The John Gilmary Shea Prize is given annually to the author of a book, published during a preceding twelve-month period, which is judged by a committee of experts to have made the most original and distinguished contribution to knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church. Any author who is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada is eligible. The prize consists of $750.

           The next prize will be presented on January 9, 2010, in San Diego, California; at the Association's ninetieth annual meeting. Books to be entered in the competition this year must have been published between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009. Three copies, identified as entries, should be sent by August 1, one to each of the following members of the committee of judges:

Professor David Burr, Emeritus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the State University, Blacksburg, Chairman, Send books to:  3352 Indian Meadow Drive, Blacksburg, VA 24060-8842

         Professor Peter C. Kent, Department of History, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3, Canada

            Inquiries may be addressed either to the chairman of the committee, Professor Thomas Reeves, at his address given above, or to the secretary of the Association, the Reverend Oaul G. Robichaud, C.S.P., at the Executive Office. 

Past Winners:

2008:  Charles R. Gallagher, S.J.  Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII  (Yale University Press)

2007: Liam M. Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724 (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)

2006:  J. Michael Hayden and Malcolm R. Greenshields, 600 Years of Reform: Bishops and the French Church, 1190-1789 (McGill-Queens University Press)        

2005: Stephen Schloesser, S.J., Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919-1933 (The University of Toronto Press)

2004: Michael B. Gross,  The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (University of Michigan Press)

2003: Jay P. Corrin, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (University of Notre Dame Press)

2002: David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (The Pennsylvania State University Press) 

2001: Katherine L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton University Press)

2000: Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Harvard University Press)

1999: Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Duke University Press)

1998: John Howe, Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy: Dominic of Sora and His Patrons  (University of Pennsylvania Press)

1997: Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750 (Stanford University Press)

1996: John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Urban North (University of Chicago Press)

1995:  Marvin R. O'Connell, Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (Catholic University of America Press)

1994:  Brian P. Clarke, Piety and Nationalism: Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850-1895 (McGill-Queens University Press)

1993: Maureen C. Miller, The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950-1150 (Cornell University Press)

1992: David J. O'Brien, Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic (Paulist Press)

1991: Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., The History of Black Catholics in the United States (Crossroad)

1990: Jeremy Cohen, Be Fertile and Increase Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Cornell University Press)

1989: Christopher J. Kauffman, Makers of the Catholic Community: The Bicentennial History of the Catholic Church in America (Macmillan Publishing Company)

1988:  James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (University of Chicago Press)

1987: James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221 (University of Pennsylvania Press)

1986:  Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (Yale University Press)

1985: Eugene Franklin Rice, Jr., Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Johns Hopkins University Press)

1984: Philip T. Hoffman, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon, 1500-1789 (Yale University Press)

1983: Thomas Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France (Rutgers University Press)

1982: Walter L. Arnstein, Protestant Versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England: Mr. Newdegate and the Nuns (University of Missouri Press)

1981: John N. Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848-1897 (University of Chicago Press)

1980: Richard Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton University Press)

1979: Kenneth Meyer Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571) Vol. II: The Fifteenth Century (The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia)

1978: Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan. Biography of a Legend (University of Chicago Press)

1977: Timothy Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France: A Social and Political Study of the Curés in a Diocese of the Dauphiné (Princeton University Press)

1976: Emmet Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Creation of the Modern Irish State, 1878-1886 (American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia)

1975: Jay P. Dolan, The Immigrant Church: New York's Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865 (Johns Hopkins University Press)

1974: Brother Thomas Spalding, C.F.X., Martin John Spalding: American Churchman (Catholic University of America Press)

1973: Robert E. Quirk, The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910-1929 (Indiana University Press)

1972: John T. Noonan, Jr., Power to Dissolve: Lawyers and Marriages in the Courts of the Roman Curia (Balknap Press of Harvard University Press)

1971: Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine. The Emergence of the Catholica Tradition (Volume I: 100-600) (University of Chicago Press)

1970: David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (Yale University Press)

1969: Robert Brentano, Two Churches: England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton University Press)

