Benedict XV: A Pope in the World of the 'Useless Slaughter' (1914-1918) 9782503582894, 2503582893

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Benedict XV

A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918)

BENEDICT XV A POPE IN THE WORLD OF THE ‘USELESS SLAUGHTER’ (1914–1918)

Volume 1

Directed by Alberto Melloni Edited by Giovanni Cavagnini and Giulia Grossi

F

Translated from Italian by Susan Dawson Vásquez & David Dawson Vásquez. © 2020, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. 2 volumes D/2020/0095/225 ISBN 978-2-503-58289-4 eISBN 978-2-503-58290-0 DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.116417 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

Volume 1 Abbreviations 15 Foreword Cardinal Pietro Parolin

19

Introduction Alberto Melloni

27 Part One Stages Origins and Formation

Genoa: A Capital between Savoyard Annexation and the Risorgimento Nicla Buonasorte

35

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries: Traces of the Della Chiesa Family Federica Meloni

53

The Migliorati and the Ancestry of Innocent VII Anna Falcioni

69

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa, Capuchin Friar, and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa Aldo Gorini

81

Formation and Studies at the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Genoa Nicla Buonasorte

93

The Students of the Almo Collegio Capranica at the Time of Rector Francesco Vinciguerra Maurilio Guasco

103

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A Diplomat of Leo XIII From Minutante to Sostituto in the Papal Secretariat of State Klaus Unterburger

111

Controversies at the Top: Merry del Val, Della Chiesa, Pius X (1883–1907) Annibale Zambarbieri 121 Rampolla, Della Chiesa, Benedict XV Jean-Marc Ticchi

147

The Bologna Episcopate Giacomo Della Chiesa’s First Pastoral Letter to Bologna Giovanni Turbanti

165

Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period (1908–14) Marcello Malpensa

185

Archbishop Giacomo Della Chiesa Facing the Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) Alessandro Santagata 207 The Beginning of the Pontificate The Conclave of Benedict XV (1914) Alberto Melloni

225

The First Encyclical: Ad beatissimi Caterina Ciriello 243 Ideas of War, Ideas of Peace Churches in War, Faith under Fire Frédéric Gugelot

263

Religion in War and the Legitimization of Violence Lucia Ceci

285

Italian Military Chaplains and the ‘Useless Slaughter’ Andrea Crescenzi

303

Pope Benedict XV and Pacifism: ‘An Invincible Phalanx for Peace?’ Gearóid Barry

319

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Interventionism and Neutrality in Italy The Extremist Neutrality of Guido Miglioli Claudia Baldoli

339

Italian Foreign Politics at the Dawn of Benedict XV’s Pontificate Michele Marchi

355

‘In pro della pace’: Benedict XV’s Diplomatic Steps to Prevent Italy’s Intervention in the Great War Maurizio Cau

373

Catholic Interventionism Guido Formigoni

391 Diplomacy through Aid

Benedict XV: Aid to Belgium Jan De Volder

407

Benedict XV and the Armenian Question Georges-Henri Ruyssen

417

Aid to the Syrians (1916–17): A Failure Florence Hellot-Bellier

439

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the Vatican and Prisoners of War Mara Dissegna

459

Neutral Switzerland: The Hospitalization of the Wounded and the Credit Owed to Carlo Santucci Stefano Picciaredda

479

The Note of 1917 The Papal Peace Note of 1917: Proposals for Armaments, Arbitration, Sanctions and Damages Alfredo Canavero

501

Reshaping Borders: Europe and the Colonies in Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 Peace Note Patrick J. Houlihan

523

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The Italian and French Bishops Dealing with the Note of 1917 Giovanni Cavagnini

533

The Note of 1 August 1917 and Its Failure Xavier Boniface

555

Part Two Problems The Missions Cardinal Willem van Rossum, Benedict XV and the Centralization of the Pontifical Missionary Works in Rome (1918–22) Vefie Poels and Hans de Valk

575

The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission to the French and German Offices for Missionary Work (1921) Stefano Trinchese

591

Maximum illud, a Missionary Turning Point? Claude Prudhomme

609

The ‘Chinese’ Missionary Policy of the Holy See before Costantini Giuseppe Butturini

629

The Re-Dimensioning of Anti-Modernism ‘A Kind of Freemasonry in the Church’: The Dissolution of the Sodalitium Pianum Alejandro Mario Dieguez

653

Transformations of Integralist Catholicism under Benedict XV: Benigni’s Network after the Dissolution of La Sapinière Nina Valbousquet

673

Modernism during the Pontificate of Benedict XV: Between Rehabilitation and Condemnation Giovanni Vian

691

Benedict XV and Modernism in Germany Klaus Unterburger

707

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Votes for Women and ‘Catholic Feminism’ during the Pontificate of Benedict XV Liviana Gazzetta

717

The View of the People of Israel Benedict XV: The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’ Raffaella Perin

739

The Birth of Vatican Policy on Palestine and the Holy Sites Paolo Zanini

763

Between Unionism and Ecumenism An Indecisive Inter-Confessional Situation (1914–22) Étienne Fouilloux

779

A Parallel Diplomacy? Vladimir Ghika and Catholic-Orthodox Relations in Romania during World War I Clémence de Rouvray

789

Theological Questions and Devotional Practices Religious Interpretations of War as Reflected in Prayers during World War I Maria Paiano

809

Benedict XV and the Nationalization of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in France and Germany (1914–18) Claudia Schlager

827

‘…and yet does not touch us’: A Survey of European Theology during the Pontificate of Benedict XV Gianmaria Zamagni

837

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Volume 2 Abbreviations 867 Part Three Relations France ‘Trop Petit?’ Benedict XV in Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart’s Journals and Writings Rodolfo Rossi

875

A Case of Oriental Wisdom: The second ralliement Fabrice Bouthillon 891 The Doulcet–Gasparri Agreement of 1920 and the Restoration of Diplomatic Relations between France and the Holy See Audrey Virot

903

The Appointment of Ambassador Jonnart and the Issue of Religious Associations Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers

913

Italy The Reform of Catholic Action Liliana Ferrari

929

The Dissolution of the Taparellian Concept of Nationality during the Great War Cinzia Sulas

949

The Role of Gaspare Colosimo and the King in the Rejection of the Gasparri Draft Piero Doria

967

The Agony of the non expedit Saretta Marotta 983 Benedict XV and Proto-Fascism Alberto Guasco

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Germany Benedict XV and the German Episcopate Sascha Hinkel

1025

The German Reception of the Peace Note Claus Arnold

1041

The Legacy of Boniface: The Bavarian Episcopate and the In hac tanta Encyclical (December 1918–October 1919) Patrizio Foresta

1051

The In hac tanta Encyclical (1919) and Peace in Europe Letterio Mauro

1071

Russia and Ukraine The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World (1914–22) Laura Pettinaroli

1087

Benedict XV in Search of Peace for Ukraine Athanasius McVay

1105

Peace in Eastern Europe Nathalie Renoton-Beine

1131

Benedict XV and the Caucasus Simona Merlo

1147

The Other European Nations Benedict XV, the Habsburg Empire and the First Republic of Austria Francesco Ferrari

1163

Benedict XV and the British Empire (1914–22) John F. Pollard

1181

Benedict XV and Czechoslovakia Ľuboslav Hromják

1201

Benedict XV and Poland Roberto Morozzo della Rocca

1219

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The Irish War of Independence Alberto Belletti

1235

Benedict XV and Yugoslavia (1914–22) Igor Salmič

1249

Finland and the Catholic Church during the Pontificate of Benedict XV Milla Bergström and Suvi Rytty 1265 The Non-European Countries Appeals to Wilson to Avoid the United States’ Entry into War Liliosa Azara

1285

Benedict XV and the Mexican Revolution Paolo Valvo

1313

The Holy See’s Relations with Brazil (1917–19) Ítalo Domingos Santirocchi

1329

Japan on the Vatican’s Radar Olivier Sibre

1341 Part Four Legacy Benedict XV’s Men

Benedict XV and the Cardinals Roberto Regoli

1361

Eugenio Pacelli: Benedict XV’s Man of Peace Philippe Chenaux

1377

A Papal Envoy on the International Stage: Edmund Aloysius Walsh, SJ Marisa Patulli Trythall 1395 Benedict XV, Father Gemelli and the Foundation of the Università Cattolica Maria Bocci 1413 Bonaventura Cerretti and the Impossible Missions Marialuisa Lucia Sergio

1433

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Europe for Peace and the Aftermath of Versailles The Failure to Revise the Treaty of London (July 1918) Sergio Marchisio

1455

New Diplomatic Relations and New Agreements in Europe Stefan Samerski

1477

Post Mortem The Death of the Pope in the Twentieth Century, Change and Continuity: The Example of Benedict XV Édouard Coquet

1491

The 1922 Conclave and the Return of Pope Pius Lorenza Lullini

1507

The Statue of Benedict XV in Istanbul: The East’s Gratitude to the Charitable Pope Rinaldo Marmara

1519

An Image-Building Failure: Biographies in the Era of Pius XI Giulia Grossi

1535

From Fernand Hayward’s Un Pape méconnu to the Spoleto Congress (1955–63) Federico Ruozzi

1557

Benedict XV and the Founding of the Pontifical Oriental Institute (1917): Foresight, Intuition, Hindsight Edward G. Farrugia

1581

Continuity and Discontinuity: Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI Annibale Zambarbieri

1599

Conclusions The Benedict XV Moment Denis Pelletier

1615

Abstracts 1625 Name Index

1663

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Abbreviations

AAB

Archivio Generale Arcivescovile di Bologna (Bologna) Archiepiscopal Archive of Bologna (Bologna)

AACB

Archivio dell’Azione Cattolica diocesana di Bologna (Bologna) Catholic Action Archive of the Diocese of Bologna (Bologna)

ACACI

Archivio Centrale dell’Azione Cattolica (Roma) Italian Catholic Action’s Central Archive (Rome)

ACDF

Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Roma) Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Rome)

ACEC

Archivio della Congregazione per l’Educazione cattolica (Roma) Archive of the Congregation for Catholic Education (Rome)

ACGA

Archivio della Curia Generalizia degli Assunzionisti (Roma) Archive of the General Curia of the Assumptionists (Rome)

ACO

Archivio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali (Roma) Archive of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches (Rome)

ACPF

Archivio della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli (Propaganda Fide) (Roma) Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) Historical Archives (Rome) Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Roma) Italian Central State Archive (Rome)

ACS ACTS

Archivio storico della Custodia di Terra Santa ( Jerusalem) Custodia Terrae Sanctae Historical Archive ( Jerusalem)

ACUA

American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University of America (Washington, DC) Archivio storico della Segreteria di Stato (Roma), Fondo Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari Archives of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (Rome) Archives françaises de la Société de Jésus (Vanves) French Archives of the Society of Jesus (Vanves)

AES

AFSJ AHAM

Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de México (Ciudad de México) Historical Archives of the Archdiocese of Mexico (Mexico City)

AHAP

Archives Historiques de l’Archevêché de Paris (Paris) Historical Archives of the Archbishop of Paris (Paris)

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AICP

Archives de l’Institut catholique de Paris (Paris) Archives of the Institut catholique de Paris (Paris)

AICR

Archives of the Pontifical Irish College (Rome)

AISACEM

Archivio dell’Istituto per la storia dell’Azione cattolica e del movimento cattolico in Italia (Roma) Archives of the Institute for the History of the Italian Catholic Action and the Italian Catholic Movement (Rome)

AJ

Arhiv Jugoslavije (Belgrade) Archives of Yugoslavia (Belgrade)

AMAE

Archives diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (La Courneuve) Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (La Courneuve)

AMEP

Archives des Missions étrangères de Paris (Paris) Archives of the Missions étrangères de Paris (Paris)

ARCB

Arhiepiscopia Romano-Catolică Bucureşti (București) Archives of the Catholic Archdiocese of Bucharest (Bucharest)

ARSI

Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (Roma) Archive of the Society of Jesus (Rome)

ASMAE

Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Roma) Archives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Rome)

ASV

Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Roma) Vatican Secret Archives (Rome)

AUC

Archivio generale per la storia dell’Università Cattolica (Milano) General Archive for the History of the Università Cattolica (Milan)

AUSSME

Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’esercito (Roma) Archive of the Historic Office of the General Staff of the Army (Rome)

CADN

Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes (Nantes) Nantes Diplomatic Archives Centre (Nantes)

EAM

Erzbischöfliches Archiv München (München) Archives of the Archdiocese of Munich (Munich)

GUSCRC

Georgetown University Special Collections Research Center (Washington, DC)

IISG

Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (Amsterdam) International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam)

IMS

Institut Marc Sangnier (Paris) Marc Sangnier Institute (Paris)

ab b re vi at i o ns

KDC

Katholiek Documentatie Centrum (Nijmegen) Catholic Documentation Centre (Nijmegen)

NA OPM

The National Archives (London) Archives des Œuvres Pontificales Missionnaires (Lyon) Archives of the Pontifical Mission Societies (Lyon)

TsDIAUL

Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy u misti Lvovi (Lviv) Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine (Lviv)

UMA

Ulkoasiainministeriön arkisto (Helsinki) Archive of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (Helsinki)

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Cardinal Pietro Parolin

Foreword

Bologna, 3 November 2016 I am grateful to the administration of the Italian Council of Ministers, the Committee for Anniversaries of National Interest, the Archdiocese of Bologna and the Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII, and for the sponsorship of eminent institutions and donors that has made possible this event dedicated to Giacomo Della Chiesa and to his career as a Christian, diplomat, pastor and pontiff.

1.

A Few Introductory Points

Much careful research is required in order to understand the many aspects of the personality and actions of Pope Benedict XV. His figure has frequently risked becoming almost condensed into the simple citation of his memorable and lapidary phrase, comparable to a prophetic judgement, which termed World War I a ‘useless slaughter’, thus reducing his activity to a mere commentary on that expression. While I am careful not to underestimate the importance of the phrase, I believe that its deeper significance is to be found in a more extensive examination of his life and activity. Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista Della Chiesa was elected pope at the outbreak of the Great War on 3 September 1914, the day on which the Catholic Church celebrates St Gregory the Great. I would like to mention two distinctive aspects of his pontificate. He was in fact the last pope of noble descent, his family being able to boast of two other popes (Callixtus II and Innocent VII). Those elected after him were of families of the professional class such as Pacelli and Montini, or of modest families from Desio, Sotto il Monte, Canale d’Agordo and Wadowice, including Pope Francis, whose Argentine family had emigrated from Italy. Due to the opposition of his father, Marquis Giuseppe Della Chiesa, to his entrance as a youth into the diocesan seminary of Genoa, Della Chiesa was also the first pope to complete a full course of study outside the seminary, graduating in 1875 from the Royal University of Genoa with the degree of Doctor of Law. This experience gave him a first-hand knowledge of the world that his successors, all of whom had

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 19–26 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118759

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received a seminary philosophical and theological education, would only come to know through the many Catholic works and organizations engaged in those areas. There are, however, significant coincidences between Giacomo Della Chiesa’s priestly and episcopal ministry and that of his contemporaries. A young prelate in the direct service of the Holy See, he was appointed Archbishop of Bologna in 1907 by Pope Pius X, who had been elected in 1903 as a result of the veto imposed by the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I and presented in conclave through the Archbishop of Kraków, which prevented Della Chiesa’s mentor, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, from being pope. Giacomo Della Chiesa was thus called to assume the burden of the pastoral inheritance left by Cardinal Svampa in the Archdiocese of Bologna. He was the first Genoese in the twentieth century to guide it, several decades before the appointment of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, the fortieth anniversary of whose death has just been celebrated by the archdiocese, the University of Bologna and the Fondazione per le scienze religiose. Like another illustrious official of the Roman Curia, Giovanni Battista Montini, sent unexpectedly to Milan in 1953, Della Chiesa found himself in a position to be viewed as a candidate in a future conclave. Benedict XV was elected at the beginning of the Great War, not unlike Pius XII who also found himself assuming the ministry of pastor of the universal Church just twenty weeks before the outbreak of World War II. This fact would leave its mark on the pontificate of both. I certainly do not have to remind readers that, at the time of Pope Benedict XV’s election, the conviction, or rather the misconception, of many government chanceries was that the coming conflict would be brief and decisive. Benedict XV’s decision, or rather his decisions, stand out against that background, since they immediately showed a perception of the horrors that war always unleashes and accumulates. From his first encyclical Ad beatissimi, in November 1914, Benedict XV refused to support either the Entente or the Central Powers, opting for a strict impartiality, which only the naive would view as an easy or painless decision. His position, and that of the Church, brought upon him a derision that was different from the anti-clerical kind of the Italian Risorgimento in that it was international in scope. For the French press he was ‘le pape boche’ (‘the Hun Pope’), in the German press, ‘Franzosenpapst’ (‘the French Pope’). For the novelist Léon Bloy he was ‘Pilate XV’, while for the Italian patriotic movement that was seeking the Church’s blessing, the insulting ‘Maledetto XV’ (‘Cursed XV’). As a result of his training, Benedict XV interpreted the turn of the twentieth century in terms of a tradition inclined to see the war either within the parameters of the so-called just war of the Thomist tradition or as a punishment for modern apostasy, certainly not as the unfolding of a radical threat to the Christian message. In addition, he sought a balance, difficult in any age, between the Pauline principle of obedience to ruling authorities (Romans 13. 1) prominent in Ad beatissimi and the eschatological principle of peace as proclaimed in the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. It was a very delicate balance to achieve in that wartime context, when almost ten million soldiers lost their lives and millions of people found themselves in need of assistance. The papacy worked tirelessly to provide the help it could receiving

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recognition in unexpected quarters: we can think of the monument that Turkey erected in the Latin Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Istanbul, where the future John XXIII was to serve for ten years as Apostolic Delegate. This image of the papacy, which is now taken for granted by all, and at every political level, was shaped by Benedict XV, together with some of the trends that would characterize the entire twentieth century. Indeed, in his programmatic encyclical Ad beatissimi, Benedict already revealed his intention to put an end to the harshest measures taken against Modernism, thereby opening the way to a Church that preferred the medicine of mercy to the discipline of severity. Hence, it is right that this significant scientific conference should be dedicated to him. Benedict XV was also the pope who completed the first Code of Canon Law, with which the Catholic Church adopted the instrument of a legal code, after centuries of a legal tradition transmitted through the Corpus, thus making this city a centre of juridical-political thought and the conscience of the West, as it emerges from the studies of Professor Paolo Prodi. It was the adoption of a code that avowed ‘the greatness and the poverty’ (to use an expression dear to Giuseppe Dossetti) of a legislation that is open to critical examination by jurists, while at the same time acknowledging that it is always inadequate to its task of regulating communion of life and openness to salvation.

2. The State of the Art As a man and as a pope, Giacomo Della Chiesa merits careful study, a point made by those who know best the present state of research concerning this diplomat in the school of Rampolla and who, as I have mentioned, is still remembered as the pope who dared to call the war a ‘useless slaughter’. The Great War had been longed for, expected, even embraced, by an entire culture that, with Sigmund Freud’s theory alone, mixed vitalism and violence in a naive and aberrant expectation of a bloodbath which was to prove a political, civil and moral catastrophe for the whole of Europe. As a wartime pope, Benedict XV did not figure significantly in public speeches or in the studies of the 1920s and 1930s. I merely note that the only person who undertook a biography of Benedict XV was the Provost of Chiuduno, Francesco Vistalli, a friend of then-Apostolic Delegate Roncalli, who had been ‘brought’ to Rome immediately after the Great War by friends of ‘his’ bishop, Giacomo Maria Radini Tedeschi, for his first duty of service at the Holy See. In Cardinal Gasparri’s final years as Secretary of State, the Genoese pope was praised, certainly not wrongly, as the one who ‘as the Great War raged, shouted at the useless slaughter’. The complexity of his pontificate and his life of government and diplomacy remained only a backdrop that was soon overshadowed by another war, by other papacies and by the new Europe that was emerging, divided by the ruins of Nazi Fascism.

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Thus, despite some studies during the years of World War II, Fernand Hayward, writing in 1955, could well give his biography of Della Chiesa a title that resurfaces every so often: Un Pape méconnu.1 It was the beginning of a new era of research, to which some Italian reviews tirelessly committed themselves, organizing an international conference in Spoleto dedicated to Benedict XV, Catholics and World War I.2 The journals Civitas, Humanitas, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, Studium and Vita e Pensiero entrusted the conference to Mario Bendiscioli, Gabriele De Rosa and Ettore Passerin d’Entrèves. They called for further study and themselves studied the Holy See’s diplomatic efforts, the conduct of Italian as well as non-Italian Catholics and the attitude of international Catholicism in the face of the problems of war and peace. That conference also marked an important moment for the Holy See, since it was the occasion for a piece by Father Martini on the 1 August 1917 Note Dès les début to the heads of belligerent peoples, based on the Secretariat of State’s then-inaccessible documentation. In 1984, the papers were released for public consultation after the Vatican Secret Archives’ work of classification. As occasionally occurs, many people clamour for access to works that, once made available, they show no interest in actually studying. Another conference, organized by Giorgio Rumi, on Benedict XV and peace,3 returned to the subject a few years later, giving rise to many studies that were collected in monographs, reviews and essays. Worthy of mention are those by Jacques Fontana, Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Annette Becker, Wilhelm Achleitner and the dean of historians of the twentieth-century Church, Canon Roger Aubert of Louvain, until 1999, when John F. Pollard’s biography took up the question of The Unknown Pope.4 Finally, we have the massive work of Mgr Antonio Scottà, who, in two large volumes published respectively in 20025 and 2009,6 studied in detail Della Chiesa’s episcopate in Bologna and his pontificate, thus providing the most complete biography to date and earning the respect and gratitude of all scholars. Someone will rightly observe that when Scottà says that, at the centre of Benedict XV’s efforts, lies ‘the dignity of the human person, the image of God present in their spirits’, he is echoing a language that the papacy was to use a few years later. That observation is correct. However, I believe it equally important to note the substantial difference between those who ‘diplomatically’ were willing to sacrifice life after life in trench warfare, and a pope who was ‘diplomatic’ in the highest sense of the term, affirming

1 Fernand Hayward, Un Pape méconnu: Benoît XV (Tournai: Casterman, 1955). 2 Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963). 3 Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990). 4 John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999). 5 Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002). 6 Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009).

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with carefully crafted phrases a concern for real persons and the concrete life of civil and religious communities. A pope too, who saw personally with his own eyes that the promotion of peace is not something extrinsic to the Church’s mission but an essential part of her task in the face of history and in light of the Gospel. Such was Della Chiesa’s style. As Scottà himself reminds us, even the inquiry of 1887 that Della Chiesa circulated, at Rampolla’s request, among the bishops in order to probe their attitude towards the Roman Question had one purpose. It was meant to provide his mentor with a perception of how a subject, then lacking an institutional framework (one later to be provided by Pope Paul VI), could advance or undermine a plan for reconciliation that might have solved the Roman Question about ten years sooner. For this reason, Benedict XV is part of an unbroken line of thought that makes peace the primary objective of pontifical diplomacy. It leads to Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in terris, to Paul VI’s Evangelii nuntiandi and to Pope Francis’s Evangelii gaudium, which interprets it also in the light of the drama of refugees driven towards Europe by today’s wars. As is proved by more recent works (from the volume by the German Jörg Ernesti to those of the Frenchmen Xavier Boniface, Marcel Launay or Yves Chiron and the Spaniard Pablo Zaldívar Miquelarena), Benedict XV is no longer an ‘unknown’ pope. Nevertheless, the process of constructing an image of Benedict undoubtedly calls for further efforts, which I believe might even prove helpful in our sad and uncertain present situation. I should like to mention, as examples, three issues that my current office permits me to see as worthy of deeper analysis: a. The Note of 1 August 1917. The year 2017 marked the hundredth anniversary of the Note, in view of which Professor Alberto Melloni wished to organize this Conference, which can enable it to be reread and reconsidered in a context that, thanks be to God, is less dramatic than that of Europe a hundred years ago, but which in many parts of the world (caught up in what Pope Francis has called a World War III fought piecemeal) is nonetheless glaringly real. Historical studies have explored the dramatic political and diplomatic import of that step and the reactions to it on the part of the various governments: from Vienna’s interest to the hostile silence of Rome and Paris. We still know little about what effect it had on soldiers and their families, apart from what was expressed by the military chaplains. Except for the descriptions of reactions to it by Father Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges at the Church of La Madeleine in December 1917, we know little about the step taken by the pope not to assign any eventual merit to the Holy See but to say a word to the multitude of victims of the ‘useless slaughter’. This was to open the way to making the moral repudiation of war by ecclesiastic public law an act of fidelity to the Gospel that would culminate in the conciliar magisterium almost half a century later. b. Diplomacy. Benedict XV’s papal diplomacy involved a few Nunciatures in the countries at war (that is, in Munich, Madrid, Vienna and Brussels), lower-level relations with the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire, the Kremlin, the court of St James and the White House, and a relationship that I would define as

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non-diplomatic with Italy and France. After the war, this network was extended to Switzerland, Romania and Venezuela. It was a diplomacy often forced to acknowledge its own impotence, as in the case of the two letters sent to the Sultan to stop the Armenian massacre, which were unheeded. However, it was Benedict XV’s intuition for making mediation and peace the instruments for a return to the diplomatic interplay that broke the Church’s isolation after the end of its temporal power. It was an effort that had already begun under Leo XIII (Mgr Della Chiesa had served the Pope in brokering a compromise between Spain and Germany for the Caroline Islands in 1885), and in the diplomacy of relief efforts, and which served to restore a prestige that had previously been lost. c. The war as an incubator. It has been said, with good reason, that the Great War was an incubator of the extreme violence of the twentieth century: the violence that led to the USSR and then, in the countries of state socialism, to a religious persecution that has affected all the Churches; and to the Nazi-Fascist violence that brought ruin, persecution, massacres and the horror of the Shoah. Yet much remains to be understood, both in terms of the Church’s inner life at the moment of transition from the violence of war to post-war violence and the return of conflict on a world scale, as well as in terms of diplomatic history, concerning the reasons for the failure of a system of international relations and multilateral organizations that proved incapable of curbing the drive towards rearmament.

3. The Fundamental Issues I would like, therefore, to propose five considerations and five questions, which I believe flow like an undercurrent beneath this very rich programme, to the historians who have contributed to the study of this period. What has happened in the case of Pius X can be avoided where there is a willingness for open and sincere cooperation. Pius X’s papers, prepared and opened with great care, have remained scarcely studied, even, and above all, by those who, for many years, managed to exempt themselves from the massive study of the complex documentation. Benedict XV is the pope who met the twentieth century head-on and, for the first time, encountered opposing expectations. Everyone expected something of him, and it seems that each one had his reasons for disappointment. With him ended the time of the Holy See’s predictability, even in political matters. This was a time when the papacy replicated previously seen patterns and yet began to introduce into a tragic period spiritual convictions and worldviews that altered their meaning in the new context. Has this change, I wonder, been sensed, and how does it change the way of studying a public figure like Benedict XV? The latter was also the pope who had to witness the horror of the war. Not that there had been no great massacres or bloody wars before, but he was the first to see the masses who had burst onto the political scene used as cannon fodder and to experience the world’s deafness in the face of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ that exterminated

fo re wo rd

the Armenians, who were described as agents of Russian imperialism and persecuted with a ferocity that he defined as an ‘annihilation’ during the Christmas of 1915. The words and gestures of the Genoese pope opened a path: not only did the Church have to decide what to say but also what had to be done, and it was not by chance that it came to be perceived as a second Red Cross. What evidence can we find of signs and declarations that may seem small today but which marked the rupture of that isolation in which the Holy See had been kept and to which it had become accustomed? Benedict XV drew enormous moral strength from his neutrality. It was a strength that was not recognized by governments but which protected him from the discredit that dragged others down, one example being the Socialist International. As a French diplomat serving in Rome noted in 1914: ‘This century seems to demand from the papacy of today precisely that for which the papacy of yesterday was reproached. It seems that it would like the current pontiff to throw himself in amongst the peoples at arms, with a lamp in his hand, not sparing anyone’.7 Yet the nations recognized his moral strength. Does this have to do with a contingent judgement, or is it part of a political philosophy involving relations between Church and state? Is it the usual problem of the many possible outcomes of the Thomism of the Leonine age, or is there something that concerns the organization of decisions and information? Instead of interpreting the war as merely the punishment for modern apostasy, Benedict XV saw it as an occasion to proclaim a peace that challenges the standard means of diplomacy. This is what gave rise to his efforts to seek a truce. Did the isolation, which did not let up at a political level, strengthen or weaken the pope’s effort? Benedict XV was the first pope no longer to see an empire to the east of Rome, but a Middle East, with insurmountable problems that at times seem unsolved even today. It was the incubator of great tragedies, such as that of Armenia, and of a poisonous nostalgia, such as the one that runs through those lands even today. There the Holy See finds itself in the face of the Christian communities in communion with Rome, for whom it asked protection, but also of other apostolic or very ancient Christian communities, with which relations were often very tense. I wonder what those communities thought of such efforts. Benedict XV was a ‘true prophet of peace’ on the international level, to use the phrase of his seventh successor, who also took his name. Yet he also made an enormous contribution in certain areas of national political life. Unpopular with the French monarchists due to the second ralliement with the French Republic, he made a previously unimaginable solidarity possible for Catholics in that country. The lifting of prohibitions against Catholic heads of state in Rome visiting the Quirinal marked the acknowledgement that the status quo was irreversible and that the change of era had to be approached a different way. Yet if these are the



7 ‘Ce siècle a l’air d’exiger de la papauté d’aujourd’hui ce qu’il reprochait précisément à la papauté d’hier. Il voudrait, semble-t-il, que le pontife actuel se jette au milieu des peuples en armes, une lampe à la main, sans épargner personne’; Charles Loiseau, Politique romaine et sentiment français (Paris: Grasset, 1923), p. 20, cited in Andrea Riccardi, Les politiques de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1999), p. 46.

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two best known illustrations, much remains to be understood of his overall stance and of the events that forced him to make corrections to his course. I am aware that I have mentioned only a few issues. Once again, I express my hope that the present Conference will help to increase our understanding of the figure and role of Giacomo Della Chiesa, who carried out his ministry as pastor and pontiff at a dramatic juncture so highly charged with implications for the development of events arising from the consequences of World War I.

Bibliography Hayward, Fernand, Un Pape méconnu: Benoît XV (Tournai: Casterman, 1955) Loiseau, Charles, Politique romaine et sentiment français (Paris: Grasset, 1923) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Riccardi, Andrea, Les politiques de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1999) Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Rumi, Giorgio, ed., Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009)

Alberto Melloni

Introduction

If there is one foundation to the work of historical-critical research in the form it has assumed in the last two centuries, it is that historical knowledge is rooted in the questioning of sources. An investigation that must never become an interrogation (because under torture even sources can be made to confess whatever their inquisitor wants). It must also never become an interview (because even sources may say what is expected of them). The proper kind of questioning generates impressions — as in Hubert Jedin’s celebrated formula — that are the tools by which we might approach ‘another present’ that may be understood as such, beyond any temptation to turn the work of history into a tribunal. The history of churches and of Christians also rests upon this foundation: like every other history, its specific nature lies not in the segmenting of specific ‘ages’ — which is always pragmatically useful and always ideological in its construction — but in its chronological extension over a long period. This is because it is in this dimension that reserves of thought that re-emerge elsewhere in time are built regardless of whether those who have produced them or those who use them are aware of it. The European historical-religious tradition in regard to Roman Catholicism is strongly marked by the conviction that, among the various sources, archives are of a decisive importance, especially when the task of excavation must be implemented in front of ecclesiastical institutions, mostly the central ones. The Vatican Secret Archives — the legendary ASV — are therefore considered as the essential archival repository to be drawn upon when searching for that fragment of knowledge that we call history. Scientific practice does not always confirm this assumption. Rather, it says that sometimes the fetishism of archival ‘secret’ papers leads to an underestimation of other sources, written and visual, and makes knowledge pay dearly for this, at a cost as high as that exacted by heuristic laziness. For example, those who studied modernity before those parts of the ASV were opened for research have shown that much can be understood by drawing upon other sources, to the point that projects and monographs produced after those Vatican stacks were opened — the inaccessibility of which was much lamented and the opening of which brought very few to return to questions left suspended — have not substantially modified the historical judgement that had been formed under a

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 27–30 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118760

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relative scarcity of documentation. There are, however, also arguments, such as the anti-conciliar movements during and after Vatican II, that can only be understood after postponing access to the diligently elaborated papers within the traditionalist bunker for a careful analysis of the grey literature of a protesting galaxy, which enters onto the scene precisely to impress its authority through the mobilization of popular opinion, whether the protests were numerous or merely based on rumour. Probably even the most vexed question of the twentieth century — Pope Pius XII’s silence on the Shoah, which has postponed every judgement on the issue until the mile-long string of documents on his long and complex pontificate is opened for research in the future — will not be answered by the discovery of a ‘smoking gun’ or ‘traces of gunpowder’ that the members of an honest and naive commission believed they could track down by ordering investigations into the matter. (In)accessibility of the papers, however, is a great manufacturer of historical-critical alibis. The alibi projected onto the ASV has strongly influenced historiographical custom to the neglect of the figure of Giacomo Della Chiesa, who ascended the throne of Peter in 1914 with the name of Benedict XV. A man with a political tact that was too refined to be imprisoned by a historiography that sees in the contemporary papacy a monochromatic and monotonous repetition of an intransigent culture aiming to re-establish a hegemony over society at the expense of the ‘individual’s autonomy’, Benedict wound up outside the spotlights of those visions. For the same reasons, however, after a brief spur of activity in the 1920s, not even a confessional apologetic was developed. Crushed by the human and historiographical weight of World War I, Benedict did not benefit from some controversial or ideological event capable of exciting opposing flashes of controversy. Even a process of canonization, for centuries closed to popes for obvious reasons and now a sort of posthumous crowning of the pontificate of all the popes of the twentieth century, was never initiated either for him or for Pius XI, further evidence of a lack of interest in his pontificate. The first general biographies and essays on his pontificate have only now begun to appear after his papers in the ASV were opened for consultation. This access has outlined, but certainly not resolved, the many questions of major historical relevance that are often much studied but in which, however, the role carried out by ‘Cardinal Rampolla’s best pupil’ remains largely undervalued or reduced to a purely narrative account. The sheer number of topics — the position of the Latin American continent, the Roman Question, the Armenian massacre, the outbreak of war, the fate of Poland, colonialism, everything encompassed in the acronym WWI, and then the containment of the anti-modernist campaign, the disintegration of the webs of internal ecclesiastical espionage, the codified culture, the diplomatic and cultural politics of the Christian East, the holy places, the practice of appointments, and so on — require what a large number of scholars have tried to accomplish in this work: to collectively and comprehensively bring this figure into focus, studying in a single joint effort the biography, personality, work and government of this man who has been so often ‘forgotten’ that his papers, which have been opened for so long yet so little studied in the ASV, might interact with other sources, without reductions and without shortcuts.

i nt ro d u ct i o n

The result is collected in these two volumes, thanks to the enthusiasm of about ninety authors, the industrious editing work of Giulia Grossi and Giovanni Cavagnini and the generosity of institutions and companies that have sustained this vast project, offering today the fruits of its labours to scholars, other interested readers and also the Church. We cannot fail to mention the exquisite and genteel presence of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis’s Secretary of State, who with the breadth of his foreword has raised the academic bar for historians without detracting from the freedom of their research. What emerges is the ‘story of a Rampollian’ who was not aware that he was the second son in a long ‘dynasty’ of Vatican diplomacy and the first of that spiritual and political current to become pope. The ‘Rampollians’ can be defined reductively, but not wrongly, as Francophile and ‘transigenti’. Their vision of the Church and the world, developed first and foremost through the work of their office rather than through reading or encounters, is not one shaped by a theological schema of the Augustinian variety that one finds in other areas but a single vision that encompasses both dimensions: a vision of the Church-in-the-world. In the face of disruptive forces and the wars that are the scourge of the times, they are the ones who did not cynically believe in the value of negotiation as an end in itself in order to balance the power of others to protect oneself in an evil and lost world. On the contrary, they believed that dialogue and compromise could bring out an intrinsic good. In fact, retracing the phases and crises in which Mgr Della Chiesa (and later Benedict XV) was involved shows an original way of looking at the theatres of conflict, first of all the Italian one, where the Roman Question remained unresolved. A patient work of excavation like this one shows, it seems to me, a peculiarity of Benedict’s government: Benedict introduced a kind of a ‘spoils system’ in his desire to maintain a small curia (that of 1914 was extremely small), but one that was free from the repressive compulsiveness that had weakened the Church and opened deep fractures between it and the worlds of historical and theological knowledge. The Catholic Church would only recover from the delay caused by the modernist crisis with the Council and the post-conciliar era. Benedict XV, however, must certainly be credited with having re-established an equilibrium that had been jeopardized by the rage of condemnations. This is further proof that the institutional weight of the Latin Church did not permit the exacerbation of its burdens through a culture of condemnation conceived as an indifferent revenge upon a hostile world or with an improvised loosening up that would only create inequalities. Pietro Gasparri is perhaps the greatest expression of the restructuring of the institutional structure using canon law as its tool — in point of fact, the only tool available to Gasparri — to orient it in a world at war. The time of the council would occur long after, but the theological fervour, albeit outside the Catholic Church, in the post-war years brought with it promises that Benedict XV did not touch, apart from the choice to bring back to Rome a Rampollian from Bergamo by the name of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who had been forced to remain in that diocese for the entire duration of the war after the death of its bishop. Aye, the war. The Guerrone could not but be an important point for critical examination. It seems to me that the reader will find a careful analysis of how the same

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message might have different meanings in a wartime context that was dramatically evolving. The internal timeline of the conflict shows a difference between the early papal appeal for peace that was raised at the moment when even the Holy See clung to the illusion of a rapid war and the later judgement regarding war that was taken when the dimensions of the tragedy and its consequences had already begun to appear after the First Russian Revolution. The transformation of papal impotence coincided with the expansion of a vision of the world that led the diplomatic pope to look at the Church’s responsibility on the international stage, from which it was excluded. It gave the, formerly sovereign, pontiff an unparalleled opportunity, that is, to identify no longer with the crowned heads of a united Europe that had long held the right to rule but with the masses overwhelmed by the violence of war and ready to bring that violence into post-war civil politics. It is a question that was repeated at other moments in the history of the papacy: sometimes as a lost opportunity, as during World War II, when the conviction of having to grasp the moment to express a moral position created a perfect distance between the act of offering assistance and the interpretation of the person to be assisted; sometimes as an opportunity taken, as in the case of the crisis in Cuba, when the second ‘Rampollian’ pope, John XXIII, made himself the voice of the ‘families’ facing the threat of an atomic catastrophe. I mention these asides, which were already touched upon in the conclusion to the conference, to recall that the clear intention of this historiographical excavation was to come closer to the man and his lapidary sentence of the war as ‘useless slaughter’, or rather, in its official formulation in French, the ‘massacre inutile’. For that sentence, Benedict XV was best known but also that phrase was the small grave within which his complex action was entombed. By disinterring the extensive background of biographical, theological, ecclesiological, political and diplomatic information, the issue is reduced proportionally but given its due, thus offering, as Henri-Irénée Marrou taught, those ‘valid reasons for placing one’s trust in what is understood through the documents’.1



1 Henri-Irénée Marrou, De la connaissance historique (Paris: Seuil, 1954), p. 232.

Part One

Stages

Origins and Formation

Nicla Buonasorte

Genoa: A Capital between Savoyard Annexation and the Risorgimento

Giacomo Paolo Giobatta Della Chiesa, Genoese nobleman and subject of the Savoyard monarchy, was born in 1854, the year when the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia and his birth city were finally joined by the railway that Cavour had so fervently desired, a means to give Turin access to the sea, or better yet, to the port. It is useful to point out this coincidence immediately because, in the 1850s, Genoa experienced an important transformation, not due to any one particular event but as the result of several factors. Indeed, it is possible to note the progressive setting aside of those anti-Piedmont positions that had characterized the, complex and stormy, first forty years of annexation, in favour of an appreciation for those elements of modernization and development that Savoyard politics had employed to try to insinuate itself into the favour of the Republic’s ancient capital. In short, the city was beginning to find its bearings within the framework of the Kingdom of Sardinia. It is worth taking a look at what was happening contemporaneously: just a few weeks before the birth of his future successor, Pius IX had proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In 1854, a cholera epidemic raged in the city, one of the ten outbreaks that struck Genoa during the nineteenth century. Cavour had been prime minister for two years; Victor Emmanuel II had reigned for five years; and the Savoyard Archbishop Charvaz had occupied Genoa’s episcopal chair for a year, after it had been vacant for the previous five years. This essay attempts to highlight pieces in this mosaic, briefly reviewing the city’s history between 1797 and 1861, tracing the lines of the aristocracy that Giacomo Della Chiesa belonged to by right of birth. Both his parents belonged to noble families that were inscribed in the Libro d’oro (Golden Book) of the city.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 35–51 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118761

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1.

From the Ancient Republic to the Fall of Napoleon

At the midpoint of the nineteenth century, the venerable Republic of Genoa was still alive in the memory and esteem of many Genoese, especially the nobility among whom Giacomo was born.1 It was a very long-lived republic, governed by the same institutional structure from 1528 to 1797. In the latter year, Napoleon started his Italian campaign from western Liguria. The end of the oligarchic republic and the birth of the Ligurian Republic was sanctioned by the agreement of Mombello at Lake Como and agreed to by the representatives of the city, Girolamo Serra, Luigi Carbonara and Michelangelo Cambiaso, who hailed from illustrious Genoese families. The laws, territory, properties, the free port and the Banco di San Giorgio all remained intact, but this was not enough to prevent the economic collapse of Genoa’s wealth of liquid assets, which had been the true pillar of the mercantile capitalism that was Genoa’s necessary financial option, given the poverty of its land. Genoa had become the perfect example of a city-world: a small state, uninterested in territorial expansion, neutral in order to guarantee the greatest possible advantage in maintaining trade relations and resistant to monarchical centralization and every form of pervasive public power. It was a city that, to preserve itself from any temptation to establish an earthly monarchy, crowned the Virgin as queen of the city in 1637. It was one of the few republics of the old style on a continent dominated by absolutism. It had a strong concentration of liquid assets in an Italy and a Europe where great land assets prevailed. It was a, seemingly insignificant, statelet that played an important role on the international scene because of its financial power and its maritime and mercantile activities.2 In December 1797, the constitution that provided for freedom of worship, freedom of the press, the nationalization of ecclesiastical assets and the creation of representational structures came into effect. The local church suffered severe blows with the abolition of priories and convents, the expropriation of property, the government’s jurisdictional policy over and strong limitations to pastoral outreach and the closure of the city’s seminary.3 Elections also took place in Genoa in 1798, the only instance of the effective exercise of the right to vote during the three years of the revolution. A new, more authoritarian constitution followed in 1802, remaining in effect until the very ineffective independence of the democratic Ligurian Republic ended in 1805. That was the year when it became a province of the vast Napoleonic Empire, for military reasons and at the request of the city’s authorities. These were



1 On his ancestry see Luigi Augusto Cervetto, I patrizi Della Chiesa e Migliorati dai quali discende il sommo pontefice Benedetto XV (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1915). 2 See Giovanni Assereto, ‘Dall’Antico Regime all’Unità’, in La Liguria, ed. by Antonio Gibelli and Paride Rugafiori (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), pp. 160–215. 3 For a general overview of religious and ecclesial events in the context of the Risorgimento, see the essays by Maurizio Viroli, ‘La dimensione religiosa del Risorgimento’; Francesco Traniello, ‘La rottura liberale: i cattolico-liberali nell’Italia del Risorgimento’; and Ulderico Parente, ‘Il Risorgimento e il paradigma intransigente’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 135–50, pp. 197–214, and pp. 631–40.

genoa: a capital between savoyard annexation and the risorgimento

years of a ‘passive modernization’ that worked to establish future developments even though, at the time, they were unable to stem the economic and demographic collapse of the city and its territories, which experienced serious difficulties at every level.4 In April, upon Napoleon’s fall, the English permitted a provisional government that for a few months offered the illusion of a possible return to the city’s independent past. This ‘diabolically capitalist’ city, as Braudel described it,5 where the nobility held the capital and the economic initiative, naively thought that everything would return as before, without considering that that ‘before’ had now become unsustainable. At the Congress of Vienna and in the European capitals, the Genoese representatives, the noblemen Agostino Pareto and Antonio Brignole Sale, sought to defend Genoa’s independence with proposals that were not heeded, being sacrificed to the interests of the larger states.6 What the Genoese could not even imagine took place: an intolerable submission to the Savoyard dynasty — for centuries the Republic’s worst enemy as well as the representative of that monarchical absolutism to which the Republic had always been antagonistic.

2. Annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia On 30 December 1814, the Kingdom of Sardinia annexed what had been renamed the Duchy of Genoa — the Duke of which was the King of Sardinia — and, on 3 January 1815, Marshal Ignazio Thaon di Revel officially took possession of the Ligurian territories. The Genoese ruling class faced a radical process of transformation with the loss of political autonomy and the revocation of their international professions. The Savoy, to initiate the expectedly difficult task of annexing not only territories but also the will of the local people, began to distribute titles, sinecures and offices, even to those who had previously been pro-French or independent.7 Even the Archbishop, Giuseppe Spina, kept his post, although he was obliged to make a public retraction of his loyalty to Napoleon in the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Holding the position from 1802 to 1819, Spina was a jurist and diplomat rather than a theologian. He was an expeditious enforcer of French laws, even those that limited church power, without protesting or, in retrospect, justifying his obedience with the need to avoid further retaliation. He sought peaceful coexistence with the strong Jansenist movement that





4 See Maria Elisabetta Tonizzi, ‘Dalla Repubblica ligure all’Unità (1797–1861)’, in Storia della Liguria, ed. by Giovanni Assereto and Marco Doria (Rome: Laterza, 2007), pp. 193–210; Maria Elisabetta Tonizzi, ‘Genova e Napoleone 1805–1814’, Società e storia, 140 (2013), pp. 343–71. 5 Fernand Braudel, Il secondo Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), p. 78. 6 See Pierangelo Gentile, ‘1814, Genova e i giochi della diplomazia: dalla Repubblica restaurata all’annessione al Piemonte’, in Genova e Torino: quattro secoli di incontri e scontri: nel bicentenario dell’annessione della Liguria al Regno di Sardegna, ed. by Giovanni Assereto, Carlo Bitossi and Pierpaolo Merlin (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2015), pp. 313–29. 7 For the reactions of the nobility, see the essays by Andrea Lercari, ‘Patrizi e notabili liguri fra Repubblica di Genova e Corte di Savoia’ and Andrea Merlotti, ‘Nobiltà e corte nella Genova della Restaurazione’, in Genova e Torino, ed. by Assereto, Bitossi and Merlin, pp. 33–55 and pp. 445–66.

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was very active during the years of the Ligurian Republic. He reopened the seminary, allowing even lay students to attend, cultivated a relationship with the seminarians and expanded the study of juridical disciplines.8 Having emerged from the French period economically exhausted and demographically impoverished, Genoa was delivered to Savoy, yet it still had an organization that was certainly more modern than that of the agonizing oligarchic republic and with a noble class that was prepared to hold positions of responsibility. In context, the Savoy regime offered better prospects for Genoa in many ways than what they had had under the old aristocratic republic, but the trauma of the loss of independence cast a shadow over everything. Attempting to rally its new subjects, the monarchy gave deferential treatment to the city, where civil law as well as Napoleonic trade law remained in effect even though it had been repealed in the rest of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The free port, the chamber of commerce and the mint were maintained, customs charges with Piedmont were abolished and an administrative organ of government (a ‘decurionate’ formed by members of the noble and bourgeois classes) was created. Turin immediately sought the collaboration of the nobility, assigning them institutional, ministerial and diplomatic appointments. Gian Carlo Brignole, son of the last doge of the Genoese Republic, was appointed Minister of State and First Secretary of Finance. Antonio Brignole Sale, who had championed the cause of Genoese independence in Vienna and who was considered very compromised in regard to the French regime, was appointed Special Ambassador and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in December of 1815 and the same to Madrid in May of 1819. Under the reign of King Charles Felix, which began in 1821, the practice of co-opting the bourgeois for key administrative positions expanded. To have an idea of proportions, in 1815 Victor Emmanuel I gave forty nobles, twenty citizens ‘living from their earnings’ and twenty ‘shopkeepers’ a lifetime appointment to the decurionate. Lasting until 1848, this organ of municipal administration dealt with managing budgets, the city police and inspecting public charities under the binding control of the royal commissioner in the person of the city’s governor. Those best informed understood that the annexation represented only a stage towards forming a larger state, which would have better structures and possibilities, but, in all the reports of police informants and those sent to Turin, the ‘Piedmont party’ remained small. The Savoyard Kingdom had the Genoese aristocracy, an institution foreign to the bureaucratic and centralized models of a modern state, as its main intermediary. Consumed by their rancour at having lost their ancient political role, a great majority of the aristocracy refused to take part in the new structure of the Sardinian Kingdom, referring to it sarcastically as the ‘kingdom of



8 For biographies of Genoese pastors, see Bianca Montale, ‘Tra restaurazione e riformismo (1802–69)’, in Il cammino della Chiesa genovese dalle origini ai nostri giorni, ed. by Dino Puncuh (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1999), pp. 403–37; Giovanni Battista Varnier, ‘Chiesa e religiosità nella Liguria contemporanea: diocesi e vita religiosa’, in Storia della Liguria, ed. by Assereto and Doria, pp. 345–62, offers a summary of local ecclesial history.

genoa: a capital between savoyard annexation and the risorgimento

marmots’. Meanwhile, the non-nobility who were called to municipal administration complained about the attention paid by the Piedmonts to the aristocracy and caused, through walkouts, a de facto paralysis of the decurionate in which they had been appointed to participate. For their part, the Savoy distrusted the city and its moods. Accordingly, they strengthened the fortifications that encircled Genoa, recovering the city’s military garrisons, particularly Forte Castelletto — which became a symbol of Savoyard oppression and was destroyed on popular demand in 1848. Its firing ports were turned towards the city instead of towards the exterior. The Savoyard military garrison amounted to 7000 units at a time when Genoa’s population barely exceeded 75,000 inhabitants. With a view to social stability, many points of concern existed: while the nobility often retreated in a hostile silence, dedicating themselves to the rather innocuous art of mugugno (grumbling or complaining), it was a different situation for the democrats and Mazzini republicans who, despite having fundamental differences, were always active and constituted a point of reference for the conspiratorial initiatives that periodically broke out in the city. The popular classes, therefore, unrepresented in the city’s administration, barely managed to survive.9 In 1835, 2800 beggars were registered in the census, and cholera and smallpox were returning with alarming frequency, often brought by ships arriving in the port. This was due to the precarious hygienic conditions of most homes and the lack of clean drinking water. Infant mortality rates were very high. In the mid-1820s, Antonio Brignole Sale wrote that, in the first year of life, twenty-six per cent of infants died, a percentage that rose to 45 per cent when considering children up to the age of ten. This information has been confirmed by historical demographic studies. The famine of 1817 revealed the weakness of the private charitable system, which had been shaken to the core by the economic crisis and not yet replaced by state intervention. The Statistique de la ville de Gênes by Michele Cevasco10 recounted a city, not that different from rest of the peninsula, where the average age was twenty-seven, and life expectancy did not exceed forty-eight years. Of 94,500 inhabitants, there were 198 noble families, 509 priests and another 1000 religious persons, 400 prisoners and over 3000 people housed in the great charitable structures of the century-old local institutions (a hostel for the poor, the Pammatone Hospital, a hospital for incurables and the mental asylum). Less than 1500 children attended the public primary schools, about 700 were in secondary schools and 580 were university students, where the faculties of medicine and jurisprudence were officially equal to those in Piedmont but in fact did not provide adequate preparation. After the Restoration, teaching was in the hands of the clergy. The Jesuits represented a bulwark of dogmatism and were considered obscurantist and pro-Savoyard. Following the suppression of religious orders in 1773, they returned after the Congress of Vienna but were again expelled in 1848.

9 Bianca Montale’s Mito e realtà di Genova nel Risorgimento (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1999) pays careful attention to the social aspects of the period. 10 Michele Cevasco, Statistique de la ville de Gênes (Genoa: Imprimerie Ferrando, 1838).

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The Piarist schools, instead, had a more ‘liberal’ reputation. The only exception to the desolate panorama of public education was the Collegio Nazionale (National College), which arose after the Jesuit schools were abolished at the end of the 1700s. It enjoyed considerable prestige for the quality of its teaching body. Even though during the ancien régime every quarter of the city had its charitable school, from 1822 these were incorporated into the municipality, losing all autonomy. The prescribed obligation of ‘decency’ excluded the poorest from attending because of their lack of suitable clothes. In protest, Archbishop Lambruschini withdrew Church support for public education. In secondary education, however, the state was almost entirely absent. Youths who wanted to continue their studies relied on the religious orders’ schools and the seminary.11 In 1848, of the seminary’s 306 students, 122 were internal and as many as 184 were external students. This was also to be the choice of the Della Chiesa family for Giacomo, who was enrolled in the seminary’s philosophical studies as an external student. Only at the end of the 1850s was there an increase in attention to the issue of the right to an education. Luigi Lambruschini had succeeded Giuseppe Maria Spina as Archbishop of Genoa in 1819. A Barnabite, he also was mainly a diplomat and jurist. A champion of Roman curialism and radically anti-Jansenist, he worked for a greater cultural preparation for the clergy, attending to the seminary and reorganizing the female convents. He unwillingly accepted the Savoyard protection that had been granted to Eustachio Degola, a Jansenist priest, and to the Piarist Father Ottavio Assarotti, an active colleague of the former who, in 1811, founded an institute for the education of deaf-mutes that soon became a national and European point of reference in its field and which enjoyed first Napoleon’s and then the Savoy’s assistance. In the first decades after annexation, Genoa’s cultural life was very limited, due to widespread illiteracy and the lack of freedom of expression. There were only a few literary groups that brought together intellectuals and men of culture, nobles and bourgeois, merchants and entrepreneurs. Such a mixture should not be surprising because, throughout Genoa’s history, belonging to the noble class never prevented the practice of trade or families’ involvement in economic business initiatives. Most of the noble families, and the Della Chiesa themselves in previous centuries, had always followed the paths of European finance and commerce, entering into society — with entrepreneurs, shipowners, bankers and such — without any social class boundaries. Intellectual life, which could not be expressed in print due to rigid censorship, found its freedom in the salon of Gian Carlo Di Negro, a cultural and political beacon in the city in the first half of the nineteenth century, who hosted, among others, Massimo D’Azeglio, Giuseppe Mazzini, the Ruffini brothers, George Byron, Charles Dickens, Stendhal and Alessandro Manzoni. Otherwise they met in the salon of Bianca Rebizzo, who had been exiled from Venice along with her banker husband. The salon was a progressive microcosm faithfully attended by the shipowner

11 For an overview, see Pietro Stella, ‘Il clero e la sua cultura nell’Ottocento’, in Storia dell’Italia religiosa, ed. by Gabriele De Rosa, Tullio Gregory and André Vauchez, 3 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1993–95), III: L’età contemporanea (1995), pp. 87–113.

genoa: a capital between savoyard annexation and the risorgimento

Raffaele Rubattino and politically engaged youths such as Nino Bixio, Giorgio Doria, Terenzio Mamiani and Goffredo Mameli. It was a centre of financial assistance for exiles and conspirators that, in 1841, also gave birth to the first kindergartens for poor families. The aristocratic, intellectual or bourgeois elite, excluded from public activity, took refuge in poetry, literature and social and charitable initiatives, which had a rich tradition in the city. In its first years, the Savoyard state tried to limit the city’s economic development to prevent it from becoming a strong centre of power, capable of undermining Piedmont’s centrality. Slowly, however, the importance of Genoa’s port and maritime and industrial sectors, together with their use in the development of territories beyond the Apennines, became clear. This awareness came to maturity during the time of Cavour, but it was already clear to Charles Felix. After the stagnation that had existed before the annexation, economic development led to the attenuation of the diffuse anti-Piedmont sensibilities in Genoa, starting with the bourgeois entrepreneurs, in favour of a reconsideration of the costs and benefits that the annexation had brought. The city’s socio-economic structure was transformed by abandoning its most archaic characteristics in order to initiate a process of modernization that, in just a few decades, quickly accelerated. Mercantile and maritime needs also gave birth to printed matter, including the publication that would become Il Corriere Mercantile. In those years, Risorgimento ideals were spreading. Even though there was tight control, with frequent arrests and rather limited possibilities for assembly and expressing oneself, a debate began regarding the future of Italy, the role of the monarchy and the possibility of having, in its place, a republican regime. Mazzini, who graduated in law in 1827, lived away from his hometown for almost his entire life. Exiled to France in 1831 because he was a member of the Carbonari, he was sentenced to death twice in absentia. From France, Switzerland and then London, he kept up with the events in Italy. His university classmates constituted the largest group of his Genoese supporters, but he had followers from all the social classes, including the nobility, who also demonstrated their intolerance and aversion towards the Piedmont monarchy. Another protagonist on the Italian scene of the following decades resided in the city. In 1830, a promising young man, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, was assigned to Genoa to direct the army’s Genio militare (Engineer Corps). He frequented the progressive salon of Anna Giustiniani and began a long relationship with her. The young woman ended her life in 1841, still thinking of him. Despite the rather negative opinion that the future Prime Minister had of the Genoese, the fact remains that he held a special place for the city in his economic policy, which quickly improved the prospects of a vast entrepreneurial class that owed its fortunes to him.12 Beginning in 1828, the theatre was another option for the elite. Charles Felix financed a theatre that was named after him, inaugurated in the sovereigns’ presence with the opera Bianca e Fernando by Vincenzo Bellini from a libretto by the Genoese

12 See Cavour e Genova: economia e politica, ed. by Maria Elisabetta Tonizzi (Genoa: Genova University Press, 2011).

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Felice Romani. The King’s death in 1831 consolidated the hopes of the Genoese reformers. Defying the custom that provided for dressing in mourning on such occasions, Anna Giustiniani, Laura Dinegro and Fanny Balbi, noble ladies and protagonists of the city’s progressive salons, arrived at the theatre dressed in bright colours. From then on, the theatre named after the deceased sovereign became the site of patriotic demonstrations. In the following decades, Giuseppe Verdi’s triad of Risorgimento operas, Nabucco (1842), Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843) and La battaglia di Legnano (1849), enjoyed great success there. With King Charles Albert’s ascension to the throne, cautious legislative and administrative reforms, together with a liberal trade policy, were initiated. Although it was the centre of the repression of Mazzini’s unification movement (the same year that Mazzini was forced into exile), Genoa became a central point in the state’s programme of modernization, which was enthusiastically supported by an oligarchy of merchants, shipowners, bankers, entrepreneurs and more than a few aristocrats. Investments in the port had the effect of rousing the city’s energies and triggering an effective chain reaction. The failure of the insurrectional uprisings of 1833 marked a tightening of control and repression. Garibaldi fled to Marseille, whence he then set out for South America, while Mazzini was sentenced to death in absentia. Those arrested were tortured and condemned to death and one, Jacopo Ruffini, committed suicide in prison. Accused of being sympathizers of Mazzini and supporting Giovine Italia, several nobles were also arrested but, due to weak evidence, were then released. The year 1831 also saw a change in the episcopacy. After Archbishop Giuseppe Airenti briefly held the post of Archbishop, the Carmelite Placido Tadini, an elderly prelate of eighteenth-century formation, began his long episcopate. He was worried about the decline in faith and customs (a leitmotif of the previous centuries, but perhaps not only then) and was particularly attentive to the formation of seminarians, imposing a strict discipline. The synod of 1838 was an important moment in his episcopate. Averse to science, he affirmed the superiority of the ‘peasant’s religion’ with respect to the ‘impious’ novelties that were emerging in the social and political spheres. Faced with the latest in a long line of cholera epidemics that hit the city, he claimed that the disease was divine punishment.13 Due to his advanced age, he did not take part in the conclave that elected Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti as Pope Pius IX. Five Genoese cardinals attended, all belonging to the Genoese aristocracy (Brignole, Fieschi, Franzoni, Spinola and Serra di Cassano), reflecting an ancien régime in its decline. Tadini died in 1847, leaving Genoa without a spiritual leader until 1852. During those five years, Giuseppe Ferrari was the Vicar General, a weak character at a complicated moment in the city’s history and a time of strong tension within the Church itself, which was divided between Jesuit and liberal priests, while an active minority of democratic priests supported unification. In 1848, with a power vacuum

13 One hundred and fifty years later, his illustrious successor said the same thing about AIDS; Nicla Buonasorte, Tra Roma e Lefebvre: il tradizionalismo cattolico italiano e il concilio Vaticano II (Rome: Studium, 2003), p. 106.

genoa: a capital between savoyard annexation and the risorgimento

at the top of the local Church, Jesuits and nuns were driven out of the city during the revolutionary activities that erupted throughout the city.14 It was in the 1840s, then, that the political climate was substantially transformed, although the two years from 1848 to 1849 proved to be very difficult, as we shall see, with a drastic cooling of the growing relationship with Piedmont. In 1842, Charles Albert worked to ‘convince’ the Genoese aristocracy to celebrate and honour him on the occasion of his wedding, promising that, if presented with a public display of support for the monarchy, he would forgive the nobles who had been accused of conspiracy. It was a symbolic moment of connection to Piedmont. Meanwhile, intellectual activities led to the creation of numerous academic societies throughout the Kingdom. In 1846, the year that the first gas lanterns appeared in the city, the VIII Congresso degli scienziati italiani (Eighth Conference of Italian Scientists) was held in Genoa. With over 1500 participants, it was an opportunity on a national level for debate and the spread of the ideas of civil, political and institutional renewal beyond the narrow scope of the fervour for unification, which was experiencing a profound crisis after the failure of its initiatives. Academics visited the city and its institutions, nurseries for the poor and schools, thus expanding the range of interest. The following year, the Comitato dell’Ordine (Committee for Order) was born, a liberal-reformist group supported by the nobleman Giorgio Doria, which would become the Circolo nazionale (National Club) in 1848. With 140 members, including several ecclesiastics and many noblemen who were former Mazzini supporters, such as Vincenzo Ricci and Lorenzo Pareto, future cabinet ministers in 1848, it was a think tank for discussing and developing concrete proposals.15 It delineated some precise requests for Charles Albert: freedom of the press, removal of the Jesuits and the authorization to form a Guardia civica (Civic Guard). The first point was a necessary step for disseminating ideas at a time when monarchical absolutism seemed to be softening. The second reflected a widespread sentiment shared by all of Genoa’s social classes: the Jesuits’ strong influence on teaching, public life and citizens’ consciences through preaching and confession; moreover, their support for Austria, aversion towards Vincenzo Gioberti and criticism of Pius IX and his concessions were an unbearable burden in even the most liberal settings. Finally, the Civic Guard was considered an indispensable check to the suffocating presence of the army and police forces, as well as a guarantee for self-defence in the event of radical upheavals. On 2 December 1847, a large patriotic banquet was set up in the city theatre, with over a thousand seats paid for by members of the nobility and the wealthy bourgeoisie. Half the guests were commoners, in a show of friendship and fraternity. A few months earlier, the Marchioness Fanny Balbi — one of the same women who had celebrated the death of Charles Felix with bright clothing at his theatre — had

14 On the clergy’s attitude, see Bianca Montale, Genova nel Risorgimento: dalle riforme all’Unità (Savona: Sabatelli, 1979), pp. 105–28. 15 See the precise reconstruction by Arturo Codignola, ‘Patrizi e borghesi di Genova nel Risorgimento italiano’, in Genova e l’impresa dei Mille, ed. by Arturo Codignola, 2 vols (Rome: Canesi, 1961), I, pp. 17–68.

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been warned by the police to stop selling, at a cost of three lire, portraits of Mazzini and Garibaldi for the ‘national cause’. Meanwhile, faced with the spread of white-redgreen ribbons worn in buttonholes and the distribution of white and yellow — papal colours — flowers, Genoa’s chief of police banned the use of rosette badges or symbols that were not Savoyard blue. On 10 December, the traditional procession to the Santuario della Nostra Signora di Loreto in Oregina, which recalled the Virgin’s apparition in favour of the Genoese rebels during the anti-Austrian riot of 1746, became a major public event, perhaps the first pro-Risorgimento demonstration to reach such a size. Over 35,000 people from around Italy gathered in memory of Balilla, the youth who, according to local legend, had started the revolt against Austrian occupation a century earlier. Waving tricolour symbols of unity and the Republic, they challenged the police ban. On that occasion, the notes of Fratelli d’Italia — the piece written by a very young Goffredo Mameli set to music by Michele Novaro which, a century later, was to become the national anthem of the Italian Republic16 — were heard for the very first time. Mameli, as is well known, died as a result of injuries sustained during the defence of the Roman Republic in July 1849. Novaro received no special recognition for his work: he lived modestly, devoting himself to the free music school that he had founded, attaining only in his old age the position of music teacher in public schools. These were years when local myths were born: in addition to the origins of Christopher Columbus being dusted off, Balilla began his career as a rallying symbol, which was to reach its peak during the years of the Fascist regime.

3. From 1848 to a Unified Italy The Statuto Albertino of 1848, in response to the European and Italian revolutionary movements, on the eve of the war with Austria, marked a turning point in favour of the requests of the liberals. One of the first results of the Genoese uprisings of 1848 was the expulsion of the Jesuits, to whom the Savoy had assigned the Palazzo Doria-Tursi in 1838 as the seat of the Collegio reale (Royal College). Abandoning the Church of Saint Ambrose, they retired to the priory of Massa. The following day, 1 March, the Civic Guard was established. A few days later, a public demonstration in front of the Doge’s Palace asked for amnesty for political prisoners. In June, Garibaldi landed in Genoa, arriving from Montevideo with 150 Italian volunteers. In August, when news arrived of the Salasco armistice between Austria and Piedmont, the city rose up and dismantled the forts of Castelletto and San Giorgio, symbols of Genoa’s military occupation by the Savoy. Revolutionary activities continued. At the beginning of January 1849, the nobles who arrived in sedan chairs at the Teatro Carlo Felice were greeted with a heavy stoning and cries of ‘down with luxury!’. Pro-Guelph hopes fell when Pius IX denounced the war against the very Catholic Austria. In March, when

16 See La musica del Risorgimento a Genova 1846–1847: gli inni patriottici della Biblioteca Universitaria, ed. by Grazia Biorci (Genoa: Compagnia dei Librai, 2006).

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the war resumed and Novara was defeated, Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel II. On receiving news of the peace with Austria, to whom the city feared being conceded, the Genoese again rose up. With the support of the Guardia nazionale (National Guard), they occupied the Doge’s Palace and took the garrison commander’s family hostage. The commander signed the surrender and hurried to leave the city. Immediately after this, the government of Turin sent 25,000 soldiers — General Alfonso La Marmora’s famed corps of Bersaglieri — to occupy Sampierdarena and the forts around Genoa. They heavily bombarded the city and then spent several violent days looting, raping and desecrating religious buildings. At least 200 soldiers and just as many civilians, almost all of whom were commoners, were killed. Along with the anti-Piedmont and anti-Austrian uprisings, the populace engaged in others against the social and economic hardships that were always pressing. For putting down the revolts in Genoa, the General received a gold medal for military valour. Victor Emmanuel II described the Genoese insurgents as ‘a cowardly and ineffective breed of scoundrels’. This effectively shut the door on the arduous attempts to build connections between Genoa and the Savoyard monarchy.17 Meanwhile, the marquises Vincenzo Ricci and Lorenzo Pareto were called, respectively, to the posts of Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs under Cesare Balbo in the Piedmont’s first constitutional government. They were the two most authoritative exponents of the liberal-reformist movement. Appointing responsibility for the two most important cabinets to the two sons of Genoa signalled the King’s desire to strengthen the links between Turin and the ‘second capital’ definitively. For the first time, members of the aristocracy officially took up positions of loyalty to the Savoy. Their lack of political experience was felt, however. The nobleman Vincenzo Ricci was from a family that was profoundly Catholic, liberal and close to democrats and Mazzini’s supporters. Until that time he had been particularly involved in the education of the poorer classes, opposing the Jesuit monopoly and advocating the need for a comprehensive technical-practical education in order to relaunch the city’s commercial and industrial activities. In Genoa, only half the male population could read and write while, naturally, the illiteracy rate for women was much greater. An optimist, Ricci nurtured a great respect for scholarly culture. He was the model of a highly civic-minded and anti-Piedmont nobleman, a leader and constant ‘anti’ spokesman. As a cabinet minister, he was precariously balanced between anti-Savoyard sentiment and dynastic loyalty in the role he played. He always voted for the ‘anti-’ side: against anti-clerical laws, against the Crimean War, against building a military arsenal in La Spezia, against relinquishing Nice, and so on. Lorenzo Pareto, instead, was a geologist. Speaking of him, a contemporary recalled that ‘he spent most months of the year atop his native mountains, breaking stones

17 See Bianca Montale, ‘1849: contro i Savoia’, in Gli anni di Genova: nove grandi storici raccontano gli anni e gli uomini che hanno cambiato la storia di Genova e del mondo, ed. by Franco Cardini and others (Rome: Laterza, 2010), pp. 177–205.

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open with a hammer for geological illustrations’.18 An advocate for, and director of, the city’s kindergartens, he was a liberal-democratic reformist who favoured unification. He was at the side of the insurgents in 1849, receiving amnesty only because he was a former minister to Charles Albert. That same year he was elected to Palazzo Carignano, the House of Deputies, as a symbol of protest. After Unification he was called to the senate, a tactic employed by the Crown to remove undesirable opponents from the House. Charles Albert wanted some Genoese senators in the upper house: Giorgio Doria, Giacomo Balbi Piovera, Antonio Brignole Sale (loyal to the Church and an intransigent Catholic, he resigned from office in 1861, considering all the annexations to be illegitimate), Gian Carlo Brignole, Ignazio Pallavicini, Domenico Serra, Alberto Ricci and Francesco Ricci, all noblemen except for the latter. The parliamentary experiences of these Genoese senators were characterized by their poor skills and lack of enthusiasm. In April 1848, elections for the first parliament took place. In Genoa, 1828 out of 2424 members of the electorate voted, a percentage that was in line with the rest of the Kingdom. Genoa’s seven representatives, including Abbot Vincenzo Gioberti, were almost all jurists. Besides the geologist Pareto there was also a banker. Genoa’s electoral protest, electing men who were not at all progressive but strongly civic-minded, continued in subsequent elections. In the city, only a few aristocrats and business proponents were pro-Savoyard moderates, and they only succeeded a few times in establishing shared plans of action, particularly when it came to gaining support for their economic or financial initiatives.19 In the same year, the first city council was also elected, with Baron Antonio Profumo as mayor. The city had many problems. Among the most urgent were the poor hygienic conditions of most housing, the low educational levels and the increasingly high number of poor persons to support. It has been calculated that, in 1846, there were forty-five private charitable institutions, mostly for specific causes that were based on testamentary legacies. There were those that cared for the sick, for prisoners, orphans, the homeless, ‘shameful spinsters’, ‘repentant women’, and so on. It was an extremely fragmentary system that, nevertheless, managed to make up for, although not entirely, the absence of state assistance in dealing with these problems. Several new religious orders, especially after the suppression of the contemplative ones, filled the void in public assistance. Private initiatives also sought to cope with the appalling rate of illiteracy, especially among women. In 1850, for example, the Collegio delle Peschiere was founded by Bianca Rebizzo to educate girls. Even though it was short-lived — a liberal-moderate sentiment soon caused a decrease in the number of students and, after three years, financial problems caused it to close — it represented an important stage in reversing the illiteracy trend. Meanwhile, under

18 Angelo Brofferio, Storia del Parlamento subalpino iniziatore dell’Unità italiana, 6 vols (Milan: Natale Battezzati, 1865–69), I: 1848 Prima sessione legislativa (1865), pp. 32–33. 19 See Luciana Garibbo, Politica, amministrazione e interessi a Genova (1815–1940) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000).

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the Statuto Albertino, associations for mutual assistance could be formed and, with the freedom of the press, newspapers were founded. In 1849, Il Cattolico, mouthpiece of an intransigent and polemical Catholicism, ever-faithful to the Pope, was born, while, a little later, Mazzini’s supporters had their say in L’Unità italiana. As the port of the only state to maintain its statutory guarantees, Genoa became the destination of a lively and numerous political emigration arriving from all the Italian states. The numbers speak of about 30,000 people, whose integration, or lack thereof, was at the centre of a close debate. This influx also positively influenced the demographic balance, allowing recovery from the high mortality rates in the cholera epidemic of 1854–55. The immigrants were mainly democrats who supported Mazzini. The other great reservoir of democratic sympathies was represented by the constantly increasing birth of associations of mutual assistance. Indeed, in 1853, the Consociazione operaia genovese (Genoese Worker’s Consortium), which united around forty associations, was born, while the following year saw the foundation of the Compagnia di San Giovanni Battista (Company of Saint John the Baptist), the Consortium’s Catholic counterpart. These were years of rapid economic growth. Cavour, Minister from 1850 and Prime Minister from 1852, worked to promote industry, trade, the port and finances, seeking the support of the business class through state protection and contracts. Genoa was fundamental to the Kingdom’s economic return to the European stage. This was another reason why Cavour wanted to heal the wounds of 1849 as quickly as possible, to re-earn consent for the Savoyard monarchy and its government, not only seeking the support of the aristocracy but, finally, widening the horizon to include the bourgeoisie that would be the catalyst of the following period. The development in this decade of the engineering centre of Ansaldo in the western part of the city, the port and the shipping companies, abundantly subsidized by the state, as well as the monumental migration to the Americas, all favoured a revolution in transportation that for seafaring transport meant a move from sails to steam. The railroads were also at the centre of Cavour’s projects. As mentioned, Genoa and Turin were joined by rail in the mid-1850s, and for a long time Genoa was the only port on the peninsula connected to both the railway and to land and sea telegraph systems, which allowed real-time communication. Another fundamental figure of the time was also tied to the railway development, Raffaele De Ferrari, who was appointed senator in 1858. A very wealthy nobleman, he followed the cosmopolitan tradition of the protagonists of Genoese finance. Often abroad taking care of his interests — which is why he was never at parliamentary sessions — he symbolized that narrow social class that managed to leave a lasting mark on his city through all types of projects. An entrepreneur and, in his old age, a philanthropist, he made considerable donations to the municipality, impacting the areas of health care, social assistance, culture and, above all, economic development, particularly through the modernization of the port.20

20 See Giovanni Assereto, I Duchi di Galliera: alta finanza, arte e filantropia tra Genova e l’Europa nell’Ottocento (Genoa: Marietti, 1991).

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Until 1859, however, the city remained politically opposed to the state government. Cavour accused the elections of 1853 and 1857, whose candidates representing various interests were united by their aversion to him, of excessive provincialism. Among Catholics, moreover, the anti-clerical laws of 1850 and 1855 were not forgotten. Naturally, we are speaking of the ‘political situation’ that represents only a small percentage of the ‘actual situation’ of persons facing the habitual problems of trying to survive, who were powerless and unrepresented. Strong feelings of patriotism found a powerful channel of expression when the national Società del tiro a segno (Society for Target Shooting) was established in 1851, with the scope of training citizens to use weapons in view of the looming battles for independence and unity. It was only after the Mazzini uprisings of 1857 failed that the moderate opinion finally grew in popularity and came to be held by the majority.21 Even Garibaldi joined the King, Catholics accepted the new reality, entrepreneurs enjoyed the benefits of economic policy and the city developed. That is how, in the elections of 1860, Cavour’s election was supported even by one of the city’s constituencies that had so hated him. The utopia of an Italy becoming a nation chosen by the people was not realized. The alternative to the uprisings and insurrections took the form of an alliance rooted not in an ideological affinity but in concrete facts and projects. Support for the government and the monarchy was given on condition that they committed themselves to the unification of the peninsula. In the war of 1859 against Austria, Genoa was the main place where troops were assembled and supplied. Over 200,000 soldiers passed through the city, and Napoleon III arrived there to meet Cavour and the King. When Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand departed, the myth of Genoa — birthplace of Mazzini, Bixio and the Thousand — as the central point of the unification process was born, even though the Genoese municipality, unlike many others, did not contribute financially to the effort. At the time of Unification, the city was already undergoing a process of impressive economic development, of both the port and industry, and was a reserve for large amounts of capital, finally emerging from the long crisis generated by the Napoleonic years. To the first truly ‘Italian’ elections, the three Genoese districts sent the exemplary Vincenzo Ricci, his brother Giovanni, a naval officer for Cavour, and Nino Bixio, the second in command of the Thousand. Genoese representation, therefore, merged with the ranks of the ministerial majority. In 1853, the year that preceded Giacomo Della Chiesa’s birth, the long period that the archdiocese had spent without a bishop because of the government’s hostility to its rebellious Ligurian subjects, came to an end. Cavour sent Bishop André Charvaz, a Savoyard prelate, formerly Bishop of Pinerolo and a tutor to Victor Emmanuel, to the difficult city, trying to remedy differences by sending a loyalist bishop who

21 On this shift, see Bianca Montale, ‘Genova 1857: cronaca di un anno cruciale’, in Politica e Cultura nel Risorgimento italiano: Genova 1857 e la fondazione della Società Ligure di Storia Patria: atti del convegno, Genova, 4–6 febbraio 2008, ed. by Luca Lo Basso (= Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 48, 1 (2008)), pp. 31–55.

genoa: a capital between savoyard annexation and the risorgimento

was amenable to the Crown.22 The traditionalist clergy did not willingly accept the presence of a conciliatory Archbishop who allowed his priests to participate in patriotic festivities, who remained silent when confronted with laws suppressing religious orders, who removed reactionary priests from roles of responsibility and who was always opposed to electoral abstention. Pius IX remained rather cold toward Charvaz even when, after Cavour’s death, he refused the senate seat that had been offered to him. As elsewhere in the 1850s, Genoa saw Catholic social and educational initiatives flourish, often connected to a collaboration on the part of a motivated laity. Certainly, the Archbishop did not have extensive relationships with part of the aristocracy, not even with Antonio Brignole, a dominant figure in the city’s landscape and financial backer of Il Cattolico, to which the Bishop always refused to subscribe. Instead, he supported the Annali cattolici, a journal of liberal Catholicism that accepted the separation of powers with the expression ‘Catholics with the Pope, liberals with the Statute’. The Archbishop’s resignation in 1860 was not accepted and, with the support of Bishop Salvatore Magnasco, who would eventually become his successor, he led the archdiocese until 1869, the year when Pius IX called Vatican I.

Bibliography Assereto, Giovanni, ‘Dall’Antico Regime all’Unità’, in La Liguria, ed. by Antonio Gibelli and Paride Rugafiori (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), pp. 160–215 Assereto, Giovanni, I Duchi di Galliera: alta finanza, arte e filantropia tra Genova e l’Europa nell’Ottocento (Genoa: Marietti, 1991) Biorci, Grazia, La musica del Risorgimento a Genova 1846–1847: gli inni patriottici della Biblioteca Universitaria (Genoa: Compagnia dei Librai, 2006) Braudel, Fernand, Il secondo Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1986) Brofferio, Angelo, Storia del Parlamento subalpino iniziatore dell’Unità italiana, 6 vols (Milan: Natale Battezzati, 1865–69), I: 1848 Prima sessione legislativa (1865) Buonasorte, Nicla, Tra Roma e Lefebvre: il tradizionalismo cattolico italiano e il concilio Vaticano II (Rome: Studium, 2003) Cervetto, Luigi Augusto, I patrizi Della Chiesa e Migliorati dai quali discende il sommo pontefice Benedetto XV (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1915) Cevasco, Michele, Statistique de la ville de Gênes (Genoa: Imprimerie Ferrando, 1838) Codignola, Arturo, ‘Patrizi e borghesi di Genova nel Risorgimento italiano’, in Genova e l’impresa dei Mille, ed. by Arturo Codignola, 2 vols (Rome: Canesi, 1961), I, pp. 17–68

22 For more information on Charvaz, see Giuseppe Oreste, ‘Note per uno studio dell’opinione pubblica in Genova 1853–60’, in Genova e l’impresa dei Mille, ed. by Codignola, I, pp. 116–242, and the more recent Un évêque entre la Savoie et l’Italie: André Charvaz (1793–1870) précepteur de Victor-Emmanuel II, évêque de Pignerol, archevêque de Gênes: actes du colloque franco-italienne de Moûtiers, 10–12 septembre 1993, ed. by Jean-Dominique Durand, Maurius Hudry and Christian Sorrel (Chambéry: Institut d’études savoisiennes, 1994).

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Durand, Jean-Dominique, Maurius Hudry and Christian Sorrel, eds, Un évêque entre la Savoie et l’Italie: André Charvaz (1793–1870) précepteur de Victor-Emmanuel II, évêque de Pignerol, archevêque de Gênes: actes du colloque franco-italienne de Moûtiers, 10–12 septembre 1993 (Chambéry: Institut d’études savoisiennes, 1994) Garibbo, Luciana, Politica, amministrazione e interessi a Genova (1815–1940) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000) Gentile, Pierangelo, ‘1814, Genova e i giochi della diplomazia: dalla Repubblica restaurata all’annessione al Piemonte’, in Genova e Torino: quattro secoli di incontri e scontri: nel bicentenario dell’annessione della Liguria al Regno di Sardegna, ed. by Giovanni Assereto, Carlo Bitossi and Pierpaolo Merlin (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2015), pp. 313–29 Lercari, Andrea, ‘Patrizi e notabili liguri fra Repubblica di Genova e Corte di Savoia’, in Genova e Torino: quattro secoli di incontri e scontri: nel bicentenario dell’annessione della Liguria al Regno di Sardegna, ed. by Giovanni Assereto, Carlo Bitossi and Pierpaolo Merlin (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2015), pp. 33–55 Merlotti, Andrea, ‘Nobiltà e corte nella Genova della Restaurazione’, in Genova e Torino: quattro secoli di incontri e scontri: nel bicentenario dell’annessione della Liguria al Regno di Sardegna, ed. by Giovanni Assereto, Carlo Bitossi and Pierpaolo Merlin (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2015), pp. 445–66 Montale, Bianca, ‘1849: contro i Savoia’, in Gli anni di Genova: nove grandi storici raccontano gli anni e gli uomini che hanno cambiato la storia di Genova e del mondo, ed. by Franco Cardini and others (Rome: Laterza, 2010), pp. 177–205 Montale, Bianca, ‘Genova 1857: cronaca di un anno cruciale’, in Politica e Cultura nel Risorgimento italiano: Genova 1857 e la fondazione della Società Ligure di Storia Patria: atti del convegno, Genova, 4–6 febbraio 2008, ed. by Luca Lo Basso (= Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 48, 1 (2008)), pp. 31–55 Montale, Bianca, Genova nel Risorgimento: dalle riforme all’Unità (Savona: Sabatelli, 1979) Montale, Bianca, Mito e realtà di Genova nel Risorgimento (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1999) Montale, Bianca, ‘Tra restaurazione e riformismo (1802–69)’, in Il cammino della Chiesa genovese dalle origini ai nostri giorni, ed. by Dino Puncuh (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1999), pp. 403–37 Oreste, Giuseppe, ‘Note per uno studio dell’opinione pubblica in Genova 1853–60’, in Genova e l’impresa dei Mille, ed. by Arturo Codignola, 2 vols (Rome: Canesi, 1961), I, pp. 116–242 Parente, Ulderico, ‘Il Risorgimento e il paradigma intransigente’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 631–40 Stella, Pietro, ‘Il clero e la sua cultura nell’Ottocento’, in Storia dell’Italia religiosa, ed. by Gabriele De Rosa, Tullio Gregory and André Vauchez, 3 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1993–95), III: L’età contemporanea (1995), pp. 87–113 Tonizzi, Maria Elisabetta, ed., Cavour e Genova: economia e politica (Genoa: Genova University Press, 2011) Tonizzi, Maria Elisabetta, ‘Dalla Repubblica ligure all’Unità (1797–1861)’, in Storia della Liguria, ed. by Giovanni Assereto and Marco Doria (Rome: Laterza, 2007), pp. 193–210

genoa: a capital between savoyard annexation and the risorgimento

Tonizzi, Maria Elisabetta, ‘Genova e Napoleone 1805–1814’, Società e storia, 140 (2013), pp. 343–71 Traniello, Francesco, ‘La rottura liberale: i cattolico-liberali nell’Italia del Risorgimento’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 197–214 Varnier, Giovanni Battista, ‘Chiesa e religiosità nella Liguria contemporanea: diocesi e vita religiosa’, in Storia della Liguria, ed. by Giovanni Assereto and Marco Doria (Rome: Laterza, 2007), pp. 345–62 Viroli, Maurizio, ‘La dimensione religiosa del Risorgimento’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 135–50

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The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries: Traces of the Della Chiesa Family

1. Introduction There are many in our city who claim to be descendants of earls of the German Marches, of dukes of the Duchy of Cleves, of counts of Narbonne, even of the Ottonian emperors, including the Lomellini, the Spinoli, the Doria and others, some hailing from Villa di Polcevera, some from Lombardy, some from the woods and mountains of the coast and some from parts unknown.1 Here we find the anonymous author of the Scruttinio della nobiltà in che questa consista et in specie quella di Genova (Investigation into the Composition of the Nobility, especially that of Genoa) — using the pseudonym Battista Coccorno — demystifying the genealogical lineages of the Genoese aristocracy and denouncing their falseness and pretentiousness. The work dates back to 1775, a period that saw a revival in genealogical work aimed, more than ever, at establishing aristocratic lineages on the basis of the new tools that historical research provided thanks to progress in the use of sources and documents. Tracing the family tree of Marquis Giuseppe Della Chiesa leads one through the history of the Genoese nobility from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries: from the first decades of the 1500s, when the city’s fluid and unscrupulous aristocratic families saw great wealth and grandeur, to 1528, when Andrea Doria’s reform gave them their most fortunate period of stability in the highest offices of the state. The achievement of the new institutional recognition was not safe from the ambitions of the great European sovereigns during its centuries of splendour and prestige, however.

1 ‘In questa nostra metropoli molti che pretendono discendere dai Conti della Marca di Germania, da Duchi di Cleves, da conti di Narbona e per insino dagli imperatori Ottoni, come li Lomellini, li Spinoli, li Doria et altri, venuti tutti sono questi dalla Villa di Polcevera, chi da quelle della Lombardia, chi da boscaglie e montagne della Riviera e chi da Paesi ignoti’; Massimo Angelini, ‘La cultura genealogica in area ligure nel XVIII secolo: introduzione ai repertori delle famiglie’, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, n. s., 35, 1 (1995), pp. 189–212 (p. 195).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 53–68 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118762

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In the long run, the Ligurian capital’s periodic attempts at a stronger position on the international chessboard wound up depleting its resources and progressively reducing it to a subordinate status. The events that led to the Restoration and the Republic’s ultimate annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia largely generated an ever-greater estrangement of the Genoese nobility from power. In briefly outlining the differences, diffidence and discontent between the Piedmont and the Genoese aristocracies, I shall analyse the Ligurian nobility’s efforts to oppose a distant, foreign leadership, taking refuge in the twists and turns of the past in order to recover their former grandeur and dignity.

2. The Origins of the Della Chiesa Family and the Albergo Social Structure In the thirteenth century, a branch of the Della Chiesa family from Piedmont had arrived in Finale and Savona on the Ligurian coast. These were territories of the Italian Riviera over which Genoa had long claimed dominion. Indeed, the city’s most influential families, interested in tightening and strengthening their connections to the coastal territories in order to cement their internal position against the various conflicting factions in the city, had contributed to consolidating Genoa’s influence over the surrounding estates. For their part, the notables of the coastal cities were also strongly attracted to the Republic of Genoa, seeking to benefit from its leadership.2 Perhaps this was the reason that prompted the Della Chiesa to move from Savona and settle in Genoa, where their presence is recorded as early as the fifteenth century, when the city had assumed the role of a commercial, maritime, financial and political capital of the Ligurian territory. In 1528, Stefano Agostino Della Cella, doctor and author of a three-volume work on Genoese family histories, includes the Della Chiesa in the city’s nobility. Some of the Della Chiesa were attached to the Gentile Albergo family, a line that died out in the eighteenth century. Others, including the ancestors of the future Pope Benedict XV, were connected to the Salvago Albergo one.3 A foundational moment in the history of the city and its ruling classes, 1528 was the year when Andrea Doria issued a broad constitutional reform that included, among other things, precise norms for determining noble status. Nobility was acquired through ascription to an Albergo (plural: Alberghi), an institution of social organization that had existed since the fourteenth century. An Albergo was comprised of several families that assumed a common surname for reasons that had



2 Andrea Lercari, ‘La nobiltà civica a Genova e in Liguria dal Comune consolare alla Repubblica aristocratica’, in Le aristocrazie cittadine: evoluzione dei ceti dirigenti urbani nei secoli XV–XVIII, ed. by Marino Zorzi, Marcello Fracanzani and Italo Quadrio (Venice: La musa Talia, 2009), pp. 227–362. 3 Stefano Agostino Della Cella, Famiglie di Genova antiche e moderne, estinte e viventi, nobili e popolari, delle quali si ritrovano memoria nelli storici scrittori genovesi con le loro rispettive arme, insegne, denominazioni, fasti ed origini (Genoa, 1790), volume V, part 3, letter C, pp. 138–41.

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

little or nothing to do with kinship.4 The need to legally define the conditions for access to the aristocratic class arose from the character of the Genoese patrician class, which had been extraordinarily volatile and fragmentary since the very foundation of the commune or ‘Compagna’ and the first municipal institutions. Indeed, the patrician class’s primacy was not sanctioned by blood ties or kinship but by economic standing. Having always been characterized by a singular lack of homogeneity in terms of geographical origin, chosen profession and means of accumulating wealth, it amassed around private interests, the pursuit of common economic objectives and the development of one’s own affairs. Genoese nobility, therefore, raised their insignia around a familial consortium, which defined the so-called ‘family-business’ system and was extremely flexible: it was open to continuous disintegrations and new aggregations, internally hierarchical and always willing to compromise in order to achieve private goals.5 From time to time, unscrupulous political alliances with various foreign powers — France, the Duchy of Milan, the Aragonese, the pope — and well-targeted, well-chosen marriages were the tools most frequently used to strengthen one’s Albergo and to maintain political control.6 In following this path, driven by individualistic and private concerns not necessarily tied to the public interest, Genoa constantly suffered from strong political instability generated by an exaggerated factionalism between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Black and White Guelphs, nobles and commoners.7 In his Storia d’Italia, Francesco Guicciardini noted: Genoa is a city built in a proper situation for the Command of the Sea, if to vast a conveniency were not rendered useless by the contagious influence of civil discord. It is not, like many other Cities of Italy, subject only to one division, but is divided into several Parties […] And these divisions caused such confusion, that





4 Giulio Pallavicino, Raccolto delle famiglie genovesi (Genoa, 1634), available at the Historical Archive of the Municipality of Genoa, MS 435. ‘Usavano i nostri antichi due modi, il primo era, che quando una famiglia si riduceva a poco numero, come quella che era esposta alle ingiurie delle altre, entrava in un’altra potente famiglia. L’altro modo, che frequentemente era usato, si univano molte famiglie insieme, e annullato il nome del loro Casato, prendevano un altro nome, il quale fusse nome specioso e bello, e quello addoperavano per famiglia’ (‘Our ancient [families] had two ways. First, when a family was reduced to a small number, as with those exposed to the injuries of others, it entered another powerful family. The other way that was frequently used was uniting many families together and, cancelling each one’s house name, they took another well-sounding and beautiful name that was adopted by the entire clan’); cited in Giacomo G. Casarino, ‘Alla ricerca di nome e parentado: Genova e distretto tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 110, 1 (1998), pp. 227–45 (p. 239). 5 Lercari, ‘La nobiltà civica a Genova’, pp. 231–35. 6 Arturo Pacini, I presupposti politici del ‘secolo dei genovesi’: la riforma del 1528 (= Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 30, 1 (1990)), pp. 12–19. 7 For an overview, see Giovanna Petti Balbi, ‘Genesi e composizione di un ceto dirigente: i populares a Genova nei secoli XIII e XIV’, in Spazio, società e potere nell’Italia dei Comuni, ed. by Gabriella Rossetti (Naples: Liguori, 1986), pp. 85–103; La storia dei Genovesi: atti del convegno di studi sui ceti dirigenti nelle istituzioni della Repubblica di Genova (Genova, 7–9 novembre 1980), ed. by Associazione Nobiliare Ligure (Genoa: Associazione Nobiliare Ligure, 1981).

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frequently those who sided together against an opposite Party, fell into various Parties among themselves; and on the contrary, united in some points with their own party, and in others with the opposite.8 The constitutional reform of 1528, therefore, was a sort of ‘unity pact’9 intended to settle internal discord and reorganize the city’s ruling class. It sought to create a liber nobilitatis in which to enrol all who had the right to hold public office. It was a first step in the re-establishment of a sovereign patriciate that held the exclusive right to participate in the city’s government. Ascription took place through association in an Albergo, which Edoardo Grendi defined as ‘a demo-topographical institute […] a principle of organizing the population on the basis of a common surname, […] a principle of organizing public space and, consequently, a principle of socio-political distinction’.10 In use from the end of the thirteenth century, the Alberghi were therefore revived as the technical means for dealing with social conflict, based on sharing power and managing common goods. They united several families, gathering them into a single clan within which minor families — such as the Della Chiesa in our case — were absorbed by a larger family group, assuming its surname and emblem. Within each family was an inheritance system that was not based on primogeniture but on a type of power distribution among all the sons. This collective system thus permitted the use of as many representatives as possible in order to ensure a certain continuity in business dealings or activities related to the possession of territories over which they held power, as well as to guarantee the occupation of the greatest number of public offices. With an eye toward strengthening their own forces, the coastal territories also proved to be very useful in establishing relations with families along the Italian Riviera that were, not infrequently, capable of influencing the power games in the Republic.11 Andrea Doria’s constitutional reform, carried out with the support of Spain’s Charles V, gave rise to an aristocratic republic in which the right of access to public



8 ‘La città di Genova, città veramente edificata in quel luogo per lo imperio del mare, se tanta opportunità non fusse stata impedita dal pestifero veleno delle discordie civili, non è come molte dell’altre d’Italia sottoposta a una sola divisione ma divisa in più parti […]. E si confondono in modo tutte queste divisioni che spesso quegli che sono d’una medesima parte, contro alla parte opposita, sono eziandio tra se medesimi divisi in varie parti, e per contrario congiunti in una parte con quegli che seguitano un’altra parte’; Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, ed. by Silvana Seidel Menchi, 3 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 1971), II, p. 655; ET: The History of Italy, 10 vols (London: Z. Stuart, 1763), VI, pp. 47, 49. 9 Pacini, I presupposti politici, p. 16. 10 ‘Un istituto a carattere demo-topografico […], principio di organizzazione della popolazione sulla base di un comune cognomen, […] principio di organizzazione dello spazio cittadino e conseguentemente principio di distinzione socio-politica’; Edoardo Grendi, ‘Profilo storico degli alberghi genovesi’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, Temps modernes, 87, 1 (1975), pp. 241–302 (pp. 243–44). 11 On this topic and on the relationship between the urban nobility and the coastal nobility see Andrea Lercari, ‘Patrizi e notabili liguri fra Repubblica di Genova e Corte dei Savoia’, in Genova e Torino: quattro secoli di incontri e scontri. Nel bicentenario dell’annessione della Liguria al Regno di Sardegna, ed. by Giovanni Assereto, Carlo Bitossi and Pierpaolo Merlin (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2015), pp. 33–55.

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

office was only permitted to those who belonged to one of the twenty-eight Alberghi. At the age of eighteen, members’ sons were presented to the doge and governors to obtain the ascription that sanctioned their entry into the Republic’s aristocratic class and the transcription of their name into the liber nobilitatis, which was also called the liber civilitatis.12 The reform also legislated for a maximum of ten new individuals per year who could be enrolled based on merit, having proven the legitimacy of their birth and their loyalty to the Republic. As was required of the entire noble class, they had to forbear exercising any ‘mechanical’ profession (a prohibition, however, that was not always respected, revealing that they must have been very profitable enterprises if the nobles who practised them often preferred to renounce holding government office rather than abandon their activity). The possibilities of these new ascriptions gave the Albergo system a sense of great dynamism but also constituted a weak point: new conflicts broke out in 1575 when commoners’ demands to increase the number of ascriptions were met with the old patricians’ firm and inflexible opposition. The conflict was resolved through mediation with representatives from Spain, the empire and the papacy, thanks to which the Peace of Casale and the publication of the Leges novae13 were achieved. With these, the aristocratic republic reached its definitive institutional balance, which would be maintained until 1797, when it would fall under the onslaught of revolutionary advances. The new laws established the abolition of the Alberghi, ordering that each family abandon the previous groupings’ surnames. It allowed entry into the lists of nobility for all the legitimate and natural sons of those already recognized and for others through the nobilibus nunc et quotannis creandis law (1576), which established admission based on merit and virtue. In spite of the rigid normative arrangement, extraordinary registrations occurred throughout the seventeenth century and were submitted to the councils as true and proper legislative proposals. They occurred ad honorem or in exchange for money. The latter transactions occurred when the state coffers were suffering. ‘Sales’ of noble titles allowed new aspirants, generally members of the upper class, to acquire not only the privileges of the new status, but also access to government offices. The honorary ascriptions, on the other hand, were only guaranteed formal privileges.14 Moreover, they served mainly to achieve political ends, usually to strengthen an alliance or to please the sovereigns of other states, in order to gain the good graces of a sovereign or to ease tense situations. Formally, they recognized military merit for illustrious cardinals or families of the popes, as happened with the Migliorati, who deposited pontifical kinship,15 a reliable element of prestige and honour, in their genealogical coffers.

12 Lercari, ‘La nobiltà civica a Genova’, p. 248. 13 For more detail, see Rodolfo Savelli, La Repubblica oligarchica: legislazione, istituzioni e ceti a Genova nel Cinquecento (Milan: Giuffrè, 1981). 14 Maria Nicora, ‘La nobiltà genovese dal 1528 al 1700’, in Miscellanea di storia ligure, 4 vols (Genoa: Università di Genova, 1958–66), II (1961), pp. 217–310 (pp. 240–41). 15 Nicora, ‘La nobiltà genovese’, p. 240; on being inscribed into the liber nobilitatis during the eighteenth century see Carlo Bitossi, ‘Per una storia del patriziato genovese nel Settecento: le ascrizioni al Liber nobilitatis’, Critica storica, 28, 4 (1991), pp. 775–802.

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3. Strategies for Earning Nobility Status: Genealogies and Barbarian Ancestry The popes were not the only ones that the Genoese aristocracy used to add prestige to their lineage. From the eighteenth century onwards, as part of the custom of elaborating the mythology of a house’s foundation and association, a certain interest in the nobility of the Romano-Germanic world was rediscovered. This is what happened for Giuseppe Della Chiesa’s branch, which from a certain moment is recalled in documents as descendant from the dukes of Spoleto.16 Social distinction was not the sole outcome of claims of relationship to barbarian aristocracies. It meant not only acquiring prestige from the antiquity of the ancestors but also bore a well-defined political value.17 For example, a Genoese family branch that could be connected to the events in Lombard history meant that it could be linked to a historical moment, and this, in the nineteenth century, signified rediscovering the path towards the independence of its own homeland. In the preface to his records of the Genoese families written between 1825 and 1833, Natale Battilana emphasized: Genoa, therefore, traces the era of its independence to the closing of the ninth century, when the dukes of Spoleto and Friuli and the kings of Provence disputed the succession of Louis II, the last Carolingian King of Italy; it was then that the Genoese […] profiting from the weakness and needs of rival sovereigns, began their independence, which was later legitimized and sanctioned by the kings of Italy, Berengar II and Adalbert, […] in 958.18 Beyond the noble patrimony inherited from Enlightenment culture, the century’s historiography was influenced by a new attention to documents that led to the search for dynastic legitimacy in real sources rather than in fantastical and mythological genealogies. In this atmosphere, it was not unheard of to re-evaluate the RomanoGermanic kingdoms and to establish the barbarian origins of the nobility of the aristocracy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The genealogy genre that was cultivated by specialists commissioned to demonstrate a noble family’s most remote antiquity possible was not an eight-

16 This information is registered in many biographical records on Pope Benedict XV; for all of them, see Gabriele De Rosa, ‘Benedetto XV, papa’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), VIII (1966), pp. 408–17. 17 Roberto Bizzocchi, ‘La storiografia genealogica nell’età della Controriforma’, in Nunc alia tempora, alii mores: storici e storia in età postridentina: atti del Convegno internazionale, Torino, 24–27 settembre 2003, ed. by Massimo Firpo (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2005), pp. 415–28 (pp. 415–17). 18 ‘Pertanto siccome Genova trae l’epoca della sua indipendenza sul finire del secolo nono, allorquando i duchi di Spoleto e di Friuli, e i re di Provenza si disputavano la successione di Lodovico II, ultimo re dei Carolingi in Italia, fu allora che i genovesi […] profittando della debolezza e del bisogno de’ sovrani rivali, diedero principio alla loro indipendenza, legittimata in seguito e sanzionata dai re d’Italia Berengario e Adalberto […] nel 958’; Natale Battilana, Genealogie delle famiglie nobili di Genova, 2nd edn (Bologna: Forni, 1971), pp. i–ii.

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

eenth-century novelty. It dates back to the second half of the sixteenth century.19 However, it was particularly in the following two centuries that it experienced its greatest development, especially in Liguria, where an apparent lack of interest in research and the reconstruction of the public history of the territory and the cities corresponded to a great interest in recounting a personal and familial history of events. In the sixteenth century, in fact, there was a growing ‘need for antiquity’20 that the Genoese aristocracy satisfied with demands for written volumes aimed at reconstructing the genealogical ancestry of a family’s house. In Genoa, in particular, the production of genealogical tables and records by scholars was widespread. These scholars included Federico Federici, Carlo Giuseppe Domenico Garibaldi, Stefano Agostino Della Cella and Odoardo Ganducci, whose reports are useful here for tracing the family of the Della Chiesa marquises.21 They present a common structure characterized by a collection of registers subdivided in alphabetical order by family surname, including a list of the proper names of the various members listed in chronological order. Many note places of origin, professions practised and political positions held. In the registries where the Della Chiesa family appears, some variants of the surname are given as ‘Chiesa’, ‘Celesia’, or ‘De Ecclesia’. The criteria for including a family in these registry lists could vary greatly: often only the oldest ones were included, sometimes only those belonging to ‘common’ or to ‘noble’ factions. Each provides concise information on the family’s Lombard origin and the transfer of one of its branches to Finale and finally to Genoa, where their presence is testified from 1400. Most scholars record it as a family of artifices that, however, on reaching Genoa knew enough to transform the nature of their business to become part of the noble Salvago Albergo in 1528. The process of regulating the aristocracy that began with the Dorian reform, although the success of its outcomes is still debated, clearly appears as a harbinger of an increasingly closed and compact ruling class, able to participate actively in the Republic’s sovereign administration. Even the Della Chiesa soon appeared in charge of public offices as councillors, senators, captains and generals of Genoa’s prisons, for example Pietro Antonio who, during a conflict with the ‘old nobility’ in 1575, distinguished himself by provoking the uprising of the inhabitants of Val Polcevera in favour of the ‘new nobility’. He was also the one

19 Giovanni Assereto, ‘Storiografia e identità ligure tra Settecento e primo Ottocento’, in Politica e Cultura nel Risorgimento italiano: Genova 1857 e la fondazione della Società Ligure di Storia Patria: atti del convegno, Genova, 4–6 febbraio 2008, ed. by Luca Lo Basso (= Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 48, 1 (2008)), pp. 57–87 (p. 67). 20 Angelini, ‘La cultura genealogica’, p. 194. 21 In particular, the following catalogues were consulted: Federico Federici, Delle nobili famiglie genovesi, 2 vols [n.p., n. pub., n.d.], I, pp. 97–98; Odoardo Ganduccio, Famiglie nobili di Genova [n.p., n. pub., n.d.], pp. 285–86; Giacomo Giscardi, Origine e Fasti delle Nobili Famiglie di Genova; delle quali si riferiscono le imprese più gloriose; gli ufficii tanto militari, che civili, le Dignità Ecclesiastiche, et Secolari, l’Opere di Pietà… [n.p., n. pub., n.d.], pp. 274–75; Genuensium nobilium liber aureus (Genoa, 1788), pp. 98–99; Della Cella, Famiglie di Genova.

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who built the palace in Pegli where, according to some accounts, the future Pope Benedict XV was born.22 None of the registries examined as yet link the Della Chiesa marquises to the dukes of Spoleto. Before attempting to explain such a late ‘affiliation’ it will be worthwhile to briefly touch on the reasons why the Lombard dynasty appears in certain biographical notes as the family’s illustrious and legitimizing progenitor. During the eighteenth century, along with a new historiographical sensitivity and a need to read the sources with a more rigorous methodology, a renewed interest in the barbarian origins of the Italian peninsula emerged. In Lodovico Antonio Muratori’s preface to his Antiquitates italicas we read: Regarding secular erudition […] it practically limited itself in those times to those many peoples in Europe, Asia and Africa that Rome ruled over, and Greece was illustrious and famous for the glory of their literature and equally for their weapons. […] This, therefore, was the only happy, fertile land taken by the ingenious Italians for cultivation […] and no concern was given to the times following the arrival of the barbarians in Italy.23 Muratori, thus, as early as the 1750s, denounced the lack of attention to the early Middle Ages, urging those interested not to consider themselves exclusively the children of the Greeks and Romans as the studies had so far led them to believe. It was the right time to reflect on what Machiavelli wrote in his Istorie fiorentine: ‘The Longobards have been in Italy for two hundred and thirty-two years, and by now they

22 In 1500, the Della Chiesa appeared in the council registers as ‘white artifices’. In 1522, a certain Antonio Chiesa was sent to Corsica as sindicatore (inspector) and, together with a certain Agostino, was ascribed to the nobility of the Salvago Albergo. In 1576, Andrea and Ambrogio appear in the Gran Consiglio dei Quattrocento. In 1665, the registries list the citizenship earned for ‘long residence’ of Domenico Chiesa, native of Santo Stefano d’Aveto, noted for having been a poet and a lawyer (Antrum bethlemium epigrammata, aliaque carmina Dominici ab Ecclesia civis Genuensis Serenissimo principi Caesari Duratio serenissimae Genuensis Reipublicae duci, Genoa, 1665). He was secretary to the Bishop of Piacenza and then in the service of the Doria Prince. A Pietro Antonio was listed in the office of governor for 1698, 1705 and 1715, then in 1719 he became a prosecutor and, in 1733, governor again. In 1769, there is record of a Niccolò Della Chiesa, who was also a prosecutor. See Della Cella, Famiglie di Genova, p. 139; Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italiana: famiglie nobili e titolate viventi riconosciute dal R. Governo d’Italia compresi: città, comunità, mense vescovili, abazie, parrocchie ed enti nobili e titolati riconosciuti, ed. by Vittorio Spreti, 8 vols (Milan: Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare Italiana, 1928–35), I (1928), p. 448. 23 ‘E per quello che spetta all’erudizione […] profana, quasi a quei soli tempi si ristrinsero ne’ quali Roma a tanti popoli in Europa, in Asia e in Africa signoreggiò e la Grecia fu per la gloria delle lettere egualmente che delle armi chiara e famosa. […] Questo pertanto era allora il felice ubertoso campo preso unicamente a coltivare dagl’ingegni italiani […] e nessun conto intanto facevasi di ciò che riguardava i tempi posteriori alla venuta de’ barbari in Italia’; Lodovico Antonio Muratori, In antiquitates italicas Medii Aevi Praefatio, in Dal Muratori al Cesarotti, ed. by Giorgio Falco and Fiorenzo Forti (Milan: Ricciardi, 1964), p. 587.

