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Christian civilization and Italic civilization: Italian Catholic theses from Gioberti to Pius XII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Oliver Logan
Oliver Logan*
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Extract

‘Civilization’ was a major keyword in the Italian Catholic discourse of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Indeed Catholic Christian civilization was seen as synonymous with true civilization itself insofar as the post-classical era was concerned. The concept of ‘Christian civilization’ was closely allied to that of cristianità, as distinct from cristianesimo (Christianity). The terms cristianità and chrétienté, like English ‘Christendom’, had originally had primarily geographical connotations, but in post-Revolutionary Catholic thought they acquired connotations of a Christian order of society under the leadership of the Church, the evils of the modern world being presented as consequences of its breakdown. The allied discourse on ‘Christian civilization’ itself in the Italian Catholic world, as in the French one, was in large measure reactionary in character, associated with Counter-Revolutionary ideology and with opposition to liberalism. It asserted that a return of society to the Church was a precondition of social order. Thus the myth of a lost universal order offered a paradigm for the future.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 33: The Church Retrospective , 1997 , pp. 475 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997

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References

1 Jacques Gadille, ‘Le concept de civilisation chrétienne dans la pensée romantique’, in Jean-René Derré et al., Civilisation chre’tienne. Approche historique d’une idéologie xviie-xxi siècle (Paris, 1975), pp. 183–210; Giovanni Miccoli, ‘Chiesa e società in Italia tra Ottocento e Novecento: il mito della “cristianità”’, in Giuseppe Alberigo et al., Chiese nella società. Verso un superamento della cristianità (Turin, 1980), pp. 151–245; Daniele Menozzi, ‘La Chiesa e la storia. Una dimensione della cristianità da Leone XIII al Vaticano II’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 5 (1984), pp. 69–106; idem, ‘Intorno alle origini del mito della cristianità’, ibid., pp. 523–62.

2 In addition to other material mentioned in subsequent notes, the main sources used here are: anon, [but G. Busnelli, S.J.], ‘L’Italia e la civiltà’, La Civiltà Cattolica [hereafter CC], 1602 (17 March 1917), pp. 41–62; anon., ‘Anniversari di guerra’, CC, 1636 (17 Aug. 1918), p. 298; anon., ‘Ragioni sociali dei centenari religiosi. S. Francesco d’Assisi’, CC, 1815 (6 Feb. 1926), pp. 198–9; anon., ‘Il centenario benedettino e le benemerenze sociali del monachesimo’, CC, 1892 (20 April 1929), pp. 97–109; A. Brucculeri, S.J., ‘Verso l’ordine nuovo’, CC, 2166 (21 Sept. 1940), pp. 401–13; G. E. Williwoll, S.J., ‘La missione di Roma negli scritti di Leone Magno’ (2 pts), CC, 2209 (4 July 1942), pp. 33–9, and 2211 (1 Aug. 1942), pp. 152–9; Giovanni Semeria, Barbabite, ‘La romanità di S. Agostino’, Vita e pensiero [hereafter VP], 21 (1930), pp. 471–82; Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, ‘Lettera pastorale. Il xv centenario della morte di S. Agostino’, Rivista diocesana milanese, 20 (April, 1929), pp. 208–22; idem, ‘Lettera pastorale. Il xvi centenario della morte di S. Ambrogio’, ibid., 29 (Sept., 1939), pp. 411–37; Igino Giordani, ‘Italia madre’, Frontespizio, 6/12 (Dec, 1934), pp. 7–8; Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, inaugural address to the Congresso giuridico internazionale (1934), in Discorsi e panegirici [hereafter DP], 2nd edn (Vatican City, 1956), pp. 333–44.

3 Vincenzo Gioberti, Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani (1843), ed. Gustavo Balsamo-Crivelli, 3 vols (Milan, 1946) 1, pp. 65–6, 69, 74, 90–2; 2, pp. 42–5, 49–52, 56–9, 63–71, 150–8; 3, pp. 134–43.

4 Ibid., 1, pp. 131; 2, pp. 135–9, 149–50.

5 Ibid., 1, pp. 54, 102, 117.

6 Ibid., 1, p. 115; 3, pp. 199–204.

7 Tosti, Luigi, Prologomeni alla storia universale della Chiesa (1861)Google Scholar, in his Opere complete, 12 (Rome, 1888), p. xiii.

8 Ibid., pp. 19–20, 64–9, 245–6.

9 Ibid., pp. 32–6; cf. idem, ‘Roma eterna’ (date uncertain), in Scritti vari, 1, Opere, 4 (Rome, 1886), pp. 3–46, at pp. 17–29.

10 Idem, Prologomeni, pp. 432–3.

11 Ibid., pp. 435–56.

12 Ibid., p. 278. Gioberti had made a broadly similar point about the emancipation of society from a once necessary ‘dictatorship’ of the Church: Primato, 2, pp. 248–61.

