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A Journal. La Civiltà Cattolica From Pius IX to Pius XII (1850-1958)1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The explosion of the periodical press in mid-nineteenth-century Italy provoked a substantially new form of literary engagement on the part of clergy and lay militants. Following the 1848 revolutions, which in Italy had brought about the temporary collapse of the papal monarchy, Italian clericals identified the periodical press as a dangerous and even ‘nefarious’ force and as the most powerful instrument of their liberal opponents. The remedy, so the founders of the Jesuit opinion-journal La Civiltà Cattolica, among others, asserted, was to combat the liberals with their own weapons: to counter the ‘bad press’ with the ‘good press’. An extensive but mainly local and in many instances, ephemeral Catholic periodical press did in fact develop in Italy from the mid-nineteenth century, asserting Catholic and essentially conservative values against secular ones. In united Italy much of this press was clericalist and ‘intransigentist’, demanding the restoration of the papacy’s temporal power and resisting compromise with the new order, although part of it was liberalizing and ‘conciliatorist’, seeking to reconcile Catholics to the new order. The two great survivors from this proliferation of Catholic periodicals, both intransigentist, were La Civiltà Cattolica (1850+), and the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano (1861+). The former was unusual in aiming at a national circulation and was a pioneer in the development of commercial distribution networks. Over the decades, its editorial team or ‘college’ of Jesuits, subject to a collective discipline, sought to combine lively polemic with information, erudition, and entertainment in an attractive and readily marketable product. This college, alongside the faculty of the Collegio Romano (alias Gregorian University), has constituted the main intellectual force of the Jesuits in Italy; indeed, it has substantially been the intellectual vanguard of hard-line clericalist Catholicism there. It has generally enjoyed a privileged relationship with the Vatican, and has contributed to the papacy’s teaching. The concern with social and political order which marked the periodical from its inception was a characteristic feature at least up to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-38), after which the papacy became more detached from political matters.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004
Footnotes
1
La Civiltà Cattolica (Naples, April-Sept. 1850; Rome, 1850–70; Florence, 1871–86; Rome 1887 to present) [hereafter CC]. The journal has been published roughly fortnightly, in 4 volumes a year, in 18 series up to 1903, but designated simply by year thereafter. Up to 1933, articles were anonymous. For the period to 1903, authorship is identifiable from Del ChiaraG., Indice generale della “Civiltà Cattolica” (aprile 1550 – diciembre 1903) (Rome, 1904). This was not accessible to the present writer. Authorship of anonymous articles (indicated in brackets) has here been identified in some instances from the works containing extracts indicated below and from secondary sources; editorials have been attributed to the then editor. Series of articles on specific themes and serial novels were often subsequently published as books under the name of their authors and advertised in the end-papers of the periodical. On CC generally, see De RosaGabriele, ‘LeA Journal. La Civiltà Cattolica From Pius IX to Pius XII (1850-1958)1’, in RosaDe, ed., Civiltà Cattolica 1850–1945. Antologia, 4 vols (Florence, 1971—3), 1:9–101; MucciGiandomenico, Carlo Maria Curci. Il fondatore della “Civiltà Cattolica” (Rome, 1988); DanteFrancesco, Sforili della “Civiltà Cattolica” (1850-1891). Il laboratorio del Papa (Rome, 1990), all of which contain extracts. See also GrecoGaetano, ‘A Journal. La Civiltà Cattolica From Pius IX to Pius XII (1850-1958)1’, Annali della Scuola Normale di Pisa. Classi di lettere e filosofia, ser. 3, 6 (1976), 1051–95; TaradelRuggero and RaggiBarbara, La segregazione amichevole. “La Civiltà Cattolica” e la questione ebraica 1850–1945 (Rome, 2000). SaniRoberto, ‘A Journal. La Civiltà Cattolica From Pius IX to Pius XII (1850-1958)1’, in RiccardiAndrea, ed., Pio XII (Roma and Bari, 1984), 409–36, and idem, De De Gasperi a Fanfani. “La Civiltà Cattolica” e il mondo cattolico italiano nel secondo dopoguerra (1945-62) (Brescia, 1986) are primarily concerned with the review’s political stance after World War II. For biographical details, reference is here made to Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 1960-) [hereafter DBI] and Giorgio Campanini and Francesco Traniello, eds, Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia 1860–1980, 3 vols in 5 (Turin, 1981–4) [hereafter DSMCI].