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

retained nothing of the foreigner other than the name’.24 With them the peninsula would have had a valued moment of unity and political stability were it not for the Church’s power that upset the Kingdom’s equilibrium. Following Muratori’s tack were many other scholars such as Carlo Giovanni Maria Denina25 and Saverio Bettinelli, who wrote of the Lombards: ‘When they were the peaceful owners of Italy, they left monuments of greatness, culture and legislation and even some studies’.26 Angelo Fumagalli, in the anonymous Antichità longobardico-milanesi, praised the Kingdom as ‘certainly very simple in its organization […] with few, clear laws […] in which were set out mostly wise and prudent principles’.27 Between the end of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, among the intellectual elite, we see a historical debate unfold that was ‘cloaked in a hazy, confused sense of country, patriotism and nationality’.28 In it we find common elements that were capable of building a shared ‘Italian’ identity. The revaluation of Germanic legacy, therefore, is central to this impulse, aimed primarily at reconciling those who had always considered themselves two opposing halves of the soul of the country: one Greco-Roman and the other barbarian and medieval.29 The incipient birth of nationalisms also breathed new life into the genealogical genre that, although some held it did not deserve a place within the historical disciplines,30 was the vehicle that best responded to the demands of historical-political legitimization that the patrician classes, particularly the Genoese aristocracy, still needed at this

24 ‘Erano stati i Longobardi dugento trentadue anni in Italia e di già non ritenevano di forestieri altro che il nome’; Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. by Alessandro Montevecchi, 2 vols (Turin: UTET, 1999), II, p. 302; ET: Florentine Histories, ed. by Laura Banfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 22. 25 In particular, see his Istoria delle rivoluzioni d’Italia (Florence, 1769–92). 26 ‘Allorché furono possessori pacifici dell’Italia, lasciassero monumenti di grandezza, di cultura e di legislazione, anzi ancora di qualche studio’; Saverio Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’Italia negli studi, nelle arti e ne’ costumi dopo il Mille (Bassano: Remondini di Venezia, 1786), p. 3. 27 ‘Assai semplice certamente nella sua organizzazione […], con poche e chiare leggi, […] in cui han seduto per lo più principi saggi e provvidi’; Angelo Fumagalli, Delle antichità longobardico-milanesi illustrate con dissertazioni dai monaci della congregazione cisterciese di Lombardia, 4 vols (Milan: Nell’imperial monistero di Sant’Ambrogio Maggiore, 1792–93), I (1792), p. 114. 28 ‘Ammantato di un aurorale, confuso senso di patria, di patriottismo e di nazionalismo’; Duccio Balestracci, Medioevo e Risorgimento: l’invenzione dell’identità italiana nell’Ottocento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015), p. 7. 29 Giorgio Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’, in Pagine sparse di storia e di vita, ed. by Giorgio Falco (Milan: Ricciardi, 1960), pp. 11–26; Enrico Artifoni, ‘Ideologia e memoria locale nella storiografia italiana sui Longobardi’, in Il futuro dei longobardi: l’Italia e la costruzione dell’Europa di Carlo Magno: saggi, ed. by Carlo Bertelli and Gian Pietro Brogiolo (Milan: Skira, 2000), pp. 219–27; Simonetta Soldani, ‘Il Medioevo del Risorgimento nello specchio della nazione’, in Arti e storia nel medioevo, ed. by Enrico Castelnuovo and Giuseppe Sergi, 4 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2002–04), IV: Il Medioevo al passato e al presente (2004), pp. 149–86; Enrico Artifoni, ‘Le questioni longobarde: osservazioni su alcuni testi del primo Ottocento storiografico italiano’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 19, 2 (2007), pp. 297–304; Balestracci, Medioevo e Risorgimento. 30 Voltaire, for example, accused the genre of being ‘learnedly absurd’, Choix moral de lettres de Voltaire, 4 vols (Paris: A. Bouland, 1824), II, p. 171.

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time of great changes.31 Indeed, at the end of the eighteenth century, the idea took root that the nobility was founded on the acquisition of merits or for eminent deeds carried out for the nation. For example, the leading genealogists, Garibaldi and Della Cella — who between 1782 and 1784 wrote the registry upon which all following ones were modelled — tied rank to ‘military valour’ and to attachment to the homeland and freedom, reaffirming a conception of the nobility based on communal, not feudal, ancestry, which was repeatedly reaffirmed throughout Genoese history. In modern times, therefore, recalling one’s noble extraction meant not only distinguishing oneself from the other social classes but also claiming participation in the state’s sovereign body at a time in history when this was given an importance it had not seemed to have had previously.

4. Giuseppe Della Chiesa, between Pegli and Genoa: Genoese Nobility in Pre-Unified Italy In the last decade of the eighteenth century, thanks to the propaganda circulated by refugees and exiles, the democratic ideas of revolutionary France were disseminated and found fertile ground in the territory of an age-old aristocratic and oligarchic republic that had ended the distinction between rich and poor nobility, now almost totally excluded from government. In 1794, an anti-oligarchic conspiracy promoted by the poor nobility initiated an opposition movement that aspired to reform the governing bodies, redistributing power according to the laws of the 1576 aristocratic constitution. The plot, however, failed, and its main exponents were arrested and exiled, but the floodgates of the status quo had been opened. On the morning of 22 May 1797, the Genoese revolution began and, less than a month later, it ended with the signing of the Mombello Convention in which Napoleon Bonaparte declared the fall of the Republic of Genoa and sanctioned the birth of the democratic Ligurian Republic. In 1805, however, Genoa was annexed by the French Empire and, following Napoleon’s defeat and the agreements reached at the Congress of Vienna, it was definitively incorporated into the Kingdom of Sardinia. A critical period for the aristocracy began for two reasons: the European crisis triggered by the French Revolution and the so-called ‘two-thirds bankruptcy’ enacted by France in 1797 that sent a large part of the Genoese aristocracy’s assets up in smoke. The Genoese nobility suffered a further blow in 1805, when Napoleon decided to suppress the Banco di San Giorgio. In the end, the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna thwarted all the efforts of those who still believed in the possibility of restoring the old city-state and reintroducing the ‘constitution’ of 1576. Instead, in the first days of January 1815, Genoa was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, a harsh blow to the Genoese aristocracy. The story of the Piedmont nobility was very different from that of the Genoese. It had never been the object of any precise, normative definition. Instead, over the 31 Bizzocchi, ‘La storiografia genealogica’.

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

years, it had been established around an ancient feudality that guaranteed access to the court, to diplomacy and to the highest ranks of the military. The norms guaranteeing these privileges, even though they had never been codified, were nevertheless rooted in use and were sufficient to render the noble class a firmly closed system.32 The difficulty of integrating two patrician classes of such diverse origin and culture had already been dealt with in the Congress of Vienna, where the question of entrance into the ranks of the magnifici, and more generally into the nobility of the Savoyard court, was deemed of such importance that it was included in the first article of the Condizioni established, reading: ‘The Genoese nobility will be admitted, as that of the other parts of the monarchy, to the high offices and duties of the court’.33 In practice, however, things were not so simple. In 1821, Charles Felix ascended the throne and had to restore a practice that had fallen out of use for nearly a century but which, after the uprisings that had brought about the fall of Victor Emmanuel I, had proven useful again: the oath of fealty to the king that was required of all nobles.34 The organization of the times and methods for carrying out this act led the Piedmont monarchy to rethink the problem of the noble class and to come up with a proposal that, however, went nowhere. No edict was ever issued to enact the practice. Under Charles Albert there was an attempt to strengthen the relationship between state and nobility through a provision in 1833 that granted noble titles for service rendered to the Crown. At the time, many other Italian states witnessed a separation from the aristocratic classes by the leading cadres of the state, particularly in Rome and Lombardy-Venetia where the removal of nobles from the most important administrative offices corresponded to their taking refuge in local administrations. In Piedmont, however, the Minister of the Interior, Antonio Tonduti d’Escarène wrote: More than a few royal subjects live so privately in small cities and villas that their existence and their true state is almost unknown. Without being able to claim special services to the Crown and state for themselves or their ancestors, they nevertheless belong to families distinguished by their antiquity and subject fealty to the royal throne […]. If these had begged a noble title it would undoubtedly be in the interests of the king and the state […] for the fact that they are more closely associated to the royal throne and placed on a higher level of society.35

32 Andrea Merlotti, L’enigma delle nobiltà: Stato e ceti dirigenti nel Piemonte del Settecento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000), pp. 70 ff. 33 ‘La nobiltà genovese sarà ammessa come quella delle altre parti della monarchia alle grandi cariche e agli impieghi di corte’; cited by Andrea Merlotti in ‘Nobiltà e corte nella Genova della Restaurazione’, in Genova e Torino, ed. by Assereto, Bitossi and Merlin, pp. 445–66 (p. 450); see also Giorgio Rumi, ‘La politica nobiliare del Regno d’Italia 1861–1946’, in Les noblesses européennes au XIXe siècle: actes du colloque de Rome, 21–23 novembre 1985, ed. by École française de Rome (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988), pp. 577–93. 34 Merlotti, L’enigma delle nobiltà, pp. 274–87. 35 ‘Non pochi regi sudditi vivono in piccole città e ville così privatamente che rimane per così dire quasi ignota la loro esistenza ed il loro vero stato e che senza poter vantare speciali servigi resi da essi o da loro antenati alla Corona ed allo Stato appartengono, tuttavia, a famiglie distinte per antica

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In 1857, Cavour again railed: The city [Genoa] has not produced statesmen or party leaders or speakers or soldiers or writers or even high-level merchants. In parliament, and outside of it, the Genoese who have participated in politics have shown themselves to be of dreadful mediocrity.36 The economic crisis, but even more the identity crisis that the nobility had suffered between the Napoleonic years and those of the Restoration — having seen their ‘diversity’ turned into inferiority and relative marginalization — had driven them into self-withdrawal, a renunciation of any political responsibility or participation, and an alienation from public life.37 For a long time, this reduced the importance of a large part of Genoese and Ligurian society. Nevertheless, it should be noted that, from the end of the seventeenth century, the practice emerged of creating and using non-feudal public structures to compel the, potentially competing, nobility into holding and exercising power. After Emmanuel Philibert abolished the feudal army, as the idea of standing armies (miles perpetuus) developed, the nobility were driven to form official cadres, with an administrative form that was unrelated to the feudal system. In 1816, Victor Emmanuel I had reformed the ancient Accademia reale with precisely this purpose in mind. For centuries it had welcomed nobles from all over Europe. He transformed it into a military institution intended to form the official body of the Savoyard army.38 Within its ranks, the Genoese nobility found some means toward public involvement and recovering career opportunities. Giuseppe Della Chiesa, who was born in 1821, almost a decade after Genoa had become part of the Savoyard states, chose this path. He was a naval officer, and his second son followed in his footsteps. In the parish registry he is noted as a landowner, but it was certainly on his military career that the prestige and wealth of the family rested, along with his fortunate union with Giovanna Migliorati, who also belonged to an ancient and important aristocratic family, hailing from Sulmona.

civiltà e sudditizia fedeltà al regio trono […]. E se da questi fosse per avventura implorato un titolo di nobiltà, sarebbe senza dubbio nell’interesse del re e dello Stato […] pel tal fatto maggiormente accostati al regio trono e posti in più elevato grado nella società’; Merlotti, L’enigma delle nobiltà, p. 302. 36 ‘Questa città [Genova] non ha prodotto né uomini di Stato, né capi di partito, né oratori, né militari, né letterati, e neppure commercianti d’alto livello. Nel parlamento e fuori di esso, i genovesi che han partecipato alla vita politica si sono mostrati d’una mediocrità desolante’; Giovanni Assereto, ‘Il ceto dirigente genovese e la sua “diversità”’, in Ceti dirigenti municipali in Italia e in Europa in età moderna e contemporanea, ed. by Danilo Marrara (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2003), pp. 83–92 (p. 89). 37 Alberto Maria Banti, ‘Note sulla nobiltà nell’Italia dell’Ottocento’, Meridiana: rivista di storia e scienze sociali, 19 (1994), pp. 13–27 (pp. 25–27). 38 Walter Barberis, ‘La nobiltà militare sabauda fra corti e accademie scientifiche: politica e cultura in Piemonte fra Settecento e Ottocento’, in Les noblesses européennes au XIXe siècle, pp. 559–76.

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

From his ancestors, the Marquis Della Chiesa had inherited some agricultural property, the Palazzo Tagliavacche in Genoa, and a villa in Pegli, which today is a neighbourhood in west Genoa. Demonstrating how much the condition of the nobility had changed, it can be noted that this patrimony would not have sufficed, for example, to finance the studies of his son Giacomo.39 It was a change in material conditions that perhaps caused aristocrats, increasingly reduced to bourgeois levels, to fall back on an entire series of class strategies aimed at recovering a certain noble character. They were purely symbolic mechanisms but not completely devoid of meaning, as seen with the birth of Giacomo. Indeed, regarding Giacomo Della Chiesa’s birth, there is a debate between those who think he was born in the villa at Pegli and those who would rather place his birth at the family’s palace in the city.40 It is not unlikely that Giacomo was born where the family was accustomed to spending their holidays. What is most relevant for the purposes of this discussion, however, is the new-born’s sudden transfer to the city where he was baptized on the day after his birth, 22 November, in the Church of Santa Maria delle Vigne, the city’s oldest Marian shrine. The fact remains that the Genoese were more successful than the people of Pegli and had the birth of the future pontiff at the family palace in the city inscribed in public memory with a stone marker that still reads ‘Benedict XV Pontifex Maximus of the Genoese noble family Della Chiesa was born in this house on 21 November 1854’.41 This speaks volumes for how the nineteenth-century aristocracy used symbolic acts to reaffirm their prestige. The biographical records of Giuseppe and Giacomo Della Chiesa hold many elements revealing the changed attitude of a nobility that, in large part, was excluded from the exercise of power: above all, this is evident in the father’s desire to ensure that his son had the adequate training recognized by the legal profession and in his subsequent opposition to his son’s desire to follow an ecclesiastical career. Secondly, it is seen in their profound dedication to charitable deeds in favour of the needy. In 1864, Giuseppe Della Chiesa, together with other noblemen of the city, founded an institution to help prisoners return to society and, in 1867, a correctional facility for minors. During the nineteenth century, even before the problems that arose with the Unification of the Kingdom of Italy, the nobles — at least those from the areas that are now peripheral — did not seem to feel obliged, on the one hand, to fall back on practising works of public utility aimed at gaining civic merit in order to reaffirm their family’s social and political standing. On the other hand, however, they invested in the historical memory of their past in order to safeguard the distinctive signs of the dignity and honour of their family name.

39 Yves Chiron, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014), pp. 2–3. 40 Chiron, Benoît XV, pp. 5–9. 41 ‘Benedetto XV Pontefice massimo dei Patrizi genovesi Della Chiesa nacque in questa casa il 21 novembre 1854’.

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Bibliography Angelini, Massimo, ‘La cultura genealogica in area ligure nel XVIII secolo: introduzione ai repertori delle famiglie’, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, n. s., 35, 1 (1995), pp. 189–212 Artifoni, Enrico, ‘Ideologia e memoria locale nella storiografia italiana sui Longobardi’, in Il futuro dei longobardi: l’Italia e la costruzione dell’Europa di Carlo Magno: saggi, ed. by Carlo Bertelli and Gian Pietro Brogiolo (Milan: Skira, 2000), pp. 219–27 Artifoni, Enrico, ‘Le questioni longobarde: osservazioni su alcuni testi del primo Ottocento storiografico italiano’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 19, 2 (2007), pp. 297–304 Assereto, Giovanni, ‘Il ceto dirigente genovese e la sua “diversità”’, in Ceti dirigenti municipali in Italia e in Europa in età moderna e contemporanea, ed. by Danilo Marrara (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2003), pp. 83–92 Assereto, Giovanni, ‘Storiografia e identità ligure tra Settecento e primo Ottocento’, in Politica e Cultura nel Risorgimento italiano: Genova 1857 e la fondazione della Società Ligure di Storia Patria: atti del convegno, Genova, 4–6 febbraio 2008, ed. by Luca Lo Basso (= Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 48, 1 (2008)), pp. 57–87 Balestracci, Duccio, Medioevo e Risorgimento: l’invenzione dell’identità italiana nell’Ottocento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015) Banti, Alberto Maria, ‘Note sulla nobiltà nell’Italia dell’Ottocento’, Meridiana: rivista di storia e scienze sociali, 19 (1994), pp. 13–27 Barberis, Walter, ‘La nobiltà militare sabauda fra corti e accademie scientifiche: politica e cultura in Piemonte fra Settecento e Ottocento’, in Les noblesses européennes au XIXe siècle: actes du colloque de Rome, 21–23 novembre 1985, ed. by École française de Rome (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988), pp. 559–76 Battilana, Natale, Genealogie delle famiglie nobili di Genova, 2nd edn (Bologna: Forni, 1971) Bettinelli, Saverio, Risorgimento d’Italia negli studi, nelle arti e ne’ costumi dopo il Mille (Bassano: Remondini di Venezia, 1786) Bitossi, Carlo, ‘Per una storia del patriziato genovese nel Settecento: le ascrizioni al Liber nobilitatis’, Critica storica, 28, 4 (1991), pp. 775–802 Bizzocchi, Roberto, ‘La storiografia genealogica nell’età della Controriforma’, in Nunc alia tempora, alii mores: storici e storia in età postridentina: atti del Convegno internazionale, Torino, 24–27 settembre 2003, ed. by Massimo Firpo (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2005), pp. 415–28 Casarino, Giacomo G., ‘Alla ricerca di nome e parentado: Genova e distretto tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 110, 1 (1998), pp. 227–45 Chiron, Yves, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014) De Rosa, Gabriele, ‘Benedetto XV, papa’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), VIII (1966), pp. 408–17 Della Cella, Stefano Agostino, Famiglie di Genova antiche e moderne, estinte e viventi, nobili e popolari, delle quali si ritrovano memoria nelli storici scrittori genovesi con le loro rispettive arme, insegne, denominazioni, fasti ed origini (Genoa, 1790)

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

Falco, Giorgio, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’, in Pagine sparse di storia e di vita, ed. by Giorgio Falco (Milan: Ricciardi, 1960), pp. 11–26 Federici, Federico, Delle nobili famiglie genovesi, 2 vols [n.p., n. pub., n.d.], I Fumagalli, Angelo, Delle antichità longobardico-milanesi illustrate con dissertazioni dai monaci della congregazione cisterciese di Lombardia, 4 vols (Milan: Nell’imperial monistero di Sant’Ambrogio Maggiore, 1792–93), I (1792) Ganduccio, Odoardo, Famiglie nobili di Genova [n.p., n. pub., n.d.] Genuensium nobilium liber aureus (Genoa, 1788) Giscardi, Giacomo, Origine e Fasti delle Nobili Famiglie di Genova; delle quali si riferiscono le imprese più gloriose; gli ufficii tanto militari, che civili, le Dignità Ecclesiastiche, et Secolari, l’Opere di Pietà… [n.p., n. pub., n.d.] Grendi, Edoardo, ‘Profilo storico degli alberghi genovesi’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, Temps modernes, 87, 1 (1975), pp. 241–302 Guicciardini, Francesco, Storia d’Italia, ed. by Silvana Seidel Menchi, 3 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 1971), II; ET: The History of Italy, 10 vols (London: Z. Stuart, 1763), VI Hugo, Victor, Choix moral de lettres de Voltaire, 4 vols (Paris: A. Bouland, 1824), II Lercari, Andrea, ‘La nobiltà civica a Genova e in Liguria dal Comune consolare alla Repubblica aristocratica’, in Le aristocrazie cittadine: evoluzione dei ceti dirigenti urbani nei secoli XV–XVIII, ed. by Marino Zorzi, Marcello Fracanzani and Italo Quadrio (Venice: La musa Talia, 2009), pp. 227–362 Lercari, Andrea, ‘Patrizi e notabili liguri fra Repubblica di Genova e Corte dei Savoia’, in Genova e Torino: quattro secoli di incontri e scontri. Nel bicentenario dell’annessione della Liguria al Regno di Sardegna, ed. by Giovanni Assereto, Carlo Bitossi and Pierpaolo Merlin (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2015), pp. 33–55 Machiavelli, Niccolò, Istoria delle rivoluzioni d’Italia (Florence, 1769–92) Machiavelli, Niccolò, Istorie fiorentine, ed. by Alessandro Montevecchi, 2 vols (Turin: UTET, 1999), II; ET: Florentine Histories, ed. by Laura Banfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988) Merlotti, Andrea, L’enigma delle nobiltà: Stato e ceti dirigenti nel Piemonte del Settecento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000) Merlotti, Andrea, ‘Nobiltà e corte nella Genova della Restaurazione’, in Genova e Torino: quattro secoli di incontri e scontri. Nel bicentenario dell’annessione della Liguria al Regno di Sardegna, ed. by Giovanni Assereto, Carlo Bitossi and Pierpaolo Merlin (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2015), pp. 445–66 Muratori, Lodovico Antonio, In antiquitates italicas Medii Aevi Praefatio, in Dal Muratori al Cesarotti, ed. by Giorgio Falco and Fiorenzo Forti (Milan: Ricciardi, 1964) Nicora, Maria, ‘La nobiltà genovese dal 1528 al 1700’, in Miscellanea di storia ligure, 4 vols (Genoa: Università di Genova, 1958–66), II (1961), pp. 217–310 Pacini, Arturo, I presupposti politici del ‘secolo dei genovesi’: la riforma del 1528 (= Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 30, 1 (1990)) Pallavicino, Giulio, Raccolto delle famiglie genovesi (Genoa, 1634) Petti Balbi, Giovanna, ‘Genesi e composizione di un ceto dirigente: i populares a Genova nei secoli XIII e XIV’, in Spazio, società e potere nell’Italia dei Comuni, ed. by Gabriella Rossetti (Naples: Liguori, 1986), pp. 85–103

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Rumi, Giorgio, ‘La politica nobiliare del Regno d’Italia 1861–1946’, in Les noblesses européennes au XIXe siècle: actes du colloque de Rome, 21–23 novembre 1985, ed. by École française de Rome (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988), pp. 577–93 Savelli, Rodolfo, La Repubblica oligarchica: legislazione, istituzioni e ceti a Genova nel Cinquecento (Milan: Giuffrè, 1981) Soldani, Simonetta, ‘Il Medioevo del Risorgimento nello specchio della nazione’, in Arti e storia nel medioevo, ed. by Enrico Castelnuovo and Giuseppe Sergi, 4 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2002–04), IV: Il Medioevo al passato e al presente (2004), pp. 149–86 Spreti, Vittorio, ed., Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italiana: famiglie nobili e titolate viventi riconosciute dal R. Governo d’Italia compresi: città, comunità, mense vescovili, abazie, parrocchie ed enti nobili e titolati riconosciuti, 8 vols (Milan: Enciclopedia storiconobiliare Italiana, 1928–35), I (1928) La storia dei Genovesi: atti del convegno di studi sui ceti dirigenti nelle istituzioni della Repubblica di Genova (Genova, 7–9 novembre 1980), ed. by Associazione Nobiliare Ligure (Genoa: Associazione Nobiliare Ligure, 1981)

Anna Falcioni

The Migliorati and the Ancestry of Innocent VII

1. Premise It can certainly be affirmed that not even the most recent historical studies have been able to dedicate the type of in-depth and comprehensive monograph merited by the Migliorati family, not only in terms of their dynastic affairs but even in a more general history of Italian families. Indeed, to date there has been little research concerning the various branches of the Migliorati line,1 and what has emerged, regarding the provenance of Pope Benedict XV’s maternal relatives, has aroused debate: at times attributing them with Tuscan origins, at others claiming they hailed from Abruzzo. In a brief but careful study of the Migliorati in 1922,2 Canon Stefano Baldini clarified the question. With precise documentary evidence, he showed that Benedict XV’s maternal lineage descended from Cosimo Migliorati (eighteenth century), of ancient and noble lineage, who lived in Prato in a palace in the San Vincenzo Martire parish.3 Even in the absence of clear information regarding the progenitor of the Migliorati family, sources have attributed its origin to Prato since the thirteenth century, when they were active in the city’s municipal events. This branch of the family, destined to 1 ‘Migliorati di Sulmona’, Famiglie celebri d’Italia (Turin, 1880), fascicle 181, tables 1–2; Cesare Pinzi, Storia della città di Viterbo, 4 vols (Viterbo, 1899), III, pp. 484–86; Paolo Brand, ‘Innocenzo VII e il delitto di suo nipote Ludovico Migliorati’, Studi e documenti di storia e di diritto, 21 (1900), pp. 1–39; Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italiana: famiglie nobili e titolate viventi riconosciute dal R. Governo d’Italia compresi: città, comunità, mense vescovili, abazie, parrocchie ed enti nobili e titolati riconosciuti, ed. by Vittorio Spreti, 8 vols (Milan: Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italiana, 1928–35), IV (1931), pp. 588–89; Enrico Fiumi, Demografia, movimento urbanistico e classi sociali in Prato dall’età comunale ai tempi moderni (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1968), pp. 339, 432; Amedeo De Vincentiis, ‘Innocenzo VII’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), II, pp. 581–84; Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte. Päpste und Papsttum, ed. by Christoph Weber and Michael Becker, 6 vols (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1999–2002), XXIX/III (2001), p. 538 and XXIX/VI (2002), pp. 650–52; George L. Williams, Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2004), pp. 239–40, 243. 2 Stefano Baldini, ‘Giovanna Migliorati di Prato: madre di S. S. Benedetto XV’, Bollettino diocesano pratese, 4, 1–2 (1922), pp. 5–7; Stefano Baldini, ‘Albero genealogico dei Migliorati’, L’Amico del Popolo, 29 January 1922, unbound plate. 3 Fiumi, Demografia, p. 432.



Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 69–80 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118763

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extend to Florence by the end of the fourteenth century, was flanked by two other dynastic strains: one in Sulmona, which had died out by the sixteenth century, and one in Genoa, which is recorded until the twentieth century.4 The goal of this contribution is to offer, for the first time, an overview of the family and to support Baldini’s theory, drawing upon results achieved with new archival investigations interwoven with contemporary studies on the subject.5

2. The Migliorati of Prato and Genoa (Fifteenth–Twentieth Centuries) The Migliorati appear in Prato in the thirteenth century. The earliest records identify Blessed Elia Migliorati6 but do not agree on his paternity (some attributing it to an Amelio, others to a Lapo) or the date of his birth, which can be placed between 1275 and 1280. A member of the family, which was already noted as illustrious, Elia felt a religious vocation from a young age and, in 1295, decided to enter the Augustinian Order, serving in the priory of Sant’Anna. From the very outset, he distinguished himself for his pious and humble attitude and his propensity for study, gifts that destined him, in a short time, to become a much-appreciated teacher and talented speaker, capable of making himself loved and respected by people from every social class in Prato.7 A fatal year for Elia and his fellow citizens unfolded in 1348. The plague, crude and unstoppable, had arrived there, claiming a large number of victims. During one Mass, Elia publicly vowed to the Virgin that, if the epidemic were to pass, leaving his fellow citizens unscathed, he would leave on a pilgrimage to Palestine. On 6 May, following the apparent end to the outbreak, he left on his mission, leaving the monastery unguarded. Elia was not to know it, but the plague made a ferocious resurgence, to the point that most of the priory’s friars died or were forced to leave the city to escape contagion. The Augustinian abandonment of the monastery and its possessions offered the opportunity to the Florentine nobleman Cigno Altoviti to request them from Pope Clement VI’s legate as a gift. Returning from his pilgrimage, Elia found himself without a place to live and, sustained by the community of Prato, dedicated himself to reclaiming the possessions that had been conceded, unjustly in



4 Other family branches are also registered in San Miniato, Sansepolcro and Città di Castello; Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare, ed. by Spreti, p. 588. 5 Anna Falcioni, ‘Le vicende politiche e militari di Ludovico Migliorati signore di Fermo’, Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per le Marche, 108 (2007–10), pp. 217–42; Anna Falcioni, ‘Ludovico Migliorati’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXIV (2010), pp. 376–81; Giampiero Guiducci, ‘La controversia fra i Migliorati per una cappellania corale nel Duomo di Prato’, Prato Storia e Arte, 117 (2015), pp. 69–77. 6 Notizie di Prato sì nel temporale, come nello spirituale, raccolte da varj scrittori (Florence: Cosimo Maria Pieri, 1747), p. 12; Luigi Torelli, De’ secoli Agostiniani, 8 vols (Bologna, 1659–86), V (1682), pp. 590–92; Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare, ed. by Spreti, p. 588. 7 Torelli, De’ secoli Agostiniani, p. 591.

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his opinion, to Altoviti. After succeeding in this endeavour, he worked to rebuild his community. Appointed prior, he died in the same year, 1348.8 During the thirteenth century, the family members were therefore committed, according to their own personal inclinations, to building a solid reputation and position of prestige within the community of Prato. We find a Matteo Migliorati recorded among the city’s magistrates in 1293. Further records prove that from the fifteenth century many family members were registered as working with wool, thus bringing the house to a leading position in the payment of tithes among the families of the petty bourgeoisie. At the same time, a branch of the Migliorati — the progenitor of which was Giovanni, son of Messer Michele — moved to Florence where, thanks to connections with their place of origin as well as to their acquired skills, they were incorporated in the social fabric, holding public offices in 1381 and 1550.9 Meanwhile, the energy spent by the Prato Migliorati, especially Amelio, to climb the city’s social ladder had borne fruit, allowing Amelio, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, to establish a choral chaplaincy in the powerful parish of Santo Stefano. The chaplaincy continued to exist until the late nineteenth century, witnessing a dispute that broke out — between 1836 and 1840 — concerning the recognition of privileges and duties between the Prato branch, represented by right by Giovanni di Michele and his brother Giuseppe, Amelio’s descendants, and the Genoese branch of Sir Elia Giovan Battista.10 The noble family’s fortunes gained new heights, growing in importance first with the knights Andrea and Antonio, who in 1687 are mentioned as soldiers fighting the Turks on Tuscan galleys, then in the eighteenth century with Cosimo Migliorati, who acquired the title of Count of the Holy Roman Empire. After moving to Genoa, he married the noblewoman Anna Maria Imperiale Lercari, daughter of the Doge of Genoa, Francesco Maria, who brought part of the fiefdom of Carosio as her dowry.11 Cosimo remained closely tied to his city of origin, however, so much so that he wanted his son — baptized Benedetto Giuseppe in the cathedral at his father’s request — to be born there in 1765 and returning, in 1820, to die there. Registered in the Libro d’oro della nobiltà genovese (Golden Book of Genoese Nobility, 1763) and member of the Genoese Republic’s grand council (1797), Benedetto Giuseppe was the noble couple’s only son. Following in his father’s footsteps, he contracted an excellent marriage with the noblewoman Giovanna della Torre, daughter of Giovanni Battista, Count of Lavagna.12 This union produced several children. The first-born, Cosimo, Marquis of Carosio (1754–80), was followed by Anna Maria (1792–1846), and Elia Giovan Battista (1788–1853).13 At this point, a definitive separation between the original Prato branch of the Migliorati and the Genoese branch occurred. Cosimo 8 Torelli, De’ secoli Agostiniani, p. 591. 9 Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare, ed. by Spreti, p. 588. 10 Guiducci, ‘La controversia’, pp. 70–77. 11 Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare, ed. by Spreti, p. 588. 12 Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare, ed. by Spreti, p. 588. 13 Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare, ed. by Spreti, p. 588; Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 538.

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and Anna Maria resided in Prato throughout their entire lives. Cosimo died without leaving heirs, and Anna Maria was married to the nobleman Francesco Gepi. Elia Giovan Battista, however, was born and lived in Genoa. The latter may well be considered the progenitor of the Genoese branch of the family. From his first marriage, to Artemisia Spinola, was born Anna, the future bride of the Marquis Paolo Centurione. Elia Giovan Battista’s second marriage to Ersilia Raggi was more fruitful and produced five children: Benedetto, future husband to Marianna Radice; Giovanni Antonio, a highly experienced diplomat and Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, destined to enter into an important marriage with Clorinda Canevaro of the dukes of Zoagli; Giovanna (1827–1904); Cosimo, who died heirless; and Teresa, the wife of Count Edoardo Boetti.14 It was undoubtedly Giovanna, by virtue of her marriage to the Marquis Giuseppe Della Chiesa, who carried on the lineage of Elia Giovan Battista and increased the family standing.15 From her marriage were born in rapid succession: Giulia (1849–1931), Giovanni Battista (1851–52), Giovanni Antonio (1853–1920), Giacomo (1854–1922), Paolo (1859–64) and Giulio Giovanni Battista (1863–1915). Giovanni Battista and Paolo died very young, but Giovanni Antonio and Giacomo brought the house to an important standing with the Holy See. The former married Eugenia Jacobini, niece of the Cardinal Secretary of State Ludovico Jacobini, and the latter became pope in 1914, taking the name of Benedict XV.

3. The Migliorati of Sulmona (Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries) Historians recognize Adamo di Gentile as the progenitor of this line of the family. He was father to Matteo and Gentile.16 In 1347, the former, already a well-known jurist, found himself among the protagonists of a heated argument between the clergy of Sulmona and its Bishop, Francesco di Sangro. The local prelates sent Matteo as envoy to Clement VI in Avignon who, noticing his diplomatic expertise and talents, appointed him the Holy See’s mediator to the parties in question. The choice turned out to be fortunate because, thanks to his efforts, an agreement was reached and signed on 8 August in that same year. Adamo’s second son was known for his marriage to Mascia Oderisi of the counts of Marsi and di Valva and their children: Cosimo (or Cosma, future Pope Innocent VII), Niccolò and Antonio, from whose lineages were generated three distinct branches of the family. Cosimo was born in 1336 in Sulmona, where he began his ecclesiastical career as rector of the local church, Santa Maria Annunziata, and then as archpriest of the

14 Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 538. 15 Baldini, ‘Giovanna Migliorati di Prato’, pp. 5–6. 16 ‘Migliorati di Sulmona’, tab. 1; Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 650.

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same parish.17 From 1383 he was established firmly at the side of Pope Urban VI, who entrusted him with sensitive roles (he was Papal Collector to the Kingdom of England and successively Treasurer and Vice Camerlengo). Having proven his skill and above all his total allegiance in the battle against the Antipope Clement VII, his career quickly advanced. In 1387, he was appointed Archbishop of Ravenna then Bishop of Bologna in 1389. In December of that same year, he was elevated to cardinal and appointed Cardinal-Priest of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. At the same time, he maintained the title of the see of Ravenna, passing it on to his nephew, Giovanni di Niccolò Migliorati, in 1400. At the end of 1404, when Pope Boniface IX died, Cosimo was one of the eight cardinals locked in conclave, all united by the promise to take every step possible to end the Western Schism and hold an ecumenical council. Cosimo himself was elected and took the name of Innocent VII. His energies were immediately absorbed by the drama of Rome, which was being torn apart by the struggle between the Colonna and Savelli factions against the Orsini and by the discord between municipality and papacy. The King of Naples, Ladislaus I of the House of Anjou-Durazzo, immediately taking advantage of the situation, arrived in Rome two days after the election and was appointed by the new Pope to pacify the various factions. Within a very short time, the sovereign managed to coerce agreements, restoring the pontiff ’s authority over the city while, at the same time, granting an acceptable degree of autonomy to the civil authorities. This all occurred thanks to Ladislaus’s arbitration and, for his troubles, he obtained a five-year rectorate of the province of Compagna and of Marittima, territories that were useful as a defence against interference and possible invasion that might come from the coalition between Antipope Benedict XIII and Louis II of Anjou. The peace did not survive the King of Naples’s departure. At the beginning of 1405, news of the imminent French incursion against the papacy and Rome reignited the clash between the populace and the Church. The situation deteriorated because of a reckless act on the part of the Pope’s nephew. Ludovico Migliorati had eleven delegates, sent by the municipality to deal with the issue of the custody of the Milvian Bridge, brutally arrested and killed.18 It was open war. The Romans rose up, forcing Ludovico, the Pope and his entire court to flee to Viterbo. Many papal buildings and part of the Vatican Archives were set on fire, papal crests were demolished, and the papal apartments looted. In the resulting vacuum of power, Ladislaus, allied with the Colonna against the Orsini faction led by Paolo, returned and, in the end, gained the upper hand, restoring the city to the Pope.

17 Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 650; De Vincentiis, ‘Innocenzo VII’, p. 581. 18 Il diario romano di Antonio di Pietro Dallo Schiavo: dal 19 ottobre 1404 al 25 settembre 1417, ed. by Francesco Isoldi, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. by Giosuè Carducci and Vittorio Fiorini, 34 vols (Città di Castello: Lapi; Bologna: Zanichelli, 1917–75), XXV/V (1917), pp. 8–9; Cronaca volgare di Anonimo Fiorentino: dall’anno 1385 al 1409, ed. by Elina Bellondi, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. by Carducci and Fiorini, XXVII/II (1922), p. 334; Braccii Perusini vita et gesta ab anno 1368 usque ad 1424 Auctore Johanne Antonio Campano, ed. by Roberto Valentini, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. by Carducci and Fiorini, XIX/IV (1929), pp. 9–20; Pinzi, Storia della città di Viterbo, pp. 484–86; Falcioni, ‘Ludovico Migliorati’, p. 376.

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It took some time, however, for the situation to calm down enough to allow Innocent VII to return to Rome, which he did only in March 1406. In June that year, he excommunicated the King of Naples for treason and perjury, giving him forty-five days to return to the Church’s folds and sending Ludovico and Orsini to him as special mediators. Peace was ratified in August of 1406.19 Ladislaus made an act of obedience and was appointed defender, conservator and gonfaloniere of the Church. Too engrossed by the Roman crisis, the Pope had neither the strength nor the time to tackle the question of the Western Schism. He thus failed in the promises made on the eve of his election but distinguished himself as a patron. In particular, he had the merit of strengthening the Roman university, focussing on the recovery of classical culture. He died in Rome on 6 November 1406. Niccolò (or Nicola) Migliorati, Cosimo’s brother and governor of the Church of Santa Maria Annunziata in Sulmona from 1378 to 1395, was the progenitor of a very specific branch of the family.20 His eldest son, Giovanni Migliorati, had, from a young age, a vocation to an ecclesiastical career, inheriting the bishopric of Ravenna from his uncle Cosimo in 1400. Sources are divided as to his expertise in the field of canon law. Some describe him as a learned and competent prelate, others as a mediocre jurist, little disposed to the study of law. All agree, however, on his tendency not to reside in the cities where he held office and to demand exorbitant tithes and annuities. As mentioned above, his promotion was tied to his uncle: in 1405, he was nominated Cardinal of Santa Croce while maintaining the administration of the see of Ravenna until his death. Following Innocent VII’s death, Giovanni participated in the conclave to elect the new pope, supporting the candidacy of the future Gregory XII. He was also present at the conclaves following the Council of Pisa that elected the Pisan popes Alexander V and John XXIII. He died in Bologna on 16 October 1410 and was buried in the Cathedral of Ravenna. Niccolò’s second son, Ugolino, was a respected man of law who resided in Città di Castello for his entire life. He had two sons: Niccolò, almost unknown in historical records, and Giannozzo, a brave soldier and constable of the Monterubbiano and Marano fortresses who was once a trusted ally of another more important Migliorati, Ludovico, Lord of Fermo. In April 1409, Giannozzo betrayed Ludovico and, with the help of his brother Niccolò and his sons, and in agreement with Ladislaus, King of Naples, he plotted for Fermo and its neighbouring castles to be handed over to the Anjou. The plot was discovered and, on the eleventh day of that same month, he was arrested and sent by Ludovico to judgement before the city priors. He was condemned to be beheaded in the public square,21 a fate probably also shared by Niccolò and his sons because any further trace of them has been lost. Antonio, Gentile’s third son, gave rise to a lineage that played an important role in the events of Rome and the March of Ancona between the end of the fourteenth and

19 Il diario romano di Antonio di Pietro Dallo Schiavo, ed. by Isoldi, p. 14. 20 Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 650. 21 Antonio di Nicolò, Cronaca Fermana, in Cronache della città di Fermo, ed. by Gaetano de Minicis and Marco Tabarrini (Florence: Cellini, 1870), pp. 1–103 (p. 36).

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the middle of the fifteenth centuries.22 Knighted by the King of Naples, Charles III of the House of Anjou-Durazzo, he served the King for many years, earning an exemption from all taxation due to the monarchy . There is little else recorded about his life. He lived in Sulmona, presumably from 1392, and was one of the governors of the Church of Santa Maria Annunziata until 1404 when he followed his son Ludovico to Fermo. Ludovico was born between 1370 and 1374 from Antonio’s marriage to an Antonella, who is not further identified in the records. Ludovico was a controversial figure, clearly gifted with military skills but also of an impulsive and violent nature devoid of political foresight. A bully, he made himself known on the great stage of the political chessboard only at the end of 1404, when Rome was in the grip of internal struggles and his uncle, Innocent VII, called for his aid. In April 1405, the Pope appointed him Rector of Todi and, a few months later, the tragic affair with the eleven Roman delegates was played out.23 The entire responsibility for the deed is attributed by many sources to Ludovico, who ordered the bodies thrown from the captains’ palace, inciting the wrath of the populace which then violently rebelled against Innocent VII. The papal court took shelter in Viterbo, and the Pope was forced, despite himself, to excommunicate his nephew. Ludovico was only formally welcomed back into the Church in July of the following year, probably obtaining the lordship of Fermo along with his pardon. The crisis in Rome having been momentarily settled, he moved to the imposing Girifalco Fortress, dedicating himself to reorganizing its lordship and violently skirmishing with its predecessor, Antonio Aceti. Ludovico did not think very long about it and, with the same lack of scruples already demonstrated in Rome, he eliminated his rival along with his entire family. In the meantime, his protector had died, and Gregory XII (Angelo Correr), far less benevolent towards him, had ascended the papal throne. Deprived of his rectorate of the March of Ancona, Ludovico changed sides and allied himself with his old rival, Ladislaus. This earned him an appointment as Count of Manoppello and the promise of the recognition of his lordship over Fermo. The Pope reacted by organizing a coalition formed by the Da Varano and the Chiavelli, headed by Andrea Fortebracci (Braccio da Montone),24 which very quickly had the better of him, forcing the enemy to ask for a truce and then to sign a peace treaty in January 1408. The strained relations with the King of Naples continued throughout the year but, in 1409, Ludovico finally decided on whose side to stand. He returned to papal protection, recognized the King of Naples as the ultimate enemy, and as we have seen, had his nephew Giannozzo and his relatives executed for treason. A few months later, his ties to the Holy See were further strengthened when the Council of Pisa declared both Gregory XII and the Antipope Benedict XIII to be unworthy of the pontificate, excommunicated them and elected a new pope, Alexander V. Needing

22 Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 650. 23 Falcioni, ‘Ludovico Migliorati’, p. 376. 24 Anna Falcioni, ‘Carlo Malatesti condottiero e diplomatico’, in La Signoria di Carlo Malatesti, ed. by Anna Falcioni (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 2001), pp. 121–200 (p. 160).

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allies like Ludovico with military experience, the pontiff took him under his wing and appointed him a Vicar of the Church in the lands of the March.25 The sudden death of Alexander V on 3 May 1410 and the Pisan nomination of John XXIII put Ludovico back in the position to change sides again. At first, he supported Gregory XII, because that allied him with Carlo Malatesti and Ladislaus of Naples,26 but then, in 1411, he flagrantly moved to the side of John XXIII. On 21 September 1412, John XXIII reappointed him Rector of the March, arousing the wrath and immediate response of the Malatesti who, in the person of Carlo, constituted the nearer threat. In 1415, the Lord of Rimini had conquered many of Ludovico’s castles and territories, but fortunes in the dispute were about to change. Following the decision of the Council of Constance to depose John XXIII and accept the resignation of Gregory XII, a league was formed against the Malatesti formed by Ancona and Camerino and placed under Ludovico’s leadership, who had won decisive victories against the Lord of Rimini in 1416. The situation became even clearer in 1417, when a truce was struck establishing, among other things, free trade in the territories of Fermo, Camerino and Pesaro.27 Fortune further favoured Ludovico. The election of Martin V on 11 November in that same year placed him once again under the protection of a pope, this one finally strong and unrivalled. He reconfirmed Ludovico and his brother Gentile in the vicariate of Fermo and other castles in the March, naming him a Captain of the Church. In 1418, to seal the restored peace, Ludovico remarried, this time the daughter of the Lord of Pesaro, Malatesta Malatesti, Taddea, who gave birth to Cosma (or Cosima) in 1426 before dying of the plague in 1428. By virtue of this new kinship, Ludovico participated as general commander in the war of the lord of Brescia, Pandolfo III, against the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti.28 Ludovico was taken prisoner by Visconti and only released upon the delivery of his son, Fermano, who remained at the Milanese court as a guarantee against future raids. Returning to Fermo, Ludovico dedicated himself to a more tranquil life, in complete obedience to Martin V. He died in his city on 29

25 Di Nicolò, Cronaca Fermana, pp. 29–31. 26 On 17 November 1410, Pope Gregory XII appointed Ludovico and Gentile Migliorati jointly to the seven-year vicariate over the city of Fermo as well as the castles of Monte Santa Maria in Giorgio, Monterubbiano, Montegranaro, Montecosaro and Cossignano (ASV, Registro Vaticano 337, ff. 193v–198v, 216). On 18 November 1410, the same pontiff issued three papal briefs spelling out the obligations related to the vicarial concession and outlining the payment of the annual census to the Church (ASV, Registro Vaticano 337, f. 199r), the city of Fermo’s payment of military accompaniment to Ludovico Migliorati for his leadership and his men at arms in service of the Church (ASV, Registro Vaticano 337, f. 199), and their unconditional obedience to the King of Naples, Ladislaus (ASV, Registro Vaticano 337, f. 199v). 27 Falcioni, ‘Carlo Malatesti’, pp. 192–93. 28 Di Nicolò, Cronaca Fermana, p. 50; Gaspare Broglio Tartaglia, Cronaca malatestiana del secolo XV, ed. by Antonio G. Luciani (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 1982), p. 14; Luigi Tonini, Storia di Rimini (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 1880), pp. 68–69; Gino Franceschini, I Malatesta (Milan: Dall’Oglio, 1973), p. 236; La Signoria di Pandolfo III Malatesti a Brescia, Bergamo e Lecco, ed. by Giorgetta Bonfiglio Dosio and Anna Falcioni (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 2000), pp. 214, 242–43, 363–65, 396, 398; Falcioni, ‘Carlo Malatesti’, pp. 196–97.

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June 1428. His first marriage to Bellafiora, daughter of the Lord of Ascoli, Count of Carrara, had produced five children: Giacomo, Pietro, Fermano, Costanza (married to the Lord of Faenza, Ostasio III of Polenta) and Antonella (married in 1428 to the Duke of Atri and Teramo, Giosia Acquaviva).29 Ludovico also had two daughters born out of wedlock whose names are not known but who married, respectively, Marizeno of Francavilla (1420) and Branciotti of Monterubbiano (1426). Giacomo began an ecclesiastical career at an early age. Thanks to his father’s influence, he was commended to the Monastery of San Fabiano in Monterubbiano and, in 1421, was entrusted with the perpetual administration of the episcopal see of Fermo.30 We have seen, however, how ephemeral alliances were, and in 1425 Martin V revoked all concessions; furthermore, abjuring his own papal bull, he appointed Domenico Capranica bishop. From this point on, we lose track of Giacomo.31 The historical record has more information about his brother, Fermano, who spent his youth as a hostage in the grand Visconti court.32 He was abruptly recalled to Fermo following Ludovico’s death thanks to a stratagem plotted by his uncle Gentile, who, faithful to his brother and aware of the Pope’s desire to remove Fermo from his family, kept Ludovico’s death secret. This gave Fermano the time to reach the city and reclaim the lordship as his legitimate paternal inheritance. His reign was brief, and not even the request, made by the city council, that Martin V should confirm the Migliorati’s vicariate was successful. On 10 August 1428, the pontiff had Fermo placed under siege, and Fermano and Gentile were forced to retreat to the Girifalco Fortress.33 After a long siege, on 22 November, the Migliorati surrendered, receiving the Duchy of Spoleto from the Pope as well as a substantial sum of money to be shared equally. While this was all happening, on 1 August, Fermano had married Caterina di Francesco Riccardi of Ortona with whom he had a child that he called Ludovico in deference to his father.34 The child lived a withdrawn, hidden life. There is some information about him concerning the restoration of the ancient family palaces (1470–76) which had fallen into disrepair. Another source attests that he obtained the rectorate of the Annunziata Church. Presumably he died at the end of the fifteenth century without leaving any heirs.35 We now come to Gentile, Antonio’s other son, distinguished by his sworn loyalty to his brother, Ludovico, and then his nephew, Fermano. His story unfolds, in the shadow of these two figures, as Regent of Fermo (1408) and brave combatant in his brother’s military exploits. He was imprisoned with Ludovico in Milan and fought under the banner of the Lord of Brescia, Pandolfo Malatesti (1420). He is the sole figure in one story only: when he kept Ludovico’s death secret in order to allow

29 Falcioni, ‘Ludovico Migliorati’, p. 381; Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, pp. 650–51. 30 Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, pp. 650–51. 31 ‘Migliorati di Sulmona’, tab. 2. 32 Di Nicolò, Cronaca Fermana, p. 51. 33 Falcioni, ‘Ludovico Migliorati’, p. 381. 34 Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 651. 35 ‘Migliorati di Sulmona’, tab. 2.

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his nephew to claim the lordship of Fermo, a loyalty that contrasts radically with his older brother’s infamy. After the dramatic siege of Fermo by the papal rector, he accompanied Fermano to Rome for the peace treaties and then, as a highly experienced soldier, joined the papal troops. Eugene IV held Gentile in high esteem, granting him the fiefs of Bassanello, Cerqueto and Palazzolo in the diocese of Orte, constituting a county to be left to his heirs. Gentile died in 1433, leaving his wife Elena a widow. They had married in 1418; she was the daughter of the Lord of Bracciano, Carlo Orsini, and sister of Cardinal Latino Orsini.36 From their union were born Lodovico and Cosimo, both recorded in history under the more illustrious surname of Orsini.37 Cosimo dedicated himself to the monastic life. Taking the Benedictine habit, he was Abbot of the Monastery of Farfa, a place dear to his mother’s family, for many years. Distinguished for his exemplary conduct and academic studies, he was appointed by Sixtus IV Archbishop of Trani (1 April 1478) and, two years later, Titular Cardinal of Santi Nereo e Achilleo (5 May 1480). He died on 21 October 1481 and was buried in Farfa. His brother Lodovico, on the other hand, dedicated his life to the family activity, enlisting under the banners of various popes. Nicholas V reinvested his claims over the fiefs of Bassanello, Cerqueto and Palazzolo. Dying in 1489, he was spared having to witness the scandal that befell his family a few years later. The story features his wife, Adriana, daughter of Pietro de Mila and Covella del Doce, as well as niece of Caterina Borgia. In 1473, they had a son, Orsino Orsini, the final offshoot of the Migliorati of Sulmona.38 The boy, who lost his father at a young age, did not inherit the diplomatic or military skills of his ancestors. Blind in one eye and described by sources as dull and talentless, Orsino was the only tool his mother could use as leverage in her ambitious social climb. Adriana unscrupulously exploited her kinship with Cardinal Rodrigo Lanzol y de Borgia, the future Pope Alexander VI. Already in 1484 there was an agreement for Orsino to marry Giulia, daughter of Pierluigi Farnese and Giovanella Castani but, due to age, the match took place only in 1489, then probably a cover-up for the relationship that already existed between Giulia and Cardinal Borgia. Adriana and Orsino’s role in the affair earned them the Castle of Carbognano, where Giulia resided until 1522. Officially, a daughter was born of the union, Laura, in 1492.39 Contemporaries considered her the offspring of Alexander VI, who never denied the rumours. With Orsino’s death in Bassanello on 31 July 1500,40 the lack of direct male heirs brought the Sulmona branch definitively to an end, and the Migliorati house continued its descent through the main dynastic branch of Prato and its derivative branch of Genoa, which, as previously mentioned, produced Benedict XV’s mother.

36 37 38 39 40

Falcioni, ‘Ludovico Migliorati’, p. 380. Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 652. ‘Migliorati di Sulmona’, tab. 1; Williams, Papal Genealogy, p. 68. Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte, ed. by Weber and Becker, p. 652. ‘Migliorati di Sulmona’, tab. 1.

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Bibliography Baldini, Stefano, ‘Giovanna Migliorati di Prato: madre di S. S. Benedetto XV’, Bollettino diocesano pratese, 4, 1–2 (1922), pp. 5–7 Bellondi, Elina, ed., Cronaca volgare di Anonimo Fiorentino: dall’anno 1385 al 1409, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. by Giosuè Carducci and Vittorio Fiorini, 34 vols (Città di Castello: Lapi; Bologna: Zanichelli, 1917–75), XXVII/II (1922) Bonfiglio Dosio, Giorgetta and Anna Falcioni, eds, La Signoria di Pandolfo III Malatesti a Brescia, Bergamo e Lecco (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 2000) Brand, Paolo, ‘Innocenzo VII e il delitto di suo nipote Ludovico Migliorati’, Studi e documenti di storia e di diritto, 21 (1900), pp. 1–39 Broglio Tartaglia, Gaspare, Cronaca malatestiana del secolo XV, ed. by Antonio G. Luciani (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 1982) De Vincentiis, Amedeo, ‘Innocenzo VII’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), II, pp. 581–84 Falcioni, Anna, ‘Carlo Malatesti condottiero e diplomatico’, in La Signoria di Carlo Malatesti, ed. by Anna Falcioni (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 2001), pp. 121–200 Falcioni, Anna, ‘Ludovico Migliorati’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXIV (2010), pp. 376–81 Falcioni, Anna, ‘Le vicende politiche e militari di Ludovico Migliorati signore di Fermo’, Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per le Marche, 108 (2007–10), pp. 217–42 Fiumi, Enrico, Demografia, movimento urbanistico e classi sociali in Prato dall’età comunale ai tempi moderni (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1968) Franceschini, Gino, I Malatesta (Milan: Dall’Oglio, 1973) Guiducci, Giampiero, ‘La controversia fra i Migliorati per una cappellania corale nel Duomo di Prato’, Prato Storia e Arte, 117 (2015), pp. 69–77 Isoldi, Francesco, ed., Il diario romano di Antonio di Pietro Dallo Schiavo: dal 19 ottobre 1404 al 25 settembre 1417, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. by Giosuè Carducci and Vittorio Fiorini, 34 vols (Città di Castello: Lapi; Bologna: Zanichelli, 1917–75), XXV/V (1917) Notizie di Prato sì nel temporale, come nello spirituale, raccolte da varj scrittori (Florence: Cosimo Maria Pieri, 1747) Niccolò, Antonio di, Cronaca Fermana, in Cronache della città di Fermo, ed. by Gaetano de Minicis and Marco Tabarrini (Florence: Cellini, 1870), pp. 1–103 Pinzi, Cesare, Storia della città di Viterbo, 4 vols (Viterbo, 1899), III Spreti, Vittorio, ed., Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italiana: famiglie nobili e titolate viventi riconosciute dal R. Governo d’Italia compresi: città, comunità, mense vescovili, abazie, parrocchie ed enti nobili e titolati riconosciuti, 8 vols (Milan: Enciclopedia storiconobiliare italiana, 1928–35), IV (1931) Tonini, Luigi, Storia di Rimini (Rimini: Bruno Ghigi, 1880) Torelli, Luigi, De’ secoli Agostiniani, 8 vols (Bologna, 1659–86), V (1682) Valentini, Roberto, ed., Braccii Perusini vita et gesta ab anno 1368 usque ad 1424 Auctore Johanne Antonio Campano, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. by Giosuè Carducci and Vittorio Fiorini, 34 vols (Città di Castello: Lapi; Bologna: Zanichelli, 1917–75), XIX/IV (1929), pp. 9–20

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Weber, Christoph, and Michael Becker, eds, Genealogien zur Papstgeschichte. Päpste und Papsttum, 6 vols (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1999–2002), XXIX/III (2001) and XXIX/VI (2002) Williams, George L., Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2004)

Aldo Gorini

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa, Capuchin Friar, and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa1

1.

The Origins of Giacomo Della Chiesa’s Vocation

Etymologically, the word ‘vocation’ indicates a calling, which, according to Catholic theology, comes from God. In His ineffable love, God always wants individuals to cooperate with him. Normally, cooperation is twofold in the case of a vocation: first, on the part of the person who is called, who even in the presence of the action of grace chooses to embrace the divine plan, and second, on the part of others who, to varying degrees, stimulate, promote, foster and support the vocation of the person called.2 For Giacomo Della Chiesa, this role was carried out by the Capuchin Giacomo Raggi. On 21 September 1914, during a private audience with the general minister and the general curia of the Capuchin friars, Benedict XV stated: At this moment, many memories are rekindled in my mind. Perhaps few of you present here know that I had a great-uncle in the Order who bore the same name as I do. If I had had the vocation to take your orders, then I would have been Father Giacomo of Genoa, as my great-uncle of the Raggi marquises was called. To him, who was a man of holiness and true Franciscan spirit, I remember having





1 For the assistance I have received in my research, I would like to thank Stefano Zagatti and Dr Francesca Nepori of the Capuchins of Genoa’s provincial library; Professor Marco Grilli, Secretary of the Prefecture of the Vatican Secret Archive; Dr Valeria Pendenza of the archives of L’Osservatore Romano; and Don Antonio Scottà and Marquis Benedetto Della Chiesa. 2 Pier Carlo Landucci, ‘Vocazione’, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols (Vatican City: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il libro cattolico, 1948–54), XII (1954), cols 1575–77; Dizionario etimologico italiano, ed. by Carlo Battisti and Giovanni Alessio, 5 vols (Florence: G. Barbera, 1975), V, p. 4078; Catechismo della Chiesa Cattolica (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1999), pp. 100, 445; Dizionario enciclopedico di filosofia, teologia e morale, ed. by Battista Mondin (Milan: Massimo, 1989), pp. 805–06; John Paul II, ‘Pastores dabo vobis: Adhortatio Apostolica Postsynodalis: Ad Episcopos, Sacerdotes et Christifideles totius Catholicae Ecclesiae: de Sacerdotum formatione in aetatis nostrae rerum condicione’ (25 March 1992), Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 84 (1992), pp. 657–804.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 81–91 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118764

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first expressed my vocation to the ecclesiastic state; from him I then received counsel and comfort.3 On the basis of these words, Raggi’s role in Della Chiesa’s vocation has been highlighted in his biographies: first by Francesco Vistalli and then by Luigi Ruggia, Antonio Durante, John F. Pollard, Antonio Scottà and Marco Doldi, who, more than the first author, seem to think it was an effective role. Gabriele De Rosa himself recalled that Della Chiesa informed his great-uncle about his vocation.4 As some form of relationship between Father Raggi and the future pontiff ’s vocation seems to be certain, it is the case to look more closely at some aspects of the issue, starting with an outline of the Capuchin monk.

2. Biographical Notes on Father Raggi Giacomo Filippo Ignazio Raggi was born in Genoa on 12 August 1812 (or 1813) to a couple belonging to the city’s aristocracy: Marquis Giovanni (or Giacomo) Antonio Raggi, Minister of State to Charles Albert, and Teresa Spinola. He had four sisters: Eugenia, Maria, Giulia (called ‘Lilla’) and Ersilia, who married a Migliorati marquis and bore Giovanna, wife of Marquis Giuseppe Della Chiesa and mother of Benedict XV.5





3 ‘In questo momento molti ricordi si ravvivano nella mia memoria. Forse pochi di quelli che sono qui presenti sapranno che nell’Ordine io ebbi un prozio che portò il mio stesso nome. Se avessi avuto la vocazione di vestire il vostro abito io sarei stato il padre Giacomo da Genova: così si chiamava questo mio prozio della famiglia dei marchesi Raggi. A lui che era un uomo di santità e di vero spirito francescano, ricordo di avere prima manifestata la mia vocazione allo stato ecclesiastico; da lui ho poi ricevuti consigli e conforti’; ‘Nostre informazioni’, L’Osservatore Romano, 22 September 1914, p. 3; Venantius a Lisle-en-Rigault, ‘Brevis relatio audientiae summi pontificis curiae generalitiae concessae’, Analecta ordinis minorum capuccinorum, 30, 10 (1914), p. 286; Frédégand Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia di S. S. Benedetto XV e l’ordine dei frati minori cappuccini (Rome: Curia Generalizia dei Frati Minori Cappuccini, 1916), pp. 10, 44. 4 Francesco Vistalli, Benedetto XV (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1928), p. 24; Luigi Ruggia, Il papa della Grande Guerra: Benedetto XV (Alba: Pia Società; Rome: Figlie di San Paolo, 1938), p. 30; Antonio Durante, Benedetto XV (Rome: AVE, 1939), p. 15; John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), p. 3; Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), p. 170; Marco Doldi, Benedetto XV: un papa da conoscere e da amare (Casale Monferrato: Portalupi, 2004), p. 15; Marco Doldi, ‘Figlio di Genova: gli anni giovanili di Giacomo Della Chiesa’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 17–30 (p. 26); Gabriele De Rosa, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), III, pp. 608–17. 5 I have drawn this information from: Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, pp. 44–45; Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi prozio di Benedetto XV e coevo del Padre Santo’, Il Padre Santo, 28, 7–8 (1939), p. 104; Francesco Zaverio Molfino, Quadri nobili dei cappuccini liguri (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1909), p. 26; Francesco Zaverio Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, 9 vols (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1912–66), I (1912), p. 239 and VI (1939), pp. 181, 186; ‘Necrologia’, Analecta ordinis minorum capuccinorum, 2 (1886), p. 127. On Spinola see, for example, Vito Antonio Vitale, ‘Spinola’, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, 35 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1929–37), XXXII (1936), pp. 378–79.

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa

Father Giacomo was, therefore, the brother of the pontiff ’s maternal grandmother, Ersilia, who, according to biographers, gave young Della Chiesa a small altar with relative articles for the child to play at imitating religious services and ceremonies.6 The young man pursued classical studies at the Jesuit college, after which he frequented the city’s aristocratic circles, where he was much admired for his elegance. This concern, however, was soon lost. Whereas his parents planned a diplomatic career for him, he was overcome by a profound disgust for worldly trappings and pleasures and began to appreciate the religious life to such an extent that, after consulting some spiritual superiors, he decided to enter the Capuchin Order.7 Unbeknownst to his parents, after the Easter holidays in 1830, he reached the priory of San Barnaba, from where he asked his family for permission to take Franciscan orders. Initially, his parents were opposed and refused him, thinking that it was a rash decision. To test his vocation, they organized a solemn reception, which however drove their son further towards becoming a man of the faith. On seeing his resolution, in vain his mother begged him to choose less strict an order. After waiting six months, the Marquis and his wife were forced to give their permission.8 So it was that on 3 November 1830 Giacomo became a monk, maintaining the name by which he had been baptized. A year later he made his profession.9 Ordained a priest, at the end of 1838 he was given the faculties of preacher and confessor and assigned to the priory of Chiavari. His exemplary conduct struck his superiors who, in 1843, sent him to France to assist their Genoese confreres who were engaged in restoring the Order, which had been suppressed during the French Revolution. In 1844, despite his opposition, he was named Guardian of Aix and Master of Novices. The following year, the chapter elected him as the third Definitor of the re-established monastic province.10 In Aix he was the spiritual director of the Capuchin Order’s nuns. After a short stay in Genoa in 1846, he was assigned to the priory of Lyon but, unable to become accustomed to the harsh climate, he returned to Aix after Easter 1847 and then returned definitively to his native province. He gave precedence to preaching but had to abandon it almost immediately because of a defect in his larynx. Removed from the pulpit, he consecrated himself entirely to the ministry of confession.11

6 Vistalli, Benedetto XV, p. 16; Ruggia, Il papa, p. 16; Durante, Benedetto XV, pp. 15–16; Carlo Falconi, I papi del ventesimo secolo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1967), p. 113. 7 Molfino, Quadri nobili, pp. 26–27; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, pp. 239–40; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 45; Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 104. 8 Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, pp. 104–05; Molfino, Quadri nobili, p. 27; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, pp. 239–40; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 45. 9 Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 46; Molfino, Quadri nobili, p. 27; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, p. 240; Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 105. 10 Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 105; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 46; Molfino, Quadri nobili, p. 27; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, p. 240. 11 Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, p. 240; Molfino, Quadri nobili, p. 27; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 46; Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 105.

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During his long religious career, he was often called to serve in the province’s main offices, further proof of his confreres’ esteem. Guardian of Chiavari from 1848 to 1851, he was elected First Custodian at the chapter in 1860. He was at Genoa’s Santissima Concezione. When the religious orders were suppressed in 1866, he took refuge with his sister, Eugenia, in the Pallavicini house, serving at the Basilica of San Siro.12 As soon as the communal life in the Genoese province was restored, however, he returned to the priory. He was Guardian of Campi in 1869, elected first Definitor and President of the Ospedale dei cronici in 1873, re-elected Definitor in 1875, 1878 and 1884, and Guardian of Voltri San Francesco in 1879. It was in Voltri that he died, struck down by pneumonia, on 15 March 1886 at the age of seventy-three.13 Father Giacomo was described as ‘serious and collected in his bearing, a lover of solitude and poverty, scrupulous in observance but full of sweetness, good-nature, and simplicity’. It was stated that he led a life that was ‘truly edifying for religious and lay persons’ and that he was ‘a true Franciscan […] rich in poverty, humility and charity, and great in the modest and fervent work of the silence of the confessional’.14 His obituary in the Genoese province of the Capuchin Order reads: It attracted respect and love to see the son of the Minister of State to Charles Albert who cleaned his own cell, patched and washed his own clothes and proved himself docile and attentive to his superiors and pleasant and agreeable with his religious brothers […]. If, for a defect of the larynx, he did not serve long in the ministry of preacher, he promptly set himself to the endeavour of the direction of souls, for the most part in monasteries.15 The loss of such an exemplary and ‘exceedingly dear’ religious man was cause for great mourning. ‘Oh! If our religious province weeps every time it loses one of its men of religion, the death of a father as dear to everyone as Father Giacomo was truly inconsolable!’.16

12 Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 105; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 46; Molfino, Quadri nobili, p. 27; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, p. 240. 13 Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, pp. 181, 186, 240; Molfino, Quadri nobili, p. 27; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, pp. 46–47; Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 105. 14 ‘Grave e raccolto nel portamento, amante della solitudine e della povertà, scrupoloso dell’osservanza, ma tutto dolcezza, affabilità e semplicità’, ‘veramente edificante per i religiosi e per i secolari’, ‘un vero francescano […], ricco di povertà, di umiltà e di carità, e grande per il modesto e fervido lavoro nel silenzio del confessionale’; Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 105; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 47; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, p. 186. 15 ‘Attraeva il rispetto e l’amore il vedere il figlio del ministro di Stato di Carlo Alberto pulire egli stesso la sua cella, rappezzarsi e lavare egli stesso i suoi abiti, e dimostrarsi prontissimo e docile ai cenni del superiore, e connivente ed affabile coi suoi correligiosi fratelli […]. E se per difetto di laringe non poté durarla lungamente nel ministero di predicatore, non si trattenne però di prestarsi alacremente alla direzione delle anime, massime nei monasteri’; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, pp. 186–87. 16 ‘Ah! Se la nostra religiosa Provincia piange ogni qual volta viene a perdere qualcuno dei suoi Religiosi, davvero che ella è inconsolabile trattandosi della perdita di un Padre a tutti sì caro, quale fu il M. Rev. padre Giacomo!’; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, p. 187.

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa

3. Raggi’s Influence on Della Chiesa’s Vocation In spite of extensive research, it has not been possible to determine the exact importance of Father Raggi on Della Chiesa’s vocation. However, the documents available lend themselves to some observations. In the aforementioned audience in September 1914, Benedict XV recalled having confided his desire to embrace ecclesiastic life to Father Raggi, receiving council and comfort from him. This information is undoubtedly credible even though, after joining the Capuchins, Father Raggi maintained few relationships with his relatives.17 On the other hand, the reference is rather vague, and the text presents problems. Although the Pope spoke in Italian (‘italice’),18 the report of the meeting that appeared in the Analecta ordinis minorum capuccinorum, signed by Venantius, the Minister General from Lisle-en-Rigault, is in Latin. Moreover, when it was studied in 1916 in La famiglia di S. S. Benedetto XV e l’ordine dei frati minori cappuccini, Father Frédégand Callaey of Antwerp refers to the Analecta but publishes a text in Italian that does not correspond exactly to the original, as can be seen in this summary: Father Frédégand19

Father Venantius20

A lui che era un uomo di santità e di vero spirito francescano, ricordo di avere prima manifestata la mia vocazione allo stato ecclesiastico; da lui ho poi ricevuti consigli e conforti. To him, who was a man of holiness and true Franciscan spirit, I remember having first expressed my vocation to the ecclesiastic state; from him I then received counsel and comfort.

Ille, sanctitate et spiritu francescano plenus, ex primis fuit cui mentem meam aperui de statu ecclesiastico amplexendo, et nunquam mihi defuerunt ejus consilia et consolationes. Known for his holiness and full Franciscan spirit, he was among the very first to whom I opened my mind, that I would embrace the ecclesiastical state, and his counsel and consolations to me have never been lacking.

The problem is further complicated when we find a third version of Benedict XV’s words in the July–August 1939 issue of Il Padre Santo, the Genoese Capuchins’ monthly bulletin. My great-uncle, Giacomo Raggi, was a man of holiness and a true Franciscan spirit. I remember having first expressed my vocation to the ecclesiastic life to him. From him I received advice and encouragement and then later, in times of difficulty, he gave me words of great comfort.21 17 Molfino, Quadri nobili, pp. 27–28; Molfino, I Cappuccini genovesi, I, pp. 240–41. 18 Venantius, ‘Brevis relatio’, p. 286. 19 Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 44. 20 Venantius, ‘Brevis relatio’, p. 286. 21 ‘Il mio prozio padre Giacomo Raggi era un uomo di santità e di vero spirito francescano, ricordo d’aver prima manifestato a lui la mia vocazione allo stato ecclesiastico; n’ebbi consigli e incoraggiamento e così poi in seguito, in difficili contingenze, n’ebbi parole di grande conforto’; Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 105.

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To understand what Benedict actually said, we must reflect on the testimonies. Father Frédégand Callaey of Antwerp, general archivist of the Order of Capuchin Friars,22 seems inclined to scholarly work. The Analecta is an important periodical and, further, the text was offered by the order’s Minister General. In comparison, Father Eugenio, writing in the monthly digest Il Padre Santo, seems to be the spokesman for a tradition of recollections. Not only the words but also the meaning of Benedict XV’s mention of Father Raggi have been interpreted in different ways. For Father Frédégand, ‘while [Raggi] was alive’, Della Chiesa ‘continued to turn to his experience and his wise advice’.23 In short, that counsel and comfort was not the origin of Della Chiesa’s vocation, but merely accompanied and sustained it when it had already been undertaken. Indeed, on closer inspection, they might not even have concerned his vocation. On the other hand, Vistalli suggests that Father Raggi’s role was not important when Giacomo’s vocation was first manifested, but shortly after this. According to him, on finishing his high school studies, the young Della Chiesa told his sister, Giulia, of his desire to stay for the priesthood in the seminary, where he was studying as an external student. Father Raggi’s presence seems to have emerged later, during his university studies, helping the future Pope ‘keep himself faithful to God’s call’.24 This is an opinion shared by his biographers.25 It has not been possible to find other texts concerning the audience. Nevertheless, the link between the two men is also attested by other sources. For example, on the occasion of Benedict’s election, the Genoese diocesan publication wrote: Through the difficulties of the university environment his vocation did not fail but was strengthened, just as every generous sentiment is tempered through struggle. There to comfort him in his conviction was the noble figure of a priest, his great-uncle, Father Giacomo of Genoa of the noble family the Raggi marquises, to whom the young soul turned with religious fervour for counsel and encouragement.26 In this passage, the reference to ‘counsel and encouragement’ might indicate that it was drawn from the Pope’s words in the September 1914 audience, which would specify that, at the time of his university studies, Raggi was important to Della

22 Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, frontispiece. 23 ‘Finché [Raggi] fu in vita [Della Chiesa] non lasciò mai di ricorrere alla sua esperienza e ai suoi savi consigli’; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 10. 24 ‘Serbarsi fedele alla chiamata di Dio’; Vistalli, Benedetto XV, pp. 22–24. 25 Ruggia, Il papa, pp. 23–30; Durante, Benedetto XV, p. 15; Doldi, Benedetto XV, pp. 14–15; Doldi, ‘Figlio di Genova’, pp. 25–26. 26 ‘Nei contrasti dell’ambiente universitario la sua vocazione non venne meno, ma si rafforzò, come si ritempra nella lotta ogni sentimento generoso: ed a confortarlo nel suo proposito gli era vicina una nobile figura di religioso, un suo prozio padre Giacomo da Genova della nobile famiglia dei Marchesi Raggi, al quale l’animo suo giovanile si rivolgeva con religioso fervore, per consiglio ed incoraggiamento’; ‘Benedetto XV: cenni biografici’, Rivista diocesana genovese, 4, 9–10 (1914), p. 212.

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa

Chiesa’s vocation. What is true is that the sources of the information are not clear, yet its reliability is increased by the official nature of the magazine. Be that as it may, we do not know when Della Chiesa first expressed his desire to become a priest to his great-uncle. He may have done so when he told his sister Giulia, leaving the question unresolved while his father urged him to continue his studies27 and returning to the matter during his university years. Or Della Chiesa may have expressed his intentions to the Capuchin only when he was at university, beginning at that point to receive his advice and comfort. Both versions are compatible with the texts provided by the Analecta and Il Padre Santo. It is interesting to note that, in the aforementioned publication La famiglia di S. S. Benedetto XV e l’ordine dei frati minori cappuccini, Father Fredegando paused over the September 1914 audience, writing: ‘The pontiff recalled with emotion the salutary influence wrought by our venerable confrere over his vocation’.28 The expression ‘salutary influence’ (‘influsso salutare’) could simply be the fruit of Father Fredegando’s interpretation. On the other hand, at the beginning of the publication, ‘The author warmly thank[ed] the Holy Father for the consideration received from his having cast a look over this humble work before it was published and for appreciating its dedication’.29 Benedict XV, therefore, may have seen the work, essentially approving it before it was printed. Needless to say, we do not know whether he had in hand the essential core of the work or its definitive version, including the preface, which spoke of the ‘salutary influence’. Perhaps the latter hypothesis is correct because the expression can already be found in the version that appeared in the July 1915 issue of the Analecta and thus cannot be the result of a late addition.30 Further contextualization can be derived from comparing Della Chiesa’s and Raggi’s biographies. Apparently, Della Chiesa’s vocation first appeared at the turn of the decade from the 1860s to the 1870s,31 when Raggi had permanently returned to Genoa. As mentioned above, after having spent some time with his sister Eugenia following the suppression of religious orders in 1866, Raggi was able to return to the local province’s priory, becoming Guardian of Campi and then first Definitor and President of the hospital for the chronically ill. According to the biographies, the geographic proximity favoured contact between the two. Vistalli spoke of ‘frequent talks’32 in the Ospedale dei cronici. Doldi claimed that, in the hospital, ‘uncle and 27 Vistalli, Benedetto XV, p. 22; Giambattista Migliori, Benedetto XV, 2nd edn (Milan: Daverio, 1955), pp. 39–40; Falconi, I papi, p. 113; Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 4; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 170; Ruggia, Il papa, pp. 23–30; Durante, Benedetto XV, p. 15; Doldi, Benedetto XV, pp. 14–15; Doldi, ‘Figlio di Genova’, pp. 25–26. 28 ‘Il Pontefice ricordò con emozione l’influsso salutare esercitato dal venerando confratello nostro sopra la sua vocazione’; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 10. 29 ‘L’autore ringrazia vivamente il Santo Padre per la degnazione che ha avuta, di gettare uno sguardo di compiacenza su questo umile lavoro prima che fosse pubblicato e di gradirne la dedica’; Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia, p. 10. 30 Analecta ordinis minorum capuccinorum, 31, 7 (1915), p. 210. 31 See Vistalli, Benedetto XV, pp. 21 ff.; Ruggia, Il papa, pp. 23 ff.; Falconi, I papi, p. 113; Doldi, Benedetto XV, pp. 14 ff.; Doldi, ‘Figlio di Genova’, pp. 25 ff. 32 ‘Colloqui frequenti’; Vistalli, Benedetto XV, p. 24.

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nephew often met for talks that helped Giacomo [Della Chiesa] stay faithful to his divine calling’.33 For Pollard, Della Chiesa ‘came under the influence […] of his own uncle, who became his chief spiritual guide’.34 According to Ruggia: Given their mutual affection, based on a reciprocal esteem and benevolence, the learned and pious priest understood the mission that he was called to carry out at the side of his nephew who bore his same name. A priest of austere lifestyle, a connoisseur of persons and things, wholly engaged in the practice of piety and charity, he was, for his nephew, the sweet, amiable and wise guide who showed him the paths of sanctuary, infusing his heart with that wise and austere life of piety that the future pontiff never forgot. He is credited in large part with having initiated him into the priesthood, and Benedict XV repaid the benevolence shown him by his uncle, Father Giacomo, always expressing, first as bishop then as pontiff, a sense of admiration and gratitude toward the Capuchin friars.35 The problem remains that these sentences seem to express assumptions rather than documented facts. Perhaps Vistalli was able to draw upon unpublished testimonials, but his book does not provide any indication of that possibility. What is certain is the energy of the Genoese ecclesiastic world at the time, which was expressed in attention to social needs, in commitment in the field of journalism, in the presence of solid examples of the religious life and in the prominent figure of a spirituality that acted concretely and left its mark.36 For example, we can recall the celebrated Capuchin Francesco Maria da Camporosso (1804–66) — known as the ‘holy father’ for his humility and charity — who was canonized by John XXIII in 1962.37

4. Raggi’s Role in Della Chiesa’s Vocation Father Raggi is certainly present in the story of Della Chiesa’s ecclesiastic vocation, as Benedict XV himself attested. Genoa’s archiepiscopal seminary was also important in the emergence of his vocation. The young Della Chiesa attended it as an external student because of divergences

33 ‘Zio e nipote si incontravano spesso per colloqui che aiutavano Giacomo [Della Chiesa] a mantenersi fedele alla chiamata divina’; Doldi, Benedetto XV, p. 15; Doldi, ‘Figlio di Genova’, p. 26. 34 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 3. 35 ‘Data la mutua affezione, fondata sulla stima e benevolenza reciproca, il dotto e pio religioso capì la missione che era chiamato a svolgere accanto a quel nipote, che portava il suo stesso nome. Sacerdote di vita austera, conoscitore di uomini e cose, figura di vero asceta, consumato negli esercizi della pietà e della carità, fu per il nipote la guida dolce, amabile e sapiente, che gli schiuse le vie del santuario, infondendogli nel cuore quella saggia e austera vita di pietà che il futuro pontefice mai dimenticò. A lui va il merito di averlo in gran parte iniziato al sacerdozio e Benedetto XV compensò la benevolenza usatagli dallo zio, padre Giacomo, esternando sempre, e da vescovo e da pontefice, un senso di ammirata gratitudine verso i religiosi Cappuccini’; Ruggia, Il papa, p. 30. 36 Aldo Gorini, Breve storia della diocesi di Genova: dalle origini ad oggi (Genova: ERGA, 2016), pp. 74–85. 37 Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi’, p. 104.

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa

arising — as far as can be determined — between his father and the administration of the Istituto Danovaro e Giusso where he had completed his secondary school studies. It does not appear that Giacomo Della Chiesa’s enrolment in the seminary necessarily meant he was to become a priest, but perhaps that was where his vocation grew.38 In this regard it is worth mentioning what the lawyer Pietro Ansaldo, one of Della Chiesa’s former classmates in the seminary,39 said at the conference held on 30 April 1916 at Genoa’s Oratory of San Donato on the occasion of the inauguration of a marble bust of Benedict XV: Remembering well [Della Chiesa’s] intense devotion to prayer in [the seminary’s] chapel, I think that, finding himself in that environment that should have been his own, perhaps his vocation to sanctuary developed, but he was not yet able to act on it out of obedience to his father, Marquis Giuseppe Della Chiesa, who wanted him to reflect deeply on his intentions, continuing his studies in law at the Genoese university after obtaining his secondary school license.40 From his own words it is clear that, as a young man, he expressed the emergence of his vocation to his great-uncle and that this was — on this the texts agree — of his own initiative. Strictly speaking, we cannot exclude the hypothesis that Della Chiesa’s vocation was inspired by the example of, and talks with, Father Raggi, but it seems more likely that the Capuchin presented himself when his nephew’s vocation was already clear. Apart from the childhood games, which have been mentioned, it seems that his vocation became manifest when he was about twelve or thirteen, as affirmed by publications from the years of his pontificate when Benedict XV was alive, and the facts were not so remote in time.41 In 1939, Durante relied on eyewitnesses when writing his book on the Genoese Pope.42 In conclusion, the major steps in Giacomo Della Chiesa’s vocation seem to be, in chronological order: when he played at imitating religious services, the emergence of his vocation at twelve or thirteen, the archiepiscopal seminary and, finally, Father Raggi.

38 Vistalli, Benedetto XV, pp. 21–22; Ruggia, Il papa, pp. 23–24; Migliori, Benedetto XV, p. 39; Falconi, I papi, p. 113; Doldi, Benedetto XV, p. 14; Doldi, ‘Figlio di Genova’, p. 25. 39 See ‘Benedetto XV nei ricordi dei suoi condiscepoli: Discorso dell’avv. P. Ansaldo’, Fides Nostra, 3, 1 (1920), pp. 7–11; Vistalli, Benedetto XV, p. 21. 40 ‘Ben ricordando l’intensa devozione colla quale [Della Chiesa] lungamente pregava in quella Cappella [del seminario], penso che trovandosi nell’ambiente che doveva esser suo, allora forse maturò quella vocazione al santuario, che ancor non aveva potuto mettere in atto per obbedienza al genitore, marchese Giuseppe Della Chiesa, il quale voleva ben ponderasse i suoi propositi, proseguendo dopo la licenza liceale gli studi di giurisprudenza nell’ateneo genovese’; see Pietro Ansaldo, Inaugurandosi il busto marmoreo del sommo pontefice Benedetto XV a cura dei suoi confratelli della Ven. compagnia di misericordia sotto il titolo della Morte e sepoltura di Cristo e di San Giovanni Decollato nell’oratorio di San Donato in Genova sua patria li 30 aprile 1916; parole dette dal confratello avv. Pietro Ansaldo (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1916), p. 6. 41 See ‘Benedetto XV: cenni biografici’, p. 211; Papa Benedetto XV (Pegli: n. pub., 1914 ), p. 7; Antonio Boggiano Pico, ‘Benedetto XV’, Ecce sacerdos magnus: ricordo del solenne ingresso di sua ecc. rev.ma mons. Lodovico Gavotti nella sua sede metropolitana di Genova VII marzo MCMXV (1915), p. 43. 42 Durante, Benedetto XV, p. 14.

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The Capuchin, therefore, became a part of a personal journey that had already been embarked upon, as suggested by various testimonials. One of Della Chiesa’s siblings, interviewed immediately after the conclave of 1914, said that the elected Pope ‘during his youth […] showed a special vocation to the priesthood from a very early age’.43 In that same vein, according to Ruggia, ‘after his First Communion […] his vocation to the priesthood became more profound and insistent, taking complete root in his soul’.44

Bibliography Ansaldo, Pietro, Inaugurandosi il busto marmoreo del sommo pontefice Benedetto XV a cura dei suoi confratelli della Ven. compagnia di misericordia sotto il titolo della Morte e sepoltura di Cristo e di San Giovanni Decollato nell’oratorio di San Donato in Genova sua patria li 30 aprile 1916; parole dette dal confratello avv. Pietro Ansaldo (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1916) Battisti, Carlo, and Giovanni Alessio, eds, Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols (Florence: G. Barbera, 1975), V Boggiano Pico, Antonio, ‘Benedetto XV’, Ecce sacerdos magnus: ricordo del solenne ingresso di sua ecc. rev.ma mons. Lodovico Gavotti nella sua sede metropolitana di Genova VII marzo MCMXV (1915) Callaey of Antwerp, Frédégand, La famiglia di S. S. Benedetto XV e l’ordine dei frati minori cappuccini (Rome: Curia Generalizia dei Frati Minori Cappuccini, 1916) De Rosa, Gabriele, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), III, pp. 608–17 Doldi, Marco, Benedetto XV: un papa da conoscere e da amare (Casale Monferrato: Portalupi, 2004) Doldi, Marco, ‘Figlio di Genova: gli anni giovanili di Giacomo Della Chiesa’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 17–30 Durante, Antonio, Benedetto XV (Rome: AVE, 1939) Falconi, Carlo, I papi del ventesimo secolo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1967) Father Eugenio, ‘Il padre Giacomo Raggi prozio di Benedetto XV e coevo del Padre Santo’, Il Padre Santo, 28, 7–8 (1939) Gorini, Aldo, Breve storia della diocesi di Genova: dalle origini ad oggi (Genova: ERGA, 2016) Landucci, Pier Carlo, ‘Vocazione’, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols (Vatican City: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il libro cattolico, 1948–54), XII (1954), cols 1575–77 Migliori, Giambattista, Benedetto XV, 2nd edn (Milan: Daverio, 1955)

43 ‘Durante la giovinezza […] dimostrò subito una speciale vocazione per il sacerdozio’; ‘Conversando con i parenti del nuovo papa’, Il Messaggero, 4 September 1914, p. 2. 44 ‘La vocazione al sacerdozio, […] dopo la Prima Comunione si fece più viva e insistente, radicandosi completamente nel suo animo’; Ruggia, Il papa, p. 15.

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa

Molfino, Francesco Zaverio, I Cappuccini genovesi, 9 vols (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1912–66), I (1912) and VI (1939) Molfino, Francesco Zaverio, Quadri nobili dei cappuccini liguri (Genoa: Tipografia della Gioventù, 1909) Mondin, Battista, ed., Dizionario enciclopedico di filosofia, teologia e morale (Milan: Massimo, 1989) Papa Benedetto XV (Pegli: n. pub., 1914) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Ruggia, Luigi, Il papa della Grande Guerra: Benedetto XV (Alba: Pia Società; Rome: Figlie di San Paolo, 1938) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Venantius a Lisle-en-Rigault, ‘Brevis relatio audientiae summi pontificis curiae generalitiae concessae’, Analecta ordinis minorum capuccinorum, 30, 10 (1914) Vistalli, Francesco, Benedetto XV (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1928) Vitale, Vito Antonio, ‘Spinola’, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, 35 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1929–37), XXXII (1936), pp. 378–79

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Formation and Studies at the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Genoa

1.

Family and Early Studies

Giacomo Della Chiesa, the third of four children of Marchioness Migliorati and her husband Giuseppe, was born on 21 November 1854 in Salita Santa Caterina in the centre of Genoa. His baptism was administered at home, at the time of birth, by Dr Alberto Botto who ‘noted a danger’ as recorded on his birth and baptismal certificate written the following day by the parish priest of the Church of Santa Maria delle Vigne, Don Giobatta Cardinali. His godmother was Marchioness Anna Centurione née Migliorati and his godfather Marquis Giacomo Spinola. Giacomo Della Chiesa’s parents probably belonged to those aristocrats who were not hostile to the Piedmont rulers. Like many Genoese noblemen, his father Giuseppe had pursued a military career within the ranks of the Savoyard navy, where he remained until 1849. The year prior he had married Giovanna Migliorati, who was remembered as a brilliant, cultured woman. One of her brothers, Giovanni Antonio Migliorati (1825–98), a volunteer during the First War of Italian Independence, became the Resident Minister of the Kingdom in 1863, a Senator in 1876, and died in Florence. In 1871, Giuseppe Della Chiesa was named comptroller of the state’s holdings, for which he moved first to Florence and then to Rome. It was probably for this reason that Giacomo followed the family to the new capital and continued his studies for the priesthood there. Giacomo’s two brothers, instead, followed in their father’s footsteps: Giovanni Antonio became an admiral and Giulio a lieutenant commander. The 1871 census of the population registered the Della Chiesa family as resident in Genoa at Via Lomellini 16 in the Pré district and the San Siro parish, a few steps from where Mazzini was born. The family is listed as including the father, Giuseppe, born in 1821, the mother, Giovanna Migliorati, born in 1829, and the children: Giulia, born in 1851; Giovanni Antonio, who is known to have been born in 1853 but is here erroneously registered as born in 1854; due to the same error, Giacomo is registered as born in 1855 although he was born in 1854; and Giulio Giovanni Battista, born in 1863. Two maids, Rosa Muratori and Carlotta Bruzzone, a cook and a servant lived

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 93–102 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118765

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in the household with them.1 Two of the couple’s other sons had died in infancy: Giovanni Battista in 1852 and Paolo in 1864. Many of the Della Chiesa family’s days were spent in Pegli, a coastal town to the west of the city that was to become part of Great Genoa in 1926. The marquises owned a palace there, and the climate was certainly more favourable to Giacomo’s poor health. He was ill several times during his infancy and his body bore the signs of it throughout his entire life. During the years of his elementary and secondary education (1862–69), he was enrolled at the Istituto Danovaro e Giusso run by priests within the Spinola Palace close to where he had been born. Giacomo made lasting friends, among whom Pietro Ansaldo and Carlo and Girolamo Monti.2 Baron Carlo Monti was the godson of Giacomo’s grandmother Ersilia Raggi Migliorati. He was slightly older than Giacomo and a classmate even at university. In 1881 he was hired by the Fondo per il Culto (Fund for Religion), becoming its Director General in 1908, and became a valuable colleague when Giacomo became pope. He was a personal point of reference as well as a confidential channel for relations with the Italian State. One of the institute’s founders, Marcellino Giusso, was also the author of a collection of short poems in Greek, Latin, Italian and Genoese, which was distributed as a prize to the best students at the end of the year. Little is known of his spiritual or academic formation in those early years. Later reconstructions, according to his sister Giulia’s recollection, refer to a precocious interest in visiting churches and attending sacred functions, so much so that his grandmother gave him a small altar and related supplies, which were much appreciated by the young Giacomo, who played at performing religious services and ceremonies.3 His older brother, instead, gave him a booklet on piety entitled Il cristianesimo reso sensibile nel culto esteriore (Exterior Practice of Christianity Explained, 1858),4 an extract of the work of Abbé Jean-Joseph Gaume published in Paris under the title Abrégé du catechisme de persévérance (Abbreviated Catechism of Perseverance, 1838).

2. External Student at the Seminary After his middle school studies, Della Chiesa attended high school at the archiepiscopal seminary as an external student from 1869 to 1871. It was a common choice for those who wished to continue their studies in a city that offered little or nothing in the way of cultural education. There are few sources that can help reconstruct this period in his life, and those that do exist were reconstructed. In 1920, half a century later, on the occasion of the inauguration of a marble bust of the pontiff in the seminary

1 Italian census of 1871. My thanks to Raffaella Ponte and Claudio Schenone for their assistance in researching the Archivio Storico del Comune di Genova (Historical Archive of the Municipality of Genoa). 2 Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009). 3 For these reconstructions, see Yves Chiron, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014). 4 Published in Genoa under the direction of the Commissione per la diffusione dei buoni libri.

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where he had studied, an elderly classmate recalled ‘the pious devotion of the young Giacomo Della Chiesa. Every morning he attended Mass, which was celebrated in the seminary’s chapel before lessons. He never missed the many services held in the chapel, to which the external students were also invited’.5 The Rector was the strict Giovanni Battista De Bernardis. Don Pietro Costa, Thomist author of three treatises, was the philosophy professor; Father Abbot Angelo Sanguineti of the Carignano Basilica taught history and Greek; and Don Angelo Costa — remembered for the passion with which he taught his courses and for the evenings spent observing the stars with the students — taught mathematics, physics and natural history. The seminary’s journal reported the grades earned by the students in their final exams of 1870 and 1871. In both cases, Della Chiesa was given a 30/30. On becoming pope, he donated a substantial series of volumes published by the Vatican Library to the seminary. In 1873, a source from the prefecture highlights the relationships of power in Genoese higher education: For many years, the teaching in this province has been almost a monopoly held by the clerics. The most prominent of Genoa’s families, rather than send their children to state middle schools or secondary schools, entrust them to the institutes ruled by the Barnabites, Piarists, Somascans, missionary priests, or other religious. Priests, friars and sisters populate all the elementary schools, boarding schools and conservatories annexed for pious works. If up to now no one has believed that this fact is of serious harm, I, on the contrary, consider it to be most serious and pernicious for politics.6 For a long time, the number of external students at seminaries far surpassed, in every part of Italy, the number of borders. The numbers for 1864 speak clearly, with 119 lay students out of a total of 490 students in the Ligurian seminaries. To be admitted to the university, it was necessary to have passed two years of rhetoric and a year of philosophy. The proposed curriculum usually included Latin, Italian, philosophy, sacred history, catechism, Greek and Roman history, prosody, algebra, geometry and physics. Unfortunately, the Genoese seminary’s archive has not preserved any documentary records concerning the years in question. In the first decades after Unification, the seminaries were at the centre of an important dispute between Church and state.7 The new-born Kingdom of Italy





5 ‘La devota religiosità del giovane Giacomo Della Chiesa. Tutte le mattine assisteva alla Santa Messa che si recitava nella cappella del Seminario prima delle lezioni, né mancava mai alle funzioni che nella cappella stessa si celebravano ed alle quali erano invitati anche gli alunni esterni’; Pietro Ansaldo, ‘Benedetto XV nei ricordi dei suoi Condiscepoli’, Fides nostra ( January 1920), pp. 7–11. 6 ‘In questa provincia l’insegnamento da lunghi anni costituisce quasi un monopolio nelle mani dei clericali e le famiglie più cospicue di Genova, piuttosto che ai ginnasi e licei governativi, affidano i loro figliuoli agli istituti retti da barnabiti, scolopi, somaschi, preti delle missioni e altri religiosi. Di preti, frati e suore son popolate tutte le scuole elementari, i convitti e i conservatori annessi alle opere pie; e se niuno finora ha creduto che tal fatto sia di grave nocumento, io per contrario lo reputo gravissimo e pernicioso per la politica’; Cristina Sagliocco, L’Italia in seminario (1861–1907) (Rome: Carocci, 2008), p. 160. 7 Cristina Sagliocco and Maurizio Sangalli, ‘I seminari’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 893–904.

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focussed on early and secondary education, not on the theological seminary, where the students’ choice to become priests was already clear. The high school seminaries were secondary schools run by the dioceses, and they became a source of friction between opposing needs. They all had to guarantee a thorough education, expanding the subjects taught, including the sciences, along with the required pedagogical structures, in order to benefit those who would not continue their theological studies, yet also had to do so without hindering those who would continue in an ecclesiastic vocation. The government wanted to regulate these high-school seminaries because many of the students never became priests or religious. Checks and inspections, which the Kingdom had already made mandatory for the other institutes of secondary education, were the means used to guarantee that scholastic regulations were observed. They met with little success, especially in the south, where repressive interventions were concentrated, often leading to shorter or longer closures of the seminaries that were reluctant to adapt to the new rules. Long considered hotbeds of anti-Italian sentiment, the seminaries, however, remained respected centres of formation in public opinion. This is why the work of nationalization, not to mention attempts at secularization, was slow and arduous, the goal sometimes being entirely blocked. Italian bishops continued to consider themselves the sole authorities on how the seminaries should be run, even to the point where, in 1872, a new law allowed them to dispense with national scholastic legislation when the students were solely clerics. At this point it was easy to put everyone in a cassock to escape state control. Yet, in 1874, of over 17,000 students, more than a quarter were actually laymen. The hybrid function of institutes that were both ecclesiastic as well as secular resulted in students having to sit for an examination at a government institute after finishing their secondary education in order to receive a diploma. The percentage of candidates from the diocesan secondary schools who passed, however, was always lower than those who had studied at their public counterparts.8 Many sensitive Catholics also found themselves profoundly torn between loyalty to the state and loyalty to the Church, at a time when the two seemed incompatible.9 Church and state, science and faith, religion and the modern world were important fault lines that fell asunder and deepened in the second half of the nineteenth century. From the ecclesiastic point of view, meanwhile, initiatives to promote vocations among the poor and to exempt clerics from military service — possible at the time by paying the state a large sum — were increasing and, in the dioceses of the most attentive bishops, vocational outreach was reorganized in more modern and effective ways.10 Genoa’s seminary, closed in 1799 and then reopened by Archbishop Giuseppe Spina in 1803, stood on top of a hill in the district of Carignano, where it had been built 8 On the years following Unification, see Sagliocco, L’Italia in seminario. 9 See Maurilio Guasco, ‘La formazione del clero: i seminari’, in Chiesa e potere politico dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 629–715. 10 See Xenio Toscani, ‘Il reclutamento del clero’, in Chiesa e potere politico, ed. by Chittolini and Miccoli, pp. 614–26.

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at the behest of Cardinal Stefano Durazzo in the middle of the seventeenth century. After it had reopened, it was enlarged by Cardinal Tadini and even further by one of his successors, Archbishop Salvatore Magnasco, the one who had also succeeded in regaining the villa of Chiappeto that had been confiscated from the Church under the laws of suppression and then sold to private individuals. Magnasco had the building restored and turned it into a minor seminary, which operated until the 1980s. At the time of Giacomo Della Chiesa’s birth, André Charvaz had only recently become archbishop. Born in Savoy in 1793, he had been tutor to Victor Emmanuel and then Bishop of Pinerolo. Chosen by Cavour after the episcopal see had been vacant for several years, he offered the Prime Minister, with whom he had always had a loyal relationship, the guarantee of becoming that indispensable key to reconciling ecclesiastic and civil authorities.11 His choices to rebuild the curia alienated him from the most intransigent but, in the long run, ensured a mitigation of the disputes between the left and the Church and between the anti-Piedmont nobility and the liberal clergy. He always emphasized the need to separate the political sphere from the religious one, even though this choice earned him the accusation of excessive acquiescence to the decisions of the Piedmont government, which many simply interpreted as anti-clerical. As vicar, he chose Abbott Pernigotti of the Carignano community, a stranger to the local church, who practically ran the diocese for long periods because of his repeated absences related to health problems aggravated by the city’s climate. He approached priests who were considered pro-Ghibelline, and thus ostracized from diocesan life. His choices did not facilitate relations with his priests, but they ferried the diocese out of the swamp in which it had become mired. The diocese underwent a deep crisis with the ratifying of the Rattazzi reforms, owing not only to the objective suppression they represented for religious institutes, but also to the perplexities they caused arising from attitude of the Bishop and his Vicar. Given Charvaz’s absence from Genoa, Abbott Pernigotti advised the priors and abbesses not to protest publicly or to resist state forces’ entry to the convents. Thirteen convents and one hundred and five priories in the Ligurian provinces were affected by the laws, forcing Augustinians, Benedictines, Dominicans, Poor Clares, Salesians, Capuchins and others to abandon their properties, which were then expropriated and sold. Even though Pius IX protested, the Archbishop remained silent. However, the diocese still managed to emerge from the difficult situation, demonstrating a religious fervour that might not otherwise have been revealed, with the birth and development of new male and female religious communities and a greater attention paid to the social hardships and poverty that oppressed so many people.

11 Bianca Montale, ‘Tra restaurazione e riformismo (1802–69)’, in Il cammino della Chiesa genovese dalle origini ai nostri giorni, ed. by Dino Puncuh (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1999), pp. 403–37; on Charvaz, see Giuseppe Oreste, ‘Note per uno studio dell’opinione pubblica in Genova 1853–60’, in Genova e l’impresa dei Mille, ed. by Arturo Codignola, 2 vols (Rome: Canesi, 1961), I, pp. 116–242 and the more recent Un évêque entre la Savoie et l’Italie: André Charvaz (1793–1870) précepteur de Victor-Emmanuel II, évêque de Pignerol, archevêque de Gênes: actes du colloque franco-italienne de Moûtiers, 10–12 septembre 1993, ed. by Jean-Dominique Durand, Maurius Hudry and Christian Sorrel (Chambéry: Institut d’études savoisiennes, 1994).

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Due to his attitude, the Savoyard Archbishop was always regarded with a certain coldness by the Pope, who considered him too entangled with the Savoyard government and, at the same time, too tepid in the interpretation of papal directives — as in the case of the Syllabus of Errors, which he interpreted with a pastoral caution that his superiors deemed excessive. It was not a stimulating moment for the diocese, to the point that priests’ ignorance and confessors’ lack of preparation were often noted. Charvaz had also found an embarrassing situation in the seminary because of its lack of discipline and backwardness. This was one of their greatest points of contention. Many letters crossed the Pope’s desk, lamenting, among other observations, that the Vice Rector, Don Angelo Costa, had said, ‘You cannot call Newton “damned”’, that the instructions of the Index were little followed, and that Gioberti’s works were praised.12 The Archbishop sent just as many letters to the Pope but, needless to say, the situation could not be improved. Charvaz wrote to Pope Pius IX that: In the first examinations, I found the studies so weak that several students did not know how to answer the questions that are asked for admittance to First Communion. I had to say that, if things did not improve, I would hold back the ignorant from ordination. Today, studies are what they should be and are accompanied with piety and discipline.13 Accused of being pro-liberal, Charvaz had, in fact, begun a reorganization of the curia and the seminary where unorthodox behaviours had taken root. Opposition was commonplace, so much so that the Archbishop complained of the harassment and persecution that he and his colleagues suffered from those who previously ‘had everyone under thumb’ and whose absolute power had been curtailed.14 In those difficult moments, his caution in avoiding conflict during years of great tension saved the city from irreparable damage; he concentrated his best energies on charitable and pastoral outreach.

3. University Student It was during Charvaz’s episcopate that Giacomo Della Chiesa began his philosophical studies at the seminary. He completed them in 1871, when diocesan leadership had passed to the intransigent Salvatore Magnasco, who had been acting as coadjutor for

12 Oreste, ‘Note’, pp. 226–27. 13 ‘J’ai trouvé les études si faibles dans les premiers examens que plusieurs élèves ne savaient pas répondre à des interrogations que l’on fait à ceux qu’il s’agit d’admettre à la première communion. J’ai dû dire que si les choses n’allaient pas mieux à l’avenir, je retiendrais les ignorants en arrière quand il s’agirait de l’ordination. Aujourd’hui les études sont ce qu’elles doivent être, et la piété et la discipline les accompagnent’; Giovanni Battista Varnier, ‘L’effervescence religieuse et politique à Gênes sous l’épiscopat de Mgr Charvaz’, in Un évêque, ed. by Durand, Hudry and Sorrel, pp. 165–81 (p. 180). 14 Oreste, ‘Note’, p. 202.

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two years.15 From a humble family, Magnasco was born in Portofino in 1806 and was able to follow his course of studies thanks to the support of benefactors. Ordained a priest in 1828, he taught speculative theology. After two postings as a parish priest — in the hinterlands of Montoggio and in Sestri Ponente, where the industrial process was just beginning — he was made a bishop in 1868 and immediately after that Archbishop Charvaz’s auxiliary. In this capacity, he participated in Vatican I, when he spoke in favour of the dogma of infallibility, putting himself in the running for succeeding Charvaz at the helm of the diocese. The years of his episcopate were characterized by intense pastoral outreach and by great conflict with the civil institutions. The Bishop’s style was marked by a clearly intransigent attitude that provoked a strong anti-clerical reaction. Among other consequences, the public celebration of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi was banned for a long time in the city. In these years, steps were taken to address the crisis in vocations, which resulted in a rapid growth of candidates for the priesthood. The Bishop sought every means to favour needy clerics and ordained 668 priests between 1871 and 1882. As we know, Della Chiesa was not one of these, but he was certainly immersed in this climate. These were the years that Giacomo Della Chiesa went on from the archiepiscopal seminary to the Royal University of Genoa. After obtaining his secondary school diploma, he had asked his father to be allowed to continue studying for the priesthood. His father asked him to continue to train at the Faculty of Law first. The serious situation of vocations in the diocese, highlighted in the Bishop’s pastoral letters, may not have been unrelated to his son’s requests: in that year, forty-nine priests died while only nine ordinations took place. A weak source recalls a reading from the future pontiff dating back to those very years. It concerns the Elevazioni sul mistero dell’Eucharistia raccolte dalle opere del beato Alberto Magno (Elucidations on the Mystery of the Eucharist Gathered from the Works of Blessed Albert the Great) written by Pio Alberto del Corona, from whom Della Chiesa reports having drawn ‘comfort and guidance’ when his father, while not opposing his vocation, asked him to obtain a degree first.16 After having passed the examination for admission to the first year of law on 13 November 1871, earning a score of 22/30, the young man began attending the University of Genoa, witnessing the closure of the Faculty of Theology, where Magnasco himself held the chair. Its final year before being suppressed was 1872–73. Following the closure of the state’s theology faculties, the St Thomas Aquinas Academy was established to confer theological degrees. Meanwhile, in 1872, the Bishop published a catechism for children that included the dogmas proclaimed by Pius IX. In the same year, Magnasco consecrated the

15 Antonio Durante, Monsignor Salvatore Magnasco arcivescovo di Genova (1806–1892) (Milan: Ancora, 1942), and Giovanni Battista Varnier, ‘Continuità e rotture (1870–1915)’, in Il cammino della Chiesa genovese, ed. by Puncuh, pp. 439–64. 16 See Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), p. 173.

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Diocese of Genoa to the Sacred Heart, in line with what was happening in many other Italian and European dioceses at the time. Civil authorities were absent from the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, and one can easily imagine that, on that day, Giacomo Della Chiesa heard the words of the orator Gaetano Alimonda, who from Charvaz’s times was a central figure of diocesan intransigency and Rector of the seminary in those difficult years between 1848 and 1853 when the episcopal see was vacant. We might also imagine Della Chiesa in the cathedral in June of 1875, when Alimonda gave the homily on the occasion of the celebrations — strongly desired by Magnasco — for the second centenary of the apparitions at Paray-le-Monial. His university years saw Della Chiesa involved in the fervour of the day and in the controversial split between pro-clerical and pro-liberal students. In 1874, he wrote to his classmate Pietro Ansaldo, summarizing ‘a plan of action for the laity who want to serve God’s cause and souls’, while we also know that, at university, he was the secretary of the Figliuoli di Pio IX youth circle, which supported the ‘prisoner Pope’. Scottà reports the words found on a holy card depicting the reigning Pope and a handwritten prayer by Giacomo that reveal his devotion to the Sacred Heart, to Mary the Immaculate and Sorrowful Mother and to the Pope himself: Most merciful Jesus, only you are our salvation, our life, our resurrection. We therefore beseech You, do not abandon us in our anguish and distress but, by the agony of your most Sacred Heart and the sorrows of your immaculate Mother, aid your servants whom you have redeemed with your precious blood.17 It supposedly dates to 1874, the year when the city held demonstrations in honour of the Pope on his eighty-second birthday. He also collaborated with the new Catholic newspaper Il Cittadino, established by Antonio Rivara in October 1873 at Magnasco’s request, who saw the press as a fundamental weapon in the battle against secularism and society’s de-Christianization.18 Along the path that led him to the priesthood, Giacomo certainly also saw on occasion F. Giacomo Raggi, his great-uncle, a Capuchin who, in 1873, after the forced separation from his priory following the suppression of religious orders, became President of the Ospedale dei cronici where he often invited his nephew, who went to visit the sick and meet with his uncle.19 However, other roots to the first spiritual and charitable experiences of the young Giacomo can also be found. For example, for at least three generations, the men of the family belonged to the Veneranda compagnia di misericordia, which

17 ‘Clementissime Iesu, salus, vita, resurrectio nostra Tu solus es: Te ergo quaesumus, ne derelinquas nos in angustiis et perturbationibus nostris, sed per agoniam Cordis tui Sanctissimi et per dolores Matris tuae immaculatae, tuis famulis subveni, quos pretioso sanguine redemisti’; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 169–71. 18 Consulting the first-year publications of Il Cittadino did not reveal what form the collaboration took. 19 On his great-uncle, see Frédégand Callaey of Antwerp, La famiglia di S. S. Benedetto XV e l’ordine dei frati minori cappuccini (Rome: Curia Generalizia dei Frati Minori Cappuccini, 1916).

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took care of prisoners and those condemned to death.20 In 1864, the father of the future Pope was one of the supporters of an institute for the assistance to former prisoners and, in 1867, of a correctional facility for minors. The traditional, brotherly fabric of the city is thus revealed, both ancient in origin and always lively. It was in this environment, on the occasion of his spiritual exercises for Easter of 1874, that he met the Abbot of Santa Maria di Carignano, Tommaso Reggio, who became Archbishop of Genoa in 1892. After having successfully passed most of his exams, on 5 August 1875, the twentyone-year-old Giacomo defended his dissertation before a commission presided over by Giuseppe Bruzzo, professor of institutions of Roman law, and obtained the title of Doctor in Jurisprudence. The dissertation was a short piece dedicated to examining the methods of interpreting laws, emphasizing their potential for development and adaptation. In his thesis, Della Chiesa distinguished the proper interpretation of the legislator (authentic), of judicial authority (usual or judicial) and of jurisconsults (doctrinal), according to the method of literal, logical-rational and historical methods. Perfect interpretation is a synthesis, such that, ‘in it one can truly find that polar star by whose light he may navigate confidently and surely to the port of Justice, when otherwise there would be nothing but a universal empire of darkness’.21 It is easy to understand how Della Chiesa’s formation in jurisprudence, the first pontiff to obtain an academic qualification from a secular university, was subsequently relevant to completing the process of the revision of canon law. When the Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1917, the former student immediately sent a copy of it to the Genoese university. After graduating, Giacomo left Genoa with his family to study in Rome, which had become capital of the Kingdom of Italy just a few years earlier. Three years later, in 1878, he was ordained a priest.

Bibliography Ansaldo, Pietro, ‘Benedetto XV nei ricordi dei suoi Condiscepoli’, Fides nostra ( January 1920), pp. 7–11 Callaey of Antwerp, Frédégand, La famiglia di S. S. Benedetto XV e l’ordine dei frati minori cappuccini (Rome: Curia Generalizia dei Frati Minori Cappuccini, 1916) Chiron, Yves, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014) Durand, Jean-Dominique, Maurius Hudry and Christian Sorrel, eds, Un évêque entre la Savoie et l’Italie: André Charvaz (1793–1870) précepteur de Victor-Emmanuel II, évêque

20 See La Veneranda Compagnia di Misericordia dal medioevo al terzo millennio, ed. by Claudio Paolocci (Genoa: Associazione Amici della Biblioteca Franzoniana, 2003). 21 ‘Che in essa si possa veramente salutare quella stella polare alla cui luce solo si può navigare con sicurezza e fiducia di entrar nel porto della Giustizia, quando altrimenti non si avrebbe che l’universale impero delle tenebre’; see Giovanni Battista Varnier, ‘La formazione giuridica di Giacomo Della Chiesa nell’Università di Genova: la tesi di laurea del 1875’, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, n. s., 47, 2 (2007), pp. 419–50.

