Search

This article focuses on the early years of the cold war in Italy in the form of an analysis of the Catholic press from 1947 to the eve of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. In so doing it attempts to answer key questions for Italian Catholicism relating to peace building that arose from total war in the age of mass democracy. En focalisant sur le debut de la guerre froide en Italie, cet article (base sur l'analyse de la presse catholique en Italie depuis 1947 jusqu'au Deuxieme concile cumenique du Vatican) cherche a repondre aux questions centrales suivantes: comment reagissaient l'Eglise catholique et les catholiques italiens face a guerre totale et democratie de masse? Avaient-ils une vision de la paix et de l'ordre international qui pouvait se maintenir face aux ideologies dominantes du vingtieme siecle? Indem sich dieser Aufsatz auf die eng umrissene Phase des fruhen Kalten Krieges konzentriert, mochte er einen Beitrag zu der Frage leisten, wie sich das katholische Milieu in Italien an die Verhaltnisse der Massengesellschaft im Kontext der Debatten uber Frieden und kommunistische Friedensbewegung anpasste. Er basiert auf der Analyse der katholischen Presse in Italien zwischen 1947 bis zum Vorabend des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils.

The history of the relationship between Catholicism and fascism in Italy and the cooperation between Catholicism and fascism in Siena in the mid 1930s is discussed.

The problems faced by the Spanish missionaries in translating Christian concept to the native people of South America, due to the stubbornness of the local priests to learn the native language are presented.

A few years ago, while researching the perception of the Jews in Italy as revealed by Italian Renaissance plays preserved at the ShakespeareFolger Library, (2) found a play entitled: 'La [...]

In a letter to the people of Florence in the early part of 1067, the ardent reformer, Peter Damian, denounced a group of monks as locustae. (2) These unnamed monks--whom [...]

This essay addresses the significance of the Assumption of the Virgin fresco in the Baptistery of Siena and the existence of an adjacent tunnel that connects the Baptistery to the Cathedral above. The traditional celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin in Siena is described; previously unpublished documents stating that a play of the Assumption was performed add new details to the picture. Other contemporary Sienese religious dramas, some little-known to modern scholars, are discussed to illustrate what the play of the Assumption could have entailed. It is proposed that the tunnel, or trapdoor, was used to conceal ropes that raised an effigy of the Assunta during the feast-day Mass., Crowning the vault above the altar of the Siena Baptistery is the Assumption of the Virgin (figs. 1, 2) painted ca. 1450 by Lorenzo di Pietro, better known as Vecchietta [...]

Church--state relations in Italy have concerned the role of the Catholic Church in the failure of successive regimes to consolidate themselves and a triangular relationship involving the Christian Democrat (DC) party between 1943 and 1994. Despite a historic ambivalence about Christian Democracy, the church supported the party not least because of its concern about the challenge of the Communist Party. By the 1970s, the church was engaged in redefining its position vis-a-vis the state, leading to the renegotiation of the 1929 concordat in 1984. The demise of the DC in 1994 finally broke the myth of Catholic political unity., The church-state relationship has been a central theme of Italian historiography. Two themes in particular can be highlighted: the role played by the Catholic Church in the failure of successive [...]

The 'Catholic effect,' or the religious vitality of Catholic areas compared to areas where other religions dominate, has been observed by various scholars but not completely explained. Italy, where a Catholic religious monopoly dominates, also shows this effect. Indicators of vitality from clerical recruitment to mass attendance have remained relatively high and largely stable in recent decades. Yet the principal theoretical paradigms -- secularization and religious market theory -- both would predict a crisis, although for different reasons. This paper addresses the vitality of Italian Catholicism by applying religious market theory and introducing the possibility of internal competition. The policies and polity of Italian Catholicism tolerate and support internal competition; this appears to counteract the decline predicted not only by the old but also by the new paradigm. The Italian case is thus revealed to be not an exceptional event, as often considered in Italian sociology of religion. The Catholic effect could be analyzed and perhaps explained using religious market theory once internal competition is accounted for., INTRODUCTION: THE 'CATHOLIC EFFECT' In American sociological literature, the 'Catholic effect' refers to findings from national and cross-national surveys indicating that, ceteris paribus, national or local Catholic monopolies showed more [...]

