About the Author

John W. O’Malley, currently university professor in the theology department of Georgetown University, is a church historian whose specialty is sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe. Among his best known books are The First Jesuits, Trent and All That, Four Cultures of the West, and What Happened at Vatican II, all published by Harvard University Press. The First Jesuits, translated into ten languages, won both the Jacques Barzun Prize for cultural history and the Philip Schaff Prize for church history. John O’Malley was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 and to the American Philosophical Society in 1997. He is past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and the Renaissance Society of America. A Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus, Father O’Malley has received lifetime achievement awards from both the Renaissance Society of America and the Society for Italian Historical Studies.