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de Pignerol, archevêque de Gênes: actes du colloque franco-italienne de Moûtiers, 10–12 septembre 1993 (Chambéry: Institut d’études savoisiennes, 1994) Durante, Antonio, Monsignor Salvatore Magnasco arcivescovo di Genova (1806–1892) (Milan: Ancora, 1942) Guasco, Maurilio, ‘La formazione del clero: i seminari’, in Chiesa e potere politico dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 629–715 Montale, Bianca, ‘Tra restaurazione e riformismo (1802–69)’, in Il cammino della Chiesa genovese dalle origini ai nostri giorni, ed. by Dino Puncuh (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1999), pp. 403–37 Oreste, Giuseppe, ‘Note per uno studio dell’opinione pubblica in Genova 1853–60’, in Genova e l’impresa dei Mille, ed. by Arturo Codignola, 2 vols (Rome: Canesi, 1961), I, pp. 116–242 Paolocci, Claudio, ed., La Veneranda Compagnia di Misericordia dal medioevo al terzo millennio (Genoa: Associazione Amici della Biblioteca Franzoniana, 2003) Sagliocco, Cristina, L’Italia in seminario (1861–1907) (Rome: Carocci, 2008) Sagliocco, Cristina, and Maurizio Sangalli, ‘I seminari’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 893–904 Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Toscani, Xenio, ‘Il reclutamento del clero’, Chiesa e potere politico dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 614–26 Varnier, Giovanni Battista, ‘Continuità e rotture (1870–1915)’, in Il cammino della Chiesa genovese dalle origini ai nostri giorni, ed. by Dino Puncuh (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1999), pp. 439–64 Varnier, Giovanni Battista, ‘L’effervescence religieuse et politique à Gênes sous l’épiscopat de Mgr Charvaz’, in Un évêque entre la Savoie et l’Italie: André Charvaz (1793–1870) précepteur de Victor-Emmanuel II, évêque de Pignerol, archevêque de Gênes: actes du colloque franco-italienne de Moûtiers, 10–12 septembre 1993, ed. by Jean-Dominique Durand, Maurius Hudry and Christian Sorrel (Chambéry: Institut d’études savoisiennes, 1994), pp. 165–81 Varnier, Giovanni Battista, ‘La formazione giuridica di Giacomo Della Chiesa nell’Università di Genova: la tesi di laurea del 1875’, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, n. s., 47, 2 (2007), pp. 419–50

Maurilio Guasco

The Students of the Almo Collegio Capranica at the Time of Rector Francesco Vinciguerra

1.

The Establishment of the Almo Collegio Capranica

Domenico Capranica, founder of the seminary that bears his name, was born in Capranica Prenestina on 31 May 1400. He studied at the universities of Padua and Bologna, and, in 1424, was appointed Bishop of Fermo. He held the office of governor of Romagna from 1426 until 1430, when he was appointed Governor of Perugia and Duke of Spoleto. In the same year he was made a cardinal, although according to some he had already been honoured with this cardinalship in a secret consistory in 1423 or, according to others, in 1426. In any case, he received the emblems of the office only in 1434. In those years he held various other offices.1 One of the Cardinal’s most important works was his Quaedam avisamenta super reformatione Papae et Romanae Curiae, which, however, did not gain much recognition.2 In 1456, he expressed his intentions to establish a Collegium Pauperum Scholarium, whose foundation was ratified on 5 January 1457. The date when the seminary first received students is not entirely certain, but by 19 May the institute was operating. Cardinal Capranica died on 14 August 1458, eight days after the death of Callixtus III, whom everyone thought he would succeed.





1 In particular, see two works that are dedicated to his life: Santo Gangemi, La vita e l’attività del cardinale Domenico Capranica (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1992) and Alessandro Saraco, Il cardinale Domenico Capranica (1400–1458) e la riforma della Chiesa (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 2004). See also Maria Morpurgo-Castelnuovo, ‘Il cardinale Domenico Capranica’, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 52 (1929), pp. 9–142, and Simona Negruzzo, ‘Prime indagini sugli alunni del Collegio Capranica di Roma in età moderna’, Humanitas, 67, 3 (2012), pp. 452–63. On the College’s first Constitutions, see articles by Prospero Simonelli in the College’s review, the Capranicense. On the library that the founder bequeathed to the College, see Alessandro Saraco, La biblioteca capranicense (Rome: n. pub., 2002), and Gangemi, La vita, pp. 211–31. On the years preceding Della Chiesa’s arrival at the College, see Roberto Regoli, ‘L’almo collegio Capranica nella prima metà del XIX secolo’, in Scuola e itinerari formativi dallo Stato pontificio a Roma capitale: l’istruzione superiore, ed. by Carmela Covato and Manola Ida Venzo (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 73–84 (with bibliography). 2 The text of the proposed reforms is found in Saraco, Il cardinale Domenico Capranica, pp. 165–75.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 103–107 FHG

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There are many testimonials locating him within the historical records. For example, the Ambassador of the Duke of Milan, Ottone da Carretto, wrote to Duke Francesco Sforza to inform him of the Cardinal’s death: My Illustrious Lord, the most wise, perfectly learned, and holy prelate that God’s Church has had in our times has died. His whole life was dedicated to the exaltation of the Roman Church. He was a pillar of peace in Italy and a mirror of piety and every holiness. Everyone believed that they would soon venerate him as pope because the parties were in agreement regarding his election. Now, full of sorrow, we must attend this man’s funeral. Similar testimony can be found in Antoninus of Florence’s Chronicon: It is with much sorrow and pain that we note the death of Domenico of Capranica, who was known by all for his great virtue. Truly he was a righteous man, beloved by all on account of his uprightness, prudence and good counsel. Father of the religious and refuge to all, he extended his hand to the poor, never ceased in his studies, and elegantly governed many places. Vespasiano da Bisticci, in his Vite degli uomini illustri, wrote the following about Domenico Capranica: A man foreign to worldly pomp and circumstance, he lived simply at home. […] He was known for being of great continence. He could not have been more contrary to the ceremonies of the court. When persons who did not know him went to speak to him, bowing and then kneeling to the ground saying: ‘I have come before your most reverend lordship’, he would respond: ‘Let us leave aside all these “monsignors”. Come, tell me what you want’. […] The Cardinal from Fermo is truly to be numbered among the worthy persons of God’s Church.3 Many other testimonials regarding Capranica’s death could be mentioned, proof of the reputation and admiration he had earned.



3 ‘Mio illustre signore, è morto il più saggio, perfetto dotto e santo prelato che avesse ai nostri giorni la Chiesa di Dio. Tutta la sua vita era dedicata all’esaltazione della chiesa romana. Egli era la colonna della pace d’Italia e uno specchio di pietà e ogni santità. Tutti credevano cosa certa di poterlo presto venerare pontefice perché i partiti erano d’accordo nella sua elezione. E ora pieni di dolore dobbiamo assistere ai funerali di quest’uomo’; ‘Multum tristitie et doloris mors Dominici de Capranica intulit cunctis, qui noverant eum propter eminentes virtutes eius. Vere hic homo iustus erat, propter rectitudinem eius a cunctis dilectus, prudentia et consilio magnus, religiosorum pater et refugium, manus copiose extendebat ad pauperes, studiosus a lectione non cessabat, in diversis partibus legationum eleganter exercens’; ‘Un uomo alieno d’ogni fasto e pompa del mondo e viveva in casa sua parcamente […] Era di lui fama che fusse di grandissima continenza. Era tenuto nimico delle cerimonie che s’usano in corte, che più non ne poteva essere. Andavano alcuni a parlargli, che non sapevano la sua natura, e cavavansi di capo, e poi s’inginocchiavano infino in terra e dicevano: io sono venuto dinanzi alla reverendissima vostra Signoria. Come egli cominciava, ed egli rispondeva: lasciamo andare tanti monsignori: vieni a dire quel che tu voglia […] Il cardinale firmano è davvero da annoverare tra il numero degli uomini degni che avesse la chiesa di Dio’; cited in Saraco, Il cardinale Domenico Capranica, pp. 32–33.

The Students of the Almo Collegio Capranica at the Time of Vinciguerra

As mentioned above, his palace became a house of formation for future Roman priests. What distinguished Capranica’s seminary from the others that already existed, or would be opened, was its democratic structure. Power over it was exercised by a rector who was elected by the students and assisted by four councilors.4 Cardinal Capranica was concerned about the students’ theological formation, which had been rather poor up until then. He therefore wanted a good professor of theology in the seminary. Essentially a conservative, he defended a highly papal ecclesiology. The need for a better formation of the clergy appears in his proposals for reform, even though he held that Church renewal should begin from the head to spread a new spirit throughout the body. He also proposed a more extensive informational process for selecting bishops and greater care in assigning benefits.5 These ideals, then, set the stage for the Capranica College’s Constitutions. Everything was regulated, and among the prohibitions were gambling, familiarity with women and disagreeable discourse; students were not allowed to go for aimless walks, in or outside Rome. There is then a long list of punishments to be enforced against those who violated the Constitutions.6 However, the history recounts that quarrels between rectors and students were frequent. One student even drew a harquebus rifle on a rector. In 1592, thus after the close of the Council of Trent, the Pope instituted a new overseer, a cardinal protector. In the meantime, its democratic character was abolished and, in 1551, it became obligatory to attend the newly founded Collegio Romano.

2. The Collegio Capranica during the Years of Giacomo Della Chiesa Francesco Vinciguerra held the office of Rector of the College from 1851 to 1884,7 during the years that Giacomo Della Chiesa was a student there. To be precise, the



4 The first official document attesting to the functioning of the College is dated 1492: it had the rector, four councillors, two librarians, two chaplains, twenty-four students and servants. The impoverished students were between fifteen and thirty-five years of age. 5 Saraco, Il cardinale Domenico Capranica, pp. 89–102. The reform proposals can be found in his Quedam avisamenta. There is some disagreement on the date when it was written, but Jedin, in his work on the Council of Trent, judged it a document of great authority ‘because in its pages we hear one of the outstanding personalities of the period of the papal restoration’; Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, trans. by Dom Ernest Graf, 2 vols (London: Nelson, 1957–61), I: The Struggle for the Council (1957), p. 120. 6 The text of the Constitutions is in Saraco, Il cardinale Domenico Capranica, pp. 189–265. 7 Mgr Francesco Maria Vinciguerra (1820–84), alumnus of the Capranica College, was ordained a priest in 1843. In 1846 he was appointed Pro-Rector and, five years later, Rector of the Capranica. In 1882, he became a Canon of the Vatican Basilica and, the same year, was appointed a personal prelate of His Holiness by Pope Leo XIII. He almost certainly died at the College.

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future Pope Benedict XV attended the Capranica from 20 November 18758 to 13 July 1879. Ordained a priest on 21 December 1878 in the Basilica of St John Lateran by Cardinal Monaco La Valletta, one of Leo XIII’s auxiliaries, Della Chiesa celebrated his first Mass the following day in St Peter’s, then in the Church of the Gesù and finally in Saint Mary Major. The following year he entered the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles, an institution for training future apostolic nuncios. During the years he was at the Capranica, he had about sixty classmates: forty-four Italians from various regions, four French, four Belgians, two Swiss, two Germans, one Maltese and one Irish. In practice, almost all were from dioceses and countries that would be represented in the following years. Generally speaking, at least until a few years ago, precedence was given to those recommended by former students, which explains the continuity of students’ origins. There was also a certain deference, including scholarships, given to applicants from Fermo, whose see had been held by the seminary’s founder. Some of the Capranica’s students from Della Chiesa’s time had a respectable ecclesiastical career; some left the ministry. Eriberto Fonti, originally from Senigallia in Marche, became Archpriest of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Luigi Misciatelli, originally from Orvieto in Umbria, entered the Academy and was appointed Honorary Canon of the Chapter, Archpriest of the Cathedral of Orvieto and later a Vatican Canon and Sub-Prefect of the Apostolic Palace. Isidoro Fanelli, originally from Florence, was a metropolitan canon and a professor of philosophy. Augusto Poggioli, originally from Rome, entered the Society of Jesus. Others became pastors or canons. Some became bishops: Luigi Boschi, originally from the Diocese of Fermo, became Bishop of Ripatransone and Apostolic Administrator of Montaldo. Leonard Ludwig Baumbach, originally from Switzerland, became Titular of Gerasa and Bishop of Nicopoli, Bulgaria. Franceso Moretti, originally from Arezzo in Tuscany, became Bishop of Narni, which was united with the See of Terni, and was later named Titular of Laodicea before becoming Auditor General of the Apostolic Camera. Pasquale Gagliardi, originally from Tricarico in Basilicata, was named Archbishop of Manfredonia. Sebastiano Nicotra, originally from Acireale in Sicily, had a true and proper diplomatic career. After serving as secretary to Apostolic Nuncio Giuseppe FrancicaNava, he was appointed Nuncio to Munich in 1901 then transferred to Vienna. In 1915, he was nominated Referendary Prelate of the Signatura and Canon of Santa Maria in Trastevere. In 1916, he was sent as Internuncio to Chile, after having been consecrated as Titular Archbishop of Heraclea in Europa, receiving ordination from Benedict XV himself in the Sistine Chapel. He later became Nuncio to Chile and, in

8 Benedict XV himself recalled this in his motu proprio Nobilissimam (1917): ‘It was 20 November 1875 and, as night fell, we stepped for the first time into the chapel of the Capranica College’ (‘era il 20 novembre 1875 e, sul cader della notte, Noi mettevamo per la prima volta il piede nella cappella del collegio Capranica’); Alfonso Carinci, Note illustrative del motu-proprio ‘Nobilissimam’ con cui S. S. Benedetto XV destinava gli alunni capranicensi al servizio della patriarcale Basilica Liberiana (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1918), p. 23. It should also be noted that the seminary’s student registry indicates a different entry date (21 November).

The Students of the Almo Collegio Capranica at the Time of Vinciguerra

1918, he was named Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium and Internuncio to Holland and Luxembourg. Finally, in 1923, he was appointed Nuncio to Portugal. The Enciclopedia cattolica mentions only one of his classmates: Enrico Maria Pezzani, from Cremona in Lombardy. He was a jurist, a professor of canon law at the Vatican seminary.9 There are no other documents in the archives of the Capranica College. Currently undergoing a reorganization, it cannot be excluded that other significant papers may emerge concerning the years in which Giacomo Della Chiesa was a student there. At that time, no one could predict that he would one day become pope. It could only have been foreseen that he would have a significant ecclesiastical career. Being of noble origin and, what is more, intelligent, it was his destiny.

Bibliography Carinci, Alfonso, Note illustrative del motu-proprio ‘Nobilissimam’ con cui S. S. Benedetto XV destinava gli alunni capranicensi al servizio della patriarcale Basilica Liberiana (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1918) Gangemi, Santo, La vita e l’attività del cardinale Domenico Capranica (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1992) Jedin, Hubert, A History of the Council of Trent, trans. by Dom Ernest Graf, 2 vols (London: Nelson, 1957–61), I: The Struggle for the Council (1957) Morpurgo-Castelnuovo, Maria, ‘Il cardinale Domenico Capranica’, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 52 (1929), pp. 9–142 Negruzzo, Simona, ‘Prime indagini sugli alunni del Collegio Capranica di Roma in età moderna’, Humanitas, 67, 3 (2012), pp. 452–63 Palazzini, Giuseppe, ‘Pezzani, Enrico Maria’, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols (Vatican City: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il libro cattolico, 1948–54), IX (1952), col. 1309 Regoli, Roberto, ‘L’almo collegio Capranica nella prima metà del XIX secolo’, in Scuola e itinerari formativi dallo Stato pontificio a Roma capitale: l’istruzione superiore, ed. by Carmela Covato and Manola Ida Venzo (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 73–84 (with bibliography) Saraco, Alessandro, La biblioteca capranicense (Rome: n. pub., 2002) Saraco, Alessandro, Il cardinale Domenico Capranica (1400–1458) e la riforma della Chiesa (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 2004)



9 Giuseppe Palazzini, ‘Pezzani, Enrico Maria’, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols (Vatican City: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il libro cattolico, 1948–54), IX (1952), col. 1309.

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A Diplomat of Leo XIII

Klaus Unterburger

From Minutante to Sostituto in the Papal Secretariat of State

Old customs of patronage and favouritism still characterized the papal curia during the nineteenth century.1 Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro was Giacomo Della Chiesa’s patron and it was to him that the latter owed his ascent. Rampolla made him his personal secretary when he became Nuncio in Madrid and on his appointment in 1887 as Cardinal Secretary of State called him to the Secretariat of State, where Della Chiesa started out working as minutante, becoming later sostituto (1901). When Rampolla lost the election to the papacy in 1903, he was obliged to leave the Secretariat of State, but Della Chiesa nonetheless maintained his post under Rafael Merry del Val until 1908, when he was nominated Archbishop of Bologna. However, Della Chiesa owed his rise entirely to Rampolla.2 Although his two decades at the Secretariat of State undoubtedly had a profound effect on Della Chiesa, the question remains as to how much freedom of action he had during that time and whether it is possible to outline a specific characteristic and distinct profile of his work there. In his capacity as minutante he had to sift and read through the incoming correspondence and then draft the letters on behalf of the Cardinal Secretary of State. This required both a close knowledge of the intentions and objectives of papal policy and expertise and competence in handling the issues and personalities concerned. Naturally, such clerical work was conscripted by instructions, but in the case of Della Chiesa it was obviously conducted in a close and trusting relationship with his superior. The missions on which he was sent as special envoy, however, required him to take greater personal responsibility for his actions. In 1901, Della Chiesa moved a rung higher in his career when he was promoted to the post of sostituto for Ordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, while Pietro Gasparri was

1 See Christoph Weber, Kardinäle und Prälaten in den letzten Jahrzehnten des Kirchenstaates: EliteRekrutierung, Karriere-Muster und soziale Zusammensetzung der kurialen Führungsschicht zur Zeit Pius IX. (1846–1878) (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1978). 2 ‘The protection and friendship of a great churchman, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, was decisive for his further career’ (‘für seinen weiteren Werdegang entscheidend wurde die Protektion und Freundschaft eines großen Kirchenmannes, des Kardinals Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro’); Jörg Ernesti, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016), p. 33.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 111–120 FHG

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made Secretary for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, above all those concerning the concordats.3 In his role as sostituto, Della Chiesa not only substituted Rampolla but also received nuncios and diplomats besides members of other dicasteries of the Roman curia, and he himself had regular access to the Pope. As sostituto he was also in a position to harbour justified hopes of rising to the cardinalate himself one day. It was above all expertise, sound judgement and loyalty that a sostituto’s role required, while his scope for creative action was still limited. As he later noted, his relationship to Merry del Val was correct but not close,4 unlike his relationship to Rampolla. Pius X’s practice of circumventing the organs of the curia by means of his Private Secretary seems to have been criticized by Della Chiesa.5 Thus, he worked for a long time within this context, in favour of the objectives of Rampolla’s policy, while his own decisions were rarely sought. Nevertheless, the fundamental principles of Della Chiesa’s later pontificate can already be seen and developed from this task.

1.

Non expedit and Ius publicum ecclesiasticum

The Secretariat of State received and seconded emissaries and nuncios as if the Pope were a sovereign ruler, hence on the same level as other governments. However, since 1870 this no longer conformed to reality as the Kingdom of Italy declared time and time





3 Yves Chiron, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014), pp. 64–66. 4 ‘Undoubtedly, before the opening of the conclave, Bishop Della Chiesa had believed that the election of Cardinal Rampolla to the supreme pontificate was possible. He might reasonably have thought that Rampolla, once pope, would name him Secretary of State. His reaction to the failed election is not known. In any case, he remained a loyal collaborator of the new Pope and of the new Secretary of State […]. On the other hand, Pius X did not exclude all the “Rampollians”. Both Gasparri and Della Chiesa were confirmed in their functions at the Secretariat of State. The relationship between Merry del Val and Della Chiesa were at times difficult. Benedict XV would later say that his relationship with the Secretary of State had been “correct but certainly not intimate”’ (‘sans doute, avant l’ouverture du conclave, Mgr Della Chiesa avait-il cru possible l’élection du cardinal Rampolla au souverain pontificat. Il pouvait penser raisonnablement que Rampolla devenu pape, il aurait été nommé secrétaire d’État. On ignore quelle a été sa réaction après l’élection manqué. En tout cas il est resté un collaborateur loyal du nouveau pape et du nouveau secrétaire d’État […]. En revanche, Pie X n’exclut pas tous les “rampolliens”. Gasparri comme Della Chiesa furent confirmés dans leur fonction à la Secrétairerie d’État. Les rapports entre Merry Del Val et Della Chiesa seront parfois difficiles. Plus tard, Benoît XV dira que ses rapports avec le secrétaire d’État avaient été “corrects mais certes pas intimes”’); Chiron, Benoît XV, p. 79. 5 ‘Della Chiesa deplored the disorder that reigned in the Secretariat of State “due to the rescripts that were made by the Private Secretary of Pius X and to the letters of Mgr Bressan that promised favours and posts in the name of the Pope”. In addition, Cassetta also writes: “It seems that Mgr Merry del Val does not get along well with Mgr Della Chiesa, but the latter is very crafty […] very hard-working and very talented”’ (‘Della Chiesa deplorava il disordine che regnava in Segreteria di Stato “per i rescritti che si fanno nella segreteria privata di Pio X e per le lettere di mons. Bressan che a nome del Papa promette provvedimenti e posti”. Inoltre sempre il Cassetta scrive: “sembra che mons. Merry del Val poco vada d’accordo con mons. Della Chiesa, ma questi è molto furbo […], laboriosissimo e di gran talento”’); Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), p. 48.

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again that the pope no longer ruled over a sovereign nation and could accordingly no longer be treated as such. For the papacy’s self-perception this proved to constitute an existential crisis, not simply because it was felt that the capture of Rome on 20 September and the loss of the Papal States had been a severe sacrilegious injustice tantamount to an act of violence. The fact that the self-perception of the papacy in the nineteenth century was closely interwoven with the question of sovereignty was crucial,6 since it is clear that the pope can make sovereign, ultimately binding decisions only if he himself is not subordinate to anyone else. However, without a territory to call his own, sovereignty seemed illusory as the pope was ultimately subject to another power. This endangered Church governance and, from the pope’s perspective, the salvation of souls. Under no circumstance, therefore, could he accept the modern Italian State, and Catholics were not permitted to participate in political life, either as voters or as elected parliamentarians, as is illustrated by the famous formula of the non expedit policy.7 The schools of thought prevailing in Rome at the close of the nineteenth century differed in promulgating a solution to this grave crisis, which would quite simply have required the restitution of the Papal States and, above all, of the city of Rome. Opposing such an integralist view, the Roman seminary of Sant’Apollinare, which had also strongly influenced Della Chiesa’s attitude, had developed a spiritualist view of the Church.8 According to this school, the Church was sovereign and invested with its own public law, but belonged, unlike the state, to another, supernatural, order. The question that followed this concerned the form of statehood afforded to the sovereign subject of the Holy See.9 Could independence truly be guaranteed if the pope had to be reconciled with Italy and acknowledge its conquests?

6 Hermann Josef Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit und Souveränität: die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit im System der ultramontanen Ekklesiologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Mainz: Grünewald, 1975). 7 Saretta Marotta, ‘Il “non expedit”’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 215–35; Saretta Marotta, ‘L’evoluzione del dibattito sul “non expedit” all’interno della Curia Romana tra il 1860 e il 1889’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 68, 1 (2014), pp. 95–164; Maurice Vaussard, La fin du pouvoir temporel des papes (Paris: Spes, 1964); Giovanni Spadolini, Le due Rome: Chiesa e Stato fra ’800 e ’900 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973); Andrea Piola, La questione romana nella storia e nel diritto: da Cavour al trattato del Laterano (Milan: Giuffrè, 1969). 8 ‘The positions of De Angelis on the power of the pope in temporal matters and those articulated in the arguments against Tarquini and the Jesuits on the contractual and non-privileged juridical nature of the concordat suggest that, unlike the ultramontanist canonists, the Apollinare school had already at the end of the 1870s evolved, at the same time as the event of Vatican I, towards a conception of pontifical authority that was more spiritualized and towards a more politically flexible attitude towards the liberal Italian State’ (‘le posizioni di De Angelis intorno al potere del papa in materia temporale e quelle pronunciate nella polemica contro Tarquini e i gesuiti sulla natura giuridica contrattuale e non privilegiaria del concordato fanno ritenere che, al contrario della canonistica ultramontana, la scuola dell’Apollinare già alla fine degli anni 1870 abbia evoluto, in corrispondenza con l’evento del Vaticano I, verso una concezione dell’autorità pontificia più spiritualizzata e verso un atteggiamento nei confronti dello Stato liberale italiano politicamente più flessibile’); Carlo Fantappiè, Chiesa romana e modernità giuridica, 2 vols (Milan: Giuffrè, 2008), I, pp. 192–93. 9 Fantappiè, Chiesa romana, I, p. 373.

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There were two ways of escaping the absolutely disadvantageous situation of being a ‘prisoner in the Vatican’, which Italy did not recognize but on whose legal guarantees the said prisoner depended. One possibility was to mobilize the international community of nations and turn Rome into an international question, since it was obvious that Italy would never relinquish Rome of its own volition. The other option was to mobilize the Italian Catholics themselves. Although the suffrage granted only a wealthy male minority the right to vote, Italy was a nation in which practising Catholics constituted the majority, so that their vote would have had a decisive influence. However, this would have necessitated both a powerful organization and effective educational and press efforts. Catholicism, on the other hand, was as yet barely politicized and, above all, so splintered regionally that a unified state seemed still very remote.10 The ecclesiology of mobilizing through unifying was taught at the Sant’Apollinare seminary and shared by Rampolla. It espoused a papacy that was the driving force of ecclesiastic and Church life, hence also of reforms and changes. Consequently, the first key mission with which Rampolla entrusted Della Chiesa (together with Gaetano De Lai) was to visit all the metropolitan bishops in Italy, impress on them the Pope’s position on the Roman Question and simultaneously undertake efforts at mobilizing the Catholics.11

2. Centralization and Mobilization 1887 appeared to turn into an important year for the Roman Question. First, it marked the end of the Kulturkampf with the German Empire. In a speech held on 23 May, the Pope called Germany a blessed nation, since the Catholic Church had regained its freedom there.12 Della Chiesa also expressed his long-standing wish to come to an understanding with Italy that might provide a solution by which the Pope would not be subjected to any power and could freely and truly exercise his rights. Secondly, Crispi’s government intensified its anti-Church course. On 15 June, Leo XIII wrote a letter to his new Secretary of State, Rampolla, outlining the principles of his policy. Being in possession of sovereignty was an absolute, never-to-be-relinquished condition in order to exercise the papal office freely and with dignity. Thus, it was not a matter of the pope striving to hold worldly or proprietary powers, but the historic injustice of 1870 that had to be fundamentally redressed.13

10 Alessandra Marani, Una nuova istituzione ecclesiastica contro la secolarizzazione: le conferenze episcopali regionali (1889–1914) (Rome: Herder, 2009). 11 Antonio Scottà, ‘Lo Stato liberale e il progetto di infeudazione della Chiesa di Roma: missione esplorativa fra i metropoliti d’Italia di mons. Giacomo Della Chiesa’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 31–35. 12 Leo XIII, Episcoporum Ordinem, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 19 (1886), pp. 515–17. 13 ‘Always, during the course of Our Pontificate, according to what was Our duty, we have claimed for the Roman Pontiff an effective sovereignty, not for ambition, not for the purposes of earthly greatness, but as a true and effective protection of his independence and freedom’ (‘sempre, nel corso del Nostro Pontificato, secondo che era debito Nostro, abbiamo rivendicato pel Romano Pontefice

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Rampolla sent this letter to all the papal nuncios aiming to internationalize the Roman Question, as it was thought that a solution would be more forthcoming on the international level. Simultaneously, however, Della Chiesa was sent to all Italian metropolitans. His task was, on the one hand, to explain and impress upon the metropolitans the papal principles and, on the other, to sound out their reception within the Italian Church. Moreover, his visit also served the purpose of fostering and promoting the formation of a Catholic press and Catholic lay associations that were to politicize Catholics in order to exert pressure on Italy in the matter of the Roman Question.14 The Italian Church was not yet one cohesive entity, as its small dioceses and regional initiatives still reflected the country that had existed prior to national unity. Thus, Della Chiesa’s programme was centralistic in its aim to let the papacy have control and mobilize the archbishops, who in turn were to assume a similar function over their suffragan bishops.15 It was important to guarantee the unity of the Catholic movement in Italy and to prevent it from disintegrating into

un’effettiva sovranità, non per ambizione, né a scopo di terrena grandezza, ma come vera ed efficace tutela della sua indipendenza e libertà’); Leo XIII, Quantunque le siano, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 20 (1887), p. 12. 14 ‘The points on which the individual metropolitans were invited to reflect were the following […] “(4) To this end the bishops must: deal with the question in their pastoral letters, bring about demonstrations of adhesion, propagate analogous pontifical acts, encourage the Catholic press to support the communicated positions and valiantly refute contrary arguments. (5) To encourage people of a certain prestige and literary valour to write some pamphlets on the subject. (6) To underline that at present the Supreme Pontiff finds himself in Italy sub hostili dominatione constitutus and thus their acts should always be consistent with this abnormal state of the sufferance of the Catholic Church” […]. “Questions to be prepared to verify the tenor of the addresses: (1) What are the conditions of the Catholic press in the respective dioceses; whether it is subject to ecclesiastical authority; whether and how it receives inspirations and warnings. (2) What, in their opinion, would be the most effective and practical means to ensure the conformity of the Catholic press in direction, charity and refinement that in no way diminishes the defence of truth and justice?”’ (‘i punti sui quali s’invitava a riflettere i singoli metropoliti erano i seguenti […] “(4) A questo scopo i vescovi dovranno: trattare la questione nelle loro pastorali, provocare manifestazioni di adesione, far propaganda degli analoghi atti pontifici, eccitare la stampa cattolica a sostenere le comunicate tesi e a confutare valorosamente gli argomenti contrari. (5) Sollecitare persone di certo prestigio e valore letterario a scrivere qualche opuscolo in proposito. (6) Sottolineare che al presente il Sommo Pontefice si trova in Italia sub hostili dominatione constitutus e quindi i loro atti si trovino sempre in coerenza con questo stato anormale di patimento della Chiesa Cattolica” […]. “Quesiti da preparare per verificare il tenore degli indirizzi: (1) Quali sono le condizioni della stampa cattolica nelle rispettive diocesi; se è sottomessa all’autorità ecclesiastica; se e come ne riceva le ispirazioni e gli ammonimenti. (2) Quale sarebbe a loro giudizio il mezzo pratico e più efficace onde seguire dalla stampa cattolica la conformità nell’indirizzo, la carità ed urbanità nei modi, senza in nulla sminuire la difesa della verità e della giustizia?”’); Scottà, ‘Lo Stato’, pp. 34–35. 15 ‘But in the strictly ecclesiastic sphere, the survey showed a not inconsiderable lack of homogeneity in the most distinct episcopal body, that of the metropolitans, which caused Pope Leo XIII considerable discouragement, since he felt more clearly the danger of a process of de-Christianization. This also explains the new direction taken by the pontifical magisterium, which would dwell with particular insistence on the great themes of political, civil, family and social life’ (‘ma nell’ambito strettamente ecclesiale, il sondaggio dimostrava una non trascurabile disomogeneità del corpo episcopale più distinto, quello appunto dei metropoliti, che procurò particolare sconforto al papa Leone XIII, che

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opposing, rival directions. As special envoy, Della Chiesa engaged in significant exchanges with the archbishops of Florence, Bologna, Venice, Genoa and Turin, who were to play an outstanding role in constructing a Catholic movement and in establishing relationships with the Italian State.16 Della Chiesa became a convinced agent in mobilizing the laity. Initiated and managed centrally from Rome, this mobilization was to be driven forward by the archbishops, bishops and priests acting as a kind of chain of command. Even in his later years as sostituto, this question of mobilizing the Catholic movement in Italy was to remain one of his central fields of activity.

3. Ralliement and Internationalization of the Roman Question Constructing the Catholic movement and internationalizing the Roman Question became the two focal points in Della Chiesa’s other missions outside Italy. He travelled to Vienna in 1888 and 1889. Although the latter visit revolved around establishing the cause of Archduke Rudolf ’s death and the ensuing question of a church funeral, the visit in 1888 addressed the issue of the Austrian Christian Social Party led by Karl Lueger.17 The party had drawn criticism upon itself from sectors of the conservative episcopate, while it simultaneously promised opportunities of efficiently representing the Church’s interests in society and parliament. The case revealed parallels to the situation in Italy and offered insight into it. In 1887, Della Chiesa travelled to Paris, interrupting his visits to the Italian metropolitans.18 In the French capital, he expounded Rampolla’s ralliement policy, which constituted a key cornerstone in the Pope’s foreign policy and thereby fully conformed to the Italian policy of Leo XIII. Its aims were: to build up a French Catholic movement so that Catholics would become active in the republic and not leave the field open to anti-clerical forces; to overcome the severe political friction within the French Church; and, finally, to effect a certain rapprochement with France to act as a counterweight in the Roman Question against Italy, which had allied itself with Germany and Austria in a Triple Alliance. He was to soothe the nerves of the French Foreign Secretary Émile Flourens, who had feared that a rapprochement of the Holy See and Italy would act against France.19 Speaking also on behalf of Rampolla,

avvertì più nettamente il pericolo di un processo di scristianizzazione. Ciò spiega anche il nuovo indirizzo assunto dal magistero pontificio, che si soffermerà con particolare insistenza sui grandi temi della vita politica, civile, famigliare e sociale’); Scottà, ‘Lo Stato’, p. 79. 16 Scottà, ‘Lo Stato’, pp. 35–46. 17 Chiron, Benoît XV, p. 59; Brigitte Hamann, Rudolf: Kronprinz und Rebell (Vienna: Amalthea Signum, 1978), pp. 484–95; John W. Boyer, Karl Lueger (1844–1910): christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf (Vienna: Böhlau, 2010). 18 Scottà, ‘Lo Stato’, pp. 47–49. 19 Scottà, ‘Lo Stato’, p. 47.

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Della Chiesa praised and confirmed an article concerning the policy of the Cardinal Secretary of State published in L’Avvenire d’Italia in 1903, which had opined that it was biased to think of the Catholic Church and a republic as being incompatible.20 Moreover, the policy of ralliement would have been exactly the same, even if Italy had abstained from the Triple Alliance with France’s enemies. Nevertheless, one must bear in mind that articles published in the Catholic press under a pseudonym or anonymously addressing the policy of the Holy See often bore the handwriting of Della Chiesa himself.21 Another of Leo XIII’s central initiatives taken in order to strengthen the international role of the papacy saw the involvement of Della Chiesa. In 1898, the Russian Tsar proposed the Pope as mediator at an international peace conference in The Hague, and the Pope communicated his willingness to do so.22 The outcry of indignation this caused in Italy demonstrates how closely this was tied to the pending Roman Question. The argument ran that the Pope was no longer a sovereign head of state and had therefore no business attending such a conference. In the end, no invitation was sent to the Holy See, which was a severe setback for Leo XIII, who protested and for a while severed diplomatic relations with the Netherlands.

4. The 1903 Veto and the Policy of Pius X Della Chiesa must have followed the conclave in the summer of 1903 with great excitement, but as an outsider since both he and Gasparri had lost out in the election to serve as Merry del Val’s secretary at the conclave. The proceedings surrounding the defeat of Rampolla and the Austrian veto are likely to have had a profound impact on him, not so much because the election of Rampolla would probably have led him directly to the office of the Cardinal Secretary of State but because the events and the subsequent policy of Pius X seemed to confirm so painfully his previous principles ex negativo. Since sovereignty had been the absolute priority, the exercise of the ius exclusivae constituted the worst catastrophe for the Holy See and highlighted its dependence on a worldly power.23 Countering this, however, had always been a top priority in Leo XIII’s foreign policy. Soon thereafter followed the collapse 20 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 44. 21 ‘It is good to note now that not infrequently Mgr Della Chiesa publishes articles or speeches in L’Avvenire d’Italia, L’Osservatore Romano, Corriere d’Italia, or even in journals, signing them with pseudonyms or having them signed by others, a tactic that will not be stopped even by the Pope and of which there is a great deal of certain and documented proof ’ (‘è bene notare sin d’ora che non rare volte mons. Della Chiesa pubblicherà articoli o interventi su L’Avvenire d’Italia, L’Osservatore Romano, Corriere d’Italia o anche su riviste, firmandoli con pseudonimi o facendoli firmare da altri, espediente che non smetterà neppure da Papa e di ciò si hanno numerose prove certe e documentate’); Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 45. 22 Chiron, Benoît XV, pp. 62–64. 23 Luciano Trincia, Conclave e potere politico: il veto a Rampolla nel sistema delle potenze europee (1887–1904) (Rome: Studium, 2004), pp. 231–45.

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of the ralliement policy, the radical separation of Church and state in France and the Pope’s ensuing uncompromising stance that prevented a compromise, which would have been more advantageous for the Church at least as far as the territorial aspect was concerned.24 Developments in the Italian policy, in which Della Chiesa remained involved, took a different turn. Here the Pope virtually lifted the notion of non expedit.25 Dividing up the Opera dei congressi, which Rampolla and Della Chiesa had sought to prevent, could no longer be prevented under Pius X. Romolo Murri and his Christian democrats fell under the Pope’s anti-modernist phobia, were slandered as rebels, and the Pope even challenged the Bolognese Cardinal Domenico Svampa to take action against them.26 Reorganizing the lay associations into federations and making political participation dependent on the respective local bishop triggered splintering, which on a national level drained strength, even though it actually resulted in Catholics and conservative liberals coming to a rapprochement in their anti-socialist stance.27

24 Pius X, Vehementer nos, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 39 (1906), pp. 3–16; Pius X, Gravissimo officii munere, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 39 (1906), pp. 386–90; Pius X, Une fois encore, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 40 (1907), pp. 3–11; Jean-Marie Mayeur, La séparation des Églises et de l’État (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 1966); Maurice J. M. Larkin, ‘The Vatican, French Catholics and the associations cultuelles’, The Journal of Modern History, 36 (1964), pp. 298–317. 25 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 48–66. 26 ‘And such are the so-called independent Christian democrats, who, out of a desire for a badly understood freedom, show by the act of shaking up every discipline that they aspire to dangerous innovations that the Church cannot approve, act in an authoritative manner in order to impose themselves, judge and criticize everything and come to the point of calling themselves ready to bow down to infallibility but not obedience. If one wanted arguments to prove that such a logical development of their principles had made them explicitly rebels against the authority of the Church, this is demonstrated by how much they assert in their conferences that they are independent, by how much they publish in their newspapers and periodicals advocating their work and justifying their conduct, and when at last they respond to the solemn prohibitions of the venerable prelates by either asserting that such prohibitions do not concern their society and their persons or by proclaiming that the pope and the bishops do have the right to judge things that regard faith and morals but not that which concerns social action, they thus feel free to proceed in their work’ (‘e tali sono i così detti democratici cristiani autonomi, che per desiderio di una libertà male intesa mostrano col fatto di scuotere ogni disciplina; aspirano a novità pericolose, che la Chiesa non può approvare; si atteggiano a contegno autorevole per imporsi, giudicare e criticare ogni cosa, e arrivano al punto di chiamarsi pronti a piegare dinanzi alla infallibilità, ma non all’obbedienza. Che se si volessero argomenti a provare che cotali pel logico svolgimento dei loro principi si sono fatti esplicitamente ribelli all'autorità della Chiesa, lo dimostra quanto asseriscono nei loro convegni dichiarandosi indipendenti, quanto pubblicano sui loro giornali e periodici propugnando la loro opera e giustificando la loro condotta; quando finalmente alle solenni proibizioni di venerandi Prelati rispondono o coll’asserire che tali proibizioni non riguardano la loro società e le loro persone, o col proclamare che il Papa ed i Vescovi hanno sì il diritto di giudicare delle cose spettanti alla fede ed alla morale, ma non quello di dirigere l’azione sociale; e quindi essi si tengono liberi di progredire nel loro lavoro’); Pius X to Svampa, 1 March 1905, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 37 (1904–05), pp. 88–90. See also Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 60. 27 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 66–68.

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5. Conclusions Although the scope for independent action during his time in the Secretariat of State was limited, Della Chiesa nonetheless became an exponent of, and an expert on, a policy that was to dominate his pontificate, particularly during the years of the Great War. This policy can be summarized in the following five principles. 1. The restitution of the Holy See’s sovereignty must have top priority. 2. This could only be re-established on an international level, so that the Holy See would be recognized and accepted as a participant and actor at international summits and conferences. 3. A sovereign pope was to mobilize, activate and unify the church top-down and from the centre. 4. While the nation states’ former rights over ecclesiastic matters would gradually disappear in the course of time — a development that was to be established in concordats — a Catholic presence in the media and associations, together with the Church’s own humanitarian and social work, was to secure the Church’s influence in social matters, in opposition to socialism. 5. Della Chiesa expounded the teaching of Leo XIII, according to which the Church could come to terms with every form of state, including democracy. Consequently, he observed the development of the Christian democrat movement rather favourably.

Bibliography Boyer, John W., Karl Lueger (1844–1910): christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf (Vienna: Böhlau, 2010) Chiron, Yves, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014) Ernesti, Jörg, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016) Fantappiè, Carlo, Chiesa romana e modernità giuridica, 2 vols (Milan: Giuffrè, 2008), I Hamann, Brigitte, Rudolf: Kronprinz und Rebell (Vienna: Amalthea Signum, 1978) Larkin, Maurice J. M., ‘The Vatican, French Catholics and the associations cultuelles’, The Journal of Modern History, 36 (1964), pp. 298–317 Marani, Alessandra, Una nuova istituzione ecclesiastica contro la secolarizzazione: le conferenze episcopali regionali (1889–1914) (Rome: Herder, 2009) Marotta, Saretta, ‘L’evoluzione del dibattito sul “non expedit” all’interno della Curia Romana tra il 1860 e il 1889’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 68, 1 (2014), pp. 95–164 Marotta, Saretta, ‘Il “non expedit”’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 215–35 Mayeur, Jean-Marie, La séparation des Églises et de l’État (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 1966) Piola, Andrea, La questione romana nella storia e nel diritto: da Cavour al trattato del Laterano (Milan: Giuffrè, 1969) Pottmeyer, Hermann Josef, Unfehlbarkeit und Souveränität: die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit im System der ultramontanen Ekklesiologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Mainz: Grünewald, 1975) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002)

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Scottà, Antonio, ‘Lo Stato liberale e il progetto di infeudazione della Chiesa di Roma: missione esplorativa fra i metropoliti d’Italia di mons. Giacomo Della Chiesa’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 31–35 Spadolini, Giovanni, Le due Rome: Chiesa e Stato fra ’800 e ’900 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973) Trincia, Luciano, Conclave e potere politico: il veto a Rampolla nel sistema delle potenze europee (1887–1904) (Rome: Studium, 2004) Vaussard, Maurice, La fin du pouvoir temporel des papes (Paris: Spes, 1964) Weber, Christoph, Kardinäle und Prälaten in den letzten Jahrzehnten des Kirchenstaates: EliteRekrutierung, Karriere-Muster und soziale Zusammensetzung der kurialen Führungsschicht zur Zeit Pius IX. (1846–1878) (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1978)

Annibale Zambarbieri

Controversies at the Top: Merry del Val, Della Chiesa, Pius X (1883–1907)

1.

Snapshots and Problems

In his memoirs, the Belgian Ambassador to the Holy See Napoléon Eugène Beyens recalls that Giacomo Della Chiesa had performed his apprenticeship ‘as auditor in the Nunciature of Madrid, under the direction of Rampolla’. When the latter became Cardinal and Leo XIII’s Secretary of State, Della Chiesa was appointed as a Substitute in the Secretariat. However, Pius X ‘removed him from his court, as he had done with Rampolla, and removed him from diplomatic affairs by appointing him to the Archdiocese of Bologna instead of granting him a nunciature’. In the conclave of 1914, the cardinals Ferrata and Gasparri, ‘heirs of the traditions of Leo XIII’, successfully sponsored his election.1 Together with essential biographical data, therefore, the Belgian diplomat reveals some, not totally irrelevant, information concerning the dynamics and tendencies in the upper echelons of Catholicism between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. At the dawn of Benedict XV’s pontificate, another, closer, recollection presents some of the actors in rapid succession. It was written for a magazine article just after the election by Giovanni Pioli — whom Émile Poulat described as ‘a perfectly honest, impartial and devoted modernist’.2 He presented an appealing overview of the new Pope’s biography, recalling a meeting with him a decade earlier.3 This had occurred at the Propaganda Fide seminary, where the young Pioli was Vice Rector, during an academia polyglotta in honour



1 ‘Sous la direction de Rampolla, comme auditeur à la nonciature de Madrid’; ‘premier ministre’; ‘l’écarta de sa cour, comme il avait fait de Rampolla et l’éloigna des affaires diplomatiques en le nommant à l’archevêché de Bologne, au lieu de lui confier une nonciature’; ‘héritiers des traditions de Léon XIII’; Napoléon Eugène Beyens, Quatre ans à Rome 1922–1926: fin du pontificat de Benoît XIV, Pie XI: les débuts du fascisme (Paris: Plon, 1934), pp. 48–51. 2 ‘Un moderniste perfaitement honnête, désintéressé, dévoué’; Émile Poulat, Modernistica: horizons, physionomies, débats (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1982), p. 161. 3 Giovanni Pioli, ‘Benedict XV: The Significance of His Election’, The Contemporary Review, 106 (October 1914), pp. 506–14.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 121–146 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118768

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of Cardinal Girolamo Gotti. For the occasion, Pioli had provided a reception for the most distinguished guests. He recalls that the absence of Secretary of State Merry del Val was ‘variously commented’ but a ‘kind of undersecretary’ punctually arrived, Giacomo Della Chiesa, whom Pioli helped through the crowd of guests, supporting ‘his slender, fragile person’. Then he saw his face, often stiffened by the bureaucratic routine, spread into a smile that hinted at an underlying, sincere warmth, and was ready to seize the opportunity to break out freely. That was the period when the Secretariat Substitute was engaged in an ‘equivocal collaboration with the evil genius of Pius X’, which soon ended with his appointment to the Bolognese episcopacy. When Pioli met him in Bologna, he had a further positive impression, seeing in the Archbishop a continuity with the ‘liberal traditions’ cultivated by his predecessor Prospero Lambertini and with the orientations of Leo XIII’s Secretary of State, Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, Della Chiesa’s ‘great friend and protector’. Pius X’s pontificate had seen both marginalized. Now, in the person of Benedict XV, the old Secretary of State seemed to return to life and speak, while Vatican politics recovered ‘a certain degree of tolerance for religious liberalism’, which allowed Catholic intellectuals like Loisy, Duchesne, Tyrrell, Schnitzer, Murri and Minocchi to avoid problems with the ecclesiastical authority (‘where not seriously disturbed’). According to Pioli, all this had to be interpreted as a ‘genetical duel’ in the spheres of the Vatican leadership between the opponents of democracy and modernism and the followers of those who — like Rampolla and Della Chiesa — acted less rigidly, with a disposition to be ‘open-minded to a large extent, clear-minded even more’.4 Pioli’s appreciation was affected by the repercussions of anti-modernist repression and the hopes for renewal in Catholicism. Doubt, however, had soon begun to creep in and mar that optimism when, in June of 1916, he wrote to Albert Houtin that ‘the attitude of Benedict XV has changed a little’.5 That being said, Pioli’s article brings to life both the atmosphere breathed by many in those days and the discontent and dissention in Vatican departments. In fact, discord was never lacking. Echoes of that world resonated, the threshold of the Great War having been crossed, in the writings of Don Giuseppe De Luca, who also captured the controversial aftermath. Motivated by more general considerations and passing over the immediate news, he sensed the opportunity for a scrupulous and wide-ranging excavation, at least for the phase between 1850 and 1930, that is, also for the years of Pius X, Merry del Val and Della Chiesa. His judgements seem to contradict one another because they are conditioned by emotional impulses but also because the complexity of the problems and situations made it difficult for him to focus on an overall vision, as seen in two letters from 1931 that he wrote to Giovanni Papini. In the first he asserted that ‘the curia has a direct and intimate, albeit anonymous, participation in Church governance’ where ‘anonymous, splendid to accomplish, and truly sacred work’ could be carried



4 Pioli, ‘Benedict XV’. 5 ‘Il gruppo radicale lombardo: 1. Carteggio Pioli–Houtin’, ed. by Rocco Cerrato, Fonti e documenti, 3 (1974), pp. 1134–285 (p. 1236).

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out.6 A few months later, he mercilessly presented the reverse side of the coin: ‘Rome is terrible, the curia frightful and its misery terrifying’.7 According to the Roman priest, the opposing reactions could and should have been interpreted within the historical setting, going beyond merely reporting what happened. In fact, in later years he presented the need for research that was perfectly critical, stringent and which went beyond simply listing events.8 In point of fact, historiographical studies conducted with different methodologies and over large time scales have still grappled with sounding out a theme, highlighting its scope in the history of Catholicism. On one, specific, side, the relevance of the role of the Secretary of State was recognized at the top curial levels, following a pattern that Étienne Fouilloux thought of as fluctuating.9 It is in this area that — despite profound divergences at times — the relations between Pius X, Merry del Val, Della Chiesa and others intertwined. De Luca recognized their lasting influences, recalling men whom he had known: ‘Certainly, with Pompilj, another of the curia’s major figures disappeared. De Lai, Merry del Val, Pompilj and Gasparri governed their Church after Leo XIII. And we are, and will be for some time, on the paths that they laid out’.10 Figures and paths: it goes without saying that there is a mixture, made up of personalities, options, projects and hoped for, sometimes achieved, results, kneaded into the clay moulded by the powers wielded by the papal throne. The whole, an ensemble that is variously interpreted, is a ‘unique institution, and since it is of the Church, the aspect of the sacred cannot be ignored’, as Jean-Dominique Durand helpfully emphasized. Nevertheless, whether unmentioned or acclaimed, the Pope’s role, which the faithful internalize and express in different ways, remains indispen

6 ‘La curia è una partecipazione diretta e intima, seppure anonima al governo della Chiesa’; ‘un lavoro anonimo, splendido da compiere, veramente sacro’; Giovanni Antonazzi, Don Giuseppe De Luca: uomo, cristiano e prete (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1992), p. 365. 7 ‘Roma è tremenda, la curia spaventosa, la sua miserabilità spaventosissima’; Antonazzi, Don Giuseppe, p. 367. Among De Luca’s other contributions — besides those already mentioned in the previous note and in the following pages (pp. 365–78) — it is worthwhile to recall the speech, which he possibly prepared, that Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani gave on 13 December 1951, in Alfredo Ottaviani, Il baluardo (Rome: Ares, 1961), pp. 129–33. On De Luca’s relationship with the curia and the Roman Church, see Luisa Mangoni, In partibus infidelium: Don Giuseppe De Luca: il mondo cattolico e la cultura italiana nel Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), pp. 72–74. 8 News about De Luca’s project can be found in Antonazzi, Don Giuseppe, p. 366. For the importance of the research, see Andrea Riccardi, Il partito romano: politica italiana, chiesa cattolica e curia romana da Pio X a Paolo VI (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2007), p. 278 and Lajos Pásztor, ‘L’histoire de la Curie romaine, problème d’histoire de l’Église’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 64 (1969), pp. 353–66. See the thorough François Jankowiak, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X: le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846–1914) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007), pp. 1–68. And, not to be overlooked, Mario Rosa, La curia romana nell’età moderna: istituzioni, cultura, carriere (Rome: Viella, 2013). 9 Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Secrétairerie d’État et gouvernement de l’Église: quelques hypothèses’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 303–11 (p. 307). 10 ‘Certo, con Pompilj scompare un’altra delle maggiori figure della curia. De Lai, Merry del Val, Pompilj, Gasparri han governato la loro chiesa dopo Leone XIII. E siamo, e saremo per un pezzo sulle vie aperte da loro’; Mangoni, In partibus infidelium, p. 73. For an opinion on Gasparri, see Mangoni, In partibus infidelium, pp. 221–22.

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sable. Given the responsibilities inherent to the tasks that need to be performed in concordance with the Pope, this awareness assumed particular characteristics in the so-called leadership circles. It was a subordination and collaboration, carried out along the lines of a necessary outpouring of ideas and judgements. To understand the physiognomy of these groups we should not overlook the involvement of those responsible for, and those assigned to, the various sectors, the uniqueness of their careers,11 the presence of ‘differences of inflection, and even different sides’, not to mention the ways that the offices themselves worked, being entrusted to a ‘limited number of ecclesiastics’.12 Some of the dynamics need to be analysed, as applicable, using studies on the mechanics of bureaucratic structures, especially those types of structures consisting of ‘small groups of officials’, needless to say, making the necessary adjustments of scale, competencies and levels, which are obviously different in the case of the curia compared to secular bureaucracies.13 Among the many considerations that may be proposed, it seems to have been overlooked that, in those nuclei, functional equilibrium is affected by sympathies, antipathies and apathies. It is a phenomenon that should be studied by applying socio-psychological categories to the decision-making centres of various religious organizations. As for the management of the Roman Church, within which the figures mentioned by De Luca and others acted, it should be added that understandings and conflicts responded to certain tendencies in their faith revolving around the certitude that the truths professed in Catholicism are essential for the proper world vision upon which a society capable of guaranteeing the common good can be built. The formulation and positioning of ideal platforms, however, proved to be problematic when facing civil institutions. Regarding these categories, historiography has developed terms such as ‘intransigence’, ‘integrism’, and ‘liberal Catholicism’, which are useful from a heuristic point of view, but which are incapable of exhausting the range of theoretical formulations and actual applications. In any case, when we explore this territory we discover at least two paths that emerge. The first included proposals that sought possible connections with tendencies that were alternatives to the Christian faith, in order to think up various ways of approaching them. The second entailed a variety of so-called intransigent attitudes: on the one hand, a rigidity that sought to safeguard principles that were considered inviolable,14 and on the other, a more possibilist attitude towards positions emerging 11 ‘Institution unique en son genre, puisqu’elle est de l’Église, parce que la part du sacré ne peut être ignorée’; Jean-Dominique Durand, ‘Conclusions’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 681–86 (pp. 682–83). 12 ‘Des différences des infléchissements, voire l’existence des partis’; ‘un nombre réduit d’ecclésiastiques’; Claude Prudhomme, ‘Les hommes de la Secrétairerie d’État: carrières, réseaux, culture’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 475–93 (pp. 490–92). 13 See, for example, Peter M. Blau, Dynamics of Bureaucracy: A Study of Interpersonal Relations in Two Government Agencies, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). 14 For these interpretive paths, see, above all, the contributions made by Émile Poulat, presented and discussed in part by François-André Isambert, ‘Du Syllabus à Vatican II, ou les avatars de l’intransigeantisme: à propos de deux ouvrages d’Émile Poulat’, Revue française de sociologie, 19,

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in what was seen to be the opposing side. These tendencies probably stemmed from the mindsets that had been established through various strategies and tactics. They can also explain some of the Roman curia’s propensities and decisions. Merry del Val and Pius X on one side, Della Chiesa (and others) on the other, represented such differences within the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.

2. The Men and the Trends in the Secretariat of State It seems appropriate to mention the physical makeup, so to speak, of the Secretariat of State in which the characters in question were working. The journalist priest Luigi Daelli, who was often in contact with Della Chiesa, drew a realistic sketch of him when he was elected pope, sharing it with the readers of Pro familia in September 1914. After recalling that, in 1901, ‘under the ancient master’ Rampolla, the young man from Genoa had reached the rank of Substitute of the Secretary of State, the author briefly described the activities and office of the Vatican department: It is up there, at the top of the Vatican palace, in that sort of pigeon coop — a material asset that, however, was a bit undignified — that extends between the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s. It was in those times that I met Mgr Della Chiesa, often surrounded by reports in his office. It was in those modest rooms that Cardinal Rampolla’s Substitute carried out an enormous amount of work, which was difficult to note because he executed it with unwavering restraint, with an, even sullen, modesty that did not tolerate useless words or, least of all, ‘friendly’ visits. With Mgr Della Chiesa one talked business, first in a little room with tattered and shoddy tapestries for receiving visitors, then in a discreet room adjoining the Secretary’s office, often fully inside or sometimes just at the door, or along a dark corridor at the end of which was Mgr Gasparri’s office, then Substitute for Foreign Affairs.15

4 (1978), pp. 603–12; Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Du catholicisme contemporain selon Émile Poulat’, Esprit (April 1978), pp. 116–21; the essays by Daniele Menozzi, ‘L’Église et la modernité, une relation compliquée’, Maurilio Guasco, ‘Intransigeantisme, libéralisme et modernisme’, and Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Du catholicisme selon Émile Poulat’, in Un objet de science, le catholicisme: réflexions autour de l’œuvre d’Émile Poulat, en Sorbonne, 22–23 octobre 1999, ed. by Valentine Zuber (Paris: Bayard, 2001), pp. 124–32, 240–45, 246–52. Also indispensible are Jean-Marie Mayeur, ‘Catholicisme intransigeant, catholicisme social, démocratie’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, 27 (1972), pp. 483–99; and Giovanni Miccoli, Fra mito della cristianità e secolarizzazione: studi sul rapporto chiesa-società nell’età contemporanea (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1985), pp. 21–92. 15 ‘È lassù in cima al palazzo vaticano in quella specie di piccionaia che si stende tra la Sistina e San Pietro, in quei tempi anche poco decorosa come assetto materiale, che conobbi mons. Della Chiesa avendo poi per il suo ufficio con lui spesso rapporti. È in quelle modeste stanze che il sostituto del card. Rampolla svolse un ingente cumulo di lavoro difficile da accennare perché compiuto con perseverante taciturnità, con modestia persino scontrosa che non tollerava le parole inutili e soprattutto le visite di “calore”. Con mons. Della Chiesa si parlava di affari, sulle prime in una stanzetta dalle tappezzerie stinte e scadenti, che servivano di ricevimento per quelli che venivano da fuori; poi nella discreta sala annessa all’ufficio di segreteria, sovente in piena, qualche volta anche solo

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Rampolla, Della Chiesa and Gasparri are three figures who frequented those halls, lingering for a long time in the limelight of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Della Chiesa was referred to as belonging to Rampolla’s camp, the Cardinal who, as De Luca reported, ‘had, in those years, become a myth’, succeeding in ‘restoring the Church’s prestige’.16 De Luca offers other information in his biography of Bonaventura Cerretti, another of ‘Rampolla’s disciples’17 and ‘heir to Leo [XIII]’s politics’18 within ‘Gasparri’s clique’.19 He was, therefore, closely connected to Della Chiesa before and after the pontiff ’s election. As the conclave of 1914 drew near, Cerretti had predicted that ‘Bologna’s Cardinal, Rampolla’s disciple and friend’ would become pope, adding that, if he were still alive, the latter would have been elected ‘by acclamation’.20 The ‘group of Rampollians’, which included Ferrata, was characterized by internal relations ‘marked by sincere affection’21 during the long duration of the Leonine pontificate and beyond. Roger Aubert described their solidarity as imbued with ‘a new spirit: the concern of not making Catholicism seem like something moving in a different direction from the aspirations of the times’. These were ideals susceptible to various interpretations, often summarized by the phrase ‘Christianizing modern life by modernizing the life of the Church’.22 The two aspects, however, involved complex implications, which were often difficult to

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

sull’uscio; o nel lungo oscuro corridoio in fondo al quale c’era la camera occupata da mons. Gasparri, allora sostituto agli Affari straordinari’; the article, which appeared in Pro familia on 14 September 1914, is reproduced in Francesco Vistalli, Benedetto XV (Milan: n. pub., 1914), p. 13. The author did not include this article in his extensive biography: Francesco Vistalli, Benedetto XV (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1928). A priest of the Diocese of Como, Luigi Daelli was known for his charitable works and his endeavours in journalism. He founded the journal Pro familia and held the position of Secretary of the Associazione dei giornalisti cattolici (Association of Catholic Journalists). He had a close relationship with Pius X and wrote a profile on him, including illustrations and photographs, that covered the first years of his pontificate: Luigi Daelli, Pio X: cenni biografici (Bergamo: Pro Familia, 1906). For information on him, see Luigi Trezzi, ‘Daelli (Luigi)’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III/1 (1984), p. 277. Always useful is Le carte del ‘sacro tavolo’: aspetti del pontificato di Pio X dai documenti del suo archivio privato, ed. by Alejandro Mario Dieguez and Sergio Pagano, 2 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006), II, pp. 544, 716–17, 813–16, 823. ‘Era divenuto in quegli anni un mito’; ‘Era riuscito […] a restituire il prestigio alla Chiesa’; Giuseppe De Luca, Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1971), pp. 90–91. ‘Discepolo di Rampolla’; De Luca, Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, p. 90. ‘Erede della politica di Leone’; De Luca, Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, p. 195. ‘Cricca di Gasparri’; De Luca, Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, p. 260. ‘Il cardinale di Bologna, il discepolo, l’amico di Rampolla’; ‘per acclamazione’; De Luca, Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, p. 163. ‘Groupe des rampolliens’; ‘marquées par une sincère affection’; Jan De Volder, ‘Gasparri et Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 243–54 (p. 345). ‘Uno spirito nuovo: la preoccupazione di non far più apparire il cattolicesimo come qualcosa che si muovesse in senso opposto alle aspirazioni del tempo’; ‘cristianizzare la vita moderna modernizzando la vita della chiesa’; Roger Aubert, ‘Leone XIII: tradizione e progresso’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 61–106 (p. 80).

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harmonize, repeating a deep common theme that, especially in the tone of the first part of the phrase, was spoken of in the times of Pius IX and continued to serve many causes, from Leo XIII to Pius X.23 Specifically, Leo XIII aimed at using the instruments presented by economic, cultural and political developments to restore, in a manner different from before, the Church’s role as guide that it had exercised in the previous centuries and which, in the environment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it had projected onto the broad horizons of world civilization.24 It was a long-range programme, capable of generating new approaches and new plans. Henri-Irénée Marrou suggested that ‘Leo XIII’s reign saw things change: in it we witnessed a rebirth of Catholic erudition, timid at first, then more and more assertive’.25 Rampolla acted in great harmony with Leo XIII,26 sharing a basic operating strategy with him: in this sense, an explicit, conscious admission that communicated Della Chiesa’s own passionate tone.27 Along with him, the so-called ‘Rampollians’, while not deviating from the doctrinal fidelity that brought them close to intransigence, worked to understand the contemporary spirit as more than a ‘mere diplomatic skill’.28 The latter certainly remained apparent in their conduct, but the tactics they drew from it were capable of reacting to strategy, of modifying the background visuals. The style that the elderly pontiff inculcated in his Secretary of State, which his followers did not abandon, should also be pointed out. The document addressed by Leo XIII to Rampolla on 15 June 1897 was characteristic of that style. It asserted that the task of the Pope and his collaborators was to show that the Church remained ‘a friend and benefactor of princes and peoples […] reconnecting or increasingly reinforcing friendly relations between the Holy See

23 Émile Poulat, Église contre bourgeoisie (Tournai: Casterman, 1977), p. 175. 24 See Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘Roma, “romanitas”. Un’ecclesiologia della visibilità’, in I cattolici e lo Stato liberale nell’età di Leone XIII, ed. by Annibale Zambarbieri (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2008), pp. 69–118 (pp. 110–18). 25 ‘Le règne de Léon XIII a vu les choses changer. Ce règne nous fait assister à un renouveau de la science catholique timide d’abord, puis de plus en plus affirmé’; Henri-Irénée Marrou, ‘Philologie et histoire dans la période du pontificat de Léon XIII’, in Aspetti della cultura cattolica nell’età di Leone XIII: atti del convegno tenuto a Bologna il 27–29 dicembre 1960, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1961), pp. 71–128 (p. 81). 26 Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘“Avec lui il n’y en a que pour la France!”: remarques sur la contribution du cardinal Rampolla à la politique de Léon XIII’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 199–241 (pp. 204–06). 27 To a colleague, who had questioned him about the decision to accept the post of Secretary of State, Rampolla allegedly answered: ‘Yes, I accept the office because the Pope commands me. Whatever hierarchy or conditions I find myself in, I must serve and, for as long as blood flows in my veins, I will be ready to obey and obey blindly’ (‘Sì, accetto l’ufficio perché il papa mi comanda: in qualsiasi grado gerarchico e condizione mi trovi devo servire e fino all’effusione del sangue mio, sarò pronto a ubbidire e ciecamente ubbidire’); Giovanni Pietro Sinopoli di Giunta, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1923), p. 97. 28 ‘Simple habilité diplomatique’; Philippe Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘Léon XIII, une vision du monde entre deux siècles’, in Le pontificat de Léon XIII: renaissance du Saint-Siège?, ed. by Philippe Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi (Rome: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 3–8 (p. 6).

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and the various nations’ as well as ‘recharging the hearts of all the Church and the papacy’.29 A striking application of this perspective was, as is known, the ralliement with the French government. It was within the atmosphere of these perspectives, convictions and propensities that Della Chiesa, in his own ways, operated. During his formation, besides the spiritual and specifically priestly component (he was ordained to the priesthood in December 1878), his assimilation of juridical culture was emphasized. As is known, he had obtained a degree in law from the University of Genoa (1875) and in theology from the Gregorian University. He attended the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles in Rome and gained a doctorate in canon and civil law. Engaged by the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in 1881, he received the title of Prelate of the Papal Household (1881) and Papal Chamberlain (1883), a rapid career that indicated, as Claude Prudhomme pointed out, the Vatican apparatus’ ‘interest’ in the young man.30 His collaboration with Rampolla became closer; he was chosen as Secretary in the Nunciature of Madrid and then adiutor pro negotiis secretis when Rampolla was appointed Secretary of State (1887). Four years later, within the same dicastery, he was promoted to Substitute for Ordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.31 His ties to the Cardinal, whom, in 1911, the Austrian ambassador to the Vatican had come to consider an Übermensch,32 became more assiduous and profound, to the point of inspiring him both existentially and spiritually. He had internalized his master’s rule — which was inspired by the Salesian constitutions — as a clearly ascetic norm.33 On another level, his, so to speak, ‘professional’ experiences were enriched by the flow of issues through the Secretariat that were related to the broad horizons of Leonine politics and by his participation in diplomatic missions in the years 1889 to 1890.34 His reports on the visits he made, in 1887, to the major Italian cities to gauge opinions on the relations with the state demonstrated his notable capacity for listening, speaking

29 ‘Amica e benefattrice dei principi e dei popoli […] riannodando o stringendo vieppiù tra la S. Sede e le diverse nazioni amichevoli rapporti’; ‘riamicare gli animi di tutti alla Chiesa e al papato’; the document is found in Sinopoli di Giunta, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla, p. 85. 30 Prudhomme, ‘Les hommes de la Secrétairerie d’État’, p. 482. 31 Rampolla’s career is charted in Hierarchia catholica medii et recentioris aevi, 9 vols (Padua: Il Messaggero di Sant’Antonio, 1913–2002), VIII: A pontificatu Pii PP. IX (1846) usque ad pontificatum Leonis PP. XIII (1903), ed. by Remigius Ritzler and Pirminus Sefrin (1978); Della Chiesa’s is found in IX: A pontificatu Pii PP. X (1903) usque ad pontificatum Benedictii PP. XV (1922), ed. by Zeno Pieta (2001), p. 89. 32 Johan Schönburg-Hartenstein, Ambassador to the Holy See from 1911; see Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960), p. 170. 33 For the rule, see Sinopoli di Giunta, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla, pp. 275–76. On the inspiration that Della Chiesa drew from it, see Lino Goriup and Roberto Macciantelli, ‘Mons. Giacomo Della Chiesa e la nascita del Pontificio Seminario Regionale Benedetto XV di Bologna’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 105–24 (p. 109). 34 See John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 10–29.

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and succinctness.35 Not surprisingly, his friend and colleague, Francis MacNutt, described him as: Accurate and very precise, acquainted with all the rules and traditions of his own chancellery, and not ignorant of those of other governments. […] Of brilliancy or originality, I never perceived a trace, but since an exhibition of such traits was not required during the years of his subordinate service, it was a proof of the greatest wisdom and tact on his part.36 Yet, in the sobriety of his conduct, some bon mot escaped that betrayed a certain detachment from restrained curial behaviour. Speaking in confidence to his friend Valfrè di Bonzo on 27 May 1896, he did not hesitate to speak of the ‘bigwigs in the Secretariat of State’.37 During the same years, a colleague was carrying out similar tasks in the high offices of the Holy See. The similarity of functions and contacts that both men had at the highest levels did not conceal their differences in terms of gifts, interests, judgement, or aspirations. Younger than him by eleven years, Rafael Merry del Val soon distinguished himself within the Vatican retinue.38 His family ancestry went back to a variety of nations, of which biographers have highlighted Spanish and English roots, linking them to the movements of his forebears that enriched their wealth of experiences.39 His education, family background and attendance at institutes of study and ecclesiastical circles offered him an opportunity for relationships within European, and other, purviews. His father’s professional tasks as a diplomatic functionary in London, Paris, Mexico, Brussels and Vienna, where he was Ambassador in 1888, assisted the son. His transfer to the same role in the Holy See (1893–1900) had decisive effects on Rafael’s life, who had chosen an ecclesiastical vocation. A student of the Ushaw Seminary in Durham, in 1885 Rafael was admitted to the tonsure and four minor orders. Significantly, the news of these ceremonies was reported in The Tablet. On the advice of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Herbert Vaughan,

35 Antonio Scottà, ‘Lo Stato liberale ed il progetto di infeudazione della Chiesa di Roma: missione esplorativa fra i metropoliti d’Italia di mons. Giacomo Della Chiesa’, in Benedetto XV, ed. by Mauro, pp. 31–80. 36 Francis Augustus MacNutt, A Papal Chamberlain: The Personal Chronicle of Francis Augustus MacNutt, ed. by John J. Donovan (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936), p. 312. 37 ‘Parrucconi della segreteria di Stato’; Benedict XV, Lettere ad un amico: Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Milan: NED, 1992), p. 59. 38 For his bibliographical and biographical notes, see Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘Merry del Val, Rafael’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXIII (2009), pp. 740–44. On his ecclesiastical career, see Hierarchia catholica, IX, p. 8. See also the recent essay by Phillippe Roy-Lysencourt, ‘Le parcours curial du cardinal Rafael Merry del Val’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Mediterranée, 128, 1 (2016) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 39 The information noted below, unless referencing another source, comes from my article in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, along with its bibliographical ensemble, reported in the previous footnote, in particular, from the documents conserved in the ASV, Spogli di cardinali e ufficiali di curia, Rafael Merry del Val, b. 3.

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in the same year he moved to Rome, which was destined to become the centre of his activities and the symbolic place of an ecclesiology that he embraced with conviction being indissolubly anchored in papal primacy. It was Leo XIII himself who gave the young cleric’s life its concrete direction. During an audience with him, Rafael, even though he was not yet a priest, received an order, more than an invitation, to enter the Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles, where Della Chiesa also studied, for a parallel training in the Holy See’s diplomacy.40 He received a doctorate in philosophy from the Gregorian University in 1886 and a baccalaureate in theology in 1888, finishing the cycle of theological studies with a degree in 1890 and a licence in canon law in 1891. One of his examiners for the theology degree of note was Louis Billot, which one might say was an authoritative endorsement of his neo-Thomist formation and of a fidelity to the romanitas from which the young man would never deflect. The course of his academic studies also saw him complete the stages in the major orders: subdiaconate in 1887; diaconate in 1888; in the same year, the Cardinal Vicar of Rome ordained him a priest. He did not lack precocious postings from the Holy See: in 1887, at the age of only twenty-two and already a Papal Chamberlain to His Holiness with the title of monsignor, he participated in the pontifical mission to England for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The following year he acted as secretary of the delegation sent to the funeral of Emperor Wilhelm I and the coronation of Friedrich III. A few months later he took a gift from the Pope to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz Joseph I. These missions, added to the task of tutoring Alfonso XIII in English, accelerated his rise in the curial ranking, especially since, in 1891, he entered the ‘participants’ ranks of the papal chamberlains. His path, therefore, was a singularly privileged one. Continuing along his brilliant course, he extended his skills, first as a collaborator of the Prefect for the Commission for Oriental Churches, then as an expert in issues concerning Anglicanism. His contacts with the English Catholics, especially Cardinal Vaughan, to whose diocese he belonged, constituted, along with his grasp of the nation’s religious political problems, the reasons why, at the elderly Pope’s behest, he worked on drafting the Ad Anglos letter (15 April 1895) and its English version. It was a prelude to his appointment as secretary of the commission charged with verifying the validity of Anglican ordinations. During the task, he held the belief that they were flawed by defects of form and intention: a judgement that was sanctioned by the papal letter Apostolicae curae of 5 December 1896. Merry del Val’s position stood out in the

40 Romana beatificationis et canonizationis Servi Dei Raphaelis card. Merry del Val: Informatio, Tabella testium, Summarium, Litterae postulatoriae super causae introductione et Summarium ex officio super scriptis (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1957), p. 5; Pio Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val (Rome: Berruti, 1933), pp. 32–33: Rafael ‘was the youngest of the academics and the only one not a priest […]. Iron-willed, with absolute self-control, he was able to moderate and then extinguish the vivacity of his character, which in his first years seemed almost excessive’ (‘era il più giovane degli accademici e l’unico non sacerdote […]. Forte di un assoluto dominio sopra se stesso, seppe moderare e quindi estinguere quella sua vivacità di carattere, che nei primissimi suoi anni poté quasi sembrare eccessiva’).

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1895–96 missives to Leo XIII’s Personal Secretary, Rinaldo Angeli,41 and Cardinal Vaughan. In one of these, he accused those who supported the validity of Anglican ordinations of a ‘liberalism in religion’.42 In general, he insisted on criticizing the Church of England and Anglo-Catholics, even beyond the specific question under debate. On 15 December 1895, he wrote to Angeli: ‘I believe that His Holiness will be convinced that I was right, so many months ago, to say that the Secretary of State was deceiving himself in believing and affirming that Halifax admitted papal primacy and infallibility’. Significantly, in his biography, Cenci substitutes the indication ‘of the Cardinal Secretary of State’ (Rampolla) with an imprecise ‘who’, probably to avoid the controversies that were still rife within the curia.43 Merry del Val’s explicit criticism of his superior, communicated indirectly to the Pope, constituted an early indication of the deep divide at the top levels of the Roman Church. Merry del Val expressed his verdict on Anglicanism in an essay that appeared several years later in La Civiltà Cattolica, penned by a ‘prelate expert in the material’.44 He placed the basis of his assessment of merit upon the infringible authority inherent to the dictates and practices of the primatial Roman See. If this were to recognize ‘having been wrong for three hundred years, relying on a crude ignorance of the fact and incautiously repeating two sacraments the whole time’, the consequences would have been, in his words, disastrous and irremediable.45 It must be remembered that Merry del Val tenaciously pursued the goal of the English ‘return’ to the Roman Church.46 On the crest of the authority he had achieved, from March to July 1897, he was a delegate to the mission in Canada aimed at settling a dispute on the categorization of public and private instruction and on state contributions to Catholic schools between the government and bishops. The successful outcome of the negotiations brought further prestige to the young Monsignor,47 who was soon

41 Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val, pp. 57–71. On Angeli, see Christoph Weber, Quellen und Studien zur Kurie und zur vatikanischen Politik unter Leo XIII (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1973), p. 78. 42 Gary Lease, ‘Odd Fellows’ in the Politics of Religion: Modernism, National Socialism and German Judaism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), p. 56. 43 ‘Credo che S. S. si persuaderà che tanti mesi or sono io avevo ragione nel dire che il cardinale segretario di Stato si ingannava credendo e affermando che Halifax ammetteva il primato e l’infallibilità del papa’; ASV, Spogli di cardinali e ufficiali di curia, Rafael Merry del Val, b. 3; Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val, p. 66; here I am correcting the page number that, in the article that I edited for the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, was erroneously given as p. 63. 44 ‘Prelato peritissimo in questa materia’; [Rafael Merry del Val,] ‘A proposito delle ordinazioni anglicane: un documento inedito sulla situazione religiosa in Inghilterra (1895–1896)’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 63, 3 (1912), pp. 72–106; for the article’s attribution, see Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val, pp. 71–72. 45 ‘Di aver sbagliato per trecento anni, basandosi sopra un’ignoranza crassa del fatto e reiterando due sacramenti senza scrupolo durante tutto questo tempo’; ASV, Spogli di cardinali e ufficiali di curia, Rafael Merry del Val, b. 3, Merry del Val to Angeli, 29 August 1895; Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val, p. 61. 46 On Merry del Val’s position and the controversy over the validity of Anglican ordinations, see Étienne Fouilloux, Les catholiques et l’unité chrétienne du XIXe et XXe siècle: itinéraires européens d’expression française (Paris: Le Centurion, 1982), pp. 39–59. 47 Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val, pp. 78–104.

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appointed President of the Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles. As was the norm, six months later he was created a bishop and elected as an extraordinary legate to the English court for the coronation of Edward VII.48 Ultimately, at the end of the new century, Merry del Val enjoyed considerable esteem in the Vatican hierarchy, and his attitude towards the most relevant doctrinal and disciplinary problems was already set. In effect, the urge to preserve orthodoxy from the smallest fissure conflicted with less rigid tendencies that were also present in the Roman curia. In 1896, moreover, he did not hesitate to judge Gasparri to be ‘hardly orthodox’, adding that he did not know where he had learned (or unlearned) theology. Named a consultant of the Congregation of the Index in July 1898, he had, apparently, solicited the issuance of a condemnation of Americanism49 and, in 1900, provided Vaughan and the bishops of Westminster with points for the draft of the Joint Pastoral Letter.50 In one important paragraph of the document, it condemns as unorthodox a ‘false theory of development’ that would have provoked a ‘real change’ in the body of Catholic doctrine.51 It is likely that Merry del Val’s thought touched on one of the key points on the agenda of possible magisterial pronouncements aimed at curbing historical-critical and theological theories that had now come to be labelled as modernist. It is also plausible that this led some cardinals in the curia to choose him as secretary of the conclave.52 As is known, the almost contemporaneous deaths of Leo XIII and of the Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation and of the College of Cardinals, Alessandro Volpini — who would have acted as secretary of the conclave — made the appointment of a substitute necessary. Surprisingly quickly, the choice was made the day after the pontiff ’s death, during a meeting of cardinals that had been called without waiting for the arrival of many of their colleagues. Mgr Alberto Serafini, Adjunct to the Secretary of State and, later, Canon of St Peter’s Basilica, reported having heard from the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Luigi Oreglia di Santo Stefano, that Merry del Val, Gasparri and Della Chiesa were the proposed suggestions. Not knowing which to choose, Agliardi suggested choosing ‘provisionally’ the first. Was

48 The text of the appointment as pontifical representative to the coronation of Edward VII is signed by Rampolla and dated 3 June 1902 (ASV, Spogli di cardinali e ufficiali di curia, Rafael Merry del Val, b. 3). 49 Merry del Val to Vaughan, 2 April 1896, in Lease, ‘Odd Fellows’, p. 56. On the question of Americanism, see Archives of the Archdiocese of St Paul, MN, Ireland’s Papers, O’Connell to John Ireland, 28 February 1900. 50 On the document’s development, see David G. Schultenover, A View from Rome on the Eve of the Modernist Crisis (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993), pp. 138–43. 51 ‘The Church and Liberal Catholicism: Joint Pastoral Letter by the Cardinal Archbishop and the Bishops of the Province of Westminster’, The Tablet (5 January 1901), pp. 8–12; (12 January 1901), pp. 50–52, n. 5. 52 Among the many studies that have shed light on these events and the entire course of the conclave, see, at least, Luciano Trincia, Conclave e potere politico: il veto a Rampolla nel sistema delle potenze europee (1887–1904) (Rome: Studium, 2004) and Alberto Melloni, Il conclave: storia di una istituzione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 78–91.

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this a sign of detachment from the newly deceased pontiff ’s Secretary of State?53 In any case, even though the conclave’s labours reached a climax with the Austrian veto of Rampolla, the fact that he was not elected mainly depended on other factors. The intersection of opinions arising from different logics, perhaps contradictory amongst themselves, directed votes to the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto. It was not by chance that Merry del Val later told Ludwig von Pastor that Rampolla would not have had the possibility of being elected because the packet of votes in his favour did not constitute a large enough bloc to attract enough consensus to reach a majority.54 Indeed, the desire to choose a style of government that was different from the previous pontificate — embodied in the Secretary of State — prevailed. It was precisely Merry del Val who took on that position under Pius X, helping send a clear signal of the change that had taken place. This led to the marginalization of Rampolla and, albeit in a partial and non-definitive form, of Della Chiesa, as was shortly seen. In reality, Pius X first adopted a wait-and-see approach regarding the appointment of a Secretary of State. Probably even before the day of the election there were exchanges of opinions, if not actual negotiations, between the Patriarch of Venice and some of his colleagues about the choice of who should have that important role. According to the diary kept by Cardinal Ferrata, he knew that the cardinals Antonio Agliardi and Andrea Aiuti had discussed the problem with Cardinal Sarto;55 however, it seems that nothing was leaked about what transpired in those conversations. As soon as he was elected, the new pontiff decided to temporarily entrust the position to someone he had come to know during the conclave. Speaking to his Jesuit friend, Angelo De Santi, he did not hide that he had had a very positive impression of the Anglo-Spanish prelate, whom he called a ‘man of extraordinary valour and firm priestly piety’.56 Merry del Val recalled a private conversation that occurred the day of the election, during which Pius X told him: ‘Stay with me. I haven’t decided anything yet; I don’t know what I’ll do. For now, I have no one; stay with me as Secretary of State… then we’ll see. Do me this kindness’. Curiously, his recollection ends by noting an immediate meeting with Della Chiesa, ‘who was particularly eager to see the Pope’s signature

53 As per Serafini at Merry del Val’s process for canonization (Romana beatificationis, p. 151). 54 The conversation between the Cardinal and the historian took place on 9 December 1920. Merry del Val accompanied the peremptory affirmation with a judgement on the conclave, which in his opinion had had an edifying bearing: ‘Var sehr erbaulisch, es var fast ars machten, die Cardinale exercitien’; Ludwig von Pastor, Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, ed. by Wilhelm Wühr (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1950), pp. 696–97. It is worth noting Cardinal Gibbons’s impression ‘of order’ in how the conclave was conducted that he confided to Filippo Crispolti just after Pius X’s election; see Filippo Crispolti, Pio IX, Leone XIII, Pio X, Benedetto XV (ricordi personali) (Milan; Rome: Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, 1932), p. 96. 55 Carlo Snider, L’episcopato del cardinale Andrea C. Ferrari, 2 vols (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1981–82), II: I tempi di Pio X (1982), pp. 119–20. 56 ‘Uomo di straordinario valore e di vera e soda pietà sacerdotale’; Giovanni Sale, ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’ nella crisi modernista (1900–1907) fra transigentismo politico e integralismo dottrinale (Milan: Jaca Book, 2001), p. 94.

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and noted its resemblance to that of Pius IX’.57 Some time before the conclave, Merry del Val had refused to be named to the archbishopric of Westminster, despite being included in the proposal to succeed Cardinal Vaughan who had died on 20 June of that year.58 To deny rumours that were already circulating, in a letter to his friend Mgr Joseph Broadhead in April, Merry del Val had ruled out being able to occupy the prestigious post, despite his affection for England: That is impossible. I am not at all fit for such an office […]. Not to speak of my deficiencies, my name alone is an insuperable obstacle. I should always be branded as an alien, however much I may be English to all intents and purposes.59 Yet his name was destined to remain known. Overcoming uncertainties and pressures,60 which were understandable in the situation, Pius X created him Cardinal in the consistory of 9 November 1903 and Secretary of State three days later. Among the many reactions, a comment in Illustrazione Italiana may be of some interest, noting that Merry del Val demonstrated a perfect knowledge of the major European languages and had ‘courteous, almost sweet, obsequious manners’.61 Beyond the importance of these aspects, his understanding with Sarto must have rested on a solid agreement of ideals. In this sense, the biographies hit the mark when they insist on a lasting fundamental agreement between the Pope and his Secretary of State. According to Cenci: There is no page of Pius X’s grand pontificate that can be dissociated from the name of Cardinal Merry del Val […]. The very differences in the nature and spirit of the Pope and his collaborator were such that they were even better at bringing these two souls together and welding and merging them into a communion of opinions, projects and actions.62 57 ‘Resti con me. Non ho deciso nulla ancora, non so che cosa farò. Per ora non ho nessuno; rimanga con me pro segretario di Stato… poi vedremo. Mi faccia questa carità’; ‘il quale era particolarmente desideroso di vedere la firma del papa e ne notò la rassomiglianza con quella di Pio IX’; Rafael Merry del Val, Pio X: impressioni e ricordi (Padua: Il Messaggero di Sant’Antonio, 1948), pp. 22–23. 58 Regarding his position, this is what can be surmised from the records in the ACPF, vol. 889, ff. 18–69. I was alerted to this information by Dr Alejandro Mario Dieguez, whom I thank for his friendship and the kindness with which he offered his competence (and not only on this occasion). See also Snider, L’episcopato, II, pp. 334–35. 59 Marie Cecilia Buehrle, Rafael, Cardinal Merry del Val (London: Sands, 1957), p. 62. 60 Snider, L’episcopato, II, pp. 119–20, 124–25. 61 ‘Le forme cortesi, quasi dolci, insinuanti’; ‘Mons. Merry del Val, segretario di Stato’, L’Illustrazione Italiana, 30 (1903), p. 363. The reasons that Pius X gave to a cardinal explaining the choice of Merry del Val are notable. In addition to his knowledge of languages, he had international experience, as well as the diplomatic skills he had inherited from his father. He was struck by Merry del Val’s modesty, punctuality, exhaustiveness in reporting daily on ‘world issues’ and, last but not least, as much as could possibly be discerned, that he did not have any ‘compromising involvements’; Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val, p. 138. 62 ‘Non vi è pagina del grande pontificato di Pio X che si possa dissociare dal nome del card. Merry del Val […]. Le differenze stesse di natura e di spirito del papa e del suo collaboratore erano tali da accostare ancor meglio e da unire maggiormente quelle due anime e saldarne e fonderle in una comunione di vedute, di programma e di azione’; Cenci, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val, p. 149.

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Some variations in tone should also be mentioned in acknowledging such a harmonious agreement. For example, Poulat noted that, though Merry del Val’s inflexibility was frequently contrasted to Pius X’s goodness, it would be better to qualify this judgement, toning it down ‘with the opposite […] as well’. That being said, affability and courtesy reflected a frank cohesion, inflected according to their respective temperaments. According to Poulat, again, the papal rigidity corresponded to that of Cardinal De Lai and Mgr Umberto Benigni, who, not by chance, nicknamed the Secretary of State ‘the Fear’.63 A clarification made by Jan De Volder should also be noted in order to understand the limits of historiography regarding the character and the modus operandi of these bishops. In his opinion, the retrospective picture of the Anglo-Spanish Cardinal was affected by the hagiographic literature produced with an eye toward the canonization of Pius X, which attributed the weaker aspects of the pontificate to the pontiff’s collaborators. Moreover, the constant attention to the anti-modernist struggle would have attenuated historians’ interests in the Pope’s reformative work, to which the Secretary of State was no stranger.64 Similar interpretations confirm the difficulty of reconstructing, with any precision, the relationships among the various personalities, taking into account historical changes that are capable of changing images. Perhaps impulsive reactions can communicate an unexpected, and in any case meaningful, photograph of the moment. For example, a few months after the Pope was elected, Della Chiesa enthusiastically asserted: He steals hearts with his admirable presence. We see God’s hand at work in his election that, after having given the Church a pontiff who certainly raised the moral prestige of the Holy See, has given it a shepherd who takes problems upon himself.65 But that immediate positive impact, which was shared by others,66 was destined to evaporate into reserve, disapproval and grievances. On a management level, discontent and intolerance with the skills attributed to the Pope’s closest collaborators quickly set in.

63 ‘La Peur’; see Émile Poulat, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969), p. 330; Émile Poulat, ‘Merry del Val’, in Encyclopaedia universalis, 5th edn, 28 vols (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 2002), XIV, p. 658. There was a fluctuation of opinions: the harsh impression that Merry del Val’s behaviour elicited was noted, for example, by Agostino Gemelli in his deposition at the process of canonization: ‘While, in his observations, the Holy Father, Pius X, was very reserved in his judgement of persons and indulgent towards one or the other, the servant of God instead was more explicit, firmer, stronger in showing that, although recognizing the good intention of these men, they still were not sufficiently faithful to the teachings of the Pope’ (‘Mentre il S. Padre Pio X nelle sue osservazioni era molto riservato nel giudizio sugli uomini e indulgente verso l’uno o l’altro, invece il servo di Dio era più esplicito, più fermo, più forte nel mostrare che pur riconoscendo la buona intenzione di questi uomini tuttavia essi non erano fedeli a sufficienza agli insegnamenti del Papa’); Romana beatificationis, p. 232. 64 Jan De Volder, ‘Secrétairerie d’État et secrétaires d’État (1814–1978): acquisitions historiographiques sur l’institution et les hommes’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 445–59 (pp. 454–55). 65 ‘Egli ruba i cuori con mirabile prestezza. Nell’elezione di lui s’è visto proprio la mano di Dio, che dopo aver dato alla Chiesa un pontefice il quale certamente sollevò a grande altezza il prestigio morale della S. Sede, le ha dato un pastore che trae a sé le turbe’; Della Chiesa, Lettere ad un amico, 90. 66 See, for example, the reactions of Geremia Bonomelli in August–October 1903, cited in Carlo Bellò, Geremia Bonomelli: vescovo di povera santa Chiesa (Brescia: Queriniana, 1975), pp. 356–58.

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On 10 October, Cardinal Cassetta, in his diary, already reported a criticism Della Chiesa had made of the Pope’s Personal Secretary, Giovanni Bressan, who rewrote responses, even ones pertaining to particular nominations.67 It was a procedure that went hand in hand with the activities of the Secretariat of State and other dicasteries, which aroused ‘a certain displeasure at the accusation of interfering in the congregations’ affairs’.68 Alberto Serafini, well placed in curial circles, hinted at occasional misunderstandings between Pius X, the Secretary of State, and the ‘segretariola’, stating that the first: Loved writing letters directly, without anyone’s input, so that sometimes the Cardinal, who was in the dark, could be embarrassed, which is certainly not pleasant. But sometimes they had letters written by Mgr Bressan in the Pope’s name (I recall, for example, the famous letters to the Scotton brothers), which the Cardinal was unhappy about. Serafini described the uneasy personal relationship between Della Chiesa and Merry del Val with an astute realism. He wrote of a resolve that only their diplomatic training could prevent turning into open hostility.69 In the historiography, therefore, Fouilloux found an ‘incompatibility of temperament’70 between the two. Besides their differences of character and psychological restraint, it was more the divergence in perspectives of government connected to the exacerbations of a widespread ecclesiology that led to misunderstandings and covert disputes.

3. A New Course A lack of harmony was already plainly visible from the beginning of the pontificate when the procedure for the examination of the Loisy case was speeded up.71 About a month before Pius X was elected, Rampolla had suggested delaying the exegete’s condemnation, writing to the Nuncio to France, Benedetto Lorenzelli, that although L’Évangile et l’Église had ‘deplorable errors; nevertheless there has not been any formal proposition to merit an obligatory condemnation’.72 On 6 July

67 Text given in L’archivio particolare di Pio X: cenni storici e inventario, ed. by Alejandro Mario Dieguez (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2003), p. xvi. 68 ‘Un certo malessere per l’accusa di intromettersi negli affari delle congregazioni’; L’archivio particolare, ed. by Dieguez, p. xv. On the nature and functions of Pius X’s Personal Secretary, nicknamed the ‘segretariola’, L’archivio particolare, ed. by Dieguez, pp. vi–xxii. Also, in addition to the inventory cited in the previous note, see the vast documentary collection in Le carte del ‘sacro tavolo’, ed. by Dieguez and Pagano. 69 Romana beatificationis, pp. 152, 157. 70 Fouilloux, Les catholiques, p. 67. 71 On the relative context, see Émile Poulat, Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste, 2nd edn (Tournai: Casterman, 1979), pp. 74–267. For dates and interpretations, see Maurilio Guasco, Alfred Loisy in Italia: con documenti inediti (Turin: Giappichelli, 1975) and La censure d’Alfred Loisy (1903), ed. by Claus Arnold and Giacomo Losito (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2009). 72 ‘Errori da deplorare; pur nondimeno non s’è riscontrata veruna formale proposizione sulla quale possa cadere una tassativa condanna’; La censure, ed. by Arnold and Losito, p. 102.

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1903, as consultor to the Congregation of the Index, Merry del Val signed a votum firmly reproving the errors contained in La Religion d’Israël and severely criticised the defence prepared for that Congregation by the Jesuit and Gregorian professor Enrico Gismondi, which was incapable of preventing the measures taken by the Index and the Holy Office. On 19 December, the Secretary of State thus informed the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, François Richard, that the Pope, ‘profoundly grieved and sadly concerned about the disastrous effects’ of Loisy’s writings, had approved the decree of condemnation of five works.73 Although at the heart of the canonical sanction lay a plurality of work, decisive influence came from Merry del Val, the representative of the ‘new intransigence […] among the Pope’s main advisors’,74 who preferred a robust decisiveness in various directions rather than his predecessor’s wait-and-see attitude. It is sufficient to offer part of the list of those involved here. Merry del Val, convinced executor of the Pope’s wishes and of the provisions of the Index and Holy Office, oversaw the censorship and then excommunication of Loisy, insisting on the need for a complete and unequivocal submission. In 1905, he became a member of the biblical commission that — empowered to confer academic degrees — could control and influence that important area of studies.75 Merry del Val’s opposition to modernism remained, therefore, inflexible, as proven by the case of George Tyrrell, which also troubled him because it originated in Great Britain. He had long considered the Irish Jesuit to have ‘thought on the other side’ and to be, essentially, a ‘heretic’, as he had written in a letter to Vaughan in 1900. The measures Merry del Val took were decisive in imposing upon him a minor excommunication, which included exclusion from the sacraments.76 Although the encyclical Pascendi was the fruit of convergent collaboration, its chief editor — the Procurator General of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Joseph Lemius — was one of Merry del Val’s ‘favourite advisors’,77 who reviewed it, took care to promote it78 and fully approved of ‘the splendid work’ of Jean-Baptiste Lemius (brother of Joseph) on the issue.79

73 ‘Profondamente addolorato e tristemente preoccupato degli effetti disastrosi’; La censure, ed. by Arnold and Losito,pp. 43–63. The votum of Merry del Val, pp. 325–31; his letter to the Archbishop of Paris, p. 61; the votum of Gismondi on La Religion d’Israël, pp. 171–77; those on L’Évangile et l’Église, pp. 207–324. On Enrico Gismondi, see Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘Prime censure a Ernesto Buonaiuti’, in La condanna del modernismo, ed. by Claus Arnold and Giovanni Vian (Rome: Viella, 2010), pp. 28–43. 74 ‘Nouvelle intransigeance […] parmi les principaux conseillers du Pape’; La censure, ed. by Arnold and Losito, p. 65. 75 The relevant document, the apostolic letter Scripturae Sanctae, bears the date of 23 February 1904, see Acta Sanctae Sedis, 36 (1903–04), pp. 350–52. 76 Lease, ‘Odd Fellows’, pp. 55–76. 77 Poulat, Intégrisme, p. 390. 78 Claus Arnold, ‘Antimodernismo e magistero romano: la redazione della Pascendi’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 5, 2 (2008), pp. 345–64. 79 ‘Lo splendido opuscolo’; Jean-Baptiste Lemius, Catechismo sul modernismo secondo l’enciclica ‘Pascendi Dominici gregis’ di Sua Santità Pio X (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1908), pp. 5–6. It should be noted that the Secretary of State insisted that the English edition of the booklet be ‘very well done’; Arnold, ‘Antimodernismo’, p. 358.

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Rampolla and his collaborators’ prudential caution had gradually been replaced by patterns of clear rejection toward theological and exegetical theses formulated by so-called ‘innovators’. Other changes were ascertainable in the area of ecclesiastic politics. Pius X expressed a certain flexibility in maintaining the non expedit, in agreement with some of the Jesuits of La Civiltà Cattolica. However, they had to note, sometimes in surprise, that the Secretary of State did not think the same way, confirming the rather varied range of views and behaviours at the top of the Vatican leadership. Among other things, Della Chiesa, albeit for different reasons, was inclined not to disregard the non expedit because of the discreet but real support that he had guaranteed Romolo Murri.80 On the contrary, the Rampollian ralliement towards the French State — which Della Chiesa, inspiring a newspaper article, had clearly defended at the beginning of 190381 — was already abandoned at the beginning of the pontificate during a heated diplomatic dispute. The prologue to the dispute made its debut when the French President, Émile Loubet, visited the King of Italy. The Holy See anticipated that the supreme authorities of Catholic countries visiting Rome would not meet the Italian ones, in order to avoid implicit approval of the ‘deeds carried out’ during the Risorgimento. As is known, the Vatican protest and, above all, all the previous frictions prompted the French government to break off diplomatic relations with the Vatican and, following subsequent incidents, to denounce the concordat.82 As the controversy developed, Pius X and his Secretary of State adopted a resolute strategy to remove French ecclesiastical institutions from state control, which they held would inevitably be subject to sanction by government laws. Hence the decisive rejection of Briand’s proposed cultural associations, which were considered detrimental to the hierarchical constitution of the Church.83 The distance between these resolutions and Rampolla’s style, plans and direction stood out starkly in the session of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs on 12 July 1906. The former Secretary of State argued that the prohibition of cultural associations by the Holy See would necessarily take on a ‘political character favourable to the fallen parties and contrary to the republic’ and capable of having

80 On this, see Sale, ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’, pp. 151–223. 81 Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), pp. 43–45. 82 Maurice J. M. Larkin, ‘Loubet’s Visit to Rome and the Question of Papal Prestige’, The Historical Journal, 4 (1961), pp. 97–103. See [Gaetano Zocchi,] ‘La visita di Émile Loubet gravissima offesa al pontificato’ and ‘Cronaca contemporanea’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 55, 2 (1904), pp. 396–409, pp. 472–511. 83 On this issue, see Émile Appolis, ‘En marge de la Séparation: les associations cultuelles schismatiques’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 49, 146 (1963), pp. 47–88. For other discussions regarding this issue, see ‘Laïcité, séparation, sécularisation (1905–2005)’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 22, 87 (2005), pp. 7–176 and ‘La République ne reconnait aucun culte’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 44, 129 (2005), pp. 7–151. On the topic overall, see Émile Poulat, Les diocésaines: République française, Église catholique: Loi de 1905 et associations cultuelles: le dossier d’un litige et de sa solution (1903–2003) (Paris: La Documentation française, 2007). On reactions in Italy and for other bibliographic references, see ‘Carteggio Bonomelli–Sabatier’, ed. by Annibale Zambarbieri, Fonti e documenti, 3 (1974), pp. 873–1057 (pp. 914–43).

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‘incalculable consequences’. On the contrary, Merry del Val declared that he was sure that its acceptance would cause ‘a disastrous effect on religion in France’, since ‘the concept of Catholic dogma and the constitution of the Church among many would be destroyed. Among the masses, even those who are intelligent but poorly educated in religious matters, it would be terribly weakened’.84 The episode was symptomatic of the antithesis between assessments that were not easily integrated. Such divergences in the sphere of politics concerning France were also found in the judgement against the Action française movement,85 a problem that would re-emerge during Pius XI’s pontificate. They reveal protrusive attitudes on a larger scale, which were emblematic of doctrinal and pragmatic approaches which, due to the persons involved and their respective influences, would last for a long time. It does not seem irrational to surmise that the obstacles to a harmonious coexistence between Merry del Val and Della Chiesa in the curial departments began at this point. Without entering into the details of each episode, the Director of L’Osservatore Romano, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, explained the situation that had been created by referring to ‘divergences and contrasts’ between the different directions that were followed during the pontificates of the first two decades of the twentieth century. Through confidences dating back years before his appointment as the paper’s editor, he spoke of ‘environmental and personal influences’ from which those responsible for pastoral guidelines and Vatican politics were not detached. However, testifying during the canonical process for the beatification of Merry del Val, he made it clear that Merry del Val’s attitudes had not arisen from ‘petty passions, but, if anything, were inspired by convictions regarding the government of the Church that were deeply rooted in him, according to doctrinal and practical principles and guidelines, which he firmly believed to be useful and essential for the Church’.86

84 ‘Un carattere politico favorevole ai partiti caduti e contrario alla repubblica’; ‘conseguenze incalcolabili’; ‘effetto disastroso per la religione in Francia’; ‘il concetto del domma cattolico e della costituzione della chiesa presso molti sarà distrutto; presso la gran massa anche dagli intelligenti ma poco istruiti in materia religiosa sarà terribilmente affievolito’; cited by Ticchi, ‘Avec lui’, pp. 234–36. 85 Jacques Prévotat, Les catholiques et l’Action française: histoire d’une condamnation (1899–1939) (Paris: Fayard, 2001). 86 ‘Influenze ambientali e personali’; ‘meschine passioni, ma ispirati se mai da convinzioni circa il governo della chiesa in lui profondamente radicate, secondo principi e indirizzi dottrinali e pratici, che egli fermamente credeva utili e impreteribili per la chiesa’; Romana beatificationis, pp. 64–65. On the Director of L’Osservatore Romano, see Federico Alessandrini, ‘Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto (Giuseppe)’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, ed. by Traniello and Campanini, II (1982), pp. 150–53. For concrete evidence on how the collaboration between Merry del Val and Della Chiesa became problematic, we can refer to confidences that the latter, as pope, shared with his friend, Baron Carlo Monti. Benedict XV recognized that he had always found Merry del Val deferential, and even, at particular moments, received the help that had been requested of him. See Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), II, p. 358. Nevertheless, their relationship was, according to Monti, ‘proper but certainly not intimate’ (‘corretti ma non certo intimi’). A revealing episode: shortly after the conclave that elected Pius X, Merry del Val rebuked his Secretary, Tedeschini, because he had shown some of the minutes to Della

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An accurate and immediate litmus test can be found in the affair surrounding the Pia Società di San Girolamo per la diffusione dei Santi Vangeli (Pious Society of Saint Jerome for the Spread of the Gospels). Founded on 27 April 1902 during a meeting in the antechamber of the Secretariat of State (then headed by Rampolla), it had Cardinal Mario Mocenni as its Honorary President and Della Chiesa as its working President. Its first ten members had set out to provide organizational support for the dissemination of the recently published work Il santo Vangelo di N. S. Gesù Cristo e gli Atti degli Apostoli.87 The work presented the version that Don Giuseppe Clementi had produced, starting from the Vulgate by constantly referring to the Greek text, while the preface was written by the Barnabite Giovanni Semeria and the notes were from the missionary of the Sacred Heart Giovanni Genocchi. Although their names did not appear in the print version, their respective functions and attributions were known, as were the authors’ perspectives, which were held to be inclined toward ‘modernist’ tendencies. This ended up provoking opposition to the society, which still enjoyed the support of the Substitute of the Secretary of State and the, initial, favour of Pius X for its translation of the Gospels.88 Nor should the text’s quality — accessible to a wide public thanks to the version’s agile wording and notes — or success be underestimated; 200,000 copies were quickly distributed. The enthusiasm and diligent cooperation of the society’s members, as can be seen in the minutes of the meetings presided over by Della Chiesa, allowed for some hope of overcoming the opposition, which was also partly offset by the support of a number of representatives in the hierarchy, first and foremost of these being Cardinal Alfonso Capecelatro.89 However, the torrent of distrust and objections to the association that promised original development in the area of disseminating biblical and patristic knowledge was not stemmed. Above all, it was the editorial extension, which brought other works to the catalogue, that nourished the insistence of detractors, in particular as far as the prayer book produced by Antonietta Giacomelli with the title Adveniat regnum tuum was concerned.90 Long shadows fell over the initiative. In 1905, La Civiltà Cattolica — which as early as 1900 had not spared criticism of the author’s previous works91 — denounced the insinuation in her Adveniat of ‘rather equivocal expressions that seem to threaten

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Chiesa; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 453. He also noted that, unlike Rampolla, Merry del Val did not update him ‘on everything’. He therefore noticed a lack of trust in him, adding however that ‘trust cannot be imposed’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 358. Il santo Vangelo di N. S. Gesù Cristo e gli Atti degli Apostoli (Rome: Pia Società di San Girolamo, 1902). Francesco Turvasi, Padre Genocchi, il sant’Uffizio e la Bibbia (Bologna: EDB, 1971), pp. 82–83. Alfonso Capecelatro, Le vie nuove del clero negli studi e nel culto divino (Rome: Desclée, Lefebvre & C., 1907), p. 9. It is worth mentioning that, many years later, a distinguished biblical scholar saw a considerable ‘sign of biblical renewal’ in the publication of the early twentieth century. See Norbert Lohfink, Esegesi biblica in cambiamento: un esegeta puntualizza la sua scienza (Brescia: Queriniana, 1973), p. 18. Antonietta Giacomelli, ‘Adveniat regnum tuum’: letture e preghiere cristiane (Rome: Pia Società di San Girolamo, 1904). [Ilario Rinieri,] ‘Pensieri di una “cattolica cristiana”’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 52, 2 (1900), pp. 204–09.

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the life of the dogmatic tree’,92 while rumours were spread that the work would be placed on the Index.93 The Pope’s strong appeal led to limiting the editorial project, which had foreseen translations of other parts of the New Testament, particularly the Pauline letters. Several notes on the Gospels that Genocchi had edited were also eliminated, and Semeria’s preface was corrected in a very specific place, substituting the expression ‘separated brothers’ with the customary ‘Protestants’.94 In a letter to Baron Friedrich von Hugel of November 1906, Genocchi — who was alarmed because ‘Rome is swarming with spies watching the “modernists”’ — wrote that he was convinced that the fate of the society was already sealed, although its death would be sweet since ‘there are milder manners by which to kill the Società di San Girolamo’.95 As the main person in charge of the society, Della Chiesa suffered the consequences of the accusations. During a meeting on 28 October 1906, to the dismay of those present, the future Benedict XV was ready to resign as president.96 He remained, but the Secretary, Giuseppe Valdambrini, was forced to abandon his post, while criticisms of the edition of the Gospels and its related notes increased.97 According to a member of the group, the Director of Milan’s La scuola cattolica, Bartolomeo Nogara, signs of distrust regarding what the society was trying to accomplish were arriving from the Secretariat of State, although certainly not from its Substitute, Della Chiesa.98 The affair, although contained, revealed the impracticability of the modus vivendi, probably already weakened at the outset, between Della Chiesa and Merry del Val.99 Beyond the complications in relationships between persons, which are quite normal in the typical dynamics of management groups, their thoughts and projects diverged: it is a phenomenon that occurs, although shrouded in privacy when appropriate, in the Roman Church. It re-emerged, with shifts in the balance of power at the highest levels of the Holy See, during phases of changing characteristics and length, in the history of twentieth-century Catholicism.

92 ‘Espressioni alquanto equivoche, che sembra intacchino il vivo dell’albero dogmatico’; review of Giacomelli’s Adveniat, La Civiltà Cattolica, 57, 2 (1905), p. 334. 93 Antonietta Giacomelli to Paul Sabatier, 2 December 1909, reported by Camillo Brezzi in ‘Carteggio Giacomelli–Sabatier’, ed. by Camillo Brezzi, Fonti e documenti, 2 (1973), pp. 296–473 (pp. 394–98). The book was placed on the Index with the decree of 22 January 1912; Index librorum prohibitorum (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1929), p. 391. 94 Francesco Turvasi, Giovanni Genocchi e la controversia modernista (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974), pp. 357–59; Virginio Colciago, ‘Note bio-bibliografiche’, in the Appendix to Giovanni Semeria, Saggi… clandestini, ed. by Celestino Argenta, 2 vols (Alba: Edizioni Domenicane, 1967), II, p. 418. 95 Turvasi, Giovanni Genocchi, p. 291. 96 Turvasi, Giovanni Genocchi, pp. 125–29. The (lost) text of the pontifical letter is summarised in the minutes of the meeting, see Turvasi, Giovanni Genocchi, pp. 126–27. 97 Turvasi, Giovanni Genocchi, pp. 129–36. 98 Turvasi, Giovanni Genocchi, p. 182. 99 He spoke of ‘Della Chiesa’s unsustainable permanence in the Secretariat of State’ (‘insostenibile permanenza in segreteria di Stato di Della Chiesa’); Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), p. 7.