The DOMINICAN friar GIOVANNI DOMINICI (1356-1419) was an influential, charismatic, and popular preacher, and an important figure in the political world of RENAISSANCE FLORENCE, but neglected in modern scholarship. This study offers a thorough summary of Dominici's political views as well as a biographical portrait, a bibliographical survey, and a discussion of Dominici's preaching style. The article draws on a large, unpublished collection of Dominici's sermons from the Biblioteca Riccardiana, dating from 1400 to 1406. Dominici emerges as an ambivalent participant in Florentine politics, advocating some of its civic values such as the active life and patriotism, while fiercely criticizing humanist ideals such as the use of rhetoric in politics and the rise of the professional politician., INTRODUCTION In a letter to the well-known merchant, Francesco Datini, Chiara Gambacorta, a nun from an aristocratic Pisan family, wrote: I know that the venerable preacher, our father, the Friar [...]

In the public worships of Santa Maria presso San Celso or church of the 'Madonna of Miracles' in Milan, music was an attraction that also drew the Milanese aristocracy into the church with their expanded liturgical musical program, which include a Vespers service and High Mass for every month's first Sunday. The first documented music director of the church and madrigalist, Simon Boyleau was an influential composer, whose compositions reflected Milan archbishop Carlo Borromeo's philosophy of church music according to Tridentine criteria and agenda directed at the aristocracy.

On 18 February 1940, a boisterous mob of recalcitrant Italian-American parishioners of the Holy Redeemer Church in Cleveland clashed with diocesan authorities and the Cleveland police in their second successful [...]

The last fifteen to twenty years have witnessed a phenomenal growth in the study of medieval and Renaissance confraternities, those lay religious associations that pervaded the spiritual and social fabric [...]

By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Italian Wars, economic disaster, social strife, and religious controversy upset any semblance of unity, peace, or order in Modena, a little city in north-central Italy. Just as chaos and crisis reached a peak, Edigio Foscarari arrived as Modena's first resident bishop in over fifty years. He immediately began to forge an alliance with the ruling elite. Together, the bishop and the elite addressed pressing issues involving Christian morality and social ethics by leading urban religious ritual, mediating social conflicts, and caring for poverty-stricken citizens. This essay on the crisis in Modena and the alliance between the bishop and the ruling elite in the public sphere casts new light on the nature of episcopal activity, the intersection of religion and politics, and the development of Catholic reform in Tridentine Italy.

The narratives of Francesco Spiera's death in Cittadella in 1548 emphasize that he died certain of his own damnation because he had recanted some Protestant beliefs during Inquisition proceedings six months earlier. In contrast, most modern historians of the Italian Reformation stress the widespread uncertainty and subtlety of belief in the area around Venice in the 1540s. The authors of the Spiera stories were not disinterested observers: Pier Paolo Vergerio, Matteo Gribaldi, Henry Scrymgeour, and Sigismund Gelous were, or became, Protestants. Their narratives are strongly influenced by both the ars moriendi tradition and the Anti-Nicodemite campaign against dissimulation. English writers adapted the story of Spiera's desperation to induce faithfulness (or good behavior) for the next three hundred years. Spiera stories are still often treated as factual, yet in practice his despair was exploited for propaganda purposes.

Italian anthropologist Ernest De Martino (1908-1965) devoted much of his writing to the analysis of 'the crisis of presence,' an existential dilemma evidenced in a disturbed sense of self and often expressed as illness, emotional distress, or 'alienation.' This article describes De Martino's conceptualization of the crisis of presence as a problem of consciousness with moral and emotional dimensions and applies it in interpreting the conversion narratives of three Italian Pentecostal Christians. The resolution of the crisis, for these Christians, entails the construction of a new sense of self, and particularly a new relationship to time and history. [De Martino, Pentecostalism, religion, existential crisis, Italy]

The long tradition of collecting in Italy continued into the 18th century, among a few aristocrats and, more importantly, within the academic community. Cosimo de Medici (1642-1723), Grand Duke of [...]

