BIRELEY, Robert, S.J.
Professor Emeritus
Robert Bireley, S.J. (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1972; B.A., Loyola University Chicago, 1956) is a retired Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he taught courses in early modern European history.
Bireley is a former president of the American Catholic Historical Association (2008) and has served on the editorial boards of the Catholic Historical Review (1979-85) and the Renaissance Quarterly (2000-3), and the Executive Committee for the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies (1979-86). Bireley has been a prolific author in the field of European religious history with a special interest in the Reformation, Roman Catholicism and Jesuit history. Bireley’s books include: Politics and Religion in the Age of the Counterreformation: Emperor Ferdinand 11, William Lamormaini, SJ, and the Formation of Imperial Policy (University of North Carolina Press, 1981), The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450 – 1700: A Reassessment of the Counterreformation (Macmillan, 1999), and The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kinds, Courts, and Confessors (Cambridge, 2003). In 2011, the University of North Carolina University Press named Politics and Religion in the Age of the Counterreformation and The Counter-Reformation Prince as Enduring Editions. Many of Bireley’s works have been translated into Italian and German. His articles have appeared in many anthologies, including most recently Los jesuitas: Religion, politica, y educacion (Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2009); The Reformation as Christianization: Essays on Scott Hendrix’s Christianization Thesis (Tubingen, 2012);and Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research (Truman State University Press, 2008). He also completed a biography of Emperor Ferdinand II titled Ferdinand II, Counter-Reformation Emperor, 1578-1637 (Cambridge, 2014).
Bireley is the recipient of some of the most prestigious fellowships, including ones from John Simon Guggenheim, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, and several from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Research Interests
Early Modern Catholicism; the Thirty Years War; Early Modern Political Thought; History of the Jesuits
Courses Taught
History 101: Western Civilization to 1650
History 102: Western Civilization from 1650 to the Present
Freshman Seminar
History 291: Approaches to History
History 300: Machiavelli: His Enemies and his Rdiends
History 300: The Thirty Years War
History 314: The Renaissance
History 316: Early Modern Europe, 1450-1650
History 410: Early Modern Catholicism, 1450-1700
History 420: Germany in the Reformation and Counter Reformation
History 523: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance, 1400-1700
Publications/Research Listings
Books
Botero, The Reason of State, by Giovanni Botero, translated by, with introduction and notes by Robert Bireley (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2017), Cambridge Texts inthe History of Political Thought.
Ferdinand II, Counter-Reformation Emperor, 1578-1637 (Cambridge, 2014)
Politics and Religion in the Age of the Counterreformation: Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini, SJ, and the Formation of Imperial Policy (University of North Carolina Press, 1981 and 2011)
The Counter-Reformation Prince. Antimachivellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (University of North Carolina Press, 1990 and 2011)
The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kinds, Courts, and Confessors (Cambridge, 2003)
The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450 – 1700: A Reassessment of the Counterreformation (Macmillan and Catholic University of America Press, 1999)
Selected Articles
“The ‘Reformation’ as a Response to the Changing World of the Sixteenth Century: Reflections on Scott Hendrix’s Recultivating the Vineyard,” in Anna Marie Johnson and John A. Maxfield (eds.) The Reformation as Christianization: Essays on Scott Hendrix’s Christianization Thesis (Tubingen, 2012)
"Katholische Konfessionalisierung oder Fruhmoderner Katholizismus?" in Das Konfessionalisierungsparadigma--Leistungen, Probleme, Grenzen, ed. Thomas Brockmann and Dieter J. Weis (Munster, 2013), 67-86.