Faculty Directory

Jeffrey von Arx, S.J.

Part-Time Faculty

Profile

Jeffrey von Arx, S.J. is currently Visiting Professor of the History of Christianity in the STM. In the academic year 2018-2019, he was the Thomas I. Gasson Professor at B.C. From 2004 to 2017, he was Professor of History and President of Fairfield University. From 1998 until 2004, he was Associate Professor of History and Dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill in Fordham University. He began his academic career at Georgetown University in 1982, as Assistant and then Associate Professor of History until 1998, serving as Department Chair from 1991-1997. He was the founding director of the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. He has an A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Yale in modern European History with a specialization in British history. Fr. von Arx is the Superior of John LaFarge House, the Jesuit House of Studies in Cambridge. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of three Jesuit universities. He served six year as a member of the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the New England Association of School and Colleges, for whom he still chairs accreditation visits. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Selected Courses

History of Western Christianity III

Selected Publications

Books

Varieties of Ultramontanism (editor and contributor), Catholic University Press, Washington, DC, 1997.

Progress and Pessimism:  Religion, Politics and History in Late Nineteenth Century Britain, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985.

Journal Articles, Book Chapters

“Engaging the Liberal State II: Cardinal Manning and The Royal Commission of 1886,” in British Catholic History, Vol. 36, Issue 1, May 2021, pp. 294-315. 

Pastor Aeternus in its Context,” in Horizons, Vol. 47, Issue 1, June 2020, pp. 109-  114.

“Engaging the Liberal State: Cardinal Manning and Irish Home Rule,” in British Catholic History Vol. 35, Issue 1, May 2020, pp.25-54.

“Historiography of the Jesuits in Britain in the Late Modern Period,” in Robert A. Maryks, ed., Brill Jesuit Historiography Online, November 2019:

https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/jesuit-historiography-online/historiography-of-the-jesuits-in-britain-in-the-late-modern-period-COM_218488

“Two Cardinals: Conflict and Controversy in the Victorian Catholic Church,” in Newman Studies Journal, Vol. 16, Issue 1, Summer 2019, pp. 99-123.

“The Root of the China-Vatican Agreement: Napoleon” in America Magazine, September 24, 2018 (online):

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/09/24/root-china-vatican-agreement-napoleon

“How Did Vatican I Change the Church?” in America Magazine, June 10, 2015.

“Cardinal Manning and his Political Persona:  The Education Act of 1870,” in Sheridan Gilley, ed., Victorian Churches and Churchmen, Catholic Record Society, London, 2005, pp. 1-11.   

“Interpreting the Council: Archbishop Manning and the Vatican Decrees Controversy, in British Catholic History, Vol. 26, Issue 1, May 2002, pp. 229-242.

“Catholics and Politics,” in V. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts, eds., From Without the Flaminian Gate, Darnton, Longman and Todd, London, 1999.

“Archbishop Manning and the Kulturkampf,” in Recusant Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2, October 1992, pp. 254-266.

“The Victorian Crisis of Faith as Crisis of Vocation,” in R. Helmstadter and B. Lightman, eds., Victorian Faith in Crisis, Macmillan, London, 1990, pp. 262-282.

“Manning’s Ultramontanism and the Catholic Church in British Politics,” in Recusant History, Vol. 19, No. 3, May 1989, pp. 332-347.

“Victorian Ethics of Belief:  A Reconsideration,” with Frank M. Turner in W. Warren Wagar, ed., The Secular Mind:  Transformation of Faith in Modern Europe, Holmes and Meier, New York, 1982, pp. 83-101.