13 Tosti, Prologomeni, pp. 283–4.

14 Ibid., pp. 298–307.

15 Ibid., pp. 307–11.

16 Ibid., pp. 249–58; idem, Della vita di S. Benedetto (1892), Opere, 18 (Montecassino and Rome, 1892), pp. 1–14.

17 Gambasin, Angelo, ‘Pietro Balan storiografo apologista del Papato (1840-1893)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 4 (1966), pp. 349–54.Google Scholar

18 Balan, Pietro, Storia d’Italia (1875-90), 2nd edn, 11 vols (Modena, 1893-8), 1, pp. xii-xxiii, 616–17.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., 3, pp. 198–200.

20 Spicciani, Amleto, Giuseppe Toniolo tra economia e storia (Naples, 1990)Google Scholar; on Toniolo’s historiography see ch. 13. Citations below are from G. Toniolo, Opera omnia, ser. 1 Scritti storici, 4 vols (Vatican City, 1947–52) [henceforth OOSS]. A condensed statement of his historical mythology can be found in Le buoni tradizioni della storia d’Italia (1891), in OOSS, 1, pp. 372–90.

21 See esp. Toniolo, Dei remoti fattori della potenza economica di Firenze (1882), in OOSS, 4, pp. 221–9.

22 Idem, ‘La genesi storica dell’odierna crisi sociale economica’ (1893), in OOSS, 1, pp. 103–97, at pp. 118–20; idem, Problemi ed ammaestramenti sociali dell’ età costantiniana (1913), in OOSS, 1, pp. 1–102 at pp. 20–1.

23 Idem, Il, socialismo nella storia della civiltà (1899-1902), in OOSS, 1, pp. 267–446, passim.

24 Idem, Problemi ed ammaestramenti, pp. 10–20.

25 Scoppola, Pietro, ‘Benigni, Umberto’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 8 (Rome, 1966), pp. 506–8 Google Scholar; Emile Poulat, Catholicisme, démocratie et socialisme. Le mouvement catholique et Mgr. Benigni de la naissance du socialisme à la victoire du fascisme (Tournai, 1977); on Benigni’s historiography see pp. 334–41.

26 Benigni, Umbert, Storia sociale della Chiesa, 5 vols in 7 (Milan, 1906-33), 1, p. xviii.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 5, pp. 590–2.

28 Ibid., 1, p. xiv.

29 Ibid., 1, pp. xiii-xiv, 218–23; 2/1, pp. 24–30; 5, pp. 329–31, 338.

30 Gustavo Bontadini, ‘Gemelli, Agostino’, in Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, eds, Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia 1860–1980, 3 vols in 5 (Casale Monferrato, 1981–4), 2, pp. 225–30.

31 See, for example, Agostino Gemelli, O.F.M., L’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan, 1921).

32 Gemelli, A., ‘Medioevalismo’, VP, 1 (1914), pp. 1–2 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Cultura e religione’, VP, 9 (1919), pp. 217–26; idem, Il mio contributo alla filosofia neoscolastica, 2nd edn (Milan, 1932), pp. 15, 19–20, 89, 91, 97, 98, citations here from pp. 89, 97.

33 Visser, Romke, ‘Fascist doctrine and the cult of the Romanità’, Journal of Contemporary History, 27 (1992), pp. 5–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. We basically disagree with Prof. Visser ‘s suggestion that ‘the fascist cult of the romanità was essential for the propaganda in favour of the “coalition” between right-wing (Catholic) intellectuals and Fascism’.

34 Anon, ., ‘La romanità di Madeleine Sofie Barat’, CC, 1888 (16 Feb. 1929), pp. 329–36 Google Scholar; A. Ferrua, S.J., ‘La mostra augustea della romanità’, CC, 2100 (18 Dec. 1937), pp. 481–91; M. Barbera, S.J., ‘Romanità genuina nell’Istituto di Studi Romani’, CC, 2110 (21 May 1938), pp. 292–303; A. Ferrua, S.J., ‘La difesa della romanità’, CC, 2165 (7 Sept. 1940), pp. 321–30; E. Pacelli, address to Pontificio Istituto d’Archaeologia Cristiana (1932), DP, pp. 91–8; idem, address to Catholic Youth, ibid., pp. 125–8; idem, ‘Il sacro destino di Roma’, address to the Istituto di Studi Romani (1936), ibid., pp. 507–14.

35 Cf. his address cited in nn. 2 and 34.

36 Pius XII, encomium on St Nicholas of Fluё (1947), in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 39 (1947), p. 369; address to the Tenth International Congress of Historical Sciences (1955), ibid., 77 (1955), pp. 680–1.

37 On the Christian Democrat intelligentsia emerging at the end of the Fascist period see Renato Moro, Formazione della classe dirigiente cattolica (1929-1937) (Bologna, 1979), eh. 11; Menozzi, ‘La Chiesa e la storia’, pp. 91–3.