rhecoverThe Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique is a "association de fait" in Belgian law, founded in 1900, whose management is specified in an agreement between the Université catholique de Louvain and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The Revue d'histoire ecclesiastique, a scholarly journal administered by professors of the Université catholique de Louvain and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, publishes 4 issues per year in 3 deliveries. It presents articles covering the entire history of Christianity. All of these articles are based on original source research and often develop innovative aspects in the area of historical methodology. Since 2011, articles may be written in English, French, German, Spanish or Italian. Besides its articles, the Revue offers the reader recensions of recents books dealing with Church history in the large sense, in the form of critical reviews or brief descriptions. These recensions try to cover the most important publications in this sector. Added to that is a chronicle describing, by country, conferences, distinctions, doctoral theses, deaths...

A jewel of the RHE is its voluminous up-to-date bibliography of religious history, providing over 6,000 notices, formerly three times a year, on articles and books that have recently appeared. Since the year 2011, the entire bibliography has been and will continue to be published in issue No. 2 of the RHE. These bibliographical notices are systematically classified, each one of them being provided with adequate keywords (persons, places, institutions, concepts...). Since 2009, the consultation of the online RHE Bibliography has been available on the Brepolis website, combining the bibliographic records from the last forty years (1971-2019). Since 2014, the RHE Bibliography online is grouped with the Elenchus bibliographicus of the Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses under the name of Index Religiosus. The bibliography no longer appears in print.

Since 2007, the site Periodical Archive Online (PAO) of the ProQuest company (http://pao.chadwyck.co.uk/home.do) has contained all the volumes of the RHE from 1900-2000 (with charge for access). Since 2011, the most recent decade of the Journal (articles, reviews, and chronicles) was made available online via a subscription to the Brepols online website. From 2011, the bibliography will be fully published in the No. 2 of the RHE.

The RHE is situated at A level among scientific periodicals in most international classifications.

The Revue (ISSN 0035-2381) is distributed in 70 countries. the allocation of the major part of subscriptions, by country, is illustrated in the map below:

 carte abonnés2

 

Some opinions on the Revue

"In the area of scholarly periodicals, the RHE remains one of the finest European enterprises of the past century. Now it's off to a new start. Who wouldn't be pleased"?

(É. POULAT, in Revue d'Histoire de l'Église de France, t. 87, 2001, p. 483.)

"The best international church-historical journal is Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique, which, like Ephemerides, is published at Louvain. Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique appears three times annually in a large volume of about 450 pages. Though written primarily in French, it covers literature of all countries, the majority of articles being in French or in English. It is the bibliographical breadth of the Revue, however, that is stunning. It does far more than any other journal with reviewing research, including work in progress at various universities in Europe. It reviews articles and frequently offers critiques; and it reviews a greater number of books than any other journal of church history. It is therefore the standard work, although written in foreign languages, for virtually all scholars working in church history".

(J. E. BRADLEY and R. A. MULLER, Church History. An introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods. Grands Rapids (Michigan), W.B. Eerdmans Publ., 1995, p. 90.)

"Dort wo germanische und romanische Kultur aufeinanderstossen, in der Vergangenheit bis zur Gewalt, nämlich im belgischen Löwen/Louvain, erscheint die grosse internationale kirchenhistorische Zeitschrift, die "Revue d'histoire ecclesiastique" (RHE). Zwischen den blass-madonnenblauen, lappigen, typographisch wenig ansprechenden Umschalgseiten versteckt sich ein Inhalt, welcher für den, der ihn zu nutzen weiss, von ausserordentlichem Reichtum ist. […] Der Rezensionsteil ist umfanmässig etwa doppelt so gross, wobei zwischen den "grossen' Rezensionen und den "notices brèves" unterschieden wird. […] Allein die nach Autoren geordnete Titelliste der rezensierten Werke umfasst jährlich rund 30 Seiten! So kann ruhig gesagt werden: Was nicht in der RHE rezensiert wurde, existiert für die Kirchengeschichte nicht. […] Das ist aber noch nicht alles. Die RHE enthält alljährlich noch eine rund sechshundertseitige, separat paginierte Bibliographie des kirchenhistorischen Schrifttums im weitesten Sinn. […] Ausserdem gibt es am Schluss noch Hinweise auf Rezensionen in andern Zeitschriften von früher angekündigten Werken. Mehr zu wünschen wäre verwegen und würde bloss die mindestens für den Anfänger nicht gerade leichte Orientierung zusätzlich erschweren".

(P. HERSCHE. Ein Streifzug durch die internationale kirchengeschichtliche Zeitschriften­landschaft, dans Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte-Revue d'histoire eccle­siastique suisse, t. 90, 1996, p. 218-219.)