1968: Edward S. Surtz, S.J., The Works and Days of John Fisher (Harvard University Press)

1967: Robert Ignatius Burns, S.J., The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Reconstruction on a Thirteenth-Century Frontier (Harvard University Press)

1966: Robert Ignatius Burns, S.J., The Jesuits and the Indian Wars of the Northwest (Yale University Press)

1965: John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Harvard University Press)

1964: Helen C. White, Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs (University of Wisconsin Press)

1963: Oscar Halecki, The Millennium of Europe (University of Notre Dame Press)

1962: Francis Dvornik, The Slavs in European History and Civilization (Rutgers University Press)

 Honorable Mention:

George H. Dunne, Generation of Giants (University of Notre Dame Press)

1961: John Courtney Murray, S.J., We Hold These Truths. Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Sheed and Ward)

1960: Maynard J. Geiger, O.F.M., The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, O.F.M. (Washington, Academy of American Fransiscan History)

Honorable Mention:

George H. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church (Harper)

1959: Robert A. Graham, S.J., Vatican Diplomacy. A Study of Church and State on the International Plane (Princeton University Press)

Honorable Mention:

Oscar Halecki, From Florence to Brest (1439-1596) (Fordham University Press)

Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law. A Sketch of Canonical Theory and its Application in England (University of California Press)

1958: John M. Daley, S.J., Georgetown University: Origin and Early Years (Georgetown University Press)

1957: Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C, The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895-1900 (H. Regnery Co.)

1956: John Tracy Ellis, American Catholicism (University of Chicago Press)

1955: Annabelle M. Melville, John Carroll of Baltimore (Scribner)

1954: Philip Hughes, The Reformation in England (Hollis and Carter)

1951: George W. Paré, The Catholic Church in Detroit, 1701-1888 (Gabriel Richard Press)

1950: John H. Kennedy, Jesuit and Savage in New France (Yale University Press)

1946: Carlton J. H. Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain (The Macmillan Company)

    The Howard R. Marraro Prize is given annually to the author of a book that is judged by a committee of experts to be the most distinguished work dealing with Italian history or Italo-American history or relations that has been published in a preceding twelve-month period. It is named in memory of Howard A. Marraro (1879-1972), who was a professor in Columbia University and the author of more than a dozen books on Italian literature, history, and culture. In his last will Professor Marraro bequeathed to the Association a sum to be invested as a fund, the income from which would be awarded each year as a prize. The amount is $750. Any author who is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada is eligible.

            The next prize will be presented on January 9, 2010, at the Association's ninetieth annual meeting. Books to be entered in the competition this year must have been published between May 1, 2008, and April 30, 2009. Three copies of each book, together with a brief curriculum vitae and bibliography of the author, must be postmarked on or before May 15, 2009, and sent to the Book Prize Administrator, American Historical Association at 400 A Street, S.E., Washington, DC 20003 (telephone: 202-544-2422). Each copy must be labeled "Marraro Prize Entry."

           The committee of judges consists of three historians representing respectively the American Catholic Historical Association, the American Historical Association, and the Society for Italian Historical Studies, for each of which Professor Marraro endowed a prize. The representative of the American Catholic Historical Association is Professor Nicholas Terpstra of the Department of History, University of Toronto (100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada); e-mail address:  nicholas.terpstra@utoronto.ca

Past Winners:

2008:  Carol Leroy Lansing, Passion and Order:  Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes (Cornell University Press) 

2007: Gerald McKevitt, S.J., Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848-1919 (Stanford University Press)  

2006: Lance Gabriel Lazar, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy (University of Toronto Press)

2005: Augustine Thompson, O.P., Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325 (Pennsylvania State University Press)

2004: Samantha Kelly, The New Solomon: Robert of Naples (1309-1343) and Fourteenth-Century Kingship (Brill of Leiden and London)

2003: Joanna H. Drell, Kingship and Conquest: Family Strategies in the Principality of Salerno During the Norman Period, 1077-1194 (Cornell University Press)

2002: David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (Pennsylvania State University Press)