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Bibliography Alessandrini, Federico, ‘Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto (Giuseppe)’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), pp. 150–53 Antonazzi, Giovanni, Don Giuseppe De Luca: uomo, cristiano e prete (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1992) Appolis, Émile, ‘En marge de la Séparation: les associations cultuelles schismatiques’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 49, 146 (1963), pp. 47–88 Arnold, Claus, ‘Antimodernismo e magistero romano: la redazione della Pascendi’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 5, 2 (2008), pp. 345–64 Arnold, Claus, and Giacomo Losito, eds, La censure d’Alfred Loisy (1903) (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2009) Aubert, Roger, ‘Leone XIII: tradizione e progresso’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 61–106 Bellò, Carlo, Geremia Bonomelli: vescovo di povera santa Chiesa (Brescia: Queriniana, 1975) Benedict XV, Lettere ad un amico: Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Milan: NED, 1992) Beyens, Napoléon Eugène, Quatre ans à Rome 1922–1926: fin du pontificat de Benoît XIV, Pie XI: les débuts du fascisme (Paris: Plon, 1934) Blau, Peter M., Dynamics of Bureaucracy: A Study of Interpersonal Relations in Two Government Agencies, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) Brezzi, Camillo, ‘Carteggio Giacomelli–Sabatier’, ed. by Camillo Brezzi, Fonti e documenti, 2 (1973), pp. 296–473 Buehrle, Marie Cecilia, Rafael, Cardinal Merry del Val (London: Sands, 1957) Capecelatro, Alfonso, Le vie nuove del clero negli studi e nel culto divino (Rome: Desclée, Lefebvre & C., 1907) Cenci, Pio, Il cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val (Rome: Berruti, 1933) Cerrato, Rocco, ed., ‘Il gruppo radicale lombardo: 1. Carteggio Pioli–Houtin’, Fonti e documenti, 3 (1974), pp. 1134–285 Colciago, Virginio, ‘Note bio-bibliografiche’, in Giovanni Semeria, Saggi… clandestini, ed. by Celestino Argenta, 2 vols (Alba: Edizioni Domenicane, 1967), II, p. 418 Crispolti, Filippo, Pio IX, Leone XIII, Pio X, Benedetto XV (ricordi personali) (Milan; Rome: Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, 1932) Daelli, Luigi, Pio X: cenni biografici (Bergamo: Pro Familia, 1906) De Luca, Giuseppe, Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1971) De Volder, Jan, ‘Gasparri et Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 243–54 De Volder, Jan, ‘Secrétairerie d’État et secrétaires d’État (1814–1978): acquisitions historiographiques sur l’institution et les hommes’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 445–59 Dieguez, Alejandro Mario, ed., L’archivio particolare di Pio X: cenni storici e inventario (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2003)

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Dieguez, Alejandro Mario, and Sergio Pagano, eds, Le carte del ‘sacro tavolo’: aspetti del pontificato di Pio X dai documenti del suo archivio privato, 2 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006), II Durand, Jean-Dominique, ‘Conclusions’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 681–86 Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960) Fouilloux, Étienne, ‘Du catholicisme contemporain selon Émile Poulat’, Esprit (April 1978), pp. 116–21 Fouilloux, Étienne, ‘Du catholicisme selon Émile Poulat’, in Un objet de science, le catholicisme: réflexions autour de l’œuvre d’Émile Poulat, en Sorbonne, 22–23 octobre 1999, ed. by Valentine Zuber (Paris: Bayard, 2001), pp. 246–52 Fouilloux, Étienne, Les catholiques et l’unité chrétienne du XIXe et XXe siècle: itinéraires européens d’expression française (Paris: Le Centurion, 1982) Fouilloux, Étienne, ‘Secrétairerie d’État et gouvernement de l’Église: quelques hypothèses’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 303–11 Giacomelli, Antonietta, ‘Adveniat regnum tuum’: letture e preghiere cristiane (Rome: Pia Società di San Girolamo, 1904) Goriup, Lino, and Roberto Macciantelli, ‘Mons. Giacomo Della Chiesa e la nascita del Pontificio Seminario Regionale Benedetto XV di Bologna’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 105–24 Guasco, Maurilio, Alfred Loisy in Italia: con documenti inediti (Turin: Giappichelli, 1975) Guasco, Maurilio, ‘Intransigeantisme, libéralisme et modernisme’, in Un objet de science, le catholicisme: réflexions autour de l’œuvre d’Émile Poulat, en Sorbonne, 22–23 octobre 1999, ed. by Valentine Zuber (Paris: Bayard, 2001), pp. 240–45 Hierarchia catholica medii et recentioris aevi, 9 vols (Padua: Il Messaggero di Sant’Antonio, 1913–2002), VIII: A pontificatu Pii PP. IX (1846) usque ad pontificatum Leonis PP. XIII (1903), ed. by Remigius Ritzler and Pirminus Sefrin (1978) Hierarchia catholica medii et recentioris aevi, 9 vols (Padua: Il Messaggero di Sant’Antonio, 1913–2002), IX: A pontificatu Pii PP. X (1903) usque ad pontificatum Benedictii PP. XV (1922), ed. by Zeno Pieta (2001) Index librorum prohibitorum (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1929) Isambert, François-André, ‘Du Syllabus à Vatican II, ou les avatars de l’intransigeantisme: à propos de deux ouvrages d’Émile Poulat’, Revue française de sociologie, 19, 4 (1978), pp. 603–12 Jankowiak, François, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X: le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846–1914) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007) ‘Laïcité, séparation, sécularisation (1905–2005)’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 22, 87 (2005), pp. 7–176 Larkin, Maurice J. M., ‘Loubet’s Visit to Rome and the Question of Papal Prestige’, The Historical Journal, 4 (1961), pp. 97–103 Lease, Gary, ‘Odd Fellows’ in the Politics of Religion: Modernism, National Socialism and German Judaism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995) Lemius, Jean-Baptiste, Catechismo sul modernismo secondo l’enciclica ‘Pascendi Dominici gregis’ di Sua Santità Pio X (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1908)

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Levillain, Philippe, and Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘Léon XIII, une vision du monde entre deux siècles’, in Le pontificat de Léon XIII: renaissance du Saint-Siège?, ed. by Philippe Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi (Rome: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 3–8 Lohfink, Norbert, Esegesi biblica in cambiamento: un esegeta puntualizza la sua scienza (Brescia: Queriniana, 1973) MacNutt, Francis Augustus, A Papal Chamberlain: The Personal Chronicle of Francis Augustus MacNutt, ed. by John J. Donovan (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936) Mangoni, Luisa, In partibus infidelium: Don Giuseppe De Luca: il mondo cattolico e la cultura italiana nel Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1989) Marrou, Henri-Irénée, ‘Philologie et histoire dans la période du pontificat de Léon XIII’, in Aspetti della cultura cattolica nell’età di Leone XIII: atti del convegno tenuto a Bologna il 27–29 dicembre 1960, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1961), pp. 71–128 Mayeur, Jean-Marie, ‘Catholicisme intransigeant, catholicisme social, démocratie’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, 27 (1972), pp. 483–99 Melloni, Alberto, Il conclave: storia di una istituzione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001) Menozzi, Daniele, ‘L’Église et la modernité, une relation compliquée’, in Un objet de science, le catholicisme: réflexions autour de l’œuvre d’Émile Poulat, en Sorbonne, 22–23 octobre 1999, ed. by Valentine Zuber (Paris: Bayard, 2001), pp. 124–32 Merry del Val, Rafael, Pio X: impressioni e ricordi (Padua: Il Messaggero di Sant’Antonio, 1948) Miccoli, Giovanni, Fra mito della cristianità e secolarizzazione: studi sul rapporto chiesasocietà nell’età contemporanea (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1985) Ottaviani, Alfredo, Il baluardo (Rome: Ares, 1961) Pastor, Ludwig von, Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, ed. by Wilhelm Wühr (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1950) Pásztor, Lajos, ‘L’histoire de la Curie romaine, problème d’histoire de l’Église’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 64 (1969), pp. 353–66 Pioli, Giovanni, ‘Benedict XV: The Significance of His Election’, The Contemporary Review, 106 (October 1914), pp. 506–14 Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Poulat, Émile, Les diocésaines: République française, Église catholique: Loi de 1905 et associations cultuelles: le dossier d’un litige et de sa solution (1903–2003) (Paris: La Documentation française, 2007) Poulat, Émile, Église contre bourgeoisie (Tournai: Casterman, 1977) Poulat, Émile, Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste, 2nd edn (Tournai: Casterman, 1979) Poulat, Émile, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969) Poulat, Émile, ‘Merry del Val’, in Encyclopaedia universalis, 5th edn, 28 vols (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis, 2002), XIV, p. 658 Poulat, Émile, Modernistica: horizons, physionomies, débats (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1982) Prévotat, Jacques, Les catholiques et l’Action française: histoire d’une condamnation (1899– 1939) (Paris: Fayard, 2001)

Co n trov e r s i e s at t h e To p : M e r ry d e l Val, De lla Chi e sa, Pi u s X

Prudhomme, Claude, ‘Les hommes de la Secrétairerie d’État: carrières, réseaux, culture’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 475–93 ‘La République ne reconnait aucun culte’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 44, 129 (2005), pp. 7–151 Riccardi, Andrea, Il partito romano: politica italiana, chiesa cattolica e curia romana da Pio X a Paolo VI (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2007) Romana beatificationis et canonizationis Servi Dei Raphaelis card. Merry del Val: Informatio, Tabella testium, Summarium, Litterae postulatoriae super causae introductione et Summarium ex officio super scriptis (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1957) Rosa, Mario, La curia romana nell’età moderna: istituzioni, cultura, carriere (Rome: Viella, 2013) Roy-Lysencourt, Phillippe, ‘Le parcours curial du cardinal Rafael Merry del Val’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Mediterranée, 128, 1 (2016) Rumi, Giorgio, ed., Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990) Sale, Giovanni, ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’ nella crisi modernista (1900–1907) fra transigentismo politico e integralismo dottrinale (Milan: Jaca Book, 2001) Il santo Vangelo di N. S. Gesù Cristo e gli Atti degli Apostoli (Rome: Pia Società di San Girolamo, 1902) Schultenover, David G., A View from Rome on the Eve of the Modernist Crisis (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Scottà, Antonio, ‘Lo Stato liberale ed il progetto di infeudazione della Chiesa di Roma: missione esplorativa fra i metropoliti d’Italia di mons. Giacomo Della Chiesa’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 31–80 Sinopoli di Giunta, Giovanni Pietro, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1923) Snider, Carlo, L’episcopato del cardinale Andrea C. Ferrari, 2 vols (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1981–82), II: I tempi di Pio X (1982) Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘“Avec lui il n’y en a que pour la France!”: remarques sur la contribution du cardinal Rampolla à la politique de Léon XIII’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 199–241 Trezzi, Luigi, ‘Daelli (Luigi)’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860– 1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III/1 (1984), p. 277 Trincia, Luciano, Conclave e potere politico: il veto a Rampolla nel sistema delle potenze europee (1887–1904) (Rome: Studium, 2004) Turvasi, Francesco, Giovanni Genocchi e la controversia modernista (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974) Turvasi, Francesco, Padre Genocchi, il sant’Uffizio e la Bibbia (Bologna: EDB, 1971)

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Vistalli, Francesco, Benedetto XV (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1928) Weber, Christoph, Quellen und Studien zur Kurie und zur vatikanischen Politik unter Leo XIII (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1973) Zambarbieri, Annibale, ed., ‘Carteggio Bonomelli–Sabatier’, Fonti e documenti, 3 (1974), pp. 873–1057 Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘Merry del Val, Rafael’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXIII (2009), pp. 740–44 Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘Prime censure a Ernesto Buonaiuti’, in La condanna del modernismo, ed. by Claus Arnold and Giovanni Vian (Rome: Viella, 2010), pp. 28–43 Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘Roma, “romanitas”. Un’ecclesiologia della visibilità’, in I cattolici e lo Stato liberale nell’età di Leone XIII, ed. by Annibale Zambarbieri (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2008), pp. 69–118

Jean-Marc Ticchi

Rampolla, Della Chiesa, Benedict XV

After Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro died on 16 December 1913, the Bologna diocesan bulletin reported that the city’s Archbishop, ‘after having spent twenty-seven years in a close relationship with the scholarly Cardinal, used to call him his beloved teacher and incomparable father because of the devoted veneration and a great love harboured for him’. It continued: ‘Cardinal Rampolla reciprocated the Archbishop’s language […] with such esteem and affection as to always refer to him as his dear, distant son’.1 That there existed an intellectual kinship between Rampolla and Giacomo Della Chiesa was often mentioned by observers of the day2 — some of whom rejoiced precisely for that very reason when Della Chiesa was elected pope3 —, in historiographical





1 ‘Dopo aver passato ben 27 anni vicino al sapiente porporato, per la devota venerazione e l’amore amplissimo che verso di lui nutriva, soleva chiamarlo il suo dilettissimo maestro e padre incomparabile’; ‘il card. Rampolla corrispondeva l’arcivescovo […] di tanta stima e affetto da parlare in ogni occasione di lui come di un tenero figliuolo lontano’; Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), p. 34. 2 For instance, Claar, for whom Della Chiesa was one of the few in the Vatican who ‘for twenty years enjoyed his full confidence’; Maximilian Claar, ‘Kardinal Rampolla als Staatssekretär und Papstweber (1887–1903)’, Europäische Gespräche: Hamburger Monatsblätter für auswärtige Politik, 9, 7 (1929), pp. 465–82 (p. 479). Also see Princess Radziwiłł’s letter to General Di Robilant from 15 September 1914: ‘From the first moment here we were dissatisfied with the choice of Cardinal Della Chiesa, in whom we recognize the ideas of Cardinal Rampolla’ (‘Ici au premier moment on s’est montré mécontent du choix du cardinal Della Chiesa qu’on savait dans les idées du cardinal Rampolla’); Marie Dorothée Élisabeth de Castellane Radziwiłł, Une grande dame d’avant guerre: lettres de la princesse Radziwiłł au général de Robilant (1889–1914), 4 vols (Bologna: Zanichelli; Paris: Plon, 1933–34), IV (1934), p. 270. Finally, see Annie Wall, ‘Kardinal Rampolla och Benediktus XV’, Nordisk Tidskrift (1921), pp. 273–84. 3 On 19 September 1914, Cyrille Korolevskij wrote to the Latin Archbishop of Bucharest Raymund Netzhammer: ‘We have an heir to Rampolla on the Chair of Peter and this election confirms once again my optimism’ (‘Nous avons un héritier de Rampolla sur la chaire de Pierre et cette élection me confirme encore dans mon optimisme’); Ion Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie moderne, 1866–1914 (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1989), pp. 951–52. See also Louis Duchesne, Correspondance avec Mme Bulteau (1902–1922), ed. by Florence Callu (Rome: École française de Rome, 2009), p. 506. Duchesne to Madame Bulteau, 9 May 1915: ‘You do not care at all for Our Holy Father the Pope […] do not expect more from people than what they can give you.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 147–161 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118769

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reports,4 and by Benedict XV himself. Neither the extent nor the specifics of their relationship are known, however, although the period of their relationship is clear enough: beginning in 1881, when Della Chiesa entered the Secretariat of State,5 until 1903, the two prelates worked together daily for more than twenty years. Another period, marked by Della Chiesa’s appointment to the See of Bologna on 18 December 1907, began when Pius X was elected and concluded with Rampolla’s death. Taking a series of cuttings found in documentary proof, I hope to illustrate some aspects of their attachment which, in part, are explained by the similarity of the two men’s curial paths that doubtlessly influenced their way of seeing things. In the first place, they were both students of the Capranica seminary. They then carried out their duties in Madrid at the Apostolic Nunciature before working in the Secretariat of State: Della Chiesa as a Substitute in the dicastery and Rampolla as Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Della Chiesa was even mentioned as a possible candidate for the Madrid Nunciature shortly before his appointment to Bologna.6 In chronological order, I shall try to show that he was, successively, the pupil, colleague and friend of Pope Leo XIII’s Secretary of State, outlining a collaboration that had a considerable, lasting influence on the future Pope’s attitude and thought.

1. Pupil Born in 1854, Giacomo Della Chiesa was only twenty-nine years old in those early days of 1883 when he became Secretary to the Nuncio to Spain. He assumed the role of chronicler and archivist of the Nunciature, which allowed him to write, in his own hand, the report of the Nuncio’s arrival, in a passage that inaugurated the precious collection of Rampolla files in the archive of the nunciature in Madrid.

They are mediocre. In ordinary times they would be enough to turn the gears, but our times are not ordinary, and they are in over their head. I would have hoped for more from an old colleague of Rampolla; when I heard him speak of his projects for Hagia Sophia, I was astounded’ (‘Vous ne voul[ez] guère de bien à N. S. P. le pape […] il ne faut pas attendre des gens ce qu’ils ne peuvent pas vous donner. Ils sont médiocres. En temps ordinaire ils suffiraient à faire tourner les manivelles, mais le temps n’est pas ordinaire et ils sont au-dessous de leur rôle. J’avais espéré mieux d’un ancien collaborateur de Rampolla; quand j’ai entendu parler de ces projets sur Sainte-Sophie, les bras me sont tombés’). 4 Danilo Veneruso, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), p. 33. 5 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 12. 6 Giorgio Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV, un epistolario inedito’, Civitas, 42 (1991), pp. 1–83 (pp. 53–54), Della Chiesa to Valfrè di Bonzo, 5 October 1907: ‘The fact is that I am not, nor will I be appointed to Madrid because the Holy Father wants me […] as Archbishop of Bologna’ (‘Il fatto è che io non sono, né sarò nominato a Madrid perché il S. Padre mi vuole […] arcivescovo di Bologna’).

r am p o l l a, d e lla chi e sa, b e ne d i ct  xv

no. 1 Arrival of Archbishop Rampolla, Nuncio of Madrid, [22 January 1883]: Archbishop Mariano Rampolla dei Conti del Tindaro, Archbishop of Heraclea and Apostolic Nuncio to Spain, arrived in Madrid on the morning of 22 January 1883. That same day, His Eminence Bianchi, Pro-Nuncio of the Holy See, gave notice to the Minister of State, asking him to appoint the date and time when he could present the new Nuncio to him. This visit was, in fact, scheduled and took place on the 24th of the same month. Following it, a royal audience was requested and obtained in the manner that appears in the attached documents.7 The diplomatic apprentice witnessed the daily life of the pontifical delegation. He saw it, for example, on 3 February 1887, during a lunch held in honour of the Spanish Minister of Grace and Justice, for which he arranged the layout of the table before taking part in it.8 On a more personal level, he was also witness to the Nuncio’s spirituality and would later take up the same way of living.9 In actual fact, the Nunciature in Madrid was in that period quite distant from Rome, as he noted on 4 November 1883. ‘For two days we have had Archbishop Vannutelli as a guest in the Nunciature. We have received some news of Rome from him, which we fell upon as manna in the desert’.10 Through his own correspondence, Della Chiesa was also the de facto chronicler of the Nunciature, noting, for example, a trip to the Escorial in the summer of 1884, a trip to Uclés, and another to the baths of Alhama de Aragón, to cite only three cases found in the archives of the Nunciature.11 In his letters he also recalled other busy times in Madrid, such as the 200 visits that the pontifical representative had to make upon arriving in Spain,12



7 ‘N. 1 Arrivo di mons. Rampolla nunzio di Madrid, [22 en. 1883]: mons. Mariano Rampolla dei Conti del Tindaro, arcivescovo di Eraclea e nunzio apostolico in Ispagna giunse a Madrid la mattina del 22 gennaio 1883. Nello stesso giorno l’Em.mo Bianchi, pro-nunzio di S. S., ne diede avviso al ministro di Stato, chiedendogli di fissare il giorno e l’ora in cui avrebbe potuto presentargli il nuovo nunzio. Questa visita fu infatti fissata ed ebbe luogo il 24 dello stesso mese: in seguito ad essa fu domandata e ottenuta l’udienza reale nel modo che apparisce dagli uniti documenti’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Madrid, b. 519, tit. I, sez. 1, f. 1. A, Nunzio. These notes are in Della Chiesa’s handwriting. 8 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Madrid, b. 520, tit. I, rubr. 3, sez. I, n. 3, Invitations to lunch at the Nunciature, f. 783, lunch on 3 February 1887, draft by Della Chiesa. 9 Giovanni Pietro Sinopoli di Giunta, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1923), pp. 274–75. 10 ‘Abbiamo avuto due giorni ospite in nunziatura mons. Vannutelli, diretto al Portogallo; da lui abbiamo avuto un po’ di notizie di Roma, accolte come manna nel deserto’; Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 13. 11 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Madrid, b. 519, tit. I, rubr. I, sez. VI, n. 2, holiday at the Escorial in the summer of 1884, ff. 600–05; n. 3, Trip to Uclés to preside at a theology conference [1886] at the Jesuit seminary, ff. 606–16, n. 5, The Nuncio went to the baths of Alhama of Aragon in August of 1886, ff. 629–37. 12 Della Chiesa to Valfrè di Bonzo on 20 February 1883, in Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 9.

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a stay at the luxurious Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso13 and an illness of the Nuncio.14 He wrote two descriptions of the Nuncio in the letters to his dear friend Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo. Writing him from Madrid on 20 February 1883, he observed: Perhaps the welcome given to Archbishop Rampolla had greater proportions than those given to welcome his predecessors because he was known, and very favourably, in Spain. We hope that this standing of his will help facilitate a path to success in his difficult undertaking. He truly deserves it, because he is a prelate in every esteemed regard: he represents the Holy See with great dignity, which in Spain can do good.15 A month later, on 24 March 1883, he wrote, ‘the Mgr Nuncio is truly an excellent superior, he works a lot and with an intelligence that everyone recognizes, in a month and a half we have written more than thirty dispatches to the Secretariat of State and, of these, seven or eight consisted of four or five sheets’.16

13 ‘San Ildefonso, 19 August 1883 […] we are enjoying the delights of a pleasant holiday in this royal resort of the Spanish monarchs. It was beautiful to think that the King spontaneously offered accommodations to the Nuncio so that he might accompany the Court during the summer season, an offer that, after the Restoration, no nuncio had received although the rest of the diplomatic court still enjoyed its custom, having to be content with modest lodgings in second or third-rate hotels. The King’s wishes, however, were carried out by two distinguished gentlemen who, having to furnish the elegant little house assigned to the Nuncio, did so splendidly, also bringing luxurious furniture from the royal palaces of Madrid and the Escorial’ (‘San Ildefonso, 19 agosto 1883 […] godiamo le delizie di un’amena villeggiatura in questo reale soggiorno dei monarchi spagnoli: fu bello il pensiero del Re che spontaneamente offrì al nunzio l’alloggio affinché potesse anch’egli accompagnare la Corte nella stagione estiva, ciò che dopo la Restaurazione nessun nunzio aveva più fatto benché il resto del Corpo diplomatico non avesse perduto quest’uso contentandosi anche di modesti alloggi in alberghi di secondo o terz’ordine: il pensiero del Re però fu eseguito da due egregi gentiluomini i quali dovendo ammobiliar a nuovo l’elegante casino assegnato al nunzio lo fecero in modo splendido, facendo anche venire dei mobili di lusso dai reali palazzi di Madrid e dell’Escorial’); Della Chiesa to Valfrè di Bonzo on 20 February 1883, in Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, pp. 12–13. 14 On 24 June 1883, he wrote: ‘My Nuncio is now feeling the effects of undertaking too many endeavours when he was at the Secretariat of Ecclesiastic Affairs, but it seems to me that he did so to better conform to the Pope’s wishes’ (‘Il mio nunzio risente ora gli effetti della troppa fatica presa su di sé quando era alla Segreteria degli Affari Ecclesiastici ma mi pare aver capito che egli intendeva con ciò di uniformarsi meglio ai desideri del papa’); and from Rome on 20 February 1892, ‘My health, thanks be to God, continues to be good. Likewise, that of his eminence, my superior, who is now perfectly restored’ (‘La mia salute, grazie a Dio, continua a essere buona; così pure è di quella dell’Em.mo mio superiore, ora perfettamente ristabilito’); Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, pp. 12, 22. 15 ‘Forse l’accoglienza fatta a mons. Rampolla ebbe proporzioni maggiori che quella onde furono onorati i suoi predecessori, perché egli era conosciuto, e molto favorevolmente, in Ispagna: speriamo che questa sua condizione gli faciliti il modo di riuscire nella sua difficile impresa. Lo meriterebbe veramente, perché è un prelato sotto ogni riguardo esimio: rappresenta la S. Sede con molta dignità, ciò che in Ispagna può far del bene’; Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 9. 16 ‘Mons. nunzio è veramente un egregio superiore, egli lavora molto e con quell’intelligenza che tutti gli conoscono, in un mese e mezzo abbiamo scritto più di 30 dispacci alla segreteria di Stato e di questi 7 o 8 constavano di 4 o 5 fogli’; Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 10.

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During his time at the Nunciature, the young diplomat was, among other things, in charge of drafting the press reviews, in particular for the pontifical mediation concerning the Caroline Islands in 1885, to which Rampolla contributed decisively. It has not been possible to find traces of it in the future Pope’s correspondence, but it can be theorised that the event constituted a very important step in his formation. On becoming pope, Della Chiesa showed that he had not forgotten the lessons in diplomatic style that he had learned in his apprenticeship in Madrid. During World War I, on 30 January 1918, he wrote to Valfrè di Bonzo, who was then Nuncio in Vienna, that his dispatches were ‘well done’ and that he found in them ‘the style of the old nuncios […] Ferrata, Rampolla, Jacobini because among the current nuncios — with the exception of Pacelli — few know the true style of the Holy See’.17 The Secretary’s service satisfied his superior, whom Della Chiesa attributed with his nomination to secret supernumerary chamberlain, observing, in a letter from 24 June 1884: I was pleased with this distinction, elicited as it was from my Nuncio.18 It shows his benevolence towards me. He is truly a dear person; drawing closer to him makes me appreciate him the better.19 Their working relationship continued when the Nuncio was appointed Secretary of State on 2 June 1887.

2. Colleague Behind the scenes at the Vatican, Della Chiesa acted alongside Rampolla, even becoming, on 23 April 1901, a Substitute of the Secretariat of State. It was precisely in this role that he received secret missions, of which at least three are known. In 1887, he made an inquiry into the status of the press in various Italian dioceses, from which he produced a report on the Catholic press, the Roman Question and the Italian episcopate. Rampolla kept this document in his papers where it was found after his death.20 In 1891, Della Chiesa participated in the preparatory contacts for the meeting between the Cardinal and future Prime Minister Antonio di Rudinì. In this regard, on 21 April 1891, Della Chiesa wrote to Ferdinando De Bojani, having been

17 ‘Lo stile degli antichi nunzi […] Ferrata, Rampolla, Jacobini perché fra i più recenti — escluso Pacelli — pochi conoscono il vero stile della S. Sede’; Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 66. 18 Note the possessive. 19 ‘Mi ha fatto piacere questa distinzione, perché, provocata come fu dal mio nunzio, è argomento della sua benevolenza per me. Egli è veramente una cara persona, avvicinandolo di più si apprezza ognor meglio’; Rumi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 11. 20 AES, Stati ecclesiastici, 1818–1903, pos. 1075, fasc. 346–347, Roma 1887, Private correspondence of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, Instructions given to Mgr Giacomo Della Chiesa, charged with secretly travelling to Florence, Bologna, Venice, Genoa and Turin to negotiate with the respective archbishops, Report of Mgr Della Chiesa.

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asked by Rampolla which method Italy would agree to in the, then open, question of episcopal nominations. I beg you to let me make this known to His Eminence, my superior, or else to go yourself to take an answer to His Eminence, who would be pleased to see you. You know that the evening hours are those in which Cardinal Rampolla is less busy and receives visitors more willingly.21 The third example is dated 2 July 1898, when Della Chiesa was sent to Mgr Giovanni Battista Scalabrini on the eve of the false report that Bishop Geremia Bonomelli was suspended a divinis. Scalabrini himself hinted at this visit, writing to the Bishop of Cremona on 4 July: A small, but future great man of the Church came to me the day before yesterday, who had just had a meeting with Cardinal Rampolla. Speaking to him of you, he restricted himself to tell him that perhaps the mention you gave to the Catholic press may not have been appropriate.22 Collaborating with Rampolla, Della Chiesa carried out many of these incidentals for his superior during a time in which the papacy was, on several occasions, called on to intervene to pacify thorny international issues. In particular, one thinks of the beneficial actions of the Holy See between France and Spain (1893), between France and Portugal regarding the customs tariff (1894), between Venezuela and Great Britain (1894), and between Ecuador and Peru.23 In addition to these mediations, there was also the emblematic one that took place on 13 February 1899, shortly before the conference at The Hague for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes.24

21 Alessandro Luzio, ‘Il cardinale Rampolla e il marchese di Rudinì’, Nuova Antologia, 398 (May 1938), pp. 16–43 (pp. 17–18). On 21 May 1891, De Bojani noted: ‘Mgr Della Chiesa, Secretary of the Nunciature and particularly for Cardinal Rampolla, came to me in the Cardinal’s name to tell me that His Eminence already thanks His Excellence (the keeper of the seals) for the decisions made and asking me to stop by tomorrow evening to visit him’ (‘Venne da me mons. Della Chiesa, segretario di nunziatura e particolarmente del card. Rampolla a nome del cardinale, a dirmi come S. Em. ringrazia già S. E. (il guardasigilli) delle decisioni prese e mi pregava di passare domani sera a visitarlo’); Alessandro Luzio, ‘La questione romana e il cardinale Rampolla’, in Chiesa e Stato: studi storici e giuridici per il decennale della conciliazione tra la S. Sede e l’Italia, 2 vols (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1939), I, pp. 441–79 (pp. 443, 449). 22 ‘Fu da me l’altro jeri un piccolo futuro grande uomo della Chiesa, il quale ebbe giorni sono un colloquio col card. Rampolla. Parlandogli di voi si sarebbe limitato a dirgli che forse non era opportuno l’accenno da voi fatto alla stampa cattolica’; Scalabrini to Bonomelli, 4 July 1898, reported in Carteggio Scalabrini–Bonomelli (1868–1905), ed. by Carlo Marcora (Rome: Studium 1983), p. 349. 23 Jean-Marc Ticchi, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint Siège, 1878–1922 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002), p. 356. 24 According to Brigitte Waché, who refers to the article ‘Église et paix’ by Yves de La Brière, ‘the minutante of the Secretariat of State, at the end of 1898, had been charged by Cardinal Rampolla with drafting the Secretary of State’s response to Mouravyov’s memo’ (‘minutante à la Secrétairerie d’état, il avait été chargé par le cardinal Rampolla, à la fin de l’année 1898, de rédiger la réponse adressée par le secrétaire d’État à la circulaire Mouraviev’); Brigitte Waché, Monseigneur Louis Duchesne, 1843–1922 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992), p. 633.

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Charged with drafting the Secretariat of State’s response to the Apostolic Nuncio in Munich, Della Chiesa had proposed characterizing the Holy See by using the expression ‘moral power’, declaring that the Italian government should have been held responsible by the other powers for the reduction in importance and effectiveness that the conference deliberations suffered by excluding [‘earth’s greatest moral power’, Rampolla added], which could have stamped it with a special guarantee of impartiality.25 This passage, in which Rampolla hyperbolically amplified the formula used by his colleague, shows how the collaboration between the two prelates led them to an ‘entwined’ writing style and also illustrates how difficult it is to distinguish between their respective contributions to the politics of the Holy See. Some clues, therefore, confirm an obvious fact: Rampolla’s collaborator belonged to a different generation to his superior’s, one that was more sensitive to the conciliatory aspirations of a sector of Italian public opinion. This can be deduced from some texts that illustrate his attitude in this regard. On 15 June 1891, after having met Della Chiesa, Bojani wrote: In the morning, however, I wanted to see the Cardinal’s Secretary, a young, upcoming prelate but who, generally, likes to exaggerate the words of His Eminence, especially when talking about conciliation. He told me, after having covered several matters, that he was wrong to deal with things that hint at conciliation, having thus lost ground at the Holy See while the Cardinal showed his amazement.26 This observation might seem exaggerated if it did not coincide with an opinion expressed by the Austrian Ambassador, Schönburg-Hartenstein, shortly after Della Chiesa’s election to the papal throne. The diplomat noted, in fact, that the new pontiff was ‘very Italian’ and that ‘even under Rampolla’s authority, he had maintained his own way of seeing things’.27 The aforementioned draft on which he worked in 1899 prior to the conference at The Hague, which also touched on the Roman Question, illustrated the difference in views between the two. While Della Chiesa wrote: ‘This government appears, in 25 ‘Il governo italiano che dalle altre potenze avrebbe dovuto essere tenuto responsabile della diminuzione di importanza e di efficacia che le deliberazioni della conferenza avrebbero sofferto per l’esclusione della [più grande potenza morale della terra] che avrebbe potuto ad esse imprimere una speciale guarentigia di imparzialità’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 2, f. 29, Della Chiesa to the Nuncio at Munich, Benedetto Lorenzelli, 13 February 1899. 26 ‘Nella mattina volli però vedere il segretario del cardinale, giovane prelato di avvenire, ma che in generale ama esagerare le parole di S. E., sopra tutto quando suonano conciliazione. Questi mi disse, dopo aver trattato parecchi argomenti, Ella ebbe torto di trattare cose che accennano a conciliazione, perdette con ciò terreno presso la S. Sede ed il cardinale se ne mostrò meravigliato’; Luzio, ‘Il cardinale Rampolla’, p. 23. 27 ‘Auch als er unter Rampolla arbeitete, behielt er diesem gegenüber seine freie Auffassung’; Friedrich Engel-Janosi, ‘Oesterreich-Ungarn während des Pontifikats Pius X. und der Wahl Benedikts XV’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, 5 (1952), pp. 278–301 (p. 299).

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this as on other occasions, dominated by sectarian elements’, Rampolla introduced the clearly intransigent notation: ‘and in a state of permanent hostility to the Holy See, adding a new argument demonstrating the impossibility of the coexistence of two sovereignties in the capital of the Catholic world’.28 It is certain, as regards the elements that contributed to the formation of the Pope of the Great War’s thoughts on peace, that the first point of concern in the pontifical note of 1 August 1917 — ‘the institution of mediation with its high function of peace-making’ — used a formulation that was in full harmony with the views expressed by Leo XIII and Rampolla himself. Further, he had reflected on the possibility of arbitration as a way of resolving international conflicts, summarizing his own thought in a project for an international arbitration court of a strictly neoGuelph inspiration, which he proposed to be located in Rome under the presidency of the Roman pontiff.29 Respectful and faithful to his superior, Della Chiesa was, however, just one of the members of the group that surrounded Pope Leo XIII’s Secretary. Various testimonials show, for example, that then Archbishop Pietro Gasparri was also considered very close to the Sicilian Cardinal. This is confirmed in the diary of the historian Ludwig von Pastor, the Austrian Ambassador, who mentioned a conversation that he had had on 10 November 1902 with Mgr de Montel, according to whom ‘Della Chiesa and Gasparri were skilled and appreciated by Rampolla’.30 At the dawn of Pius X’s pontificate, the same Ambassador attributed a notable influence on the state of affairs to both prelates. On 10 November 1903, he reported that because the new Secretary of State, Merry del Val, was a young foreigner who has not yet been able to show his competence for that important position, Pius has kept Rampolla’s collaborators, Della Chiesa and Gasparri, in place. Many speculate about the influence these will have and think that Sarto was not elected pope to remain subservient to Rampolla’s system.31

28 ‘Questo governo apparisce in questa come in altre occasioni, dominato dagli elementi settarii […] e in istato di permanente ostilità alla S. Sede aggiungendo un argomento novello alla dimostrazione della impossibilità della coesistenza di due sovranità nella capitale del mondo cattolico’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 2, f. 29v, Della Chiesa to Lorenzelli, 13 February 1899. 29 ‘L’institution de l’arbitrage avec sa haute fonction pacificatrice’, text published by Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘Bons offices, médiations, arbitrages dans l’activité diplomatique du Saint-Siège de Léon XIII à Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 105, 2 (1993), pp. 567–612 (pp. 584–604). See also Benedict XV’s encouragement to Toniolo for having created an institute for international mediation, Ticchi, Aux frontières, p. 358. 30 ‘Della Chiesa und Gasparri seien tüchtig und gälten alles bei Rampolla’; Ludwig von Pastor, Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, ed. by Wilhelm Wühr (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1950), p. 396. 31 ‘Eines jungen Ausländers der seine Befähigung für diesen bedeutsamen Posten bisher noch nicht beweisen konnte. Deshalb behält Pius X. die Mitarbeiter Rampollas, Della Chiesa u. Gasparri bei. Manche prophezeien diesen zweien einen entscheidenden Einfluß und meinen man habe nicht Sarto deshalb zum Papst gewählt, um vom System Rampollas weiterhin beherrscht zu werden’; Pastor, Tagebücher, p. 421.

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Under Pius X’s pontificate, the relationship between the two men still remained so close that, in 1912, reflecting on the possibility of Rampolla’s election to the papal throne, the Bavarian representative to the Holy See mentioned the idea of Della Chiesa’s nomination as Secretary of State, as he was expectedly ‘skilled and willing’.32 In fact, Rampolla’s sudden death left the Archbishop of Bologna almost an orphan, according to Giovanni Pietro Sinopoli di Giunta, who had met him during his stay in Rome. Leo XIII having died and Cardinal Rampolla no longer being Secretary of State, Mgr Della Chiesa stayed at his post of Secretary della Cifra […] he seemed abandoned […] But he was never heard to place himself before others, or to aspire to higher places, or to complain that his services were not given worthy compensation.33

3. Friend and Successor The relationship of personal esteem and confidence between Rampolla and Della Chiesa had already emerged during the Leonine pontificate. In his will, written on 19 April 1889, the Cardinal had designated his Secretary as one of his heirs, along with Leo XIII himself and Mgrs Galimberti and Mocenni.34 Indeed, the Cardinal’s collection of medals was given to Benedict XV.35 Della Chiesa showed his devotion to his former superior in the mortuary chamber, being one of the first to celebrate Mass the day after the Cardinal’s death on 17 December 1913.36 He then asked Sinopoli di Giunta to draw up his biography,37 contributing directly with personal reflections.38

32 ‘Als gewandt und verläßlich’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Oesterreich-Ungarn’, p. 297. 33 ‘Morto Leone XIII, e non essendo più il card. Rampolla segretario di Stato, mons. Della Chiesa rimase al suo ufficio di segretario della Cifra […]. Sembrava abbandonato […]. Però mai lo si udì né anteporsi ad altri, né aspirare a posti più alti, né querelarsi che ai suoi servigi non fosse dato il degno compenso’; Giovanni Pietro Sinopoli di Giunta, Alla memoria di S. S. Benedetto XV: nel solenne funerale celebrato in Agira il 30 gennaio 1922 (Palermo: n. pub., 1922), p. 10. The Ambassador of Austria to the Holy See held that it was thanks to him that Rampolla still exercised an influence in the Vatican: ‘Cardinal Rampolla, “through the intervention of Mgr Della Chiesa”, still wields great influence in the Vatican. Even Cardinal Merry del Val often sought the advice of his predecessor’ (‘Daß Kardinal Rampolla “durch Vermittlung Monsignore Della Chiesas” noch immer großen Einfluß im Vatikan ausübte. Auch Kardinal Merry del Val soll sich oft den Rat seines Amtsvorgängers erbitten’); Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960), p. 54. 34 Cesare Bertini, Ai tempi delle Guarentigie: ricordi di un funzionario di polizia (1913–1918) (Rome: Cremonese, 1932), p. 123. 35 Verbally communicated by Prospero Rampolla in Palermo, 2003. 36 ‘La mort du cardinal Rampolla’, Rome: Revue mensuelle illustrée (8 January 1914), p. 22. 37 Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘The Biography of a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church: A Lecture of G. Sinopoli di Giunta’s Book Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro’, in Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Biographies: Research, Results, and Reading, ed. by Anders Jarlert (Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien, 2017), pp. 140–47. 38 He recalled his devotion to the deceased Cardinal, his spiritual way of living that he imitated, and his stay at Santa Marta after 1903; Sinopoli di Giunta, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla, pp. 97, 275, 302.

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He also had a memorial monument commissioned, which was inaugurated only in 1929,39 in the Roman Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere,40 respecting the Cardinal’s desire to be buried there.41 The Pope of Peace had also had, many years earlier, the opportunity to listen to his superior’s observations. Immediately upon arriving in Madrid, the Cardinal had presented his credentials to the Spanish sovereign, giving a speech focussed on the Apostolic See’s contribution to international peace: Sire […], the noble and elevated aims of the Supreme Hierarch who sends me are not unknown to Your Majesty. Raising himself over all human passions in the serene sphere of justice and truth, eager for the true good of the nations, he everywhere discloses and smoothes out for governments the paths that lead to harmony and tranquillity without omitting a reminder to peoples of the duties of faithful submission. In this way he offers civil society, in moments that seem to have the greatest need, a powerful element of order, of consistency, and of public well-being. This charitable ministry of peace is now entrusted, O Sire, to my poor forces so that I may exercise it in favour of the illustrious Spanish nation. By the effective cooperation of Your Majesty, I hope that the wise and admirable concerns of the Supreme Pontiff will not be contrasted in their intent.42

39 Rampolla’s remains were transferred on 19 June and the monument was inaugurated on 22 June 1929. It had been conceived by the architect Coradeschi and bears the dedication: ‘Benedictus XV Pont. Max. — qui ad res Ecclesiae gerendas — V. E. usus est quondam magistro — suam erga eum praecipuam caritatem — hoc monumento testatam voluit — quod Bonaventura Cerretti Presb. Card. — ab eodem V. E. sacerdotio auctus — eiusque tituli successor — inlatis cineribus — anno MDCCCCXXIX dedicavit’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 80, 3 (1929), p. 84; Bonaventura Cerretti, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1929), p. 5. 40 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1920, rubr. 284, fasc. 1, f. 37, Memorandum of the Director General for worship, 2 April 1924. 41 According to the chronicles of the Monastery of Santa Cecilia in 1926, Benedict XV wanted ‘to respect the will of his great friend, who left written in his will that he wanted to be buried near the tomb of his dear St Cecilia’ (‘rispettare la volontà del suo grande amico, il quale lasciò scritto nel suo testamento di voler essere sepolto vicino alla tomba della sua cara S. Cecilia’); see Maria Giovanna Valenziano, ‘La memoria del cardinale Rampolla nel monastero di S. Cecilia’, speech given on the centenary of the death of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, Rome, 15 December 2013. 42 ‘Sire […], a Vostra Maestà non sono ignote le mire nobili ed elevate del Supremo Gerarca che m’invia. Innalzandosi Esso su tutte le umane passioni nelle sfere serene della giustizia e della verità, desideroso del vero bene delle nazioni, dischiude dappertutto e appiana ai governi le vie che conducono alla concordia e alla tranquillità, né tralascia di ricordare ai popoli i doveri di fedele sudditanza. Offre per tal modo alla civile società, in momenti in cui sembra averne maggiore bisogno, un elemento poderoso di ordine, di consistenza, di pubblico benessere. Questo benefico ministero di pace viene ora confidato, o Sire, alle mie deboli forze, perché lo eserciti in pro’ della illustre nazione spagnuola. Mercé l’efficace cooperazione di Vostra Maestà, spero che le cure sapienti e amorevoli del Sommo Pontefice non saranno attraversate nel loro intento’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Madrid, b. 519, tit. I., sez. 1, nunzio, f. 10r.

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The word ‘justice’ as well as those of ‘charitable ministry of peace’ were reused in the note of 1917 almost without modification in a way that allows us to locate the document within the series of declarations of the Roman pontificate on its proper contribution to international peace. In his attitude towards some of the great questions that he had to face during his pontificate, Pope Benedict XV, on several occasions, showed how much he owed to Pope Leo XIII’s Secretary of State. One example is the decisions made on the questions of lay associations in France. Although he did not explicitly return to the condemnations pronounced by Pius X, Benedict relied on Rampolla’s reflection about the ‘tolerability’ of these associations. The issue had been widely developed by the Cardinal during a session of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs on 12 July 1906, when he asked: What are the reasons in favour of a more conciliatory solution? […] This solution would not be contrary to the encyclical Vehementer nor to the dignity of the Holy See […]; it would not be intrinsically illicit, since it is not a matter of formal cooperation but of material cooperation with a bad law […]. It will be said: given the Masonic plan to de-Catholicize France, these consequences will come to pass in any case, and therefore it is more honourable for the Holy See to play its entire hand now. One can answer that the future and probable evil is better than the present and certain evil.43 The former Secretary of State was thus of the opinion that the Holy See could ‘tolerate’ the ‘Catholic associations’ if they were ‘canonically constituted by the legitimate hierarchical authority’.44 The circumstances of the years 1911 to 1913 illustrate the fact that many of his contemporaries saw a tribute to Rampolla’s actions in Della Chiesa.45 At this point it must be remembered that an important current of opinion had begun to favour Rampolla as the next pope on the death of Pius X. This current was expressed, amongst other ways, in the correspondence of Countess Sabina di Parravicino Revel46 who, in a letter to Bishop Bonomelli on 19 May 1911, noted that: ‘Cardinal Ferrari told me

43 ‘Quali sono le ragioni in favore di una soluzione più conciliante […] Questa soluzione non sarebbe contraria all’enciclica Vehementer né alla dignità della S. Sede […], non sarebbe intrinsecamente illecita, poiché qui si tratta non di cooperazione formale, ma di cooperazione materiale a una legge cattiva […]. Si dirà: dato il piano massonico di scattolicizzare la Francia, a queste conseguenze si giungerà egualmente e perciò è più onorevole per la S. Sede giocare ora la partita intera. Si può rispondere che il male futuro e probabile è meglio del male presente e certo’; AES, Rapporti delle Sessioni, vol. 61, sessione 1076, 12 July 1906. 44 ‘L’ex segretario di Stato considerava di conseguenza che la S. Sede poteva “tollerare” le “associazioni cattoliche” se fossero “canonicamente costituite per l’intervento della legittima autorità gerarchica”’; AES, Rapporti delle Sessioni, vol. 61, sessione 1076, 12 July 1906. 45 After the Cardinal’s death, a French diplomat noted: ‘Benedict XV is the revenge of Rampolla, lying in his grave’ (‘Benoît XV, c’est la revanche de Rampolla couché dans sa tombe’); CADN, Holy See, embassy, 2nd series, carton 54, dossier Death of Pius X, unsigned note, 5 September 1914. 46 On her, see O. Confessore Pellegrino, ‘Parravicino Revel (di), Sabina’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, ed. by Traniello and Campanini, III/2 (1984), p. 630.

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on Monday that everyone would resign themselves to the Pope’s death, since the conclave would immediately acclaim Cardinal Rampolla!’47 On 13 April 1913, knowing of Pius X’s health problems, she added: ‘It is certain that public opinion now is all for Rampolla’.48 On 11 April 1911 she had already outlined a portrait of the future pontiff, assigning him some of Rampolla’s features — of whom she was thinking — and Della Chiesa’s — of whom she had no idea. ‘If we have a second Pius X, who knows where it is going to end? We need a pope who knows the world, and diplomacy, and who would be, at the same time, a religious pope, just like Rampolla’.49 The same Austrian cardinals, whose sovereign had used his veto against Rampolla in 1903, shared similar opinions in the conclave of August 1914, voting for the Archbishop of Bologna instead of Cardinal Gaetano Bisleti, who expressed the old opposition to the Rampollian standpoint.50 For his part, Maximilian Claar, the press officer of the Austrian Embassy to the Holy See recalled, after the successive disillusionments with the modernist crisis, that there was the sentiment that Rampolla would have been a different pope, as was often said in the curia, and that, perhaps, Rampolla would have been elected pope in August of 1914 if he had survived Pius X. Since the master was dead, they took his pupil Benedict.51 In a letter to Rampolla dated 14 May 1913, Sabina di Parravicino Revel evoked the figure of the future Pope, alluding to the possibility that he would take the name Benedict XV: And in this best of future worlds I hope there will be a magnificent celebration in St Peter’s with its central nave displaying statues of Leo XIV and Benedict XV. Do you know why I say Benedict XV? Because I am reading this Pope’s correspondence with Cardinal de Tencin and I am admired [sic] of the resemblance I find between him and the recluse of St Martha. It is true that the recluse of St Martha is much more prudent and reserved than Pope Benedict XIV, but for his good sense, intelligence, patience with cardinals and principles they seem brothers to me. What a beautiful figure of a Pope! And how he let himself speak certain truths! 47 ‘Il card. Ferrari mi diceva lunedì che tutti si rassegnerebbero alla morte del papa, poiché il conclave acclamerebbe subito il card. Rampolla!’; Ambrosian Library, Milan, Correspondence Bonomelli, folder 29, Savina di Parravicino Revel to Bonomelli, 19 May 1911. 48 ‘È certo che l’opinione pubblica è ormai tutta per Rampolla’; Ambrosian Library, Milan, Correspondence Bonomelli, folder 31, Savina di Parravicino Revel to Bonomelli, 13 April 1913. 49 ‘Se abbiamo un secondo Pio X, chi sa dove si va a finire? Ci vuole un papa che conosca il mondo, la diplomazia e sia nello stesso tempo un papa religioso com’è appunto Rampolla’; Ambrosian Library, Milan, Correspondence Bonomelli, folder 29, Savina di Parravicino Revel to Bonomelli, 11 August 1911. 50 Josef Lenzenweger, ‘Neues Licht auf die Papstwahlen von 1914 und 1922’, Theologisch-praktische Quartalschrift, 112 (1964), pp. 51–58 (p. 52). 51 ‘Sie schöpfte immer wieder Nahrung aus dem Gefühl, daß Rampolla doch ein anderer Papst gewesen wäre, wie denn ja auch an der Kurie selber oft gesagt worden ist, Rampolla wäre vielleicht im August 1914 doch noch Papst geworden, wenn er Pius überlebt hätte. Da der Meister tot war, nahm man seinen Schüler Benedikt XV’.; Claar, ‘Kardinal Rampolla’, p. 473.

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He understood the limits placed upon authority! From such publications the prestige of the papacy is increased; but do you believe that many in the Vatican today are favourable to such publications?52 In spite of their probable divergence on the Roman Question, perhaps the most characteristic trait of Rampolla as well as of Benedict XV was, in diplomatic negotiations, not to assume extreme positions that denied the reality of a situation or that betrayed their principles. Four months after the conclave, the Austrian Ambassador noted that the new Pope was a man who always dealt solely with the ‘possible and the feasible’.53 In this sense, Pope Benedict XV was inspired by a ‘Roman’ spirit that had already been revealed by Rampolla and, even earlier, by Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, whom the French Ambassador François Charles-Roux had defined as follows: The Holy See, everywhere and at all times, is concerned first and foremost with safeguarding the spiritual interests of the Church: whereby it is, moreover, aware of serving the moral interests of all nations. But this legitimate and dominant concern does not prevent it from taking into consideration political interests, proper to the people and their civil authorities, bearing them in mind and doing justice to them as much as possible. Thus, it is the very defence of the Church’s essential rights, which does not have to be rigid except on the fundamental principles, that, on the contrary, gains in efficiency when it is flexible in matters of method. But it is also the Holy See’s continual plan to be useful to nations, refraining from aggravating the crises that affect them and helping them to find a way out.54

52 ‘E in questo miglior futuro spero abbia a esservi una magnifica funzione in S. Pietro ricoperto anche nella navata centrale di marmi da Leone XIV e Benedetto XV. Sa perché dico Benedetto XV? Perché sto leggendo la corrispondenza di questo papa col cardinale de Tencin e sono ammirata [sic] della rassomiglianza che trovo tra lui e il solitario di S. Marta. È vero che il solitario di S. Marta è molto più prudente e riservato di papa Lambertini, ma per il buon senso, l’intelligenza, la pazienza con cardinali e principi mi sembrano fratelli. Che bella figura di papa! E come si lasciava dire certe verità! Come comprendeva i limiti frapposti all’autorità! Da simili pubblicazioni il prestigio del papato ne esce aumentato; ma crede Ella che molti in Vaticano siano oggi favorevoli a simili pubblicazioni?’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Spogli Cardinali e ufficiali di Curia, Spoglio cardinale Merry del Val, b. 4, n. 389, Sabina di Parravicino Revel a Rampolla, 14 May 1913 (copy). 53 ‘Ein Mann […], welcher beim […] Möglichen und Durchführbarem rechnet’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Oesterreich-Ungarn’, p. 301. 54 ‘Le Saint-Siège, partout et en tout temps, se préoccup[e] d’abord de sauvegarder les intérêts spirituels de l’église: ce par quoi il a, d’ailleurs, conscience de servir les intérêts moraux des nations. Mais ce légitime et dominant souci ne l’empêche pas de prendre en considération des intérêts politiques, propres aux peuples et à leurs autorités civiles, à en tenir compte, à y faire une part aussi large que possible. Ainsi le veut la défense même des droits essentiels de l’église, qui n’a lieu d’être rigide que sur les principes fondamentaux et gagne, au contraire, en efficacité à se montrer souple sur les questions de modalités. Mais ainsi le veut également le dessein constant du Saint-Siège d’être utile aux nations, en s’abstenant d’aggraver les crises qui les affectent et en les aidant à en sortir’; see the preface by François Charles-Roux to Jacques-Paul Martin, La Nonciature de Paris et les affaires ecclésiastiques de France sous le règne de Louis-Philippe (1830–48) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1949), pp. ix–x.

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Bibliography Bertini, Cesare, Ai tempi delle Guarentigie: ricordi di un funzionario di polizia (1913–1918) (Rome: Cremonese, 1932) Cerretti, Bonaventura, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1929) Claar, Maximilian, ‘Kardinal Rampolla als Staatssekretär und Papstweber (1887–1903)’, Europäische Gespräche: Hamburger Monatsblätter für auswärtige Politik, 9, 7 (1929), pp. 465–82 Confessore Pellegrino, Ornella, ‘Parravicino Revel (di), Sabina’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III/2 (1984), p. 630 Duchesne, Louis, Correspondance avec Mme Bulteau (1902–1922), ed. by Florence Callu (Rome: École française de Rome, 2009) Dumitriu-Snagov, Ion, Le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie moderne, 1866–1914 (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1989) Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960) Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, ‘Oesterreich-Ungarn während des Pontifikats Pius X. und der Wahl Benedikts XV’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, 5 (1952), pp. 278–301 Lenzenweger, Josef, ‘Neues Licht auf die Papstwahlen von 1914 und 1922’, Theologischpraktische Quartalschrift, 112 (1964), pp. 51–58 Luzio, Alessandro, ‘Il cardinale Rampolla e il marchese di Rudinì’, Nuova Antologia, 398 (May 1938), pp. 16–43 Luzio, Alessandro, ‘La questione romana e il cardinale Rampolla’, in Chiesa e Stato: studi storici e giuridici per il decennale della conciliazione tra la S. Sede e l’Italia, 2 vols (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1939), I, pp. 441–79 Marcora, Carlo, ed., Carteggio Scalabrini–Bonomelli (1868–1905) (Rome: Studium 1983) Martin, Jacques-Paul, La Nonciature de Paris et les affaires ecclésiastiques de France sous le règne de Louis-Philippe (1830–48) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1949) Pastor, Ludwig von, Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, ed. by Wilhelm Wühr (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1950) Radziwiłł, Marie Dorothée Élisabeth de Castellane, Une grande dame d’avant guerre: lettres de la princesse Radziwiłł au général de Robilant (1889–1914), 4 vols (Bologna: Zanichelli; Paris: Plon, 1933–34), IV (1934), p. 270 Rumi, Giorgio, ‘Benedetto XV, un epistolario inedito’, Civitas, 42 (1991), pp. 1–83 Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Sinopoli di Giunta, Giovanni Pietro, Alla memoria di S. S. Benedetto XV: nel solenne funerale celebrato in Agira il 30 gennaio 1922 (Palermo: n. pub., 1922) Sinopoli di Giunta, Giovanni Pietro, Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1923) Ticchi, Jean-Marc, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint Siège, 1878–1922 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002)

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Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘The Biography of a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church: A Lecture of G. Sinopoli di Giunta’s Book Il cardinale Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro’, in Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Biographies: Research, Results, and Reading, ed. by Anders Jarlert (Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien, 2017), pp. 140–47 Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘Bons offices, médiations, arbitrages dans l’activité diplomatique du Saint-Siège de Léon XIII à Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 105, 2 (1993), pp. 567–612 Veneruso, Danilo, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), p. 33 Waché, Brigitte, Monseigneur Louis Duchesne, 1843–1922 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992) Wall, Annie, ‘Kardinal Rampolla och Benediktus XV’, Nordisk Tidskrift (1921), pp. 273–84

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The Bologna Episcopate

Giovanni Turbanti

Giacomo Della Chiesa’s First Pastoral Letter to Bologna

According to standard practice, Archbishop Giacomo Della Chiesa addressed his first pastoral letter to the clergy and faithful of the Diocese of Bologna before even arriving there. Receiving him in audience on 4 October 1907, Pius X had informed him of his intention to assign him as Bishop to the See of Bologna, which had been left vacant after the sudden death, in August, of Cardinal Domenico Svampa. Before acceding to the episcopal see, however, the governmental exequatur was required, which did not arrive until 9 February 1908.1 His pastoral letter is dated the following day but had obviously been pondered upon and prepared at length during the months of waiting. His arrival in Bologna occurred privately on the evening of 20 February, and two days later Della Chiesa celebrated his official arrival.2

1 The exequatur was granted by royal decree on the proposal of the Ministry of Justice, having heard the opinion of the Council of State in a general audience and the Council of Ministers. On the issue of the exequatur, see Angelo Manfredi, ‘Exequatur e nomine dei vescovi in Italia nel secondo Ottocento: il caso Rota’, in Fede e libertà: scritti in onore di p. Giacomo Martina sj, ed. by Maurilio Guasco, Alberto Monticone and Pietro Stella (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1998), pp. 277–302. More generally on the Italian episcopacy in those years, see Arturo Parisi, Vescovi ed episcopato: dinamica istituzionale e caratteri strutturali dell’episcopato italiano (da Pio IX a Paolo VI) (Padua: Cedam, 1979); Giuseppe Battelli, ‘Santa Sede e vescovi nello Stato unitario: dal secondo Ottocento ai primi anni della Repubblica’, in La Chiesa e il potere politico, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 807–54; Alberto Monticone, ‘L’episcopato italiano dall’Unità al Concilio Vaticano II’, in Clero e società nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. by Mario Rosa (Rome: Laterza, 1992), pp. 257–330; and, for the period discussed here, Maria Lupi, ‘Vescovi/1: dal 1848 alla fine del secolo’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), II, pp. 809–27. 2 Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), pp. 98–100. I will be making constant reference to Scottà’s study, which is a wealth of information and documentation, in the following pages. To it can be added more recently Giacomo Venturi, ‘Giacomo Della Chiesa a Bologna’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 81–103, which adds some documents from the Fondo Acquaderni. For bibliographic information, see Francesco Vistalli, Benedetto XV (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1928); and, for memoirs, Ernesto Vercesi, Tre papi: Leone XIII, Pio X, Benedetto XV (Milan: Athena, 1929); Filippo Crispolti,

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 165–183 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118770

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The letter was the first episcopal act of a man who had had relatively little pastoral experience.3 His ecclesiastical career had, in fact, been entirely within the diplomatic sphere, in the shadow of Cardinal Rampolla since 1882, in the distant past, when he had wanted Della Chiesa with him as Secretary to the Nunciature of Madrid and then at the Secretariat of State in 1887. Della Chiesa probably thought that he was to be sent back to Madrid as a diplomat when Pius X instead told him of his new destination. He is said to have told the pontiff immediately that he was pleased, having always had an ‘inclination to ministry’ and only that he was ‘frightened’ of the situation in Bologna.4 All of the records speak, however, of Della Chiesa’s welcome acceptance of his new assignment, and there is no evidence leading one to think of any disappointment concerning the abandonment of his diplomatic career.

1.

Leaving Rome

The reasons why Della Chiesa had to abandon his office at the Secretariat of State are still not entirely clear. Neither Vatican documents nor Della Chiesa’s personal ones currently allow us to explain them with any certainty. Telling his brother Giovanni Antonio of the audience in which Pius X had informed him of his intention to send him to Bologna, Della Chiesa recalled how he had heard from the Spanish Ambassador of ‘the likelihood of [his] being sent to Madrid’.5 The report of the attorney general of Bologna’s Corte d’appello to the Keeper of the Seals for the exequatur also confirmed that, within the Vatican, it had previously been thought that he would be sent to the Nunciature in Madrid, where he had already been with Rampolla.6 Even before the surprise of having to renounce his diplomatic career, therefore, he was certain that he would have to leave Rome. After Pius X’s election and the change at the Secretariat of State from Rampolla to Merry del Val, Della Chiesa’s position had become rather difficult. He alone of Rampolla’s men remained, since Gasparri had also been removed and assigned to the presidency of the Commission for the Codification of Canon Law. Regarding his relationship with Merry del Val, various testimonials report that they were marked by a certain cordiality, but others do not hide the disagreements that were held in

Pio IX, Leone XIII, Pio X, Benedetto XV, Pio XI (ricordi personali) (Milan: Garzanti, 1939); Giovanni Semeria, I miei quattro papi: Benedetto XV (Amatrice: Scuola tipografica dell’orfanotrofio maschile di guerra, 1932). 3 In fact, his pastoral experiences were limited to helping on Sundays at the parish of Sant’Eustachio or, in other parishes in Rome, to celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, preaching on the occasions of the Triduum, novenas and Lenten services, in addition to preaching retreats for a few religious communities. 4 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 84–85. 5 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 85. 6 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 88–89.

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check by ‘each one’s diplomatic habits’.7 It cannot be ruled out, therefore, that among Pius X’s reasons lay the intention of pursuing a plan to marginalize those tied to Rampolla, which he began to put into effect as soon as he was elected. Della Chiesa, who had followed Rampolla to the Secretariat of State as his secretary in 1887, was then named Substitute for Ordinary Affairs in April 1901, maintaining this position after Rampolla was replaced by Merry del Val in 1903. In the seven years that he held the office, he dealt with many thorny issues related to ecclesiastic life.8 It is difficult to say how much autonomy he may have had in conducting the cases entrusted to him, but it must be presumed that, on the most relevant issues, he had to conform to higher directives. Some documents show him, at the beginning of the century, dealing with controversies that arose within the Catholic movement in Italy in the relationship between the Opera dei congressi, on the one hand, and the young supporters of Romolo Murri in the Christian democracy movement, on the other. A letter addressed to him from Murri in October of 1901 seems to show a mutual respect and some attention, on the Substitute’s part, for the priest from Marche’s ways of thinking. In another letter from March of 1903, written to Rocca d’Adria, the editor of the Bologna newspaper L’Avvenire d’Italia, he suggests that the Secretariat of State had used that paper to influence Catholic public opinion for the purpose of supporting Rampollian politics towards France and to support Catholic participation in social life. However, in 1905, when Pius X’s encyclical Il fermo proposito — which left some opening for overcoming the non expedit — was promulgated, Della Chiesa took a rather prudent and reserved stand in the answers to bishops who were asking for a clearer line of conduct.9 Of greater interest are the documents related to his work on the Loisy case, in which the Secretariat of State was invested as the recipient of many requests from French bishops for a condemnation. The more strictly doctrinal problem was a matter for the Holy Office, but the Secretariat of State found itself with an intermediary role to play on becoming the executor of the Holy Office’s provisions. According to Scottà, it was Della Chiesa who had in memoria the paperwork pertaining to the difficult case, and a great deal of the correspondence with Loisy passed through his hands.10 In actual fact, it is very difficult to deduce from office paperwork what Della Chiesa’s personal position may have been on modernism in general or on the struggle against it that was undertaken by the pontiff. For Scottà, Della Chiesa was affected, for more than just reasons of doctrine, by the human aspect that could be seen behind Loisy’s protests and excuses, so much so that, precisely in his first pastoral letter to the Diocese of Bologna, he showed more understanding towards those who had



7 From the report of the Canon of St Peter’s Basilica, Alberto Serafini, on the cause for the beatification of Cardinal Merry del Val; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 86–87. On the Roman curia in those years, see François Jankowiak, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X: le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846–1914) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007). 8 Despite the availability of sources, so far there is no systematic study of Della Chiesa’s office activities during this period. 9 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 41–45, 53–54, 64–65. 10 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 69–76.

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incurred the suspicion of modernism. Certainly, he did not demonstrate the same furious attitude that, in those years, characterized some members of Pius X’s curia, first and foremost of these his own superior, Merry del Val. Della Chiesa’s activity at the Secretariat of State was, therefore, marked by a general balance and the desire to respect directions given to him, but his ties to Rampolla still weighed upon him and that is what probably caused his removal from Rome. If, on the one hand, his being sent to Bologna might well have flattered him, on the other it was no small a challenge that he was called to face. Perhaps the decision was also motivated by a desire to put him to the test. It was Della Chiesa himself who recalled how, after Svampa’s death in August 1907, Merry del Val had once asserted in Pius X’s presence that ‘whoever [went] to Bologna would, after six months, [become] a liberal’, and how the pontiff had responded that, instead, he would send ‘an archbishop to Bologna who [would not turn] liberal’.11 Della Chiesa reminded Merry del Val of this to reiterate his fidelity to the pontiff and to claim that he had passed the test. However, if this indeed was the spirit in which he had been sent there and in which he had accepted the post, then even his first pastoral letter must be read in this light.

2. A Demanding Diocese At the beginning of 1908, from Rome’s point of view, the Church of Bologna was a cause for several concerns. The final years of Svampa’s episcopate seemed full of serious dangers, attributed mostly to the Cardinal himself. Certainly, his many pastoral merits could not be denied, in particular that he had given new vigour to the Catholic movement which had been on the front lines of the clash with the overwhelming socialist advances. Certainly, he was recognized as having brought the Church of Bologna back to the centre of the ecclesiastic movement from which it had drawn away in preceding years and for having brought Giovanni Acquaderni himself back to resume his fruitful apostolate initiatives, supporting him in the founding of L’Avvenire d’Italia. However, he effected this by supporting and favouring the ‘innovative’ trends that now seemed dangerously close to gaining the upper hand, with immense danger for the entire ecclesiastic organization.12 What, at the beginning of his episcopate, could have been forgiven, after Pius X’s ascent to the papal throne appeared instead to be an increasingly serious weakness. There were essentially two accusations made against him, and both led back to the

11 ‘Chiunque vada a Bologna dopo sei mesi sarà liberale’; ‘manderò a Bologna un arcivescovo che non si farà liberale’; Della Chiesa to Merry del Val, 19 February 1909, in Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 85–86. 12 On Svampa’s episcopacy of Bologna, see, above all, Alessandro Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa e i cattolici bolognesi (1894–1907) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971); Alessandro Albertazzi, ‘Domenico Svampa: un vescovo tra due secoli’, Quaderni culturali bolognesi, 2, 5 (1978), pp. 5–50; Domenico Svampa, Lettere al fratello (1884–1907), ed. by Alessandro Albertazzi (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1982); Lorenzo Bedeschi, La curia romana durante la crisi modernista (Parma: Guanda, 1968), which publishes the Cardinal’s important correspondence.

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charge of being a friend of the ‘innovators’. The first was having led the Congress of Bologna in 1903, for which he had acted as president. On that occasion, he had looked too favourably on the Christian democratic trend that was connected to Murri, which was taking over the old leadership tied to Paganuzzi who, until shortly before, had led the Opera dei congressi.13 Svampa’s own protests against the success enjoyed by the Congress — concerning having brought Murri himself back to the folds of the Catholic movement under the control of the hierarchy — counted little among those in the Roman curia who were looking on with concern. It is known that, at the beginning of 1905, the Cardinal Archbishop of Padua, Giuseppe Callegari, sent a letter to the pontiff denouncing Svampa’s overpermissive attitude towards the Lega democratica (Democratic League) that, precisely in Bologna, had established one of its offices and had planned, for the following March, a national conference.14 The pontiff had strongly spoken out against the Christian democrats in an open letter to the Cardinal of Bologna on 1 March 1905, in which he denounced their autonomist positions. They ‘[driven] by the desire for a misunderstood freedom’, read the letter, ‘demonstrate by upsetting every discipline; they aspire to dangerous novelties, which the Church cannot approve; they put on an authoritative demeanour to impose themselves, judging and criticizing everything, and coming to a point of claiming to be ready to bow down before infallibility, but not to obedience’. They explicitly ‘made themselves into rebels’, openly declaring themselves to be ‘independent’, publishing newspapers and periodicals in which they advocated and justified their actions and ideas. Above all, they rejected the bishops’ prohibitions saying that such prohibitions did not concern them or their association and proclaiming that ‘the pope and bishops have the right to judge things pertaining to faith and morals, but not to direct social action’.15 Beyond the explicit condemnation of the Democratic League, the letter counted as a serious disavowal of Svampa’s conduct for having permitted the Congress. In vain were the Cardinal’s subsequent warnings about the ever-greater danger of the

13 On the Congress of Bologna, see Gabriele De Rosa, Storia politica dell’Azione cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1953–54), I (1953), pp. 370–88; Dino Secco Suardo, Da Leone XIII a Pio X (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1967), pp. 364–75; Angelo Gambasin, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958), pp. 544–58; Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa, pp. 243–79; and Giovanni Vian, La riforma della chiesa per la restaurazione della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1917) (Rome: Herder, 1998), pp. 564–71. 14 Vian, La riforma, pp. 577–79 with the text of the letter; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 59–60. 15 ‘Per desiderio di una libertà male intesa’; ‘mostrano col fatto di scuotere ogni disciplina; aspirano a novità pericolose, che la Chiesa non può approvare; si atteggiano a contegno autorevole per imporsi, giudicare e criticare ogni cosa, e arrivano al punto di chiamarsi pronti a piegare dinanzi alla infallibilità, ma non all’obbedienza’; ‘fatti ribelli’; ‘indipendenti’; ‘il papa e i vescovi hanno sì il diritto di giudicare delle cose spettanti alla fede e alla morale, ma non quello di dirigere l’azione sociale’; Pius X to Svampa, 1 March 1905, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 37 (1904–05), pp. 488–89. The letter, therefore, forbade all the faithful, especially all priests, from participating in the congress that the Democratic League had called for the following weeks.

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socialist advance; he felt Catholics should fight its influence on society at every step.16 In Rome, all this sounded like a distant and not very relevant lament in the face of the more concrete concern about a Catholic movement that proclaimed the values of autonomy and democracy. Another incident that had earned Svampa the distrust of the Roman curia had been the tribute he had seen fit to pay the Italian sovereign Victor Emmanuel III, on the occasion of his visit to Bologna at the end of May 1904. Despite having been previously authorized by the Holy See, the meeting had not failed to provoke a lively controversy over the way it had been conducted and the excessive openness shown by the Cardinal when relations between Church and state were still circumscribed by the Roman Question.17 In the last years of his episcopate, the reproaches against him — for associating with modernists and the protection that, in various circumstances, he had given to those who, in his diocese or elsewhere, had been accused of modernism — grew more serious. Although he had always declared his incompetence when it came to the new scholarly advances and the critical breakthroughs that they were introducing in ecclesiastical studies, his willingness to recognize the importance of such studies — at least to the extent that they did not affect the faith — was known to many. Nor was there a lack of occasions on which he used his personal authority to defend those he considered unfairly attacked by defamatory accusations, such as in the case of the priest from Marche, Michele Faloci.18 The mistrust of Svampa’s episcopal governance had grown to the point that, after his death, an apostolic visitor, the Dominican Tommaso Pio Boggiani, was sent to Bologna, arriving in September 1907.19 The fact that Bologna’s episcopal see changed hands in precisely the same year as the controversy over modernism was most acutely felt must not be underestimated, especially when one also takes into consideration Della Chiesa’s pastoral letter. Although there was not much distinction made in Rome between a disapproval of Christian democracy and that of the critical renewal in ecclesiastical studies, it was precisely on the latter that the Roman polemic concentrated that year.

16 On the spread of the Christian democratic movement in Emilia-Romagna and Bologna, see the documents published by Lorenzo Bedeschi, Il modernismo e Romolo Murri in Emilia e Romagna (Parma: Guanda, 1967). 17 Giulio Andreotti, Pranzo di magro per il cardinale (Milan: Longanesi, 1954). 18 There is extensive documentation in Bedeschi, La curia romana, pp. 297–373. In a letter to Svampa from 25 February 1907, Genocchi reported to the Cardinal rumours about him that were running around Rome: ‘One proof of the bad education that is given at the Pio Seminary […] is the success of its former student Svampa, a modernist and protector of modernists. I don’t know if this argument was repeated by the Pope, actually I do not think so; but certainly it is a currency with which he is very familiar’ (‘Tra le prove della cattiva educazione che si dà al Seminario Pio […] c’è la riuscita dell’antico alunno Svampa, modernista e protettore di modernisti. Non so se questo argomento sia stato ripetuto dal Papa, anzi non credo; ma certo è moneta corrente poco lontano da lui’); Francesco Turvasi, Giovanni Genocchi e la controversia modernista (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974), p. 314. 19 On Boggiani’s pastoral visit, see Vian, La riforma, pp. 582–97, which analyses the report presented at the Congregation of the Council.

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From that point of view, the conclusions of Boggiani’s visit were rather negative. His judgement of the local clergy was critical, reporting that there was wide acceptance by them of the doctrines of the ‘innovators’. Even after Rome’s strong stands in Lamentabili and in Pascendi, many of the new ideas were being professed in secret. His judgement of the seminary was particularly harsh, not only because the Rector allowed the students too much freedom of thought and was not very interested in their spiritual formation, but also because two of the teachers who had been most trusted were Don Alfonso Manaresi and Don Giulio Belvederi. Trained at the Roman seminary, they were already revealing that they followed the new, modernist doctrines.20 Moreover, the diocesan newspaper, L’Avvenire d’Italia, which the pontiff had to correct personally during Svampa’s episcopate, was denounced for its standpoints that were too favourable to the innovating trends in the social and cultural fields. Boggiani’s report on his apostolic visit reached Rome only at the beginning of December 1907. It is not known whether it was shown to Della Chiesa or not in order for him to take it into consideration before beginning his ministry.21 What is certain is that some passages in the pastoral letter he sent on the eve of his arrival in Bologna seem to show that he was well aware of the difficulties he was about to encounter. As we shall see better below, his experience in the Secretariat of State and the personal contacts that he made there must definitely have given him further, and probably less dramatic, information about the situation in Bologna, but in the overall context of Pius X’s Church, the picture drawn by Boggiani should have seemed, if not convincing, at least inevitable.

3. Expectations on the Eve If the motivations that prompted Pius X to remove Della Chiesa from the Secretariat of State remain partly obscure, even less clear are those that convinced him to choose Della Chiesa for the Diocese of Bologna, which had suddenly been left vacant. Considering Bologna’s reputation, the new Archbishop had to be someone capable of instilling tranquillity and bringing it back to a greater fidelity to the Pope. These were Pius X’s expectations; while some in Bologna hoped for this, others feared it. In any case, Della Chiesa’s mission would be measured against these expectations, and he was well aware of it from the moment he accepted the assignment and started writing his first pastoral letter. In the report of 23 January 1908, which the attorney general of Bologna’s appellate court sent to the Keeper of the Seals, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, with the information

20 On Alfonso Manaresi and Giulio Belvederi, see C. Cocchi, ‘Aspetti della chiesa bolognese nel primo Novecento: fermenti innovatori e reazione antimodernista nella vicenda di Giulio Belvederi e Alfonso Manaresi’ (unpublished thesis, University of Bologna, 1987–88). 21 Scottà (Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 84) believes that this report was not shown to Della Chiesa and that, only in 1912, would Cardinal De Lai, Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation, commenting on the report for his ad limina visit, tell him that his observations coincided with those reported by Boggiani. However, the arguments brought up do not seem forceful and the opposite theory seems more probable.

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necessary for granting the exequatur, the terms of the problem were expressed very clearly. Della Chiesa was praised for his excellent moral qualities, his skills and his cultural preparation: ‘He enjoys an excellent reputation and much sympathy’, it read, ‘especially in the Catholic world’. He was said to be politically traditionalist and, according to the prosecutor, this explained the pontiff ’s determination to send him to the archbishopric of Bologna instead of the Nunciature of Madrid, where it was first thought to send him. Taking up Cardinal Svampa’s succession here in Bologna, where the Christian democratic movement has a centre of propaganda and action, necessitates, according to the Vatican’s views, a man like Della Chiesa, with authority and proven energy who is ready to start working on renewal.22 As far as Della Chiesa personally is concerned, judgement in Bologna was rather cautious. La Fiaccola, the mouthpiece of Bologna’s Christian democracy group, wrote in October 1907 that his appointment had aroused a deluge of the most varied comments; some of the newspapers [had] described him as a devourer of modernists, others as a very prudent and skilled man. We, out of respect for his person, are not making any inductions or predictions. We can only say that some of our well-informed friends who live in Rome have assured us that he is a cultured and intelligent man, very pious and zealous in his ministry, which he has never neglected even when heavily engaged with the cares of his diplomatic offices.23

22 ‘Egli gode fama eccellente e molta simpatia specialmente nel mondo cattolico’; ‘la determinazione del pontefice di mandarlo all’arcivescovado di Bologna, anziché alla nunziatura di Madrid ove prima si era pensato di destinarlo; perché, a raccogliere la successione del card. Svampa qui a Bologna, ove il movimento democristiano ha un centro di propaganda e di azione, si rendeva necessario, secondo le vedute del Vaticano, un uomo come Della Chiesa, di autorità, di provata energia e pronto a iniziare un’opera di rinnovamento’; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 88–89. The report then continued with some observations that were more specifically related to the political line followed by Della Chiesa in his diplomatic offices: ‘In all the various posts held by Mgr Della Chiesa, he has always conducted himself well and in relations with governmental authorities has always shown himself to be compliant and temperate. Even more, although the friend of Cardinal Rampolla and once loyal to the imperialist policy of said Cardinal, it can be said that with his diplomatic ability he was able to modify those tendencies, adapting them to current Vatican policy. Consequently, there would be nothing against the proposed request, which I am returning, and I therefore express, in accordance with other local authorities, a favourable opinion on granting the regio exequatur’ (‘In tutti i vari uffici coperti mons. Della Chiesa si è sempre comportato bene e nei rapporti con le autorità governative si è sempre mostrato arrendevole e temperato. Si dice anzi che sebbene amico del card. Rampolla e ligio un tempo alla politica imperialista del detto cardinale, con la sua abilità diplomatica ha potuto modificare le sue tendenze adattandole all’attuale politica vaticana. Per conseguenza non vi sarebbe nulla in contrario alla proposta domanda che restituisco, ed esprimo perciò in conformità delle altre autorità locali parere favorevole alla concessione del regio exequatur’). 23 ‘Un subisso di commenti i più svariati, e i giornali l’hanno descritto chi come un divoratore di modernisti, chi come un uomo molto prudente e abile. Noi per rispetto anche alla sua persona, non facciamo induzioni e pronostici. Possiamo solo dire che amici nostri bene informati e che abitano

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Reading this article, the new bishop jotted down, in the top margin of his copy of the paper, a draft of his response: To the sincere, reverent and affectionate homage of La Fiaccola, Mgr Della Chiesa, elected Archbishop of Bologna, responds with the assurance that he does not come to Bologna with the purpose of ‘devouring’, but with the hope of facilitating the salvation of the souls of all of his future spiritual children.24 However, it is difficult to say what Della Chiesa’s actual expectations and intentions were. Certainly, from the moment of his initial choice he would have been well aware that his ministry would be subjected not only to the judgement of his faithful but also to those who had sent him to Bologna and who had done so for very specific purposes.

4. Shepherd of the Flock This complex situation explains, in a certain sense, the pastoral direction that Della Chiesa declared he wanted to follow from the very beginning of his ministry. It is necessary to take these preliminary elements into account if one wants to try to understand his first pastoral letter, including its most obscure meanings.25 In actual fact, from the outset he appears to follow, in form and substance, a rather common model. During the years of the Law of Guarantees and the exequatur, a new bishop’s first letter was almost a specific literary genre. Not a letter of policy, it rather served to indicate accession to the diocese, consisting in the bishop’s presenting himself, with some attempt to evoke goodwill from the local authorities, clergy and faithful.26 Thus, Della Chiesa also followed a canon that seemed pre-set: first of all, the grateful reference to the will of the pontiff who had sent him on this new task, mentioning his feelings on first hearing about it, then the recollection of his venerated predecessor in the episcopal see and the most distinguished bishops who

a Roma ci hanno assicurato che è uomo colto e intelligente, molto pio e zelante del suo ministero, che non ha mai trascurato, anche quando le cure degli uffici diplomatici lo tenevano fortemente occupato’; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 86. 24 ‘All’omaggio sincero, riverente, affettuoso della Fiaccola, mons. Della Chiesa eletto arcivescovo di Bologna corrisponde coll’assicurazione che non viene a Bologna col proposito di “divorare”, ma con la speranza di facilitare a tutti i futuri suoi figli spirituali la salvezza dell’anima loro’; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 86. 25 Giacomo Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale al venerabile clero e al popolo della città ed arcidiocesi di Bologna (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1908). 26 See the registries of the pastoral letters cited in various collections: Lettere pastorali dei vescovi dell’Emilia-Romagna, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Genoa: Marietti, 1986); Lettere pastorali dei vescovi della Lombardia, ed. by Maurizio Sangalli and Xenio Toscani (Rome: Herder, 1998); Lettere pastorali dei vescovi del Veneto, ed. by Marcello Malpensa (Rome: Herder, 2002); Lettere pastorali dei vescovi della Toscana, ed. by Bruna Bocchini Camaiani and Daniele Menozzi (Genoa: Marietti, 1990); Lettere pastorali dei vescovi dell’Umbria, ed. by Bruna Bocchini Camaiani and Maria Lupi (Rome: Herder, 1999).

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had occupied it throughout its long history.27 Then followed the main body of the letter, which Della Chiesa dedicated to reflecting upon the episcopal office. Finally, he sent his greetings to the civil authorities, the metropolitan chapter and the city’s and province’s pastors, the regular clergy, the male and female religious orders and the seminarians, in that order. According to the established practice, the letter ended with an invocation to the Virgin, which in this case took the form of a prayer to the Madonna di San Luca, venerated on Monte della Guardia, an occasion that allowed him to remind them of his Genoese origins and his veneration for that other shrine to the Madonna della Guardia in that city. The formal canon that inspired his first letter also corresponded, from the point of view of content, to a respect for a very precise model concerning the most substantial part of the letter, a reflection on the role of a bishop. Della Chiesa effected this by making use of the rhetorical figure of hendiadys, linking the bishop, his flock’s shepherd and faithful’s father, to the criterion of sentire cum Ecclesia, a directive for every action. These were the distinctive features of the episcopal figure used by ancient tradition and specifically consolidated after the Council of Trent. However, adherence to these models of form and substance did not prevent Della Chiesa from using them in a personal way, taking into account the specific circumstances in which the assumption of his episcopate occurred. The first thing that he did after learning of his destination and in the months waiting for the exequatur was, as he himself noted in his letter, to reflect on the office of bishop and his task in Bologna.28 It is exactly on this interpretive level that the letter must be analysed in order to identify the specificities of the expectations and the programmes that the new Bishop proposed. Referring to the etymology of the Greek word, Della Chiesa pointed out that the ministry of bishop was essentially that of ‘“superintendence” exercised in the Church for its members’.29 So the title of ‘bishop’ was not merely honorary but corresponded to an active ministry. Della Chiesa derived the two figures of shepherd and father from biblical language, the teachings of the Church Fathers and tradition, in which the Church is depicted

27 Particularly significant is the mention of Niccolò Albergati, Cardinal of Bologna between 1417 and 1443, who also spent long years in the papal diplomatic service. On him, see the classic biography by Paolo de Töth, Il beato Nicolò Albergati e i suoi tempi (1375–1444) (Acquapendente: La Commerciale, 1922–34). 28 In the first pages of his letter, Della Chiesa dwells on the ‘sentiment of spiritual joy’ (‘sentimento di spiritual allegrezza’) that he experienced after being appointed as Archbishop of Bologna, owing to his consideration for the episcopal office: ‘But my spiritual joy was due to an objective consideration of the office proper to bishop. In considering this I immediately turned my thoughts to understanding what the Lord wanted of me and the Lord, in making known to me how I should be as a bishop, deigned to instil a very sweet sense into my soul’ (‘ma la mia spirituale letizia, più che al ricordo di circostanze secondarie, fu dovuta alla considerazione oggettiva dell’officio proprio del vescovo. A considerazione siffatta io ho volto tosto il pensiero per conoscere che cosa volesse da me il Signore, e il Signore, nel farmi conoscere che cosa avrei dovuto essere come vescovo, degnossi infondere nell’anima mia un senso soavissimo’); Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 5. 29 ‘“Soprintendenza” esercitato nella Chiesa a prò [sic] dei membri di essa’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 6.

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both as a flock gathered around its shepherd as well as a family ‘dependent upon the father who lovingly supports it’. The image of the shepherd precedes that of the father; concern for the flock comes before affection for children. This explains not only, and not so strictly, his conception of the episcopal ministry but rather the perspective with which he was preparing to take office. The letter begins with an image, that of the shepherd who leads his sheep to pasture: New bishop, destined to perform the office of superintendence of one of the oldest and most illustrious churches, I set my gaze upon an image that represents an attentive shepherd’s solicitude. It is not hard to understand that this solicitude consists in both the positive creation of good pastures as well as in maintaining them or even removing the flock from infected pastures.30 It was an intentionally bucolic image, with an abundance of pastures, a stream to quench thirst, the sheep that tended to scatter where ‘the sun’s rays shone too brightly’ and therefore had to be called back by the shepherd’s voice, others who instead wandered away from the flock and went dangerously close to a cliff. It was not enough for the good shepherd to call these; he himself, ‘hastening his steps, [had to go to them] and even stretch his arms out to [pull them back] from the precipice’s edge, and by hand [lead them back] along the straight and safe path’. Another aspect of the image depicted the sheep that were approaching a poisoned pasture. In this case, the good shepherd had to rip violently ‘even a single bad weed’ out of his sheep’s mouths, prevent them from approaching it again and finally even set fire to the dangerous field.31 This representation of the Diocese of Bologna, therefore, was where Della Chiesa drew inspiration for the image of the good shepherd in his letter: a Christian people that were essentially good but threatened by the poisonous weeds of modernism and Christian democracy and the danger that some were on the edge of falling into the precipices of false doctrine and autonomy. This also explains the intentions that Della Chiesa set forth in respect to the situation, with an emphasis that could not be mistaken. He was going to move on two fronts: on the one hand, in a positive sense, he meant to encourage religious and catechetical instruction. On the other, in a negative sense, he would prevent any risk of modernist deviation. The flock entrusted to me consists in those who profess the Catholic faith in the Archdiocese of Bologna, whose name ‘the faithful’ comes from the faith that

30 ‘Dipendente da un padre che amorosamente la regge’; ‘vescovo novello, destinato a compiere l’officio di soprintendenza in una delle chiese più antiche e più illustri, fisso lo sguardo in un quadro che rappresenta la sollecitudine di attento pastore. Non duro fatica a comprendere che questa sollecitudine consiste vuoi nel positivo avviamento a buoni pascoli, vuoi nella preservazione o anche nell’allontanamento del gregge dai pascoli infetti’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, pp. 7–8. 31 ‘I raggi del sole dardeggiano troppo vivi’; ‘affrettando il passo le raggiunge e anche col braccio le ritrae dall’orlo del precipizio, anche con la mano le riconduce in mezzo alla via diritta e sicura’; ‘anche una sola di quelle erbe cattive’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, pp. 8–9.

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they profess. My first care will therefore be to maintain, nurture and increase the Catholic faith in the members of my diocese. To this end, I will not be satisfied until they are all ensured a religious education because I do not doubt that, to the already commendable zeal of the caretakers of souls, new vigour has been given by the solemn confirmation of ancient prescriptions, which the reigning pontiff has expressed in one of his first encyclicals.32 The reference was to the encyclical Acerbo nimis (1905), which was dedicated to catechesis. It is no coincidence that one of Della Chiesa’s first acts on arriving in Bologna was to call a conference on religious instruction.33 The new Bishop did not intend to create new schools but to encourage the praiseworthy ones that already existed in the diocese and to inform them that his care would drive him ‘to safeguard that such religious instruction be given at the time and in the way necessary so that it might be most profitable’.34 At this point the negative aspect, so to speak, of his task of supervision of the diocese was inserted, that of vigilance against the doctrines of the innovators: It is repugnant to me to think of the possibility that poisonous pastures might take the place of the healthy ones that, until now, have been prepared for the people of Bologna. But if that sad day should dawn when I might reasonably fear that that frightful possibility had become a deadly reality, I would hasten to raise my voice to call my children out of the poisoned pastures.35 Here, however, the letter’s discourse becomes more complex because he turned to the question of which criterion the Bishop intended to adopt in order to discern between good and bad doctrine. His answer was, essentially, the criterion of sentire cum Ecclesia, referring to the doctrine defined by the supreme magisterium.36 This was 32 ‘Il gregge a me affidato è composto da coloro che nell’arcidiocesi di Bologna professano la fede cattolica, ché il loro nome di fedeli deriva appunto dalla fede che essi professano. Mia prima cura sarà dunque quella di mantenere, alimentare ed accrescere nei miei diocesani la fede cattolica. A tale scopo non sarò pago che a tutti i miei diocesani sia assicurata l’istruzione religiosa, perché non dubito che allo zelo già commendevole dei curatori d’anime abbia dato nuova lena la solenne conferma di antiche prescrizioni, che il Regnante Pontefice ha fatto in una delle sue prime encicliche’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 10. 33 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 125–42; Venturi, ‘Giacomo Della Chiesa’. 34 ‘A invigilare che questa istruzione religiosa sia data nel tempo e nel modo in cui debba riuscire di maggior profitto’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, pp. 10–11. 35 ‘A me ripugna il pensare alla possibilità che pascoli velenosi vengano sostituiti ai salutari pascoli fin qui apprestati al popolo bolognese; ma se il triste giorno sorgesse in cui dovessi ragionevolmente temere la paventata possibilità si fosse cangiata in una infausta realtà, mi affretterei a levare alta la voce per allontanare i miei figli dai pascoli avvelenati’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 11. 36 ‘And here I am allowed to express the satisfaction that I felt in reflecting on the sure criterion that I will make use of in judging the wholesomeness of the pastures prepared by the members of my diocese, whether through schools or through the press. True Christians should not be content to profess all the truths that the Holy Church teaches and proclaims as dogmas of the faith, but must also conform their lives, both in theory as in practice, to that sentire proper to the Church, which, if not new dogma, nevertheless expresses the true character, the true extension, and the true consequences of dogmatic doctrines. I intend to conform my judgements and actions to such a

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the compass needle pointing in the right direction, rendered all the more necessary at a time when the desire for progress makes us accept, without the necessary reflection, judgements and interpretations that are opposed to the appreciation, explanations, interpretations and judgements that, in time past, were given at school regarding religious doctrines and the questions connected to them.37 Della Chiesa declared that he was not, in principle, opposed to innovations, nor did he want to condemn every new form of doctrine but, on the contrary, he wanted ‘to applaud scientific progress’. ‘In the field of religious research, controversies often crop up, which should not be condemned a priori because they may lead to the discovery, or the greater illustration, of some truth’.38 But he was also convinced that discovery alone was not enough to justify the quality of a theory and that, in order to judge correctly, it was necessary to have recourse precisely to that ‘thinking with the Church’. The bishop’s vigilance should already be exercised before any definitive declaration on the part of the magisterium. If the supreme authority had not yet pronounced a conclusive judgement, but had merely expressed an unfavourable inclination, when it became evident that these innovations did not conform to tradition, then the bishop had to speak clearly to his faithful so that they might reject them, whether they were theses on religious truths or concerned social or political doctrines.39 Moreover, when theories or doctrine upon which the supreme authority’s negative judgement had already been expressed were involved, the bishop’s task was to eradicate them, even by force. Here the discourse returns to the metaphor of the good shepherd, but in darker, more disturbing tones: I look again upon a flock of animals that are not endowed with reason and I see a shepherd ceaselessly tending to the lambs, removing them from the infected pastures and, if at the same moment his sheep went to bite a weed that he sensed

criterion, and certainly no one will marvel at it because “thinking with the Church”, if necessary to a Christian, is indispensable to a bishop’ (‘E qui siami lecito esprimere la soddisfazione che provo nel pensare al sicuro criterio di cui mi varrò nel giudicare la salubrità dei pascoli apprestati ai miei diocesani, sia per mezzo delle scuole, sia per mezzo della stampa. Un verace cristiano non deve essere pago di professare tutte le verità che la santa Chiesa insegna e proclama come dommi di fede, ma deve altresì conformare la sua vita, così teorica come pratica, a quel sentire proprio della Chiesa che, se non costituisce nuovo domma, esprime nondimeno il vero carattere, la vera estensione, le vere conseguenze delle dottrine dommatiche. A un così fatto criterio io intendo conformarmi nei giudizi e negli atti, e niuno per certo vorrà meravigliarne, perché “il sentire colla Chiesa” se è necessario ad un cristiano, è indispensabile ad un vescovo’); Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, pp. 11–12. 37 ‘La vaghezza di novità fa accogliere, senza la ponderazione che sarebbe necessaria, giudizi e interpretazioni, spiegazioni e apprezzamenti che si oppongono agli apprezzamenti e alle spiegazioni, alle interpretazioni e ai giudizi che in addietro si davano nelle scuole intorno a dottrine religiose o a questioni con esse collegate’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, pp. 11–12. 38 ‘Far plauso al progresso scientifico’; ‘nel campo scientifico-religioso si agitano spesso controversie che non debbono essere condannate a priori, perché possono condurre alla scoperta od alla maggiore illustrazione di una qualche verità’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 12. 39 Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, pp. 12–13.

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was poison, who could restrain him from even brandishing a weapon? Who could forbid him from using it to strike even the tender head of those incautious sheep, so that they are, almost necessarily, forced to drop the poisoned food that they were about to gobble up?40 It sounded like a subtle warning to those who had let themselves be influenced by the ‘innovating’ doctrines, assuming that these had come from without, as a threat to the docility of the flock that Della Chiesa imagined and which, precisely as its shepherd, he felt it his duty to defend. It was not the novelty in itself, therefore, that he was reproaching, but the doctrines and ideas that were contrary to tradition and which, in any case, had been condemned or even simply not approved by the supreme authority. According to the content of this first pastoral letter, the modernist danger, in its two aspects as a doctrinal criticism and socio-political praxis, were the most salient features in the image he had of Bologna and the main concern that he expected to tackle as bishop. It was, however, a necessary position so shortly after Pascendi and in the overall climate that characterized ecclesiastic life at the time. The reference to the supreme authority of the magisterium, to sentire cum Ecclesia, was a sign of wanting to maintain a strict line of fidelity to the pontiff ’s directives. Della Chiesa was well aware of the attention that Rome, as well as Bologna, would pay to his first pastoral letter.

5. Loving Father The threatening tone was definitely moderated in the second part of the letter, where Della Chiesa dealt with the office of the bishop as a father. The text insisted on saying that this was precisely the most important aspect of the episcopal office, which mitigated harshness of punishment when it was necessary and at the same time provided the care due to each single member of the faithful. This was not just a rhetorical artifice but indicated the mark he meant to make on his ministry: In his diocese, the bishop is not only a shepherd but also a father: this difference suffices to explain that should a shepherd ever need to make use of punishments, as a father he would either delay its use as far as his conscience would permit or, in meting them out, would ensure that they would truly be for the well-being of his children.41

40 ‘Volgo di nuovo lo sguardo a un gregge formato da animali non dotati di ragione, e vedo il pastore che non si dà requie, lo vedo contendere cogli agnelli per allontanarli da pascoli infetti e, se nel momento stesso in cui le sue pecore addentano un’erba viene avvertito che quell’erba è avvelenata, chi lo trattiene dall’imbrandire anche un’arma? Chi gli vieta di colpir con essa anche il tenero capo di quelle incaute pecorelle, affinché sieno quasi per forza obbligate a lasciar cadere di bocca il cibo avvelenato che già stavano per trangugiare’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 14. 41 ‘Il vescovo nella sua diocesi non è solo pastore ma è anche padre: questa differenza basta a far comprendere che, se come pastore dovesse mai porre mano ai castighi, come padre o ne tarderebbe l’uso sino all’estremo limite consentito dalla sua coscienza, o, nel fare quell’uso, si assicurerebbe insieme che il castigo dovesse veramente riuscire a salute dei figli’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 15.

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That the office of father was more exalted than that of shepherd was proven by the fact that even when a shepherd may say that he is not obliged to be vigilant any longer, even when a shepherd may believe that he has taken the utmost care due to his flock, a father never stops watching over his children, he never says that he is done caring for them. Above all, observed Della Chiesa, this excellence derived from the fact that ‘a father’s care for his children is so individual that we usually say that a good father takes an interest in the good of his child as if there were nothing other than that child in the whole world’. Thus ‘the bishop, as father, has the good of each member of his diocese at heart; as a father he must take an interest in each individual member as if s/he were the only one in the diocese’. From this point of view, Della Chiesa promised to be as close as possible to his faithful, to have his door always open to learn of their spiritual and material needs, always open to those who ‘want to pour their bitterness into my heart’. He also assured them that ‘to remedy the physical and moral evils that my children are suffering, I am ready to go as far as my physical strength and the duties of my conscience allow’.42 In the structure of the letter, the paternal function of the episcopal office counterbalanced that of the shepherd; the promise of comfort and aid was equal in weight to the necessary task of surveillance. They were two different, distinct aspects of the same episcopal ministry. I can only hope that everyone recognizes the need not to confuse or mutually exchange the two offices of shepherd and father, even though both are encompassed within that of a bishop: the vigilance of the first, without the attentive and loving care of the second, would not be enough to show what a bishop must be, just as the tenderness of a father who lacked the care to provide a pasture of sound doctrine to his children would no longer be appraising ‘the office of superintendence’ which, according to the divine institution, must be exercised in the Church for the members of the Church itself.43 42 ‘Anche quando il pastore può dirsi non obbligato ad ulteriore vigilanza, anche quando il pastore può credere di aver toccato l’estremo limite delle cure dovute al suo gregge, il padre invece non dà per terminata la sua vigilanza, non dice esaurite le cure dei figli’; ‘la cura del padre verso i figli è bene così individuale, che sogliam dire un buon padre interessarsi al bene del figlio come se al mondo non esistesse altri che quel figlio’; ‘il vescovo come padre ha a cuore il bene di ciascun diocesano; quale padre, deve interessarsi ai singoli diocesani, come se i singoli fossero soli nella diocesi’; ‘vorranno versare nel mio cuore le loro amarezze’; ‘a rimediare ai mali fisici e morali che soffrano i miei figli, son pronto a giungere fin dove consentano le forze materiali o i doveri della coscienza’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 17. 43 ‘Mi giova soltanto sperare che ognuno ravvisi la necessità di non confondere e mutuamente scambiare i due offici di pastore e di padre, sebbene entrambi compresi in quello di vescovo: la vigilanza del primo senza la sollecita e amorosa cura del secondo non farebbe abbastanza comprendere ciò che esser deve il vescovo, come la tenerezza di un padre a cui facesse difetto la sollecitudine di provvedere ai figli il pascolo di sana dottrina non farebbe punto più apprezzare “l’officio di sopraintendenza” che, secondo la divina istituzione, deve esercitarsi nella Chiesa a prò [sic] dei membri della Chiesa stessa’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 18.

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Naturally, this dual dimension of the episcopal office had to agree with ‘a dual duty on the part of the members of the diocese who should respond to the vigilance of the shepherd with the docility of lambs and to the providential care of the father with the love and gratitude of children’.44 In any case, the difficult balance between the two aspects of the pastoral ministry constituted the lines along which Della Chiesa intended to act. It was a balance that looked not only to Bologna, but also to Rome, where this first pastoral letter would be examined with great care.

6. The Episcopal Office and the Church Corresponding to the idea of the episcopal office summarized in the task of overseeing the faithful of the diocese was the principle of sentire cum Ecclesia, which was assumed as the sole criterion of judgement for discerning which was a good and which a dangerous pasture. Sentire cum Ecclesia referred only to the tradition and the magisterium of the pontiff and took for granted the principle of hierarchical authority as an implicit ecclesiological foundation. It was only within this context that the Bishop’s pastoral care, his concerns for the spiritual and material needs of the faithful, could be explained.45 This pastoral letter must therefore be read in light of the three protagonists it involves: Della Chiesa himself, who saw himself suddenly dispatched from his usual diplomatic work to the pastoral task of leading a diocese as demanding as Bologna; the diocese, which after having lost a beloved Bishop questioned what would change with his successor; and finally, the Holy See, which looked upon the diocese with concern and wanted to test not only Della Chiesa’s pastoral capacity, but also his fidelity. It is within this threefold game of mirrors that one understands why the letter’s central theme was precisely the modernist danger, with its twin aspects of doctrinal criticism and the autonomy of the faithful in society. By considering the two aspects of shepherd and father, Della Chiesa aimed at a position arduously balanced between the expectations of severity nurtured in Rome and the line of openness that his predecessor in Bologna had carried forward, which could not be entirely disowned without causing further, difficult ruptures. It was a balance that, moreover, corresponded to one of Della Chiesa’s deepest convictions, for whom certain doctrinal positions, however just they might be, had to be translated and dealt with in a pastoral tone. The years of his episcopate in Bologna were thus marked by clear doctrinal adhesion to Roman directives, even in the culminating phase of the modernist crisis, but without reaching a position of intransigence or

44 ‘Un doppio dovere da parte dei diocesani, i quali alla vigilanza del pastore devono corrispondere colla docilità degli agnelli, e alla provvida cura del padre corrisponder devono coll’amore e colla gratitudine dei figli’; Della Chiesa, Prima lettera pastorale, p. 18. 45 It is not surprising, given the rigid hierarchy followed by Della Chiesa, that, in addressing his greeting to the diocese at the end of his letter, he significantly forgets the laity.

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condemnation. His most consistent commitments during the years of his episcopate were, on the one hand, the pastoral sojourn resumed after Svampa’s was interrupted and carried out with great determination over the course of four years and, on the other, the construction of a new regional seminary that would be supported by the diocesan one. His ‘pastoral’ approach to the modernist problem would also be confirmed during the years of his pontificate when, while still maintaining the norms established by Pius X, the rigour used in applying those norms would be considerably softened. In Della Chiesa, the balance between the two aspects of shepherd and father were part of an ecclesiological conception that remained essentially traditional, based on the hierarchical principle that the bishop embodied with his office. All of the tasks of the episcopal ministry were, in fact, summed up in that of the ‘superintendence’ of the diocese’s needs, while the criterion of sentire cum Ecclesia tied the bishop to the magisterium and the central governance of the Church. Even the pastoral approach chosen by Della Chiesa must be understood within this ecclesiological perspective, in which the tasks of vigilance and governance were prevalent. Yet the importance given to fatherhood, which expressed the need for closeness — even spiritual closeness — to the faithful of the diocese in a rather original way, should not be underestimated. This aspect was expressed in different ways during his episcopate. Undoubtedly, under Della Chiesa the Diocese of Bologna was not what it had been during Svampa’s episcopate. Particularly different was the overall ecclesiastic climate, which was then suffering the most difficult years in the modernist crisis and its relationship to Rome. The turmoil of renewal that had previously characterized Bologna’s Catholic world no longer existed because the spaces in which they could develop had been foreclosed. If the Catholic movement, therefore, seemed to accompany as a protagonist the great changes occurring in society at the turn of the century, in Bologna the Church also seemed to participate somewhat as an outsider in the phenomena of industrialization and the extraordinary urban development that were changing the city’s look and social fabric. Worried by doctrinal dangers and the threats that might arise from hostile political forces, Pius X’s Church had wound up closed in on itself, not knowing how to offer the answers that the times required. Moreover, if his years in the episcopate of Bologna constituted a valuable apprenticeship for what would soon become his pontificate, it was the dramatic political upheavals resulting in the catastrophe of war that shifted the challenge of his action to a totally unexpected and incomparably more difficult terrain.

Bibliography Albertazzi, Alessandro, Il cardinale Svampa e i cattolici bolognesi (1894–1907) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971) Albertazzi, Alessandro, ‘Domenico Svampa: un vescovo tra due secoli’, Quaderni culturali bolognesi, 2, 5 (1978), pp. 5–50 Andreotti, Giulio, Pranzo di magro per il cardinale (Milan: Longanesi, 1954)

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Battelli, Giuseppe, ‘Santa Sede e vescovi nello Stato unitario: dal secondo Ottocento ai primi anni della Repubblica’, in La Chiesa e il potere politico, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 807–54 Bedeschi, Lorenzo, La curia romana durante la crisi modernista (Parma: Guanda, 1968) Bedeschi, Lorenzo, Il modernismo e Romolo Murri in Emilia e Romagna (Parma: Guanda, 1967) Bocchini Camaiani, Bruna, and Daniele Menozzi, eds, Lettere pastorali dei vescovi della Toscana (Genoa: Marietti, 1990) Bocchini Camaiani, Bruna, and Maria Lupi, eds, Lettere pastorali dei vescovi dell’Umbria (Rome: Herder, 1999) Cocchi, C., ‘Aspetti della chiesa bolognese nel primo Novecento: fermenti innovatori e reazione antimodernista nella vicenda di Giulio Belvederi e Alfonso Manaresi’ (unpublished thesis, University of Bologna, 1987–88) Crispolti, Filippo, Pio IX, Leone XIII, Pio X, Benedetto XV, Pio XI (ricordi personali) (Milan: Garzanti, 1939) De Rosa, Gabriele, Storia politica dell’Azione cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1953–54), I (1953) de Töth, Paolo, Il beato Nicolò Albergati e i suoi tempi (1375–1444) (Acquapendente: La Commerciale, 1922–34) Della Chiesa, Giacomo, Prima lettera pastorale al venerabile clero e al popolo della città ed arcidiocesi di Bologna (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1908) Gambasin, Angelo, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958) Jankowiak, François, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X: le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846–1914) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007) Lupi, Maria, ‘Vescovi/1: dal 1848 alla fine del secolo’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), II, pp. 809–27 Malpensa, Marcello, ed., Lettere pastorali dei vescovi del Veneto (Rome: Herder, 2002) Manfredi, Angelo, ‘Exequatur e nomine dei vescovi in Italia nel secondo Ottocento: il caso Rota’, in Fede e libertà: scritti in onore di p. Giacomo Martina sj, ed. by Maurilio Guasco, Alberto Monticone and Pietro Stella (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1998), pp. 277–302 Menozzi, Daniele, ed., Lettere pastorali dei vescovi dell’Emilia-Romagna (Genoa: Marietti, 1986) Monticone, Alberto, ‘L’episcopato italiano dall’Unità al Concilio Vaticano II’, in Clero e società nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. by Mario Rosa (Rome: Laterza, 1992), pp. 257–330 Parisi, Arturo, Vescovi ed episcopato: dinamica istituzionale e caratteri strutturali dell’episcopato italiano (da Pio IX a Paolo VI) (Padua: Cedam, 1979) Sangalli, Maurizio, and Xenio Toscani, eds, Lettere pastorali dei vescovi della Lombardia (Rome: Herder, 1998) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Secco Suardo, Dino, Da Leone XIII a Pio X (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1967) Semeria, Giovanni, I miei quattro papi: Benedetto XV (Amatrice: Scuola tipografica dell’orfanotrofio maschile di guerra, 1932) Svampa, Domenico, Lettere al fratello (1884–1907), ed. by Alessandro Albertazzi (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1982)

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Turvasi, Francesco, Giovanni Genocchi e la controversia modernista (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974) Venturi, Giacomo, ‘Giacomo Della Chiesa a Bologna’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 81–103 Vercesi, Ernesto, Tre papi: Leone XIII, Pio X, Benedetto XV (Milan: Athena, 1929) Vian, Giovanni, La riforma della chiesa per la restaurazione della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1917) (Rome: Herder, 1998) Vistalli, Francesco, Benedetto XV (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1928)

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Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period (1908–14)

1.

Counter-Positions and Crossfades

At the end of 1907, when Giacomo Della Chiesa was chosen by Pius X to succeed Cardinal Svampa as head of the Archdiocese of Bologna, the Catholic world of the city found itself immersed in a tense climate fraught with strong contradictory drives.1 This situation was the result of a decade during which — leaving aside for the moment the unifying rally against socialism — there were clashes, controversies and rivalries in relationships among both external and internal forces. There were also, however, agreements that were increasingly sought — more or less secretly — by some sectors that shared common goals. On the one hand, there were the complex dynamics between the local Catholic community and institutions or situations — not without their own ambiguities — that were officially recognized as radically different (representatives of the liberal state and the moderate, non-Catholic strata of society). On the other hand, there were significant differences — often leading to extremely fierce conflicts — that had developed within the Catholic world itself, particularly among the ranks of associations, which mirrored exactly what was happening throughout the Church in Italy. To mention just a few examples, it is worth remembering that, thanks to Cardinal Svampa’s intelligent mediation, the repression following the 1898 uprisings had a less traumatic effect on Catholics than it had in other places. Thus, from the beginning of 1900 the Associazione bolognese per le elezioni amministrative (Bologna’s



1 In one of the relatively few works dedicated to the issue and the period that interests us here, Giampaolo Venturi observes: ‘The situation was notably intricate, also because of the bishops’ particular pastoral concerns, each of whom faced a specific situation in his own diocese’ (‘La situazione era notevolmente intricata, anche per le preoccupazioni pastorali interne dei vescovi, ognuno dei quali si trovava a fronteggiare una determinata situazione tipica della propria diocesi’) in Giampaolo Venturi, Il movimento cattolico a Bologna e in Emilia Romagna fra Ottocento e Novecento: linee indicative di storia e metodo per la ricerca, 4th edn (Bologna: Conquiste, 2004), p. 76. Among more recent works, see Mirella D’Ascenzo, ‘Cultura, educazione ed editoria a Bologna nel primo Novecento’, Annali di storia dell’educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche, 16 (2009), pp. 335–48 (pp. 344–46).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 185–205 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118771

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Association for Administrative Elections) had already been re-established and was very well-structured and extensive. Nearly all the most influential Catholics in the city and province belonged to it and they were careful — despite the association’s name and the non expedit — to follow the process of political elections and parliamentary life,2 maintaining their contacts with the liberal party. If the official position was to continue unceasingly to persecute and contest their adversaries, the growing power of the Socialist Party in actual fact forced moderates to come to agreements, judging contingencies on a case-by-case basis. Alfonso Marescalchi’s victory in Bologna’s second district supplementary parliamentary elections in January 1905, and Giuseppe Tanari’s subsequent election as mayor, both of whom were moderates, concretely demonstrated the decisive weight that Catholics had in the political sphere and that there was a reservoir of consensus on the part of moderates.3 It was, on the other hand, within the ‘friendly walls’ of the Catholic world itself that the bitterest battle was waged. Contrary to expectations, the promulgation of the encyclical Graves de communi re in 1901 did not impede young Catholic democrats’ impetus towards renewal. However, the changing of the guard in the upper echelons of the Opera dei congressi — where the Venetian Giovanni Battista Paganuzzi had succeeded Giovanni Grosoli from Ferrara in 1902, supported by many in Bologna — had exacerbated the rifts that strikingly occurred at the congress held precisely in Bologna in 1903.4 The dissolution of the Opera in 1904, the eruption of the Murri case and the birth of the Lega democratica nazionale (National Democratic League) in 1905 sanctioned a polarization of factions and groups that all found supporters within Bologna’s Catholic community, divided among old intransigents, moderate clerical ‘electionists’, and Catholic democrats of various hues. Yet these divergences could not erase the many ideas that were shared by all Catholics. These summary observations allow me to highlight a first, general assertion: even postulating that, through a profounder research and a wider, more diversified types of sources, it would be possible to solve some of the methodological problems that will be discussed below, it would still be difficult to restore the complexity of a picture that, depending on the angle from which it is viewed, seems to present as many clear-cut contrasts as does a tapestry of nuances and crossfades. The scene must be understood as a common ground of exchange and support that is real but that never fully comes into focus. Some initial assistance in reconstructing the climate comes from the best conserved archival collection for the period from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century: the Fondo Acquaderni. The situation recalled here did not permit

2 Alessandro Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa e i cattolici bolognesi (1894–1907) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971), p. 175; Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), p. 379. 3 Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa, pp. 302–06. 4 Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa, pp. 243–66.

Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period

anyone to remain au-dessous de la mêlée. That being said, it is important that even an old glory of Catholicism such as Giovanni Acquaderni — who had been a central figure during previous decades but by this time had taken a back seat5 — still wanted to intervene personally or was called upon to use his prestige to resolve situations that risked causing serious damage to the economy and the image of Catholics in Bologna. His passionate personal involvement was evident from the fear of possible infiltrations by members of the Democratic League among employees and members of the Credito Romagnolo bank, which was denied by President Grosoli.6 Between the end of 1912 and the beginning of 1913, the administrative council members of the Unione agricola romagnola (Romagna’s Agricultural Union), following the advice of Don Cerutti, urged him to appeal to the Pope, asking him to come to the cooperative’s rescue and prevent its failure. If he did not — warned the appeal that Acquaderni indeed sent to Pius X — ‘the diocese’s Catholic activities’ would have suffered such a blow as to cause the ‘collapse of our municipal and provincial administration, consisting of Catholics and moderates’, and the paralysis of the Catholic movement in Bologna.7 These are two interesting but isolated testimonials that, in their rarity, afford us an explanation of the methodological problems mentioned above. Indeed, in his indispensable work on Della Chiesa, Archbishop of Bologna, Scottà dedicated a chapter to reviewing the main diocesan Catholic associations between 1908 and 1914, working essentially from the diocesan bulletin, which was published from 1910.8 However, the archives are only of use for a few of these associations, even if some rare exceptions — essentially the Società della gioventù cattolica italiana (Society of Italian Catholic Youth) and the Unione popolare (People’s Union) — do allow us to formulate an interpretive hypothesis and some reflection that can be added to a study of the papers of the Associazione San Sigismondo (San Sigismondo Association), which arose within one of the city’s most prominent parishes of the period, later become the university parish.

2. L’Avvenire d’Italia, Il Mulo and Its Ilk To overcome these limitations, I have conducted a systematic examination of Bologna’s Catholic press, searching for information about these associations’

5 Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa, p. 262; on Acquaderni, see Fausto Fonzi, ‘Acquaderni, Giovanni’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), I (1960), pp. 160–62; Silvio Tramontin, ‘Acquaderni, Giovanni’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), pp. 1–6; Giampaolo Venturi, Storia del Credito romagnolo (Rome: Laterza, 1996), pp. 18–58. 6 AAB, Fondo Acquaderni (FA), b. 223, doc. 5992 (registered as no. 9696). 7 ‘Le opere cattoliche diocesane’; ‘tramonto delle nostre amministrazioni comunale e provinciale, composte di cattolici e moderati’; AAB, FA, b. 223, doc. 5510 (other papers related to this event are documents 5508, 5512, 5513, 5672 and 5673); for a general reconstruction, see Venturi, Storia, pp. 121–25, adapted later by Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 521–26. 8 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 315–34.

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activities, concerns and objectives. The city was a gold mine in this respect, with a variety of printed material that revolved around the indefatigable editorial activity of Cesare Algranati, better known as Rocca d’Adria.9 A converted Jew, he had embraced the Christian-democratic line that emerged at the Congress of Bologna in 1903, distancing himself however from Murri, until their definitive break following Murri’s establishment of the Democratic League. He was also the Director of L’Avvenire d’Italia from 1902 to 1910 and, from 1907, his own publishing house — Cromolitografica Bolognese — published six magazines aimed at — in different ways and different areas — supporting Catholic action. Even if not all Catholics recognized themselves in these publications’ political stances concerning society and the Church, the periodicals that Algranati promoted represented a type of middle ground that ran through most of the Catholic world in the culture and mentality they expressed as well as on certain specific issues. The originator of these periodicals was the satirical weekly Il Mulo, which arose in 1907 to counteract the crude anti-clericalism of the popular L’Asino that had been founded in 1892 by the socialist Guido Podrecca.10 Then the weekly La Domenica was born in 1908, aimed at the religious instruction of families, followed by La Semente in 1909 for workers threatened by socialism. Finally came the Rinascita Francescana, also in 1909, for Franciscan tertiaries, Il Sementino in 1910, for the catechism of children, and Vita Femminile in 1912, dedicated to the problems of working women. It is also important to note that — with the exception of Il Mulo, which was already planned in February 1907 even if it was not published until November that year — these were all born during Della Chiesa’s episcopate. As mentioned above, analysing these publications reveals the dominant interests, urgencies and reflections in local Catholic circles. Of course, with one exception,11 these papers were not the diocesan organization’s official mouthpiece, and they ideally addressed all Italian Catholics. Nevertheless, the fact that they were published in Bologna made them very attentive to the events in the Bologna Diocese, which were decisive in their formulation of analyses and judgements. A further clarification concerns L’Avvenire d’Italia. It sought to present an outlook that was at least interregional but it also contained a column entitled ‘Sotto le due torri’ (‘Under the Two Towers’), which was reserved for diocesan information. Analysing these pages, therefore, is very pertinent and useful, but the awareness that the paper, in itself, was not an expression of the local Catholic world is made clearly explicit in an article of 15 September 1908, inspired by the paper’s editor. Many have written to us to urge us to speak out about our own issues. One says: ‘Why doesn’t Rocca d’Adria, who goes to talk at all the congresses, promote anything in Bologna?’. We answer that that is not his business or his character. As editor of a newspaper he can only be a spokesperson for what local Catholics 9 See Fausto Fonzi, ‘Algranati, Cesare’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, II (1960), pp. 365–66. 10 See Franco Cristofori, ‘Il Mulo giornale anticanagliesco’, Il Carrobbio, 2 (1976), pp. 123–36. 11 In January 1913, Rinascita Francescana became the official organ of the SS. Redentori tertiary federation of Bologna.

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are doing. Let them meet and act and they will find L’Avvenire d’Italia at their disposal […]. L’Avvenire d’Italia is obliged to arouse the great religious, political and social problems that threaten Italian Catholics. In each and every place, however, they have to think of themselves. We believe that a good societal and professional weekly would be very effective for Catholic action in Bologna, but it is not up to us to take up, let alone take over, such an initiative. Of course, there is much to be done here. It is not, however, our task to take action. We are doing all we can. It is the duty of the Catholics of the archdiocese and, if they do so, all the better!12 Bearing these clarifications in mind, it is now time to give an account of the issues emerging from these publications, starting with L’Avvenire d’Italia and Il Mulo. On 8 January 1908, Catholics in Bologna gathered to organize a welcome for their new Archbishop. Apart from clearly taking up a stand opposing the insinuations of his adversaries, it is evident that his arrival occurred at a time when the Christiandemocratic spheres that had been defended by Svampa, even in the face of Pius X’s disfavour,13 were worried that they would not find the same support in Della Chiesa. To the liberal press that spoke of ‘priests’ distrust’ and the ‘laity’s preconceived apathy’, L’Avvenire d’Italia responded that ‘speaking of the clergy’s distrust is simply to offend Bologna’s clergy, who know for themselves of the obedience due to the Pope and the Archbishop’, and to speak of the laity’s apathy, thanks be to heaven, is nonsense. The laity, face to the triumphant Socialist march in Bologna, could not ask for better than a pastor who is heir to the best traditions of hard labour in the field of Catholic action. Indeed, we have firm faith that Mgr Della Chiesa’s arrival will be the incentive for serious and fruitful work in Bologna to the benefit of the working classes.14

12 ‘Parecchi ci scrivono per incitarci a parlare delle cose nostre; e uno dice: “Rocca d’Adria che va a parlare in tutti i congressi, perché non promuove nulla a Bologna?”. Rispondiamo che non sta a lui né in lui. Come direttore di un giornale, egli non può essere che il portavoce di quanto fanno i cattolici del luogo. Che questi si riuniscano, facciano e troveranno L’Avvenire a loro disposizione […]. L’Avvenire d’Italia è in obbligo di agitare i grandi problemi religiosi, politici e sociali che incombono sui cattolici italiani: però luogo per luogo, essi devono pensare a sé. Noi crediamo che un buon settimanale sociale e professionale, sarebbe di grande efficacia per l’azione cattolica nel bolognese; ma non sta a noi di prenderne e tanto meno di assumerne l’iniziativa. Certo qui c’è molto da fare: non sta però a muoverci a noi, che facciamo tutto quello che possiamo: sta ai cattolici dell’archidiocesi. E se lo faranno, tanto meglio!’; ‘Per l’A zione cattolica nel bolognese’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 15 September 1908, p. 1. 13 Moreover, the Pope had given a clear signal by sending the Apostolic Visitor Tommaso Pio Boggiani to the seminary immediately after the Cardinal’s death: see Giovanni Vian, La riforma della chiesa per la restaurazione cristiana della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1914) (Rome: Herder, 1998), pp. 564–97 and Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 85, 144–50. 14 ‘Diffidenza dei preti’; ‘apatia preconcetta dei laici’; ‘parlare di diffidenza del clero è semplicemente offendere il clero bolognese, il quale sa da sé medesimo, l’obbedienza che deve al papa ed all’arcivescovo’; ‘parlare poi di apatia dei laici, grazie al Cielo, è un non-senso. I laici, nella marcia trionfante del socialismo nel Bolognese, non potevano desiderare meglio di un pastore che è figlio

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The article highlighted the two main worries in Bologna’s Catholic circles on the new Archbishop’s arrival: their reaffirmation of total obedience to the Pope — which intransigents such as the Scotton brothers’,15 strengthened by the recent publication of the Pascendi, continued to put into question — and the rise of socialism. As far as the first preoccupation is concerned, it is interesting to recall a series of articles on the ‘new stamp of modernism’ as Cardinal Ferrari called it,16 which appeared in L’Avvenire d’Italia in February–March 1908. In particular, the concomitance of two articles in the 4 March 1908 issue is significant. One, on the front page, attacked Murri, who was called a pupil of Labriola. The other, on the third page, defended the paper from attacks by de Töth’s L’Unità Cattolica, almost as if attempting to define the narrow space within which the Catholic democrats could manoeuvre. In this regard, the harsh exchange of letters between de Töth and Della Chiesa a few months later and the latter’s letters to the Secretary of State17 clarify how, although not entirely satisfied with L’Avvenire d’Italia and its Director, Della Chiesa would in no way tolerate de Töth’s interference. De Töth was incapable of understanding that, in the difficult situation of Bologna, Algranati’s work was far more useful in defending the Catholic cause than the rigidity of the intransigents was.18 As for the second concern, the harshness of these conflicts should not make us forget that, beyond all divisions, Catholics were very clear about the fact that the ‘real’ adversaries were the socialists. While the dispute between L’Avvenire d’Italia and L’Unità Cattolica was in progress,19 the ‘Sotto le due torri’ column regularly reported on news of strikes, unrest and clashes, in the face of which the newspaper tried to maintain a healthy distance. The rejection of socialist ideas and actions, however, wound up prevailing, as can be seen in the comment on the first bloodshed to occur in the province, at Caselle di Crevalcore: Employers must absolutely abandon the idea that workers should remain unorganized. Instead, they must willingly deal with the workers’ representatives. Workers must absolutely abandon the thought that, with the aid of socialism, they might strip property away through strikes, boycotts and stone-throwing because property — obviously — will be defended, even with blood. It will be delle tradizioni migliori di operosità nel campo dell’azione cattolica. Noi abbiamo anzi ferma fiducia che la venuta di mons. Della Chiesa sarà un incentivo a un lavoro serio e fecondo a Bologna in favore delle classi popolari’; ‘Per l’ingresso del nuovo Arcivescovo’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 8 January 1908, p. 4. 15 See Giovanni Azzolin, Gli Scotton: prediche, battaglie, imboscate: tre fratelli monsignori, papi, cardinali e vescovi tra liberalismo e modernismo dall’Unità d’Italia al primo Novecento (Vicenza: La Serenissima, 1998). 16 ‘Modernismo di nuovo conio’; ‘Una vibrata protesta del card. Ferrari contro un opuscolo antimodernista’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 29 February 1908, p. 3. 17 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 442–52, 470–71. 18 See Maurizio Tagliaferri, L’Unità Cattolica: studio di una mentalità (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993), pp. 126–30. 19 Again in February of 1909, de Töth harshly attacked Algranati, who in an article had acknowledged that he had once been fascinated by Murri (‘Murri ultimo’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 10 February 1909, p. 1). The letter that Della Chiesa wrote to Merry del Val on 12 February 1909 was precisely about this article.

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civil war, barbaric, but it will be a fight and an ignominious fight at that. Many feel the need to spend it cheerfully in Bologna, inciting the peasants to excess, even if the peasants of some socialist kingpin — once in debt but living in luxury today — bend their necks under a graver colonial pact. Now the workers must rip these leeches off. They must recognize that it is not in class struggle but in class collaboration that they will find lasting well-being.20 The owners were only asked to accept having to deal with organized labour. The workers were asked to abandon the class struggle instigated by the ‘leeches’ and the socialist ‘kingpins’. In reality, Bologna’s Catholic community produced an alternative to the socialist superpower in the fields: the Fratellanze coloniche (Colonial Brotherhoods), associations of non-confessional — but mainly Catholic — sharecroppers, which through their mediation had managed to mitigate conflicts and obtain better working conditions.21 As stated in the L’Avvenire d’Italia 8 July 1908 issue, their actions constituted a real obstacle to the socialist leagues that prevented Fratellanze members from working, which in some cases even led to physical conflict.22 The emergence of the weekly satirical paper Il Mulo also needs to be understood within this context of total opposition to the socialists. Algranati had firmly desired the publication’s creation, even though L’Avvenire d’Italia’s board of directors resisted the idea.23 This led to a breakdown in relations between Grosoli and Algranati who differed on the methods and tools to be used in the struggle against the subversives. The release of the periodical’s first issue preceded Della Chiesa’s arrival in Bologna by a few months.24 Although not appreciating its tone or language, he supported it, considering it a useful tool in the difficult situation in Bologna, where only such a paper would permit him to reach certain layers of society.

20 ‘I padroni debbono assolutamente deporre l’idea che l’operaio deve ancora stare disorganizzato; e debbono anzi trattare volentieri colle rappresentanze degli operai. Gli operai debbono assolutamente deporre il pensiero che essi possano coll’aiuto del socialismo spogliare la proprietà con gli scioperi, i boicottaggi, le sassaiole; perché la proprietà — si capisce — si difenderà anche col sangue. Sarà guerra civile — barbara —, ma sarà lotta, e lotta ignominiosa. Parecchi hanno bisogno per scialarla a Bologna di spingere agli eccessi i contadini, anche sei i contadini di qualche capoccia socialista — un dì indebitato e oggi danaroso — chinano il collo sotto un patto colonico più grave. Ora gli operai debbono trarsi di dosso queste sanguisughe; debbono riconoscere che non è nella lotta di classe ma nella collaborazione di classe che troveranno un benessere duraturo’; ‘La tragedia di Caselle di Crevalcore: il Sangue!’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 21 March 1908, p. 4. 21 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 374. 22 ‘Nel Bolognese: grave conflitto fra le Leghe socialiste e le Fratellanze autonome’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 8 July 1908, p. 3. See also ‘La lotta contro le fratellanze coloniche: Un oratore fischiato’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 13 August 1908, p. 4, and ‘Adagio!’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 15 August 1908, p. 4. On 22 November 1908, the first provincial conference of the Fratellanze took place in Bologna, which was a great success with 2000 delegates representing about 15,000 members (‘Il primo Congresso provinciale delle Fratellanze coloniche’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 23 November 1908, pp. 3–4). 23 Cristofori, ‘Il Mulo’, p. 128. 24 Cristofori, ‘Il Mulo’, p. 128.

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Il Mulo’s fundamental characteristic was that of being the Catholic response to L’Asino. Defining itself as an ‘anti-rogue newspaper’, Il Mulo reacted to Podrecca’s anti-clericalism with an anti-socialism that was just as base and crude.25 Common article headlines read: ‘In the Red Sewer’, ‘The Red Mafia’, ‘The Fat Socialist’ and ‘The Red Sewer in the Red Province’. The main target, however, was Podrecca, at first called Prode Giudecca (Hero of the Jewish Ghetto) then — when the socialists decided to nominate him for the constituency of Budrio — Piroporco (Pyropig), because being around him would turn anyone into ‘an extraordinary pig’.26 In point of fact, beyond satirical articles, Il Mulo also left room for the most relevant issues of interest to those Catholics who recognized Algranati’s editorial activism as an effective form of Catholic action: the will to oppose and compete with the socialists for control of the working masses; the claim of a deeper, more ‘authentic’ Catholic patriotism/nationalism compared to the liberals; the constant internal conflict against the weakness and apathy of the moderates; and signs of anti-Judaism. Regarding the first aspect, the attempt to appropriate the May Day celebrations — proposed in 1909 and 1914 — was interesting, but with a significant difference. In the latter year, prospects appeared better because of the electoral success achieved thanks to the Gentiloni pact (although Algranati did not much appreciate it): We greet the radiant dawn of this First of May, which rises amidst Italian Catholics’ brightest hopes that the people, who have now become disillusioned with the red flag, will once again turn their gazes to the august banner of the cross, the symbol of redemption.27 The events of June’s settimana rossa (‘red week’) and the socialist victory in Bologna’s municipal elections in July show how Algranati and his people had let themselves be strongly influenced by enthusiasm, but their ardent desire to affirm Catholic action as the workers’ only true protection emerges from other passages in an article, which it is useful to note: In this hubbub of propaganda, based on stupid promises and fists raised to the sky, the people — tired of all the smoke and mirrors and all the parlour tricks that are flashed in the eyes by the easily fooled who look to the league or the strike, to the municipality or the parliament for their little piece of the ‘light of the future’ — the people look to us, and from us they generally expect the redemption that only the followers of Christ can give them. Already, in many

25 ‘Giornale anticanagliesco’; Cristofori, ‘Il Mulo’, p. 130. 26 ‘Un maiale straordinario’; Guido Podrecca, ‘La lettera di Piroporco ai suoi elettori di Budrio’, Il Mulo, 28 February 1909, pp. 3–4. It is obvious that the true author of the article was one of Il Mulo’s editors. 27 ‘Salutiamo l’alba radiosa di questo Primo Maggio, che sorge fra le più liete speranze dei cattolici italiani, che vedono il popolo ormai disilluso del bandierone rosso, volgere ancora gli sguardi al vessillo augusto della croce simbolo di redenzione’; see ‘Primo Maggio’, Il Mulo, 1 May 1914, p. 2 and ‘Il Primo Maggio e i cattolici’, Il Mulo, 2 May 1909, p. 3.

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Catholic places, intrepid pioneers of Christian democracy have vigorously lent a hand, among protests and persecution by those interested, in many reforms in favour of the people. And our countless institutions of credit, consumption and production show even the blind the serious, lengthy, painful and patient work that Catholics have always carried out for the people even when it was not possible to get close to the masses because of the prejudices spread about us by the socialists and because of persecution by the usual din-dins patriots who invoke their love of country to hide their robberies, pointing to Catholics as enemies of the institutions.28 The last reference introduces us to the second theme: the claim of a Catholic patriotism, here addressed against the liberals, joining in this field the dominant anti-socialist polemic. On this topic, it is interesting to note an article of June 1909 on the outcome of Trieste’s administrative elections, where Italian and Slavic socialists successfully supported one another. It bears mentioning that, with the war in Libya still in the distant future, Catholics — considering themselves the bearers of the only true patriotism — proudly opposed both liberals as well as socialists. And then they speak of the priests who are enemies of the nation, these clowns, and then they speak of wars of independence! And then, both buffoons and hooligans, they want a monopoly over the commemorations and do not want Catholics in their marches! But, you, oh oxheart, how they forget our young Catholic regiments: and yet you are the only one with the right to be heard!29 As has been pointed out, even Bologna’s Catholics, whether moderates or democrats, claimed the originality and superiority of their patriotism, or even nationalism.30 This conviction emerges from another of Algranati’s periodicals, La Semente. Indeed, once 28 ‘In questa baraonda di propaganda, fatta a base di promesse stupide e di pugni in cielo il popolo — stanco di tutti gli specchietti e di tutte le lanterne magiche che gli si fanno brillare davanti agli occhi dai soliti spostati, che cercano nella lega e nello sciopero, nel comune, in parlamento il loro pezzetto di sol dell’avvenire — il popolo guarda a noi, e da noi solamente aspetta quella redenzione, che solo i seguaci del Cristo possono dargli. Già in molti luoghi i cattolici, intrepidi pionieri della democrazia cristiana, hanno dato vigorosamente mano, fra le proteste e le persecuzioni degli interessati, a tante riforme fatte in vantaggio del popolo. E le nostre innumerevoli istituzioni di credito, di consumo, di produzione sono a dimostrare anche ai ciechi il lavoro serio, lungo, penoso, paziente che i cattolici hanno saputo compiere a vantaggio del popolo, anche allora quando, e per i pregiudizi sparsi a nostro carico dai socialisti e per le persecuzioni dei soliti pappattriotti che invocando l’amore di patria a salvazione delle loro rapine, li additavano come nemici delle istituzioni, non era possibile potersi avvicinare alle masse’; ‘Il Primo Maggio e i cattolici’, Il Mulo, 2 May 1909, p. 3. 29 ‘E poi parlano dei preti nemici della patria, cotesti buffoncelli, e poi parlano delle guerre d’indipendenza! E poi, buffoni e teppisti insieme, vogliono avere il monopolio delle commemorazioni e non ci vogliono i cattolici nei cortei! Ma, o nerbo di bue, come ti dimenticano le nostre giovani falangi cattoliche: eppure sei l’unico che abbia il diritto di farsi sentire!’; ‘Oh! I Patrioti!’, Il Mulo, 27 June 1909, p. 4. 30 See Marcello Malpensa, ‘Il riavvicinamento dei cattolici allo Stato italiano tra la guerra di Libia e la Grande Guerra’, in I cattolici e l’Unità d’Italia: tappe, esperienze, problemi di un discusso percorso, ed. by Maria Paiano (Assisi: Cittadella, 2012), pp. 283–314 (pp. 289–92).

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the war in Libya began,31 the ‘little weekly paper of the people’, in its very concise and essential style, printed many articles opposing Catholics, who were friendly to the nation, to socialists, who were hostile to the nation. The socialists, who now call themselves the Young Turks of Italy, have promoted demonstrations to end the war and bring home the troops from Tripoli. […] Now that more than 3000 Italian sons have been buried in the African soil of that land that is being prepared to host thousands of Italian workers, how can we think of abandoning it and becoming the laughingstock of Europe? What is done is done. Those Catholics who have accepted the war as a sad necessity and have sought in all ways to aid the troops and the government to end the war have done well. And to think that the government has no eyes except those it uses to wink at socialists! Catholics, close ranks! Show that you count, too, and you will see that they will have to deal with us as well.32 In August 1913, reasserting these positions with a tried and tested method, Algranati was the protagonist of a lively public debate with a socialist exponent. The weekly reported it with the title ‘The Great Debate: Are Catholics Enemies of the Nation?’. The exchange ended with the decisive call for an agreement between government and papacy, which would finally allow Catholics to demonstrate their patriotism. ‘The Catholics of Italy then, in the wish that the Italian government will make peace with the pontiff, are not enemies of Italy at all, but are the first patriots’.33 Some of the essential characteristics of Algranati’s Catholicism thus emerge clearly. It inextricably combined an openness to social challenges, a conciliatory nature and projects for building a strong, confessional, patriotic and national Catholic party. To return to Il Mulo, it is certainly significant that in July 1914 (therefore before public opinion was divided between neutralists and interventionists) the weekly affirmed that young Catholics’ fascination for the nationalist movement was due to the fact that ‘courage is needed in those ranks and every effort is made to fight the advance of subversive parties. In a word: there they fight, they come to blows’. So, if Catholics supported and invested money in the ‘proletariat’s resistance to socialist

31 On this issue, see the contribution by Alessandro Santagata in this volume. 32 ‘I socialisti, che adesso si chiamano i turchi d’Italia, hanno promosso delle manifestazioni per la fine della guerra e il ritiro delle truppe da Tripoli. […] Oggi che più di 3000 figli d’Italia sono seppelliti nella terra africana conquistata e che si prepara quella terra a ospitare migliaia di lavoratori italiani, come mai si può pensare di abbandonarla divenendo il ludibrio dell’Europa? Quel che è fatto è fatto. E bene fanno i cattolici i quali hanno accettato la guerra come una triste necessità e in tutti i modi cercano di aiutare le truppe e il governo a finire la guerra. E dire che il governo non ha occhi che per far l’occhiolino ai socialisti! Cattolici, stringete le fila! Fate vedere che contate anche voi e vedrete che dovranno tenervi da conto anche voi’; ‘Qui si vede un’altra volta che i socialisti sono i veri nemici della patria’, La Semente, 14 April 1912, p. 3. 33 ‘Ecco dunque che i cattolici d’Italia, facendo voti che il governo italiano si pacifichi col pontefice, non sono affatto nemici d’Italia, ma sono i primi patriotti’; ‘Il grande contraddittorio: i cattolici sono nemici della patria?’, La Semente, 13 July 1913, p. 3.

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servitude’, they would see ‘everyone come back running, also willing to beat off the thugs which the Socialist Party would certainly set against them just to win the day’.34 As will shortly be seen, the argumentative force against the apathy and weakness of moderate Catholics — whose main fault was not having succeeded in forming a party — crops up in various articles. Nonetheless, harsh criticism was not spared to the liberals either. In an article in April 1908, there was a criticism of how, faced with the first attempts to organize a ‘Christian socialist movement’, those who should have supported it ‘gave a smile of compassion, told them [the organizers] that they were fanatics and said that they wanted to create disorder and parties where there weren’t any’. Hence, in the course of a few years, thanks to the diffusion of L’Asino and Avanti! and the propaganda of the secretaries of the Camere del lavoro (Trade Union Centres), the socialists had created a disaster, ‘sowing hatred against God and against employers, they abandoned the Church, created a league of resistance, and frequently held strikes that were long and very damaging. And peace, religion, and quiet comfort disappeared forever’. The conclusion was blunt: ‘Sleep, sleep, O men of order, and you will find that someone will give you a rude awakening’.35 But for Catholics who recognized themselves in Algranati’s positions, regardless of the socialists’ strength or the weak collaboration of liberals, the greater culpability in the situation lay with a timid and aloof Catholic action. In July 1909, an article in a semi-dialectical Italian accused Catholics of having given up the fight: In short […] it seems to me that, for some time, Catholics have been dragging their feet and now it’s time to stop. We have to wake up and start again with vigour. Against everything that the Freemasons are doing through socialism, we have to fight with other actions.36 In March of 1910, L’Avvenire d’Italia’s acquisition by the Società Editrice Romana (SER; Society of Roman Publishers)37 cost Algranati his directorship of the daily.

34 ‘In quelle file si domanda del fegato, e si cerca di contrastare con tutte le forze l’avanzata ai partiti sovversivi. In una parola: là si combatte, si menano le mani’; ‘resistenza del proletariato contro il servaggio socialista’; ‘tornare tutti di corsa, disposti anche a fare a bastonate coi teppisti, che il partito socialista manderebbe loro, di certo, incontro, pur di spuntarla’; ‘Il perché’, Il Mulo, 12 July 1914, p. 2. 35 ‘Fece un sorriso di compassione, disse loro che erano fanatici e che sarebbe stato un voler portare il disordine ed i partiti ove non c’erano’; ‘seminato l’odio contro Dio e contro i padroni si abbandonò la chiesa, si fece la lega di resistenza, gli scioperi si ripeterono a breve scadenza, lunghi, dannosissimi; e la pace, la religione, l’agiatezza tranquilla scomparvero per sempre’; ‘dormite, dormite, o uomini dell’ordine e troverete chi vi sveglierà in malo modo’; ‘Dormite, dormite! Storia di molti luoghi’, Il Mulo, 5 April 1908, p. 4. 36 ‘Insomma […] a me mi pare che da un poco di tempo i cattolici battono la fiacca e che l’è ora di finirla; bisogna svegliarsi e ricominciare con ardore; bisogna che contro tutto quello che fa la Massoneria col mezzo del socialismo, noi ci opponiamo con altre opere’; ‘Lettere di Martin Lacappa: dove si dice che i nostri dormono’, Il Mulo, 11 July 1909, p. 2. 37 The syndicate of Catholic newspapers was born in 1907. As Algranati wrote at the time of his dismissal — ‘I do not know and have never had occasion to deal with the Society of Roman Publishers [SER], which does not know either me or the pain and toil that L’Avvenire d’Italia has cost me’ (‘Io non conosco, e non ho mai avuto occasione di trattare con la Società Editrice Romana [SER], la quale

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In the pages of Il Mulo he thanked his supporters and proudly defended the value of Catholic action that he had covered with his tireless editorial work. When my every thought and every deed were absorbed in Catholic action, I created this Mulo to place a terrible adversary before the destructive work of socialist pornography, and I entrusted it to talented writers of the genre. In response to your loving competition, I made personal sacrifices; I undertook burdensome obligations to provide for what seemed to me of urgent necessity to our movement.38 In reality, Catholic democrats were opposed to the moderate clerical line that supported Giolitti, whom they saw as weak and harmful. ‘The danger, therefore, lies in this: in reducing the solution to Italy’s socio-political-religious problem to the maintenance of a ministry created by Giolitti or in his image and likeness. This course of conduct makes us hateful to people’.39 On the contrary, We need two urgent factors for our defence and the nation’s prosperity: a national organization and a democratic programme. […] We need representation of our own, that is an exponent of all our forces who will guide all our forces. […] And we need a democratic programme, that is, one that includes all the moral and economic questions that reflect society and that proposes a solution in a manner that is predominantly favourable to the lower classes, which are the most numerous, most hard-working and unhappiest.40 When, at the end of March 1911, Giolitti inaugurated his fourth ministry (without Catholics), Algranati published a strongly oppositional article in Il Mulo. It stated

non conosce né me, né il lavoro e i dolori che mi è costato L’Avvenire d’Italia’; Il Mulo, 24 April 1910, p. 2) — L’Avvenire d’Italia only joined it in 1910, passing under the direction of Paolo Mattei Gentili, who also edited the Corriere d’Italia from Rome. 38 ‘Quando ogni mio pensiero, ogni mia attività erano assorbiti dall’azione cattolica, ho ideato questo Mulo per mettere un avversario terribile di fronte al lavoro deleterio della pornografia socialista, e l’ho affidato a valenti scrittori del genere. Dopo il vostro amorevole concorso, ho fatto sacrifici personali, ho contratto obbligazioni onerose per provvedere a quella che mi è parsa una necessità urgente nel movimento nostro’; ‘Cari amici’, Il Mulo, 10 April 1910, p. 2. Algranati’s dismissal was due to choices by Grosoli’s SER and not, as has been claimed, by Della Chiesa in hostility to a director who was too ‘pro-modernist’ (D’Ascenzo, ‘Cultura, educazione’, p. 345). Rather, from the papers reported by Scottà, it turns out that the Avvertenza of 2 December 1912, issued by the Holy See against the newspapers of the SER, found elements for its report precisely in a hostile defence sent by Algranati to the Vatican (Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 452–65). 39 ‘Il pericolo dunque sta qui: nel ridurre la soluzione del problema religioso-politico-sociale in Italia, al mantenimento di un ministero fatto da Giolitti, o a immagine e somiglianza sua. Questa linea di condotta ci rende odiosi al popolo’; ‘Dove sta il pericolo’, Il Mulo, 7 August 1910, p. 2. 40 ‘Abbiamo bisogno di due fattori urgenti di difesa nostra e di prosperità della Patria: organizzazione nazionale e programma democratico. […] Abbiamo bisogno di una rappresentanza nostra, che sia l’esponente di tutte le nostre forze e guidi tutte le nostre forze. […] E abbiamo bisogno di un programma democratico, cioè che comprenda tutte le questioni morali ed economiche che riflettono la società, e ne proponga la soluzione in modo prevalentemente favorevole per le classi inferiori, che sono le più numerose, le più laboriose, le più infelici’; ‘Quel che ci vuole’, Il Mulo, 28 August 1910, p. 2.

Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period

that, in the first place, Grosoli had taken the directorship of L’Avvenire d’Italia away from him, kowtowing to a disastrous pro-Giolitti line. He entitled the piece ‘The Collapse of Ferrara’ — an explicit reference to the celebrated article of 1902, ‘The Collapse of Venice’, which Murri had published against Paganuzzi41 — and he traced the errors made by the moderate clericals and the deaf ear they had turned to his criticism, arriving at precise conclusions regarding the attitude that Catholic associations should have: Our health can only come from ourselves. The permission to go to the voting booth cannot be used for backdoor intrigue. Society is not saved in this way. This permission should only show that we are a force and one to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, those who made themselves the exponents of this force used a ruinous system. Since 1904, except for two Platonic congresses, we have not had a single, national demonstration to show that Italian Catholics were ready to do anything to defend their rights, to implement their programme of social restoration. […] Our associations should all feel ashamed, worse, should merit all the disgrace that would fall on them if they still let themselves be fooled by those who, from the Rava Regulation to Raineri’s project for the Rural Credit Unions, have seen for four years their negotiations crowned with a success of mockery. Only by putting ourselves firmly in front of the opposing ranks, without trusting in anything but our fighting spirit and our cause, will we be able to reduce the enormous evils of this unhealthy politics, which has frustrated the greatest historical fact of this century: the Holy See’s concession for Italian Catholics to take part, with all due permissions, in the political elections to save Italian society.42 Following the threads of what has been revealed here, it can be said that Algranati and his followers wanted a Catholic action that would become a fiercely anti-socialist, patriotic and nationalist party, attentive to social and popular problems while still 41 Angelo Gambasin, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958), p. 292. 42 ‘La nostra salute non può venire che da noi: il permesso di andare alle urne politiche non può servire agli intrighi di corridoio: non si salva in questo modo la società. Questo permesso deve mostrare soltanto che noi siamo una forza, e che bisogna fare i conti anche con noi. Disgraziatamente, coloro i quali si fecero l’esponente di questa forza usarono un sistema rovinoso. Dal 1904 in poi, all’infuori di due congressi platonici, non c’è stata una sola manifestazione nostra generale, nazionale, che mostrasse che i cattolici italiani erano pronti a tutto, per difendere i loro diritti, per attuare il loro programma di restaurazione sociale. […] Le nostre associazioni debbono sentire tutta la vergogna anzi tutto l’obbrobrio che ricadrebbe su di loro, se ancora si lasciassero illudere da quelli che dal regolamento Rava al progetto Raineri sulle Casse Rurali, hanno veduto per quattro anni i loro negoziati coronati da un successo di scherno. Solo mettendoci risolutamente di fronte alle schiere avversarie, senza fiducia in nessun altro che nel nostro spirito di combattività e nella nostra causa, potremo diminuire i mali enormi di questa insana politica, che ha frustrato il più grande fatto storico di questo principio di secolo: la concessione della S. Sede ai cattolici italiani di prender parte, coi dovuti permessi, alle elezioni politiche per la salvezza della società italiana’; ‘Giolitti e i cattolici italiani. Il crollo di Ferrara’, Il Mulo, 9 April 1911. On the Rava Regulation, see Ermanno Genre, ‘L’insegnamento della religione’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 509–24 (pp. 512–13).

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openly clerical and confessional. To all this, however, Algranati added an element that was not insignificant: signs of anti-Semitism. Between 1909 and 1914, there were over twenty articles and vignettes in Il Mulo that targeted the Jews, singling them out or associating them with socialists and Freemasons. The articles are characterized by an elevated level of hostility and contempt.43 They range from a classic repertoire of stereotypes (‘The Jew is the prototype of an exploiter. It is difficult to find a Jew doing manual labour. They are all bankers, loan sharks, traders or parasites. Fine. The Socialist Party — that claims to be against all exploiters — was not only born of a Jewish matrix but is cultivated by the Jew’)44 to direct attacks (‘Today the Jews are masters of the field, are masters of Freemasonry and of the government and unfortunately also have a number of Christians who circle around them, slithering after their gold’),45 to even a grotesque and surreal dialogue between ‘Samuele Levi’ and Abraham’s son, ‘a thirty-five-year-old lawyer’ who ‘is making his political career as a socialist revolutionary with the money of his daddy, a moderate commendator’.46 Of course, Il Mulo had distanced itself from the Director of the Gazzetta di Venezia, Luciano von Ingenheim,47 who, denouncing Avanti!’s anti-colonial positions on the war in Libya, emphasized how, in Russia, they made ‘men like that Treves [Director of the socialist daily] into mincemeat when there aren’t any pigs or asses’. The paper, in fact, clarified: ‘We don’t want anyone’s slaughter’.48 Nevertheless, a month later it claimed that the colonial campaign was a sieve for the nation’s refuse: And looking carefully finds that in all that waste there are neither priests nor clerics, but it is made up precisely of all the anti-clerical scoundrels who, for so many years, have accused Catholics of anti-patriotism. In that sieve are found the Jew (your Pardos and Luzzattos), the socialist and the Freemason.49

43 On the continuation of these traits over the following years, see Fabio Nardelli, ‘I periodici cattolici bolognesi e gli ebrei durante il periodo fascista’ (unpublished thesis, University of Bologna, 1995–96), pp. 91–105. 44 ‘L’ebreo è il prototipo dello sfruttatore. È difficile trovare un ebreo che faccia un lavoro manuale. Sono tutti banchieri, strozzini, commercianti o parassiti. Bene. Il partito socincialista [sic] — che vuole essere contro gli sfruttatori — non solo è nato da matrice giudaica, ma è dall’ebreo coltivato’; ‘I loro ebrei’, Il Mulo, 21 February 1909, p. 3. 45 ‘Oggi gli ebrei sono padroni del campo, sono padroni della massoneria e del governo ed hanno anche purtroppo una quantità di cristiani che fanno loro intorno la ruota e strisciano davanti al loro oro’; ‘Massoneria in piazza: gli ebrei nella massoneria’, Il Mulo, 18 December 1910, p. 4. 46 ‘Avvocato trentacinquenne’; ‘fa la carriera politica, come socialista rivoluzionario coi quattrini di papà, commendatore moderato’; ‘Papà conservatore e figlio socialista ebrei’, Il Mulo, 17 March 1912, p. 6. 47 On this controversial figure, see Patrizia Bartoli Amici, ‘Ingenheim, Luciano von’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, LXII (2004), pp. 365–67. 48 ‘Di uomini come quel Treves carne da macello, quando mancano porci e asini’; ‘non vogliamo il macello di nessuno’; ‘L’ebreo a Tripoli’, Il Mulo, 21 January 1912, p. 2. 49 ‘E guardando bene trova che in tutta quella scoria non ci sono né preti né clericali, ma è costituita proprio da tutto il canagliume anticlericale, che da tanti anni accusa i cattolici di anti patriottismo. Si trova nel setaccio l’ebreo (i Pardo e i Luzzatto), il socialista e il massone’; ‘Il setaccio… inutile’, Il Mulo, 21 February 1912, p. 2.

Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period

These outbursts did not exhaust the activities of the ‘editorial Catholic action’ carried out by the periodicals of Algranati’s publishing house. Indeed, since it had become the official mouthpiece of the dependent tertiary congregations of the province of the Franciscans of the Most Holy Redeemer of Bologna, Rinascita Francescana attributed to the tertiaries a decisive role in vitalizing the People’s Union, presided over by Giuseppe Dalla Torre. On 2 February 1913, for example, the magazine reported extensive excerpts from the speech that the latter had given in Venice. Certainly, the denial that there was a need for a Catholic party was not shared by Algranati, but when he spoke of an intrinsically social religion that had to save people from the ‘socialist hegemony’, they were in full agreement.50 Thus, a few weeks later, a new article stressed that the tertiaries should be declared ‘to be the best and most active parishioners’ becoming, by virtue of their piety and prayer, the driving force of the Catholic associations that were active in the social sphere.51 Two articles at the end of August and the beginning of November 1913 were even more explicit. The first affirmed that a tertiary should be a complete Catholic, fundamentalist and militant, that is, a Catholic who, beginning to reconstruct the conscience and morality of the people, acted indirectly even in their material well-being and was present in the social struggle.52 In the second, fearing an electoral alliance between liberals and radical anti-clericals, tertiaries were urged to abandon their political reluctance and act forcefully to bring people back to the faith. But to do this it is necessary to shake, agitate, and become, with their words and their lives, the intrepid apostles of the Christian ideal, without any excuses and unbending. […] We must return to being old-school Franciscan tertiaries, that is, fearless, intrepid militants of the Church and of Christ […]. This is what will return Italy to a strict, organized, combative Third Order, to provide new and better heroes of Catholicism in the religious struggle that will soon be fought in our unfortunate and beloved country.53 The desire for a combative, militant and close-knit presence, therefore, also found its expression in pages that were usually dedicated to spirituality and religious reflection. Moreover, if, as we have seen, even the Franciscan tertiaries found that the keystone of Catholic action was in their activity within the parish communities, it is worth the trouble to attempt to define an area of observation in order to discover whether and

50 51 52 53

‘Egemonia socialistica’; ‘Dove il Papa ci chiama’, Rinascita Francescana, 2 February 1913, p. 1. ‘Essere i migliori e più attivi parrocchiani’; ‘Quel che ci vuole’, Rinascita Francescana, 20 April 1913, p. 1. ‘Per intenderci’, Rinascita Francescana, 31 August 1913, p. 1. ‘Ma a fare questo è necessario scuotersi, agitarsi, diventare con la parola e con la vita gli apostoli intrepidi della idea cristiana, senza attenuazione alcuna e con rigidezza integrale. […] Bisogna ritornare a essere terziari francescani del vecchio stampo, cioè senza paure, militi intrepidi della Chiesa e del Cristo […]. Ecco ciò che ridarà all’Italia un Terz’Ordine rigido, organizzato, combattivo, per fornire i nuovi e migliori eroi del cattolicesimo nella lotta religiosa che si combatterà in un domani prossimo nel nostro sfortunato e amato paese’; ‘È tempo di scuoterci!’, Rinascita Francescana, 2 November 1913, p. 3.

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how the issues and methods of action proposed by the Catholic press were concretely adopted by the diocese’s parish associations.

3. ‘Awakening the Old’ and the Brief Life of a Parish Association in Bologna The trust that Bologna’s Catholics had in the momentum Della Chiesa would give to Catholic action found concrete feedback, not so much in the People’s Union as in the Society of Italian Catholic Youth. Particularly at the end of his episcopate, it experienced a significant recovery after the difficulties following the dissolution of the Opera dei congressi.54 Some of the papers preserved in the archives of Bologna’s Azione cattolica (Catholic Action) offices allow us to grasp how the People’s Union languished and the Society of Italian Catholic Youth found renewed vigour. Beginning in 1911–12, the Society saw a new flourishing of chapters, evidenced by the many statutes dating back to those years.55 Of interest, in this regard, is the ‘Moral Report of the First Semester of 1913’ of the youth chapter of Santi Vitale e Agricola, which recalls that, since December of 1912, the association had aligned itself with the Catholic youth movement’s new structure in Bologna, inaugurated at the last meeting in October, and nominated one of our representatives to the Diocesan Council. Then, considering that the basis of every activity is internal organization, we decided to replace the old one with a new statute.56 Although this needs to be more fully analysed, it is quite probable that Della Chiesa, urging the youth chapters towards renewal within a framework of greater connection to the diocese’s central structures, was experimenting with new proposals, first on a local level and later, in February 1915, at a national level with the establishment of a Giunta centrale per l’Azione cattolica italiana (Central Council for Italian Catholic Action). The Archbishop would certainly have desired greater energy in Catholic associations, which in Bologna were mainly implemented by their youngest members. An article entitled ‘Awakening the Old’, published in November of 1914 in the bimonthly L’Araldo — issued by the Pro Fide et Patria chapter of San Giovanni in

54 See Giuseppe Battelli, ‘Fra età moderna e contemporanea (secoli XIX e XX)’, in Storia della Chiesa di Bologna, ed. by Lorenzo Paolini and Paolo Prodi, 2 vols (Bergamo: Bolis, 1997), I, pp. 285–372 (p. 327); Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 319. 55 The papers examined were those from AACB, folder 51 (‘Società della Gioventù Cattolica Italiana, anni 1901–21’, files 1 and 2) and 282 (‘Unione Popolare fra i Cattolici d’Italia, Sezione Diocesana di Bologna’, 1900–17). 56 ‘Al nuovo assetto del movimento giovanile cattolico in Bologna, stabilito nell’ultimo convegno dell’ottobre e si nominò un nostro rappresentante in seno al Consiglio diocesano, considerando poi che il fondamento di ogni attività è l’organizzazione interna si deliberò di sostituire al vecchio un nuovo statuto’; AACB, b. 51, f. 1, c. SS. Vitale e Agricola.

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Monte parish — well summed up the difficulties of the People’s Union at the end of Della Chiesa’s episcopate: It is generally said that the experience of the old benefits the young but that is not always the case. In fact, as far as Catholic organization is concerned, the opposite has happened. When chapters of the Italian Catholic Youth were already flourishing, the People’s Union among Italian Catholics, at least in Bologna, still slept the sleep of the just. Before last spring, very few knew that a diocesan branch existed in Bologna. The first sign of its being truly worthy of the name was the meeting against the unjust law of the precedence of civil marriage over religious marriage, which was a vibrant success of enthusiasm. Then, it seemed to go back to sleep after the first autumn breezes had helped waken it from its fruitless hibernation. At the end of October there was also a very successful meeting at which wonderful proposals were made, agreeing, among other things, to establish parish sections and chapters imitating Catholic Youth.57 The article ended with the almost irreverent suggestion to choose diocesan delegates more carefully in order to guarantee Catholic action a more effective vitality. Indeed, the papers conserved of the People’s Union confirm this merciless analysis. For several years, only exchanges of information on the status of membership fees were made. The response that Professor Giuseppe Rosselli, member of the Florentine central office, gave in November of 1910 to the diocesan representative, Alberto Tubertini, who had tendered his resignation two weeks earlier because he did not have time to devote to his office, is significant: In all confidence and confidentiality […] do you believe that, in Bologna today, the People’s Union might easily find this ideal person to be appointed, who should devote himself with apostolic zeal to the promotion of our association, dedicating all or almost all of the time necessary to it? […] So, rather than slipping from little to nothing, wouldn’t it be better to continue the current situation?58

57 ‘Suole dirsi generalmente che dell’esperienza dei vecchi si avvantaggiano i giovani ma non è sempre così. In fatto di organizzazione cattolica è proprio avvenuto il contrario. Quando già fiorivano i circoli della Gioventù cattolica italiana, l’Unione popolare fra i cattolici italiani, almeno a Bologna, dormiva ancora il sonno del giusto. Prima della trascorsa primavera ben pochi sapevano che ne esisteva a Bologna una direzione diocesana. La prima manifestazione di essa veramente degna di tale nome fu la riunione contro l’iniqua legge della precedenza del matrimonio civile sul religioso, riuscita vibrante di entusiasmo. Poi parve riaddormentarsi quando valsero a destarla dal letargo infruttifero le prime brezze autunnali. Si ebbe agli ultimi di ottobre una riunione anch’essa riuscitissima nella quale furono manifestati bellissimi propositi, stabilendosi fra l’altro di istituire a imitazione della Gioventù Cattolica delle sezioni e circoli parrocchiali’; ‘Il risveglio dei vecchi’, L’Araldo, 15 November 1914, p. 5; AACB, b. 51, f. 1, c. San Giovanni in Monte. The issue also contained an article entitled ‘Plauso’ (‘Approval’), which highlighted the success of people making the pro pace pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca, organized by the Catholic Youth and held precisely on that 15 November 1914. 58 ‘In tutta confidenza e riservatezza […] crede Lei oggi che nella città di Bologna l’Unione popolare possa trovarlo molto facilmente questo ideale d’incaricato che si dia con zelo d’apostolo alla propaganda del nostro sodalizio e ad esso dedichi tutto o quasi il tempo necessario? […] E allora piuttosto che cadere dal poco nel nulla non sarà meglio continuare nella situazione attuale’; AACB, b. 282, f. 16, 1910.

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In the end, Tubertini withdrew his resignation and we find him as the Union’s secretary in the following years. Indeed, on the occasion of the initiative that, according to L’Araldo, had marked a moment of the associations’ reawakening at the beginning of 1914 (referring to the public protest against the precedence of civil marriage over religious marriage), it fell to him to write to the General Secretariat of the People’s Union (which had moved to Padua) to report that copies of L’Allarme had not arrived in time to be distributed to the participants. It was a successful demonstration that, nevertheless, highlighted the scarce efficiency of the entire organization.59 In conclusion, having taken a brief look at the situation in the local sections of the national associations, the sources and archival papers also permit us to focus on an association of an exclusively parochial nature. Two weeks before Della Chiesa’s arrival in Bologna, L’Avvenire d’Italia published this brief notice in the ‘Sotto le due torri’ column: The San Sigismondo Association, gathered for an extraordinary assembly on the third day of this month, sent a greeting to the new Archbishop of Bologna to which he deigned to reply immediately with the following letter: ‘Rome, 5 February 1908. Illustrious Sir, I have received, with glad spirit, the warm greeting sent to me by the San Sigismondo Association of this city and I am heartily pleased with the sentiments of respectful devotion that you have expressed to me in the name of its members. Hoping soon to make the personal acquaintance of the president and all the associates, I wholeheartedly impart to you my pastoral blessing. With full esteem, I am your most affectionate servant, Giacomo Archbishop of Bologna. The Most Illustrious Mr Pietro Scarabelli, President of the San Sigismondo Association — Bologna’.60 Without wishing to overestimate its reach, it should be noted that this was the only association in the city to see its greeting to the new Archbishop published in the newspaper, proof its importance, despite the fact that it had been established only three years earlier (on 9 January 1905), as can be seen from a list of the members that specified an honorary member (Don Giovanni Scarabelli, parish deacon), sixty founding members, and thirty-five ordinary members, the first of whom was Prince Filippo Hercolani.61 59 AACB, b. 282, f. 20, 1914. 60 ‘L’associazione San Sigismondo, riunita in assemblea straordinaria il giorno 3 del corrente mese, inviava un saluto augurale al nuovo arcivescovo di Bologna. Al che egli degnavasi rispondere immediatamente con la seguente lettera: “Roma, 5 febbraio 1908. Ill.mo Signore, ho accolto con animo lieto il caldo saluto augurale inviatomi dall’Associazione di San Sigismondo di cotesta Città, e mi sono grandemente compiaciuto dei sentimenti di ossequiente devozione da Lei espressimi a nome dei Soci. Sperando fra breve fare la personale conoscenza del Presidente e di tutti gli Associati, imparto [sic] Loro di cuore la Pastorale Benedizione. Con perfetta stima sono di Lei aff. mo Servo, Giacomo Arciv. di Bologna. Ill.mo Sig. Pietro Scarabelli, Presidente dell’Associazione di San Sigismondo — Bologna”’; ‘Per l’ingresso di mons. Della Chiesa’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 9 February 1908, p. 3. The manuscript of the letter, signed by Della Chiesa, can be found in AAB, f. Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 10/1908. 61 AAB, f. Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 12/1910.

Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period

What were its goals? Although possessing a hand-written draft of the statute (with various corrections, including a change of name to Circolo Bibiena, which nevertheless is not in the minutes), the most effective summary is found in a model letter that was used to request donations to support its social initiatives: To tear the worker away from his tavern, the lamentable cause of so many families’ sorrows; to paralyse the destructive work of subversives who try to corrupt him at any cost; to care for moral and material improvement: this is the goal of our Association.62 San Sigismondo’s goals, therefore, were the same as those advocated in the publications of the Cromolitografica. In the first place, the Association was to oppose the spread of socialist ideas, concretely supporting the workers who were victims of subversive propaganda. What is striking, however, are its methods of operation: its activity consisted in organizing lotteries and charity celebrations, the proceeds of which were to finance the support fund for its needy members, if they were such ‘especially due to sickness or unemployment’.63 In the very months following the new Archbishop’s arrival, the Association organized a humorous exposition of sketches and illustrated postcards, with a corresponding prize competition. Various local papers publicized the event, which seems to have been quite successful.64 Yet an internal ‘Resoconto morale’ (‘Moral Report’) dated 27 January 1909 painted a much less brilliant picture of the Association’s activities. When the new council was elected, our society, it can be said, was deteriorating. The main cause of this can be attributed to the rash discord and disagreements that arose among the members themselves and, for that reason, our meeting place, it can be said, was deserted. The attempt was then made to improve our standing and bring new life to our society by holding assemblies and having a few parties, even of little importance, but nothing came of this since it seemed convenient to many not to care or do anything about it, avoiding anything that was sour but embracing whatever seemed sweet.65

62 ‘Strappare l’operaio dalla bettola, lacrimata causa di tanti dolori alle famiglie, paralizzare l’opera deleteria di sovversivi che ne tentano a qualunque costo la corruzione; curarne il miglioramento morale e materiale, ecco lo scopo della nostra Associazione’; AAB, f. Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 12/1910. 63 ‘Massime per malattia o disoccupazione’; AAB, f. Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 12/1910. 64 See ‘La festa dell’Associazione di San Sigismondo’, Gazzetta dell’Emilia, 14 May 1908, p. 3, in AAB, Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 13/Giornali con articoli. 65 ‘Quando venne eletto il nuovo consiglio, la nostra società era, si può dire, in isfacelo; causa principale di ciò, si attribuì a inconsulte discordie e attriti sorti fra i soci stessi, e per tal fatto il ritrovo si fece, si può dire, deserto. Si tentò allora di rialzare il prestigio e dare vita alla società tenendo adunanze e facendo qualche festa, benché di poco rilievo, ma nulla si ottenne, giacché parve comodo a molti di non occuparsi o preoccuparsi di nulla, schivando tutto ciò che si sapeva di agro e abbracciare invece tutto ciò che si sapeva di dolce’; AAB, Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 11/1909.

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The report goes on to state that the same celebration of the previous May (which had actually for the most part been prepared and organized, considering the rich archival documentation on it) had not achieved the goal it should have, and even the Pope’s offering had not been claimed, proof of the lack of participation. The text ended with a complaint of the scanty number of members, which meant now it is our pressing duty to explain all of our activities in order to increase our number of members, who must willingly work to shake off their inertia and ensure that our association may, one day, be counted among the most flourishing and independent.66 The minutes — from April 1908 to August 1910, albeit with some gaps — do not exactly clarify what happened in the following months. A letter of resignation from a member in June 1909 ‘for incompatibility with other members’ suggests internal tensions, while the board’s council meeting on 25 August 1910 decided to modify the statute to allow eighteen-year-olds from other parishes to become members but without access to social offices, a choice that sounds like an extreme attempt to revive the association.67 Instead, a terse brief article that appeared in Il Resto del Carlino on 1 April 1911 gave notice of the Association’s dissolution.68 Beyond any other consideration, the events of the San Sigismondo Association seem to confirm two aspects that have already emerged: the inadequacy of Bologna’s Catholic associations to counteract the spread of socialism (which was repeatedly criticized by Algranati, who continued his personal ‘Catholic action’ through the press) and the difficulty of increasing the number of members and of initiatives, often due to a tendency to stress differences and disagreements. However, if one looks away from the incidental conflicts and personal idiosyncrasies, an analysis of the dominant issues enables one to recognize common tendencies in Bologna’s Catholic world, which, albeit in different ways, increasingly claimed political representation in order to face the socialists on an equal footing. Moreover, it is truly of no little significance that, despite following very diverse personal paths, by virtue of their total aversion to socialism, their patriotism and their desire to affirm Catholicism’s national importance, the men who clashed during the years examined here (think of the breakdown in ties between Murri and Algranati or between the latter and Grosoli) rediscovered new elements of consonance thanks to their relationship with fascism, which would, in the end, also be embraced by their most hated enemy, Podrecca.

66 ‘Ora a noi incombe il dovere di spiegare tutta l’attività onde accrescere il numero dei soci, i quali si adoperino con la buona volontà, per scuotere l’inerzia, e far sì che la nostra associazione possa un giorno essere annoverata fra le più floride e indipendenti’; AAB, Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 11/1909. 67 ‘Per incompatibilità con altri soci’; AAB, Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, minutes from the assemblies of 12 April 1908 to 1 June 1909 and minutes from the assemblies of 29 October 1909 to 25 August 1910. 68 AAB, Parrocchie di Bologna Soppresse 45/258, Associazione San Sigismondo, 12/1910 (but 1 April 1911).

Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period

Bibliography Albertazzi, Alessandro, Il cardinale Svampa e i cattolici bolognesi (1894–1907) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971) Azzolin, Giovanni, Gli Scotton: prediche, battaglie, imboscate: tre fratelli monsignori, papi, cardinali e vescovi tra liberalismo e modernismo dall’Unità d’Italia al primo Novecento (Vicenza: La Serenissima, 1998) Bartoli Amici, Patrizia, ‘Ingenheim, Luciano von’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXII (2004), pp. 365–67 Battelli, Giuseppe, ‘Fra età moderna e contemporanea (secoli XIX e XX)’, in Storia della Chiesa di Bologna, ed. by Lorenzo Paolini and Paolo Prodi, 2 vols (Bergamo: Bolis, 1997), I, pp. 285–372 Cristofori, Franco, ‘Il Mulo giornale anticanagliesco’, Il Carrobbio, 2 (1976), pp. 123–36 D’Ascenzo, Mirella, ‘Cultura, educazione ed editoria a Bologna nel primo Novecento’, Annali di storia dell’educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche, 16 (2009), pp. 335–48 Fonzi, Fausto, ‘Acquaderni, Giovanni’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), I (1960), pp. 160–62 Fonzi, Fausto, ‘Algranati, Cesare’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), II (1960), pp. 365–66 Gambasin, Angelo, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958) Genre, Ermanno, ‘L’insegnamento della religione’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 509–24 Malpensa, Marcello, ‘Il riavvicinamento dei cattolici allo Stato italiano tra la guerra di Libia e la Grande Guerra’, in I cattolici e l’Unità d’Italia: tappe, esperienze, problemi di un discusso discorso, ed. by Maria Paiano (Assisi: Cittadella, 2012), pp. 283–314 Nardelli, Fabio, ‘I periodici cattolici bolognesi e gli ebrei durante il periodo fascista’ (unpublished thesis, University of Bologna, 1995–96) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Tagliaferri, Maurizio, L’Unità Cattolica: studio di una mentalità (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993) Tramontin, Silvio, ‘Acquaderni, Giovanni’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), pp. 1–6 Venturi, Giampaolo, Il movimento cattolico a Bologna e in Emilia Romagna fra Ottocento e Novecento: linee indicative di storia e metodo per la ricerca, 4th edn (Bologna: Conquiste, 2004) Venturi, Giampaolo, Storia del Credito romagnolo (Rome: Laterza, 1996) Vian, Giovanni, La riforma della chiesa per la restaurazione cristiana della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1914) (Rome: Herder, 1998)

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Archbishop Giacomo Della Chiesa Facing the Italo-Turkish War (1911–12)

This article focusses on Archbishop Giacomo Della Chiesa’s attitude during the civilian mobilization in support of Italy’s military intervention in Libya. Archbishop of Bologna for almost four years, it is important to include his stand in his biography given the ecclesiastic and political climate of his time. More generally, historians have brought to light how the Italo-Turkish War represented a laboratory of rhetoric, of ‘liturgies’ and of the practices that characterized the mobilization from 1915 to 1918.1 From this point of view, the attitude that Della Chiesa assumed is particularly meaningful, both in order to investigate the evolution of his thought in relation to the thorny theoretical question of the war and to reflect, from a specific perspective, on the history of Catholic nationalism. This research has been conducted through an examination of the diocesan bulletin, the newspaper L’Avvenire d’Italia, and the local magazines La Semente and Il Mulo.2 I also consulted the collections of the Consistorial Congregation, the Cardinal Della Chiesa collection in the Secretariat of State: Personal Articles of the Cardinals and Officials of the Curia collection, and the alphabetical indexes of the Secretariat of State for the months of the war. The archive of the Archdiocese of Bologna was not taken into consideration since it does not conserve the letters of the bishops (with the partial exception of documents contained in the Fondo Acquaderni,3 and in the particular

1 See Marco Mondini, La guerra italiana: partire, raccontare, tornare, 1914–1918 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014), pp. 33–36; Gabriele Proglio, Libia 1911–1912: immaginari coloniali e italianità (Florence: Le Monnier, 2016), pp. 141–51. 2 I should like to thank Marcello Malpensa for his help in selecting these materials. 3 Marcello Malpensa, ‘Religione, nazione e guerra nella diocesi di Bologna (1914–1918)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 383–408 (pp. 386–87). According to Scottà, the material relating to Della Chiesa’s preaching during his time in Bologna is currently distributed among four archives: the private one held by Giuseppe Della Chiesa’s nephew, which is the most consistent; that of the Alberoni College in Piacenza; that of the episcopal seminary in Piacenza and the Cardinal Della Chiesa collection, the Benedict XV collection as well as the collections of Mgr Migone and Cardinal Tedeschini in the Vatican Secret Archives. Scottà also reports that ‘a rather rapid survey made of the materials related to his preaching and their location allows one to envision a project of taking inventory and cataloguing that, for now, seems only wishful’ (‘una ricognizione piuttosto rapida fatta

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 207–221 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118772

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secretariat).4 Before entering into its merits, it should be noted that the research on the documentation produced by Della Chiesa pertaining to these years — to a great extent already published by Antonio Scottà5 — has not produced any significant results. Nonetheless, from studying the Bologna context it has been possible to deduce some considerations concerning the Archbishop’s prudence in face of the war.

1.

Italian Catholics and the War in Libya

Erupting on the fiftieth anniversary of national unification, the Italo-Turkish War had important immediate repercussions on the home front. Few people had posed the question of what they had really gone there to conquer, that is, what the conditions of the Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan regions actually were.6 Yet the war had a strong political impact on internal affairs. Alluding to the Battle of Adwa, both Filippo Turati’s Critica Sociale and La Civiltà Cattolica had predicted the defeat of the Italian troops. As far as the religious press was concernd, this position could not easily be repeated in the face of the constant campaigning waged by most of the press, by patriotic committees and by student organizations, campaigning that could not help but involve Catholics. In his important study of Catholic nationalism, Luigi Ganapini illustrated how, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Italian Catholic movement had gradually strengthened its ties with the patriotic ideal. In the background was that tradition of Guelphism that the intransigent and the conciliatory both avowed, albeit stressing different aspects, but whose substance of the myth of an organized Christian nation they both shared. Catholics, therefore, embraced a liberal politics that was marked by a more energetic conduct of international affairs and, therefore, closely linked to the need to defend internal order from democratic and socialist forces.7 In terms of rhetoric, Francesco Piva’s latest book sheds light on a pedagogy of war promoted by the Società della gioventù cattolica italiana (Society of Italian Catholic Youth) based on the device of the ‘good Catholic soldier’, ready to sacrifice himself and capable of a self-control that would permit him to kill without any emotional involvement.8 It

di recente sul materiale di predicazione e il suo collocamento, permette di prefigurare un progetto d’inventariazione e di catalogazione, ma che per ora appare solo auspicabile’). As far as the present contribution is concerned, it should be pointed out, as a revelatory limitation, that the Piacenza archives and the Giuseppe Della Chiesa Archive did not figure in this study. For its part, Scottà’s inquiry into those archives did not record any result that was relative to the issue of the war in Libya. See Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), pp. 201–02. 4 See L’Archivio generale arcivescovile di Bologna: inventario-guida dei fondi ordinati e consultabili, ed. by Mario Fanti (Bologna: Costa Editore, 2015), p. 99. 5 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa. 6 Nicola Labanca, La guerra italiana per la Libia 1911–1931 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), pp. 26–52. 7 Luigi Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970), p. 7. 8 ‘Buon soldato cattolico’; Francesco Piva, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015).

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was an ideological system that aimed, mainly, to dispel the recurrent accusations of anti-patriotism. Ganapini and Francesco Malgeri also interpreted the action carried out by the syndicate of the Società Editrice Romana (SER; Society of Roman Publishers) — consisting of newspapers like Rome’s Corriere d’Italia, Bologna’s L’Avvenire d’Italia, Milan’s L’Italia and Palermo’s Corriere di Sicilia, etc. — in this light.9 It is not possible here to deal with the complicated relationships that tied Giovanni Grosoli’s group to the Banco di Roma, the Catholic financial institution that was the protagonist of the so-called ‘peaceful penetration’ at the beginning of the century.10 For the purposes of this study, it is more relevant to observe the circulation of religious motifs used to lend support to the conflict. Moreover, even Catholic newspapers of very diverse orientations, such as La Rassegna Nazionale and L’Unità Cattolica, converged upon this point, seeing the war as an occasion to isolate Catholic Italy’s internal enemies. As is known, L’Osservatore Romano and La Civiltà Cattolica took a more prudent stand. The latter, however, had tones that convinced Pius X to issue, on 21 October, a reprimand saying that it had abandoned itself to certain commemorations.11 From the Pope’s point of view, the grip of the nationalist movement — which was, not merely by chance, loosening its anti-clerical stranglehold — was cause for dismay.12 However, the hope that the campaign for Libya might foster religious renewal did not disappear during the course of the war, as can also be seen from the studies on the episcopate’s stance.

2. The Episcopate and the War Malgeri’s research, and more recently, that of Giovanni Cavagnini and Father Giovanni Sale have allowed us to draw a fairly detailed map of bishops’ choices in view of the war.13 On the whole, an affinity with rationalizations of mobilization, which can only partly be attributed to the government’s choice to send priests and religious to the front, has been revealed.

9 Piva, Uccidere senza odio, pp. 171–91; Francesco Malgeri, La guerra libica (1911–1912) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970). 10 Malgeri, La guerra libica, pp. 15–36. 11 Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico, p. 189. This was joined to a pamphlet from the Congregation of Rites, De suffragiis pro defunctis in bello Tripolitano, issued 3 February 1912, which authorized only one funeral Mass on the most solemn, obligatory feast days, specifying that no one could hold speeches or prayers during Mass (Proglio, Libia 1911–1912, p. 167). 12 The main opponents of contamination with the nationalists were the intransigents of L’Unità Cattolica. The attitude of the Lega democratica (Democratic League) was more articulated and contradictory. Finally, the majority were moderate clericals, like Filippo Meda, who distinguished between religious inspiration and patriotic content, in which they could see themselves reflected (Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico, pp. 198–99). 13 Malgeri, La guerra libica, pp. 236–54; Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Soffrire, ubbidire, combattere. Prime note sull’episcopato italiano e la guerra libica (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 27–44; Giovanni Sale, Libia 1911: i cattolici, la Santa Sede e l’impresa coloniale (Milan: Jaca Book, 2011).

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As was logical, in light of the Holy See’s neutrality (which, however, would not have condemned the legitimacy of colonial expansion in itself),14 the hierarchy expressed different positions deriving from the sensitivity of its members but also from the political conditions of the various dioceses. To understand this phenomenon better, Cavagnini identified four phases. The first, from the declaration of war to the Battle of Shar al-Shatt (29 September–23 October), is characterized by many bishops making use of propaganda. Some bishops blessed the troops departing for North Africa and, for Assisi’s social week (which started on 24 September), enthusiastic demonstrations were held in favour of the war.15 Conspicuous in their patriotic zeal were Bishop Geremia Bonomelli of Cremona, Bishop Giacomo Maria Corna-Pellegrini of Brescia and, most notably, Cardinal Pietro Maffi of Pisa, who was particularly attached to the notion of a ‘crusade against the Turks’ (7 October marked 340 years since the Battle of Lepanto). This was the same topos used by Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli, referring to the defence of Vienna in 1683. Finally, and more generally, the numerous pro tempore belli prayers and the commitment of various bishops to raising funds for the soldiers’ families should be mentioned. In the second phase, from November to December 1911, after Pope Pius X’s aforementioned reprimand, while there was no discontinuity in attitude, greater caution was exercised in expressing support for the war. Indicative of this caution was the disappearance of the motif of a battle against the crescent moon. During the long stalemate from January to September 1912, the first discontent with the campaign’s consequences for the economic conditions of the soldiers’ families was heard. Finally, in the fourth phase lasting from before to after the Treaty of Lausanne on 18 October, there was substantial agreement among the episcopacy to celebrate victory, even though services for the fallen soldiers did not have the same patriotic tone everywhere.16 The following pages will attempt to establish which stands Della Chiesa, Archbishop of Bologna from December 1907, adopted in these cases.

3. Archbishop Della Chiesa in Bologna’s Politics First of all, it should be noted that, at the beginning of the century, the city’s political situation was highly polarized. In 1902, a coalition constituted by democrats, republicans and socialists had conquered Palazzo d’Accursio, which housed the town council of Bologna, thus favouring a reconciliation between conservative-liberal and Catholic forces. Giuseppe Tanari, who enjoyed the support of some moderate clerical sectors,

14 On the Holy See’s diplomatic strategy, see Gabriella Giusti, ‘La diplomazia vaticana e la guerra di Libia’, in Pio X e il suo tempo, ed. by Gianni La Bella (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 741–52. 15 See Lucia Ceci, L’interesse superiore: il Vaticano e l’Italia di Mussolini (Rome: Laterza, 2013), p. 34. 16 On the issue of funeral rites for the fallen of Shar al-Shatt and the proposal to build a memorial, see Matteo Caponi and Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘“Ai morti per una più Grande Italia”: un monumento mancato ai caduti in Libia (1911–1913)’, Mondo contemporaneo, 9, 1 (2013), pp. 115–52; Matteo Caponi, ‘Liturgie funebri e sacrificio patriottico: i riti di suffragio per i caduti nella guerra di Libia (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 10, 2 (2013), pp. 437–59. On the services of 1912 for the fallen, an overview is offered in Proglio, Libia 1911–1912, pp. 171–208.

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had been mayor since 1905. The national movement of the Bolognese Luigi Federzoni, which shifted the political axis to the right and even broke into Catholic circles, was gaining increased support in the political world.17 The Catholic movement was added to this fragmented situation. At a national level, the dissolution of the Opera dei congressi by Pius X in 1904 and the repression of theological and political modernism weighed heavily.18 In Bologna, the Catholic world was divided between old intransigents, moderate clerical ‘electionists’, and Catholic democrats of various hues. The death of Cardinal Domenico Svampa had removed one of the main promoters of Bologna’s Catholic movement; he had kept up talks with the liberal and democratic sectors. It was precisely for this reason — as Della Chiesa himself suggested in a letter to the Secretary of State19 — that the new Archbishop was called ‘under the two towers’ — as John F. Pollard writes — to ‘cleanse the augean stables’ from political and theological dangers.20 Specifically, it can be observed from the aforementioned letter — which outlined a predominantly pastoral attitude — that prudence was the calling card of his actions. This does not, however, mean that Della Chiesa was disinterested in civil life. According to Pollard, in the clash between the democrats of La Fiaccola and the conservatives of L’Unità Cattolica, Della Chiesa did not take a hard line against Murri’s group.21 More precisely, Scottà documents: Della Chiesa’s political vision oscillated between intransigence and moderation, reflecting a certain flexibility between obedience to the Holy See’s directives and the demands of reality […]. From analysing the procedures he put in place for the dispensation from or suspension of the non expedit, one sees the perspective towards which he oriented himself with regard to the relationship between Church and state, namely: an articulation of conditions for the autonomy of Catholics in the political sphere and the identification of a plan for the solution of the Roman Question.22 17 For a general overview, see Aldo Berselli, ‘Da Napoleone alla Grande Guerra’, in Storia di Bologna ed. by Renato Zangheri, 4 vols (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2005–13), IV/1: Bologna in età contemporanea: 1796–1914 (2010), pp. 1–136 (pp. 119–20). 18 See Giampaolo Venturi, Il movimento cattolico a Bologna e in Emilia Romagna fra Ottocento e Novecento: linee indicative di storia e metodo per la ricerca, 4th edn (Bologna: Conquiste, 2004), pp. 60–65. For a glimpse of the Italian Catholic movement, see Gabriele De Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico in Italia, 2 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1966), I: Dalla Restaurazione all’età giolittiana, pp. 419–62. More specifically on Bologna, see Alessandro Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa e i cattolici bolognesi (1894–1907) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971) and Marcello Malpensa’s contribution in this volume. 19 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 85. 20 John F. Pollard also wrote in The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 41–42, of Della Chiesa’s ‘being sent there precisely for this purpose, even though Merry del Val may equally well have hoped, and perhaps even expected, that he would fail in this task’. The local and national press confirmed this perception. 21 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, pp. 46–47. 22 ‘La visione politica di Della Chiesa oscillava tra intransigenza e moderatismo, riflettendo una certa flessibilità fra obbedienza alle direttive della S. Sede ed esigenze della realtà […]. Dall’analisi delle procedure da lui stabilite per la deroga o la sospensione del non expedit s’intravede la prospettiva verso cui si orientava in ordine ai rapporti tra Stato e Chiesa e cioè: l’articolazione dei presupposti per l’autonomia dei cattolici in campo politico e l’individuazione di una linea progettuale per la soluzione della questione romana’; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 336.

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In other words, to Della Chiesa’s mind, the problem of the circumstances of the Holy See could not be put at risk by Catholics’ desire to reconcile with their country. Relations with the established power were respectful, as seen by the participation in the celebrations called by the municipality for the King’s birthday in November 1911.23 On the other hand, he remained vigilant in the face of the risk of any socialist affirmation, supporting the candidacies that showed themselves to be respectful towards ecclesiastic authority. It is, therefore, clear how the Archbishop stood at a distance from those Catholic leaders, such as Carlo Malvezzi, who called for a clearer political direction for the national unions. His decision to maintain a certain reserve during the months of the war can be explained in this light.

4. Mobilization of Bolognese Society and the Contribution of Catholics In the absence of studies that permit us to have a clear image of mobilization for war in Bologna, the reports in L’Avvenire d’Italia, particularly the column entitled ‘Sotto le due torri’ (‘Under the Two Towers’), are a precious source for reconstructing the contribution made by Catholics. The Bolognese newspaper had undergone a profound transformation at the beginning of the new century and, under the direction of Rocca d’Adria — the pseudonym used by the journalist Cesare Algranati — had become autonomous from the diocese and was distributed nationwide.24 Protected by Svampa, it had welcomed some prominent exponents of the Christian democrat movement, thus becoming the object of attack on the part of L’Unità Cattolica. Finally, in 1910, it had joined the SER, printing close to 20,000 copies and adopting a pro-Giolitti line that was far removed from the positions of Rocca d’Adria (who was removed from management that same year). This decision was certainly not appreciated by the Pope, who on several occasions had wanted to signal his distance from a press that he did not consider sufficiently outspoken in favour of the Holy See. After becoming Archbishop of Bologna, Della Chiesa conformed to the pontifical criticism, although without directly intervening in the editorial line.25

23 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 338. 24 A converted Jew, Algranati had embraced the Christian democratic line that emerged at the Congress of Bologna in 1903, distancing himself, however, ever more clearly from Murri, until their definitive break following Murri’s establishment of the Democratic League. See Fausto Fonzi, ‘Algranati, Cesare’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), II (1960), pp. 365–66. As Malpensa writes in his contribution in this volume: ‘Even if not all Catholics recognized themselves in these publications’ political stances concerning society and the Church, the periodicals that Algranati promoted represented a type of middle ground that ran through most of the Catholic world in the culture and mentality they expressed as well as on certain specific issues’. 25 Relations with the publication had been tense for a while, as evidenced by the numerous exchanges between the Archbishop and the Director. When, in 1910, the SER decided to relieve Rocca d’Adria of his position, thus giving the paper’s line a more moderate bent, it was precisely Della Chiesa who supported his cause with the Secretariat of State; see Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 457–65.

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The first demonstrations in favour of the war date back to the beginning of October, a few days after a general strike against the military intervention had successfully been promoted by the socialists. On 1 October at the Verdi Theatre, the Marcia reale was sounded and the emblem of the crescent moon was removed from the consulate in Piazza Aldrovandi.26 As the Bolognese newspaper reported, on the Sunday of Our Lady of the Rosary, ‘some pious persons’ (in agreement with the Dominican fathers) celebrated the anniversary of the victory of Lepanto ‘against the Muslims’ and ‘implored her protection for the Italian troops’ who were fighting ‘with renewed valour against the same enemies of Christianity, in defence of Italy’s good name’.27 It was a useful occasion for journalists to explain that victory would come only with the support of the ‘God of Hosts’ and that patriotism acquired its strength from ‘a sincerely and powerfully felt faith’. It was a strong linguistic device creating a background that drew upon the stigma of the Muslims, which had been circulating for some time in the debate and which characterized the newspaper’s entire narration of the war, aimed at sanctifying patriotic sentiment.28 The penetration of this type of propaganda into the Catholic world can easily be seen from a comparison of sources. With regard to Gioventù cattolica (Catholic Youth), Piva had highlighted that the central leadership — with the notable exception of Egilberto Martire — held a prudent position, limiting itself to inciting young Catholics to fulfil their patriotic duty and privileging the aspect of assistance.29 Yet, there was great enthusiasm for the undertaking, above all among student groups such as the one in Rome. The contamination with nationalism — the historian explains — intermingled diverse impulses such as a revival of neo-Guelphism, interpreted in imperialist tones, aversion to Giolitti’s era, anti-socialist prejudices imbued with anti-democratic impulses, and the head-on opposition to Freemasonry. Some of these issues were also found when studying Bologna’s situation. On 24 November, for example, the new-born Bolognese Catholic Youth — it is not clear to what extent this was an expression of the Society of Italian Catholic Youth founded by Acquaderni and Fani30 — distributed a communication extending an invitation to attend a Mass in suffrage and the ritual absolution for the fallen.31 L’Avvenire d’Italia reported that, during the ceremony in the Church of San Salvatore, over 40,000 tricolour pins had been distributed.32 Further below we shall return to the appeal by the promotional committee, on which the Archbishop commented in the diocesan bulletin. For the moment, it suffices to say

26 ‘Dimostrazioni pro Tripoli’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 1 October 1911. 27 ‘Alcune pie persone’; ‘contro i musulmani’; ‘imploravano la sua protezione per le armi italiane’; ‘con rinnovato valore contro gli stessi nemici della cristianità in difesa del buon nome dell’Italia’; ‘I bolognesi alla battaglia di Lepanto’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 3 and 6 October 1911. 28 ‘Dio degli eserciti’; ‘una fede sinceramente e potentemente sentita’. See Lucia Ceci, Il vessillo e la croce: colonialismo, missioni cattoliche e Islam in Somalia (1903–1924) (Rome: Carocci, 2006), pp. 12–18; Proglio, Libia 1911–1912, pp. 155–209. 29 Piva, Uccidere senza odio, pp. 70–76. 30 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 319. 31 ‘Il suffragio delle anime dei nostri soldati caduti in guerra’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 24 November 1911. 32 ‘Per i caduti in guerra’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 26 and 27 November 1911.

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that nationalist positions were also held in the circles closer to Della Chiesa, such as the Associazione bolognese per le elezioni amministrative (Bologna’s Association for Administrative Elections), and the Unione elettorale (Electoral Union), which was presided over by Count Filippo Sassoli de Bianchi.33 At the city council meeting on 15 November 1911, the count spoke in favour of sending a substantial subsidy to the military cause, stating: We Catholics, while we pray to the God of Hosts for the full and complete victory of our brave soldiers, our fearless army, that has been sent by the will of the nation to the shores of Africa to bring it back to Latin Christian civilization, which once flourished there at the hands of our ancestors, we cannot but wish for better times for our country, times of greatness and true glory […]. Italy will know how to overcome every obstacle in order to reach that perfect religious peace that will make it truly capable of fulfilling its great mission in the world […]. We fervently vow that the blood so generously shed by our brothers, encouraged to such a great sacrifice by thoughts of our country and a future life as priests of Christ, whom they accompanied with admirable passion in the trenches of the outposts, may lead to a time of undisputed triumph for our flag and be great and fruitful for that Latin Christian civilization that our country, for centuries, has been destined to spread throughout the world.34 The passage contains all the basic elements of the nascent Catholic nationalist discourse: first, the need to be accredited as representatives of a national cause that only the solution to the Roman Question could achieve completely in its universal mission of bringing civilization. Although the controversy between L’Avvenire d’Italia and the Giornale del Mattino, which had a democratic and pro-Masonic leaning,35 was particularly heated, the main enemy of this plan obviously remained the left, an object of violent controversy after the explosion of the Masetti case. It took its name from the soldier Augusto Masetti who, on 30 October, had shot at Lieutenant Colonel Stroppa 33 Bologna’s Association for Administrative Elections numbered 550 members in 1900. Among these were almost all of the notable Catholics of the city and province, who — despite the association’s name and, even more, the non expedit — were extremely careful to follow the process of political elections and parliamentary life, maintaining their contacts with the liberal party; see Albertazzi, Il cardinale Svampa, p. 175. 34 ‘Noi cattolici, mentre preghiamo dal Dio degli eserciti vittoria piena e completa ai nostri prodi soldati, all’invitta nostra armata che si recarono per volere della nazione sul lido africano a ricondurvi la civiltà cristiano-latina, altra volta ivi floridissima per opera dei nostri avi, non possiamo non auspicare tempi migliori per la patria nostra, tempi di grandezza e di gloria vera […]. L’Italia saprà vincere ogni ostacolo onde raggiungere ancora quella perfetta pace religiosa che la renderà veramente capace di compiere la sua grande missione nel mondo […]. Noi facciamo voti fervidissimi che il sangue sparso con tanta generosità dai nostri fratelli, incoraggiati al grande sacrificio dal pensiero della nostra patria e di una vita futura dai sacerdoti di Cristo che li accompagnarono con slancio mirabile fin sotto le trincee degli avamposti, apporti ad un tempo il trionfo indiscusso alla nostra bandiera e sia grande e fecondo di quella civiltà cristianolatina che la patria nostra è destinata da secoli a diffondere nel mondo intero’; ‘Il sindaco Nadalini espone il proprio programma’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 16 November 1911. 35 See, for example, ‘Vampiri e Da Costantinopoli a via dei Mille’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 6 and 10 November 1911.

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while shouting ‘long live anarchy!’. It is striking, however, that very different content could be read in the same months in other local Catholic papers, for example the weekly La Semente, which was aimed at the popular classes, and the satirical Il Mulo, which countered Guido Podrecca and Gabriele Galantara’s socialist satire, L’Asino. Both La Semente and Il Mulo were published by Rocca d’Adria’s company, Cromolitografica Bolognese, and through the populist satirical genre they conveyed a much more critical version of events. This was in tune with a design to claim the superiority of Catholic patriotism in order to incite action against the prudence of the moderate clericals as well as the need to distinguish themselves from Giolitti’s people.36 For example, in La Semente, the war is presented as an initiative by Giolitti to support Masonic economic interests, the cost of which, however, would fall entirely on the workers and families of the soldiers.37 In the column ‘Lettere da Tripoli’, the weekly strongly attacked socialists. In the end, it presented the war as an occasion for religious conversion.38 It narrated the story of an imaginary soldier telling his friend Masticabrodo (Soupslurper), The Arabs are like monkeys who know how to climb trees and shoot you […] but you see how a soldier changes here! Here you never hear any swearing along the whole trench! If you only saw, when they know that in the morning they are going into battle, how many soldiers go to confession […]. In Tripoli there are friars who are hearing confessions day and night and the military chaplains come to the trenches on horseback […]. Tell all the mothers who have sons in Tripoli that this war is also a grace. Many boys have become good Christians.39 Similar arguments were used in Il Mulo against Piroporco (Pyropig; L’Asino’s Guido Podrecca) for his ideological contradictions (he had sided for the intervention) and against the ‘socialist Arabs’ who were threatening the nation and the Church.40 The magazine denounced the hypocrisy of a government that had made Italy the laughingstock of Europe: Italy has sold its primacy in the Mediterranean for the tasty dish of the Roman Question. If it stood with the Pope, if there were no need for triple or even double 36 On this point, see Marcello Malpensa, ‘Il riavvicinamento dei cattolici allo Stato italiano tra la guerra di Libia e la Grande Guerra’, in I cattolici e l’Unità d’Italia: tappe, esperienze, problemi di un discusso discorso, ed. by Maria Paiano (Assisi: Cittadella, 2012), pp. 283–314 (pp. 289–92). 37 ‘Qui si parla della guerra e di quello che ci deve imparare l’operaio’, La Semente, 15 October 1911, p. 2. 38 ‘Qui si parla di Tripoli e della guerra’, La Semente, 29 October 1911, p. 1. 39 ‘Gli arabi sono come scimmie che si arrampicano sugli alberi e ti sparano addosso […], ma tu vedessi come è cambiato qui il soldato! Qui sì che non si sente più una bestemmia in tutta la trincea! Se tu vedessi quando si sa che si deve alla mattina dopo andare in battaglia quanti e quanti soldati si confessano […]. A Tripoli ci sono frati che confessano giorno e notte e alle trincee vengono a cavallo i cappellani militari […]. Fai sapere a tutte le madri che hanno figli a Tripoli che questa guerra è anche una grazia. Tanti ragazzi sono diventati dei buoni cristiani’; ‘Lettere da Tripoli’, La Semente, 17 December 1911, p. 1. 40 ‘Arabi del socialismo’; ‘Una lettera dell’on. Podrecca’, Il Mulo, 15 October 1911; ‘Il nostro diritto di insurrezione’, Il Mulo, 26 October 1911. The controversy against the socialists and Masons had also taken on anti-Semitic traits, see ‘L’ebreo a Tripoli’, Il Mulo, 21 January 1912.

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alliances against the bogeyman of the Roman Question, then Egypt, Tunisia and Tripoli would today be the imperial colony of the risen Italian nation.41 The article continued: Tripoli is what it is, that is, a good cause compromised by the government and the sensationalist press. But now businessmen of a very dubious stamp are scheming over it […]. Since Italy’s honour has been committed, we take fervent vows that the nation’s flag will fly victorious in the Mediterranean.42 The magazine had thus decided not to withdraw its support for the mobilization, as the rest of the articles published after the Battle of Shar al-Shatt and regarding the handling of funerals demonstrated.43 It is, therefore, possible to suppose that the two heads functioned as a release valve for that discontent that had been silenced by L’Avvenire d’Italia — for example, as mentioned, pro-Giolitti positions — which also found space in the paper over the long months of 1912, even in the face of the paper’s lesser attention to the events of an increasingly static war. Given these premises, it is possible to theorize about the position adopted by Della Chiesa.

5. Della Chiesa’s Discretion From examining Bologna’s diocesan bulletin, two of the Archbishop’s positions have emerged. The first, from October 1911, consists of a pamphlet in which the archiepiscopal chancellery ordered the parish priests to insert a ‘pro tempore belli prayer’ into the Mass.44 Such a decision was in harmony with most of the episcopate and the directives of the Holy See. The latter, in fact, had used its own press organs to defend the sung celebration in the Church of Tripoli on 17 October in the presence of the military authorities.45 The second, more meaningful one, concerns the aforementioned funeral rites held on 26 November. The bulletin recalls the success of the initiative promoted by Catholic Youth.46 There follows

41 ‘La questione romana è il piatto di lenticchie per il quale l’Italia ha venduto il suo primato nel Mediterraneo. Se vi fosse intesa col papa, se non avesse avuto bisogno né di Triplice, né di Duplice per lo spauracchio della questione di Roma, l’Egitto, Tunisi e Tripoli sarebbero oggi l’impero coloniale della nazione italiana risorta’; ‘Tripoli: il piatto di lenticchie’, Il Mulo, 1 October 1911, p. 6. 42 ‘Tripoli è quello che è; cioè una causa buona, compromessa dal governo e dalla stampa gialla, però laggiù intrigano ora affaristi di assai dubbia lega […]. Poiché è impegnato l’onore dell’Italia, noi facciamo caldi voti che la bandiera della patria sventoli vittoriosa nel Mediterraneo’; ‘Chiacchiere Tripoline’, Il Mulo, 8 October 1911, pp. 2–3. 43 On Turkish violence, see ‘Qui si parla di quello che si trova nella guerra di Tripoli’, La Semente, 17 December 1911, pp. 1–3. On the reception of Shar al-Shatt in the Catholic press and the discussion within the Catholic world concerning the image to be projected for the funerals of the fallen, see Caponi, ‘Liturgie funebri’, p. 443. 44 ‘Dubbio intorno all’orazione pro tempore belli’, Bollettino della Diocesi di Bologna, 2, 2 (1911), p. 49. 45 See Sale, Libia 1911, pp. 64–68. 46 ‘The severe furnishing, the grave song of the choir, the solemnity of the rite and of the crowd that continuously filled the vast Temple contributed to making this display of Christian piety toward the glorious fallen of Africa worthy of the city of Bologna’ (‘Il severo apparato, il canto grave del

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an appeal entitled ‘Voti e preghiere per la vittoria delle armi italiane e suffragi perpetui ai prodi soldati caduti nella guerra di Tripolitania’ (‘Offerings and Prayers for the Victory of the Italian Forces and Perpetual Suffrages to the Brave Soldiers Fallen in the War of Tripoli’), which was drafted by a committee of Bologna’s noblewomen. The text asks for contributions to celebrate a Mass in suffrage for the fallen and to build a votive chapel dedicated to St Pius V.47 Marcello Malpensa recovered a copy of the text, annotated and corrected by Della Chiesa to moderate its nationalist emphasis, in the diocese’s archive. The first three paragraphs — ‘La guerra’, ‘Le nostre preghiere’ and ‘Il nostro santo patrono’ (‘The War’, ‘Our Prayers’ and ‘Our Patron Saint’) referring to the glory of Lepanto — were completely rewritten.48 Regarding this action, the scholar comments: The manuscript confirms that, like his other confreres, [Della Chiesa] had no qualms in invoking the God of Hosts to give ‘complete victory to our soldiers’ arms’ or in asking for the intercession of St Pius V. It must not be forgotten, however, that the Archbishop revised a text that was not his own and that, in the published version, he decided to sign only one note as his own, a note which ordered that the entire first part of the appeal be attributed to the promoting committee.49

coro, la solennità del rito e della folla che di continuo gremì il vasto Tempio contribuirono a rendere questa manifestazione di cristiana pietà verso i gloriosi caduti d’Africa, degna della città di Bologna’); ‘Cronaca’, Bollettino della Diocesi di Bologna, 2, 3 (1911), p. 109. 47 ‘Voti e preghiere per la vittoria delle armi italiane e suffragi perpetui ai prodi soldati caduti nella guerra di Tripolitania’, Bollettino della Diocesi di Bologna, 2, 3 (1911), pp. 92–93. 48 Some of the document’s most significant passages reported: ‘All Italians must beseech the God of Hosts to shorten the days of tragedy, to give complete victory to the troops of our valiant soldiers and to gladden the country with the ineffable gift of peace’; ‘Whoever remembers the efficacy that the prayers of St Pius V already had in winning victory against the Muslim power cannot fail to recognize the pontiff as an excellent patron of the Italian forces, around whom the glories of the Battle of Lepanto are gathered’; ‘May St Pius V, therefore, the immortal victor over Islam in the sixteenth century, also intercede with God for the victory of the arms of those now fighting the same enemy he defeated’ (‘Tutti gli italiani devono supplicare il Dio degli eserciti ad abbreviare i giorni della sciagura, a dar completa vittoria all’armi dei nostri prodi soldati, e a rallegrare il paese con il dono ineffabile della pace’; ‘Chi ricordi l’efficacia che ebbero già le preghiere di San Pio V nell’ottenere vittoria contro la potenza mussulmana, non può non riconoscere un ottimo Patrono delle armi italiane nel pontefice intorno a cui si rannodano le glorie della battaglia di Lepanto’; ‘San Pio V, dunque, l’immortale vincitore dell’islamismo nel secolo XVI, interceda da Dio la vittoria anche per le armi di chi ora combatte contro lo stesso nemico da lui debellato’). There followed a plan for distributing the offerings: ‘1. A weekly Mass (which will begin being celebrated immediately) during the war to implore, through the intercession of St Pius V, the victory of our troops and peace. 2. Two hundred Requiem Masses to be celebrated this year and the next for those fallen in war. 3. A perpetual bequest of Masses for the dead of this war and possibly a daily Mass or more. 4. A votive chapel’ (‘1. Una messa settimanale (che si comincerà a celebrare subito) durante la guerra per implorare, colla intercessione di San Pio V, vittoria delle nostre armi e la pace. 2. Duecento messe di requie da celebrarsi nel corrente anno e nel prossimo pei caduti in guerra. 3. Un legato perpetuo di messe per morti nell’attuale guerra e possibilmente una messa quotidiana o più. 4. La Cappella votiva’); AAB, Fondo Acquaderni, b. 268, 20276–78. 49 ‘Il manoscritto conferma che egli, al pari di altri confratelli, [Della Chiesa] non avesse remore nell’invocare il Dio degli eserciti perché desse “completa vittoria all’armi dei nostri soldati” o nel chiedere l’intercessione di San Pio V. Non si deve dimenticare però che l’arcivescovo rielaborava un testo non suo e che, nella versione pubblicata, egli decise di firmare come propria soltanto una nota,

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That note, which the Bishop extrapolated from the appeal and published as his own, read: In this sorrowful hour of so many grieving mothers, like Rachel in antiquity, mourning their lost sons, may they draw steady comfort from the knowledge that Christian prayers for the strong young men who have left their lives on African sands are lifted up to God by good souls. May their sorrow be eased in reflecting that, although the memory of the fallen never perishes in the souls of the survivors, their religion still wants to erect a perennial memory of their valour in a temple dedicated to the Divine Heart that has so loved his people. From these few lines we can see Della Chiesa’s desire to express a sentiment of condolence that was exclusively pastoral, distanced from the tone of the paragraphs he rewrote of the noblewomen’s appeal and substantially in harmony with the ecclesiastic tradition on assistance to the fallen. The fact that this was his only public pronouncement, above all in writing, indicates his distance from the enthusiasm of other bishops, such as Maffi and Vannutelli, in the middle of a campaign even that, although in a decreasing phase, continued to find ample space in the diocesan Catholic press. In the first months of the new year there were still articles in La Semente and Il Mulo exulting the contribution of Catholics to the patriotic cause in opposition to the protests of socialists and anarchists who denounced the costs of the conflict suffered by the population.50 In Bologna, Catholic activism was relaunched in January by Bologna’s Association for Administrative Elections, Sassoli returning to his keyboard to pound out his love of country and the need to resolve the Roman Question.51 In May, La Semente — whose articles devoted to Libya were frequent and reaffirmed the same propagandistic concepts — lamented the duration of the war, motivated by a lack of international consensus around the Holy See’s efforts toward peace.52 Finally, between 18 and 26 October, the day when the Chamber ratified the

ordinando che tutta la prima parte dell’appello venisse attribuita al comitato promotore’; Malpensa, ‘Religione, nazione e guerra’, pp. 386–87. The following quotation, in the original, reads ‘nell’ora luttuosa in cui tante madri afflitte, come l’antica Rachele, piangono i figlioli perduti; torni loro di salutare conforto il sapere che anime buone innalzano a Dio la cristiana preghiera per i giovani forti che lasciarono la vita sulle sabbie africane, e sia lenito il dolore nel riflettere che, se la memoria dei caduti non perirà giammai nell’animo dei superstiti, la religione ancora vuole erigere un perenne ricordo del loro valore in un tempio dedicato a quel Cuore Divino che ha tanto amato gli uomini’. 50 ‘Brevi considerazioni sui soldati che si rifiutano di andare in guerra’, Il Mulo, 26 May 1911. Among others, see the installments of the column ‘Lettere da Tripoli’, La Semente, 7 January 1912, p. 3; 14 January, p. 3; and 16 March, p. 3. See also ‘Qui si parla dei veri amici dell’Italia e come si fa a riconoscerli’, La Semente, 21 January 1912, pp. 1–3 and ‘L’attentato al Re d’Italia e gli attentati a Gesù Cristo’, La Semente, 31 March 1912, p. 1 (in solidarity with the King after the assassination attempt of 14 March). 51 ‘L’assemblea dell’Associazione elettorale bolognese’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 28 January 1912. 52 ‘Qui si parla della guerra’, La Semente, 5 May 1912, p. 3.

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Treaty of Lausanne, L’Avvenire d’Italia was full of praise for the victorious army.53 The sources do not afford us an idea of Della Chiesa’s reactions to these events, but some interpretive knots should now seem less tangled. First, observing the Bologna context is valuable in order to understand how the Catholic world took part in the national mobilization, making the reasons for Italian colonial expansion its own. It was an important step in the process of the nationalization of the masses, in which the leadership of the then fragmentary Catholic movement had partly been concerned. It was trying to stem the growing influence of the nationalist discourse, in part already underway, in the sectors that were most engaged in political action, even though these had, as we have seen, standpoints that differed from those of the government.54 It then understood how to exploit it in order to gain some credit in the national arena against ‘internal enemies’. More generally, the press of the time (both popular and satirical) offers proof of the attempt to ‘sanctify’ the colonial campaign, appraising content of a religious nature in order to claim hegemony.55 This vision — partly endorsed by the liberal ruling class — contributing to the success of the plan for expansion, helped fill the need to give some meaning to the war and invested the imagined meaning with new rhetorical content, making the boundaries between sacrifice for the nation and that for the faith porous. It was a structure that would prove fundamental to the mobilization of 1915–18.56 Returning, in conclusion, to the image adopted by Della Chiesa, it is possible to suppose that, in this scenario, his reticence to speak in his own name was the result of a combination of factors. Attentive to the transformation underway, the Archbishop of Bologna embraced a yielding prudence that was fully in line with the Holy See’s attitude, which he mastered, sharing its mentality and dynamics. His consent to the colonial initiative, therefore, was probably tied to the hope that the war would favour religious renewal, offering new room for modifying the relationships with the political forces in Italy and in Bologna. At the same time, however, he believed that vigilance should remain high to prevent the Church from slipping into nationalist positions that were considered dangerous. As already mentioned, it was a different choice from those made by other bishops, but it was essentially in line with the majority of the episcopate, especially after Pius X’s reprimand of 21 October. It should be added that, to Della Chiesa’s mind, the failure to resolve the Roman Question remained a priority; it was the flaw that prevented true reconciliation with Giolitti’s ruling class. 53 See also the considerations in La Semente, which obviously avowed the Catholic contribution and asked the government to ‘leave religion alone’ (‘lasciare in pace la religione’); ‘La pace, la guerra, l’operaio’, La Semente, 20 October 1912, pp. 1–2. 54 Malpensa, in his contribution in this volume, writes: ‘Following the threads of what has been revealed here, it can be said that Algranati and his followers wanted a Catholic action that would become a fiercely anti-socialist, patriotic and nationalist party, attentive to social and popular problems while still openly clerical and confessional’. 55 See Cavagnini, ‘Soffrire, ubbidire, combattere’, p. 42. 56 See Caponi and Cavagnini, ‘“Ai morti”’, p. 42. On the patriotic national koinè during the Great War, see Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, La violenza, la crociata, il lutto: la Grande Guerra e la storia del Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 2002), pp. 78–158; Sante Lesti, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015), pp. 95–153.

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It followed that Catholics should obey the constituted power, without however signalling a retreat, or worse, autonomy from the directives of the ecclesiastical authority. The privileged strategic model, therefore, was that of Bologna’s Catholic Youth and of Count Sassoli, which was not very far from the rhetoric of a crusade that the Archbishop had legitimized in his note to the Bolognese noblewomen’s appeal. Once he became pope, his mistrust of nationalism would be further accentuated by the mobilization of 1915. This seems to be the most relevant element in the future Benedict XV’s path toward that ‘all-out war’ among Christian nations that upset the European equilibrium and also marked a change in the magisterium’s position on war.

Bibliography Albertazzi, Alessandro, Il cardinale Svampa e i cattolici bolognesi (1894–1907) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1971) Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, and Annette Becker, La violenza, la crociata, il lutto: la Grande Guerra e la storia del Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 2002) Berselli, Aldo, ‘Da Napoleone alla Grande Guerra’, in Storia di Bologna, ed. by Renato Zangheri, 4 vols (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2005–13), IV/1: Bologna in età contemporanea: 1796–1914 (2010), pp. 1–136 Caponi, Matteo, and Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘“Ai morti per una più Grande Italia”: un monumento mancato ai caduti in Libia (1911–1913)’, Mondo contemporaneo, 9, 1 (2013), pp. 115–52 Caponi, Matteo, ‘Liturgie funebri e sacrificio patriottico: i riti di suffragio per i caduti nella guerra di Libia (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 10, 2 (2013), pp. 437–59 Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Soffrire, ubbidire, combattere. Prime note sull’episcopato italiano e la guerra libica (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 27–44 Ceci, Lucia, L’interesse superiore: il Vaticano e l’Italia di Mussolini (Rome: Laterza, 2013) Ceci, Lucia, Il vessillo e la croce: colonialismo, missioni cattoliche e Islam in Somalia (1903– 1924) (Rome: Carocci, 2006) De Rosa, Gabriele, Storia del movimento cattolico in Italia, 2 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1966), I: Dalla Restaurazione all’età giolittiana Fanti, Mario, ed., L’Archivio generale arcivescovile di Bologna: inventario-guida dei fondi ordinati e consultabili (Bologna: Costa Editore, 2015) Fonzi, Fausto, ‘Algranati, Cesare’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), II (1960), pp. 365–66 Ganapini, Luigi, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970) Giusti, Gabriella, ‘La diplomazia vaticana e la guerra di Libia’, in Pio X e il suo tempo, ed. by Gianni La Bella (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 741–52 Labanca, Nicola, La guerra italiana per la Libia 1911–1931 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012) Lesti, Sante, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015) Malgeri, Francesco, La guerra libica (1911–1912) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970)

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Malpensa, Marcello, ‘Religione, nazione e guerra nella diocesi di Bologna (1914–1918)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 383–408 Malpensa, Marcello, ‘Il riavvicinamento dei cattolici allo Stato italiano tra la guerra di Libia e la Grande Guerra’, in I cattolici e l’Unità d’Italia: tappe, esperienze, problemi di un discusso discorso, ed. by Maria Paiano (Assisi: Cittadella, 2012), pp. 283–314 Mondini, Marco, La guerra italiana: partire, raccontare, tornare, 1914–1918 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014) Piva, Francesco, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Proglio, Gabriele, Libia 1911–1912: immaginari coloniali e italianità (Florence: Le Monnier, 2016) Sale, Giovanni, Libia 1911: i cattolici, la Santa Sede e l’impresa coloniale (Milan: Jaca Book, 2011) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Venturi, Giampaolo, Il movimento cattolico a Bologna e in Emilia Romagna fra Ottocento e Novecento: linee indicative di storia e metodo per la ricerca, 4th edn (Bologna: Conquiste, 2004)

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The Beginning of the Pontificate

Alberto Melloni

The Conclave of Benedict XV (1914)

There is not only a sequential connection between the conclave that brought Giacomo Della Chiesa to the throne of Peter and the one immediately before that, which almost eleven years earlier, on 4 August 1903, had elected Pius X. In the torrid August election of 1903, the jus exclusivae (i.e. a veto) had been imposed for the last time — its use accurately codified in the ruling legislation of the time1 —, the Austrian Crown, on the strength of its privileges, barring the way to Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro’s pontificate. This great man, who had been excluded in 1903, was none other than the master and guide of the future Benedict XV. The latter was elected under the norms that Pius X, who was faithful to customs that saw and would see a renewal in the provisions of conclaves, had published a year and a half after his own election. At Christmas in 1904, Pius X promulgated the constitution Vacante sede apostolica,2 with changes that bore the mark of the dramatic experience that the cardinals had undergone. That constitution of Pius X, with the same organizational intentions that would guide the Codex iuris canonici project, regulated the duration of the mourning period, the rights of the electors and the prohibition of chapters, establishing that not even the sedente council — Pius X perhaps imagined a concluding session of Vatican I that had been interrupted — would be able to legislate on the matter. The place in which the electors were to gather, a highly vexing question in the nineteenth century, was not explicitly mentioned, but seclusion was reinserted. This was not only to





1 See Xavier Barbier de Montault, Le conclave et le pape (Paris: Oudin, 1878); Giovanni Berthelet, La elezione del papa: storia e documenti (Rome: Forzani, 1891); Lucius Lector [ Joseph Guthlin], Le conclave: origine, histoire, organisation, législation ancienne et moderne (Paris: Lethielleux, 1894); Adolfo Giobbi, L’esercizio del veto d’esclusione nel conclave (Monza: Artigianelli, 1897). 2 For the first time, since Pius VII’s conclave in Venice in 1800, the College — with Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli as Dean — was meeting in a time of war, albeit in a country that was, at the time, not involved in the conflict. See Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960), pp. 176 ff. The cardinals created by Pius X on 25 May 1914, who had not yet taken the oath, did not participate. It was precisely from this experience that the regulation was corrected to favour cardinals, even if their appointment had only been published.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 225–242 FHG

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prevent the nineteenth-century anguish of possible anti-clerical interference in the proceedings but also to prevent Catholic princes from controlling their cardinals’ votes and, in effect, abrogating the ‘exclusion’ that was implicitly prohibited as a matter of principle.3 The only concession to the climate of fear was the abrogation of the law forbidding simony in order to prevent the malicious spread of suspicions that would risk casting doubts about the outcome of the vote.4 The vote per accessum that institutionalized Cardinal Oreglia di Santo Stefano’s practice, which had been boycotted in 1903 by the Camerlengo, was replaced by two votes a day, and the only alternative to the vote by suffrage remained that of inspiration.

1.