References
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4 De Rosa, ‘Le origini’, 23–33; Dante, Storia, 66–7. In 1853 the journal had a print-run of 13,000 copies and 11,000 subscribers: Greco, ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’, 1055.
5 [Curci], ‘Il giornalismo moderno’, 11–21. Cf. [idem], ‘Le nostre speranze’; [idem], ‘Il teologizzare della Civiltà Cattolica’, CC, ser. 1, 10 (1852), 5–18; [idem], ‘Il fatto e il da farsi della Civiltà Cattolica’, CC, ser. 1, 11 (1852), 5–20, 129–42.
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18 Cf.Fedalto, Giorgio, ‘ La Civiltà Cattolica e il laicato cattolico 1868–1901’, in Osbat, Luciano and Piva, Francesco, eds, La Gioventù Cattolica dopo l’Unità, 1868–1901 (Rome, 1972), 513–29.Google Scholar
19 ‘Un liberale cattolico?’, CC, ser. 1, 1 (1850), 537–43; ‘I cattolici liberali in Italia’, CC, ser. 6, 6 (1866), 24–37; ‘La nuova appellazione di Cattolici liberali’, CC, ser. 6, 11 (1867), 17–30, 144–53; ‘Ripugnanza del concetto di Cattolico liberale’, CC, ser. 7, 8 (1869), 5–19.
20 CC, 1906(1)-1910(4), passim. The relevant encyclicals of Pius X were: Pieni l’animo, 27 July 1906 (CC, 1906(3), 385–93), and Pascendi, 8 Sept. 1907 (CC, 1907(3), 709–53). On Italian Jesuit attitudes to ‘Modernism’ and the role of Enrico Rosa in particular, see Zambarbieri, Annibale, Il Cattolicesimo tra crisi e rinnovamento. Ernesto Buonaiuti ed Enrico Rosa nella prima fase della polemica modernista (Brescia, 1979)Google Scholar.
21 Campanini, Giorgio, ‘Brucculeri, Antonio’, DSMCI, 3/i: 134–5 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Messineo, Antonio’, ibid., 2:371-4; Sani, ‘De De Gasperi a Fanfara’, 12–22 and passim.
22 See especially ‘Lo Stato e la patria’, CC, ser. 1, 7 (1852), 36–45, 149–64, subsequently published in Taparelli, L., Esame critico itegli ordini rappresentativi, 2 vols (Rome, 1854), 2:221–46 Google Scholar; cf.Logan, Oliver, ‘Italian identity; Catholic responses to secularist definitions c.1910-48’, Modern Italy, 2 (1997), 55 Google Scholar; for a bibliography of Taparelli’s writings, see Dante, Storia, 264–71.
23 Althusius, Johannes, Politica methodice digesta (Herborn, 1603): Eng. edn, The Politics of Johannes Althusius, tr. and abridged by F.S. Carney, preface by C.J. Friedrich (1964)Google Scholar.
24 Dante, Storia, 87–125 and, for a list of Liberatore’s works, 272–83. Of these, especially relevant here are: the series under the general title ‘Dell’economia politica’, CC, ser. 13, 5 (1887) – ser. 14, 4 (1889), passim, and the article ‘Le associazioni operaie’, CC, ser. 14, 4 (1889), 513–28. On the drafting of Rerum novarum see Sandor Agoes, The Troubled Origins of the Italian Catholic Labor Movement (Detroit, 1988), 68–70.
25 Reproduced in CC, 1931(2), 385–416, 481–500.
26 See A. Brucculeri’s articles: ‘L’economia corporativa’, CC, 1933(4), 560–71; ‘Dal corporativismo cristiano-sociale al corporativismo integrale fascista’, CC, 1934(1), 225–37, 449–60; ‘L’aspetto religioso delle corporazioni’, CC, 1934(2), 345–6; ‘L’aspetto etico delle corporazioni’, ibid., 462–75; ‘Corporatismo e Tomismo’, CC, 1934(4), 574–83.
27 See A. Messineo’s articles, ‘L’annessione territoriale nella tradizione cattolica’, CC, 1936(1), 190–201; ‘Necessità economica ed espansione coloniale’, ibid., 378–94; ‘Propaganda della civiltà ed espansione sociale’, CC, 1936(2), 99–110, 290–303, 374–86; ‘La vita dello Stato e il caso di necessità’, CC, 1936(3), 123–34, 197–208; ‘Necessità di vita e diritto di espansione’, CC, 1936(4), 363–73, 451–60; ‘Estensione e limiti del diritto di espansione vitale’, ibid., 363–75, 455–69; ‘Emigrazione e diritto di espansione vitale’, CC, 1937(1), 304–18, 410–21, 524–32.
