The Achievement of Jaroslav Pelikan

Fri, 01 May 1992 00:00:00 -0400

In 1971 the University of Chicago Press published The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), the first volume in a projected five-volume work entitled The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. In his preface to volume 1, Jaroslav Pelikan (a professor of church history, medieval history, and religious studies at Yale University since 1962) expressed his hope that the entire project would be completed “within the next decade.” Ten years, however, stretched into almost twenty. The fifth and final volume appeared in 1989: Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700). The intervening years—1974, 1978, 1983—witnessed the publication, respectively, of volumes 2, 3, and 4: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700), The Growth of Medieval Theology (600–1300), and Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300–1700).

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