The sainthood of Ranieri of Pisa was based on his civic contributions and exemplary life in 12th century Italy. San Ranieri had been convinced of his religious vocation at an early stage in life, when consequently he left his secular lifestyle, assumed a monk's habit and embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. At his return he was reported to have had several visions and performed several miracles before his death in 1160.

Arians in Bishop Ambrose's Milan, under the leadership of Bishop Julian Valens, attempted to move from private to public sacred space to become a legitimate religion in the court's eyes during the late 300s. The political-religious arena was dominated by orthodox Christians who were supported by the court and Ambrose and they maintained an anti-Arian stance. The conflict lasted 13 years until 387 but the Arians continued to create sacred space in the private arena.

The image of the Pentecost underwent some significant changes during the Italian Renaissance, particularly during the late sixteenth century in Rome. Traditionally, the scene had shown the descent of the Holy Spirit on the twelve Apostles and sometimes Mary, but in this period the image was expanded to include all the women and men numbered among the disciples after the Ascension: the 120 mentioned in Acts 1:15. This enlarged version of the Pentecost was related to the reform ideas and the missionary imperative of the Counter-Reformation papacy of Gregory XIII Boncompagni (1572-1585). Gregory promoted this new image, which found its most eloquent expression in the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, particularly in Jacopo Zucchi's apse frescoes commissioned by the Order of Santo Spirito in 1582, and in the chapel of the Marchesa Vittoria della Tolfa. Papal rhetoric, the liturgy of the reformed Missal of Pius V, popular preaching, and the writings of Gregory Nazianzus all contributed to the new Pentecost imagery in late Cinquecento Rome.

Although Swanson's (1967) Religion and Regime is highly regarded by sociologists, it has spurred little additional work on the sociology of the Reformation. Those who have investigated the Reformation, mainly historians, have tended to ignore Swanson. This study takes a fresh look at the same Durkheimian concern which interested Swanson, namely, the possible link between social structure and a belief in immanence, in the specific case of Italy. Protestantism had some early and limited successes in northern Italy, mainly because of the presence of indigenous religious traditions which (like Protestantism) rejected immanence. Southern Italy, by contrast, never developed any indigenous immanence-rejecting traditions which could serve to 'pull in' Protestantism. This is attributed in part to the fact that local communities in the South were often organized around a chiesa ricettizia, a type of church that has been well studied by Italian scholars but generally ignored by English-speaking investigators.

The power of the Catholic Church in the Piedmont region of Italy from 1570 to 1770 was neither absolute nor uniform. Visitation records of the parishes in the Dioceses of Asti, Alba and Mondovi reveal a wide range of approach and result in Church-laity relations. The Church's goal was to focus the communities' religious practice on the parish and away from kin-groups, thus enabling more control of religious life. Kinship groups, lay-religious groups and village councils all came into to conflict with the Church over this process.

Venice is a magical city at any time, but during the annual Carnival, held usually in February depending upon when Easter occurs, the city has a further fascination. If as [...]

The article examines the role of philanthropy, processions, and Forty Hour devotions as public manifestations of lay confraternities, which in turn fostered the theatricality of religion in post-tridentine religious life. Examples from Rome, Naples, and Bologna are provided.

A spring evening in Rome. People, returning from work, pause in one of the city's countless piazzas, chatting amiably. These public spaces seem expressly designed for such conviviality, luring individuals [...]

A study was conducted to examine the differing conceptions of marriage held by the laity. A total of 750 matrimonial trials discussed before the ecclesiastical court in Venice (1420-1545) were analyzed. Findings indicate that practices such as bigamy and concubinage were part of socially accepted marital behavior.

The theoretical and methodological aspects of the Italian school of History of religions, that owes its particular character to the cultural commitment of Raffaele Pettazzoni, Ernesto de Martino and Angelo Brelich who are not well known internationally are studied, The aim is provide some keys to their interpretation for the purpose of wider circulation.

America's Protestant challenge and Italy's Catholic response examines the contribution to the body of the works that explores the cultural dimension of international relations. It was observed that beside the Cold War, the religious confrontation between America's Protestant and Italy's Catholic and cultural conflict existed between two nations that were otherwise allies in the struggle against communism.