Beginning of the Sede vacante

The set of rules issued by Pope Pius X entered into effect upon his death, which occurred suddenly on 20 August 1914, the day that German troops entered Brussels. An editorial in the Corriere della Sera, which issued a special number, observed: This spiritual monarch leaves open a succession bristling with earthly interests. The religious Pope has died at a moment that will perhaps make a political pope necessary. Pius X had suffered deeply during these days of people’s great distress. His death certainly freed him from worse anguish. His hand no longer knew whom to bless; as a father he could not turn away from the hatred of his children. There is something tragic about dying like this, a man of peace, amidst so much clamour of battles to which all of our thoughts turn. Here, the faint sigh of one dying makes us turn our eyes to the Vatican, which seems shrouded in its motionless silence. Due to the disappearance of this venerable old man, the Vatican now enters our gloomy reality, yet another reason to kneel down in thought in the face of this death.5

3 Pii X Pontificis Maximi Acta, 5 vols (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1905–14), III (1908), pp. 280–81. For the preparations in Minuta della costituzione de civili voto exclusive, uti vocant, in electione Summi Pontifici, see ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Morte di papi e conclavi, Leone XIII, rubr. 7, scatole 16–17, fasc. 1. The documentation on the conclave is preserved (a provision, to say the least fortunate, to protect the one elected from disputes or suspicions), but any possible leak of information from without to within, or from protagonists to spectators — even of past events — remains prohibited. On the veto at that time, see Silvio Pivano, Il diritto di veto ‘ius exclusivae’ nell’elezione del pontefice (Turin: UTET, 1905). 4 On the validity of a papal election obtained by simony, see Marc Dykmans, ‘Le conclave sans simonie ou la bulle de Jules II sur l’élection papale’, in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae, 23 vols (Vatican City: Vatican Apostolic Library, 1987–), III (1989), pp. 203–55 (pp. 252–54). 5 ‘Questo monarca spirituale lascia aperta una successione irta di interessi terreni. Il papa religioso scompare in un’ora che renderà forse necessario un papa politico. Pio X aveva molto sofferto in questi giorni del grande dolore dei popoli. La morte lo liberò certo da angosce peggiori. La sua mano non sapeva ormai più chi benedire; la sua paternità non poteva volger l’occhio che sull’odio dei figli. C’è qualche cosa di tragico nello spegnersi così, di un uomo di pace, in mezzo a tanto strepito di battaglie. Tutti i nostri pensieri a esse. Ed ecco che il lieve respiro di un morente ci fa volgere gli occhi verso

T h e Co nclave o f Be ne d i ct  XV

Newspapers gathered information about how rapid his death had been: ‘Pope Pius X Passes Away After Suffering but a Brief Illness’ was the front-page headline of the European edition of The New York Herald. The speed with which the Venetian Pope’s condition deteriorated — it was noted — did not even permit preparation for the procession of holy oils that usually served to advertise all the popes’ agony. The traditional solemnity that accompanies the pontiffs’ illness and death was, this time, surpassed by the speed of Pius X’s end. It almost seemed that fate wanted to favour the personal humility that the deceased Pope tried to exhibit and establish beyond the limits of the great dignity of his position. He was anointed with holy oil in great haste, and the traditional impressive procession could not be prepared. Mgr Bressan, Pius X’s faithful Secretary, fearing to see the Pope expire at any moment, gave him extreme unction as would a good pastor to a faithful parishioner. Except for the period between noon and three in the afternoon and in his final hours, Pius X showed that he was not only aware of, but also understood, his fate, so much so that, when Mgr Bressan, who was extremely moved, told him: ‘It would be good to recite the prayers of commendation to God!’, the Pope responded with a faint smile of recognition as if to signify: ‘I well understand what that euphemism means’.6 Having been disgusted by the spectacle of the removal of Leo XIII’s internal organs, Pius X did not want to be embalmed. As would be the case in other summer funerals during the twentieth century, this complicated handling the body, which was injected with eight litres of a mixture of alcohol and a formaldehyde solution. During the days of mourning, while the cardinals were arriving in Rome — among the first were noted to be precisely Giacomo Della Chiesa, from nearby Bologna, and Andrea Carlo Ferrari, who left on 23 August ‘on the 9 p.m. direct train’, accompanied by Mgr Achille Ratti and Dr Macchi7 — the funeral rites were held, and the political measure of the situation was taken. The Corriere d’Italia’s report that Antonio Salandra visited the Pope’s remains was publicly corrected; in fact, it was his wife who paid homage to





il Vaticano che pareva raccolto in un suo immobile silenzio. E per questo vegliardo che sparisce il Vaticano entra ora nella nostra lugubre attualità. C’è dunque una ragione di più per inchinarsi pensosi davanti a questa morte’; ‘La morte di Pio X’, Corriere della Sera, 20 August 1914, p. 1. 6 ‘La tradizionale solennità che accompagna la malattia e la morte dei pontefici è stata questa volta sorpassata dalla rapidità della fine di Pio X e sembra quasi che la sorte abbia voluto favorire quell’umiltà personale che il papa defunto tenne a mettere in evidenza e fissare sopra i limiti della grandiosa dignità del suo posto. L’olio santo gli è stato dato in grande fretta e non si è potuto preparare la tradizionale impressionante processione. Mons. Bressan, fedele segretario particolare di Pio X, temendo da un momento all’altro di veder spirare il papa, gli somministrò l’estrema unzione come un buon parroco a un buon fedele. Salvo lo spazio che decorse dalle 12 alle 15 e nelle ultime ore, Pio X mostrò non solo di aver conoscenza ma anche di comprendere la sua sorte: tant’è vero che quando mons. Bressan, estremamente commosso, gli ha detto: “è bene recitare le preghiere per raccomandarsi a Dio!”, il papa rispose con un debole sorriso di intelligenza, come per significare “capisco bene a che cosà vuole alludere questa perifrasi”’; ‘Il conclave si farà il 30 agosto’, La Stampa, 21 August 1914, p. 4. 7 ‘Col direttissimo delle 21’; ‘Il card. Ferrari parte per Roma’, La Stampa, 24 August 1914, p. 3.

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the deceased Pius X.8 Meanwhile, the press noted some significant appearances such as that of a Prussian minister in dress uniform who had arrived to attend the funeral.

2. Atmosphere of Hostility An atmosphere of hostility could be sensed by the diplomats and journalists who were present in Rome, although none of them intended to make predictions, and many denied that the conclave might be delayed or moved in order to give the cardinals who had to cross the war-front time to reach Rome. For example, on 23 August, L’Italia already printed news of the French contingent’s travel arrangements. The names of those who could receive votes (in a college of 65 cardinals, of whom 21 had been present at the preceding conclave) appeared in scattered notices here and there. On the same day, the Corriere della Sera also published a front-page photo of ‘some of the most prominent cardinals: 1. Cardinal Camerlengo Della Volpe, 2. Cardinal Gasparri, 3. Cardinal De Lai, 4. Cardinal Ferrari, 5. Cardinal Maffi, and 6. Cardinal Lualdi’. For its part, L’Italia reported that it was already being said that tonight, in many authoritative diplomatic and political circles, one of the candidates to the papal crown is the illustrious Belgian Cardinal, Désiré Mercier, Archbishop of Mechelen, one of the strong and gifted personalities of Belgium, a philosopher, man of politics and eloquent orator. Mercier has some chance of success.9 In point of fact, Mercier did have a role to play. He had arrived in Rome baffled by the Vatican’s silence at the invasion of his country, which had been laid waste, and was indignant at the fact that the Cardinal Secretary of State had told him that only a symbolic resistance would be expected from the small Catholic country in order to limit damages. His role may perhaps have been magnified thanks to the climate of war since he was seen as a martyr of the German enemy. There were also, however, those who confided to the daily La Tribuna that, after the cardinals’ first general congregation, the Vice Dean of the Sacred College served a ‘notice to belligerent governments’ in which the cardinals asked ‘in particular the Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of Germany’ to stipulate an armistice so that the election of Pius X’s successor could take place ‘with greater peace of mind for the cardinals’.10

8 For the correction, see ‘La signora Salandra visita la salma del pontefice’, La Stampa, 23 August 1914. 9 ‘Alcuni fra i cardinali più in vista: 1. Il card. Camerlengo Della Volpe, 2. Il card. Gasparri, 3. Il card. De Lai, 4. Il card. Ferrari, 5. Il card. Maffi, 6. Il card. Lualdi’; ‘stasera in parecchi circoli diplomatici e politici autorevoli che uno dei candidati alla tiara sarebbe l’illustre cardinale belga Désiré Mercier, arcivescovo di Malines, una delle forti e dotte personalità del Belgio, filosofo, uomo politico e oratore eloquente. Il Mercier avrebbe qualche probabilità di riuscita’; ‘Il card. Mercier papabile?’, La Stampa, 21 August 1914, p. 4. 10 ‘Nota ai governi belligeranti’; ‘specialmente all’imperatore d’Austria e all’imperatore di Germania’; ‘colla più grande quiete d’animo dei cardinali’; see La Tribuna, 23 August 1914, p. 2.



T h e Co nclave o f Be ne d i ct  XV

Among the cardinals, however, it was not only the political and military worries that dominated the days of Pius X’s funeral and the conclave. The climate of the time is reflected in the sources available in memorials and journals, but also in the press, which collected and solicited interviews that were at times a source of embarrassment.11 However, the concern for the international situation was interwoven with a sense of unease due to the repressive climate that had hit the Church, above all in its Italian spheres, which had been weakened by Sarto’s anti-modernist campaign. It was Mercier who expressed his near surprise on 26 August: Pius X was so good, so affectionate, so pious; […] I had so much filial love, esteem, and veneration for him. Now, most of the people I meet — Mgr Tiberghien, the cardinals Della Chiesa, Ferrari, and Maffi, Marquis Crispolti, the editor of Turin’s Momento […] and many others, after an obligatory tribute to the memory of Pius X, immediately turn to the deep malaise that prevails here in Italian Catholic circles because of the protection, at least tacit and indirect (by the ‘small secretariat’, Bressan, Pescini…) granted to traditionalists; the secret denunciations; the ignoring of episcopal authority; decrees and decisions that are invented and then reported; the despondency of Catholics, writers, journalists, and men of action … Certainly, in history books, these minor aspects of Pius X’s pontificate will fade away and vanish. The great figure of the Pope, as is reflected today in the inscription upon his catafalque, will remain and dominate but, at present, criticism is sharp. The oppressed cannot stifle their sigh of relief and, I admit, that it hurts my heart. There is, of course, a basis for these criticisms and I cannot help but think that Providence thereby makes it possible, as a rule, for the defects of a regime to be accentuated at its end, in order to prepare the necessary reaction and to assist its successors. The cardinals De Lai, Pompilij and Merry del Val harshly, often brusquely, executed the grand designs of the good Pius X and have aroused an air of unpopularity around his memory. One would have wished, however, for more reserve. It would have been decent to wait to make these judgements until after the Novennalia were finished.12 11 When they did not have them, they did the same as the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung that republished interviews such as the one of 2 November 1904 in which Pius X confided the sense of horror that he had had on hearing the testimony of Dr Perosi concerning the behaviour of the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War when the doctor returned from Poland. 12 ‘Pie X était si bon, si affectueux, si pieux; […] j’avais pour lui tant d’amour filial, d’estime, de vénération. Or, il se fait que la plupart des personnes que l’on rencontre — Mgr Tiberghien, les cardinaux Della Chiesa, Ferrari, Maffi, le marquis Crispolti, directeur du Momento de Turin, […] et plusieurs autres, après un hommage obligé à la mémoire de Pie X, se sont aussitôt étendus sur le malaise profond qui régnait dans les milieux catholiques italiens, à cause de la protection, au moins tacite et indirecte (par la ‘petite secrétairerie’, Bressan, Pescini…) accordée aux intégristes; des dénonciations secrètes; de la méconnaissance de l’autorité épiscopale; des décrets et des décisions improvisées et rapportées; du découragement des catholiques, écrivains, journalistes et hommes d’œuvres… Certes, dans l’histoire, ces côtés accessoires du pontificat de Pie X s’estomperont, s’évanouiront, la grande figure du pape, telle que la dessine aujourd’hui l’inscription portée sur son catafalque restera, dominera, mais à l’heure présente la langue de la critique est déliée; les opprimés ne peuvent étouffer un soupir de soulagement et j’avoue que cela me fait mal au cœur. Il y

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The recognition of the status ecclesiae — the ancient medieval formula that indicated the discernment of the Church’s past situation — could not have been more precise: the question was whether and how to mark a discontinuity (or, as Mercier wrote, a reaction) with Pius X’s style. This is evident from the news that was leaked from the ‘secret congregation’, that is, one held without the presence of a master of ceremonies, of which Il Giornale d’Italia learnt only that the pontifical seal had not been broken (since it was made of steel) but only scratched to invalidate it and then sent to be placed in the Pope’s coffin. It also learnt of the decision of the Secretary of State, Merry del Val — a key figure in the anti-modernist, repressive climate of the period — that was formally made at the Camerlengo’s request, to stay in his apartment rather than move to Santa Marta as was customary. While the marshal of the conclave, Prince of Campagnano, organized new partitions to isolate the entrances to the Sistine Chapel, the first rumours were heard, including the one that a compromise vote could be reached, in order to avoid a conflict among nationalities, by delegating a few ‘neutral’ cardinals to make a choice that would exclude ‘extreme’ positions, such as that of Maffi.13

3. First Predictions Various rumours were reported in the columns of the Corriere della Sera: was there a Serafini–Gasparri duel among the members of the curia? Or a ballot decided by foreigners between the archbishops of Palermo, Milan, Turin and Pisa?14 On 23 August, Emilio Zanzi — friend of Guido Gozzano, the author of the famous Cronache torinesi (Turin Chronicles) and a prominent writer for La Stampa — already set out in search of the main contenders for the papal throne on the basis of information from a certain Giulio Aureli. To his mind, these candidates represented a ‘left-wing’ force against De Lai, seeing Maffi as his potential candidate (the Archbishop of Pisa was also Mercier’s candidate, according to Crispolti) and immediately mentioning the Cardinal from Bologna, Marquis Giacomo Della Chiesa. Zanzi’s article, however, had an explicitly local intention if, having reviewed a variety of names, he dreamt that Richelmy might become Pius XI. In this article, and from many sources, the name of a, certes, un fondement à ces critiques et je ne puis m’empêcher de penser que la Providence permet ainsi, d’ordinaire, que les défauts d’un régime s’accentuent sur la fin, afin de préparer une réaction nécessaire et de la faciliter aux successeurs. Les cardinaux De Lai, Pompili, Merry del Val ont exécuté avec dureté, souvent avec brusquerie, les desseins augustes du bon Pie X et ont suscité autour de sa mémoire un vent d’impopularité. On eût souhaité, cependant, plus de réserve. Il eut été décent d’attendre, pour proférer ces jugements, que les Novennalia fussent terminés’; reported by Roger Aubert, ‘Le cardinal Mercier aux conclaves de 1914 et 1922’, Académie Royale de Belgique: Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres, 6, 11 (2000), pp. 165–236 (pp. 211–12), with a large documentary appendix; this part concerning the scrutinies comes from the Piffl information published by Maximilian Liebmann, ‘Les conclaves de Benoît XV et de Pie XI: notes du cardinal Piffl’, La revue nouvelle, 38, 7–8 (1963), pp. 34–52. 13 ‘Il Papa eletto per delegazione?’, La Stampa, 27 August 1914, p. 8. 14 ‘Il Sacro Collegio e la successione’, Corriere della Sera, 21 August 1914, p. 2.

T h e Co nclave o f Be ne d i ct  XV

the Archbishop of Milan, Andrea Carlo Ferrari, was put forward, as well as the elderly Antonio Agliardi, as a transitional pope, or Gasparri. On the other hand, what Piffl called the ‘old guard’ backed Cardinal Domenico Serafini, a learned fifty-year-old who enjoyed the support of Secretary of State Merry del Val, who also worked in order to gain some votes and pass them on to this candidate who was not suspected of being too involved with the most unscrupulous integrist circles. A strong call (in Italian) warning the cardinals against Serafini, however, was circulated. The complaint was conserved by Mercier in his own notes: The connivers, who until yesterday had held the power in their hands, cannot adapt to losing it and are seeking, by means of every art and deception, a candidate for the papacy who is the image and likeness of the deceased pontiff: good, religious, pious, but without a will, without character, without energy so that things might stay as they are. Cardinal Serafini! Their cunning is truly diabolical, no doubt about it, and their success has 99 percent probability out of 100; it’s natural! […] The approaching days will be wracked with the spasms of war: Ferrari, Della Chiesa, and Maffi are too much men of action. A homo pacis meae is needed: Cardinal Serafini, here is the man! Gotti, Vannutelli are too old, we would have to hold another conclave tomorrow. We need a middle-aged man: Cardinal Serafini! Agliardi and Ferrari are too liberal. We need a temperate man who, while he maintains the Church’s reasons, does not exacerbate dissent: Cardinal Serafini! The reasoning is flawless, the ‘Eminentissimi’ are impressed, the Roman aristocracy is passionate, and the propaganda of the old secret cabinet run by Cardinal Merry del Val with Faberi, Canali, etc. gains ground and wins! I have seen that, in just a few hours, it can be said that the opinion of the ecclesiastics and much of the Roman nobility have started to turn into the plebiscite of Cardinal Serafini. A most eminent prince, but the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with this conclave! This sinister deception, this crossroads trafficking out of the mad desire to remain in power cannot truly be the work of the Holy Spirit, and neither has the latter done His best to have himself replaced by the profane desecrators of the Temple! His Eminence Serafini is a holy man and we are all devoted to him; but we shall have the continuation of the preceding pontificate with its related misgovernance of conniving men who do not possess overly delicate consciences; indeed, they are highly skilful tricksters! In the meantime, what the Church needs in the present contingency, according to the unanimous judgement of illuminated minds, is an energetic, combative pontificate, without hesitation or restrictions. And there is no lack, thanks be to God, of superior men of this type in the Sacred College! Ferrata, Della Chiesa, Maffi, Pompilj, Ferrari are personalities that can be safely trusted, moreover they are not in the clutches of cliques and secret cabinets.15

15 ‘I mestatori, che hanno tenuto sino a ieri il potere in mano, non sanno adattarsi a lasciarlo e cercano con ogni arte e raggiri un candidato al papato che sia in tutto a immagine e somiglianza del defunto pontefice: buono, religioso, pio; ma senza volontà, senza carattere, senza energia perché le cose restino come si trovano. Il card. Serafini! L’astuzia è veramente diabolica, non c’è che dire, e la riuscita ha 99 gradi di probabilità su cento, è naturale! […] I giorni che volgono sono in convulsioni

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It is the testimony of one side that permits one to intuit how harsh the conflict was when, on 24 August, the date for the beginning of the voting being almost certainly 30 August, La Stampa summarized how the two-thirds rule, aimed at preventing ‘bullying’ by an extreme faction, could be applied in the dramatic context of the war: Preparations for the conclave, therefore, consist in supporting the creation of certain currents that are favourable to one or the other main candidates for the papacy at the first meeting, in mainly sounding out the terrain of one’s adversaries more than that of one’s friends. This happens especially among the groups of foreign cardinals who have often arrived in the curia with preconceptions that, coming into contact with the realities and currents that their colleagues have already committed to initiate, must give way to new convictions regarding who is eligible for the position. The conclave’s preparatory work is, perhaps, more a work of destruction than construction. Whoever is wedded to their candidate, whoever truly intends to set to work for him, would do well to keep that a well-guarded secret, especially today when the press easily lends itself to creating an overlooked notoriety or to destroying a widespread fame. The war has upset predictions and tactics. The conclave cannot even be spoken of in terms of a political basis. We shall undoubtedly have the dramatic sight of French cardinals against German cardinals, cold and mute in the solemn silence of the conclave.16 spasmodiche di guerra: Ferrari, Della Chiesa, Maffi sono troppo uomini d’azione; occorre l’homo pacis meae: il card. Serafini, ecco l’uomo! Gotti, Vannutelli sono troppo vecchi, avremo domani un altro conclave; occorre un uomo di mezz’età: il card. Serafini! Agliardi, Ferrari di tendenze troppo liberali; occorre un uomo temperato, che mentre conserva integre le ragioni della Chiesa, non acuisca il dissidio: il card. Serafini! Il ragionamento non fa una grinza, gli Eminentissimi s’impressionano, l’aristocrazia romana s’appassiona; e la propaganda della vecchia camarilla che fa capo al card. Merry del Val, col Faberi, Canali ecc. si fa strada e trionfa! Io ho potuto constatare che in poche ore, si può dire, l’opinione degli ecclesiastici e di moltissimi del patriziato romano comincia a divenire plebiscitaria pel card. Serafini. Eminentissimo Principe, ma lo Spirito Santo non ha nulla a che vedere in questo conclave! Perché questo losco raggiro, questo traffico da trivio per la voglia pazza di restare al potere non può essere davvero opera dello Spirito Santo; né questi si è impegnato a farsi sostituire da interessati profanatori del Tempio! L’E.mo Serafini è un santo uomo ed abbiamo tutta la devozione per lui; ma avremo la continuazione del precedente pontificato con il relativo sgoverno di uomini mestatori non eccessivamente delicati di coscienza, anzi lestofanti abilissimi! Mentre ad unanime giudizio di menti illuminate la Chiesa nelle attuali contingenze ha bisogno di un pontificato energico di carattere, combattivo, senza tentennamenti e senza restrizioni: ed uomini superiori di questo stampo non mancano, la Dio mercé, nel Sacro Collegio! Ferrata, Della Chiesa, Maffi, Pompili, Ferrari sono personalità che danno amplissimo affidamento ed il fatto che non sono portati da cricche e camarille’; reported in Aubert, ‘Le cardinal Mercier’, pp. 216–17. 16 ‘La preparazione del Conclave consiste adunque nell’appoggiare nella prima riunione la creazione di correnti favorevoli all’uno od all’altro papabile, nel sondare principalmente il terreno degli avversari più che il terreno dell’amico. E ciò avviene specialmente fra i gruppi di cardinali esteri i quali spesso giungono in Curia con delle prevenzioni che, nel contatto della realtà e delle correnti che i loro colleghi già si incaricano di far trovar avviate, debbono cedere il posto a nuove convinzioni sul nome del papabile. Il lavoro di preparazione del Conclave forse è più un lavoro di distruzione che di edificazione. Chi ha un candidato in cuore e attorno a sé intende veramente di lavorare, tiene ben custodito il segreto specialmente oggi che la stampa si presta facilmente alla creazione di una notorietà ignorata o alla distruzione di una fama diffusa. La guerra ha sconvolto le previsioni e la

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In this climate of ‘astonishing dismay’, therefore, an electoral showdown was being prepared, in which the Turin newspaper subjected Ferrata’s name to a careful analysis. Of him had been known for a long time, his personality and virtues as a serious man, an expert diplomat, a gifted and learned prelate. It is thought that the figure of Ferrata will certainly emerge in the Sacred College, and, having kept himself away from the struggle that has recently torn Catholicism apart and having held himself with great reserve in political matters, he is now placed in a privileged position in the conclave. Therefore, amidst various expressions of praise, the insinuation has now appeared that, because he had been Nuncio in Paris and had steadfast friends on the French political scene, he would certainly be made the Entente’s favourite candidate. What would it cost either to deny or qualify this by saying that, if ever Ferrata had been, in recent times, in favour of the Triple Entente, in any case, no tie binds him to any one power and that a man of his mind and valour is always fully aware of the independence that the papacy must maintain?17 While remaining, therefore, ‘in the forefront of the centre’s candidates to the papacy’, Ferrata would lose ground unless ‘his adversaries’ fury were to become too evident, allowing one to see clearly where the shots are coming from’, shots which were being directed precisely by Merry del Val. Since it is certain that his candidacy is being systematically attacked, it might almost be said that there is someone who fears it personally. For example, it is rumoured that the few friends of Pius X’s ex-Secretary of State want, at least in the first vote, the Spanish Cardinal [Merry del Val] to receive a demonstration of support from the Sacred College. But the best terrain upon which to organize such a vote is now occupied by the moderate cardinals who are backing Ferrata’s candidacy. Merry del Val’s name, therefore, can only be voted for by the Extreme Right — Cardinal De Lai would gladly cede the honour of defeat to Merry del Val — since a demonstration from the left can certainly not be imagined. In the

tattica. Non si può più parlare di una base anche politica del Conclave. Avremo certo la drammatica visione di cardinali francesi di fronte ai cardinali tedeschi, freddi e muti nel silenzio solenne del Conclave’; ‘Discussioni e pronostici sul Papa futuro’, La Stampa, 24 August 1914, p. 3. 17 ‘Impressionante sbigottimento’; ‘da molto tempo dalla sua personalità e dalle sue virtù di uomo serio, di diplomatico esperto, di prelato dotto e sapiente, si è pensato che certamente la figura del Ferrata emergerà nel Sacro Collegio e che l’essersi egli tenuto in disparte dalla lotta che in questi ultimi tempi ha dilaniato il cattolicismo e l’essersi egli chiuso in un grande riserbo in materia politica lo pone ora in un posto privilegiato nel conclave: ed ecco comparire fra un elogio e l’altro l’insinuazione che l’essere egli stato nunzio a Parigi e l’aver egli salde amicizie nel mondo politico francese lo faranno sicuramente il candidato preferito dell’Intesa. A che varrà opporre una smentita o un’attenuazione che dica che se mai il Ferrata fu, in tempi più vicini, favorevole della Triplice e che, ad ogni modo, nessun legame lo vincola a nessuna Potenza e che un uomo della sua mente e del suo valore ha sempre piena coscienza dell’indipendenza che deve mantenere il papato?’; ‘Discussioni e pronostici sul Papa futuro’, La Stampa, 24 August 1914, p. 3.

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first vote, that faction will not renounce affirming Maffi or Ferrari, shifting if necessary later towards Gasparri or Ferrata.18 Whether Merry del Val was ‘above these intrigues’ or was calculating how he might lose everything, Il Giornale d’Italia guessed how to obtain a shortlist by proposing a convincing path a week before the vote: 25 of the 66 electors were over seventy and thus excluded because they were too elderly; the 19 foreigners were also excluded because it would not have been possible to go fishing outside of the territory of the pope’s primacy; the five cardinal deacons were excluded because they had insufficient ecclesiastical dignity; which left 16 cardinals: Six are excluded for particular reasons, those being: Vico, because of the differences he had had with Spain; Martinelli, for health reasons; Cavallari, because it was unlikely that another patriarch of Venice would be appointed immediately after Pius X, and because, among other things, he would continue the same policies as the deceased pontiff; Granito de Belmonte, because of the difficulties he had with the court of Austria when he was Nuncio in Vienna; Lorenzelli, for the differences he had had with the French cabinet; and Lualdi, because of his sad state of health.19 The remaining ten were possible candidates: Francica-Nava, Ferrata, Ferrari, Richelmy, Serafini, Gasparri, De Lai, Della Chiesa, Pompilj and Maffi. If, as in the last conclaves, a residential cardinal were to be considered, then the favourite would be Maffi and, from the curia (‘Pompilj is the exponent of the Roman clergy, De Lai is the continuation of Pius X’s pontificate and Serafini was made a cardinal too recently’), either Gasparri or Ferrata.20 18 ‘In prima linea fra quella dei papabili del Centro’; ‘l’accanimento posto dai suoi avversari si rivelasse troppo evidente e si potesse vedere limpidamente da che parte giungono i colpi’; ‘Poiché è certo che contro questa candidatura si combatte sistematicamente e si direbbe quasi che c’è chi la teme personalmente. Ad esempio: si vocifera che i pochi amici dell’ex segretario di Stato di Pio X vogliono che per lo meno in una prima votazione il porporato spagnuolo abbia una dimostrazione di suffragi dal Sacro Collegio; ma il miglior terreno per organizzare questa votazione è ormai occupato dai cardinali moderati aderenti alla candidatura Ferrata. Il nome del card. Merry del Val non potrebbe essere quindi votato che dall’Estrema Destra — il card. De Lai cederebbe volentieri l’onore della sconfitta al Merry del Val — poiché in verità per una dimostrazione dell’ala sinistra non può pensarsi. Essa non rinuncerà in una prima votazione a una affermazione sul Maffi o sul Ferrari spostandosi, se mai, in seguito verso il Gasparri o verso il Ferrata’; ‘Discussioni e pronostici sul Papa futuro’, La Stampa, 24 August 1914, p. 3. 19 ‘Superiore a questi maneggi’; ‘sei vengono esclusi per ragioni particolari e cioè: il Vico, per le differenze avute con la Spagna; il Martinelli per le condizioni di salute; il Cavallari per la poca probabilità che sia nominato subito dopo Pio X un altro patriarca di Venezia, il quale sarebbe, tra l’altro, continuatore della stessa politica del pontefice defunto; il Granito di Belmonte per le avversità avute con la Corte d’Austria quando era nunzio a Vienna; il Lorenzelli per le differenze avute con il Gabinetto di Francia e il Lualdi per le tristi condizioni di salute’; ‘Discussioni e pronostici sul Papa futuro’, La Stampa, 24 August 1914, p. 3. 20 ‘Pompili è l’esponente del clero romano; il De Lai è la continuazione del pontificato di Pio X; il Serafini ha una porpora troppo recente’; ‘Discussioni e pronostici sul Papa futuro’, La Stampa, 24 August 1914, p. 3.

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On the same day that the announcement that the Germans were eighty kilometres from Paris arrived, the Corriere della Sera reported the news that the conclave would begin. Great interest surrounds the meetings held in this or that house of some cardinal with influence or some special authority, whether for the post he holds or because of the many years he has belonged to the Sacred College. It is said that in some of these meetings much work is being done for one of the most prominent cardinals, let’s say, liberals, in favour of whom some new votes will be cast. But their adversaries have not been inactive either. Between the intransigent group, which is headed by De Lai, and the partisans of the influential Cardinal Ferrata, a perfect agreement seems to have been established, joined by not only the faithful followers of Pius X’s policies but also by several old-school cardinals: Sévin, Archbishop of Lyon; the Americans O’Connell, Farley and Bégin; as well as some Spaniards, who would be attracted to this orbit by the authority of the ex-Secretary of State, their fellow countryman. It is estimated that these could amount to 25 votes, which would never pass to the opposition even minimally but could only converge on a transition candidacy. The group would be sufficient to impede a candidate’s election, since around 40 votes are needed, the total number of voters being from 57 to 60. Moreover, this new, more precise information only confirms the situation that for some days we have already reported. Only the work of propaganda and preparation in the two opposing camps is highlighted. Nor can the initial physiognomy of the conclave be changed now since it is said that very few hours remain before the plenary and definitive meeting.21 An interview by Giuseppe Sobrero with an unnamed ‘Minister of the King’, published on 30 August, suggested that there was some Italian investment in regard to Serafini and especially Gasparri, who was considered capable of navigating negotiations with Italy in order to end the Roman Question. On the other hand, the assurance that

21 ‘Grande interesse destano le riunioni tenute in casa di questo o quel cardinale influente e di speciale autorità o per la carica che occupa o perché appartenente da lunghi anni al Sacro Collegio. Si dice che in alcune di queste riunioni si sia lavorato assai per uno dei più noti porporati, diremo così, liberali, in favore del quale si sarebbero accaparrati alcuni nuovi voti. Ma nemmeno gli avversari sarebbero rimasti inattivi; fra il gruppo intransigente, a capo del quale sta il De Lai, e i partigiani dell’influente card. Ferrata si sarebbe stabilito un perfetto accordo, cui aderirebbero, non solo i fedeli seguaci della politica di Pio X, ma altresì parecchi vecchi porporati d’antica scuola, il Sévin, arcivescovo di Lione, e gli americani O’Connell, Farley e Begin, nonché qualche spagnuolo, il quale verrebbe attratto in tale orbita dall’autorità dell’ex segretario di Stato suo connazionale. Si calcola che con ciò si potrà arrivare a circa 25 voti, i quali non potrebbero mai passare all’avversario nemmeno in minima parte, ma solo potrebbero convergere sopra una candidatura di transazione. Il gruppo sarebbe sufficiente a impedire l’elezione di un candidato, poiché occorreranno circa 40 voti, essendo il totale dei votanti da 57 a 60. Del resto, queste nuove informazioni più precise non fanno che confermare la situazione che già fin da qualche giorno avevamo esposta: si è accentuato soltanto il lavoro di propaganda e di preparazione nei due campi opposti. Né la fisionomia iniziale del conclave può essere ormai spostata, poiché si può dire che manchino poche ore alla riunione plenaria e definitiva’; ‘Il Conclave per la successione di Pio X comincia oggi’, Corriere della Sera, 31 August 1914, p. 4.

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‘the government remains strictly neutral and has only one proposal: ensuring the conclave’s freedom’ was rather different from the fairly accurate information that the government and the ruling house revealed that they were aware of: The government has reason to foresee a very short conclave. Perhaps by Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest, it is believed that the Sacred College will have chosen Pius X’s successor. This time, the public will not know what stages the nomination of the new pope will have passed through. […] We shall not, therefore, have revelations and indiscretions. Suddenly, without knowing the phases of the battle, we shall learn the result. On the other hand, time will be gained.22

4. Ballots To a great extent, voting procedures confirmed the names that had been circulating.23 In the first scrutiny (31 August, 9:00 a.m.), Maffi and Della Chiesa obtained 12 votes 22 ‘Ministero del Re’; ‘il governo si mantiene rigorosamente neutrale e non ha che un proposto: assicurare libertà al conclave’; ‘il governo ha ragione di prevedere un conclave brevissimo. Forse nella giornata di martedì o al più tardi mercoledì è da ritenersi che il Sacro Collegio avrà prescelto il successore di Pio X. Il pubblico non conoscerà questa volta attraverso quali fasi la nomina del nuovo papa sarà avvenuta. […] Non avremo pertanto rivelazioni e indiscrezioni: improvvisamente, senza conoscere le fasi della battaglia, ne apprenderemo il risultato. In compenso si guadagnerà tempo’; ‘I “papabili” secondo un ministro del Re’, La Stampa, 30 August 1914, p. 3. The qualification of ‘intellectual’ might lead one to think of Ferdinando Martini, Minister of the Colonies in the Salandra I Cabinet. 23 The account given in a February 1939 issue of the Corriere della Sera diverges from the data provided by Mercier. It is ‘from the Genoese Fr. Scotti, the long-time Director of the Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana. Scotti enjoyed the full confidence of Cardinal Gotti, who at the time of the conclave was eighty years old and, as Prefect of the Propaganda Fide, had an undisputed authority as well as much influence over the College of Cardinals. The notes that Cardinal Gotti took during the conclave, upon his death in 1916, were moved to Scotti’s house where no one disturbed them. […] From the first vote he noted that the opinions of the electors were rather disparate: the greatest sympathies went to Cardinal Ferrata, followed by Cardinal Maffi of Pisa, then Cardinal Ferrari of Milan. Also earning some votes were Cardinal Cavallari, the Patriarch of Venice, and Cardinal Lualdi of Palermo. Cardinal Merry del Val, because he was Secretary of State and too tied to Pius X’s politics, did not receive many. It was noted with great surprise that the Cardinal Giacomo Della Chiesa, who had only been a cardinal for three months, had obtained three votes — those of Cardinal Gotti, Cardinal Agliardi and Cardinal Merry del Val. On 2 September, the second day of the conclave, Cardinal Gotti’s influence was widely felt. Gotti was from Genoa, like Della Chiesa, and held him in great esteem. Cardinal Agliardi, who had come up against the mindset of Pius X and his Secretary of State, Merry del Val, immediately supported Della Chiesa’s candidacy. Against Cardinal Maffi, who was highly regarded for his doctrine, there was a strong aversion for conciliatory measures. Realizing that his success was impossible, he also sided with Della Chiesa, who received 35 votes on the evening of 2 September. During the meeting of 3 September, there was only one scrutiny and Cardinal Della Chiesa received 52 votes, more than enough to be elected. Seven votes went to Cardinal Ferrata, another reason that Benedict XV named him as his Secretary of State’; (‘dal genovese P. Scotti, per molto tempo fu direttore della Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana. Scotti godeva la piena confidenza del card. Gotti, il quale all’epoca del conclave aveva 80 anni ed essendo prefetto di Propaganda Fide aveva un’autorità indiscussa e anche molta influenza sul collegio cardinalizio. Gli appunti che il card. Gotti prese

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each, Merry del Val 4, Serafini 7, Pompilj 9 and the rest were scattered. Cardinal Agliardi suggested postponing the second scrutiny until the afternoon but was not heeded. In the second ballot in the morning, Maffi and Della Chiesa received 16 votes each while Pompilj, Merry del Val and Serafini respectively received 10, 7 and 2 votes. The patriotism he had shown during the war in Libya, and his position in favour of allowing Catholic laypeople to become politically involved, eroded consensus for Maffi, who fell to 14, 13 and 7 votes. At the same time, Della Chiesa (whom Agliardi had publicly called a ‘mediocris homo’ on 31 August in order to convince the Austrians and Germans to vote for Maffi) saw his votes rise to 18 and then to 21.24 On 2 September, he fell by one vote and then rose to 27 votes in the second scrutiny of the morning. In the meantime, the theory of an integrist continuity represented by Serafini was brought to light. On 2 September, his votes rose from 10 to 17, then to 21 and finally 24 votes. In short, the conclave began to take on that bipartisan air that often marked its conclusion and of which at least a part had been well predicted by Serafini’s anonymous detractor mentioned above. Actually, what counted was the action of advice and discernment exercised by the prominent figures in the College. In fact — and perhaps this is the most novel and illuminating element offered by Mercier’s diary — Gasparri found in his hands a declaration by Della Chiesa, stating that the one with most votes would cede them precisely to Serafini. On that crucial 2 September, Mercier wrote: Cardinal Gasparri, who has always been my right-hand neighbour in the conclave, gave me the text of the declaration that Della Chiesa wanted to read to the conclave and, after speaking to me about it, had advised him against it. Basically, the note said: Eminent Sirs, you have expressed your desire for a pope who knows both the curia as well as pastoral ministry. I do not have this double quality but Cardinal Serafini more rightly possesses them. Therefore, in order not to prolong

durante il Conclave passarono alla sua morte, avvenuta nel 1916, in casa Scotti e nessuno mai ne abusò. […] Fin dalla prima votazione si notò che i pareri degli elettori erano assai disparati: le maggiori simpatie erano per il card. Ferrata, quindi per il card. Maffi di Pisa, poi per il card. Ferrari di Milano; raccolsero voti anche i cardinali Cavallari, patriarca di Venezia, e Lualdi di Palermo; non molti ne aveva ottenuti il card. Merry del Val perché segretario di Stato e troppo legato alla politica di Pio X. Con grande sorpresa si rilevò che il card. Giacomo della Chiesa, elevato alla porpora da tre mesi appena, aveva raccolto 3 voti; erano quelli dei cardinali Gotti, Agliardi e Merry del Val. Il giorno 2 settembre, seconda giornata del Conclave, l’influenza del card. Gotti si manifestò largamente: il Gotti era genovese come il Della Chiesa e lo stimava moltissimo. Il card. Agliardi, che s’era trovato in urto di tendenze sociali con Pio X e il suo segretario di Stato Merry del Val, appoggiò subito vivamente la candidatura Della Chiesa. Contro il card. Maffi, apprezzatissimo per dottrina, era una forte avversione per ragioni conciliatoriste; vista impossibile la sua riuscita si schierò egli pure per il Della Chiesa, il quale la sera del 2 settembre raccoglieva già 35 voti. Nella riunione del 3 settembre si ebbe una sola votazione e il cardinale Della Chiesa ebbe 52 voti, abbondantissimi per essere eletto: 7 andarono al card. Ferrata e Benedetto XV lo nominò anche per questo suo segretario di Stato’); ‘Rivelazioni dal conclave da cui uscì Benedetto XV’, Corriere della Sera, 26 February 1939. 24 Aubert, ‘Le cardinal Mercier’, pp. 179–81.

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the conclave, for the honour of the Sacred College, I propose that you give your votes to Cardinal Serafini.25 It is not known who or what may have suggested such a retreat to Della Chiesa, nor is it given to know whether the aforementioned note against Serafini had provided Mercier with the arguments to persuade Gasparri to act or Gasparri with the information to advise Della Chiesa not to proceed with such an act of demission. That retreat, however, was the decisive step: Della Chiesa did not lose any of his supporters and the next day, 3 September 1914, in the tenth scrutiny, two of Serafini’s electors voted for the Cardinal of Bologna, who thus reached the quorum with 38 votes. There were eighteen votes for Serafini and one (Della Chiesa’s?) for Richelmy, the Cardinal from Turin. Della Chiesa accepted and, in honour of his predecessor who had ascended to the pontificate from the Archdiocese of Bologna, he took the name of Benedict XV.

5. Profiles and Expectations of the New Pope ‘The pope who does not speak but listens’, he was called by La Stampa. The newspapers, obviously highlighting his origins for patriotic reasons in eye-catching subtitles, exalted his ‘pure Genoese blood’ or, more generically, his ‘Italian blood’. The Corriere della Sera’s Bologna correspondent gathered information about his very normal asceticism; in Turin La Stampa exalted the Pope’s ‘episcopal virtues’ and had the correspondent from Bologna, veiled in anonymity, dictate a classic, stereotypical portrait of the hagiography of the Pope-elect. The new pontiff is a very active man. In Bologna, he rose at 5 a.m. Midnight would find him still bent over his books. Even in sickness he continued his tireless work. In the vicariate it was admiringly recalled that, even when he had a temperature of 39 degrees, he did not want to renounce a promised pastoral visit to a provincial village. It was also recalled that Mgr Della Chiesa was deeply saddened on the day that, due to unforeseen circumstances, he was unable to visit the parish priest in San Giovanni in Persiceto who was sick, when he was accustomed to visiting all the sick priests. […] And so, Mgr Della Chiesa dedicated himself with phenomenal energy, with keen sight and steady hand, to his difficult work, ever more profoundly developing his pastoral ministry, with the most scrupulous accuracy in the tasks which he often carried out personally, even if they were unexpected of him, without asking for recognition. He demanded the greatest cleanliness of the churches. More than a few priests heard Mgr Della Chiesa say, in a tone that did not permit excuses or justifications: ‘Woe 25 ‘Il card. Gasparri, che è stato sempre il mio vicino di destra nel conclave, mi consegna da leggere il testo della dichiarazione che Della Chiesa voleva leggere al conclave e, dopo avermene parlato, lo ha sconsigliato. Questa nota diceva in sostanza: Eminentissimi Signori, voi avete marcato il vostro desiderio d’avere un papa che conosca sia la Curia che il ministero pastorale: io non ho questa doppia qualità, ma il card. Serafini le possiede a un miglior titolo. Così, per non prolungare il conclave, per l’onore del Sacro Collegio, vi propongo di riportare i vostri voti sul card. Serafini’; Aubert, ‘Le cardinal Mercier’, p. 223.

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if I see dirty churches!’. He handled his affairs by himself, his correspondence included. He had an affectionate and meticulous care for his diocese. […] Mgr Della Chiesa was very charitable. A religious, who was more familiar with the intimate life of the new pontiff, has assured us that he not only gave quo superest to the feeding of the poor in Bologna but also made a donation of over 40,000 lire of his inheritance. In giving alms, Mgr Della Chiesa was a master of diligence. He often gave lessons to the servants, who sometimes grew tired when they had to deal with a long queue in the antechamber and the supplicants were rather annoying. […] From the very first moments of his episcopacy in Bologna, Mgr Della Chiesa had encountered a certain hostility from some of the clergy, but his character, while tempered with a certain sweetness, seemed imperious enough to instil fear rather than respect. Nevertheless, he was possessive of his clergy and protected them, even when forced to punish.26 La Tribuna attested to another stereotype: the election of a figure perfectly suited to the times, stating that the ‘predicted solution’ had brought to the papal throne a man who, ‘as an Italian’, would be aware that ‘religious sentiment is now confused with a deeply-felt patriotism’27 in the people. The national question was also reflected in a long commentary in the Corriere d’Italia, which warned Benedict XV of the fact that Pius X’s two great legacies — ‘the venerability of the Church and the intention of making Christ the foundation for all things’ — opened the door to a new era of conciliation: Today there is nothing to lead us to believe that Benedict XV will oppose the fervent desire of the great majority of Italian Catholics to reconcile their religious

26 ‘Il nuovo Pontefice è uomo molto attivo. A Bologna si alzava alle cinque: la mezzanotte lo trovava ancora chino sui libri. Anche durante le malattie continuava il suo indefesso lavoro. Nel Vicariato si ricorda con ammirazione che egli, pure avendo la febbre a 39 gradi, non volle un giorno rinunciare a una promessa visita pastorale a un paesello di provincia. Si ricorda anche che mons. Della Chiesa fu addoloratissimo un giorno in cui, per imprevedute circostanze, non poté visitare il parroco di San Giovanni in Persiceto che era infermo, mentre egli soleva far visita a tutti i sacerdoti infermi. […] E così mons. Della Chiesa attendeva con attività fenomenale, con occhio e polso sicuro alla sua difficile opera curando sempre il maggior sviluppo del ministero sacerdotale, la più scrupolosa esattezza nelle funzioni alle quali spesso soleva assistere di persona, non atteso e temuto testimone. Esigeva la massima pulizia nelle chiese. Non pochi parroci si sono sentiti dire da mons. Della Chiesa in tono che non ammetteva scuse o giustificazioni: “guai se vedo chiese sporche!”. Sbrigava da sé tutti i suoi affari non esclusa la corrispondenza. Ebbe per la sua diocesi cure affettuose e minuziose. […] Mons. Della Chiesa era caritatevolissimo. Un religioso, che meglio di ogni altro ha potuto conoscere la vita intima del nuovo pontefice ha assicurato che non solo dava il quod superest della mensa ai poveri di Bologna, ma aveva fatta una elargizione di oltre 40,000 lire del suo patrimonio. Nel fare l’elemosina mons. Della Chiesa era maestro di diligenza. Sovente dava qualche lezione ai camerieri che talvolta stancavano, facendo loro fare una lunga anticamera, i questuanti un po’ seccatori. […] Mons. Della Chiesa aveva trovato nei primi tempi del suo episcopato a Bologna presso una parte del clero una certa ostilità per il suo carattere che, pur essendo temperato con una certa dolcezza, appariva imperioso e tale da incutere più timore che rispetto. Tuttavia, egli era geloso del suo clero e lo proteggeva anche quando era costretto a punire’; ‘La virtù episcopale del nuovo papa’, La Stampa, 4 September 1914, p. 2. 27 ‘Il sentimento religioso si confonde ormai con il sentimento di alto patriottismo’, see La Tribuna, 4 September 1914.

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faith with love for their country and a respect for institutions. On the other hand, it can be observed that the new pontiff ’s sharp mind will not overlook the extreme importance of the situation, characterized by the renewed ardour of Italian anti-clericalism and therefore of a danger that the Church will not escape except through a very wise, very prudent, and very skilled policy. The history of the past forty-three years and three conclaves has shown that the politics of the Italian State guarantees freedom to the Church of Rome. Whether Benedict XV maintains the protests of his three immediate predecessors is of no substantial importance to the goals of the balance of political forces in Italy. Instead, what is politically efficient is that the new pontiff, like Pius X, should suggest a directive of national solidarity to Italian Catholics.28 This was a rather foreseeable appeal for conciliation, just as the sacrificial rhetoric, in L’Osservatore Romano, of the paper’s greetings to the new pontiff was foreseeable (‘We offer you our work, our service, our faithfulness and, if necessary, our lives’), burning with a martyr’s ardour in a risk-free context.29

6. Conclusions The choice of a bishop who had been in a diocese for seven years but was a diplomat by formation and Rampollian by culture documents one of the conclave’s classic dynamics: that is, the vindication of the minorities. Those who had had to bow down to events in 1903, in 1914 obtained a reversal of roles. It took several ballots but, in the end, the Rampollians’ revenge won the day.30

28 ‘La venerabilità della Chiesa e l’intendimento di porre Cristo a base dell’instaurazione universa’; ‘Nulla può oggi autorizzare a ritenere che Benedetto XV osteggerà il fervido desiderio della grandissima maggioranza dei cattolici italiani di conciliare la fede religiosa con l’amore di patria e il rispetto delle istituzioni. D’altra parte si può osservare che all’acuta mente del nuovo pontefice non può sfuggire l’estrema importanza di una situazione caratterizzata dal rinnovato ardore dell’anticlericalismo italiano e cioè da un pericolo che la Chiesa non potrà parare se non con una politica molto saggia, molto prudente e anche molto abile. La storia degli ultimi 43 anni e di tre conclavi ha dimostrato che la politica dello Stato italiano assicura la libertà alla Chiesa di Roma. Che Benedetto XV mantenga le proteste dei suoi tre immediati predecessori non ha importanza sostanziale ai fini dell’equilibrio delle forze politiche in Italia: quello che invece è politicamente efficiente è che il nuovo pontefice come Pio X suggerisca ai cattolici italiani una direttiva di solidarietà nazionale’; see Corriere d’Italia, 3 September 1914. 29 ‘A Voi offriamo l’opera nostra, i nostri servizi, la nostra fedeltà, se occorre la nostra vita’; [G. Angelini], ‘Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum habemus papam E.mvm et R.mvm D.nvm Jacobum Della Chiesa qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictus XV’, L’Osservatore Romano, 4 September 1914, p. 1 (special edition). 30 Charles Commeaux, Les conclaves contemporains, ou: Les aléas de l’inspiration (Paris: France-Empire, 1985), p. 169, which cites, on this point, Paul Lesourd and Claude Paillat, Dossier secret des conclaves (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1969), p. 289 and Jean-Jacques Thierry, Journal politique d’un cardinal (1914–1965) (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1967), pp. 42–45.

T h e Co nclave o f Be ne d i ct  XV

Even in this conclave, while we cannot speak of a development in electoral specifications in a technical sense, we can see in retrospect the maturation of alliances and agreements concerning future nominations, that is to say, an expression of the majority. Among them we begin to glimpse a new importance of the Secretary of State, who will play a significant role before, during or after all future conclaves: in 1914, the counterbalance of the former Secretary of State came into play (as would happen again in 1963). Moreover, the need was felt (as again in 1958) to find a holder of this office who was esteemed by the pope he would have to serve, but first and foremost by his electors. Benedict XV accomplished this task, with which he was well familiar, by replacing Merry del Val (he was the last Pope to change the Secretary of State after a conclave) first with Ferrata, who was one of the leaders of his majority, and then, after Ferrata’s death merely two months after his appointment, with Gasparri, a man of great experience and influence in ‘his’ conclave,31 a precedent that would be applied on a normative level only within the context of canon law.32 Thus, a papacy emerged from the conclave of 1914 whose political and religious timbre few would have been able to predict, but which, in its course, already revealed the weight of the conditions of a war that would not be just temporary, as too many believed in those weeks.

Bibliography Aubert, Roger, ‘Le cardinal Mercier aux conclaves de 1914 et 1922’, Académie Royale de Belgique: Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres, 6, 11 (2000), pp. 165–236 Barbier de Montault, Xavier, Le conclave et le pape (Paris: Oudin, 1878) Berthelet, Giovanni, La elezione del papa: storia e documenti (Rome: Forzani, 1891)

31 On which, see Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 286– 301, and Francesco Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966). 32 A precedent that would then be discontinued with the regulations of the Codex iuris canonici which, in canon 229, implemented Pius X’s plan for Cum romanis pontificibus, reserving the election to cardinals (including the excommunicated, interdicted or suspended, but not those who had been deposed or had renounced the dignity of cardinal), acting on the size of the College that, by the regulation of canon 231, remained of the 70 units established by Sixtus V and was composed of those the pope chooses ex toto orbe terrarium. On the state of the canonical doctrine, see Franz Xaver Wernz, Ius decretalium ad usum praelectionium in scholis textus canonici sive iuris decretalium, 6 vols (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1898–1914), II (1898), pp. 653–65; Johannes Baptist Sägmüller, Lehrbuch des katholischen Kirchenrechts (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1900), pp. 313–19. The regulation, which does not exclude the excommunicated, seeks to avoid incidents for minor but reserved violations, such as those that happened at the opening of Leo XIII’s conclave (but involving a cardinal). Concerning this, see Carlo M. Fiorentino, ‘P. Generoso Calenzio e il “Diario del conclave di Leone XIII”’, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 118 (1995), pp. 187–278 (p. 265). On the juridical problem, see Timothy Mock, Disqualification of Electors in Ecclesiastical Elections (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958).

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Commeaux, Charles, Les conclaves contemporains, ou: Les aléas de l’inspiration (Paris: France-Empire, 1985) Dykmans, Marc, ‘Le conclave sans simonie ou la bulle de Jules II sur l’élection papale’, in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae, 23 vols (Vatican City: Vatican Apostolic Library, 1987–), III (1989), pp. 203–55 Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960) Fiorentino, Carlo M., ‘P. Generoso Calenzio e il “Diario del conclave di Leone XIII”’, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 118 (1995), pp. 187–278 Giobbi, Adolfo, L’esercizio del veto d’esclusione nel conclave (Monza: Artigianelli, 1897) Lesourd, Paul, and Claude Paillat, Dossier secret des conclaves (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1969) Liebmann, Maximilian, ‘Les conclaves de Benoît XV et de Pie XI: notes du cardinal Piffl’, La revue nouvelle, 38, 7–8 (1963), pp. 34–52 Lucius Lector [ Joseph Guthlin], Le conclave: origine, histoire, organisation, législation ancienne et moderne (Paris: Lethielleux, 1894) Margiotta Broglio, Francesco, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966) Mock, Timothy, Disqualification of Electors in Ecclesiastical Elections (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958) Pii X Pontificis Maximi Acta, 5 vols (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1905–14), III (1908) Pivano, Silvio, Il diritto di veto ‘ius exclusivae’ nell’elezione del pontefice (Turin: UTET, 1905) Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Sägmüller, Johannes Baptist, Lehrbuch des katholischen Kirchenrechts (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1900) Thierry, Jean-Jacques, Journal politique d’un cardinal (1914–1965) (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1967) Wernz, Franz Xaver, Ius decretalium ad usum praelectionium in scholis textus canonici sive iuris decretalium, 6 vols (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1898–1914), II (1898)

Caterina Ciriello

The First Encyclical: Ad beatissimi

On the centenary of the Great War, many topics have been dealt with and certainly many more still remain to be considered and more fully researched. This essay will focus, in particular, on Benedict XV’s first official document, an encyclical in which, of necessity, the new pontiff made peace the main programme of his pontificate. The ‘useless slaughter’1 began on 28 July 1914 with the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s declaration of war on Serbia for the attack in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed. The consequences, as we all know, were disastrous, not only in terms of the loss of human life, but also of the loss of those values by which, until that point, all European nations had endeavoured to live. If, on the one hand, the war marked the end of empires, on the other, it exacerbated the dynamic of the ensuing nationalisms that later generated the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century.2 Consequently, these made World War II even more destructive than World War I. The Church also suffered the consequences since ‘the nationalisms isolated the Holy See from the nations and sometimes from Catholics themselves’.3 This forced the Church to make a strong show of its ‘neutrality’. Indeed, as the mother of all peoples it had to remain ‘impartial’. This was to be Pope Benedict XV’s standpoint, and it emerged not only in continuity with his predecessor but also from charity and ‘the very nature of humanity’ so that ‘the position developed by Benedict XV, over the







1 See Andrea Tornielli, ‘Cento anni fa Benedetto XV, il Papa contro “l’inutile strage”’, La Stampa, 2 September 2014; Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994); Giuseppe Mellinato, ‘Benedetto XV inascoltato profeta di pace’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 140, 1 (1989), pp. 452–58; Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009); Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963); Jörg Ernesti, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016). 2 See Luigi Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970); Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Mariner Books, 1973); Marcello Flores, Tutta la violenza di un secolo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2005); John F. Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 3 ‘I nazionalismi isolano la S. Sede dalle nazioni e talvolta dagli stessi cattolici’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. xii.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 243–259 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118774

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four years of war, represents a “philosophy” to which the Holy See’s actions will refer throughout the twentieth century in regard to war and peace’.4

1.

An Unexpected Pope

Giacomo Della Chiesa, the future Pope Benedict XV, was created a cardinal in Pius X’s last consistory, just three months before his death.5 Antonio Scottà highlights the interesting fact that, in the previous consistory of 1911, despite requests received from the metropolitan Chapter of Bologna, Pius X had not made Archbishop Della Chiesa a cardinal. What was his reason for this? The answer reached the person in charge of the Chapter of Bologna through His Holiness’s Secretary. The reasons were not tied to the person of Della Chiesa: ‘It did not take much to deduce that these reasons lay in the Roman curia, or rather, with the Secretary of State’.6 In fact, there was bad blood between the future Benedict XV and Pius X’s Secretary of State, Merry del Val, and it can be presumed that, because of this antipathy — I cannot see what other term might be used — an informal but strong type of veto arose against Della Chiesa.7 By this time it was known to all that Pius X ‘was influenced by and followed the directives of Merry del Val, who guided him in the intricate affairs of the congregations and who often modif[ied] his incorrect judgements […] and Pius X followed his suggestions, which were not always just’.8 The Cardinal’s influence continued even after Della Chiesa’s election to the papal throne, with Pope Benedict patiently enduring his witticisms.9

4 ‘Dalla natura stessa dell’umanità’; ‘la posizione elaborata da Benedetto XV, nei quattro anni di guerra, rappresenta la “filosofia” a cui si rifà l’azione della S. Sede durante tutto il Novecento per quel che riguarda la pace e la guerra’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. xiii. 5 See Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 8 (1914), pp. 253–56. 6 ‘Non ci voleva molto per dedurre che tali ragioni stessero nella curia romana, anzi dentro alla segreteria di Stato’; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, p. 29. 7 Danilo Veneruso suggests, not incorrectly, that ‘the Secretary of State bitterly opposed conferring a cardinalship on the Archbishop of Bologna, fearing him as a successor to Pius X who, because of the Rampollian tradition that he represented, may have called for the liquidation of the legacy of his predecessor’s pontificate’ (‘il segretario di Stato si oppone fino all’ultimo al conferimento della porpora all’arcivescovo di Bologna, temuto come un successore di Pio X che, per la tradizione rampolliana che rappresenta, sia in predicato di mettere in liquidazione l’eredità del pontificato del predecessore’); Danilo Veneruso, ‘La contrastata ascesa di Giacomo Della Chiesa verso il pontificato tra oblio di memoria e incomprensione’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 345–62 (p. 352). 8 ‘Subiva l’influenza e seguiva le direttive di Merry del Val, il quale lo guidava negli intricati affari delle congregazioni e spesso ne modifica[va] i non esatti giudizi […] e Pio X seguiva i suggerimenti, non sempre giusti’; Veneruso, ‘La contrastata ascesa’, p. 455. 9 See Veneruso, ‘La contrastata ascesa’. See also the report of Scottà: ‘It bears mentioning […] that his relationship with Merry del Val, Pius X’s Secretary of State, during the time that Della Chiesa was still in the Secretariat, remained at a diplomatic level. Cardinal Francesco Cassetta di Paola writes in his diary […]: “It seems that Mgr Merry del Val does not get on well with Mgr Della Chiesa, but

T h e Fi r s t Encycli cal: Ad beat issimi

With these kinds of premises, a first question that must be posed is how Della Chiesa could become pope. As Scottà writes, no one expected his election,10 except for a nun from the Monastery of the Visitation in Padua, who had predicted his success ten days earlier.11 Yet, he did become pope, and a sigh of relief swept through the Italian political scene. It is once again Scottà who imparts this information, quoting a passage from a letter by Sidney Sonnino, editor of Il Giornale d’Italia, that reads: ‘This election went well, and is one less concern for the government’.12 In Germany, however, the tension before his election was palpable. In a political report sent by Pietro Tomasi della Torretta, received on 23 August 1914, the Italian government was informed of the political situation in Munich, which was rather worrying due to the issue of mixed labour unions and the decision to exclude non-Catholics, in line with the integralist trend. Tomasi della Torretta wrote: The political-religious question that has provoked, in particular recently, great discussion and caused the Bavarian government grave difficulties has been that of mixed labour unions, which are tolerated, if not approved, by the Vatican […].

the latter is very clever […] hardworking and very talented”’; (‘Merita accennare […] che i rapporti con Merry del Val, il segretario di Stato di Pio X, durante il periodo in cui il Della Chiesa rimase in Segreteria di Stato, si mantennero su un piano diplomatico. Il cardinale Francesco Cassetta di Paola, nel suo Diario scrive […]: “Sembra che mons. Merry del Val poco vada d’accordo con mons. Della Chiesa, ma questi è molto furbo […] laboriosissimo e di gran talento”’); Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), pp. 47–48. 10 An American author recounts that Cardinal Gibbons, from the United States, arrived when the conclave had already concluded and, on learning the name of the new Pope, asked ‘Who is he?’; James H. Moynihan, The Life of Archbishop John Ireland (New York: Harper, 1953), p. 329. 11 Scottà writes: ‘This note, as attested to in writing by Don Prosdocimo Cerato, received by him on the morning of 23 August, was delivered to the Pope on 6 September. In it was written: “In nomine Jesu. Sunday, 23 August 1914, Pietro, Giacomo Giovanni. Upon you I have turned my gaze and I will set my spirit… Do not fear, I will be your arm and your heart… Fortier et suaviter… Out of love for you I warn you in confidence, knowing that I am Vincit mundum and from above I will preside over the governance of my Church, placing everything a suo pro… At this time of universal upheaval and war, I desire that my Church give the world a new demonstration of harmony and of peace, making this election without any conflict and with a complete unity of hearts. It therefore remains that you not oppose or offer any resistance to my will, so as to avoid useless arguments. I give you my peace and my peace be with you… Laus Deo!”’ (‘Tale biglietto, come attesta per scritto don Prosdocimo Cerato, ricevuto da lui il 23 mattina, venne fatto recapitare al papa il 6 settembre. In esso era scritto: “In nomine Jesu. Domenica 23 agosto 1914. Pietro, Giacomo Giovanni. Sopra di te ho rivolto il mio sguardo e poserò il mio spirito… Non temere, Io sarò il tuo braccio e il tuo cuore… Fortier et suaviter… Ti prevengo per amarti di confidenza sapendo che Io sono Vincit mundum e dall’alto presiedo al governo della mia chiesa, rivolgendo tutto a suo pro… In questo momento di universale sconvolgimento e di guerra desidero che la mia chiesa dia al mondo tutto uno spettacolo nuovo di concordia e di pace facendosi questa sì grande elezione senza alcun contrasto e con l’intera fusione dei cuori. Resta dunque che tu non ti opponga né faccia resistenza alcuna al voler mio per evitare inutili discussioni. Io ti do la mia pace e la mia pace sua teco… Laus Deo!”’); Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, pp. 29–30, n. 79. 12 ‘Questa elezione è andata bene ed è un pensiero di meno pel governo’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 30.

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It is, therefore, obvious that this government desires to see a non-intransigent cardinal, who will fight the integralist current that has more than a few supporters in the Vatican, appointed as successor to Pius X. These deductions, which are easily made, have also been confirmed to me in confidential conversations held in this Foreign Ministry.13 As we can see, three days after Pius X’s death and awaiting the conclave, the Italian government’s primary concern was not to create further problems in an already agitated political climate. There is no doubt that it was everyone’s intention to maintain the most serene context possible, even in Italy. That is why, on 20 August 1914, the day of the pontiff ’s death, the Minister of Public Works, Augusto Ciuffelli, already wrote to Baron Carlo Monti, who was in charge of the Italian government’s affairs with the Holy See and Director of Religious Affairs, besides being a close friend of the future Benedict XV, asking whether, once he was back in Rome, he could present himself: ‘You understand how, at this moment, it may be useful to have some certain news concerning the Vatican’s leanings […] in the interest of the country’. He does not deny that he is in need of advice, in the light of, he continued, ‘your good relationships with that world’.14 It is said that ‘when one pope dies, another is soon made’, but it seemed indisputable that, at that particular historical moment, it could not be just anyone. Aware of this, Tomasi della Torretta’s letter continued: It does not seem that there are strong sympathies for any of the papal candidates here. On the contrary, it is lamented that the Sacred College does not have a cardinal noted for some special, impressive quality. All of Bavaria’s efforts converge only on the desire that the cardinal who is elected to become pope should not change the line of conduct followed hitherto by Pius X on the abovementioned question and that he should have a greater authority to check the integralist current that, in the Vatican’s current state of affairs, has dominated it from time to time, creating serious embarrassment for the Bavarian government.15

13 ‘La questione politico-religiosa che ha suscitato specialmente in questi ultimi tempi grandi discussioni e procurato al governo bavarese non lievi difficoltà è stata quella dei sindacati misti, tollerati se non approvati dal Vaticano […]. È perciò evidente il desiderio di questo governo di vedere nominato a successore di Pio X un cardinale non intransigente che combatta la corrente integralista che ha in Vaticano non scarsi sostenitori. Queste deduzioni facili a farsi mi sono state anche confermate in conversazioni confidenziali avute a questo ministero degli Esteri’; ASV, Fondo Culto, Esteri, b. 18, sottofasc. 1. 14 ‘Tu comprendi come in questi momenti possa essere utile avere qualche notizia sicura sugli orientamenti del Vaticano […] nell’interesse del paese’; ‘i tuoi buoni rapporti con quel mondo’; ASV, Fondo Culto, Esteri, b. 18, sottofasc. 1. 15 ‘Non sembra che qui si abbiano delle spiccate simpatie per uno qualsiasi dei cardinali papabili; anzi si lamenta che nel S. collegio non vi sia una figura di cardinale che si imponga per speciali qualità. Tutti gli sforzi della Baviera convergono solo alla elezione di un cardinale che, diventato papa, non muti la linea di condotta seguita finora da Pio X sulla questione sopra accennata e che abbia anzi una maggiore autorità per tenere in freno la corrente integralista che allo stato attuale delle cose in Vaticano prendeva di tanto in tanto il di sopra creando gravissimi imbarazzi al governo bavarese’; ASV, Fondo Culto, Esteri, b. 18, sottofasc. 1.

T h e Fi r s t Encycli cal: Ad beat issimi

This integralist current is also referred to in an article that appeared in The Nation on 7 January 1915. Its author attributes the origin of this faction — ‘characterized by the titles Integralism, Papalism, and Episcopalism’16 — to the dogma of papal infallibility, noting what had happened precisely in Germany in regard to the two camps that had formed on the issue of trade union organization, a problem that concerned the Bavarian government, as mentioned above, but also the Italian one.17 One of Pius X’s first actions had been to abolish the right of veto by heads of state in papal elections.18 I mention this here because, in some indirect way, even in the papal election being considered, expectations tied to concrete candidates were expressed. Indeed, Tomasi della Torretta continued: This being the case, I intended to name some cardinals whose election would be welcome and, after subsequent eliminations, the government’s attention has fallen upon Cardinal Panfili. I have reason to believe that the cardinals of Munich and Cologne, and perhaps the Austrian ones, will try to draw the most votes possible to Panfili, but I repeat that it is not so much the desire to make one prevail over the other. The main concern is, above all, to exclude an advocate of the integralist tendency in the question of workers’ unions and, therefore, Panfili’s name could easily be dropped to choose another cardinal of like ideas.19 A note from Monti in the margins of the file demolishes any speculations about the possible election of Panfili. In fact, he points out that there is no cardinal with that surname and that perhaps he had been confused with a certain Cardinal Pamfily, who, in any case, did not exist either.20 It is interesting, however, to note the confidence with which the writer takes it for granted that some cardinals will unite around

16 Homer Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, The Nation, 7 January 1915, pp. 10–12 (p. 10). 17 ‘There were, also, speaking of partisanship in the Church, two factions which, for special reasons, obtained their most pronounced development in Germany; the one, in the matter of labour organisations of a social or benevolent nature, standing for societies composed of none but Catholics (the “Confessionalists”), the other for the union therein of both Catholics and Protestants (the “anti-Confessionalists”). The former group was patronized by Cardinal Kopp, Archbishop of Breslau, and was sometimes for this reason called the Breslau party; the latter was upheld by Cardinal Fischer, Archbishop of Cologne, and was called by the name of that city. On the general issue Pius X had pronounced in favour of exclusively Catholic membership, but for Germany was constrained, on account of the political and numerical strength of the Catholics in Rhenish Prussia, to admit the mixed organizations’; Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, p. 11. 18 See Gianpaolo Romanato, ‘E Pio X si sbarazzò dell’ancien régime’, L’Osservatore Romano, 25 February 2010; Mario Mancini, La riforma della Chiesa di San Pio X (Verona: Fede & Cultura, 2015). 19 ‘Stando così le cose ho inteso fare dei nomi di cardinali la cui elezione riuscirebbe gradita e per successive eliminazioni l’attenzione del governo si è fermata sul card. Panfili. Ho ragione di ritenere che i cardinali di Monaco e Colonia e forse quelli austriaci cercheranno di far convergere sul Panfili i maggiori voti possibili, ma ripeto non è tanto l’interesse di far prevalere uno piuttosto che un altro, il grande interesse è soprattutto di escludere un fautore della tendenza integralista nella questione dei sindacati operai e perciò il nome del Panfili sarebbe facilmente abbandonato per fermarsi sopra un altro cardinale di eguali idee’; ASV, Fondo Culto, Esteri, b. 18, sottofasc. 1. 20 Actually, among the list of cardinals in the conclave appears the name of the Italian Basilio Pompilj, who was created a cardinal in the consistory of 1911.

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that name. In any case, regardless of any preference, any cardinal would have been acceptable except for an integralist. That much was clear. The conclave lasted for three days and required ten scrutinies. The first scrutinies saw a head to head context between Maffi and Della Chiesa. Finally, despite the manoeuvrings of two cardinals, the German Felix von Hartmann and the Italian Antonio Agliardi, Della Chiesa was elected with 38 votes on 3 September 1914.21 The unexpected election unleashed more than a little conjecture, since the prominence of a young cardinal over others who were much more authoritative, such as Maffi or Mercier (to whom Della Chiesa would have given his vote), could not be explained.22 Even The New York Times hazarded a guess. In an article of 4 September 1914, it was reported how, in a conversation that occurred shortly before the election, the future Benedict XV had repeatedly expressed the conviction that the pope would have to intervene with an appeal for peace, not in a purely evangelical manner, but through precise diplomatic action. He had, moreover, asserted that ‘the pope […] must actually place himself amidst the combatants, instead of standing back and preaching peace and concord from a distance’. The article continued: ‘It is said that these ideas were expressed in the Conclave with Genoese tenacity, Cardinal Della Chiesa at the same time showing such absolute neutrality toward the belligerents that it caused the majority to elect him Pontiff ’.23 In any case, Della Chiesa’s name as a possible candidate had also been mentioned by the Bolognese newspaper Giornale del Mattino towards the end of August.24 Two days after his coronation, which took place during a very sober ceremony and not in St Peter’s, Benedict XV received Monti,25 responding to the wishes of Prime Minister Salandra, who ‘had expressed the desire that he choose a person who could eventually serve as an intermediary between him and the government’.26 From that moment on, Monti became the link between the Holy See and the Italian State.

2. The Encyclical Ad beatissimi At least until the middle of 1917, Benedict XV was the one and only architect of the Holy See’s politics. The sudden death of Cardinal Ferrata — one month after his appointment as Secretary of State — created the need for the pontiff to name a substitute. His choice fell upon Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, already president of the Commission for the Codification of Canon Law, whose preparation as a jurist, however, was not necessarily suited to diplomacy since his character complicated any diplomatic initiative.

21 Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 19. 22 Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, pp. 19–20. 23 ‘Pope Would Try to Stop the War’, The New York Times, 6 September 1914, p. 3 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 24 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 573. 25 ASV, Fondo Culto, Esteri, b. 18, sottofasc. 2. 26 ‘Aveva manifestato il desiderio che egli indicasse una persona che eventualmente potesse servire da intermediario tra lui e il governo’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, pp. 171–72.

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It must, therefore, be said that Gasparri’s preceding commitment was fortunate for the Pope, who thus had a free hand in relationships with countries during the war.27 Faithful to his predecessor, Benedict XV intended to show from the outset the Holy See’s complete impartiality, which was certainly not an easy task given the rifts within the Italian clergy and beyond, who often failed to control their patriotic impulses.28

3. The Encyclical’s Genesis It is not easy to ascertain the genesis of Ad beatissimi due to the fact that there is no previous research in this regard, and even the archival investigations that have been conducted have not produced useful results.29 We find ourselves, therefore, on completely unexplored terrain upon which manifold theories may be constructed. There are questions that must be considered because they may influence the analysis of this genesis. First of all, it bears saying that Benedict XV, following the procedure established by his predecessor, did not relegate the Roman Question to the background, which obviously created a situation of great unease for the pontiff, who addressed the issue directly in the final part of the encyclical.30 It can be affirmed with certainty, however, that that was not the leading argument in Ad beatissimi. There can be no doubt that it was quite logical for the Italian government, having learnt of the document’s publication, to be concerned that it might speak of the Roman Question in a passionate tone, but the Pope decided that this was not to be the case and discussed it with Monti. The third meeting, which took place on 24 September 1914, is recounted by the Baron in his diary: Having expressed the government’s desire that the premise of the encyclical not say anything offensive about Italy, he smiled and assured me that, even if he was not able to avoid mentioning the conditions that the Holy See found itself in, the matter would be stated in a measured and sober way that was not offensive.31 Yet the Pope could have used his moral authority to bring the attention of the entire Catholic world to the Roman Question, especially when there were two other matters

27 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 45. 28 Caterina Ciriello, ‘Benedetto XV, la guerra e le posizioni dei vescovi italiani’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 23 (2014), pp. 41–60. 29 I have consulted every collection with possible ties to Benedict XV, the war, and the encyclical. In one of these I found only the printed copy and many letters of appreciation, but not the original. An interpretation of the encyclical can be found in Guglielmo Cafiero, Sulla prima enciclica di Benedetto XV e sul messaggio per la pace (Rome: Desclée, 1915). 30 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 31 ‘Avendogli manifestato il desiderio del governo che nella promessa enciclica non si dicano cose offensive su l’Italia, ha sorriso e mi ha assicurato che, pur non potendo prescindere da un accenno alle condizioni in cui si trova la S. Sede, la cosa sarà detta in forma misurata e sobria e non offensiva’; cited in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 174.

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at stake: the internationalization of the Holy See and the exequatur of Archbishop Caron, who had been waiting since 1912 to take his place as head of the Archiepiscopal See of Genoa.32 On 9 October, however, the Pope reassured Monti that there would be no insult or bad word for Italy.33 On 11 November, the Baron took up the issues ‘internationalization of the Holy See’, ‘Roman Question’, and ‘encyclical’ with Benedict XV. As far as the latter is concerned, we read in his diary: As for the encyclical of which he had spoken in other meetings, the pontiff took it out of the drawer of his desk with a decisive movement and read me the most salient passages, especially those that ultimately refer to the papacy’s situation. The encyclical is entirely religious in nature, an invocation for peace and harmony. And, as a consequence of peace, he takes vows that it also be given to the Church, the freedom of which is bound to the present state of affairs, against which the Pope must raise the protest of his predecessors. It is something very bland, as you can see, the Pope added, not only in substance, because it does not even mention temporal power or the Roman Question, but also in its form. At my request, the Pope promised again that he would attenuate some of the expressions. The section relative to the situation of the Church in the draft is all written in the pontiff’s hand.34 Monti concludes the page of his diary affirming that Italy could not wish for a better Pope.

4. The Character of Ad beatissimi: ‘Christian Is my Name and Catholic my Surname’ As can be seen, in his diary the Baron asserted that the encyclical was of an entirely religious character and was a call for peace. Only some twenty lines concerned ‘the abnormal position of the Head of the Church’.35 The same opinion was expressed 32 Archbishop Andrea Caron had been appointed to the Archbishopric of Genoa in 1912 but he never took possession of the See because the exequatur from the Italian State only arrived in December of 1914. On the Pope’s suggestion, Caron tendered his resignation at which time Archbishop Ludovico Gavotti was appointed. The Caron Affair had broken out following information gathered on him by the Italian police. Not only was he an intransigent, backed by the newspaper La Riscossa, but was also suspected of being against the Italian State. See ASV, Fondo Culto, S. Sede, n. 249, sottofasc. 1–2. 33 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 176. 34 ‘Quanto all’enciclica della quale erasi parlato in altri colloqui, con atto deciso, il pontefice l’ha tolta fuori dal cassetto della scrivania e me ne ha letto i brani più salienti e più specialmente quello che, in ultimo, si riferisce alla situazione del papato. L’enciclica è per intero di carattere religioso, un’invocazione alla pace ed alla concordia; e, come conseguenza della pace, fa voti che essa sia data anche alla chiesa, la quale è vincolata nella sua libertà dall’attuale stato di cose, contro il quale il papa deve elevare la protesta dei suoi predecessori. Una cosa molto blanda, come vedi, ha soggiunto il papa, non solo nella sostanza, perché non si accenna affatto al potere temporale e alla questione romana, ma anche nella forma. A mia preghiera il papa ha promesso ancora che attenuerà alcune espressioni. Il periodo relativo alla situazione della chiesa è scritto nelle bozze tutto di pugno del pontefice’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 178. It would be interesting to know which expressions Monti is referring to, but even more so to find the draft with the pontiff ’s corrections. 35 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 31.

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by The Nation. Its Rome correspondent emphasized above all that almost the entire encyclical concerned issues internal to the Church or its government, with obvious and logical references to the situation of the time that required a strong call for peace; therefore, those who expected a political treatise on the international situation were disappointed.36 Starting with a proclamation of the pontiff ’s universal paternity and his care for all persons, the encyclical denounced the bloody war that was a manifestation of the lack of sincere love for one’s neighbour and an indication of the unbridled desire for earthly goods, which is the root of all evil. The article in The Nation is interesting because it is not limited to reporting the author’s opinion but takes a critical look at other writers who were interpreting the encyclical. Citing an article by his colleague, Gabriel Hanotaux, in Le Figaro, which referred to the Pope taking a position ‘against the odious principles of German politics and morality’, he asserted that such might be a possible conclusion when interpreting the pontiff’s statement.37 He did not, however, accept what was stated by the Corriere della Sera, according to which — in reference to the Holy See’s position in Italy — ‘this protest of Benedict XV against the condition of the Papacy since 1870 is more pronounced and circumstantial than any that have ever gone forth from the Vatican’.38 For The Nation’s journalist, however, ‘[it] is certainly erroneous’, an error even if, in fact, it could not be denied that the Holy See’s current position was ‘only the plain truth’, that is, a real situation. It could also not be ruled out that the Holy See might be represented at the future peace conference but, in any case, ‘it would never put forward territorial questions but only those that might be in the religious interests of the papacy, which anyway would never be hostile toward Italy’.39 In any event, the newspaper held that, beyond the truth of the speculations proposed, they had nothing to do with the ‘momentous character’ of the encyclical that was and remained bound to the life of the Church. Looking through the text of Ad beatissimi, it can be seen that the very first part concerns the issue of the Pope’s universal paternity and the war, with the immense carnage it was causing. At once with affectionate love we cast our eyes over the flock committed to our care — a numberless flock indeed, comprising in different ways the whole human

36 ‘Perhaps the first trait of the encyclical Ad beatissimi to attract the attention of persons well versed in ecclesiastical affairs is that it is almost entirely taken up with the internal life and government of the Church. To the present world-struggle and crisis some allusion was, of course, unavoidable. The prayers for peace uttered by his saintly predecessor, Pope Benedict has twice repeated, once just after his accession and again in the present encyclical. But the many who expected a political treatise on the international situation were doomed to disappointment’; Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, p. 10. 37 ‘In fact, the distinguished French statesman and academician asserts that in this way the Pope ranges himself against the gross German materialism and worship of brute force that have been the cause of the European conflict’; Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, p. 10. 38 Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, p. 10. 39 ‘Non metterebbe mai innanzi questioni territoriali, ma solamente quelle che potessero toccare gli interessi religiosi del papato, il quale ad ogni modo non farebbe mai atto ostile all’Italia’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 178; see ‘The New Pontificate. Indications of a Change in Policy’, The Nation, 10 December 1914, p. 683.

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race. […] hence the Divine Pastor has one part of the human race already happily sheltered within the fold, the others He declares He will lovingly urge to enter therein.40 Benedict XV revisited the theme of peace as an inheritance received from his predecessor, his last sigh on his deathbed, which the new Pope made his own, also begging and imploring for peace. However, if the world was at war, if peace was lacking, it was because the four pillars of society had vanished: mutual love, justice, respect for authority and spirituality. But it is not the present sanguinary strife alone that distresses the nations and fills Us with anxiety and care. There is another evil raging in the very inmost heart of human society, a source of dread to all who really think, inasmuch as it has already brought, and will bring, many misfortunes upon nations, and may rightly be considered to be the root cause of the present awful war. For ever since the precepts and practices of Christian wisdom ceased to be observed in the ruling of states, it followed that, as they contained the peace and stability of institutions, the very foundations of states necessarily began to be shaken. Such, moreover, has been the change in the ideas and the morals of men that unless God comes soon to our help, the end of civilisation would seem to be at hand. Thus we see the absence from the relation of men of mutual love with their fellow men; the authority of rulers is held in contempt; injustice reigns in relations between the classes of society; the striving for transient and perishable things is so keen that men have lost sight of the other and more worthy goods they have to obtain. It is under these four headings that may be grouped, We consider, the causes of the serious unrest pervading the whole of human society. All then must combine to get rid of them by again bringing Christian principles into honour, if We have any real desire for the peace and harmony of human society.41 In particular, the Pope denounced the divisions found within the nations themselves and the selfishness that predominated everywhere. However, above all he exposed the contempt for authority and the spirit of independence that had spoilt the family and, ‘more deplorable still, has not stopped at the steps of the sanctuary’.42 This last passage alluded to the diverse and painful positions of conflict within the Church itself, positions that, in the curia, were rooted in the intricate relations created by Pius X’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val, and in particular, by the increased power of the Consistorial Congregation led by Cardinal De Lai, starting from Pius X’s reform in 1908. His functions were extended to include the nomination of bishops and the direction of seminaries for the formation of priests.43 Yet the disorder had also grown due to four or five of the Pope’s private secretaries who formed the ‘segretariola’, as it was called in Rome, and which Benedict XV immediately abolished.

40 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 1. 41 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 5. 42 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 9. 43 ‘Ambitious and insubordinate priests were not slow to see their chance, and by a journey or a letter to Rome could often obtain instructions without the knowledge, much less the consent, of their bishops’; Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, p. 11.

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The passage in which the pontiff sees a connection between class struggles and Pius X’s condemnation of the ‘errors of Socialism and of similar doctrines’ should also be noted. ‘Desire for money is the root of all evils’ and of the struggle between brothers that sees 1914 as its crucial year. It leads to war, the offspring of class competition.44 The encyclical, therefore, is not lacking in strong social accents and political rebukes.45 In fact, authorities, public powers and nations had to assess whether it is a prudent and safe idea for governments or for states to separate themselves from the holy religion of Jesus Christ […]. Sad experience proves that human authority fails where religion is set aside. […] When the twofold principle of cohesion of the whole body of society has been weakened, that is to say, the union of the members with one another by mutual charity and their union with their head by their dutiful recognition of authority, is it to be wondered at, Venerable Brethren, that human society should be seen to be divided as it were into two hostile armies bitterly and ceaselessly at strife?46 As we have seen, the Pope neither accepted nor condemned the struggle between classes, repeatedly remarking on the aspect of fraternity that recalls — in my opinion — a paternalism of the richest towards the poor and our duty toward the less fortunate who, moved by envy of the former, try ‘to take what they want to have’.47 The encyclical’s main topics are clearly indicated a few pages from the end. First: ‘We must devote Our earnest endeavours to appease dissension and strife, of whatever character, amongst Catholics, and to prevent new dissensions arising, so that there may be unity of ideas and of action amongst all’.48 The discord among Catholics was already revealed in the Italian press and beyond,49 and was considered scandalous by everyone, whether Catholic or not. Benedict XV seized the opportunity to emphasise the authority of the Church’s magisterium and the respect due it, leaving the freedom to express opinions and to discuss matters that were not touched upon by magisterial pronouncement, while always avoiding ‘expressions […] which might constitute serious breaches of charity’.50 The encyclical again condemns the ‘monstrous errors of “Modernism”’, extending an invitation to ‘guard against any contagion of the evil’.51 For the Pope, this ‘synthesis of all heresies’ constituted a problem not so much on a speculative level, because of its inherent contradictions, but ‘at the level of the Church’s life, of the recognition,

44 See Domenico Losurdo, La lotta di classe: una storia politica e filosofica (Rome: Laterza, 2015). 45 See Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 347 ff. 46 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § § 11–12. 47 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 15. 48 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 22. 49 ‘The first and most obvious of these headings, which has been amply treated in the Italian secular press, refers to the Pope’s determination to suppress the divisions and factions in the Church, which have been a scandal to right-minded Catholics and a source of derision to the profane and unbelieving world’; Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, p. 10. 50 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 23. 51 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 25.

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that is, of the ecclesiastic communion that is the first guarantee of faith and without which the latter is an act of sterile rationality’.52 The encyclical’s other focal points include support for the birth of new Catholic associations, which the Pope explicitly promises to help and protect and, directly related to these, a commitment to the clergy in wisely guiding them through the labour of sanctification and formation that priests carry out. Benedict XV makes a strong plea for the union between priests and their bishops: the priests, indeed, had also fallen into the temptation of a ‘spirit of insubordination and independence’. The Pope has lapidarian words for them: Let those who have so unfortunately failed in their duty recall to their minds again and again that the authority of those whom ‘the Holy Spirit hath placed as Bishops to rule the Church of God’ (Acts 20:28) is a divine authority. Let them remember that if, as we have seen, those who resist any legitimate authority, resist God, much more impiously do they act who refuse to obey the Bishop, whom God has consecrated with a special character by the exercise of His power.53 With the explicit condemnation of priests’ disobedience to bishops and the affirmation of the sacredness of episcopal authority, the Pope implicitly guarantees the full autonomy of such authority. The important principle of local and decentralized government, the only one that can ensure a considerable degree of freedom in any political system, whether democratic or monarchic, was also safeguarded during his reign.54 The encyclical ends with an appeal to those who needed to put an end to the terrible atrocities that Benedict XV had witnessed in the two months of his pontificate and with an invocation to God, on behalf of all of humanity: ‘Grant, O Lord, peace, in our day’. In concluding this section, we must also consider an emphasis highlighted by Alberto Monticone who, while also considering the encyclical as a strongly ecclesiastic document, adds that — even though Benedict XV’s predecessors had stressed the universality of the papacy — Benedict XV ‘attaches original aspects to it in accentuating a lively missionary sense in a spirit of clear ecumenical inclination and the primacy of fatherhood. Thus, evangelization and diplomacy, teaching and charity, an appeal to Catholics and a hand outstretched to others find their common justification in this starting point of Benedict XV’s pastoral programme’.55

52 ‘Sintesi di tutte le eresie’; ‘sul piano del vivere della Chiesa, del riconoscimento, cioè della comunione ecclesiale che è la prima garanzia della fede, senza la quale quest’ultima è un atto di sterile razionalità’; Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, p. 94. 53 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 28. 54 Edmiston, ‘The New Papacy’, p. 12. 55 ‘Vi annette aspetti originali nella loro accentuazione quali un vivo senso missionario, uno spirito di chiara tendenza ecumenica e un primato della paternità. Così evangelizzazione e diplomazia, magistero e carità, appello ai cattolici e mano tesa agli altri trovano la loro comune giustificazione in questo punto di partenza del programma pastorale di Benedetto XV’; Alberto Monticone, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200 (pp. 159–60).

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5. The Encyclical’s Reception I have followed with interest some of the discordant voices that, even in these days, despite the gravity of many concerns, have made themselves heard, and I have noticed that some reproached the Pope for not have spoken out as much as the moment seems to have necessitated for the cessation of hostilities and for peace, while others, on the contrary, reproached him for not knowing how to talk about anything other than peace.56 These are the words that Cardinal Maffi wrote when introducing the first, and perhaps only, volume of study and comment on the encyclical Ad beatissimi, which sold out immediately precisely thanks to the interest it generated. Maffi spoke of its enormous success in the country in spite of criticism from the Pope’s enemies and expressed the hope that it would also be welcomed beyond the Alps and the sea. The encyclical’s publication, therefore, aroused both criticism and appreciation. Many positive comments arrived, especially from the bishops, even non-Italian ones. In a letter dated 22 November 1914, Bishop Félix-Auguste Béguinot of Nîmes wrote to the Pope: ‘In this document […] the causes of evil are pointed out with a convincing lucidity’. Others considered it a ‘sign of light in a century of darkness’.57 Benedict XV offers an unambiguous interpretation of a very concrete and lucid reality. War has arrived, but it is the fruit of human selfishness, not punishment from God. That God is our father is never questioned. The Bishop of San Severo, in south-eastern Italy, wrote to Benedict XV: I feel it my duty to thank Your Holiness for your superb encyclical addressed to the Catholic world, in which you find it fitting today to give orders, opportune warnings and loving advice to prevent the disintegration of today’s society, in which — although a material unity among nations is sought by every means — the moral union of souls prescribed by the Gospels is almost completely overlooked.58 In these few lines, the writer shows that he has understood the Pope’s message with an emotional intelligence, and is aware of humanity’s serious moral laxness, the consequences of which could still be felt. In mid-December, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Francis Bourne, wrote to Gasparri that he wanted to translate it into English to be disseminated throughout

56 ‘Ho seguito con interesse alcune delle voci discordi che anche in questi giorni, non ostante la gravità di molteplici preoccupazioni, si sono fatte intendere ed ho notato che le une rimproveravano al papa di non aver proclamato alto, quanto l’ora pareva imporre, la cessazione delle ostilità e la pace, mentre le altre, all’opposto, appunto gli rimproveravano di non saper dire altro che pace’; Cafiero, Sulla prima enciclica di Benedetto XV, p. vi. 57 ‘Dans ce document […] les causes du mal sont indiquées avec une lucidité convaincante’; ‘un segno di luce in un secolo di tenebre’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 65. 58 ‘Sento il dovere di ringraziare V. S. per la stupenda enciclica diretta all’Orbe cattolico, nella quale si degna di dare ordini oggi, ammonimenti opportuni e consigli amorevoli per impedire lo sfacelo dell’odierna società, in cui, sebbene con ogni mezzo si cerchi l’unità materiale delle nazioni, si trascura quasi del tutto l’unione morale degli animi prescritta dal Vangelo’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 65, Bishop of San Severo Gaetano Pizzi to Benedict XV, 25 November 1914.

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England. The Secretary of State’s placet arrived a few days later.59 Although Catholics were a minority, at that moment, the encyclical was considered so important that its maximum circulation in British territory was greatly desired. Many letters expressing their appreciation for the encyclical can be found in the archives, as well as many that were critical. The latter, however, concerned Benedict XV’s presumed silence, to which newspapers of the period often referred.60 In particular, they denounced the Pope for not having specifically condemned the brutal invasion of Belgium, accusing him of being biased towards Germany. Their discontent is clearly expressed in a letter from the Italian Nuncio to Belgium, Cardinal Giovanni Tacci, Titular of Nicaea, dated 6 December 1914. In it, the Nuncio expresses all of the suffering of the Belgian people and the highest authorities of the country for the Holy See’s failure to condemn the act: In the midst of so much bitterness, the Belgians would have liked, and would still like, the Holy See, at least in some way, to take their side. Instead, for some time, and particularly at the beginning of the war, it seems that the Holy See has been inclined toward Germany. Naturally, I have made every attempt to show the Holy See’s equanimity and the sympathy that it has always and continues to have towards Belgium, but my words, I must confess, have not been enough to reassure the people there. Resentment exists, like a type of disillusion, among Catholics who see themselves neglected and put off, or at least not being treated with that spirit of deference that should have been extended in view of the injustice of the war, which everyone has acknowledged, and also in view of their need for protection as the weaker side. I have heard very bitter outbursts in this regard, not only privately, from people in authority, but also from ministers and public officials.61 The letter goes on to list all the calumny that Belgium was been forced and still had to suffer: the Italian press’s favour for Germany rather than for Belgium, rumours that had reached Belgium during the conclave, the Belgian Catholics’ excessive zeal 59 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 65, Bishop of San Severo Gaetano Pizzi to Benedict XV, 25 November 1914. 60 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 64, Bishop of San Severo Gaetano Pizzi to Benedict XV, 25 November 1914. However, it must be said that there was also a general misunderstanding of Benedict XV’s acts of peace among European Catholics, so much so as to lead to episodes of real disobedience. See Silvio Tramontin, Un secolo di storia della Chiesa, 2 vols (Rome: Studium, 1980), I, pp. 112–13. 61 ‘I belgi in mezzo a tante amarezze avrebbero voluto tanto e vorrebbero che la S. Sede almeno si fosse in qualche modo messa dalla loro parte. E invece hanno ritenuto per un tempo, nel principio specialmente della guerra, che essa propendesse per la Germania. Io naturalmente ho cercato con ogni mezzo di mostrare l’assoluta equanimità della S. Sede e la simpatia che questa aveva avuto sempre e continuava ad avere verso il Belgio, ma le mie parole, conviene che lo confessi, non sono state bastanti a rassicurarli. Un risentimento esiste sempre, come una specie di disillusione, nei cattolici di vedersi come negletti e posposti, o almeno non trattati con quello spirito di deferenza che avrebbero preteso vista l’ingiustizia della guerra a loro riguardo da tutti riconosciuta e il bisogno di protezione come potenza più debole. E ne ho avuto degli sfoghi in proposito assai amari non solo da persone autorevoli private, ma anche da ministri e da pubblici funzionari’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 64, Tacci to Gasparri, 6 December 1914.

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and their opposition to Germany’s claims, to the point that ‘in some parts of the kingdom occupied by the invaders it has even been said that, in Rome, they do not believe anything other than the lies fabricated by Germany and that the Peter’s pence is being spent to support the Germans’.62 To the request for a firm expression of condemnation from the Holy See for the country that had been so unjustly treated, the Secretary of State responded: The Holy See’s position does not allow it, with so much fury of war raging, to take issue with any side, without compromising other serious religious interests and exposing the very decorum and spiritual prestige of the pontiff, the father shared by the faithful. Nevertheless, it cannot be questioned that from the outset the same Holy See has been intimately associated with, and still participates in, the pain and suffering that the present war is causing the Catholics in that realm.63 Meanwhile, on 8 December 1914, Benedict XV sent a letter to Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Mechelen and Primate of Belgium, in which he expressed his profound sadness and anguish ‘in seeing how the nation of the Belgians, so beloved by Us, has been reduced to woeful circumstances by an atrocious and devastating war’.64 The Holy See’s impartiality was also questioned by France, where the same type of missive was sent to Cardinal Hector-Irénée Sévin, Archbishop of Lyon, on 22 November 1914 and to Archbishop Alfred-Jules Mélisson, Bishop of Blois, on 4 January 1915, reaffirming the Holy See’s absolute neutrality and making the request to disseminate the letter extensively in the light of the persistent rumours of the Holy See’s preference for Germany.65 The Corriere d’Italia joined in the defence of the Holy See with an article reiterating the latter’s full neutrality, as already clarified

62 ‘Si è arrivati a dire in alcune parti del regno occupate dagli invasori, che in Roma non si crede più che alle menzogne fabbricate dalla Germania e che si spende fin l’obolo di S. Pietro per sostenere i tedeschi’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 64, Tacci to Gasparri, 6 December 1914. 63 ‘La posizione della S. Sede non le permette, imperversando tanto furore di guerra, di far causa con alcuna di esse, senza compromettere presso altre gravissimi interessi religiosi ed esporre lo stesso decoro e prestigio spirituale del Pontefice che è Padre comune dei fedeli, non può tuttavia mettersi in dubbio che la medesima S. Sede si sia associata sin dal principio e partecipi tuttora intimamente alle pene e amarezze che la presente guerra cagiona ai cattolici di codesto regno’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 64, Gasparri to Tacci, 6 December 1914. 64 ‘Nel constatare come la nazione dei Belgi, tanto a Noi diletta, fosse ridotta a una lacrimevole condizione da un’atroce e devastante guerra’; Benedict XV, Cum de fidelibus, 8 December 1914. 65 ‘It is false and unjust, indeed, to affirm that the Holy See has shown indulgence and sympathy for one of the belligerent nations in preference to another; that Rome is besieged by official and unofficial German emissaries who disguise the truth and only allow the Vatican to hear a bell; and that, in the antechambers of the Vatican are found Germans, Austrians, Italians, but no French’; (‘Il est faux et injuste, en effet, d’affirmer que la Saint-Siège aurait manifesté de l’indulgence et de la sympathie pour une des nations belligérantes de préférence à une autre; que Rome serait assiégée d’émissaires allemandes officiels et officieux qui travestissent la vérité et ne permettent au Vatican que d’entendre une cloche et que dans les antichambres du Vatican on trouve des Allemandes, des Autrichiens, des Italiens, mais de Français point’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 64, Gasparri to the Bishop of Versailles, Charles Gibier, 21 January 1915.

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in Ad beatissimi.66 However, it also commented on the ‘incident’ of Cardinal Mercier, who was confined to his episcopal palace and subjected to interrogations concerning his pastoral in defence of the nation for having denounced the serious situation in Belgium.

6. Conclusions From what has emerged from this research, the encyclical Ad beatissimi, programmatic of a pontificate half the duration of which was marked by the tragedy of the Great War, was born with the intention of calling for peace, but was also an invitation to introspection, which the Head of the Church imparted to its entire body, from the pastors to the faithful. It was an invitation to them to look within their hearts, to all to consider their moral life in order to combat the scourge of selfishness and greed. It is not a political text. The Roman Question is mentioned — in very subdued tones — only in the very last part. Certainly, the Pope had been ‘deprived of that protection which by divine Providence had in the course of ages been set up to defend that freedom’67 and could not follow in the footsteps of his predecessors. Nevertheless, it was not a question of reclaiming temporal power, which no longer had reason to exist, and Benedict XV knew this well. Rather, it was an attempt to secure a prominent position within an international forum through the assertion of a firm neutrality together with charitable action and to intercede with the governments at war in regard to prisoners and the subsequent offer to mediate for peace between the belligerent nations. It only remains to be asked why research into, and analysis of, this first encyclical has been so limited that it has been virtually overlooked.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Mariner Books, 1973) Cafiero, Guglielmo, Sulla prima enciclica di Benedetto XV e sul messaggio per la pace (Rome: Desclée, 1915) Ciriello, Caterina, ‘Benedetto XV, la guerra e le posizioni dei vescovi italiani’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 23 (2014), pp. 41–60 Ernesti, Jörg, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016) Flores, Marcello, Tutta la violenza di un secolo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2005) Ganapini, Luigi, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970) Hobsbawm, Eric J., The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994) Losurdo, Domenico, La lotta di classe: una storia politica e filosofica (Rome: Laterza, 2015)

66 ‘La Santa Sede e la Guerra: altre fantasie giornalistiche’, Corriere d’Italia, 10 January 1915. 67 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 31.

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Mancini, Mario, La riforma della Chiesa di San Pio X (Verona: Fede & Cultura, 2015) Mellinato, Giuseppe, ‘Benedetto XV inascoltato profeta di pace’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 140, 1 (1989), pp. 452–58 Monticone, Alberto, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200 Moynihan, James H., The Life of Archbishop John Ireland (New York: Harper, 1953) Pollard, John F., The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Tramontin, Silvio, Un secolo di storia della Chiesa, 2 vols (Rome: Studium, 1980), I Veneruso, Danilo, ‘La contrastata ascesa di Giacomo Della Chiesa verso il pontificato tra oblio di memoria e incomprensione’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 345–62

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Ideas of War, Ideas of Peace

Frédéric Gugelot

Churches in War, Faith under Fire

The historical study of World War I has been renewed by the inclusion of social, cultural and religious dynamics that occurred during the war and were connected to it. Two books in particular provided a new perspective: Annette Becker’s La guerre et la foi and Roberto Morozzo della Rocca’s La fede e la guerra.1 The war was in itself essentially a religious action, just as religious action was an essential part of a total war. These books unearthed the proliferation of practices aimed at responding to the new problems of a modern war. They restored the places dedicated to religious fervour, objects of piety and devotional practices within or outside churches. The cultural history of the war historicized the emotions, the suffering, the impairment of bodies and the mobilization of spiritual weapons. Benedict XV was the first pope to face a total world war.2 The letter of the Holy Father to the heads of the warring nations of 1 August 1917 speaks of a ‘useless slaughter’. The horror of the war and mass death inflamed the convictions of the European faithful. How can we fail to recognize in the war the mysterious forces that sometimes crush us and sometimes save us? I would never have imagined how much the war, even this modern war that is so totally industrial and studied, is full of religion3



1 Annette Becker, La guerre et la foi: de la mort à la mémoire, 1914–1930 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994); Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980). 2 The Pope developed a humanitarian policy, and the Vatican became a collection point for prisoners, victims of military occupation and indigents. Would there have been a different pope in another context? Would the conclave have elected the Cardinal Archbishop of Pisa, Pietro Maffi, if the war had not begun? After Fernand Hayward, Un Pape méconnu: Benoît XV (Tournai: Casterman, 1955) and John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), see Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008); Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963); Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990). 3 ‘Comment méconnaître dans la guerre les forces mystérieuses qui tantôt nous écrasent et tantôt nous sauvent. Je n’aurais jamais imaginé à quel point la guerre, même cette guerre moderne tout industrielle et savante, est pleine de religion’; Hertz to his wife Alice, 3 October 1914, in Un ethnologue

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 263–284 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118775

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the ethnologist Robert Hertz wondered in October 1914. Yet if, as we have learned from the founding fathers of the sociology of religion — Durkheim, Weber, Mauss, Halbwachs — modernity contradicts the very idea of religion, and if secularization is the result of modernity, then should modern war not separate itself from the religious idea?4 How are we to continue to believe after the battles of Tannenberg and Verdun,5 when such a carnage had shaken the values that gave meaning to life and to sacrifice? Elsewhere, people needed faith after Gallipoli and Caporetto. Although the Great War was not a war of religions, it was a war that mobilized religions and churches, engaged clergymen and believers and questioned both the faith and the fervour of the faithful.

1.

Death, Where is Your Victory?

At the outset of the war, soldiers made their own combat knives. Why did a French soldier bury the handle of his dagger with the words ‘requiescat in pace’ engraved on it? Was it regret or irony? The novelty that historical studies highlight is a new observation of objects. The ‘brutalizing’6 on the battlefields of the Great War, called thus since 1915, had an impact on all social, cultural and spiritual expressions. In war, the enemy must be overwhelmed, and ‘the war experience’ was the crucible of a new man. An officer taught a chaplain ‘the ferocity that is developed during these struggles and how, in the face of such things, the notion of a God of love is hidden. […] And he wondered whether, after having thus unleashed the beast, it can be re-enchained’.7 The ‘progressive bestializing of humanity’,8 in a chaplain’s words, explained the brutalization of European societies.



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dans les tranchées, août 1914–avril 1915: lettres de Robert Hertz à sa femme Alice, ed. by Alexander Riley and Philippe Besnard (Paris: CNRS, 2002), pp. 69–70. ‘Si comme nous l’ont appris les pères fondateurs de la sociologie des religions — Durkheim, Weber, Mauss, Halbwachs —, la modernité contredit l’idée même de religion, et si la sécularisation est le résultat de la modernité, alors la guerre moderne devrait se séparer radicalement de l’idée religieuse?’; Annette Becker, ‘Églises et ferveurs religieuses’, in Encyclopédie de la Grande Guerre 1914–1918: histoire et culture, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker (Paris: Bayard, 2004), pp. 731–50 (p. 731). Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Première guerre mondiale et changement religieux en Europe’, in Les sociétés européennes et la guerre de 1914–1918: actes du colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Amiens du 8 au 11 décembre 1988, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker (Nanterre: Publications de l’Université de Nanterre, 1990), pp. 439–52. George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). ‘Il me dit la férocité qui se développe au cours de ces luttes et comme, en face de choses pareilles, la notion d’un Dieu d’amour se voile. […] Et il se demande si, après avoir ainsi démuselé le fauve, on arrivera à l’enchaîner de nouveau’; André Encrevé, ‘Les Notes de guerre (1915–1918) du pasteur Henri Monnier, aumônier à la 66e division’, Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du protestantisme français, 161, 1 (2015), pp. 39–60 (p. 45). ‘Bestialisation progressive de l’humanité’; Encrevé, ‘Les Notes de guerre’, p. 52.

c h u rc h e s in war, fai t h u nd e r f i re

Mass mourning, often without bodies, accentuated the need for consolatory practice because ‘death, far from being trivial, remains unbearable’.9 The ‘service in remembrance of soldiers who died for their country’ became an important moment in religious life during the war.10 The conditions of war favoured a closer, limited but true bond among people for example during ceremonies in common, which were, however, officially prohibited. The chaplains were forced to a de facto ecumenical accord because it was frequently impossible to ascertain the religious affiliation of one of the fallen. Furthermore, the chaplain who was on the spot took care of everyone. In December 1915, within a few days, Pastor Durrleman celebrated a funeral service with a Catholic priest and read psalms at the burial of a young Jew. ‘I always thought I was fulfilling a pious duty by commemorating the dead. What did the rites matter!’,11 wrote Marc Bloch on religious ceremonies in war times. In Italy, the Holy See was unable to prevent patriotic funeral ceremonies.12 Mass mourning lent new strength to religion, in particular to Catholicism, in an attempt to attribute some meaning to the events, but it affected a change in religious sensitivity. It was impossible to impose purgatory on soldiers who had gloriously fallen in battle because ‘too much expiation kills the expiation’.13 At the same time, ‘to the extent in which they multiplied, monuments to the fallen lost their traditional social distinctions’.14 In short, social and religious differences diminished. How can we refuse paradise to the soldier who gave his life for ‘God and country’? The democratization of civil ceremonies at military shrines did not spare religious celebrations. War became the aspiration of every nation involved; it invaded life, newspapers, advertising, books, academic exercises, Christmas toys, prayers and sermons. People on each side believed that they were waging a defensive war and, therefore, a just war. Political and spiritual Messianism considered war the sacred cause of civilization and transformed the conflict into a patriotic mysticism that would give life to a new, bright, purified world. ‘Patriotic and religious fervour mingled, combined, multiplied’.15 In all the belligerent countries, the same process of nationalization of congregations and religious fervour explains the success of the mobilization of clergymen and the faithful in 1914. The losses, the horror of battle and the continuation of the war enfeebled civil societies and weakened involvement in them without its being

9 ‘La mort, loin de se banaliser, reste insupportable’; Becker, La guerre et la foi, p. 9. 10 ‘Service en souvenir des soldats morts pour la patrie’; Nicolas Champ, ‘Les protestants, la mort et la foi dans la Grande Guerre’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 235–48. 11 ‘J’ai toujours cru remplir un devoir pieux en commémorant les morts. Qu’importaient les rites!’; Marc Bloch, Souvenirs de guerre 1914–1915 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1959), p. 23. 12 Maria Paiano, La preghiera e la Grande Guerra: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto in Italia (Pisa: Pacini, 2017); Maria Paiano, ‘L’Italie, le pays qui abrite le pape’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 102, 1 (2016), pp. 69–88 (pp. 83, 86). 13 ‘Trop d’expiation tue l’expiation’; Guillaume Cuchet, Le crépuscule du purgatoire (Paris: Armand Colin, 2005), p. 234. 14 Reinhart Koselleck, L’expérience de l’histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1997), p. 184. 15 ‘Ferveurs patriotique et religieuse se sont mêlées, ajoutées, multipliées’; Becker, ‘Églises et ferveurs’, p. 736.

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jeopardized. During the first two years of the war, the faithful and clergy shared the same spirit. In France, Catholic opinion had aligned itself with the union sacrée, that is, with the interruption of political and spiritual preferences and internal clashes that the Germans called Burgfrieden (‘civil peace’). When Italy entered the war in May 1915, Cardinal Pietro Maffi, Archbishop of Pisa, stated in a letter that ‘concord is the supreme duty. Yesterday we could argue, tomorrow we can do so again, today we cannot’.16 Both in France and in Germany, the churches legitimized the use of force to protect the homeland and defend the highest spiritual values. The nationalization of religions drew on the notion of just war but ignored critical aspects of the conflict. The clergy insisted on the specific mission of their respective nations, while recognizing the Pope as a universal father seeking peace. The principal risks for the Church were first the suicide of Europe, which was still the basis of Catholicism, then the confusion between temporal and spiritual power, between faith and ideology. Yet it was impossible to combat the nationalization of religion. In occupied Belgium, the altars were covered with tricolour flags and, during some ‘patriotic services’, the songs became anthems for the country and the king.17 In Italy, the nationalization of Saint Francis of Assisi, ‘the most Italian of the saints, the most saintly of the Italians’, became a reality in the interwar period.18 Some disagreement was voiced, however. In June 1915, in Florence, an anonymous letter criticized the prior of the Church of San Giuseppe, Luigi D’Indico, who during a service proclaimed his Italian identity: ‘First the tricolour flag was almost excommunicated, then it entered the churches, and now it is placed on either side of the tabernacle […], soon we will also make tricoloured hosts’.19 Religious solidarity failed to compete with national unity. ‘Jew or Christian, every Kraut is odious to us’, claimed the weekly paper Archives israélites in June 1915.20 The sermons of American chaplains compared the German army to ‘Pharaoh’s army’.21

16 ‘La concordia è dovere supremo. Ieri potevamo discutere, domani lo potremo ancora, oggi no’; Pietro Maffi, Lettere pastorali, omelie, discorsi, 3 vols (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1920–31), II (1921), pp. 637–39. Quoted by Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Le chauvinisme épiscopal: les cardinaux de Pise et de Paris entre catholicisme et religion de la patrie’, in Foi, religions, ed. by Boniface and Cochet, pp. 17–29 (p. 23). 17 Axel Tixhon, ‘L’évêque de Namur et son diocèse dans la Grande Guerre’, in 1914–1918, le Dieu de la guerre: religion et patriotisme en Luxembourg belge, ed. by Sébastien Pierre and Benoît Amez (Bastogne: Musée en Piconrue, 2013), pp. 107–10. 18 ‘Il più italiano dei santi, il più santo degli italiani’; Daniele Menozzi, ‘“Il più italiano dei santi, il più santo degli italiani”: la nazionalizzazione di San Francesco tra le due guerre’, in Cattolicesimo, nazione e nazionalismo, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2015), pp. 86–109. 19 ‘D’abord le drapeau tricolore était presque excommunié, puis il est entré dans les églises et maintenant on le met de chaque côté du trône du sacrement […], ensuite nous ferons aussi les hosties tricolores’; anonymous letter to the Archbishop of Florence Alfonso Maria Mistrangelo, 9 June 1915, quoted by Matteo Caponi, ‘Liturgies et dévotions de guerre: le cas florentin (1914–1918)’, in Foi, religions, ed. by Boniface and Cochet, pp. 149–62 (p. 161). 20 ‘Juif ou chrétien, tout Boche nous est odieux’; quoted by Philippe Landau, Les Juifs de France et la Grande Guerre: un patriotisme républicain, 2nd edn (Paris: CNRS, 2008), p. 112. 21 Jonathan Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 19.

c h u rc h e s in war, fai t h u nd e r f i re

Even in France and Italy, despite the lack of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, religion impregnated some rituals, employing religious words and images, sacralizing flags, battlefields and supply lines. A ‘religion of the homeland’ included ‘civil religion’ and an aspiration for the redemption of the country and its soldiers. On 12 November 1918, an American officer explained the issue to his soldiers in this way: Some of our comrades have fallen, some of our boys have made the supreme sacrifice, but you know and I know that they have not died in vain, that their names, their deeds, their actions are immortal, and just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow to proclaim that God still rules, just as surely are those boys now sitting on the right hand of God, for they died that the ideals, beliefs, and the religion taught to us by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, might rule the world.22

2. Hate the Enemy The Great War was also a cultural conflict: ‘It seems that war spontaneously creates the ideas that it needs’, noted the soldier novelist Léon Werth.23 Between 1914 and 1915, a series of representations was forged to lend meaning to the conflict, a meaning inseparable from hatred for the enemy. Hence we wage war for almost nothing, but this is everything: a certain way of thinking, of feeling […]. We wage war for a certain way of seeing the world. Every war is a war of religion […]. And indeed who would not be ready to be killed rather than agree to see good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly, there where our enemies see it.24 In 1915, for the prisoner Jacques Rivière, it was a war of civilization, for others a ‘crusade’. War itself was depicted as a German crime. Thus, the immoral German way of fighting proved their moral inferiority. ‘The devil is currently wearing a pointed helmet’, claimed the newspaper L’Évangéliste.25 Hence the national churches participated in propagandizing the atrocities. To the book from the Comité catholique de propagande française à l’étranger — La guerre allemande et le Catholicisme (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1915), edited by Mgr

22 Ebel, Faith in the Fight, p. 100. 23 ‘On dirait que la guerre crée spontanément les idées qui lui sont nécessaires’; Léon Werth, Clavel soldat (Paris: Éditions Viviane Hamy, 1993). The text was written between 1916 and 1917. 24 ‘On fait la guerre pour un presque rien, mais qui est tout: une certaine manière de penser, de sentir […]. On fait la guerre pour une certaine façon de voir le monde. Toute guerre est une guerre de religion […]. Et en effet qui ne serait prêt à se faire tuer plutôt que d’accepter de voir désormais le bien et le mal, le beau et le laid, là où le voient nos ennemis’; Jacques Rivière, À la trace de Dieu (Paris: Gallimard, 1925), p. 37. 25 ‘Le diable porte en ce moment un casque à pointe’; quoted by Pierre-Yves Kirschleger, ‘Une minorité religieuse dans la Grande Guerre: les protestants français’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 102, 1 (2016), pp. 37–56 (p. 46).