28 See Messineo’s articles, ‘Autonomia e autolimitazionc nella filosofia dello Stato’, CC, 1933(1). 324–36; ‘Le garanzie dell’idividuo e dello stato’, CC, 1933(3), 326–38; ‘Il problema della nazione’, CC, 1938(3), 97–110; ‘Gli clementi costituivi della nazione e della razza’, ibid., 209–23; ‘Natura ed essenza della nazione’, ibid., 304–17; ‘Nazione e stato’, CC, ‘938(4), 102–15; ‘Nazione e stato nella gerarchia degli enti sociali’, ibid., 289–303; ‘La nazione come realtà assoluta e assoluto valore’, CC, 1939(1), 302–16, 509–23; ‘La nazione valore essenzialmente relativa’, CC, 1939(3), 203–14, 302–12; ‘La persona umana nella società nazionale’, ibid., 481–95. Cf. A. Brucculeri, ‘Il concetto cristiano dello Stato’, CC, 1938(3), 19–31, 1938(4), 385–98, criticizing Nazi totalitarianism. On Messineo’s significance see Campanini, ‘Messineo’.
29 Sani, ‘Un laboratorio’, 412.
30 Messineo, A., ‘Umanesimo integrale’, CC, 1956(3), 449–63.Google Scholar
31 The case of Liberatore has been noted. Fathers Brandi, De Santi, and Pavissich were involved in the drafting of Pius X’s encyclical Il fermo proposito (1905), which laid the basis for the reorganization of the lay Catholic movement: S. Tramontin, ‘Pavissich, Antonio’, DSMCI, 3/ii:634-5.
32 On the ‘devotion’ generally, Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘La devozione al Papa’, in Guerriero, Elio and Zambarbieri, Annibale, eds, Storia della Chiesa: XXII, ha Chiesa e la società industriale 1878–1922, 2 pts (Milan, 1990), 2:9–81 Google Scholar; Logan, Oliver, ‘Pius XII: romanità, prophesy and charisma’, Modern Italy, 3 (1998), 237–48.Google Scholar
33 See especially ‘Il culto al cuore dell’Uomo-Dio’, CC, ser. 9, 6 (1875), 513–27. On the devotion generally, see: Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘Per la devozione al Sacro Cuore in Italia tra ’800 e ’900’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 41 (1987), 361–431; Fulvio De Giorgi, ‘Forme spirituali e forme politiche. La devozione al Sacro Cuore’, ibid., 48 (1994), 365–469; Daniele Menozzi, ‘Una devozione politica tra ’800 e ’900. L’intronazione del s. Cuore nelle famiglie’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 33 (1997), 29–65.
34 See esp. [Calvetti, Giuseppe], ‘Congruenze sociali di una definizione dogmatica sull’immacolato concepimento della B.V. Maria’, CC, ser. 1, 8 (1852), 377–96 Google Scholar; ‘Il domma e la civiltà’ CC, ser. 2, 8 (1854), 481–504; cf. Logan, ‘Pius XII’, 244.
35 Logan, Oliver, ‘Counter-Reformatory theories of upbringing in Italy’, SCH, 31 (1994), 275–84.Google Scholar
36 ‘L’Ebreo di Verona’, CC, ser. i, 1–7 (1850-1), passim.
37 ‘Lionello’, CC, ser. 1, 8–10 (1852), passim.
38 ‘Ubaldo ed Irene’, CC, ser. 2, 2–12 (1853-5) passim.
39 See esp. ‘Donna antica e donna nuova’, CC, 1006(2)-1908(1), passim. NB also ‘Emma, prima e dopo’, CC, ser. 16, 8–17 (1896-7), passim.
40 Cf.Logan, Oliver, ‘Christian civilization and Italic civilization: Italian Catholic theses from Gioberti to Pius XII’, SCH, 33 (1997), 475–86 Google Scholar.
41 Inscrutabili dei Consilio, 21 April 1878, reproduced in CC, ser. 10, 6 (1878), 385–402, at 388–94.
42 On the cultural formation of the latter, see Moro, Renato, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica 1929–1937 (Bologna, 1979)Google Scholar. Moro particularly focuses on the formative role of Azione fucina, the organ of the Catholic university students’ federation and of Studium, the review of the Catholic graduate association.