2001: Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (E.J. Brill)

2000: Franco Mormando, S.J., The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (University of Chicago Press)

1999: Konrad Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411-1785 (University of Toronto Press)

1998: John M. Headley, Tommaso Campanella and the Transformation of the World (Princeton University Press)

1997: Silvana Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge University Press)

1996: Frederick J. McGinness, Right Thinking: Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton University Press)

1995: Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature ; Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (University of California Press)

1994: Elisabeth G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform (University of California Press)

1993: Philip Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, Il Duce's Other Woman: The Untold Story of Margherita Sarfatti, Benito Mussolini's Jewish Mistress, and How She Helped Him to Come to Power (William Morrow and Company)

1992: Martha D. Pollack, Turin, 1564-1680: Urban Design, Military Culture and the Creation of the Absolutist Capital (University of Chicago Press)

1991: Robert Charles Davis, The Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal: Workers and Workplace in the Preindustrial City (Johns Hopkins University Press)

1990: Alan Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy in the Age of Metternich, Volume 2: Revolution and Reaction, 1830-1838 (Catholic University of America Press)

1989: Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Death and Property in Siena, 1205-1800: Strategies for the Afterlife (Johns Hopkins University Press)

1988: Charles M. Radding, The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence: Pavia and Bologna, 850-1150 (Yale University Press)

1987: Gary Ross Mormino, Immigrants on the Hill: Italian-Americans in St. Louis, 1882-1982 (University of Illinois Press)

1986: Margaret L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton University Press)

1985: David Herlihy and Christine Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (Yale University Press)

1984: John F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Johns Hopkins University Press)

1983: Randolph Starn, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval & Renaissance Italy (University of California Press)

1982: Edward M. Muir, Civil Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton University Press)

1981: Felix Gilbert, The Pope, His Banker, and Venice (Harvard University Press)

1980: Richard Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton University Press)

1979: David R. Coffin, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton University Press)

1978: Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605 (Princeton University Press)

1977: Sarah Rubin Blanshei, Perugia, 1260-1340: Conflict and Change in a Medieval Italian Urban Society (American Philosophical Society)

1976: Not awarded

1975: Silvano M. Tomasi, Piety and Power: The Role of the Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area, 1880-1930 (Center for Migration Studies) 

1974: Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries: 1527-1800 (University of Chicago Press)

           The Peter Guilday Prize is awarded for a manuscript, accepted by the editor of the Catholic Historical Review, that is the author's first scholarly publication. Entries must be submitted as articles; those received in the editorial office by September 1 of any year will be considered for that year's prize, the amount of which is $100. The winning article will be published in the following year.

           Any author who is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada is eligible.

         The John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award, which carries a purse of $1,200, memorializes the scholarship and teaching of Monsignor Ellis (1905-1992). Its purpose is to assist a graduate student working on some aspect of the history of the Catholic Church. The twelfth annual award will be announced at the Association's ninetieth meeting, which will be held in San Diego, on  January 7-10, 2010.

         Eligibility: Those wishing to enter the competition for the award must be citizens or authorized residents (i.e., permanent residents or on student visas) of the United States or Canada, and must be enrolled in a doctoral program at a reception at a recognized institution of higher education.

           Procedures: Applicants must submit the following materials:

           (1)   three copies of a statement from the chairman (or director of graduate studies) of  the applicant's department certifying that he or she has completed all the degree requirements for the doctorate except for the dissertation, and has received departmental approval to undertake work on a dissertation topic dealing with some aspect of the history of the Catholic Church;

           (2)   three copies of a statement written by the applicant, not exceeding 1,000 words in            length, describing the dissertation project and the way in which the award would be used to further its completion;

           (3) two sealed letters of recommendation from scholars familiar with the applicant's work, one of whom must be his or her dissertation director.

These materials must be sent by September 30, 2008, to the secretary of the Association.

           This year the judges are Professors Ann C. Rose, Chairman, of Pennsylvania State University,  Brad S. Gregory of the University of Notre Dame, and Richard F. Gyug of Fordham University.