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Alfred Baudrillart, Rector of the Institut catholique de Paris, and published in six languages — Germany answered with Der Deutsche Krieg und der Katholizismus (Berlin: Aktien-Gesellschaft für Verlag und Druckerei, 1915), edited by Canon Arnold J. Rosenberg. These books, written by Catholics, divided the Church but were never placed on the Index. The question of ‘atrocities’ therefore strengthened the national orientation of Catholicism in the countries at war and showed how difficult it was for the Church to reach a consensus on the ‘truth’ of what happened and still more difficult to speak of reconciliation between members of the same religion.26 One aspect considered to be a sign of moral inferiority was the destruction of places such as the Catholic University in Louvain and the Reims Cathedral.27 In Italy, the US and the Netherlands, all neutral at the time, political cartoons showed these destructions to be a sign of barbarity.28 They also became a source of tension between the Pope and the societies at war. Benedict XV never responded to the demands to accuse the enemy and restricted himself to a general condemnation. ‘The tactic of moral condemnation has shown how much it can provoke the hostility of public opinion’.29 These ‘crimes’ (the ‘rape’ of Belgium, the violence against civilians, the destruction of places of worship) made it impossible to invoke a peace that was not victorious. Even the Dominican Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, in his famous sermon against the Pope’s 1917 Peace Note, claimed: ‘Our peace will not be a conciliatory peace. […] It will be peace [obtained] through a bitter war and brought to its end, the peace of just power shattering the violence, the peace of the soldier!’.30 The victory of the Allies was the victory of civilization against barbarity, of Christ against the ‘beast of the Apocalypse’.31 A ‘just peace’ would also be a victory against war itself. The extent of the sacrifices led to a refusal to stop the war before the final victory. Romain Rolland cites a letter written by a Parisian in 1917: ‘Undoubtedly the soldiers cannot bear the

26 John Horne and Alan Kramer, 1914: les atrocités allemands (Paris: Tallandier, 2005), p. 310. 27 Frédéric Gugelot, ‘Union sacrée autour de la cathédrale: le cardinal Luçon dans la Grande Guerre’, in Reims 14–18: de la guerre à la paix, ed. by Jean-François Boulanger and others (Strasbourg: La Nuée Bleue, 2013), pp. 83–88. 28 Reproduced in Le Rire, 6 March 1915, p. 11. 29 ‘La tactique de la condamnation morale a montré à quel point elle pouvait provoquer l’hostilité de l’opinion publique’; Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004), p. 24. 30 ‘Notre paix ne sera pas une paix conciliante […] ce sera la paix par la guerre âpre et menée jusqu’au terme, la paix de la puissance juste brisant la violence, la paix du soldat!’; Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, La paix française: discours prononcé en l’église Sainte-Madeleine le lundi 10 décembre 1917 en la cérémonie religieuse et patriotique présidée par S. E. le cardinal-archevêque de Paris (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1917). 31 ‘Bête de l’Apocalypse’; speech of the Dominican Martin Stanislas Gillet, ‘Te Deum de la victoire à Montmartre’, Semaine religieuse de Paris, 30 novembre 1918, pp. 609–18.

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atrocious idea of having suffered so long, so terribly, for nothing; they need the vital illusion of at least a slight usefulness of this suffering’.32 The deaths and sacrifices incurred so far could not be in vain. The war memorials expressed the same idea: ‘The dead embodied exemplary behaviour; they died in the performance of a duty that the survivors must approve so that these fighters have not fallen in vain. This applies to every field’.33 The churches did not disarm the hate but took part in its dissemination. Sermons, such as that of Father Julien, who was close to Marc Sangnier, were rare: It would be thought that you lacked love for your country if you did not feel hatred for the nation that caused the war […]. However, we must be on our guard against what is always essentially bad in hatred […]. If it were allowed to do so, it would go so far as to exterminate peoples, nations and races. It would thus surpass the legitimate aim of war, which is to redress injustice and violence […]. Let us leave the enemies for who they are […]. Why do we need to hate them? Let us be content to defeat them.34

3. Sacrifice and Redemption Following a theology of divine retribution, the Roman Church interpreted the Great War as a punishment for the apostasy of the modern world. As Charles de Foucauld wrote to a friend, ‘God wants a long war […]. The length of the war is also, for the Allies, a punishment and a lesson they need. Let us hope they come out of it improved. Caritas omnia sperat’.35 A theological interpretation of the conflict saw the bloodshed as a punishment for the sins of the country, and also saw it as redemptive: We do not remember that it takes pure blood to wash away the stain of sin. What an admirable consolation is the Christian religion in these times of war, and how

32 ‘Sans doute les soldats ne peuvent pas supporter l’idée atroce d’avoir si longuement, si affreusement souffert, pour rien; il leur faut l’illusion vitale d’un minimum d’utilité de cette souffrance’; Romain Rolland, Journal des années de guerre 1914–1919 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1952), p. 1232. 33 Koselleck, L’expérience, p. 189. 34 ‘On croirait manquer d’amour pour son pays si l’on n’éprouvait pas de la haine pour la nation qui a provoqué le conflit […]. Cependant, il faut prendre garde à ce qu’il y a toujours dans la haine d’essentiellement mauvais […]. Si on la laissait faire, elle irait jusqu’à exterminer les personnes, la nation et la race. Elle dépasserait ainsi le but légitime de la guerre, qui est la réparation de l’injustice et de la violence […]. Laissons les ennemis pour ce qu’ils sont […]. Qu’avons-nous besoin de les haïr? Contentons-nous de les battre’; quoted by Nadine-Josette Chaline, Empêcher la guerre: le pacifisme du début du XIXe siècle à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Amiens: Encrage, 2015), pp. 123–24. 35 ‘Dieu veut une guerre longue […]. La longueur de la guerre est aussi, pour les peuples alliés, une punition et une leçon dont ils avaient besoin. Espérons qu’ils en sortiront meilleurs’; de Foucauld to de Castries, 20 November 1915, in Charles de Foucauld, Lettres à Henry de Castries (Paris: Grasset, 1952), p. 215.

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well are the current events explained by the eminently Catholic dogma of the communion of saints or the transferability of merits.36 War became a time for collective and personal redemption. Christianity seemed to be working to lend meaning to the war. The Bishop of Arras, after the destruction of his city, reminded his people in his Lenten pastoral letter of 1915 that the action of Providence […] gives to the trial that it imposes a truly expiatory value. […] War is […] a form of human nobility; that is, it gives rise to sublime virtues; it gives rise to heroic efforts, and to the extent that it is solicited by our prayers and merits, providential action can enrich these virtues, making these efforts so effective that they lead to a glorious peace and the moral recovery of an entire people.37 In 1914, the Church fought against pleasures and entertainment; it fought for the closure of theatres and cinemas for a few months, condemning frivolity, dance and fashion.38 On 12 November 1917, during the invasion of north-eastern Italy by the Austrians, Maffi exhorted Italians to both resistance and penitence. In his opinion, an Italian triumph would be made possible through a Christian life of discipline, duty, obedience and the boycott of theatres.39 These conservative clergymen, moulded by the moral values and a reverence for the social norms of their times, thought that war created an opportunity to fight against decadence. The faithful found theological weapons in the teaching of their respective churches. The marked insistence both on Christian duty and on the redeeming value of sacrifice and suffering allowed Christian soldiers to become united with Christ’s passion. The war was a punishment for the sins of humanity but also a time of consolation. Through its message of sacrifice, redemption and resurrection, Christianity could profit from this great, long war. Crosses, nails and crucifixes filled the battlefield. Christ was the central figure in the understanding of the conflict, even in the devotion

36 ‘On ne se souvient pas qu’il faut un sang pur pour laver la souillure du péché. Quelle admirable consolation que la religion chrétienne en ces temps de guerre, et combien les événements actuels se trouvent expliqués par le dogme éminemment catholique de la communion des saints ou de la réversibilité des mérites’; letter of the seminarian Vichy, 7 March 1915, in Daniel Moulinet, Prêtres soldats dans la Grande Guerre: les clercs bourbonnais sous le drapeaux (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014), p. 160. The former chaplain Paul Doncœur wrote in 1922: ‘We Catholics […] believe in the power of salvation through blood; we know that in this fundament the basis of our hope lies decided in this sacrifice offered to God’; quoted by Patrick J. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 241. 37 ‘L’action de la Providence […] donne à l’épreuve qu’elle impose une vraie valeur expiatrice. […] La guerre est […] une forme de la noblesse humaine, c’est-à-dire qu’elle fait naître de sublimes vertus, qu’elle suscite d’héroïques efforts, et dans la mesure où elle est sollicitée par nos prières et nos mérites, l’action providentielle peut féconder ces vertus, rendre efficaces ces efforts au point de les faire aboutir à une paix glorieuse et au relèvement moral de tout un peuple’; Émile Lobbedey, ‘L’action providentielle dans la guerre présente’, in La guerre en Artois: paroles épiscopales, documents, récits, ed. by Émile Lobbedey (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1916), p. x. 38 Houlihan, Catholicism, p. 57. 39 Quoted by Cavagnini, ‘Le chauvinisme’, p. 25.

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to the Sacred Heart: ‘Hence, Christ can bless the warrior and a warring nation, but never war itself. Because Christ wants peace not war. But just as he sacrificed himself in order to bring reconciliation to men, so he blesses anyone who makes a sacrifice of his life for the purpose of peace’.40 A national Catholic imaginary embraced the Christian faith, the sacrifice of Christ and patriotism. The aversion to all progressive approaches to history, the appeal of morbid, putrid things, an enemy complex and an obsession with conspiracy tormented some believers at the end of the war and nourished the devotion to a new bearer of the Stigmata.41 The war became a moment of affliction, necessary for a personal and collective transformation. Faith and religious enthusiasm fed the continual flow between the front and home.42 Mireille Dupouey lost her husband in the war but continued to write to him: Lord Jesus, I asked for the cross to receive love — here you are taking me to Calvary, thank you […]. If you tear my heart apart, may my heart adore you […]. There is something higher than the love of a heart; that is the call of France […]. Oh, we have to love God with a frightening love to make such a sacrifice to him. To love him more than my love? […] You are not dead, and I am not a widow.43 Mireille’s story transcended personal and family disaster. This profound affliction, in a strange dialogue beyond death between a soldier and his wife, demonstrates the capacity of believers to find in their faith the strength to transcend their losses. Women were at the heart of this mourning. The theme of the pietà was present in numerous monuments to those fallen in war. Christ was the consoler. The success of devotion to Thérèse of Lisieux shows the influence of feminine piety in masculine spirituality. It is important to pay attention to generational aspects because those young men were sent to war by an aging society with a low birth rate, such as in France. The war turned the generational order upside down by killing the sons before the fathers. These devotions, by ennobling the war, reinforced its acceptance and its totality and engendered resignation, making people accustomed to the violence. Each of the warring parties was convinced of the legitimacy of its own cause. They each conducted a war they considered just against invasion or encirclement through loyalty to their own people and fidelity to their own ‘culture’. This is especially true 40 Carl Muth, ‘Christus und der Krieger’, Hochland, 13, 1 (1915), p. 105. See Houlihan, Catholicism, p. 53. 41 Sergio Luzzatto, Padre Pio: miracoli e politica nell’Italia del Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 2007), p. 100. 42 The protestant Marguerite Cadier-Reuss, a widow at twenty-six years of age and mother of three children, the last one born on the day of his father’s death in war on 26 September 1914, wrote letters to her dead husband between 1915 and 1917. See Marguerite Cadier-Reuss, Lettres à mon mari disparu (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014). 43 ‘Seigneur Jésus, j’ai demandé la croix pour recevoir l’amour — voici que vous m’emmenez au calvaire, merci […]. Si vous déchirez mon cœur, que mon cœur déchiré vous adore […]. Il y a quelque chose de plus haut que l’amour d’un cœur, c’est l’appel de la France […]. Oh il faut que nous aimions Dieu d’un amour effrayant pour lui faire un tel sacrifice. L’aimer pour lui donner mon amour? L’aimer plus que mon amour? […] Tu n’es pas mort et je ne suis pas veuve’; Mireille Dupouey, Cahiers, 3 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1944–45), I (1944), pp. 36, 96, 117 (4 September 1915, 31 December 1915 and 20 March 1917).

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for the minorities, Catholics in Germany or Jews in Paris or Berlin; war was seen as an instrument for the definitive integration into the homeland.

4. A Revival? The first months of the war brought about a religious revival, which surprised Baudrillart: For Christ and for France. Who would have told us, only a few weeks ago, that, apart from in our vows, these two causes could be united? And yet a miracle occurred. By becoming completely French again, the national soul finds itself Catholic again.44 In all denominations and countries,45 this revival took the form of conversions and an increased participation in services of worship,46 at different levels of intensity and timing. The war led to a clarification of feelings, focussing on what is essential and encouraging self-reflection. The soldier Vernon Smith confessed that going ‘over there’ made him a ‘better man’.47 In bello veritas was a common conviction. For Julius Mitchell, war made him a ‘more sober and Christ-like patriot’.48 For Afro-American soldiers, war was also an experience of equality. The soldiers recognized in their own pain God’s suffering. They found in Catholicism a practice of the acceptance of suffering. However, this impulse was already cut short in 1915. Even religious enthusiasm has its own internal dynamic. In 1916, conversions and church attendance decreased, testifying to the increasing weariness. Perhaps the prestige recovered by the churches in the war did not produce any pastoral and religious gains after the war. ‘Pastoral fear tactics’ were not effective in the face of mass destruction. The duration of the conflict blunted the impact of the engagement of churches and the effectiveness of their spiritual answers to the new conditions of war. How indeed does one maintain a spiritual life in such conditions? How does one act like a Christian while the Decalogue is being scorned? Maintaining an inner life was so difficult: ‘I come to the point that I think about Jesus only when I get up and before I go to bed’, a seminarian confessed.49 Prayers and the rosary became moments of security. The experience of the trenches completely disrupted the idea of life and 44 ‘Pour le Christ et pour la France. Qui nous eût dit, il y a seulement quelques semaines, que ces deux causes pourraient sitôt se trouver solidaires, autrement que dans nos vœux? Et pourtant le miracle s’est fait. En redevenant tout à fait française, l’âme nationale se retrouve catholique’; Alfred Baudrillart, ‘Pour le Christ et pour la France’, La Semaine religieuse, 22 August 1914, pp. 231–33. 45 Richard van Dülmen, ‘Der deutsche Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg’, Francia, 2 (1974), pp. 347–76. 46 Frédéric Gugelot, La conversion des intellectuels au catholicisme en France (1885–1935), 2nd edn (Paris: CNRS, 2010), pp. 40–47. 47 Ebel, Faith in the Fight, p. 117. 48 Ebel, Faith in the Fight, p. 122. 49 ‘J’en arrive à ce point que je pense à Jésus juste en me levant et avant de me mettre au lit!’; Letter of Ernest Aurambout, 11 June 1915, in Moulinet, Prêtres soldats, p. 43.

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death, what the shell-shocked Italian poet Clemente Rebora called, so precisely, ‘vitamorte’ (‘life-death’)50 because the border between the two had disappeared. Religious life was marked by the construction of new chapels, outdoor Masses and the manufacture of devotional and pious objects suitable for combat and life in the trenches. The conflict changed some religious representations. Some observers, such as the English Jesuit Charles Plater, were convinced that faith was becoming deeper: In general, the war has tended to emphasize the religious character of the men and to cause reflection and focus their thoughts on a God and a hereafter more than anything before in their lives. In the field they thought of God much more and practised their religion better than in the training camps, and, I believe, than at home.51 But what did this religiosity mean? On 7 September 1918, a soldier from Massachusetts wrote: ‘Soldiers are fatalists. Chance is the fighting man’s God’.52 At times fatality and resignation won the day. The British soldier C. Bartram broke with his faith on the first day of the battle of the Somme in 1916, shocked by the 60,000 dead and wounded soldiers: ‘From that moment all my religion died. All my teaching and beliefs in God had left me, never to return’.53 It was not only the nineteenth-century adversary — secular liberalism, with its triptych reason-science-progress — which was undermined. Faith was sometimes missing from the battlefield: ‘During the war, while viewing by plane the ruins amassed by the massacre, I meditated as I flew over these disasters, and I often told myself, faced with this spectacle, that God was impossible, because he could not have allowed such a scourge to happen’.54 It would be interesting to study the transference of hope towards new ideological options such as fascism or communism. Both projects aimed at creating a ‘new man’ with the new dogma ‘believe, obey, fight’.55 But were these ‘better men’ really ‘new men’? Did they share the ‘cultural despair’ that was afflicting Europe at the time?56 50 See Antonio Gibelli, L’officina della guerra: la Grande Guerra e le trasformazioni del mondo mentale (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991). 51 Catholic soldiers, ed. by Charles Plater (London: Longmans & Co., 1919), p. 153, quoted by Jonathan Ebel, ‘“En avant, soldats du Christ”: imaginer la religion du soldat américain’, in Foi, religions, ed. by Boniface and Cochet, pp. 139–48 (p. 142). 52 Ebel, Faith in the Fight, p. 65. 53 Private C. Bartram, 94th Trench Mortar Battery, quoted by Martin Middlebrook, The First Day in Somme, rev. edn (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2016), p. 316. 54 ‘Pendant la guerre, assistant en avion aux ruines amoncelées par la tuerie, je méditais en survolant ces désastres, et je me suis dit souvent, devant ce spectacle, que Dieu était impossible, car il n’aurait pu permettre un tel fléau’; testimonial of A. Hours, in Pourquoi nous sommes libres penseurs: deux enquêtes, avec de nombreuses réponses (Herblay: Éditions de l’Idée Libre, n.d. [1939]), p. 25. See Frédéric Gugelot, ‘La preuve de l’inexistence de Dieu: le premier des conflits mondiaux et l’abandon de la foi’, in La politique et la guerre: pour comprendre le XXe siècle européen, hommage à Jean-Jacques Becker, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and others (Paris: Agnès Viénot, 2002), pp. 216–25. 55 Emilio Gentile, Qu’est-ce que le fascisme? (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), p. 53. 56 Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963), p. xi.

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The war encouraged forms of spirituality aimed at ‘saving’ those who stood outside orthodoxy. Soldiers and their families were seeking safety. When he was recruited, the Jewish soldier Pierre Hirsch received from a young woman a Sacred Heart medal with the inscription ‘Divine Heart of Jesus, protect our soldiers’, packaged in a saucy song. He put it with a medal given to him by a woman from the Salvation Army at a train station; he put these with the mezouzah that his father had given to him.57 The soldier and his family needed expressions of affection and support from the nation and the faith. New forms of war caused the birth of new forms of protection. Hence the bombing of Paris generated the legend of Nénette and Rintintin, two small woollen puppets that afforded protection from the bombs to anyone who carried them. In 1916, a false ‘Epistle to Pope Leon IV, sent by an angel to Emperor Charlemagne’, was published in Florence to protect the soldiers.58 In the German army, it was a common practice for Catholic soldiers to carry with them letters of protection invoking Christ: Just as Christ stood pacified in the olive garden [i.e., Gethsemene], so should all weapons be pacified. Nothing will harm whoever bears this letter. Nothing will hit him; God will overpower the enemy’s weapons so that [the bearer of this letter] need not fear thieves and murderers.59 Prophecy about the fall of the empires or the end of the war had great resonance. Natural phenomena such as comets, meteorites and flights of birds were interpreted, while visions of flaming swords, angels or tricolour stars multiplied. In Italy, there were rumours of children with mysterious powers, capable of ensuring victory for the nation, while apparitions of the Virgin Mary announced peace.60 However, daily religion remained well framed by the churches and was the backbone of religious life.

5. Faithful, Clergymen and Bishops The religious confrontations were becoming blurred. Anti-clericalism had only a few, residual supporters or was common only among the followers of conspiracy theories, while the last battles of the Kulturkampf were coming to an end. The Christian denominations entered the war in their threefold character (ecclesial, doctrinal and religious). They encouraged mobilization, blessed the armies and legitimized the conflict, demonstrating their social utility. Felix von Hartmann in Germany, John Farley in the United States, Francis Bourne in England, Léon-Adolphe Amette in France and Pietro Maffi in Italy embodied the participation of the churches in the conflict. The bishops of the martyred cities became true icons, such as Louis Luçon

57 Pierre Hirsch, De Moïse à Jésus: confession d’un juif (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1933), p. 184. 58 Caponi, ‘Liturgies’, p. 162. 59 Houlihan, Catholicism, p. 148. The additions are the author’s. 60 Giovanna Procacci, Dalla rassegnazione alla rivolta: mentalità e comportamenti politici nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Bulzoni, 1999), pp. 340–64.

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(Reims)61 or Cardinal Désiré Mercier (Malines), who embodied occupied Belgium. Some did not act in the same way: for instance, in 1917, Bishop Nicola Monterisi of Monopoli wrote in a pastoral letter: ‘In the current war, let us bless the Lord’ (‘nella guerra attuale benediciamo il Signore’). The war was an occasion for the clergy to regain their political and social prestige. Although there was a wide range of positions between patriotic religion and obedience to the established power, the sacralization of patriotism gave the war full religious legitimacy.62 The increased number of chaplains in France and Germany and the recognition of other denominations in Italy and Belgium showed that they were approved because the clergymen did not flee from the war; the priests fought, celebrated Mass and administered the sacraments. In France, Paul Rémond was the first clergyman to become a commandant. The clergy felt they had found their place in the nation and did their best to earn the trust of their country; few clergymen became deserters and no bishops denied their responsibilities to the enemy. They became once again defensores civitatis. The soldiers favourably welcomed the presence of the clergy who shared their destiny. The men of the Church discovered a hitherto ignored world: ‘For us, soldier-priests, […] the war was a baptism into reality’,63 wrote a young stretcher-bearer, the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. This mixture allowed the men, who for the most part had not attended church before war, to meet the chaplains. At war, a priest was still a priest. He had to perform the duties of his office, sacrificing his own life if necessary. Franz Hämmerle, a chaplain in Austrian army, was killed by shrapnel while administering the last rites to a wounded soldier near Monte di Val Vella.64 The priests gave absolution, said Mass, took care of the sick and, above all, buried the dead. The chaplains encouraged Christian and patriotic behaviour.65 Religious enthusiasm, a pure way of life, a sense of duty and obedience were the essential virtues of a good warrior. Acceptance of death and hatred of the enemy afflicted their spirituality, which was blended with patriotism.66

61 Frédéric Gugelot, ‘Luçon (Louis)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 428–29. 62 For Morozzo della Rocca, the Italian military chaplains were 65 per cent patriots, 20 per cent nationalists and 15 per cent completely unaffected by the patriotic propaganda: Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Il prete al campo: relazioni ed epistolari di cappellani militari e preti-soldati’, in Operai e contadini nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Mario Isnenghi (Bologna: Nuova Cappelli, 1982), pp. 155–73 (p. 156). 63 ‘Pour nous, prêtres-soldats, […] la guerre fut un baptême dans le réel’; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Genèse d’une pensée: lettres (1914–1919) (Paris: Grasset, 1961), p. 37. 64 Houlihan, Catholicism, p. 97. 65 See e.g. I cappellani militari d’Italia nella Grande Guerra: relazioni e testimonianze (1915–1919), ed. by Vittorio Pignoloni (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 2014) and Peter Houston, ‘South African Anglican Military Chaplains and the First World War’, South African Historical Journal 68, 2 (2016), pp. 213–29. 66 Jacques-Robert Leconte, L’aumônerie militaire belge: son évolution de l’époque hollandaise à l’organisation actuelle (Brussels: Musée Royal de l’Armée, 1966).

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The chaplains felt the need to ‘re-masculinize’67 the faith in a war which had strengthened the relationship between virility and militarism. Few believers rejected the engagement from a religious point of view and only a few voices were raised against the mobilization of God. Conscientious objection was rare and mainly Protestant, just as pacifism had been before the war. In June 1917, the American Alvin York asked to be exempted from military service because of his religious beliefs:68 My religion and my experience […] told me not to go to war, and the memory of my ancestors […] told me to get my gun and go fight. […] I’m telling you there was a war going on inside me […]. It is a most awful thing when the wishes of your God and your country […] get mixed up and go against each other. One moment I would make up my mind to follow God, and the next I would hesitate and almost make up my mind to follow Uncle Sam. […] I wanted to follow both, but I couldn’t. They were opposite. I wanted to be a good Christian and a good American too.69 In most cases the faithful accepted the war and suffered rather than reject it.70 This engagement was made evident by the birth of new Christian heroes. In 1914, the grandson of the ‘apostate’ Ernest Renan, Ernest Psichari, died in the early days of the Battle of Lorraine. Having been recently converted, he embodied Catholic heroism. On 24 August 1914, Sister Julie saved the hospital of Gerbéviller from being burnt by invaders. Stamps, photographs, newspapers and books depicted her heroism as a combination of charitable work (feminine and Catholic) and resistance to barbarity. On 9 January 1915, she was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour. Louise de Bettignies was the ‘Joan of Arc of the North’, according to Alexis-Armand Charost, the Bishop of Lille. She brought patriotism and faith to the struggle against the invaders.71 Arrested in 1915, she was sentenced to death in 1916 and died in prison on 27 September 1918. The war overturned convictions, created uncertainty and put values to the test. The testimony of a soldier priest in 1917 reveals the contradictions between war and faith: This war will be an evil for everyone. It is an unhealthy school, where one becomes accustomed to criminal acts, desires for revenge and thoughts that are absolutely contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. […] We rejoice to see the plain covered with enemy corpses; we search through the slit for a human head or heart to put marmalade on; we laugh to hear the howls of pain in the trenches opposite us and when one of our barrage shots […] makes their arms, heads and legs fly to the

67 Xavier Boniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014), p. 89; Houlihan, Catholicism, p. 37. 68 Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 68. 69 Judith Bronte, ‘The Christian’ [accessed 10 January 2019]. 70 Dans la guerre 1914–1918: accepter, endurer, refuser, ed. by Nicolas Beaupré, Heather Jones and Anne Rasmussen (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2015). 71 Panegyric by Mgr Charost at Louise de Bettignies’s funeral, 4 March 1920.

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four corners of the horizon. […] We are the attacked. […] And this is precisely what is terrible for us: we do our duty by killing.72 These Christian testimonies prove how far violence affected these believers, without causing any dissent: Here I am […], always instructing the men in blue, teaching them the ways to kill without being killed. It is a little barbaric, I must admit, especially for a seminarian who, if God permits, must one day preach peace, gentleness and goodness! I try to pay my dues by praying from time to time for the soldiers of all nations.73 The complexity of behaviours and expectations are evidenced in the words of a Catholic gunner: ‘By observing a shot of 155, he thinks that these shells will kill “five, ten, fifteen unfortunate ones, fifteen men. And at the same time, before it falls, I pray for their souls; and at the same time, I surprise myself by saying, my God let it hit them”’.74 War tore at consciences and appeared to contradict the Gospel. Father Arthur Mugnier was shocked: ‘This God in a host permanently on the altars and those who let their children butcher one another’.75 Even a soldier, in this case a Protestant, was distressed after the sermon of a chaplain: Yesterday, at the Protestant services, our chaplain from Nîmes prayed to God to crush Germany, to bring enough intelligence to our scientists to invent something worse than gas, etc. Oh, if Jesus had been there among us, would he not have risen up to call the one who speaks like this in his name crazy.76 72 ‘Cette guerre sera un mal pour tout le monde. C’est une école malsaine, où l’on prendra l’habitude des gestes criminels, des désirs de vengeances, des pensées absolument contraire à l’esprit de l’Évangile. […] On se gaudit de voir la plaine couverte de cadavres ennemis; on cherche par le créneau, une tête ou un cœur humain à mettre en marmelade; on rit d’entendre des hurlements de douleur dans les tranchées d’en face et quand un de nos tirs de barrage […] fait voler aux quatre coins de l’horizon les bras, les têtes et les jambes. […] Nous sommes les attaqués. […] Et voilà justement ce qui est terrible pour nous: nous faisons notre devoir en tuant’; letter from a priest soldier, Semaine religieuse de Bayeux, 19 August 1917, quoted in Dominque-Marie Dauzet, ‘Entre patriotisme et réalisme’, in Servir Dieu en temps de guerre: guerre et clergés à l’époque contemporaine (XIXe–XXIe siècles), ed. by Séverine Blenner-Michel and Jacqueline Lalouette (Paris: Armand Colin, 2013), p. 172. 73 ‘Me voilà […] instruisant toujours les bleus, leur apprenant les moyens de tuer sans se faire tuer. C’est un peu barbare, je l’avoue, surtout pour un séminariste qui, si Dieu le permet, doit prêcher un jour la paix, la douceur, la bonté! Je tâche de me dédouaner en priant de temps en temps pour les soldats de toutes les nations’; letter from Aurambout, 13 November 1914, in Moulinet, Prêtres soldats, p. 232. 74 ‘En observant un tir de 155, il pense que ces obus vont tuer “5, 10, 15 malheureux, 15 hommes. Et du même coup avant qu’il ne tombe, je prie pour leur âme; et en même temps, je me surprends à dire: Mon Dieu faites que le coup porte”’; testimonial of the artilleryman L. B., ‘Nos premiers coups de canon’, 7 mars 1915, Études, 5–20 May 1915, p. 237. 75 ‘Ce Dieu dans une hostie, en permanence, sur les autels et qui laisse s’égorger ses enfants’; Arthur Mugnier, Journal 1879–1939 (Paris: Mercure de France, 1985), p. 308 (1–9 February 1917). 76 ‘Hier, au culte protestant, notre aumônier, de Nîmes, a prié Dieu d’écraser l’Allemagne, d’apporter assez d’intelligence à nos savants pour inventer quelque chose de pire que les gaz, etc. Oh, si Jésus avait été là parmi nous, ne se serait-il pas levé pour traiter d’insensé celui qui en Son nom parle ainsi?’; quoted by Rémi Fabre, ‘Un groupe d’étudiants protestants en 1914–1918’, Le mouvement social, 24, 122 (1983), pp. 75–101 (p. 88).

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Christians fought against Christians. The German exegete Adolf Dreissmann read the Bible in English during the war to remind himself that he had the Christian faith in common with his British pre-war friends. Others were frightened. In October 1915, chaplain Andreas Farkas wrote in his pastoral report that he had not gone to the front and had restricted himself to saying Mass in the rear: ‘It is dangerous […]. I do not have the appropriate hero’s courage’.77 He was quickly replaced. If patriotic ‘gatherings’ were not very crowded, for example among Italian clergymen,78 fidelity to the cause was however fully supported. There was no movement of opposition to war. For his part, even the Pope did not condemn the most patriotic priests, at least in Italy.79 It seems that Benedict XV restrained Cardinal Mercier’s patriotic zeal.80 Others found fulfilment. Teilhard de Chardin wrote, ‘A hole has been made by the war in the scab of banalities and the crust of convention. A “window” onto the secret mechanisms and the deep layers of human development has been opened. A place had been made where it was possible for men to breathe an air charged with heaven’.81 He added: ‘Among men, he who has passed through fire is another kind of man’.82 Father Annibale Carletti was almost inclined to think the same. In his opinion, war was a crusade, and he became a man of action, full of courage: ‘All that I have done on the battlefields was out of respect for my duty, for a pure love of my country and because I was sustained by the faith that a better humanity would emerge from the bloody sacrifice’.83 But Carletti could not bear to return to normal, clerical life after the excitement and the strong emotions of war and he left the Church in 1918. The impasse84 between the Pope and the nations was the result of the new form of total war as well as of the gap between the Pope’s appeals and the standpoints of

77 Houlihan, Catholicism, p. 98. 78 Luigi Bruti Liberati, Il clero italiano nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1982), pp. 11–12. 79 Alberto Monticone, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200 (p. 162). 80 Jan De Volder, Benoît XV et la Belgique durant la Grande Guerre (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1996). 81 ‘Par la guerre, une déchirure s’était faite dans la croûte des banalités et des conventions; une “fenêtre” s’était ouverte sur les mécanismes secrets et les couches profondes du devenir humain; une région s’était formée où il était possible aux hommes de respirer un air chargé de ciel’; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, ‘La Nostalgie du front’, Études, 20 November 1917, pp. 458–67, quoted in La guerre: controverses éthiques et spirituelles, ed. by François Euvé, Nathalie Sarthou-Lajus and Oliver Feniet (Paris: Études, 2014), p. 62. For the English version see Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, ‘Memory of the Front’, trans. by Lanayre de Liggera [accessed 10 January 2019]. 82 ‘Parmi les hommes, celui qui a passé par le feu est une autre espèce d’homme’; La guerre, ed. by Euvé and Sarthou-Lajus, p. 61 and Teilhard de Chardin, ‘Memory of the Front’. 83 ‘Tutto quello che io ho compiuto sui campi di battaglia fu per una fedeltà al mio dovere, per un amore puro alla Patria e perché mi sosteneva la fede che dal sacrificio sanguinoso sarebbe uscita una umanità migliore’; Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 174. 84 Maurice Vaussard, ‘Discours inaugural’, in Benedetto XV, ed. by Rossini, p. 14.

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the national churches.85 Every intervention by Benedict XV gave the impression that those who criticized Germany always went a step further than the others.86 National identity prevailed over Catholicism, and even the bishops distorted the words of the Pope. In February 1915, when Benedict XV asked for prayers for peace, Amette revised the proposal, stating: The peace that the Holy Father asks us to implore is the work of justice, the peace that presupposes triumph and the rule of law […]. Since justice requires the complete reparation of the rights violated; since this reparation can only be obtained by the victory of our arms, it is therefore for victory that we pray, in praying for peace.87 The papacy was undoubtedly impartial, but it was not heeded. However, these proposals brought the Vatican closer to the idea of peace and led to Pacem in terris and Assisi. How could the churches contribute to the disarmament of hatred? Was there a Christian way based on forgiveness and reconciliation to disarm the hatred? The idea of a crusade was linked to peace. Lenin understood this evolution in August 1914: ‘This is a war of imperialism and pillaging. It is not peace we should claim. It is a priests’ watchword’.88 It would take time for the moral authority of the Pope to be recognized. The Vatican had no internal divisions but a spiritual and charitable strength. The Pope increased his activism and his donations amounted to tens of millions of gold lire,89 but this did not seem to make any difference. The papal discourses clashed with the people’s misunderstanding; yet, the policy of Benedict XV illustrates the change that began in the nineteenth century, whereby the Pope relied on the people rather than on increasingly uncertain regimes. In the various countries, the national churches chose to support the war, finding their place in the nation; they were not opposed at the end of the conflict. When Benedict XV died, the debate on his positions during the war recommenced.90 The accusations also focussed on the non-reporting of war crimes. The article ‘One of the Greatest Silences in History’ appeared in L’Avenir on 23 January 1922. The reporter Maurice Geneste recalled the lack of condemnation of German crimes: ‘His name will remain associated with the

85 See, for Italy, Daniele Menozzi, ‘La cultura cattolica davanti alle due guerre mondiali’, Bolletino della Società di Studi Valdesi, 70, 176 (1995), pp. 28–60. 86 It was the same in the 30s. See Raffaella Perin, ‘Radio Vaticana tra apostolato, propaganda e diplomazia: dalla fondazione alla fine della Seconda guerra mondiale’ (doctoral thesis, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2016), p. 107. 87 ‘La paix que le Saint Père nous invite à implorer est l’œuvre de la justice, la paix qui suppose le triomphe et le règne du droit […]. Puisque la justice exige la réparation complète des droits violés; puisque cette réparation ne peut être obtenue que par la victoire de nos armes, c’est donc pour la victoire que nous prions, en priant pour la paix’; Cardinal Amette’s sermon in Notre-Dame, February 1915, quoted by Rolland, Journal, p. 258. 88 Speech of Lenin to the Bolsheviks of Berne, quoted by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Lénine (Paris: Fayard, 2012), p. 169. 89 Vaussard, ‘Discours’, p. 16. 90 Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Tombeau pour Pie XI’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 925–35 (p. 927).

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memory of an immense abstention, one of the greatest silences in history. But what glory he would have had if he had known how to speak’.91

6. Conclusions Catholicism was mobilized and gave meaning to the conflict: The call to moral action and influence was one of the characteristics; it was not unprecedented but very remarkable of the Great War of the twentieth century. The war of pens, the war of ideas, were juxtaposed, superimposed on the operations of armies of land and sea. Each belligerent wanted to mobilize spiritual forces, moral powers, to maintain warlike energies and hopes of victory among their own people, to irritate the resistance and bring down the enemy’s morale, to capture the sympathies of public opinion in neutral countries.92 The Great War was not a period lacking faith in one’s nation, in victory and also in God. For Catholics, war was an opportunity to find redemption in order to create a new world. Revival, conversions and pilgrimages were spiritual answers to the disaster. The horror of battle and the lasting continuation of war had never taken into consideration the process of the nationalization of churches and religious fervour. However, the war went on for too long, and, in the end, the churches failed to prevent secularization. In order to champion peace, Benedict XV detached Catholicism from the war, which had become a moral evil, crusading and nationalism.93 It could not be the work of one pope alone, since the Great War mobilized churches, faith and fervour, religious words, images and practices in order to lend meaning to the ‘useless slaughter’.

91 ‘Son nom restera associé au souvenir d’une immense abstention, d’un des plus grands silences de l’Histoire. Mais quelle gloire il eût laissée s’il avait su parler’; M. Geneste, ‘Un des plus grands silences de l’histoire’, L’Avenir, 23 January 1922, reproduced in La Documentation catholique, 4, 7 (1922), p. 289. 92 ‘L’appel aux forces et aux influences morales aura été l’un des caractères, non pas inédits, mais très remarquables de la grande guerre du vingtième siècle. La guerre de plumes, la guerre d’idées, s’est juxtaposée, superposée aux opérations des armées de terre et de mer. Chaque belligérant a voulu mobiliser les forces spirituelles, les puissances morales, pour entretenir chez ses propres nationaux les énergies guerrières et les espérances de victoire, pour énerver la résistance et abattre le moral de l’ennemi, pour capter les sympathies de l’opinion publique dans les pays neutres’; Yves de La Brière, ‘Le rôle des forces morales dans la Grande Guerre’, Études, 5 March 1919, pp. 614–20. 93 John F. Pollard, ‘Nationalismes et paix: l’impossible dialogue’, in Nations et Saint-Siège au XXe siècle: actes du colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, octobre 2000), ed. by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse and Philippe Levillain (Paris: Fayard, 2003), pp. 33–46.

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Bibliography Beaupré, Nicolas, Heather Jones, and Anne Rasmussen, eds, Dans la guerre 1914–1918: accepter, endurer, refuser (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2015) Becker, Annette, La guerre et la foi: de la mort à la mémoire, 1914–1930 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994) Becker, Annette, ‘Églises et ferveurs religieuses’, in Encyclopédie de la Grande Guerre 1914–1918: histoire et culture, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker (Paris: Bayard, 2004), pp. 731–50 Bloch, Marc, Souvenirs de guerre 1914–1915 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1959) Boniface, Xavier, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014) Bruti Liberati, Luigi, Il clero italiano nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1982) Cadier-Reuss, Marguerite, Lettres à mon mari disparu (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014) Caponi, Matteo, ‘Liturgies et dévotions de guerre: le cas florentin (1914–1918)’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 149–62 Capozzola, Christopher, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) Carrère d’Encausse, Hélène, Lénine (Paris: Fayard, 2012) Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Le chauvinisme épiscopal: les cardinaux de Pise et de Paris entre catholicisme et religion de la patrie’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 17–29 Chaline, Nadine-Josette, Empêcher la guerre: le pacifisme du début du XIXe siècle à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Amiens: Encrage, 2015) Champ, Nicolas, ‘Les protestants, la mort et la foi dans la Grande Guerre’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 235–48 Cuchet, Guillaume, Le crépuscule du purgatoire (Paris: Armand Colin, 2005) Dauzet, Dominque-Marie, ‘Entre patriotisme et réalisme’, in Servir Dieu en temps de guerre: guerre et clergés à l’époque contemporaine (XIXe–XXIe siècles), ed. by Séverine BlennerMichel and Jacqueline Lalouette (Paris: Armand Colin, 2013), p. 172 De Volder, Jan, Benoît XV et la Belgique durant la Grande Guerre (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1996) Dülmen, Richard van, ‘Der deutsche Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg’, Francia, 2 (1974), pp. 347–76 Dupouey, Mireille, Cahiers, 3 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1944–45), I (1944) Ebel, Jonathan, ‘“En avant, soldats du Christ”: imaginer la religion du soldat américain’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 139–48 Ebel, Jonathan, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010) Encrevé, André, ‘Les Notes de guerre (1915–1918) du pasteur Henri Monnier, aumônier à la 66e division’, Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du protestantisme français, 161, 1 (2015), pp. 39–60

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Euvé, François, Nathalie Sarthou-Lajus and Oliver Feniet, eds, La guerre: controverses éthiques et spirituelles (Paris: Études, 2014) Fabre, Rémi, ‘Un groupe d’étudiants protestants en 1914–1918’, Le mouvement social, 24, 122 (1983), pp. 75–101 Foucauld, Charles de, Lettres à Henry de Castries (Paris: Grasset, 1952) Fouilloux, Étienne, ‘Première guerre mondiale et changement religieux en Europe’, in Les sociétés européennes et la guerre de 1914–1918: actes du colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Amiens du 8 au 11 décembre 1988, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker (Nanterre: Publications de l’Université de Nanterre, 1990), pp. 439–52 Fouilloux, Étienne, ‘Tombeau pour Pie XI’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 925–35 Geneste, Maurice, ‘Un des plus grands silences de l’histoire’, L’Avenir, 23 January 1922, reproduced in La Documentation catholique, 4, 7 (1922), p. 289 Gentile, Emilio, Qu’est-ce que le fascisme? (Paris: Gallimard, 2004) Gibelli, Antonio, L’officina della guerra: la Grande Guerra e le trasformazioni del mondo mentale (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991) Gillet, Martin Stanislas, ‘Te Deum de la victoire à Montmartre’, Semaine religieuse de Paris, 30 novembre 1918, pp. 609–18 Gugelot, Frédéric, La conversion des intellectuels au catholicisme en France (1885–1935), 2nd edn (Paris: CNRS, 2010) Gugelot, Frédéric, ‘Luçon (Louis)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 428–29 Gugelot, Frédéric, ‘La preuve de l’inexistence de Dieu: le premier des conflits mondiaux et l’abandon de la foi’, in La politique et la guerre: pour comprendre le XXe siècle européen, hommage à Jean-Jacques Becker, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and others (Paris: Agnès Viénot, 2002), pp. 216–25 Gugelot, Frédéric, ‘Union sacrée autour de la cathédrale: le cardinal Luçon dans la Grande Guerre’, in Reims 14–18: de la guerre à la paix, ed. by Jean-François Boulanger and others (Strasbourg: La Nuée Bleue, 2013), pp. 83–88 Hayward, Fernand, Un Pape méconnu: Benoît XV (Tournai: Casterman, 1955) Hirsch, Pierre, De Moïse à Jésus: confession d’un juif (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1933) Horne, John, and Alan Kramer, 1914: les atrocités allemands (Paris: Tallandier, 2005) Houlihan, Patrick J., Catholicism and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Houston, Peter, ‘South African Anglican Military Chaplains and the First World War’, South African Historical Journal 68, 2 (2016), pp. 213–29 Kirschleger, Pierre-Yves, ‘Une minorité religieuse dans la Grande Guerre: les protestants français’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 102, 1 (2016), pp. 37–56 Koselleck, Reinhart, L’expérience de l’histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1997) La Brière, Yves de, ‘Le rôle des forces morales dans la Grande Guerre’, Études, 5 March 1919, pp. 614–20 Landau, Philippe, Les Juifs de France et la Grande Guerre: un patriotisme républicain, 2nd edn (Paris: CNRS, 2008) Leconte, Jacques-Robert, L’aumônerie militaire belge: son évolution de l’époque hollandaise à l’organisation actuelle (Brussels: Musée Royal de l’Armée, 1966)

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Lobbedey, Émile, ‘L’action providentielle dans la guerre présente’, in La guerre en Artois: paroles épiscopales, documents, récits, ed. by Émile Lobbedey (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1916), p. x Luzzatto, Sergio, Padre Pio: miracoli e politica nell’Italia del Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 2007) Maffi, Pietro, Lettere pastorali, omelie, discorsi, 3 vols (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1920–31), II (1921) Mauro, Letterio, ed., Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi (Bologna: Minerva, 2008) Menozzi, Daniele, ‘La cultura cattolica davanti alle due guerre mondiali’, Bolletino della Società di Studi Valdesi, 70, 176 (1995), pp. 28–60 Menozzi, Daniele, ‘“Il più italiano dei santi, il più santo degli italiani”: la nazionalizzazione di San Francesco tra le due guerre’, in Cattolicesimo, nazione e nazionalismo, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2015), pp. 86–109 Middlebrook, Martin, The First Day in Somme, rev. edn (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2016) Monticone, Alberto, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Il prete al campo: relazioni ed epistolari di cappellani militari e preti-soldati’, in Operai e contadini nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Mario Isnenghi (Bologna: Nuova Cappelli, 1982), pp. 155–73 Mosse, George L., Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) Moulinet, Daniel, Prêtres soldats dans la Grande Guerre: les clercs bourbonnais sous le drapeaux (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014) Mugnier, Arthur, Journal 1879–1939 (Paris: Mercure de France, 1985) Muth, Carl, ‘Christus und der Krieger’, Hochland, 13, 1 (1915), pp. 105 ff. Paiano, Maria, ‘L’Italie, le pays qui abrite le pape’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 102, 1 (2016), pp. 69–88 Paiano, Maria, La preghiera e la Grande Guerra: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto in Italia (Pisa: Pacini, 2017) Perin, Raffaella, ‘Radio Vaticana tra apostolato, propaganda e diplomazia: dalla fondazione alla fine della Seconda guerra mondiale’ (doctoral thesis, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2016) Pignoloni, Vittorio, ed., I cappellani militari d’Italia nella Grande Guerra: relazioni e testimonianze (1915–1919) (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 2014) Plater, Charles, ed., Catholic soldiers (London: Longmans & Co., 1919) Pollard, John F., ‘Nationalismes et paix: l’impossible dialogue’, in Nations et Saint-Siège au XXe siècle: actes du colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, octobre 2000), ed. by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse and Philippe Levillain (Paris: Fayard, 2003), pp. 33–46 Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Pourquoi nous sommes libres penseurs: deux enquêtes, avec de nombreuses réponses (Herblay: Éditions de l’Idée Libre, n.d. [1939]) Procacci, Giovanna, Dalla rassegnazione alla rivolta: mentalità e comportamenti politici nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Bulzoni, 1999)

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Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Riley, Alexander, and Philippe Besnard, eds, Un ethnologue dans les tranchées, août 1914– avril 1915: lettres de Robert Hertz à sa femme Alice (Paris: CNRS, 2002) Rivière, Jacques, À la trace de Dieu (Paris: Gallimard, 1925) Rolland, Romain, Journal des années de guerre 1914–1919 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1952) Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Rumi, Giorgio, ed., Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990) Sertillanges, Antonin-Dalmace, La paix française: discours prononcé en l’église SainteMadeleine le lundi 10 décembre 1917 en la cérémonie religieuse et patriotique présidée par S. E. le cardinal-archevêque de Paris (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1917) Stern, Fritz, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, Genèse d’une pensée: lettres (1914–1919) (Paris: Grasset, 1961) Tixhon, Axel, ‘L’évêque de Namur et son diocèse dans la Grande Guerre’, in 1914–1918, le Dieu de la guerre: religion et patriotisme en Luxembourg belge, ed. by Sébastien Pierre and Benoît Amez (Bastogne: Musée en Piconrue, 2013), pp. 107–10 Werth, Léon, Clavel soldat (Paris: Éditions Viviane Hamy, 1993)

Lucia Ceci

Religion in War and the Legitimization of Violence

1.

A Crusade without the Pope?

‘The cause that has moved us is just, and our war is a holy war’. With these words, on 2 June 1915, Italian Prime Minister Antonio Salandra officially announced from the Capitoline Hill Italy’s alignment with the anti-German crusade that had been declared months earlier by the Entente.1 For the entire duration of the conflict, propaganda on both fronts insisted on the religious nature of the ongoing fight: a planetary war between chosen peoples. In recent years, the role of the Church and of Catholics in the Great War has been the object of a new type of analysis. In the wake of the ‘cultural turn’ promoted by the historiography of World War I,2 attention has turned away from treating the organized Catholic movement, or its leaders, towards looking at the religious culture of war and the dynamic of semantics that developed within it. It is a corpus of pervasive representations, ritual practices, ethical models, behavioural stereotypes and emotional fervour that fused religious faith to patriotic zeal in order to nourish spiritual consensus for the conflict and to cement the nation in a struggle against the enemy.3 It was a religion of war that had to respond to a variety of emotional urgencies

1 ‘Giusta è la causa che ci ha mossi e la nostra guerra è una guerra santa’; Antonio Salandra, La nostra guerra è santa: discorso detto in Campidoglio il 2 giugno 1915 (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1915), p. 4. 2 Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 25–30. 3 In this sense, a very influential interpretation is offered by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18, retrouver la guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 2000). It is translated into English as 14–18: Understanding the Great War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014). Already in the 90s, the road had been paved to a wealth of research into the religious history of World War I by Annette Becker in her La guerre et la foi: de la mort à la mémoire, 1914–1930 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994). It is also important to mention her later article: ‘L’histoire religieuse de la guerre 1914–1918’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 86, 217 (2000), pp. 539–49. For a short but effective historiographical summary, see Catherine Maurer, ‘Vingt ans d’histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre en France et en Allemagne: où en est l’histoire des formes de piété?’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 108 (2014), pp. 19–29. Among recent studies, a particularly rich one is Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 285–302 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118776

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and therefore, from time to time, appeared as a factor of cohesion and discipline, of atonement and consolation, and of heroism and piety. The pronounced religious connotation imprinted on the war mobilization was then translated into narratives that idealized the divine benevolence accorded to each side’s forces and transformed the war into a crusade. The consecration of armies to the Sacred Heart thus sanctified the military confrontation, making it not only a holy war, but a war of the holy.4 Such a perspective expands the timeline, both backwards and forwards. On the one hand, the vision of military conflict in terms of a crusade was fuelled by the vocabulary that, in the previous century, had fed patriotic discourse by sanctifying the nation, nationalizing religion and defining normative male roles with distinctive warrior traits.5 On the other hand, the fusion between the nationalization of faith and the myth of the mother country unravelled during the following decades.6 In this context, the religious history of the Great War increasingly moved Benedict XV to the sidelines. If it is true, as Alphonse Dupront was one of the first to write, that the West rediscovered its holy war in the world conflict,7 the Pope chose not to conduct it because his children belonged to both camps. The war had mobilized two thirds of the Catholics of the time, 124 million with the Entente and 64 million with the Central Powers. Benedict’s aspiration to impartiality, therefore, became the object of a symmetrical rejection. For Clemenceau he was ‘the Kraut Pope’ while for Ludendorff he was ‘the French Pope’. For other belligerent governments he was a nefarious propagator of defeatism.8 Yet it is possible to trace some lines of connection between the general policy espoused by Benedict XV and the guidelines adopted by the hierarchies of the countries involved in the conflict.9 Throughout its entire duration, Pope Benedict XV condemned the catastrophe of war in ever stronger terms: from ‘horrible slaughter’,10

Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014). Finally, in Italian, see: Religione, nazione e guerra nel primo conflitto mondiale, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (= Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006)); Carlo Stiaccini, L’anima religiosa della Grande Guerra: testimonianze popolari tra fede e superstizione (Rome: Aracne, 2009); and La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015). 4 Sante Lesti, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015). 5 Alberto Mario Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin: Einaudi, 2000). 6 George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). For the Italian context, see Lucia Ceci, The Vatican and Mussolini’s Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 44–58. 7 Alphonse Dupront, Le mythe de croisade, 4 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), II, p. 1195. 8 ‘Le pape boche’; ‘der französische Papst’; Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82. 9 Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 22–31. 10 Benedict XV, Allorché fummo chiamati, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7 (1915), pp. 375–77 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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to ‘suicide of civilized Europe’,11 to his famous ‘useless slaughter’.12 These condemnations had no effect against the immense death and violence made possible on the battlefields by the use of new military techniques. The condemnations accompanied efforts to implement diplomatic mediation to halt the sacrifice of millions of human lives. Nevertheless, on a doctrinal level, Benedict XV did not aim at innovations in the traditional interpretation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century warfare, which identified armed conflict as a providential occasion to reverse the course of modern society and to restore an order that was subject to ecclesiastic directives. He was not interested in introducing theological ruptures nor was it his personal style of governance. Pope Benedict reasoned like a diplomat and a politician. The reality of a war that was devastating Europe, wreaking terrible destruction and having Christians massacring other Christians, could only appear diabolical and unsustainable to him. But it was most probably precisely for this reason that he avoided a doctrinal intervention that could be used to exhume theories on just and unjust wars. Why weaken his comprehensive condemnation of the conflict by soliciting theoretical discussions?13 Better to focus on political diplomatic objectives and remain flexible in order to achieve them, deploying relief efforts across the board in favour of fighters of every nation and their families.14 At a time when planetary war was driving the chosen peoples who were facing one another to define the boundaries of their missions, in not repudiating the doctrine of a ‘just war’ the Pope left intact an interpretive framework that allowed national ecclesiastical institutions to wield it in favour of their own war deployment. The myth of Christianity thus wound up representing a reservoir from which to draw a discursive rhetoric that absolved the nation and moulded the contours of a political religiosity capable of mobilizing people. The national churches of the opposing sides tapped into this dialogue, launching loaded condemnations that

11 ‘Suicidio dell’Europa civile’, as in his letter of 4 March 1916 to Cardinal Vicar General of Rome Basilio Pompilj, with whom the Pope exhorted Catholics to give alms for war orphans, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 3, 8 (1916), pp. 58–60. 12 ‘Inutile strage’; Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. An analysis of the document and its editorial process can be found in Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra, pp. 36–46. On its political-historical significance, see instead Giovanni Vian, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, in Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 736–43. 13 This aspect is insisted on by Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 175. 14 On Benedict XV’s diplomatic activities, see in particular John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999); and Nathalie RenotonBeine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004). On the action carried out by the Christian churches in offering aid to prisoners, see Alberto Monticone, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella grande guerra, 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013).

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were mixtures of religious and political rhetoric, assigning genealogies of errors to their enemy while claiming their own inheritance as the righteously armed wrath of Providence. Along these lines fall well-known examples such as the French Church’s claim of a divine mission, which attributed to the defeat of Luther’s homeland a recovery of the ecclesiastic guidance of the European consortium, or the German Church’s inverse claim that Germany was in a fight against the country that had dissolved the rights of God in the revolutionary principles of 1789.15 The victory of one’s own country represented the condition for re-establishing an international order inspired by Christian principles.16 These motives, sustained by traditional Catholic loyalty toward the governments in office, were translated, with all of their trappings, into the national churches’ complete support of the wartime mobilization of their respective countries. The fear expressed by Benedict XV, from the very first months of the conflict, that ‘human passions, rancour and hatred’ would overtake ‘the sacred enclosures dedicated to divine worship’ and take possession of God’s ministers17 became a reality. The Pope attempted to put a stop to it through appeals to moderate the excessive exposure of Catholics to nationalism as well as to a spiritual mobilization aimed at weakening the bellicose tones being attributed to the religion.18

2. The Mysticism of War and Addiction to Violence: The Italian Situation The tendency to identify national victory with the victory of Christianity, which implied the self- sanctification of a nation at arms, had already occurred in Italy during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya (1911–12). A large part of the episcopate had attributed to it the significance of a modern-day crusade to affirm Christian civilization.19 The culture of war established at that crossroads had been extended into commemorative 15 I will limit myself to pointing out, from the vast literature: Heinrich Missalla, ‘Gott mit uns’: die deutsche katholische Kriegspredigt 1914–1918 (Munich: Kösel, 1968); Arlie J. Hoover, God, Germany and Britain in the Great War: A Study in Clerical Nationalism (New York: Praeger, 1989); Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War, pp. 101–21. On the connection between faith in God and patriotic fervour in the context of a religion of war, see Annette Becker, ‘Églises et ferveurs religieuses’, in Encyclopédie de la Grande Guerre, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker (Paris: Perrin, 2012), pp. 731–50. 16 Umberto Mazzone, ‘A Religious War? Suggestions from the First World War’, Annali di storia dell’esegesi, 26 (2009), pp. 251–77. 17 ‘Le umane passioni, i rancori e gli odi’; ‘i sacri recinti destinati al culto divino’; noted in ‘La Chiesa e i suoi ministri nelle amarezze dell’ora presente’, L’Osservatore Romano, 8 October 1914. On the basis of a page in Baron Carlo Monti’s diary, Antonio Scottà has attributed the text to the pontiff; see Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, p. 176. 18 Maria Paiano, ‘Benedetto XV e la preghiera cattolica durante la Grande Guerra: il caso italiano’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 108 (2014), pp. 259–77. 19 Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Soffrire, ubbidire, combattere: prime note sull’episcopato e la guerra libica (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 27–44.

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practices aimed at honouring those fallen in the colonial campaign. This created narratives in which century-old anti-Muslim hatred had lent frequently violent tones to the sanctification of the homeland at war and the glorification of its martyrs.20 During the world war, the divine mission of the army at war was anchored to the myth of the ‘Primate’, the fruit of the historical link to the Holy See, and to the image of a nation chosen by God as the cradle of Catholicism. These were, however, stylistic features that rarely achieved systematic or original elaboration.21 The conformational paradigm of a holy war for Italy and for Christian civilization penetrated the language of the men of the Church, but the war culture based on violence, on hatred for one’s enemies, and the vision of military conflict in terms of a crusade were not efficient enough to constitute a legitimization of the violence unleashed or the killing during the war. Such narratives certainly helped validate an ethics of the conflict, nourishing popular consensus for it, but only rarely to the point of transforming the war into a crusade. The main category used by the bishops, priests, military chaplains and the Catholic press to lend meaning to the tragic destiny of death in battle was that of sacrifice. It was a concept with many elusive elements that influenced the nationalist and patriotic pedagogy of modern political communities.22 In the bishops’ words, in Catholic publications and in the liturgies of mourning, it assumed the connotation of martyrdom, assimilated to Christ’s sacrifice on Mount Calvary.23 Needless to say, the exaltation of sacrifice was not specific to the discourse developed by the Catholic Church to give meaning to death in battle.24 Nevertheless, the introduction of rhetoric sustaining war and the worship of country through the symbolic device of sacrifice was, for the Italian Church, a point of arrival after a tiring journey. The reality of a conflict marked by the novelty of cold, industrial technology, which perpetuated and amplified death and ancient horrors to an excess,25 showed the inadequacy of the idea of sacrifice in war as atonement for the collective and for individuals. It had previously represented a junction in the reflections of Joseph de Maistre and was widely accepted

20 Matteo Caponi, ‘Liturgie funebri e sacrificio patriottico: i riti di suffragio per i caduti nella guerra di Libia (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 10, 2 (2013), pp. 437–59; Matteo Caponi and Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘“Ai morti per una più Grande Italia”: un monumento mancato ai caduti in Libia (1911–1913)’, Mondo contemporaneo, 9, 1 (2013), pp. 115–52. 21 In this sense, the circumstance of the Florentine Diocese is very significant; see a reconstruction in Matteo Caponi, Una Chiesa in guerra: sacrificio e mobilitazione nella diocesi di Firenze, 1911–1928 (Rome: Viella, 2018). 22 Alberto Mario Banti, L’onore della nazione: identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII secolo alla Grande Guerra (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), pp. 145–57; also see note 24 below. 23 See Sacrificarsi per la patria: l’integrazione dei cattolici italiani nello Stato nazionale, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (= Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011)). 24 See Mondher Kilani, Guerra e sacrificio, ed. by Annamaria Rivera (Bari: Dedalo, 2008). On the theme of sacrifice for one’s country in Italian national discourse, see also Alberto Mario Banti, Sublime madre nostra: la nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo (Rome: Laterza, 2011). 25 See Antonio Gibelli, L’officina della guerra: la Grande Guerra e le trasformazioni del mondo mentale (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991).

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in nineteenth-century Catholic thought.26 In a syncretism of religious and patriotic sentiment, the mysticism of sacrifice was established to confer on the ‘disordered, senseless and unreasonable’27 death of thousands of young men and the grief of their families an order, sense and reasoning that made it comprehensible and acceptable. As far as the Italian context is concerned, this was already the approach chosen by Father Agostino Gemelli in October 1915, when — dressed as a captain with gloves, spurs and whip — he was training officials and soldiers in a field hospital in Udine,28 leaving out the hate speech (for which he had attracted Rome’s censure in August)29 against the ‘eternal enemies of Italy’ with their ‘hard heads and beer-fattened hearts’.30 It was the idea of the destiny of an entire ‘generation sacrificed’ to make society better, that Miles Christianus (‘Soldier of Christ’) wrote about in the pages of Vita e Pensiero,31 translating and paraphrasing passages out of Henri Massis’s book on sacrifice that attributed the meaning of a profound moral and religious regeneration to the cloister of the trenches and the holocaust of thousands of young men.32 There were the sermons by Archbishop Angelo Bartolomasi, Italy’s Military Ordinary, on the theme of ‘sacrifice and love’, which attributed a sanctifying and martyrial value to dying for one’s country.33 Furthermore, the invitation to endure material hardships extended by Archbishop Pietro Maffi of Pisa to those who were protesting against the lack of wheat and the war.34 More generally, there were devices symbolizing sacrifice in the pastoral letters of the Italian episcopate, which supported the war discourse and the worship of the mother country with some recurring motifs: ‘the inescapable need for sacrifice to appease divine justice, the greater salvific value of the sacrifice of innocent and the — apparently only metaphorical but in actual fact substantial — link between such sacrifices and that of Christ’.35

26 See Daniele Menozzi, ‘Regalità sociale di Cristo e secolarizzazione: alle origini della Quas primas’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 16, 1 (1995), pp. 79–113, and Giovanni Miccoli, ‘La guerra nella storia e nella teologia cristiana: un problema a molteplici facce’, in Pace e guerra nella Bibbia e nel Corano, ed. by Piero Stefani and Giovanni Menestrina (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2002), pp. 91–110. 27 ‘Disordinata, insensata, irragionevole’; Antonio Gibelli, La grande guerra degli italiani: 1915–1918 (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009), p. 342. 28 Lesti, Riti di guerra, pp. 116–21. 29 Lesti, Riti di guerra, pp. 126–28. 30 ‘Eterno nemico dell’Italia’; ‘testa dura e dal cuore grasso di birra’; Agostino Gemelli, ‘Quanto durerà la guerra attuale?’, Vita e Pensiero, 2, 2 (1915), pp. 81–82 (p. 82). 31 Miles Christianus, ‘Il sacrificio di una generazione’, Vita e Pensiero, 4, 44 (1917), pp. 531–36. 32 Henri Massis, Le sacrifice 1914–1918 (Paris: Plon, 1917). 33 Sante Lesti, ‘Autorità, dovere, sacrificio: il discorso di guerra di mons. Angelo Bartolomasi’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 45–62. 34 See Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Per una più grande Italia’: il cardinale Pietro Maffi e la prima guerra mondiale (Pisa: Pacini, 2015), pp. 81–87. 35 ‘L’ineluttabile necessità di sacrifici per placare la giustizia divina, il valore salvifico maggiore del sacrificio degli innocenti, il legame apparentemente solo analogico, ma di fatto sostanziale, tra questi sacrifici e il sacrificio di Cristo’; Marcello Malpensa, ‘Il sacrificio in guerra nelle lettere pastorali dell’episcopato’, Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008), pp. 905–24 (p. 913). On the standpoints taken by the Italian bishops, see also Alberto Monticone, ‘I vescovi italiani e la guerra’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by

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From another point of view, the religion of sacrifice sustained minimal and apathetic forms of ‘consensus’ and helped define the boundaries of an ‘ethics of resignation’, a terrain to which Catholics, even in the eyes of military and political authorities, boasted of having more right than anyone else.36 At the end of the conflict, the ‘indisputability of supreme sacrifice’37 made by the young men who had died in the war made it possible to obliterate the concreteness and horror of death, transforming resentment into pride for the burnt offering sacrificed to the country and private mourning into a collective consensus for the nation.38 However, the conviction that death in battle had, in itself, martyrial and salvific value must have already been widespread in 1916 if Bishop Giovanni Maria Pellizzari of Piacenza had to denounce the belief that those who died in war automatically achieved paradise, reminding the faithful that war was ‘neither baptism nor martyrdom for the faith’: We have learned that the idea has been spreading among many that those who die in war certainly always enter paradise. Let us remember that war is neither baptism nor martyrdom for the faith. In war, those who offer their lives in obedience to the commands of authorities, and do so having resigned themselves to God’s will, certainly acquire great merit and will be rewarded by the Lord. But in order to acquire this merit, it is necessary for this to occur in God’s grace.39 Bartolomasi, who from June 1915 represented the highest ecclesiastic disciplinary authority over all the military chaplains, moving tirelessly along the front lines to celebrate Mass, assemble the chaplains and bless the soldiers,40 was aware of how the language of mother country and war had assimilated the religious lexicon and

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Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 627–59, and Marcello Malpensa, ‘I vescovi italiani davanti alla guerra’, in Un paese in guerra: la mobilitazione civile in Italia, ed. by Daniele Menozzi, Giovanna Procacci and Simonetta Soldani (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 293–315. ‘Etica della rassegnazione’; Mario Isnenghi and Giorgio Rochat, La Grande Guerra: 1914–1918 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 240–44. ‘Indiscutibilità del sacrificio supremo’; this expression comes from Mario Isnenghi, ‘La Grande Guerra’, in I luoghi della memoria: strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita, ed. by Mario Isnenghi (Rome: Laterza, 1997), pp. 273–310 (p. 301). In this sense, as concerns Italy, see ‘Non omnis moriar’: gli opuscoli di necrologio per i caduti italiani nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Fabrizio Dolci and Oliver Janz (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003), and Oliver Janz, ‘Il culto dei caduti’, in Gli italiani in guerra, ed. by Isnenghi, III, pp. 905–16. This is an obvious reference to George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 70–106. ‘Siamo venuti a conoscenza che fra molti si è diffusa l’idea che chi muore in guerra senza altro guadagni il paradiso. Ricordiamoci che la guerra non è né un battesimo né un martirio per la fede. Chi in guerra offre la sua vita in obbedienza ai comandi delle autorità, e lo fa con rassegnazione ai voleri di Dio certamente acquista un gran merito, e sarà dal Signore ricompensato; ma per acquistarsi questo merito, è necessario che sia in grazia di Dio’; Malpensa, ‘Il sacrificio’, p. 919. See Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980), p. 10.

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assumed a sacred dimension of its own, as he wrote in a page of his notes that bore the title ‘Incongruenze’ (‘Incongruities’): Those who fall for their country are called martyrs. The Nation, the cause and ideals for which those who fight are called holy. […] Podgora and San Michele… have become Calvaries. The work of the medics and the lady nurses is a priesthood. Whenever, then, it is necessary to merely mention religion and Christianity in official documents, vague formulas are used: noble sentiments, duties or religious sentiments.41 Associating the concept of martyrdom for one’s mother country and that for the sake of faith in Christ, the classic technique of Risorgimento narrative,42 was the core of Dominican Reginaldo Giuliani’s preaching. A highly decorated chaplain, first of the 55º Reggimento Fanteria ‘Marche’ (1916–17) then with the Arditi corps (1917–19), he was destined to enter the Fascist regime’s pantheon and, after his death in battle at the Uarieu Pass during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, into Catholic hagiography.43 Homeland, blood and sacrifice were the codewords that marked his sermons on the front. Gathered in a small posthumous volume entitled Il Vangelo della domenica spiegato ai miei soldati (The Sunday Gospel Explained to my Soldiers), he practically superimposed ‘martyrs for religion and for the country’: This intense love for one’s brothers (because the church is a gathering of brothers), this heroic sense of community, also teaches us the love of one’s own nation, one’s own race, one’s own blood. Martyrs, like Jesus, have given up their lives for their neighbours. And you too, O good heroes of the country, sacrifice yourselves for your brothers! In one of the terrible battles of sorrowful Carso, a chaplain found a Bersagliere with his arms and legs hideously crushed

41 ‘Chi cade per la patria è detto martire. | La Patria, la causa e ideali per cui si combatte sono appellati santi. […] | Il Podgora e S. Michele… diventano Calvarii. | L’operato dei medici e delle Dame Inf[ermiere] Sacerdozio. | Quando poi nei documenti ufficiali si deve fare anche solo accenno alla religione e al cristianesimo si ricorre alle vaghe formule: nobili sentimenti, doveri o sentimenti religiosi’; Lesti, ‘Autorità, dovere, sacrificio’, p. 57. 42 Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento, and Tommaso Caliò, ‘Ai confini dell’agiografia’, Sanctorum, 8–9 (2011–12), pp. 101–20. 43 Born in 1887, Giuliani had been called to arms in 1916 and was deployed to Carso and Tonale with the 55º Reggimento Fanteria ‘Marche’. After Caporetto, he joined the Arditi corps of the 3ª Armata and was bunkered with them along the Piave front. On the eve before assaults he would exhort the ‘Fiamme Nere’ as their commander, ‘God guides you and Italy is with you!’ (‘Dio vi guida e l’Italia è con voi!’). For more information on this Dominican priest, see Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Le prime prove di un mito fascista: P. Reginaldo Giuliani nella Grande Guerra’, Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008), pp. 976–92 and Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Nazione e provvidenza: P. Reginaldo Giuliani tra Fiume ed Etiopia (1919–1936)’, Passato e Presente, 28, 81 (2010), pp. 43–67. On the use of his image in Fascist and Catholic propaganda during the years of the war in Ethiopia, see Lucia Ceci, Il papa non deve parlare: Chiesa, fascismo e guerra d’Etiopia (Rome: Laterza, 2010), pp. 126 ff.

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among the broken wire fences of the Austrian trenches. But his face, young and tanned, was radiant, almost transfigured. […] May the martyrs for religion and for fatherland teach you how to bear patiently and serenely the suffering that looms over soldiers’ duties. And glory and happiness will not fail, one day, to surround your priceless heroism!44 The idea of the salvific and purifying value of sacrifice was amplified after the rout at Caporetto in circumstances that were marked by a cultural totalization of the conflict.45 At that point, the incitement to sacrifice was also extended to the population, who were called upon to take charge of the collective destiny of the nation, expanding the sanctification of the Italian war. This went hand in hand with the criminalization of the image of the enemy, who were guilty of perpetrating violence against women, children and the sick, and of extending their savage fury to the destruction of sacred places, as was seen for example, in the bombardment of the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua.46 Thanks to new historical research, which has broadened the spectrum of sources (soldiers’ diaries, ex voto objects, prayer manuals and holy pictures), we know that, along the battle lines as well as at the rear, there was a constant effort to mobilize believers through symbolic liturgical forms that were cloaked in a political dimension, including the Te Deum, tridua, the blessing of scapulars, holy water and rites of mourning.47 These were initiatives that, with the multifarious works of assistance and news offices for the families of soldiers, led Catholics to accept the violence of war as an inevitable fact, to give meaning to the mass death, to ennoble its drama and, to some extent, trivialize it and make it banal, as if it were part of everyday life. On the other hand, attempts were made to stem the soldiers’ rampant appeal to devotional fervour and superstitious rituals that were foreign to Catholic doctrine by means of practices and prayers with a Christ-centred structure.48 Within this framework, field

44 ‘Martiri della religione e della patria’; ‘Questo amore intenso dei propri fratelli (poiché la chiesa è l’adunanza dei fratelli) questo senso eroico della collettività, ci insegni pure l’amore della propria nazione, della propria razza, del proprio sangue. I martiri, come Gesù, si sono immolati per il prossimo: e voi pure, o buoni eroi della patria, vi sacrificate per i vostri fratelli! In uno dei terribili combattimenti del Carso doloroso, un cappellano ritrovava tra i reticolati infranti delle trincee austriache un bersagliere dalle braccia e dalle gambe orribilmente sfracellate. Ma il suo volto (un volto giovane e abbronzato) era raggiante e quasi trasfigurato. […] I martiri della religione e della patria siano i vostri maestri nel sopportare con pazienza e con serenità le pene che incombono sui doveri dei soldati: e la gloria e la felicità non mancheranno di circondare un giorno il vostro inestimabile eroismo!’; Reginaldo Giuliani, Il Vangelo della domenica spiegato ai miei soldati (Turin: Stella di San Domenico, 1936), pp. 146–47. 45 See Becker, ‘Églises et ferveurs religieuses’. 46 Francesco Piva, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015), p. 123. 47 For example, see Stiaccini, L’anima religiosa; Maria Paiano, ‘La preghiera della patria in guerra: le immagini di devozione’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 409–21; Matteo Caponi, ‘Il culto dei caduti nella Chiesa cattolica fiorentina’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 63–90. 48 Along with the studies cited in the preceding note, see Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra.

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Masses, celebrated outdoors, often surrounded by more than picturesque mountain scenes, were promoted and spectacularized.49 An iconography — destined to enter the collective imagination thanks to the circulation of photographs in the Catholic press and to its being extensively reproposed in the 20s and 30s — thus became codified. On the one hand, there was the display of the youthful, male fighters lining up in front of an altar. On the other, officers and troops were shown genuflecting during a consecration.50 The latter gesture held great symbolic value because it was performed by the men in a group, the army, which was devoted exclusively to submission to the king and to military hierarchies. The narratives proposed by a warlike religion, however, remain silent on one essential aspect: the concreteness of violence in war, in particular, of inflicted violence. In war one ‘is killed’ but does not kill.51 In the Italian context, one exception existed to the complete avoidance of the moral question of the act of killing. For soldiers, especially Catholic soldiers, the pamphlet Mentre si combatte (While Fighting), conceived after a speech given by Egilberto Martire, who became its editor, proposed a catechesis of war. Its four, small pages, accompanied by images, were distributed to thousands of fighters and included brief biographies of warrior saints, prayers and uplifting episodes of war. The pages were written in a simple language, aimed at readers who had been asked to internalize the duty to kill and be killed.52 The paper of the trenches, of which twelve million copies were distributed between 1915 and 1918, explained the war by resorting to evangelical and theological concepts repackaged in patriotic tones. A captivating religious dimension emanated from its many sketches, its new reports and the medallions that dotted the periodical, all leading back to the heart of the Christian tradition images and categories used by the civil religion of the Risorgimento. Starting from the hagiographic models rooted in the sacrificial martyrdom of ‘young’ saints,53 it offered Catholic instruction support in its claim to its own superiority, in its claim to the original monopoly of such symbols. However, the catechetical argument did not escape the agonizing contradiction suffered by young Catholic soldiers: how can the duty of killing during war be reconciled with the divine commandment ‘Do not kill’ and the evangelical exhortations to love one’s neighbour

49 On the importance of using nature to help mask the realities of war, see Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, pp. 107–25. 50 Piva, Uccidere senza odio, p. 125. 51 Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (New York: Basic Books, 1999); and John Keegan, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), pp. 320 ff. 52 The message disseminated in the pamphlet Mentre si combatte during the years of the conflict was reconstructed by Piva in his Uccidere senza odio, pp. 113–26. 53 On the hagiographic stylistic features of the ‘young’ saint, see Bambini santi: rappresentazioni dell’infanzia e modelli agiografici, ed. by Anna Benvenuti Papi and Elena Giannarelli (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991); Pietro Stella, ‘Santi per giovani e santi giovani nell’Ottocento’, in Santi, culti, simboli nell’età della secolarizzazione (1815–1915), ed. by Emma Fattorini (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1997), pp. 563–86; and Maria Angelica Genovese, ‘Pier Giorgio Frassati: un “caso” agiografico’, in Santi del Novecento: storia, agiografia, canonizzazioni, ed. by Francesco Scorza Barcellona (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1998), pp. 83–102.

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and forgive one’s enemy?54 If, in his many talks, the indefatigable Capuchin preacher Roberto da Nove never grew tired of explaining that, in the hierarchy of earthly loves, love for humanity was subordinate to love for one’s family and for one’s country,55 the response was put in even simpler terms in the pages of the paper of the trenches: in war, the young Catholic had a duty to kill, but should ‘kill without hatred’. The piety of the Gospel, it stated, did not diminish the heroism of a Catholic soldier. On the contrary, young Catholics were there, where the melee was most violent, fighting like lions and not ashamed to bear the image of Our Lady on their breast, because they were fighting with a soul purified of hatred.56 The message was presented in editorials, letters and prayers for the fallen soldiers. The most popular text was perhaps the prayer penned by the soldier poet Giosuè Borsi, who was destined to become an icon of Catholic patriotism shortly before being killed on the Carso in November of 1915. I will fight with pride and joy, without hatred or rancour. […] I also pray with all my heart for our enemies and brothers, whose dear and precious blood I may perhaps have to shed. Among them there may be fighting many of your children who love you, are good and intelligent, fond of their homes, parents, wives and small children. Never let me forget it, O Lord, so that I don’t throw myself at them with cruel or barbaric or ferocious fury. Instead, offer me the means of exercising on the battle fields, with enemies as well as friends, some Christian virtue of piety, of succour and of love.57 Outside his public communications, however, Borsi left one of the few written testimonies illustrating the unspeakable: the subtle fascination that the soldiers in his regiment felt for killing, yet another reason why he described them as ‘the best in the world’. I have a soldier named F., who arrogantly strides from house to house with a fine Austrian karabiner in hand and, as soon as he finds a favourable spot, takes aim at

54 The question also tormented Don Primo Mazzolari who, writing to his friend Don Guido Astori, chaplain of the Alpini corps in Carnia, wavered between the certainty of fighting without hatred (‘we don’t hate, your heart does not know hatred’) and horror for the death (‘martyrdom’) of so many young men. See Primo Mazzolari, Quasi una vita: lettere a Guido Astori (1908–1958), ed. by Guido Astori (Bologna: EDB, 1979), pp. 27–29. On Mazzolari’s suffering at having participated in World War I, see Giancarlo Minighin, ‘Don Primo Mazzolari e la Grande Guerra’, Studi storici, 43, 1 (2002), pp. 107–51. 55 Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Poeta, santo, eroe: il mito di Giosuè Borsi nella Grande Guerra (1915–1918)’, Memoria e ricerca, 21, 44 (2013), pp. 107–22 (p. 113). 56 ‘Uccidere senza odio’; Piva, Uccidere senza odio, p. 119. 57 ‘Combatterò con alterezza e con gioia, senza odio né livore. […] Prego anche con tutto il cuore per i nostri nemici e fratelli, di cui forse dovrò versare il sangue caro e prezioso. Tra essi militeranno molti dei tuoi figli che ti amano, buoni, intelligenti, affezionati alla loro casa, ai genitori, alle mogli, ai piccoli figli. Fa che non lo dimentichi mai, o Signore, per non gettarmi su loro con accanimento crudele e barbaro e feroce. Anzi, offrimi il modo d’esercitare sui campi di battaglia, coi nemici non meno che con gli amici, qualche virtù cristiana di pietà, di soccorso e d’amore’; ‘Una preghiera di Giosuè Borsi’, Mentre si combatte, 21 October 1917. On the construction and permanence of Borsi’s myth, see Cavagnini, ‘Poeta, santo, eroe’; Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘L’ombra lunga del fascismo: sul mito di Giosuè Borsi nell’Italia repubblicana’, Studi storici, 60, 3 (2014), pp. 759–78.

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the posted lookouts as soon as any of them are imprudent enough to poke their heads out. A little while ago he killed an Austrian soldier that way and came to tell me, very pleased with himself. And he is no exception. Our soldiers, you may say, are the best in the world.58 If the exaltation derived from killing was silenced, support for the war, sought even in religious terms on a devotional, welfare and propagandistic terrain, gave rise to an addiction to physical violence and, not infrequently, to celebrating it.59 In the years immediately following the war, liturgies of mourning, with their emotional charge, became occasions for the communities shaped by the conflict to see themselves bound by a close connection among nation, the violence of war and Catholicism.60 This was part of the terrain on which, in the centres and on the outskirts, an ideological harmony arose between Church and Fascism. This harmony did not lead to a hegemonic affirmation of the clerical Fascist paradigm as much as to a difficulty in understanding the true nature of Mussolini’s movement (itself the bearer of an exclusive political mysticism) and in the prevailing perception of sharing common codes with it.61 History has rightly pointed out how the Great War led to a tangible rallying point between Catholicism and the nation and to a redefinition of Catholic identity.62 More recently, attention has focussed on the connections between the war experience and the spread, even among the ranks of organized Catholicism, of forms of political violence: planned initiatives, a fascination for it, and underestimations of it. In the context of an extensive social and political conflict that troubled the arrival of peace, memory of the war was actually expressed in the relaxation of inhibitions toward physical violence, in the use of weapons by those who had fought in the trenches and by the youngest generation lamenting their having been left out of an adventure that had already taken on sacred tones.63 Between the end of the war and the early twenties, mental and behavioural traits inherited from the war experience

58 ‘Ho un mio soldato che si chiama F., il quale se la gira tutto superbo di casa in casa, con un bel moschettone austriaco in pugno, e, appena trova un punto propizio, piglia di mira le vedette appostate, non appena queste hanno l’imprudenza di cacciar fuori la testa. Poco fa ha ucciso così un soldato austriaco, ed è venuto, a raccontarmelo soddisfattissimo. E non è un’eccezione. I nostri soldati, puoi dirlo, sono i migliori del mondo’; Piva, Uccidere senza odio, p. 121. 59 See Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War, especially the conclusion. On Germany, see instead Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, pp. 159–81. 60 For example, see the case of the Florentine Church (Caponi, ‘Il culto’). 61 Ceci, The Vatican, pp. 81–82. 62 Of the many studies, I shall restrict myself to mentioning Guido Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici: fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), pp. 99 ff.; Renato Moro, ‘Nazionalismo e cattolicesimo’, in Federzoni e la storia della destra italiana nella prima metà del Novecento, ed. by Benedetto Coccia and Umberto Gentiloni Silveri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 49–112; Renato Moro, ‘Nazione, cattolicesimo e regime fascista’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 1, 1 (2004), pp. 129–47; and Francesco Traniello, Religione cattolica e Stato nazionale: dal Risorgimento al secondo dopoguerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), pp. 29 ff. 63 Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), especially pp. 193–214.

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radicalized, even in Catholic circles, the legitimacy of having recourse to a holy thrashing for political ends. After years of preaching the holy anti-German war and of legitimizing armed violence against an enemy, it was easy to give in to the fascination for conclusive violence, especially since the bludgeon was less deadly than the machine gun and the enemy deadlier for religion. If it was lawful to go to war to kill the Austrians and Germans in 1915 — Don Carlo Rossi wrote a few days before the March on Rome — was it not legitimate, in the post-war period, to defend sacred things and persons with clubs?64 In this climate, armed squads of young Catholics called arditi bianchi or avanguardisti bianchi gathered in Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia, but also in Florence. Their intent was to oppose the socialists and, to a lesser extent, the Fascists, in order to defend religious events or to sabotage demonstrations that were considered scandalous. They were young, physically active and picked out mainly from athletes: cyclists, runners and swimmers. In Florence, between August and September 1920, a diocesan youth federation of the Giovane Guardia or Avanguardia (Young Guards, or Advance Guard) formed. It was an assembly chosen from a religious, physical and political point of view, obliged to pay absolute obedience to Catholic leaders and endowed with its own symbol of identity, the Gioventù cattolica (Catholic Youth) badge on top of a black sash. For the most part under the command of decommissioned officers, the group, which was recognized by the regional council of the Catholic Youth, had the purpose of defending, by any means necessary, against aggressions upon Catholic demonstrations and churches. Its regulations called for the enlisted to demonstrate ‘masculine steadfastness’, constancy in religious practice, and not to practise ‘violence for violence’s sake’ but merely to defend ecclesiastic institutions from ‘God’s enemies’. A lukewarm interest, however, entailed immediate discharge from its activities.65 From the first half of 1919, squads of avanguardisti had been established in city parishes and various towns in the Diocese of Milan under the guidance of Don Francesco Olgiati, spiritual director of Milan’s Catholic Youth, with the tacit approval of Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari. In an atmosphere marked by waves of social protest and by the first appearance of squadrist violence, the initial intention was to defend processions and events from the so-called ‘socialist hooligans’ with clubs and bludgeons. Between 1919 and the first half of 1920, the avanguardisti bianchi were often in the front row of the clashes that dotted life in the city and provincial towns. The most prized act was to capture the flag or pennant but occupying public spaces and seizing the adversary’s symbols were pursued by both sides with stones launched, punches thrown and beatings dispensed. The recourse to a physical confrontation went hand in hand with a radicalization of the invectives against the socialists and the brutalization of the internal enemy (‘red beast’, ‘red herd of fanatics’). The aggression did not spare ‘the rabbits’, ‘the fearful and timid little creatures, sick with worry and inexpressible trembling’ but the most relevant novelty concerned physical violence,

64 Piva, Uccidere senza odio, p. 171. 65 Reported in Caponi, Una Chiesa in guerra, pp. 382–83.

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openly legitimized, for example, in the pages of L’Azione giovanile: the avanguardisti were not permitted to rebel against the police but, if attacked, they were to defend themselves ‘with violence’ and, if necessary, ‘with weapons’.66 Giving and receiving beatings became a sort of rite of passage, a baptism by blood that reinforced Christian conviction. The young Catholics gave thrashings without hate but with love, but they were also capable — as let people know after the invasion of Fascist squads — of wielding the bludgeon very well against the Blackshirts. That of avanguardisti bianchi was certainly an experience of the minority in the sphere of organized Catholicism. Nevertheless, it shows the much more extensive conviction that political violence, as a reaction to social disorder and to the far more feared violence of the reds, was justified.67 In this sense, therefore, it is not surprising that the Italian Church, at its highest levels and in the fringes, maintained an attitude of relative tolerance when interpreting Fascist violence. It was an attitude, shared to a great extent by moderate public opinion, that tended to trivialize the aggression of the Blackshirts as ‘bravado’ in response to the civil war engaged in by socialists and anarchists, at least until they assaulted Catholic circles and militants.68 Between underestimating it or feeling a fascination for it, the culture of war was translated into an endorsement, at least defensive, of the political violence that Fascism was preparing to theorize and implement, in an offensive and systematic way, with a very different intensity.

Bibliography Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, and Annette Becker, 14–18, retrouver la guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 2000) Banti, Alberto Mario, La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin: Einaudi, 2000) Banti, Alberto Mario, L’onore della nazione: identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII secolo alla Grande Guerra (Turin: Einaudi, 2005) Banti, Alberto Mario, Sublime madre nostra: la nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo (Rome: Laterza, 2011) Becker, Annette, ‘Églises et ferveurs religieuses’, in Encyclopédie de la Grande Guerre, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker (Paris: Perrin, 2012), pp. 731–50 Becker, Annette, La guerre et la foi: de la mort à la mémoire, 1914–1930 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994) Becker, Annette, ‘L’histoire religieuse de la guerre 1914–1918’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 86, 217 (2000), pp. 539–49 66 ‘Con la violenza’; ‘con le armi’; the case of the Milan avanguardisti is reconstructed in Piva, Uccidere senza odio, pp. 153–73. 67 For an overview of the issue, see Lucia Ceci, ‘La Chiesa cattolica e la politica armata’, in 1914–1945: l’Italia nella guerra europea dei trent’anni, ed. by Simone Neri Serneri (Rome: Viella, 2016), pp. 223–36. 68 See the many cases recounted in Alberto Guasco, Cattolici e fascisti: la Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del regime (1919–1925) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013), pp. 83–296.

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Giuliani, Reginaldo, Il Vangelo della domenica spiegato ai miei soldati (Turin: Stella di San Domenico, 1936) Guasco, Alberto, Cattolici e fascisti: la Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del regime (1919–1925) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013) Hoover, Arlie J., God, Germany and Britain in the Great War: A Study in Clerical Nationalism (New York: Praeger, 1989) Isnenghi, Mario, ‘La Grande Guerra’, in I luoghi della memoria: strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita, ed. by Mario Isnenghi (Rome: Laterza, 1997), pp. 273–310 Isnenghi, Mario, and Giorgio Rochat, La Grande Guerra: 1914–1918 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Janz, Oliver, ‘Il culto dei caduti’, in Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 905–16 Keegan, John, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme (New York: Penguin Books, 1976) Kilani, Mondher, Guerra e sacrificio, ed. by Annamaria Rivera (Bari: Dedalo, 2008) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Leed, Eric J., No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) Lesti, Sante, ‘Autorità, dovere, sacrificio: il discorso di guerra di mons. Angelo Bartolomasi’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 45–62 Lesti, Sante, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015) Malpensa, Marcello, ‘Il sacrificio in guerra nelle lettere pastorali dell’episcopato’, Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008), pp. 905–24 Malpensa, Marcello, ‘I vescovi italiani davanti alla guerra’, in Un paese in guerra: la mobilitazione civile in Italia, ed. by Daniele Menozzi, Giovanna Procacci and Simonetta Soldani (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 293–315 Massis, Henri, Le sacrifice 1914–1918 (Paris: Plon, 1917) Maurer, Catherine, ‘Vingt ans d’histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre en France et en Allemagne: où en est l’histoire des formes de piété?’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 108 (2014), pp. 19–29 Mazzolari, Primo, Quasi una vita: lettere a Guido Astori (1908–1958), ed. by Guido Astori (Bologna: EDB, 1979) Mazzone, Umberto, ‘A Religious War? Suggestions from the First World War’, Annali di storia dell’esegesi, 26 (2009), pp. 251–77 Menozzi, Daniele, ed., La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015) Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Menozzi, Daniele, ‘Regalità sociale di Cristo e secolarizzazione: alle origini della Quas primas’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 16, 1 (1995), pp. 79–113 Menozzi, Daniele, ed., Religione, nazione e guerra nel primo conflitto mondiale (= Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006))

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Menozzi, Daniele, ed., Sacrificarsi per la patria: l’integrazione dei cattolici italiani nello Stato nazionale (= Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011)) Miccoli, Giovanni, ‘La guerra nella storia e nella teologia cristiana: un problema a molteplici facce’, in Pace e guerra nella Bibbia e nel Corano, ed. by Piero Stefani and Giovanni Menestrina (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2002), pp. 91–110 Miles Christianus, ‘Il sacrificio di una generazione’, Vita e Pensiero, 4, 44 (1917), pp. 531–36 Minighin, Giancarlo, ‘Don Primo Mazzolari e la Grande Guerra’, Studi storici, 43, 1 (2002), pp. 107–51 Missalla, Heinrich, ‘Gott mit uns’: die deutsche katholische Kriegspredigt 1914–1918 (Munich: Kösel, 1968) Monticone, Alberto, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella grande guerra, 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013) Monticone, Alberto, ‘I vescovi italiani e la guerra’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 627–59 Moro, Renato, ‘Nazionalismo e cattolicesimo’, in Federzoni e la storia della destra italiana nella prima metà del Novecento, ed. by Benedetto Coccia and Umberto Gentiloni Silveri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 49–112 Moro, Renato, ‘Nazione, cattolicesimo e regime fascista’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 1, 1 (2004), pp. 129–47 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980) Mosse, George L., Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) Mosse, George L., Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). Paiano, Maria, ‘Benedetto XV e la preghiera cattolica durante la Grande Guerra: il caso italiano’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 108 (2014), pp. 259–77 Paiano, Maria, ‘La preghiera della patria in guerra: le immagini di devozione’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 409–21 Piva, Francesco, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Salandra, Antonio, La nostra guerra è santa: discorso detto in Campidoglio il 2 giugno 1915 (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1915) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997)

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Stella, Pietro, ‘Santi per giovani e santi giovani nell’Ottocento’, in Santi, culti, simboli nell’età della secolarizzazione (1815–1915), ed. by Emma Fattorini (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1997), pp. 563–86 Stiaccini, Carlo, L’anima religiosa della Grande Guerra: testimonianze popolari tra fede e superstizione (Rome: Aracne, 2009) Traniello, Francesco, Religione cattolica e Stato nazionale: dal Risorgimento al secondo dopoguerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006) Vian, Giovanni, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, in Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 736–43 Winter, Jay, and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Andrea Crescenzi

Italian Military Chaplains and the ‘Useless Slaughter’

1. Introduction Leaving a careful and complete examination of the figure of Pope Benedict XV to more accredited scholars, this piece will concentrate on the Italian military clergy during World War I using partly unpublished documentation kept in the Archive of the Historic Office of the General Staff of the Army. It will allow us to reflect on the organization, structure and role played by military chaplains within the Royal Italian Army in the context of their ‘rebirth’ in Italy during the war. In order to meet the spiritual needs of the military, all the pre-unification Italian states had chaplains within their military organization. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany had three chaplains. In the Papal States, the office of major chaplain was instituted in 1850. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the king himself appointed the chaplains.1 In 1859, forty chaplains of the Fortress Regiment and the military academies and schools in the Piedmont army were incorporated into the subalpine military clergy when it was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1865, the entire peacetime staff comprised 189 chaplains but, from that year, because of the secular disposition of the government and budgetary economies, that number was cut until the position of chaplain disappeared entirely. The Roman Question also contributed to the extinction of the figure of military chaplain since, during the process of national unification, it had decidedly poisoned the minds and attitudes of the upper military and political levels, and the clergy was seen as a sower of discord.2 It should not be forgotten that the Papal States had called foreign troops to Italy and hosted the royal Bourbon family. At least until 1867, it had also incited and given assistance to the armed struggle against the Italian State which



1 See the site of the Ordinariato Militare per l’Italia (Italian Military Ordinariate) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 2 Arturo Marcheggiano, Diritti e doveri del cappellano militare in tempo di guerra (Rome: Rivista Militare, 1992), p. 42.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 303–317 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118777

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had expropriated the assets of convents and threatened the very survival of the pope’s temporal power.3 In the collective imagination, therefore, priests and convents took on the semblance of the enemy.4 Hence, military chaplains remained solely in military hospitals and the Royal Navy. When the latter abolished them in 1878, there only remained chaplains in military hospitals during peace time.5 There still remained, however, the military right to reinstate chaplains in wartime units in case of war, as established by the Istruzioni per la mobilitazione e la formazione di guerra dell’Esercito (Army’s Instructions for Mobilization and Training). By virtue of this exception, chaplains were used during the expedition to China for the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and the Italo-Turkish War in Libya in 1911–12. It was only during World War I, however, that, in accordance with international law, the figure of military chaplain was restored in Italy and deployed to all fighting units up to the level of independent regiments and/or battalions.

2. Organization and Structures of Military Chaplains in the Royal Army Decree No. 771, by which the Royal Army assumed, from 23 May 1915, the formation established by confidential mobilization documents, extended religious assistance to all combat units, even those of the lowest levels. Previously, on 12 April 1915, Cadorna himself had issued a pamphlet in which he assigned clerics to field hospitals as well as to all the units of infantry, artillery, etc.6 Law No. 1022, issued on 27 June 1915,7 provided for religious service in the Royal Army and Royal Navy with the appointment of a field bishop,8 who was entrusted with directing that service. Established by the Consistorial Congregation on 1 June 1915, the office extended its jurisdiction to all priests in arms and laid the canonical foundations for the ecclesiastic recognition of military chaplains. The decree conferred the rank of major general upon field Bishop Angelo Bartolomasi,9 authorizing him to appoint three vicars to assist him, one of

3 L’esercito alla macchia: controguerriglia italiana, 1860–1943: l’esperienza italiana di controguerriglia dal brigantaggio alla Seconda guerra mondiale, ed. by Federica Saini Fasanotti (Rome: Stato Maggiore della Difesa, Ufficio Storico, 2015), pp. 21–22. 4 Marcheggiano, Diritti e doveri, p. 45. 5 Francesco Agostino Pugliese, Storia e legislazione sulla cura pastorale alle Forze Armate (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1956), pp. 52–53. 6 Francesco Fontana, Croce ed armi: l’assistenza spirituale alle Forze Armate italiane in pace e in guerra (1915–1955) (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1956), p. 13. 7 AUSSME, Giornale Militare Ufficiale, anno 1915, Dispensa 48º, vol. 2, pp. 1585–86. 8 La Civiltà Cattolica was very pleased with the regulations resulting from the agreement with the Italian government, which were considered better than those issued in France or in Great Britain. See Piero Melograni, Storia politica della Grande Guerra, 1915–1918, 5th edn (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), p. 125. 9 Archbishop Bartolomasi, formerly Cardinal Agostino Richelmy’s Auxiliary in Turin, was appointed field bishop. After the war he maintained the honorary post after becoming Bishop of Trieste in December 1919. With the establishment of the Military Ordinariate in 1929 he was immediately appointed military ordinary and held this position until 1944, representing, in the face of Catholic and Fascist public opinion, a clear reference to the events of the Great War. In the 1930s he was

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whom was to serve the armed forces. Given the complexity of the situation and his functions, he created three offices, one for the Royal Navy and two for the Royal Army, of which one was in Rome (for activities concerning the Ministry of War) and the other in the Intendenza generale (General Bureau), for those concerning mobilized services.10 The latter was in operation from the end of July, with its headquarters established in Treviso, inaugurating the following sectors with personnel made available by the Comando supremo (Supreme Command): (1) organization of religious services, (2) supplies (for religious services), (3) discipline of military clergy, (4) ecclesiastic civil affairs for occupied territories, (5) information, (6) various affairs of an ecclesiastic nature. Even before the office was established or war declared, the Ministry had acquired applications from priests who had voluntarily asked to be employed as military chaplains, without the obligation of military service.11 In reality, when the field bishop’s office was instituted, operating units were already provided with chaplains, as established by the mobilization plan. It was, however, the task of the office to provide for the total list of chaplains and, after evaluating their suitability, to confirm them or not in their post. Such confirmations were then issued by the Ministry on the proposal of the Rome office. In November 1915, the Ministry already issued memorandum No. 22950 establishing the rules for appointing chaplains, which was to occur with the designation of suitable subjects by the field bishop.12 In the same memorandum, the Ministry indicated which units and services were to be supplied with chaplains, establishing the rules for assignment, remuneration and uniforms. Besides Catholic chaplains, the document made provisions for four rabbis, assigned to the Intendenze d’Armata (Armed Forces Bureau) and three evangelical ministers, employed in the 3º Reggimento Alpini and in the health services of the 2ª and 4ª Armata.13 The office at the General Bureau received the chaplains destined for the units and mobilized services, and oversaw their deployment, giving instructions and rules on how they were to carry out their service. Subsequent to the aforementioned memorandum there were numerous combat units and special services — not mentioned in the text and thus deprived of religious assistance — that had to be instituted14 due to wartime needs. It was, therefore, the task of the office to request and obtain the assignment of a military

10 11 12 13 14

undeniably a representative character that the Fascist government used broadly in its militia, its associations and, above all, in its wars. See Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980), p. 122. AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, Relazione Guerra 1915–1918, Ufficio Vescovo di Campo. AUSSME, bb. 146B, 1f–16f, Intendenza Generale Ufficio del Capo di S. M., Allegati, Foglio n. 7987 del 15 maggio 1915, Ecclesiastici che hanno chiesto di essere nominati cappellani militari, Ministero della Guerra, Direzione Generale Servizi Logistici e Amministrativi. AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, f. 4. AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, f. 5. Such as bombers, machine gun units, heavy and mixed mountain siege artillery groupings, surgical ambulances, submersion units, marching regiments (only after the rout at Caporetto), autonomous infantry units, assault groups, airmen’s groups and instructional units. See AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, f. 6.

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chaplain from the Supreme Command. The prolongation of the conflict beyond what had been predicted, and the hardship and suffering to which the combat unit chaplains were subjected in the trenches, highlighted the need to replace those who were no longer psychologically or physically capable of carrying out their duty. Thus the office established a fixed regularity for replacing all the chaplains who, after at least a year of commendable service in a combat unit, submitted their request and obtained authorization from their respective commands for either ascertainable physical conditions, if they were no longer capable of serving in a combat unit, or for moral reasons, if they found themselves in a condition that would merit their being removed from the front and deployed to second-line units. Substitutes were newly appointed chaplains or those from the health services who voluntarily requested deployment to a combat unit. Each rotation was proposed to the General Bureau and, after authorization, the field bishop’s office provided for the replacement, taking care that units were not left without religious assistance. A unit sometimes happened to remain temporarily without a chaplain, due to the death, injury or leave of another. To solve this problem, a core of five chaplains was established, first from the Rome office and then, for obvious ease of deployment, from the Treviso office, to cover such shortages until a replacement arrived. In the most difficult periods, when substitution was not possible, the office arranged for a substitute to be sent to the front-line units from one of the nearest health services units. This efficiency in organizing the religious activity suffered a setback after the days of the Battle of Caporetto when, due to the dissolution and reorganization of units decimated by the conflict, many chaplains found themselves at the office’s disposal. With the authorization of the General Bureau, they were assigned to various areas of reorganization where they cooperated with the officers. Many returned to their reconstituted units while others were reassigned to new units. It is also noteworthy that the Supreme Command made the decision to detach twelve chaplains — chosen from among the best — from front-line units, sending one to each of the territorial Corpi d’Armata with the task of coordinating and guiding, through appropriate discussions, their work, thus reinforcing the soldiers’ sense of duty. At the end of their mission, which lasted about three years, they returned to service in the war zone. The Ministry of War also instituted the figure of a chaplain’s aide, a military trooper who was authorized to wear a cassock and sent to reserve hospitals to assist a chaplain in performing his religious service, given the high number of wounded and the many tasks to be carried out. It was not possible to deploy such figures — midway between soldier and priest — to the mobilized units because their task in such units was deemed by the Supreme Command to be only temporary, according to which the voluntary assistance of some military priest serving in the same unit would be sufficient for the chaplain. The role of chaplain’s aide, however, was recognized for religious service in stopover hospitals. After Caporetto, the Supreme Command forbade passage to territorial services of religious personnel, even of that serving in mobilized units, and the office of the

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field bishop took charge of the chaplain’s aides, assigning them to new stopover or field hospitals that were too crowded for the chaplains assigned there alone.15

3. Religious Assistance in the Health Sectors and for Prisoners of War From the beginning of the conflict, the Supreme Command and the office had pointed out that, in the health sectors the work of a single appointed chaplain was insufficient due to his specific formation and employment during war. In such circumstances, it was almost impossible for a chaplain to carry out his duties efficiently. Unable, for staffing reasons, to assign a chaplain to every unit of the health services, they sought to make due with military priests, endowed with ecclesiastic faculties and dispensed from health assistance services, to provide spiritual assistance to the sick and wounded.16 With the establishment of concentration camps for prisoners of war in the national territory, the Ministry of War was compelled to appoint a number of polyglot chaplains to send, periodically, to the prison camps (or to the forced labour camps in the war zone). For its part, the office provided for the Supreme Command to authorize six chaplains to serve in the camps in the war zone (two for the Germans, one for the Slavs, one for the Hungarians, one for the Bohemians and one for the Polish) and dispense religious comfort to the prisoners.17

4. Employment of Chaplains Returning from Captivity and Demobilized after the Armistice With the armistice and the return of prisoners to the Central Powers, the military chaplains also returned to their homeland. Initially they were distributed among the collection camps that were specifically created for the freed prisoners so that they could, with their moral authority and common experience of captivity, cooperate with the authorities in maintaining order. When those camps were closed, the former prisoner-of-war chaplains were handled by the Rome office to be re-employed in religious assistance to the Royal Army. With the cessation of hostilities and the gradual dissolution of mobilized units, however, other chaplains were found to be available and they were sent to serve the units that had been definitively demobilized between 1918 and 1920.18

15 16 17 18

AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, ff. 6–12. AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, ff. 6–12. AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, f. 13. AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, f. 13.

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5. Organizing Supplies for Religious Service In May 1917, an agreement between the Ministry of War and the Supreme Command provided for supply units to be established in Rome and in the war zone to facilitate the supply and distribution of everything necessary for military chaplains to perform their religious duties. The main task of the Roman unit was to collect materials provided by private initiatives, that is, by the Comitato nazionale per l’assistenza religiosa (National Committee for Religious Assistance) that was headquartered in Rome with various branches around the nation (Turin, Biella, Ivrea, Genoa, Verona, Parma, Bologna, Pisa, Florence, Naples and Palermo). The war unit, on the other hand, handled the distribution of materials arriving from Rome or acquired in the war zone on behalf of the aforementioned committee. It also forged relationships with other local committees (Milan, Brescia and Bergamo) that operated autonomously, carrying out a kind of assistance parallel to that of the national committee. It also promoted a variety of initiatives such as conferences that demonstrated how to provide religious and moral assistance to the troops and collect sacred furnishings and donations from the people. They also promoted participation in national exhibitions on war in Rome and Bologna (where, along with various types of field altars, the original statue of the Madonna del Grappa, which had been damaged by enemy fire, was displayed) and the distribution of pamphlets and booklets of a moral and religious nature. In the autumn of 1916, hundreds of thousands of copies of Via retta (True Path) — a booklet of prayer and spiritual life suggestions written for soldiers by Don Giovanni Minozzi and Father Vincenzo Ceresi — were distributed among the troops.19 When the units were dissolved and the war machine demobilized, all the material that had been collected during the war, thanks mainly to private charitable donations, was given to ruined churches as well as to Italian mission churches abroad.

6. Discipline of Military Clergy and Informative Reports The significant number of chaplains deployed during the conflict and their distribution over such a vast territory impeded oversight by bishops and their vicars, making it necessary to create a certain number of ecclesiastics for the task. Not members of the armed forces yet resident in the main centres of the war zone, these clerics often carried out a purely ecclesiastic task, basically restricting themselves to keeping an eye on the mobilized clergy’s moral and religious conduct and reporting on deficiencies that could be canonically sanctioned. Precisely because of the specificity of their task, it was considered opportune for them not to hold a military rank, unlike the military chaplains, but simply be accredited by military authorities. This solution was not embraced by the Supreme Command or the Ministry of War, so the ecclesiastic delegates were relieved of the duties they had carried out for several months. With the 19 Melograni, Storia politica, p. 143.

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suppression of the ecclesiastic delegates, however, the need for personnel — officially recognized by the military authorities — to assist the bishop in ensuring ecclesiastic discipline among the chaplains was not met. To this end, the military authorities made a chaplain, authorized to bear the rank of captain and charged with inspecting chaplains’ service, available to the office. In order to carry out this surveillance overseas and outside the national territory, where contact was almost impossible, a chaplain deemed suitable, because of the site of the regiment and thanks to his particular qualities, was entrusted with the task. In Albania, Macedonia and France, therefore, they assigned a chaplain to each zone, without, however, exempting him from his specific regimental duties. Based on the information sent to the field bishop from these ‘monitor’ chaplains, and from the commanders or regimental directors, the office evaluated cases and issued advice, warnings, reprimands and, at times, threats to take serious measures. In the most serious cases, inspections and investigations were carried out to ascertain the reality of the situation. Chaplains involved were recalled to the field bishop’s office, and various kinds of measures were taken. As a result of such actions, a request for transfer could be made to the General Bureau or an exemption asked of the Ministry of War. To strengthen the bonds connecting the chaplains serving in the same large division, to maintain their ecclesiastic discipline, give a uniform direction to the implementation of their service and to solve contingent difficulties, so-called conferences of military chaplains, presided over by the field bishop or a delegate chaplain, were periodically held in the war zone with the approval of the competent military authorities. Because the various regiments were constantly on the move, it was not possible to provide a stable or definitive organization for these conferences, which were, however, very numerous and produced positive results.20 With the intention of keeping the bishop informed of the situation and work of the chaplains, the office asked the competent military authorities for information reports that could be used to take appropriate steps, in the case of reported shortcomings, or to commend the deserving. Such reports were preserved whenever a chaplain departed definitively from the unit in which he was serving. The Consistorial Congregation’s aforementioned canonical decree Rectus ordo of 1 June 1915 entrusted the field bishop with canonical jurisdiction over all priests and clerics called to military service, which involved disciplinary oversight. Moreover, it also proved very useful to the military because, having to choose the priest to propose from time to time to the Ministry of War for religious service in the army made it necessary for the field bishop to have a precise knowledge of his moral, ecclesiastic and military talents. To this end, Bartolomasi ordered that military chaplains should send his office a detailed report on the priests serving in their units every two months.21

20 AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, ff. 20–25. 21 AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, ff. 20–25.

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7.

Civil and Ecclesiastic Affairs in Occupied Territories

With the occupation of Austrian territories, the Italian authorities were forced to establish relations with the ecclesiastic authorities for the management and operations of the institutions for worship that had previously been under the jurisdiction of the Austrian government. The Holy See thus authorized the nearest bishops to extend their jurisdiction to the churches and clergy in the occupied territories. This ordinance lasted from July to October 1915, the Holy See considering it appropriate to entrust the disciplinary oversight of all the clergy to the field bishop and the oversight of the canonical jurisdiction to five juridical vicars appointed in agreement with the Segretariato generale affari civili (General Secretariat for Civil Affairs). With Memorandum No. 1339 of 10 July 1915, the Supreme Command established that priests from the health units — exempt from all military service and authorized to wear a cassock with the distinguishing insignia of the army unit they belonged to — should be those mainly assigned to cover ecclesiastic offices in occupied territory. It must be remembered that, through these temporary deputies of religious functions, nominated by the Supreme Command, the office carried out an intense propaganda campaign promoting feelings in favour of Italy, facilitated by the strong religious sentiment of the peoples concerned. In particular, thousands of copies of the work L’episcopato italiano e la guerra (The Italian Episcopate and the War) in Italian and Slovene, compiled by Senator Vittorio Polacco and containing a wealth of encouragement from Italian bishops to the faithful, were distributed after the proclamation of hostilities with Austria-Hungary.22

8. Various Information and Affairs of an Ecclesiastic Nature Thanks to the frequent communications between the office, the chaplains and the military of their respective units, families often turned to the bishops for news of their loved ones, comfort or, in the case of imprisonment, help in having them repatriated. In order to alleviate the suffering of the war, the field bishop’s office, together with special offices created by the government and the Italian Red Cross, managed to respond to the more than 4900 cases that were received during the conflict.23 The character of field bishop’s mission elicited various questions of a military and religious nature, such as special authorizations for administering the sacrament, the resolution of questions of conscience, the conferral of special faculties and marriages by proxy. In agreement with the military authorities, the office also regulated the exercise of the ministry of worship by military clergy for the benefit of the civilian population.24

22 AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, ff. 27–30. 23 AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, f. 31. 24 AUSSME, Fondo B-1, b. 151C 7g, ff. 32–34.

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9. Religious Service in the Great War: The Military Clergy 9.1.

Military Chaplains

Chaplains were the most direct expression of the Church’s involvement with the army during the war. They were witnesses and protagonists of the alliance between ‘cross and sword’, and their first task was to assure soldiers of the legitimacy of the war they were fighting.25 War and religion, priests and armies are a strong pair in every society. In every historical age, fighters have needed the encouragement and certainty of religion and its ministers to face death in battle.26 For an army such as Italy’s that lacked the coercive means to organize consensus for war, chaplains constituted a kind of intellectual network that promoted military order and discipline. They also differed markedly from the rest of the clergy due to the authority conferred upon them by the rank they held and, even more, by their patriotic orientation, which was sometimes so exaggerated as to overshadow their religious and ecclesiastic commitments.27 In recent decades, an examination of the copious documentation, consisting in reports on chaplains’ activities, has highlighted their predominant interest: the idea of the restoration of Christian civilization.28 They also saw in the army an ideal type of relationship between Church, civil society thanks to the clarity of hierarchical order, mutual respect and the collaboration between the military and religious spheres without external interference.29 The selection among applicants effected by the military curia contributed decisively to the idea that the corps of chaplains was elitist and privileged compared to most of the mobilized clergy. This is partly true if we consider that among the chaplains we find figures who would later become very important in the ecclesial hierarchy and at times in the political life of the nation.30 Nevertheless, there were differences in the way Benedict XV’s words were received, particularly his diplomatic Note of August 1917. Some welcomed it with joy but others with diffidence, convinced that the document would compromise the patriotic credit that had been acquired with great effort over the course of two long years.31

25 La spada e la croce: i cappellani italiani nelle due guerre mondiali: atti del 34º convegno di studi sulla Riforma e i movimenti ereticali in Italia (Torre Pellice, 28–30 agosto 1994), ed. by Giorgio Rochat (= Bollettino della Società di studi valdesi, 70, 176 (1995)), p. 3. 26 La spada e la croce, ed. by Rochat, pp. 4–6. 27 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 1–6. 28 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 1–6. 29 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 119–20. 30 Without a doubt, the best known was Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the future John XXIII. Holding decidedly patriotic convictions, which however were tempered by a stronger ecclesial feeling, he enacted the role of chaplain in the hospital in Bergamo with a scrupulous sense of duty and without any particular doubts regarding the lawfulness of the conflict; see Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 112. 31 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 96–98.

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With the pastoral letter of 15 December 1915, Bartolomasi outlined the essential features of the chaplains’ mission.32 He asked for zeal and readiness to act in the apostolate, that they not neglect anything that would make them acceptable to the troops and that they always pay attention to the latter’s needs, religious or otherwise, reminding them that the soldiers needed a popular secretary to write their letters for them.33 Bartolomasi’s appeal continued with an invitation to the chaplains to study, respect and observe both military and ecclesial laws. He concluded with an exhortation that the chaplains make a contribution to the nation and the army by exhibiting a moral strength that encouraged the soldiers, underlining the virtue of valour and sacrifice and the reward for those who fulfil their duty.34 The document clearly shows the connection between religious action and the support of the troops’ morale, which represented a constant in the chaplains’ work throughout the duration of the conflict. From this point of view, the meaning of their mission becomes clear: they were to provide the troops with a moral justification for the war. Some of them promoted the war in a simple manner, abstaining from rhetoric, while others, infused with a sense of nationalism, used emphatic tones and arguments that seemed to erase any memory of the previous conflicts between the Italian State and the Church. Common to all was a campaign for moral conduct.35 The chaplains’ civil and propagandistic labours were carried out regardless of specific structures. The field bishop also punctually called on them to express their patriotic solidarity through welfare initiatives, which were seen as a tool to promote their apostolate and to acquire merit in the face of public opinion. The ‘case del soldato’ (soldiers’ recreational centres) were seen as a single structure, which in a certain sense combined the chaplains’ activities. Assigned to the management of soldier-priests, chaplains and trusted military members, these centres constituted an important structure in governing the propaganda both for lay people’s service and for the military clergy. These centres were founded by Don Giovanni Minozzi, and at his request they never had a distinct confessional character precisely in order to avoid arousing distrust.36 In the field of assistance, an activity to which chaplains were strongly committed was the news office, whose task it was to facilitate communications between the soldiers and their families. Information concerning those who had been killed, wounded, lost or hospitalized was transmitted to the central news office in Bologna, which then informed the families. The work was not limited to this, however, and the auspices of the news office included working with the soldiers, who were to a great extent semi-literate, in order to help them with their correspondence. Many also interpreted this task as a means of supervising the news communicated to and from the soldiers at the front, and they were formally 32 Biblioteca di storia moderna e contemporanea, Rome, Fondo Misc. B. 225/29. See Angelo Bartolomasi, Ai molto reverendi cappellani e sacerdoti militari del r. esercito: zona di guerra, lettera n. 2, 25 dicembre 1915 (n.p.: n. pub., 1915), pp. 1–5. 33 Bartolomasi, Ai molto reverendi, p. 10. 34 Bartolomasi, Ai molto reverendi, pp. 11–12. 35 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 30. 36 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 36–37.

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authorized by their superiors to act as censors. Together with the news office, the schools for the illiterate represented another constant of the civil assistance exercised by the chaplains. Another characteristic feature of the chaplains that should not be forgotten was their ‘petty’ work, that is making small donations and giving monetary subsidies. Together with these gifts, thousands of religious icons, medals with sacred images, rosaries and various pages and pamphlets alternating between religious and patriotic themes were distributed.37 An important role in the wartime propaganda was played by the dissemination of newspapers, pamphlets and periodicals that, thanks to their format, lent themselves to a rapid dissemination in large numbers of copies. Mentre si combatte (While Fighting) and La Stella del soldato (The Soldier’s Star) are two Catholic examples of these that come to mind. True and proper religious service was almost exclusively concentrated around official moments of worship, that is to say, Masses on the field and practising the sacraments. Field Masses took place in the most disparate circumstances: outside, in village churches or in chapels erected close to the front lines. The liturgy was often adapted to the circumstances of war, which gave it a characteristic identity. Soldiers participated in the Masses fervently and diligently, war permitting. It should, however, be noted that such participation was not always the fruit of sincere and clear conviction. The phenomenon of the so-called imposed order for field Masses, where officers and soldiers lined up according to their rank, casts doubt on the spontaneity of the men’s participation, who were issued commands and called to the services as if they were military activities. Other tasks in the chaplains’ religious duties were the commemoration of the dead, which was particularly significant as is comprehensible, including Masses in suffrage of the deceased, and the arrangement of small war cemeteries; communal absolution before combat; First Communion and Confirmation; and marriages by proxy. Special attention was paid to assisting the dying and administering the last rites, which for some was their only significant task.38 Preaching to the soldiers was not limited to explaining the Gospel. Most of the chaplains chose a type of oratory that was the result of mixing religious and patriotic motifs, supported by the authoritative example of the field bishop. In official documents as well as in his visits, Bartolomasi always emphasized collaboration and patriotic and military solidarity in the army. In particular, in his pastoral letter of December 1916, after having stressed how the nation, God and family constitute the three elements in life that Jesus wanted to harmonize,39 he declared that, from the sacrifice of millions of Italians, a strong, compact, morally pure and religiously serene Italy would arise.40 There were also those who clung to religious themes, limiting the patriotic propaganda to conferences and speeches held for the particular occasion, 37 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 38–41. 38 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 42–56. 39 Biblioteca di storia moderna e contemporanea, Rome, Fondo Misc. B. 225/30. See Angelo Bartolomasi, Ai molto reverendi cappellani e sacerdoti militari del r. esercito: zona di guerra, lettera n. 3, 6 dicembre 1916 (n.p.: n. pub., 1916), p. 9. 40 Bartolomasi, Ai molto reverendi cappellani e sacerdoti militari del r. esercito: zona di guerra, lettera n. 3, 6 dicembre 1916, p. 9.

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distinct however from religious ceremonies.41 A concept insisted upon by a certain type of preaching was duty, understood as actions motivated by love of country and not constrained by regulations, which the soldiers were encouraged to fulfil out of conscientious devotion rather than obligation.42 In conclusion, it can be said that most of the chaplains sensed the soldiers’ feelings and mentalities and bore this in mind in their preaching. Patriotic content could be conveyed through the values and themes that the soldiers best understood and to which they were most sensitive, such as those of home, family and their own fields and villages.43 9.2.

The Soldier-Priests

During the war, there were about 24,000 military clergymen who were not recruited to the ranks of military chaplains. Of these, roughly 10,000, who had not yet been ordained to major orders, were not distinguished in any way by the military authorities and were indifferently assigned even to fighting units, thus compelled, if necessary, to kill or be killed. The others, however, to a great extent also due to their advanced age, asked to be assigned to health units and to field or territorial hospitals.44 The particular education they had received and mentality they had acquired certainly did not incline these priests to take up arms, even if there were cases, particularly starting from 1917, when the great need in the ranks of aspiring officers induced the Supreme Command to oblige the qualified younger priests to attend accelerated courses for future officers.45 The soldier-priests in the army played a very different role from that of the chaplains, first because they shared the hardships, deprivations and dangers with the soldiers, with whom they were more supportive, and, second, because they presented the troops with a model of clergy in uniform that allowed them to gain the men’s trust and to carry out religious tasks more effectively. Obviously, the conflict posed serious personal and spiritual problems to the soldier-priests. Nevertheless, their aversion to the war never inspired attitudes of revolt but only those of strong inner suffering and a deep existential malaise, which did not invalidate their full obedience to military authorities.46 At the same time, their own ecclesial superiors, chaplains included, urged them to carry out their duties patiently and willingly. 9.3.

Relationships with Soldiers

In many cases, relationships between soldier-priests and troops were tense. The men’s first contact with these new companions was, almost always, negative and characterized by feelings of contempt and a lack of tolerance, if not outright rejection. 41 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 80–87. 42 Rodolfo Ragnini, I sermoni della messa festiva, detti ai soldati di mare e di terra negli anni 1915–1916–1917 (Vicenza: Società anonima tipografica, 1917), pp. 98–99. 43 Reginaldo Giuliani, Gli arditi, 3rd edn (Milan: Treves, 1934), pp. 196–97. 44 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 125. 45 Fontana, Croce ed armi, p. 31. 46 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 131–32.

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For this reason, some tried to hide, as far as possible, their ecclesiastic identity. During the course of the war, 1582 soldier-priests were made officers although Bartolomasi and their ecclesiastic superiors were against it because they feared the consequences that such power might have over persons who were accustomed to submission and obedience. In practice, a certain number of them were forced by their superiors to attend officer training, since they were among the few troops to have the academic qualifications required for admission. The most qualifying aspect of the figure of the soldier-priests was undoubtedly their opinion of the enemy, whom they viewed with respect, devoid of the polemics about the barbaric deeds that were common in the propaganda rhetoric of the military chaplains.47 9.4.

The Crisis of the Military Clergy

The experience of war stood in stark contrast to the human, spiritual and religious formation that the soldier-priests and chaplains had received. From one day to the next, they found themselves in a situation, such as that of war, that demonstrated in a brutal and ferocious way all the aspects of the external world in which they had wanted no part. The cases of tough, difficult situations in which the military clergy found themselves having to live were of a highly diverse nature. Hence, spiritual crises differed according to the situations that generated them. Frequently, the causes of a crisis were rooted in the realization of an existence of types of life and human relationships that were very different from those they had known before the conflict. For many, this was enough for them to decide to live a life outside the ecclesiastic world.48 Different and more serious — from a religious and moral point of view — was the crisis caused in older soldier-priests and chaplains, who sometimes started to conform their tastes and habits to the military environment in which they were living. This was also partly due to the positions they held, which were more comfortable or at least safer than those of the younger clergymen. The older clergymen, in fact, were assigned to health units and hospitals that were almost always located near populated areas, far from the dangers of war, where the call for moral integrity and habits was less demanding.49 The disciplinary measures taken were essentially caused by behaviour contrary to the religious vocation, leading many to request being laicized, although judgements were frequently influenced by excessively inquisitorial sentiments. In particular, some of the most delicate cases concerned relationships with the opposite sex. There were many cases of relations with religious sisters or lay women, often engaged in without any discretion.50 The crisis in vocation of the military clergy affected well over the 350 priests who were suspended a divinis or the indefinite number of young military clergymen who did not return to their former life after the war. On 25 October 1918, the Holy See issued the decree De clericis e

47 48 49 50

Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 148–52. Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 153–60. Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 162. Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 165–66.

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militia redeuntibus, which established precise norms for dealing with all the clergy returning from the war, asking the religious ordinaries and superiors to examine the veterans’ spiritual conditions carefully before readmitting them to the religious life. This provision made no distinction between soldier-priests and chaplains, which signified that such crises were suffered by both groups.51

10. Conclusions The circumstances of the military clergy during the war did not engender any particular intra-ecclesiastic reflection, as is revealed by the way in which veterans were greeted: they were neither embraced nor heard as witnesses of situations and experiences that were out of the ordinary and from which the Church might have derived great benefits, from a religious and missionary point of view. On the contrary, they were viewed with suspicion and mistrust, as if the purity of their vocation — rightly or wrongly — had been put at risk. In official ecclesiastic circles, the only positive result that could be seen in the massive presence of soldier-priests and chaplains was a step forward towards Catholic reintegration into Italian civil society, with little interest in the other aspects of the war experience of the clergy in uniform. Therefore, the achievements of the chaplains, the experience of the soldier-priests and the comparison between the religious men in uniform and a very large part of the male population did not substantially influence the Italian Church’s choices in the post-war years.52 Statistical Data on Chaplains during the War There were 1410 units that had a military chaplain during the conflict. There were 1870 chaplains assigned to various units, 434 alternates and 516 who were replaced because they were sick (280), taken prisoner (110), killed (64) or wounded (62).53 Statistical Data on Military Recognition 3 were decorated with a Gold Medal of Military Valour, 108 with a Silver Medal, 258 with a Bronze Medal, 12 were decorated for Civil Valour and 4 received foreign decorations.

51 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, pp. 168, 171. 52 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 216. 53 Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 15.

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Bibliography Bartolomasi, Angelo, Ai molto reverendi cappellani e sacerdoti militari del r. esercito: zona di guerra, lettera n. 2, 25 dicembre 1915 (n.p.: n. pub., 1915) Bartolomasi, Angelo, Ai molto reverendi cappellani e sacerdoti militari del r. esercito: zona di guerra, lettera n. 3, 6 dicembre 1916 (n.p.: n. pub., 1916) Fontana, Francesco, Croce ed armi: l’assistenza spirituale alle Forze Armate italiane in pace e in guerra (1915–1955) (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1956) Giuliani, Reginaldo, Gli arditi, 3rd edn (Milan: Treves, 1934) Marcheggiano, Arturo, Diritti e doveri del cappellano militare in tempo di guerra (Rome: Rivista Militare, 1992) Melograni, Piero, Storia politica della Grande Guerra, 1915–1918, 5th edn (Milan: Mondadori, 1998) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980) Pugliese, Francesco Agostino, Storia e legislazione sulla cura pastorale alle Forze Armate (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1956) Ragnini, Rodolfo, I sermoni della messa festiva, detti ai soldati di mare e di terra negli anni 1915–1916–1917 (Vicenza: Società anonima tipografica, 1917) Rochat, Giorgio, ed., La spada e la croce: i cappellani italiani nelle due guerre mondiali: atti del 34º convegno di studi sulla Riforma e i movimenti ereticali in Italia (Torre Pellice, 28–30 agosto 1994) (= Bollettino della Società di studi valdesi, 70, 176 (1995)) Saini Fasanotti, Federica, ed., L’esercito alla macchia: controguerriglia italiana, 1860–1943: l’esperienza italiana di controguerriglia dal brigantaggio alla Seconda guerra mondiale (Rome: Stato Maggiore della Difesa, Ufficio Storico, 2015)

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Pope Benedict XV and Pacifism: ‘An Invincible Phalanx for Peace?’

In April 1915, an international gathering of 1200 socialist and pacifist women from twelve countries, including a number from the nations at war, took place in The Hague in the neutral Netherlands. Holding an international women’s peace conference in wartime was a major achievement in the light of wartime strictures on travel, and it marked the foundation of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Presided over by the American feminist, social reformer and pacifist Jane Addams, the congress endorsed proposals for a negotiated end to the war. Addams was one of the women envoys mandated at The Hague to go and present their proposals to the governments of the US and Europe. As he was a world spiritual leader who had already called repeatedly for negotiated peace, a meeting with Pope Benedict XV was a priority. As John F. Pollard notes, Addams and her American feminist colleague, Alice Hamilton, recalled their visit to Rome in the spring of 1915 as an immensely positive one: they were taken by surprise by the Pope’s enthusiasm, informality and cordiality towards them.1 Shortly afterwards, Jane Addams wrote in the American pacifist journal The Advocate of Peace: We spoke with Cardinals. The Pope himself gave us an audience of half an hour. These are men of religious responsibility, men who feel keenly what has happened in Europe. And yet they are apparently powerless to do the one thing which might end it. […] Isn’t it hideous that whole nations find the word peace intolerable?2 Two months later, on 28 July 1915, the first anniversary of the bombing of Belgrade and the outbreak of the war, Benedict XV issued a special public exhortation for peace, one of several he had already issued. The first anniversary exhortation, however, was



1 John F. Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 58. 2 Jane Addams, ‘The People of Europe and the Great War’, The Advocate of Peace, 77, 8 (1915), pp. 194– 97. For the context, see Bruna Bianchi, ‘Towards a New Internationalism: Pacifist Journals Edited by Women (1914–1919)’, in Gender and the First World War, ed. by Christa Hämmerle, Oswald Überegger and Birgitta Bader-Zaar (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 176–94.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 319–335 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118778

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not an appeal to political leaders but to Catholics and public opinion throughout the world, boldly inviting ‘all those who are the friends of peace the world over to lend us a helping hand to hasten an end to the war’.3 These two quotations from 1915 offer us a glimpse of Benedict XV’s relationship with wartime pacifism, and, in terms of political as distinct from ethical significance, such an appeal can be interpreted in contrasting ways. On the one hand, the Pope, for all his sincerity, can be seen as a helpless, isolated figure, a marginalized prophet ineffectually appealing to Cain and Abel to stop killing each other. Georges Hoog, Catholic journalist, activist and a sympathetic observer of the Pope, writing in 1928 about the place of religion in the post-war project of a ‘moral rapprochement’ recalled the war — which at the time Hoog himself had supported as a French patriot — as a crisis of Christian conscience in which the Pope’s words were ignored: ‘Alas! The doleful voice of Benedict XV had been foully smothered by the tumult of passions unleashed, still more by that of the cannons’.4 Equally, though, while the Pope did indeed struggle to obtain a sympathetic hearing, he remained, due to his office, a global figure, devoid of hard power certainly, but one who retained a voice that he could raise above the din of war to appeal to the world’s Catholics — and to others of goodwill — in the hopes of turning a body of believers into a body of public opinion for peace. That Benedict XV had some role in facilitating the emergence of a small but distinct Catholic peace movement during and after the war is fairly clear, and recent studies have outlined its contours considerably, albeit with an emphasis on the Franco-German aspect.5 This chapter attempts to provide a general overview of Catholic peace activism during the pontificate of Benedict XV by considering a cross-section of wartime Catholic activists who evolved towards some variant of pacifism whilst linking the phenomenon of activism to broader questions about Catholic wartime sensibility and to what Patrick J. Houlihan calls ‘micro-level public responses’ amongst Catholics to the Pope’s rhetoric of peace.6 Melding together in this fashion these two elements, peace activism and the echoes (or lack of the same) of papal rhetoric elsewhere, helps to place such Catholic peace activists (who were exceptional) in their proper context. This preliminary discussion of Catholic peace movements tests such an approach while suggesting other possible lines of enquiry. Benedict’s peace appeals must surely also

3 Benedict XV, Allorché fummo chiamati, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7 (1915), pp. 375–77 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See Youssef Taouk, ‘The Guild of the Pope’s Peace: A British Peace Movement in the First World War’, British Catholic History, 29, 2 (2008), pp. 252–71. 4 ‘Hélas! la voix douloureuse de Benoît XV avait été lâchement étouffée par le tumulte des passions déchaînées, plus encore que par celui des canons’; Georges Hoog, ‘Le rapprochement moral’, in France et Allemagne, ed. by Georges Hoog and others (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1928), p. 134. 5 For example, Gearóid Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred: Marc Sangnier, French Catholicism and the Legacy of the First World War (1914–1945) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Olivier Prat, ‘Internationalisme et pacifisme chrétiens en France et en Allemagne (1919–1939)’, in Les Chrétiens, la guerre et la paix: de la paix de Dieu à l’esprit d’Assise, ed. by Bruno Béthouart and Xavier Boniface (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012), pp. 305–16. 6 Patrick J. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and AustriaHungary (1914–1922) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 201.

P o p e Be ne d i ct  XV and Paci f i sm

be considered in the light of the more general phenomenon of pacifism during World War I and also with regard to the small pre-1914 Catholic peace movement. Having provided such necessary background information, I shall then briefly consider three groups of Catholic activists — from Britain (1916–17), France (1916) and Germany and Austria-Hungary (1917–19) — and how they interacted with the papacy. Inspired by papal peace rhetoric, we shall see, in my final section, just how the small wartime Catholic peace movements synthesized into a semblance of an international Catholic peace movement in the years 1920–22 in a specifically Catholic ‘internationalist moment’.

1.

Context: Before and After 1914

Let us begin with two essential questions of context, therefore. Did Benedict XV inherit anything akin to a Catholic peace movement when he took charge of the universal Catholic Church in August 1914? Secondly, what do we mean by pacifism or peace movements in the context of the Great War? In 1906, Pope Pius X sent a message of encouragement in response to a request from Catholic delegates who were present at the XV Universal Peace Congress in Milan. Such gatherings brought together the moderate pacifist constituency of ‘patriotic pacifists’ who, in the first decade of the new century, placed their faith in international law and arbitration to prevent or at least civilize war. As such, in no way did they wish to be identified with socialist anti-militarism or its agenda of class conflict. However, this liberal transnational constituency was often either Protestant or anti-clerical, or both. Catholic peace activists, such as the French layman, Alfred Vanderpol, founder of the Société Gratry in France in 1907 and later, in 1911, of the Ligue international des catholiques, had to walk a tightrope between Ultramontanism and liberal pacifism.7 Exhausted by his good works and the loss of a son in the war, Vanderpol died in Lyon in 1915. Thus, Catholic peace activists, whilst they existed, were to a degree marginal in the Catholic Church, notwithstanding what Xavier Boniface and Jean-Marc Ticchi have identified as the similarity in the register of language used for arbitration and peaceful resolution of conflicts in liberal pacifist rhetoric and Holy See pronouncements.8 As far as pacifism in general was concerned, it seemed like a 7 Xavier Boniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014), p. 58; Olivier Prat, ‘L’internationalisme du père Gratry et son héritage’, in Alphonse Gratry (1805–1872): marginal ou précurseur, ed. by Olivier Prat (Paris: Cerf, 2009), pp. 117–29; Alfred Vanderpol, Un Institut de droit international chrétien (Brignais: Imprimerie de l’École Professionnelle, 1912); see also Gearóid Barry, ‘Alfred Vanderpol (1854–1915), Religious Internationalism and the Pre-History of Catholic Pacifism in France, 1916–1917’, in Les défenseurs de la paix, 1899–1917, ed. by Rémi Fabre and others (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018), pp. 141–50. 8 Boniface, Histoire religieuse, p. 54; Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘Bons offices, méditations, arbitrages dans l’activité diplomatique du Saint-Siège de Léon XIII à Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 105, 2 (1993), pp. 567–612. On liberal pacifism, see Jean-Michel Guieu, ‘Les juristes internationalistes français, l’Europe et la paix à la Belle Époque’, Relations internationales, 39, 149 (2012), pp. 27–41; Michael Clinton, ‘Coming to Terms with “Pacifism”: The French Case, 1901–1918’, Peace & Change, 26, 1 (2001), pp. 1–30.

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dead letter in the autumn of 1914. Most liberal pacifists were also sound patriots, and anti-war socialists constituted a minority in most countries in 1914–15. Appearances can be deceptive, however. David S. Patterson has recently argued that ‘there was a lot of “pacifism” during the Great War, if the word is not treated too narrowly’. Patterson argued that as well as counting those absolutists who rejected killing as wrong, for ethical or political reasons, the term ‘pacifist’ in 1914–18 should be ‘defined broadly to include not only conscientious objectors but also those individuals who, strongly sensitized to the ongoing slaughter on the battlefields […], engaged in concerted peace advocacy’, even if some of these same peace advocates conceded that there could be, in principle, such a thing as a morally just war.9 Christian pacifism during World War I has been generally identified in historical literature, however, with English-speaking Protestant dissenters or with representatives of the traditional ‘peace-witness’ religious communities, such as the Quakers, from whose ranks came individuals who were usually, if not always, absolutist in their opposition to war. Nonetheless, if we take Patterson’s broader definition of pacifism, there were indeed some Catholic groups that corresponded to the wider definition of ‘pacifist’ and which cited the Pope as their inspiration. When taken together with the Pope’s tireless advocacy of peace and his potential to reach a global audience, the existence of Catholic peace activists, however isolated they were at first, lends some weight to the rather dramatic judgement by Philip Jenkins that during the conflict ‘by far the most significant centre of Christian anti-war activism was the Vatican’.10 I shall now turn to three belligerent nations: Britain, France and the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

2. Great Britain, 1916–17 My first example is the Guild of the Pope’s Peace, founded by the Catholic laymen Francis Meynell and Stanley Morison in January 1916 specifically to promote the Pope’s peace appeals and to resist conscription. In Britain, Catholics were a religious minority within an officially Protestant state. The introduction of compulsory military service, or conscription, by the British Parliament in January 1916 marked a departure from the British tradition of voluntary military service. Special provision for conscientious objection was made for Protestant sects such as the Quakers, subject to verification by local military tribunals.11 Both Maynell and Morison worked in Catholic publishing and, while it enjoyed a very limited membership, the Guild was good at self-publicity. Its publications provoked an outcry on the part of patriotic elements, including several British Catholic bishops. The Catholic Truth Society 9 David S. Patterson, ‘Pacifism’, in 1914–1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War [accessed 10 January 2019]. 10 Philip Jenkins, The Great and Holy War: How World War One Changed Religion Forever (New York: Lion Hudson, 2014), p. 65. 11 On religion and World War I in Britain, see Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 152–86.

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apologized unreservedly in the pages of the semi-official Catholic weekly The Tablet for having distributed the Guild’s mission statement in April 1916. Members of the Guild defended themselves in the Catholic press by quoting the Pope’s invitation of July 1915 to the friends of peace, adding that ‘[surely] the fact that we do no more than desire to see [the Pope’s] appeals and exhortations successful should preserve us from the sneers of Catholics’.12 It did not. Francis Meynell and Stanley Morison themselves went even further and refused military service outright when called up in 1916; the pair went before local military tribunals seeking exemptions as conscientious objectors, motivated by Catholic loyalty to the Pope’s message. They failed to obtain total exemption, even from non-combatant work, which they sought, and accordingly both men were sent to prison in 1917. Meynell, for instance, was released on medical grounds after a twelve-day hunger strike. The Guild staged a second publicity campaign in the autumn of 1917 when a letter to British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, from the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, was made public. The Guild’s 1917 pamphlet The Pope’s Plan for the Destruction of Militarism supported Gasparri’s proposal to abolish conscript armies.13 It was the Guild’s efforts’ last gasp. After the war, Francis Meynell left the Catholic Church and embraced the communist worldview.

3. France, 1916 Meanwhile, in August 1916 in Rome, Benedict XV accorded a private audience to a French Catholic soldier, a meeting which would, in hindsight, have great significance for the Catholic peace movement in France, and more generally in Europe. Marc Sangnier was a French Catholic intellectual, journalist and activist best known for his leadership of the Sillon, a dynamic and potentially radical Ultramontanist social Catholic youth movement in the first decade of the twentieth century. In the context of the modernist crisis, Sangnier and his movement came under suspicion from integrists in the French Church and eventually, in 1910, the Sillon was very publicly reprimanded for its declared egalitarianism by Pius X. The new Pope, Benedict XV, wished to turn the page in 1914 on the bitter modernist episode and made considerable moves to rehabilitate Sangnier as a Catholic social activist. The main thrust of this phase concerns diplomacy and peace, even if the emergence of Sangnier as a Catholic peace activist is intimately bound up with the politics of his rehabilitation by Benedict XV: this culminated in a public message of approval from Rome for his work as a Catholic activist in 1920 at the end of a tortuous process.14 In August 1916, meanwhile, Sangnier, after two years as an army officer at the front, was spirited out of the war for a high-level mission to Italy on behalf of the French

12 Taouk, ‘The Guild of the Pope’s Peace’, p. 263. 13 Taouk, ‘The Guild of the Pope’s Peace’, pp. 267–68. 14 Gearóid Barry, ‘Rehabilitating a Radical Catholic: Pope Benedict XV and Marc Sangnier, 1914–1922’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 60, 3 (2009), pp. 514–33.

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Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand. No official relations had existed between Paris and the Vatican since 1904. With Catholics now reintegrated into French national life in the broad national wartime consensus known as the union sacrée, Sangnier was to act as an unofficial envoy to present France’s moral case on the war to the studiously neutral Pope. Sangnier was deeply impressed with Benedict, who received him in private audience on 16 August 1916, even though they differed on the question of German war responsibility. Sangnier’s private memorandum on the meeting records the Pope’s declaration that ‘he loved France and that he had affirmed the injustice of the violation of Belgium’ but when pressed to condemn German occupation as a continuing injustice, Benedict temporized: ‘The Pope replied that I, as a philosopher, ought to understand that the Pope was obliged to negotiate with the Germans, even in Belgium, where they hold power de facto’.15 Sangnier saw the war as many French liberal pacifists did, that is to say, as a war for lasting peace achieved through victory not negotiation. He could not agree with the Pope’s wish to start ‘to envisage a peace without fighting to the bitter end’.16 However, the Pope had planted a seed in Sangnier’s mind that was to contribute to the evolution of the Frenchman’s thoughts about Germany and peace.

4. Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1917–19 The third instance of evolving Catholic attitudes examined here dates from the year 1917, when a new organization called the White Cross World Peace League (Weltfriedenswerk vom weissen Kreuz) was founded in Austria by a German Catholic priest and ex-army chaplain, Max Josef Metzger. Originally from Baden in Germany, Metzger had been ordained as a priest in 1911. The young priest was deeply affected by his experience as chaplain with a German regiment in France in 1914. As he would testify six years later in 1920, before a receptive audience at a pacifist conference at Bilthoven in Holland, ‘[in 1914] I thought Germany was the power attacked, so I went to the front as a Chaplain, not to preach patriotism, but to help the soldiers, and I am glad that I have seen the horrors of war’.17 Invalided out of frontline duties in 1915, Metzger was sent by his Bishop to Austria to organize the alcohol abstinence movement there. It was in Graz, in Austria, that Metzger founded the White Cross World Peace League in 1917, a body which raised funds strenuously in

15 ‘Aimait la France et avait affirmé l’injustice de la violation de la Belgique’; ‘Le Pape me répond que moi qui suis philosophe, je dois comprendre que le Pape est bien forcé de traiter avec les Allemands même en Belgique où il y a là un pouvoir de fait’; IMS, MS 26, Memorandum, Marc Sangnier, Audience du Pape 1916; Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, p. 32. 16 ‘Envisager la paix sans aller jusqu’au bout’; IMS, MS 26, Memo, Marc Sangnier, Audience du Pape 1916. 17 IISG, Archief Kees Boeke, Bilthovense Beweging, 419, ‘Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference at Bilthoven, 20–30 July, 1920’, Sunday afternoon, ‘White Cross Weltfriedensbund’, contribution of Max Josef Metzger, pp. 22–23.

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neutral states such as Switzerland and Holland.18 The League was the earliest tangible mobilization of Catholics in support of Benedict XV’s peace policy during World War I. Metzger published his own Catholic peace programme in January 1917, which he sent directly to the Pope, even if, in Metzger’s own words, ‘[unfortunately], the Pope, and our Movement were both isolated, and the Movement found but a feeble echo from other leaders’.19 In 1917, another German priest, Magnus Jocham, also published, with financial help from German Catholic politician Matthias Erzberger, a pamphlet on Christians and the Pope’s peace programme entitled Wir Christen und das päpstlische Friedensprogramm (We Christians and the Papal Peace Programme). In Munich in October 1919, the League of German Catholics for Peace (Friedensbund Deutscher Katholiken, FDK) was created from the stock of Metzger’s White Cross organization. This new league had as its founders the Dominican theologian Franziskus Strattmann from Munich, Father Jocham and Father Metzger himself.20 It would be in the following three years, 1920–22, the final years of Benedict’s pontificate, that these isolated Catholic peace movements in France and Germany would begin to reach out to one another.

5. A Catholic Peace Sensibility? Looking beyond these enthusiasts who were, however cautiously, swimming against the dominant clerical nationalist tide of the war years, the question arises as to how much or how little papal appeals and prayers for peace resonated among less ideologically-minded Catholics. What evidence, if any, may be found about the attitudes of Catholics who were engaged in the war as chaplains and soldiers or living as ordinary Catholics on the home front? By 1917, in particular, weariness with the war was taking its toll across Europe, and some ordinary Catholics expressed this ennui in religious terms. This surely accounts, for instance, for some of the enthusiasm of Portuguese Catholics for the anti-war message imparted at the Marian apparitions in Fatima in 1917. Benjamin Ziemann’s study of rural Bavaria reveals soldiers writing in September 1917, after the papal Peace Note, of their ardent desire to see the end to the war and of their ‘real hopes that the Pope will act as intermediary’.21 Houlihan’s recent scholarship on German-speaking Catholics in wartime is instructive concerning such ‘micro-level’ reactions, not least those amongst chaplains and Catholic soldiers. In January 1915, Benedict had already issued bishops with a ‘prayer for peace’ to be distributed in their own countries. Military authorities attempted to suppress such prayers, and the Pope’s prayer in particular, as seen in

18 Ilde Gorguet, Les mouvements pacifistes et la réconciliation franco-allemande dans les années Vingt (1919–1931) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999), p. 71. 19 IISG, Archief Kees Boeke, Bilthovense Beweging, 419, ‘Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference’, pp. 22–23. 20 Gorguet, Les mouvements pacifistes, pp. 73–75. 21 Benjamin Ziemann, War Experiences in Rural Germany (1914–1923) (Oxford: Berg, 2007), p. 154.

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the case of the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army Command.22 Presumably generals only took such preventative measures because they feared the potential impact of these sentiments on their Catholic soldiers. In spite of his political impotence, it seemed to the military that the Pope still had power to affect morale. Karl Döhl, a previously enthusiastic Austrian peasant soldier, dutifully noted the papal initiative in his diary as an invitation to the ‘whole Catholic world’ to ‘humbly pray to the Lord so that His mercifulness might finally bring the desired peace’.23 Houlihan argues that, however strongly censored, ‘the Pope’s message of peace was reaching a broad audience’, and that it was ‘among religious soldiers that the Pope’s message of peace particularly resonated’.24 Individual chaplains such as Max Josef Metzger may have drawn pacifist lessons from their baptisms of fire, but the evidence about wartime chaplains’ reactions as a whole to the papal peace message is somewhat equivocal. Houlihan cites the testimony of Father Justin Molson, a French chaplain, who wrote to the Pope in 1915 expressing his horror at the battlefield reality of uncollected bodies between the lines, which Molson considered a form of involuntary desecration. In contrast, in September 1916, a group of French military chaplains stationed in the Somme sector passed on a handwritten address to the Pope to Sangnier — whom they encountered as an officer and as a layman known to have access to Pope Benedict — in the hopes that on an eventual return journey to Rome the Frenchman could have delivered it to Benedict. The priests’ names are difficult to read in the extant draft, and it is not clear whether the final document was actually delivered to the Vatican, but the tone and content of the document are revealing. This chaplains’ address is deferential to the Pope but also resolute in its defence of the French moral case in the war, presuming to declare that ‘His Holiness knows well that our country did not go of its own volition into this horrible war and [had been] driven solely by [its] faith in treaties’.25 They argued that the French struggle, once engaged, also became a spiritual one drawing on reserves of Catholic faith. The French priests’ silence on the Pope’s peace initiatives is all the more evident when they conclude by stating that France ‘also is ready to await, from the hands of Providence, Peace based on Christian Principles [sic]’.26 This is a salutary reminder of the tenacity of clerical nationalism even in the face of one of the worst battles in the war. The Pope’s lonely vigil was not totally in vain, however. William Mulligan argues that in the case of the Pope ‘power and principle could not be disentangled. Benedict XV, like many others, saw the war as a European civil war, whose consequences would

22 Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War, p. 202. 23 Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War, p. 208. 24 Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War, p. 207. 25 ‘Sa Sainteté sait bien que notre Pays n’est pas allé de son propre plein gré à cette guerre horrible, et mû seulement par la foi des Traités’; Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War, p. 210; IMS, MS 26, Folder, Mission en Italie, 16 June 1916–9 January 1917, handwritten address from French military chaplains at the Somme to Benedict XV, 21 September 1916, to be brought to Rome by Sangnier. 26 ‘À attendre, de la main de la Providence, la Paix basée sur les Principes chrétiens’; Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War, p. 210.

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destroy the affective bonds of Catholics and Christians across the continent’.27 In the preamble to the Peace Note of August 1917, Benedict asked rhetorically: ‘Is the civilized world to become nothing more than a heap of corpses? Will Europe, so rich in glory and achievement, precipitate itself into the gulf and commit suicide, as if seized by universal madness?’.28 It is arguable that Benedict’s very insistence, at regular intervals and in the most plaintive terms, on the tragedy of the ‘suicide of civilized Europe’ places the Pope by default amongst a select group of dissenting European intellectuals who tried to keep alive the concept of a common European heritage, conceived variously in religious or Enlightenment terms, their hope being that the very idea of Europe might still be available as a framework for preserving peace whenever it finally came.29

6. Synthesis: An Internationalist Catholic Movement in the Years 1920–22? After the war, therefore, there was a gradual fusion of the small Catholic movements discussed above, resulting in a new wave of Catholic pacifism. In this regard the year 1920 was significant for a number of reasons. First, in May 1920, Benedict issued his encyclical Pacem Dei munus to the Universal Church, specifically addressing the need in post-war Europe for a change of heart. Secondly, Catholic internationalist movements began to mobilize around the Pope’s peace policy, also due to the ‘red scare’ spreading across Europe in 1919–20: Catholic internationalism was partly a defence mechanism against communist internationalism.30 Both the German war chaplain, Father Metzger, and the French Catholic layman, Sangnier, were part of this mobilization in 1920. In that year, while attending the World Esperanto Congress at The Hague, Metzger launched the Catholic Peace International (Internacio Katolika, IKA), a group of Catholic pacifists from nineteen nations including Germany, which committed itself to campaigning for the revision of the Treaty of Versailles and the promotion of the syncretic Esperanto language. Its practical and spiritual works for Catholic reconciliation included collecting money from German Catholics to help rebuild ruined churches (in France), and international monthly reparation by veterans through the Eucharist and spiritual and corporal works, which Metzger himself emphasized in his correspondence with the

27 William Mulligan, The Great War for Peace (Yale: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 214. 28 Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War, p. 199. 29 Jenkins, The Great and Holy War, p. 65; Europe in Crisis: Intellectuals and the European Idea (1917–1957), ed. by Matthew D’Auria and Mark Hewitson (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012). 30 Wolfram Kaiser, Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 61.

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Vatican.31 Earlier in the year, on 8 January 1920, the Frenchman Sangnier, who had recently been elected as a deputy to the French Chamber of Deputies, met Benedict for the second time, accompanied this time by his close collaborator, the journalist Georges Hoog. In this audience in 1920, Benedict told Sangnier and Hoog that he wished to ‘count on them’ in the promotion of a Catholic peace policy.32 The fact that the new centrist and centre-right Bloc National government in Paris was committed to reopening diplomatic relations with the Holy See added lustre to Deputy Sangnier’s visit to the Vatican. Elected in Paris on a Bloc National list, Sangnier initially sat as a government backbencher (though he quickly chafed at its conservatism and would, in the course of his five-year mandate, part company with the right over its policy towards Germany). At the January 1920 meeting, the Pope encouraged Sangnier to engage in cautious cooperation with non-Catholics on the question of promoting peace, a small but significant departure from papal suspicion of interreligious cooperation, although it was meant to apply to secular causes and certainly not intended to be confused with religious ecumenism, which remained officially taboo for faithful Catholics before Vatican II. In the political sphere, Benedict stated his view to Sangnier and Hoog that the right to declare war should be vested in parliaments rather than in heads of state in order to buy time for wiser counsel to prevail in a time of crisis. Hoog noted the Pope’s air of long suffering and his ‘weary gestures’ when he spoke about the difficulties of disarmament. Benedict expressed grief at how his own humanitarian appeals for Austria and Germany had been calumniated in France in what the Pope called ‘the spectacle of Christians […] so stubborn in their hatred as to refuse succour to hungry children’.33 In the same audience, Benedict had spoken in favour of ‘engaged faith’ stating his understanding that ‘the civilizing action of Christianity should correspond to an effort to reform human institutions’.34 How did such statements of engagement with contemporary political reality sit with the Vatican’s attitude to the new League of Nations? Here there appears to be something of a paradox. The Vatican certainly seemed to speak the language of the new internationalism and of international arbitration: Benedict’s encyclical Pacem Dei munus of May 1920 called on nations to put aside ‘mutual suspicion’ and to join a league or ‘a kind of family of peoples […] to safeguard the order of human society’.35 Authoritative Catholic prelates had written

31 AES, IV, pos. 293, fasc. 19, f. 125. Pamphlet on Third Congress of the Catholic International (IKA), Constance, 10–15 August 1923; f. 23, Letter, Metzger–Secretary of State, 1 March 1922; Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, p. 56; Frédérick Hadley, ‘La Paix par la Jeunesse’, La Lettre de l’Historial, 23 (2008), p. 13. 32 ‘Compter sur eux’; Georges Hoog, ‘Mort du Pape Benoît XV’, La Démocratie, 10 February 1922; Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, p. 51. 33 ‘Gestes fatigués’; ‘le spectacle des chrétiens […] aussi tenaces dans leur haine que de refuser le secours aux enfants affamés’; Hoog, ‘Mort du Pape’; Hoog, ‘Le rapprochement moral’, p. 142. 34 ‘Foi engagée’; ‘l’action civilisatrice du christianisme devrait correspondre à un effort de réformer les institutions humaines’; Hoog, ‘Mort du Pape’. 35 Benedict XV, Pacem Dei munus pulcherrimum, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 12 (1920), pp. 209–18 (§ 17) [accessed 10 January 2019]; see Frank J. Coppa, The Modern Papacy since 1789 (London: Longman, 1998), p. 171.

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in similar terms, some even arguing that Christianity could and should provide the moral underpinning of the new League of Nations project which, without this moral foundation, would be like the house built on sand. As the impeccably patriotic and theologically orthodox Catholic Bishop of Arras, a diocese devastated by four years of fighting, Mgr Léon-Adolphe Julien certainly had moral authority to put forward such an argument, which he had done in a pamphlet in 1919.36 The Vatican, however, under both Benedict XV and his successor Pius XI, remained guarded in its appreciation of what they perceived to be an ‘Anglo-Protestant’ League of Nations. While Benedict XV’s lack of personal vanity is unquestioned, there can be little doubt that the Vatican was corporately offended by an institution which seemed to usurp the erstwhile role of the papacy as world conscience and court of arbitration. When the cosmopolitan German diplomat, Harry Kessler, visited the Vatican in June 1921, he found the Secretary of State, Gasparri, ‘scornful’ of Geneva, considered as a victors’ club. Kessler could not help but sense in the Vatican coolness towards the League of Nations some traces of ‘irritation, “our toes have been trodden on”, and possibly a touch of Church venom against this invention of the devil in the guise of that Calvinist pastor and president Wilson’.37 Despite all the Vatican scepticism about Geneva, Benedict XV nonetheless presided over something of a Catholic internationalist movement in the immediate aftermath of the war, partly due to the challenge of Bolshevik internationalism, but also as a means of beginning the delicate task of bridging the wartime divides between European Catholics in the two belligerent camps.38 Such obstacles notwithstanding, Paul Misner writes in his recent study of twentieth-century social Catholicism that ‘in fact, during the 1920s there was a blossoming of Catholic associations on the international level’ with a ‘first explosion in the immediate aftermath of the war’.39 The foundation of the IKA in 1920 by Father Metzger has already been mentioned. However, in the realm of Catholic peace activism, it was the suggestion that the moment was ripe for a ‘democratic international’, wherein democratic Catholics could collaborate with other moderates, which really caught the imagination of an emerging transnational constituency of Catholic intellectuals and activists in 1920–21. Fresh from his second audience with Benedict in January 1920, during which he had been invested with a new mission for peace, Sangnier would be at the heart of the resulting initiative to create a ‘Democratic International’ whose congresses and propaganda would make it one of the most tangible expressions of

36 Léon-Adolphe Julien, La Société des Nations: une théorie catholique (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1919). On Bishop Julien, see Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, pp. 139–46. 37 Harry Kessler, The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan: Count Harry Kessler (1918–1937) (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), p. 142, entry for 23 June 1921. 38 In this regard, it should be noted that Catholic labour unions actually had to have two separate international bodies from 1918 to 1920, such was Franco-German distrust: only when the neutral Dutch Catholic trade unionists brokered a modus vivendi in 1920 did sitting in the same meeting hall become possible. See Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, p. 55. 39 Paul Misner, Catholic Labor Movements in Europe: Social Thought and Action (1914–1965) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015), p. 40.

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Catholic peace activism in the interwar years. The idea was not originally Sangnier’s but emanated rather from contacts between Italian and French Catholic activists and their periodicals. It was Don Ernesto Vercesi, a Milan-based Italian priest, newspaper editor and long-time Sangnier advisor on Vatican politics, who proposed such a democratic international to bring together European Catholics and other men and women of goodwill from across the wartime divide to discuss social questions. What began as a Franco-Italian conversation evolved rapidly into a lengthy and voluminous ‘enquiry’ in the pages of Sangnier’s periodical La Démocratie, which began in May 1920 and lasted until early 1921, featuring contributions from Catholics across Europe responding to Sangnier’s invitation for responses to Vercesi’s proposal. The resulting published correspondence was transnational in character and featured particularly striking responses from German Catholic correspondents. Hoog, as periodical editor and as Sangnier’s trusted lieutenant, edited the eight-month series of letters. Correspondents again and again cited the example of the reigning Benedict XV and his peace advocacy. Whereas political internationalism had been previously suspected in Catholic circles of being ‘socialist’, the very turbulence of the times required Catholics to make common cause across borders. Hoog, as editor, politely reproved, while still publishing, a number of responses that included anti-Semitic tropes. In terms similar to those he used in his contribution to La Démocratie, in 1921 Father Giulio De Rossi of the Italian People’s Party wrote: Faced with a powerful Masonic International, an even more powerful Jewish and financial International and a violent red International, the political parties that are inspired by the Christian school of social policy in the various countries cannot remain discrete. It would be tantamount to a death sentence.40 Correspondents who were favourable to the concept of a democratic international of Christian inspiration referred repeatedly to the words and actions of Benedict XV, most dramatically in the case of Father Magnus Jocham, co-founder of the FDK, the German Catholic peace league, who wrote: ‘As friend of peace, the Pope has given the order: “War on War!”. This war must be pursued by Christians of all nations’.41 The result of this epistolary diplomacy was a decision by Sangnier and his small Jeune République political party to summon a congress to be held in Paris in December 1921 which would formally constitute a Democratic International as a link among democrats, in particular Catholic democrats, across borders. The Pope’s words to Sangnier in 1920 had driven him in a direction in which he was already beginning to go. First, as a Christian democrat politician in the French Parliament, Sangnier began to espouse a more conciliatory attitude towards Germany, stating the need for France to distinguish between German militarists and German republican democrats. From January 1921, Sangnier adopted in his speeches the ringing phrase ‘the disarmament

40 Misner, Catholic Labor Movements, p. 51. 41 ‘Alors que le pape ami de la paix a donné le mot d’ordre: “Guerre à la guerre” [sic], il faut que cette guerre soit poursuivie par tous les chrétiens de toutes les nations’; Georges Hoog, ‘L’Internationale démocratique: deuxième série de réponses’, La Démocratie, 25 November 1920.

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of hatred’ that would define the Democratic International he founded in 1921 (and which became, in 1922, the Democratic International for Peace). Thus, as a direct result of the enquiry in the pages of La Démocratie, and using the same network of Catholic and non-Catholic contacts across Europe, Sangnier organized the First International Democratic Congress in Paris in December 1921. This remarkable meeting of representatives of twenty-one nations included many Protestants and non-believers whilst retaining pride of place for the public reconciliation of French and German Catholics. Alongside Magnus Jocham of the FDK, Father Metzger himself also went to Paris, as part of a small Austrian delegation. At the public meeting during the congress’s conclusion, held in front of several thousand spectators in central Paris, Metzger became one of the first German-speakers to speak from a public rostrum in Paris since before the recent war. Metzger boldly told his audience that ‘if only the world’s three hundred million Catholic consciences were committed to the Pope’s vision of social justice and peace, Catholics, in alliance with other pacifists, would form an invincible phalanx for peace’.42 Sangnier had taken great care to send the Pope a personal copy of the congress programme, which is to be found in the Pope’s personal correspondence.43 The Pope reciprocated and publicly blessed the meeting’s work by means of a telegram sent to Sangnier on behalf of the Pope by Gasparri. The reading of this message was one of the highlights of the congress for many of the Catholic delegates. Simultaneously, the newly arrived papal Nuncio to France, Mgr Bonaventura Cerretti, the first Nuncio to France since the rupture of diplomatic relations between the Republic and the Holy See in 1904, received a delegation of Catholic and Protestant congress participants at his new Paris residence.44 For Metzger and Sangnier, therefore, Benedict XV was both a direct and an indirect inspiration for their peace activism. A month after this first Democratic International congress, in January 1922, in a further sign of Vatican endorsement, the Nuncio Mgr Cerretti visited Sangnier’s offices at the Maison de la Démocratie on Boulevard Raspail, which had hosted the congress shortly before. While there, he visited the newspaper’s chapel or ‘crypt’, a shrine to the memory of fallen comrades in the recent war and the site where, a month earlier, German priest Father Jocham had celebrated Mass and invoked Christian reconciliation at the table of the Eucharist. The Nuncio’s brief remarks during his visit reflected perfectly the papal peace policy of which Sangnier was now a very public advocate. ‘The war is over’, Cerretti declared, ‘[and] hatred ought to disappear to make way for reconciliation among peoples and love’.45 In the week during which Cerretti spoke these words in Paris, Benedict lay ill in Rome. A few days later, when Benedict died on 22 January 1922, it was for Sangnier a personal loss, the loss of a mentor and of a friend. The encomium which he published in his newspaper Jeune République was revealing. 42 Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, p. 62; Compte-rendu complet du Ier Congrès démocratique international (Paris, 4–11 décembre 1921) (Paris: La Démocratie, 1922), pp. 291–92. 43 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 83, ff. 158r–162r. I am grateful to my colleague Dr Patrick J. Houlihan (Trinity College Dublin) for bringing this document to my attention. 44 ‘Le premier Congrès démocratique international’, La Croix, 11–12 December 1921, p. 2. 45 ‘Mgr Cerretti, Nonce Apostolique, à La Démocratie’, Jeune République, 22 January 1922.

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Sangnier offered his tribute as ‘a humble flower on an august tomb’, the tomb of a man who had ‘supported, comforted and defended’ him. He mourned the dead Pope not just as a humanitarian but also as a man of ‘bold’ pacifism.46 Hoog wrote a similarly emotional tribute recalling the audience he and Sangnier had had with the Pope almost exactly two years before, in 1920, and remarking on the poignancy of the Pope’s passing so soon after the peace congress that he had blessed had been held: the late Pope was ‘happy, we are sure, that France was the first to welcome, on her soil, Christians and democrats of all countries without exception […] serving together the great cause of peace’.47

7. Conclusions Although this chapter focusses on the pontificate of Benedict XV, it is worth emphasizing that there were several threads of continuity in Vatican policy towards the Catholic peace movement throughout the 1920s. While it is clear from the Vatican’s repeated endorsements of Sangnier’s peace congresses throughout the 1920s that it was supportive of moderate Catholic peace activism (once it steered clear of radical anti-militarism and conscientious objection), the Vatican was more cautious about the more outspoken movements such as Metzger’s IKA. Sangnier’s status as an elected politician between 1919 and 1924 frankly meant that Rome took him and his movement more seriously as an ally in the battle to mould public opinion. In contrast, papal diplomats were privately realistic about the modest size and import of a movement like Metzger’s, which they interpreted in part as a vehicle for German interests and for revisionism concerning the Treaty of Versailles in particular. When, in 1924, the IKA sought Vatican support for holding a congress in Venice in Mussolini-ruled Italy, Luigi Maglione, Nuncio in Berne, Switzerland, wrote to Cardinal Gasparri to advise caution. The IKA’s promotion of Esperanto showed its zeal and idealism, but the movement was one of well-meaning enthusiasts and was marked in general by ‘a great deal of utopianism and vagueness’. It lacked any real influence, except in certain German and Austrian Catholic circles that ‘wished to improve the moral situation of their country by this new means’.48 Moreover, for Ultramontanes, like Sangnier himself, and sympathetic bishops, such as the Bishop of Arras, Mgr Julien, the Catholic peace movement also had clear ideological limits, and these needed to be policed against the dangers of syncretism: conscientious objection was for them a bridge too far, a well-meaning but naive subjective ethic that denied the valid calls of just

46 Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, p. 69. ‘Une fleur humble sur une tombe auguste’; ‘soutenu, réconforté et défendu’; Marc Sangnier, ‘Une fleur humble sur une tombe auguste’, Jeune République, 29 January 1922. 47 ‘Heureux, nous en sommes sûrs, que la France avait été le premier à accueillir, sur son sol, les chrétiens et les démocrates de tous les pays sans exception […] au service de la grande cause de la paix’; Hoog, ‘Mort du Pape’. 48 AES, IV, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 293, fasc. 19, f. 44, Nuncio Maglione to Gasparri, 16 June 1924 (report on proposed IKA International Catholic Congress at Venice).

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authority, a type of ‘Tolstoyan’ individualism that greatly alarmed Bishop Julien.49 In this view, national egotism was indeed un-Catholic but traditional patriotism and obedience to authority, including compulsory military service, were not. The Catholic peace movement of the 1920s thus had its own internal tensions and contradictions. These doses of curial realism and episcopal caution prompt an important question concerning the Catholic pacifist personalities outlined above. Briefly, does what is described in this chapter amount to no more than an intriguing web of personal relations with little broader historical significance? Even if that were the case, it would still be worthwhile studying them. As Helen McCarthy writes of the minority anti-war feminists who formed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in The Hague in 1915, ‘the history of seemingly lost causes can tell us a great deal about how power works’.50 Yet we can say more than that. As several studies, including Wolfram Kaiser’s study of Christian democracy and the rise of European unity, have shown, the Catholic peace movement associated with the pontificate of Benedict XV, which continued to grow throughout the 1920s, was modest in size but not insignificant politically in the medium term.51 Such movements stood out against the clerical nationalism of most of their co-religionists and loyally disseminated the papal peace message, even if this embarrassed their own bishops. Even while the Catholic Church officially spurned ecumenism at that time, these Catholic-inspired peace movements were open to cooperation with non-Catholics and themselves benefitted from the increased prestige of the papacy in the aftermath of the war, a prestige thanks both to the Pope’s humanitarian action but also to the Vatican’s distance from the Versailles settlement that had left Germans and Austrians disgruntled, to put it mildly. Catholic pacifism was often coupled with Christian democracy, as was the case with Sangnier, and the years 1919–20 saw a brief opening on the Vatican’s part to Christian democratic politics, as can be seen in the case of Don Luigi Sturzo and the Italian People’s Party. By inspiring French and German Catholic youths around them to become engaged in social Catholicism and peace activism, their efforts formed part of a unique Christian democrat moment in the early to mid-1920s. Under the new Pope, Pius XI, not least due to Gasparri’s continuation as Secretary of State throughout the 1920s, there was a certain continuity in the Vatican’s foreign policy and in its cautious cultivation of the Catholic peace movement, as is seen in particular at the time of the Ruhr crisis between France and Germany in 1923.52 Thus, Catholics, or rather a transnational cadre of Catholic peace activists, of whom Sangnier and Metzger were but two examples, were able to take their place as part

49 Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, p. 146. 50 Helen McCarthy, ‘Pacifism and Feminism in the Great War: A Century Ago, the Women’s Congress Met with the Aim of Revolutionising a Ravaged Political Landscape’, History Today, 65, 4 (2015), pp. 4–5. 51 Kaiser, Christian Democracy. 52 Gearóid Barry, ‘Marc Sangnier and “the Other Germany”: The Freiburg International Democratic Peace Congress and the Ruhr Invasion (1923)’, European History Quarterly, 41, 1 (2011), pp. 25–49.

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of a larger moderate peace constituency during the brief period of Franco-German détente in the mid-1920s, better known as the ‘Locarno honeymoon’.53 They were, in the striking words used by the German Catholic FDK in 1928, nothing less than ‘the shock troops at the service of the papal message’.54

Bibliography Addams, Jane, ‘The People of Europe and the Great War’, The Advocate of Peace, 77, 8 (1915), pp. 194–97 Barry, Gearóid, ‘Alfred Vanderpol (1854–1915), Religious Internationalism and the PreHistory of Catholic Pacifism in France, 1916–1917’, in Les défenseurs de la paix, 1899–1917, ed. by Rémi Fabre and others (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018), pp. 141–50 Barry, Gearóid, The Disarmament of Hatred: Marc Sangnier, French Catholicism and the Legacy of the First World War (1914–1945) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Barry, Gearóid, ‘Marc Sangnier and “the Other Germany”: The Freiburg International Democratic Peace Congress and the Ruhr Invasion (1923)’, European History Quarterly, 41, 1 (2011), pp. 25–49 Barry, Gearóid, ‘Rehabilitating a Radical Catholic: Pope Benedict XV and Marc Sangnier, 1914–1922’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 60, 3 (2009), pp. 514–33 Bianchi, Bruna, ‘Towards a New Internationalism: Pacifist Journals Edited by Women (1914–1919)’, in Gender and the First World War, ed. by Christa Hämmerle, Oswald Überegger and Birgitta Bader-Zaar (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 176–94 Boniface, Xavier, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014) Clinton, Michael, ‘Coming to Terms with “Pacifism”: The French Case, 1901–1918’, Peace & Change, 26, 1 (2001), pp. 1–30 Compte-rendu complet du Ier Congrès démocratique international (Paris, 4–11 décembre 1921) (Paris: La Démocratie, 1922) Coppa, Frank J., The Modern Papacy since 1789 (London: Longman, 1998) D’Auria, Matthew, and Mark Hewitson, eds, Europe in Crisis: Intellectuals and the European Idea (1917–1957) (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012) Gorguet, Ilde, Les mouvements pacifistes et la réconciliation franco-allemande dans les années Vingt (1919–1931) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999)

53 Pope Pius XI endorsed Sangnier’s congresses. The Sixth Democratic International Peace Congress held at Bierville, near Paris, in August 1926, occurred at the height of Locarno-era Franco-German détente. The political manoeuvring in Rome and France surrounding the papal message of support to this Bierville congress, a congress dedicated to ‘La Paix par la Jeunesse’, was intimately bound up with the simultaneous ‘condemnation’ by the Holy Office of the integral nationalism of the Action française movement and its leader Charles Maurras who had spent decades pouring scorn on Sangnier’s Christian democracy and latterly on his pacifist initiative. For a fuller discussion of this, see Barry, The Disarmament of Hatred, pp. 147–51. 54 Gorguet, Les mouvements pacifistes, p. 75.

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Gregory, Adrian, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Guieu, Jean-Michel, ‘Les juristes internationalistes français, l’Europe et la paix à la Belle Époque’, Relations internationales, 39, 149 (2012), pp. 27–41 Hadley, Frédérick, ‘La Paix par la Jeunesse’, La Lettre de l’Historial, 23 (2008), p. 13 Hoog, Georges, ‘Le rapprochement moral’, in France et Allemagne, ed. by Georges Hoog and others (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1928), p. 134 Houlihan, Patrick J., Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary (1914–1922) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Jenkins, Philip, The Great and Holy War: How World War One Changed Religion Forever (New York: Lion Hudson, 2014) Julien, Léon-Adolphe, La Société des Nations: une théorie catholique (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1919) Kaiser, Wolfram, Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Kessler, Harry, The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan: Count Harry Kessler (1918–1937) (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) McCarthy, Helen, ‘Pacifism and Feminism in the Great War: A Century Ago, the Women’s Congress Met with the Aim of Revolutionising a Ravaged Political Landscape’, History Today, 65, 4 (2015), pp. 4–5 Misner, Paul, Catholic Labor Movements in Europe: Social Thought and Action (1914–1965) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Mulligan, William, The Great War for Peace (Yale: Yale University Press, 2014) Patterson, David S., ‘Pacifism’, in 1914–1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War Pollard, John F., The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Prat, Olivier, ‘L’internationalisme du père Gratry et son héritage’, in Alphonse Gratry (1805–1872): marginal ou précurseur, ed. by Olivier Prat (Paris: Cerf, 2009), pp. 117–29 Prat, Olivier, ‘Internationalisme et pacifisme chrétiens en France et en Allemagne (1919– 1939)’, in Les Chrétiens, la guerre et la paix: de la paix de Dieu à l’esprit d’Assise, ed. by Bruno Béthouart and Xavier Boniface (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012), pp. 305–16 Sangnier, Marc, ‘Une fleur humble sur une tombe auguste’, Jeune République, 29 January 1922 Taouk, Youssef, ‘The Guild of the Pope’s Peace: A British Peace Movement in the First World War’, British Catholic History, 29, 2 (2008), pp. 252–71 Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘Bons offices, méditations, arbitrages dans l’activité diplomatique du Saint-Siège de Léon XIII à Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 105, 2 (1993), pp. 567–612 Vanderpol, Alfred, Un Institut de droit international chrétien (Brignais: Imprimerie de l’École Professionnelle, 1912) Ziemann, Benjamin, War Experiences in Rural Germany (1914–1923) (Oxford: Berg, 2007)

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Interventionism and Neutrality in Italy

Claudia Baldoli

The Extremist Neutrality of Guido Miglioli

1.

Catholics and Neutrality

Without any precise directives from above and without a political party to represent them, Italian Catholics reacted to the outbreak of the Great War in extremely different ways. During the war, most of the Catholic press stated the Catholics’ desire to prove to the country what staunch patriots they were and their determination to support the government’s choices, even when that meant ignoring biblical commandments. At the same time, however, among the Catholic population there were ‘a few too many pious women and a few too many prayers for peace’.1 Moreover, due to the Vatican’s presence, the divergence between the activities of the Pope and his Secretary of State — both committed to working to end the conflict and promoting the Holy See’s international character — and the process of nationalization sought by the government — which aimed at involving Catholics — became problematic, in Italy more than in the other belligerent countries.2 It was precisely the Pope’s presence and the Church’s influence, especially among the Italian peasantry, that made the development and permanence of neutralist attitudes and resistance to the war possible. Furthermore, Italy’s late entry into the war allowed the Socialist Party to mobilize the masses, in a pacifist sense, more than in other countries. This paper analyses the activity, content and forms of anti-war protests expressed in the most important case of Catholic neutrality in Italy: that promoted by the leghe bianche (White Leagues) organized by Guido Miglioli in Cremona, placing it within the broader context of Italian Catholic and socialist neutrality. During the period of neutrality, there were forms of moderate Catholic and patriotic neutrality that expressed sentiments of loyalty toward the Holy See but also, at the same time, the need to defend Italy’s interests. This neutrality remained



1 ‘Un po’ troppe pie donne e un po’ troppe preghiere per la pace’; Mario Isnenghi, Dieci lezioni sull’Italia contemporanea: da quando non eravamo ancora nazione… a quando facciamo fatica a rimanerlo (Rome: Donzelli, 2011), p. 173. 2 Gabriele Paolini, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008), p. 55.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 339–354 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118779

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limited by the general provision (also recommended by the Holy See) to respect institutional authority. It was, therefore, a conditional opposition to the war involving mainly intellectual Catholics, a bourgeoisie that was involved in Italian politics but which was, at the same time, concerned with nineteenth-century fears about the liberal age. The pending situation was made even more complicated by the war and by Italy’s intervention in it. As with other previous conflicts and revolutionary events and as would happen twenty years later when facing World War II, patriotic, neutral, and interventionist Catholicism appeared unified by an intransigent and anti-liberal interpretation of war as the result of modern society’s errors and as divine punishment for people straying from the dictates of the Church. For those who wanted neutrality, war represented a ‘lie against the truth’, and interventionism was emblematic of a Masonic and anti-clerical challenge to the Church.3 One of the main concerns of Catholics on the side of neutrality was to distinguish themselves from the socialists, whose opposition to the war was seen as absolute and therefore disparaging of state authority and a herald of that other scourge of modern society: revolution. During the months of neutrality, patriotic Catholics opposed Italy’s entry into the war in that it would be against Italian interests as well as contrary to ecclesiastical freedom. From the opposing point of view, nationalist Catholics, who favoured Italy’s entry into war, were operating on the same principles. They, too, were convinced that the war was a divine punishment. For them, the Church manifested itself as the element of the nation’s salvation, the main guarantor of ‘Italy’s unity, strength, and power’.4 Once Italy joined the war, Catholics for neutrality and those for the war, in fact, wound up converging, at least partly. Although the former did not share the nationalism of the latter and had to suspend their aversion to the war out of respect for authority, they ended up participating in the same aspirations. Both were subject to ideological and theological conversions, which led them to accept the premises of bourgeois and liberal nationalism. On a theological level, the patriotic neutralists justified their position on the basis of the distinction between just and unjust war. War with Austria, since it had not invaded Italy, was not justified. These theological discussions, however, were limited to a minority within the clergy. Most Catholic opposition to the war reflected the hostility felt by the rural population.5 In particular, the Catholic trade union movement in the Italian countryside, especially in the Po Valley, from the beginning of the century found itself sharing an unwavering defence of neutrality with the socialists, based on the fact that, should Italy enter the war, it would be the peasant masses that would be sent to die in the trenches.





3 ‘Menzogna contro la verità’; Pietro Scoppola, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 95–151 (p. 105). 4 ‘L’unità, la forza, la potenza dell’Italia’; Luigi Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970), p. 207. 5 John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), p. 102.

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2. The White Leagues Guido Miglioli, a lawyer and, from 1913, Catholic parliamentarian, was raised in the province of Cremona, the son of a landowner and a Catholic mother. He brought to L’Azione — the newspaper he founded — the voice of the rural masses in the fight against the gentry, the war and, later, Fascism. During the early post-war period and then during the dictatorship he became famous as the ‘bolscevico bianco’ (‘White Bolshevik’).6 Miglioli’s neutrality, therefore, is explained not only as an interpretation of the New Testament in pacifist terms, but also as his support of the needs expressed by the rural populace. While interventionism was a predominantly urban and bourgeois phenomenon,7 the stereotypical image of a large peasantry passively accepting direction from above does not reflect the reality of the war years, when large sectors of the rural population opposed Italy’s entry into the war. In particular, the most dynamic area, where the White Leagues’ activity was most energetic, included the lands between the Po, Oglio and Adda rivers in the province of Cremona.8 In the first two decades of the twentieth century, this area — which until the end of the nineteenth century was without work contracts for the approximately 40,000 farmhands who worked there, where pellagra was rampant and landowners often absent — became one of Italy’s most important centres for socialist and Catholic activity (and rivalry).9 Catholic trade unionism had already often met and clashed — with various migrations between the two — with socialist trade unionism. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Po Valley socialism had also proven open to evangelical influence, and the White Leagues — attracting the censure of the ecclesiastical hierarchies — had struggled to reconcile the rites and traditions of the peasant world with the political culture imported from socialism. It was precisely some of the socialist leaders, including Camillo Prampolini and Leonida Bissolati, who explained to the peasants that the Christian and socialist messages were fundamentally





6 Among biographies of Miglioli, see Antonio Fappani, Guido Miglioli e il movimento contadino (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1964) and Franco Leonori, No guerra, ma terra: Miglioli, una vita per i contadini (Rome: Compagnia Edizioni Internazionali, 1969). On the origins of Fascism in Cremona, see Francis J. Demers, Le origini del fascismo a Cremona (Rome: Laterza, 1979) and Claudia Baldoli, Bissolati immaginario: le origini del fascismo cremonese dal socialismo riformista allo squadrismo (Cremona: Cremonabooks, 2002). 7 See Mario Isnenghi, Il mito della Grande Guerra, 4th edn (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), pp. 11–76. For a recent discussion of the historiography of Italian interventionism, see Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008). 8 Carlo Bellò, L’Azione 1905–1922 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1967), p. ix. 9 On this history of Cremona and its province, see Una città nella storia dell’Italia unita: classe politica e ideologie in Cremona nel cinquantennio 1875–1925, ed. by Franco Invernici (Cremona: Linograf, 1986) and Storia di Cremona, 8 vols (Azzano San Paolo: Bolis, 2003–13), VIII: Il Novecento, ed. by Elisa Signori (2013). On peasants’ conditions in the Po Valley between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Guido Crainz, Padania: il mondo dei braccianti dall’Ottocento alla fuga dalle campagne (Rome: Donzelli, 1994), pp. 19–79.

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similar, generating conversions within the two sides. This was the context in which the pacifism of the White Leagues developed.10 The White Leagues’ newspaper, L’Azione — founded in Cremona in 1904 as a weekly, then from 1913 becoming a daily, and ultimately eliminated by the Fascists in 1922 — supported forms of protest that were often more radical than the socialist ones, as Antonio Gramsci later recognized.11 Its uncompromising rejection of the war was based on practical considerations, reflecting the social reality of the countryside and its absolute pacifist interpretation of the Gospel. The war was held to be contrary to the Christian conscience but also an instrument of the ruling and financial class to make a profit and lead the peasant masses to slaughter. The White Leagues were opposed to war before 1914. In 1911 and 1912, Miglioli’s paper had already expressed its hostility to the Italian occupation of Libya, causing a fracture within Cremona’s Church, whose Bishop, Geremia Bonomelli, shared the general attitude of the Italian Church, seizing the opportunity to demonstrate his own patriotism.12 Even bourgeois Catholicism underwent various conversions during the period between the Italo-Turkish War in Libya and the Great War. In those years, the periodical L’Unità Cattolica often reflected on the danger of nationalism and of the possible collusion between Catholic patriotism and the nascent nationalism, arising from diverse forces on either side, but both generally anti-clerical. During the war in Libya, some Catholics had already moved to a nationalist stance, for the most part, however, without abandoning their religion. ‘The providential mission, the importance of religion for cultural penetration, to maintain ties with emigrants, to reinforce an internal unity with respect to objectives abroad: these were the points, at the ideological level, from which Catholics started out’.13 It was only during the Great War that theological reflection on millennial writings regarding the just war and submission to authority gave way to ‘a true and proper sanctification of war frequently based on the Christianization of the nation’s political religion’.14 In September 1911, L’Azione accused Italian politicians, whether Catholic or not, who, with the exception of the socialists, had supported the Libyan enterprise, of

10 On evangelical socialists, see Daniela Saresella, Cattolici a sinistra: dal modernismo ai giorni nostri (Rome: Laterza, 2011), p. 16. For an anthology of their writings, see Rossano Pisano, Il paradiso socialista: la propaganda socialista in Italia alla fine dell’Ottocento attraverso gli opuscoli di ‘Critica Sociale’ (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1986). 11 Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, ed. by Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), II, p. 1199. 12 On Bonomelli, see Gianfausto Rosoli, Geremia Bonomelli e il suo tempo: atti del convegno storico 16–19 ottobre 1996 (Brescia: Fondazione Civiltà Bresciana, 1999). 13 ‘La missione provvidenziale, l’importanza della religione per la penetrazione culturale, per mantenere il legame con gli emigrati, per rinsaldare l’unità interna rispetto agli obiettivi all’estero. Sul piano ideologico erano questi i punti da cui i cattolici partivano’; Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico, p. 194. 14 ‘Una vera e propria sacralizzazione della guerra basata spesso sulla cristianizzazione della religione politica della nazione’; La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), p. 7.

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‘nationalist tendencies’, ‘imperialist reactions’ and ‘reactionary militarism’.15 Two months later, Miglioli devoted his thoughts to the ‘humble victims’ of the conflict: a ‘great army of the weak, inept in war, but the first to suffer from the war’.16 In 1915, he emphasized the continuity between the motivations of 1911 and those in 1915: war was evil, always.17 As soon as Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914, he made it clear that, in spite of Vienna’s evident expansionist interests, it was not a question of going into such details but of rejecting war in itself.18 Some examples from L’Azione’s front pages during the months of neutrality reveal the nature of his opposition: ‘Gli effetti della Guerra: tutta l’Italia contro gli affamatori’ (‘Effects of War: All Italy against Those Who Cause Starvation’), 9 August 1914; ‘La guerra degli orrori’ (‘War of Horrors’), 15 August 1914; ‘La guerra in una fase di angosciosa attesa’ (‘War: Waiting in Anguish’), 16 August 1914; ‘L’Italia non è preparata moralmente alla guerra’ (‘Italy Is Not Morally Prepared for War’), 2 February 1915; ‘Oggi tutto il mondo cristiano prega per la pace’ (‘Today, the Entire Christian World Prays for Peace’), 7 February 1915; ‘La preghiera cristiana per la pace fra i popoli’ (‘Christian Prayer for Peace among Peoples’), 9 February 1915; ‘L’odio civile del popolo contro la Guerra: tutti i comunicati parlano di vittorie, cioè di morti’ (‘People’s Civic Hatred of War: All Reports Speak of Victories, that is, of the Dead’), 14 February 1915. During those months, reports from prefects around Italy bore witness to how the demonstrations in favour of neutrality were far more numerous and better organized than those promoting intervention.19 Nevertheless, from February 1915, the interventionist minority, with which the Catholic right that had been banned from public demonstrations was beginning to align itself, launched a counterattack throughout the country.20 In the province of Cremona, this landslide occurred very gradually because of the hostility of the peasant masses to the war and the popularity that the socialist and Catholic leagues, advocates of a total neutrality, enjoyed there. In the newspapers of both organizations, moments of convergence are traceable from the beginning. In August 1914, Cremona’s socialist newspaper, L’Eco del Popolo, encouraged the proletariat to prepare for revolutionary action if the government decided to abandon its neutrality. On 10 August, during the meeting of Cremona’s provincial council, the socialists proposed a motion against war, which Miglioli supported.21

15 ‘Tendenza nazionalista’; ‘reazione imperialista’; ‘militarismo reazionario’; ‘Tra le due follie’, L’Azione, 30 September 1911. 16 ‘Umili vittime’; ‘grande esercito di deboli, inetto alla guerra, ma della guerra il primo a soffrire’; ‘Il nostro dovere durante la guerra’, L’Azione, 11 November 1911. 17 ‘La nostra opposizione’, L’Azione, 17 January 1915. 18 ‘Contro la guerra’, L’Azione, 29 July 1914, and ‘Le manovre dei guerrafondai’, L’Azione, 29 August 1914. 19 The first comprehensive work on Italian is Abbasso la guerra! Neutralisti in piazza alla vigilia della Prima guerra mondiale in Italia, ed. by Fulvio Cammarano (Florence: Le Monnier, 2015). 20 Mario Isnenghi, L’Italia in piazza: i luoghi della vita pubblica dal 1848 ai giorni nostri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), p. 212. 21 Notes from the meeting are in Gian Carlo Corada, L’attività politico-amministrativa di Guido Miglioli nel Consiglio Provinciale di Cremona (1910–1914) (Cremona: Provincia di Cremona, 1988), pp. 139–42.

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When Italy entered the conflict, the socialists abandoned their revolutionary tones, limiting themselves to expressing their detachment: ‘If the state, which is stronger, wants war’, explained the Cremona newspaper, ‘it will be responsible for what happens’.22 When the war became an inevitable fact, instead of calling a general strike, the Italian Socialist Party decided to focus its efforts on practical assistance to the working and peasant classes, which would bear most of the weight. In May, a manifesto of the party leadership appeared in the national newspaper Avanti!, highlighting the difficult position of a party that refused to share responsibility for the war, but that at the same time found itself collaborating with the government on the level of civil society.23 Cremona’s socialists concluded that the war was a transitory situation and that the social battles would start anew with the return of peace.24 The White Leagues had a similar attitude. Protests against intervention gave way to the need to support the families of peasants who had been recruited for the front. Like the socialists, Miglioli proclaimed his commitment to the peasantry during the war, interpreting that mandate, however, religiously as an ‘apostolate’, seeking to prepare for the post-war period when the peoples would be returned to a civilization of peace and love.25 The White Leagues began a campaign to extend the rights of peasant soldiers. For example, they wanted to eliminate the contractual clause that established that, after twenty days’ absence, labourers owed an indemnity to their landowner, which in times of war would have led their families to starvation.26 While Miglioli never abandoned his position of neutrality, at the end of December 1914, most of the Catholic press, which until then had also supported neutrality, began to clarify more and more openly how, although the war remained ‘anti-human, anticivil and anti-Christian’, Catholics would not be opposed if the national government changed its directive. As Paolo Mattei Gentili explained in L’Italia on 22 December 1914, unlike the socialists, Catholics had voted in favour of military expenses, wanting a strong army and adhering, in their speeches and their newspapers, to the concept of an armed neutrality. If there were to be war, they would be the only ones able to contribute ‘a solid moral strength’. Until then, if the Italian government was thus convinced, it was in Italy’s interests to remain neutral.27 Early in 1915, the moderate Catholic press continued to defend neutrality, criticizing both interventionist demonstrations as well as those in favour of neutrality. During those months, the Corriere d’Italia insisted that extremist neutrality was, in fact, creating a subversive climate that would be dangerous if Italy were to enter the war.28 In a speech given on 5 January 1915 at a conference of Christian democrats in Bologna, the president of the Unione popolare (People’s Union), Giuseppe Dalla Torre, announced what he

22 ‘Se lo Stato, più forte, vuole la guerra, esso sarà responsabile degli eventi’; ‘Oggi e sempre abbasso la guerra!’, L’Eco del Popolo, 22 May 1915. 23 ‘Partito Socialista Italiano’, Avanti!, 23 May 1915. 24 ‘Il momento’, L’Eco del Popolo, 19 June 1915. 25 ‘Apostolato’; ‘Ai miei elettori’, L’Azione, 2 June 1915. 26 ‘La nostra opposizione’, L’Azione, 17 January 1915. 27 ‘Antiumana, anticivile, anticristiana’; ‘una grande forza morale’; Paolo Giovannini, Cattolici nazionali e impresa giornalistica: il trust della stampa cattolica (1907–1918) (Milan: Unicopli, 2001), p. 267. 28 Giovannini, Cattolici nazionali, p. 270.

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called a ‘conditional neutrality’.29 The final deliberation, at the end of the three-day conference, stated that although every war was contrary to Christian principles, this war in particular might be necessary in order to bring back a stable peace in Europe.30 For the rest of the war, Miglioli, who opposed this statement, wound up being accused of being a defeatist, an Austrian and a German by the interventionists belonging to all currents, including those Catholics who in 1914 had been in favour of neutrality.31 The politics of the liberal ruling class and relations between Church and state were of no significance to Miglioli, who held that the only solution to the problem was for the Gospel to penetrate the popular masses.32 His conclusion was that in times of war it was necessary to pray for peace and oppose, as far as possible, a continuation of the conflict. The rupture between the two Catholic conceptions of neutrality, the patriotic and the extremist ones, was officially revealed not only by Miglioli’s opposing vote (being the only Catholic deputy to oppose war expenditures in parliament in May 1915), but also at a national meeting of Catholic leaders and deputies. On 1 December 1915 in Rome, the latter confirmed their allegiance to government policy. Miglioli voted in opposition on that occasion, as well, drawing accusations of ‘Tolstoyism’ from the moderate Catholic press, which was concerned about Miglioli’s classist interpretation and the possible spread of his ideas among the Catholic masses. Miglioli’s influence among the peasants, indeed, remained widespread and deep, as the large post-war demonstrations in Cremona revealed. He was unable to lead Italian Catholics, however, finding himself at odds with the political choices of the majority.33

3. The First Years of War During the war years, White League activists found themselves attacked by interventionists, watched by the police and isolated within the institutional Church. Bishop Giovanni Cazzani of Cremona, who had succeeded Bonomelli in the summer of 1914, was worried that L’Azione’s neutrality was based on socialist motivations and thus imposed Giuseppe Cappi, a more politically moderate personality, upon Miglioli’s editorial staff. In spite of these difficulties, Miglioli continued to count on other Catholic hardliners for neutrality, such as Giuseppe Speranzini and Romano Cocchi, whose positions led to a definitive rupture with the local diocese.34

29 ‘Neutralità condizionata’; Scoppola, ‘Cattolici neutralisti’, p. 123. 30 ACS, Ministero dell’Interno (hereafter MI), Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza (hereafter DGPS), Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, 1915, b. 33, fasc. Partito clericale, categ. K2, sottofasc. 11, Prefect of Bologna to the Ministry of the Interior, 8 January 1915. 31 Mauro Felizietti, Guido Miglioli testimone di pace: dal neutralismo al movimento cristiano per la pace (1912–1954) (Rome: Agrilavoro, 1999), p. xvi. 32 Scoppola, ‘Cattolici neutralisti’, p. 137. 33 Carlo Bellò, ‘Miglioli e il movimento contadino “bianco” nel periodo bellico’, in Benedetto XV, ed. by Rossini, pp. 429–44 (p. 436). 34 John M. Foot, ‘“White Bolsheviks”? The Catholic Left and the Socialists in Italy, 1919–1920’, Historical Journal, 40, 2 (1997), pp. 415–33.

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Unlike L’Azione, most of the Catholic press bowed to the general climate of the war emergency, with publications pointing out their obedience to the state’s authority in patriotic tones and trying to present the clerical front as united. However, this ignored the fact that the Catholic masses, not just the Holy See, were on the contrary mainly opposed to the war.35 When, on 20 May 1915, Miglioli voted with the socialists against war expenditures in the Chamber of Deputies, Il Cittadino — an organ of Lodi’s Catholic left — supported him because this was consistent with Christian values but also because the conflict would be harmful to the peasant classes.36 Miglioli knew that anyone close to the peasants was aware of their hostility to the war. Being in favour of the war, he wrote in L’Azione in January, would be like sending your own people to the slaughter.37 In November, when Italy had been at war for seven months, he declared, against patriotic Catholics, that there was no country bearing Christ’s name, which meant believing in the superiority of good over evil and rejecting a world inhabited by exploiters and the exploited.38 In response to the anti-German speeches that appeared in the interventionist press, he was concerned with the re-emergence of forms of hatred between the Latin and Germanic worlds, hatred that would allow the ruling classes of both to evade the social question.39 An example of this tendency was, in 1916, the government’s ban on commemorating May Day. On that occasion, Miglioli hoped that God would bring the working and peasant classes not victory, but peace, and declared that the war had succeeded in subduing the working class.40 In a speech to the Chamber of Deputies in June 1916, defending himself against the accusation of socialism, Miglioli called on both socialists and Christians to act against the war. ‘Our people’, he recalled, were not socialist, but educated in the faith of the Gospel. The words of peace and love were found precisely in the Gospel and were words irremediably adverse to war. Nevertheless, the battle of the Catholic peasantry was the same as that of the whole proletariat: ‘The Christian and non-Christian proletariat is united and strong in cursing war and in preparing for the day when all will be righted’. Other than religion, they had a common bond: ‘There is a unity of sentiment because we are united in our suffering and our hopes, united by our history’. At that moment, the European populations were ‘torn apart on the Golgotha of the sins of the other’, but ‘brothers are not enemies of brothers’. After the war, ‘the dream, perhaps of an international socialism or perhaps of an international Christianity, but certainly of a truer and more fruitful human solidarity, will come true for the good of all’.41

35 Giovannini, Cattolici nazionali, pp. 273–74. 36 Il Cittadino, 29 May 1915. See Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘La diffusione del modello migliolino nelle campagne lombarde’, in La figura e l’opera di Guido Miglioli 1879–1979, ed. by Franco Leonori (Rome: Tipolitografia C. Salemi 1982), pp. 119–50 (p. 136). 37 ‘Nell’ora della follia guerrafondaia’, L’Azione, 13 January 1915. 38 ‘Senza Patria’, L’Azione, 15 November 1915. 39 ‘Nell’ora della follia guerrafondaia’, L’Azione, 13 January 1915. 40 ‘Festa sospesa’, L’Azione, 30 April 1916. 41 ‘Il nostro popolo’; ‘il proletariato cristiano e non cristiano è uno e forte nel maledire alla guerra e nel prepararsi a un domani di rivendicazione’; ‘vi è unità di sentimenti perché vi è unità di dolori e di speranze, unità di storia’; ‘dilaniate sul Golgota di colpe altrui’; ‘non sono nemici i fratelli ai fratelli’;

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Nevertheless, Catholic pacifism was different from socialist pacifism. In 1910, Miglioli had already reflected in his diary about how socialism was only a human doctrine that did not know ‘the element that ensures life and victory in the course of time: the will of the Spirit’. Its action lacked ‘the direct and continual impulse of the Gospel’.42 Only Christianity could generate brotherhood, thanks to faith in a God who was not subject to any king, since He himself was king of all souls.43 In Catholic pacifist interpretation, war appeared to the socialists to be the result of economic phenomena. For Christians, instead, it was the result of the historical materialism that the socialists so adored, the consequence of that powerful state that they hoped to dominate in the future. The Christian message was universal: ‘All persons are truly our brothers and sisters: do not kill them but love them, assist them, defend them from all evils, from all snares, because they are the children of one Father, all marked for the same destiny’.44 According to the White Leagues’ organizer, Giuseppe Speranzini, the moral law on which human coexistence ought to be built was ‘one derived from religious conscience’. It was, however, possible to collaborate with the irreligious socialists because they also responded to the ‘widespread sentiment of the masses’. ‘Our place’, he wrote a few years later, in an argument with the Italian People’s Party, is ‘alongside the parties that come from the people, and we are against others that have different origins’.45 Declaring oneself to be external to socialism, however, did not in fact entail a moderate type of opposition to war, as the White Leagues’ newspaper tried to point out at the end of 1916: What, actually, is reformism? The spirit of adaption to circumstances; it is transigence; it is the sacrifice of substance to form; the rejection of one’s own ideas […] quietist opportunism concerning life and action; insincerity […]; lukewarm faith and slothfulness.46

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‘si realizzerà benefico il sogno, forse dell’internazionale socialista o forse dell’internazionale cristiana, certo di una più vera e feconda solidarietà umana’; Miglioli’s speech to the Chamber, 29 June 1916, in Felizietti, Guido Miglioli, pp. 104–06. ‘L’elemento che assicura la vita e la vittoria attraverso i tempi: la volontà dello Spirito’; ‘l’impulso diretto e continuo dell’Evangelo’; Paola Ongini, ‘Gli appunti di lavoro inediti di Guido Miglioli’, Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia, 34, 3 (1999), pp. 339–428 (p. 349). ‘Crisi di Parlamenti’, L’Azione, 23 September 1915. ‘Tutti gli uomini sono veramente tuoi fratelli: non ucciderli, ma amali, soccorrili, difendili da tutti i mali, da tutte le insidie, ché sono figli tutti di uno stesso Padre, segnati tutti per un eguale destino’; ‘Noi e i socialisti di fronte alla guerra’, L’Azione, 22 July 1916. ‘Quella che deriva dalla coscienza religiosa’; ‘diffuso sentimento delle masse’; ‘il nostro posto […] accanto ai partiti che vengono dal popolo e siamo contro gli altri che muovono da diversa origine’; Giuseppe Speranzini, Un partito e un programma: polemica coi popolari (Rome: Rassegna nazionale, 1922), pp. 5, 11. ‘Che cos’è, in realtà, il riformismo? Spirito di adattamento alle circostanze; è transigenza; è sacrificio della sostanza alla forma: rinunzia delle proprie idee […] opportunismo quietistico sulla vita e sull’azione; insincerità […] tiepidezza di fede e accidia’; ‘Riformismo’, L’Azione, 12 December 1916.

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4. The Crisis of 1917: Peace and Social Question In 1917, dissatisfaction with the state of war grew among the rural populations, due also to the food restrictions imposed by the government. In May, Cremona’s Prefect wrote to the Ministry of the Interior that hostility to the war had intensified throughout the province, especially among the peasants. Instead of understanding the ‘noble’ reasons that had led to the shortages of bread and flour, the peasants refused to collaborate because they were influenced, like the women protesting the inadequacies of the war subsidies, by the propaganda of the ‘Catholic socialists’ led by Miglioli. These continued their propaganda, building on the populace’s discontent and, since their actions were hidden or private, they managed to escape the clutches of the law. The women in the province’s villages seemed to believe that protesting would facilitate the return of their men from the front. Although mass initiatives were easily repressed by the Carabinieri, the Prefect warned that they represented symptoms of a slowly growing public spirit against the war.47 Miglioli’s pacifist propaganda was particularly troublesome for the local authorities and interventionists because it was difficult to refute and was widespread among the peasant families as well as at an individual level among a population that ‘either does not feel the need for our war or is decidedly against it’.48 Especially after the rout at Caporetto, the provincial authorities complained to the Prefect about the peasants’ mood concerning the war, which was partly the result of Miglioli’s activities. In the countryside around Cremona, people openly criticized the war and, on receiving the news of Caporetto, groups of women shouted that even Austrians would have been preferable to Italian masters. Landowners were worried by these signs of ‘red and white Leninism’. The Pope’s Note of August 1917 encouraged the local clergy to express pacifist sentiments that had been present from the beginning of the war. Influenced by the propaganda of the White Leagues and surrounded by a peasant population that was defined as anti-patriotic by the Prefect, many priests had immediately adopted an indifferent attitude towards the war campaign, thus avoiding having to solicit patriotism from the faithful.49 By 1917, it had become increasingly difficult to imagine the end of the war. In July, the socialist deputy Claudio Treves made a declaration in the Chamber that was widely echoed among the masses: ‘Next winter, no longer in the trenches’.50 On 1 August, Pope Benedict XV sent an appeal to the leaders of the warring nations that sounded like a cry for peace, asking them to try to bring an end to what seemed more and more like a ‘useless slaughter’. Promulgated at a time of war fatigue in all of the European countries, between revolutionary insurrections in Russia and meetings for peace 47 ACS, MI, DGPS, A5G, Prima Guerra Mondiale (hereafter PGM), b. 93, fasc. 209, sottofasc. 2, Prefect of Cremona to the Ministry of the Interior, 1 and 8 May 1917. 48 ‘O non sente la necessità della nostra guerra o è ad essa decisamente contraria’; Luigi Bruti Liberati, ‘Miglioli “disfattista”’; Rivista di storia contemporanea, 7, 2 (1978), pp. 251–64 (p. 258). 49 ‘Leninismo rosso e bianco’; ACS, MI, DGPS, A5G, PGM, b. 93, fasc. 209, sottofasc. 2. 50 ‘Il prossimo inverno non più in trincea’; Claudio Treves, La Politica interna ed esterna: discorso nella tornata parlamentare 12 luglio 1917 (Milan: Libreria Editrice Avanti!, 1917).

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organized in Europe by the socialist parties and the neutral countries, the papal Note found a very receptive audience.51 Although the Pope spoke of a ‘just war’ and not of peace at all costs, his message was isolated from its context and interpreted in opposite ways by pacifists and interventionists. In Italy, the Pope was accused of supporting defeatism and weakening the internal front, especially in a situation where Catholics had instead responded patriotically, sending chaplains to the front and demonstrating how liberal Italy needed the Church to maintain obedience in the army.52 Benedict’s phrase carried significant theological weight. If the war was useless, it would not serve to restore the social order that had been violated; it could not be explained as ‘just’. Even if the Pope did not intend to dispense the faithful from obedience to political and military authorities, his sentence could be interpreted in that sense.53 A result of this political climate, which preceded the rout at Caporetto by a few months, was also that the offices of censorship and the prefects throughout Italy found it difficult to prevent the distribution, along the internal front as well as among the soldiers, of religious material of pacifist propaganda. It was sometimes spread through prayer cards that transferred ancient impulses — particularly Marian devotion — to the context of modern war.54 One of these, of August 1917, recited: Mary […] | Like a field strewn with blood | And earth made of tears | O Mother, end the horrible war | That kills us, people with a heart. | […] | ‘Peace’, cry out the oppressed peoples, | ‘Peace’, implore the temples and altars, | ‘Peace’, the mountains and beaches of the sea, | This is the cry that comes from our hearts.55 Another postcard, about 10,000 copies of which were printed in August 1917, showed a peasant ploughing a field with a church and the rising sun in the background, the word ‘Peace’, an image of the Virgin in the sky and a sentence of Benedict XV’s: May the fratricidal weapons fall to the ground! Already they are too bloodstained; let them at last fall! And may the hands of those who have to wield them return to the labours of industry and commerce, return to the works of civilization and peace!56 51 Enrico Serra, ‘La nota del primo agosto 1917 e il governo italiano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 49–63 (p. 50). 52 Giovanni Vian, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, in Gli italiani in guerra, ed. by Isnenghi, III, pp. 736–43 (p. 741); Isnenghi, Dieci lezioni, p. 158. 53 La Chiesa italiana, ed. by Menozzi, pp. 8–11. 54 Antonio Gibelli, L’officina della guerra: la Grande Guerra e le trasformazioni del mondo mentale, 4th edn (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009), pp. 164–209; David Blackbourn, The Marpingen Visions: Rationalism, Religion and the Rise of Modern Germany, 2nd edn (London: Fontana Press, 1995), p. 210. 55 Maria […] | come un campo cosparso di sangue | e di lagrime è fatta la terra | cessa o Madre l’orribile guerra | che ci uccide la gente del cuor | […] | Pace gridano i popoli oppressi | pace implorano i templi, gli altari | pace i monti, le spiagge dei mari | ecco il grido che parte dal cuor’; ACS, MI, DGPS, A5G, PGM, b. 6, prayer inserted in a card to a soldier, 11 August 1917. 56 ‘Cadano al suolo le armi fratricide, cadano alfine queste armi ormai troppo macchiate di sangue, e le mani di coloro che hanno dovuto impugnarle tornino ai lavori dell’industria e del commercio, tornino alle opere della civiltà e della pace!’; illustrated postcard from the Prefect of Padua to the Ministry of the Interior, 17 October 1917.

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Divine piety to conclude the war was often invoked through the intercession of Mary.57 It was a type of propaganda that was difficult to discourage, particularly when, as in the last example, it was based on statements made by the Pope. People’s reception of such prayers for peace was complex; even when they spoke of peace and not victory, it was difficult to imagine that the Pope would not hope for a peace ‘after the victory of the Italian armies’. The flexibility of the Italian Church’s message regarding the war, moreover, permitted very different interpretations.58 Religious images representing the return of peace to the countryside also suggested ideas of a new era, especially following the Soviet Revolution, which had at the same time, it was said, brought an end to the war and land to the peasants. In the last year of the war, the socialist and Catholic leagues continued to emphasize the need to link anti-militarism to the social question — a prelude to the season of strikes and land occupations during the ‘Biennio rosso’ (‘Red Biennial’, the two years of social unrest immediately following World War I) from 1919 to 1920. From the autumn of 1917, L’Azione became more and more radical. In November, it proclaimed that the system of contracts stipulated between unions and landowners was no longer functional and that it was imperative to search for new forms of agreement. In December, it encouraged the peasants to prepare to manage their own land. In January 1918, the slogan ‘land to the peasants’ began to appear on the masthead and, in February, Miglioli announced in parliament that it was necessary to revolutionize relationships among the agrarian classes. At this point, the circumstances of social revolution and pacifism became intertwined. The White Leagues’ activities and the peasant populations that followed them showed little interest in an Italian military victory, revealing the unbridgeable distance between the Italian government and the countryside, but also between Catholic members of parliament and the rural masses.

5. Conclusions In 1920, Miglioli returned to his reflections on the war as a moment of rupture between the movement of the White Leagues and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which was concerned with showing its own patriotism to combat the anti-clerical prejudice of liberal Italy. He thus wrote to the Director of L’Unità Cattolica that those Catholics who had ‘sinned by war’ had turned away from the people. The conflict had shown who the true Christians were; those who had chosen to be more patriotic than Christian had supported the war, showing their membership in a bourgeois and liberal culture rather than their religious nature.59 57 Maria Paiano, ‘Pregare per la vittoria, pregare per la pace: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto’, in La Chiesa italiana, ed. by Menozzi, pp. 43–73. 58 ‘Dopo la vittoria delle armi italiane’; Sante Lesti, ‘Pregare per la pace, legittimare la guerra: la ricezione della preghiera per la pace di Benedetto XV nei santini di guerra (1915–1918)’, in La Chiesa italiana, ed. by Menozzi, pp. 75–98. 59 ‘Peccato con la guerra’; ‘Una polemica d’idee e di partito tra l’On. Miglioli e il Direttore de L’Unità Cattolica’, Il Popolo, 28 February 1920.

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Returning from a long anti-Fascist exile, he wrote again in 1945 that there had been no difference in the attitude of Catholic or non-Catholic interventionists, they were equally engaged in the offensive against the pacifists during the war and immediately after it. I was also attacked by Catholics, who had embraced the war and exulted in it for no special reason of principle but for the same class reasons that the bourgeois elements had turned the war into a monopoly of patriotism, an emblem of one’s Italianness.60 The climate of intimidation and suspicion generated by the interventionist and nationalist campaign had, in many small country villages, even led to episodes of violence against those who had, by then, been designated as the internal enemy.61 In the province of Cremona, these episodes — organised by Bissolati’s followers who were represented by the newspaper La Squilla, which was founded by Roberto Farinacci in 1914 — had multiplied after the rout at Caporetto, anticipating the activities of the Fascist squads after the war. Miglioli, who had condemned these attacks since 1915 and continued his pacifist work in parliament and the provincial council, was one of its main victims.62 When analysing this type of neutrality, the way in which the paths of religion and political radicalism crossed is of particular interest.63 The history of the White Leagues, especially, has often been underestimated in the history of the Church, also because it was not classifiable within the divisions that the Cold War had generated in Italy, although it briefly re-emerged during the period of the liberation theology movement in the late 1960s. In Italy, however, it remains the most significant example of peasant opposition to the war and, later, to Fascism. It was a religious movement, albeit assimilable to socialism, that is to say, an attempt to bring religion into politics. One of the limitations of the copious historiography on ‘political religion’ of the last two decades has precisely been ignoring this religious characteristic, which is why there are far more studies on Catholic patriotism and nationalism, which can be included more easily in discourse on the nation’s religion.

60 ‘Io subivo anche l’assalto di quella parte di cattolici, che aveva aderito alla guerra e la esaltava, per nessuna ragione speciale di principio, ma per gli stessi motivi di classe, per cui gli elementi borghesi si facevano della guerra un monopolio di patriottismo, un emblema di italianità’; Guido Miglioli, Con Roma e con Mosca: quarant’anni di battaglie (Milan: Garzanti, 1945), pp. 17–18. 61 Angelo Ventrone, La seduzione totalitaria: guerra, modernità, violenza politica (1914–1918) (Rome: Donzelli, 2003), p. xi. 62 Baldoli, Bissolati immaginario. 63 On the persistence of religion in the European workers’ movements between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see, for example, Vincent Viaene, ‘International History, Religious History, Catholic History: Perspectives for Cross-Fertilization (1830–1914)’, European History Quarterly, 38, 4 (2008), pp. 578–607; Patrick Pasture, Christian Trade Unionism in Europe since 1968: Tensions between Identity and Practice (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994); and Paul Misner, Catholic Labor Movements in Europe: Social Thought and Action (1914–1965) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015).

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Bibliography Baldoli, Claudia, Bissolati immaginario: le origini del fascismo cremonese dal socialismo riformista allo squadrismo (Cremona: Cremonabooks, 2002) Bellò, Carlo, L’Azione 1905–1922 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1967) Bellò, Carlo, ‘Miglioli e il movimento contadino “bianco” nel periodo bellico’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 429–44 Blackbourn, David, The Marpingen Visions: Rationalism, Religion and the Rise of Modern Germany, 2nd edn (London: Fontana Press, 1995) Bruti Liberati, Luigi, ‘Miglioli “disfattista”’; Rivista di storia contemporanea, 7, 2 (1978), pp. 251–64 Cammarano, Fulvio, ed., Abbasso la guerra! Neutralisti in piazza alla vigilia della Prima guerra mondiale in Italia (Florence: Le Monnier, 2015) Corada, Gian Carlo, L’attività politico-amministrativa di Guido Miglioli nel Consiglio Provinciale di Cremona (1910–1914) (Cremona: Provincia di Cremona, 1988) Crainz, Guido, Padania: il mondo dei braccianti dall’Ottocento alla fuga dalle campagne (Rome: Donzelli, 1994) Demers, Francis J., Le origini del fascismo a Cremona (Rome: Laterza, 1979) Fappani, Antonio, Guido Miglioli e il movimento contadino (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1964) Felizietti, Mauro, Guido Miglioli testimone di pace: dal neutralismo al movimento cristiano per la pace (1912–1954) (Rome: Agrilavoro, 1999) Foot, John M., ‘“White Bolsheviks”? The Catholic Left and the Socialists in Italy, 1919– 1920’, Historical Journal, 40, 2 (1997), pp. 415–33 Ganapini, Luigi, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970) Gibelli, Antonio, L’officina della guerra: la Grande Guerra e le trasformazioni del mondo mentale, 4th edn (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009) Giovannini, Paolo, Cattolici nazionali e impresa giornalistica: il trust della stampa cattolica (1907–1918) (Milan: Unicopli, 2001) Gramsci, Antonio, Quaderni del carcere, ed. by Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), II Invernici, Franco, ed., Una città nella storia dell’Italia unita: classe politica e ideologie in Cremona nel cinquantennio 1875–1925 (Cremona: Linograf, 1986) Isnenghi, Mario, Dieci lezioni sull’Italia contemporanea: da quando non eravamo ancora nazione… a quando facciamo fatica a rimanerlo (Rome: Donzelli, 2011) Isnenghi, Mario, L’Italia in piazza: i luoghi della vita pubblica dal 1848 ai giorni nostri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994) Isnenghi, Mario, ed., Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008) Isnenghi, Mario, Il mito della Grande Guerra, 4th edn (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007)

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Leonori, Franco, No guerra, ma terra: Miglioli, una vita per i contadini (Rome: Compagnia Edizioni Internazionali, 1969) Lesti, Sante, ‘Pregare per la pace, legittimare la guerra: la ricezione della preghiera per la pace di Benedetto XV nei santini di guerra (1915–1918)’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 75–98 Menozzi, Daniele, ed., La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015) Miglioli, Guido, Con Roma e con Mosca: quarant’anni di battaglie (Milan: Garzanti, 1945) Misner, Paul, Catholic Labor Movements in Europe: Social Thought and Action (1914–1965) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Ongini, Paola, ‘Gli appunti di lavoro inediti di Guido Miglioli’, Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia, 34, 3 (1999), pp. 339–428 Paiano, Maria, ‘Pregare per la vittoria, pregare per la pace: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 43–73 Paolini, Gabriele, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008) Pasture, Patrick, Christian Trade Unionism in Europe since 1968: Tensions between Identity and Practice (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994) Pisano, Rossano, Il paradiso socialista: la propaganda socialista in Italia alla fine dell’Ottocento attraverso gli opuscoli di ‘Critica Sociale’ (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1986) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Rosoli, Gianfausto, Geremia Bonomelli e il suo tempo: atti del convegno storico 16–19 ottobre 1996 (Brescia: Fondazione Civiltà Bresciana, 1999) Saresella, Daniela, Cattolici a sinistra: dal modernismo ai giorni nostri (Rome: Laterza, 2011) Scoppola, Pietro, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 95–151 Serra, Enrico, ‘La nota del primo agosto 1917 e il governo italiano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 49–63 Speranzini, Giuseppe, Un partito e un programma: polemica coi popolari (Rome: Rassegna nazionale, 1922) Storia di Cremona, 8 vols (Azzano San Paolo: Bolis, 2003–13), VIII: Il Novecento, ed. by Elisa Signori (2013) Treves, Claudio, La Politica interna ed esterna: discorso nella tornata parlamentare 12 luglio 1917 (Milan: Libreria Editrice Avanti!, 1917) Ventrone, Angelo, La seduzione totalitaria: guerra, modernità, violenza politica (1914–1918) (Rome: Donzelli, 2003) Viaene, Vincent, ‘International History, Religious History, Catholic History: Perspectives for Cross-Fertilization (1830–1914)’, European History Quarterly, 38, 4 (2008), pp. 578–607 Vian, Giovanni, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, 7 vols (Turin: UTET,

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2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 736–43 Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘La diffusione del modello migliolino nelle campagne lombarde’, in La figura e l’opera di Guido Miglioli 1879–1979, ed. by Franco Leonori (Rome: Tipolitografia C. Salemi 1982), pp. 119–50

Michele Marchi

Italian Foreign Politics at the Dawn of Benedict XV’s Pontificate

The objective of this contribution is to describe Italian diplomacy’s attitude and its relations with the other main European diplomacies from the outbreak of the Great War to Italy’s official entry into the conflict. Within this timeframe, the essay will also reconstruct Benedict XV’s relationship with the Italian government, focussing in particular on the Holy See’s attempts to prevent Italy’s entry into the war, especially after Italy’s choice to change its alliance. The impression is that in reacting to the events that led to the outbreak of war, the Kingdom of Italy’s diplomacy laboriously sought, first and foremost, to show the extent of its autonomy, secondly the possibility to project itself as a world power and, finally, a full expression of its own national, and selfish, interests. With the decision of 23 May 1915, Italy had effectively reached a point characterized by a clear break with its past. However, the lethargy and often non-linear character with which this decision had been attained, the route taken and the modalities chosen, all wound up influencing judgements and considerations that past, present and future allies had, or would have, towards the country. From the point of view of the Holy See, and of Benedict XV mainly, the impression that emerges was, on the one hand, a mixture of a true concern for Europe’s fate and for the endurance of Italy’s national system. On the other hand, there was real anguish about the repercussions that might result for the Holy See itself, considering its particular relationship with the Kingdom of Italy as developed after national unification.

1.

Brief Introduction

At the beginning of 1914, Italy could boast of a certain influence in the Balkan region, the Adriatic and, of course, North Africa. Its ambitions of becoming a ‘world power’ were, in part, diminished by a certain instability at the level of domestic politics and the numerous unknown factors arising from the campaign in Libya that had not yet become fully stable.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 355–371 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118780

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Diplomatic manoeuvres at the time seemed to confirm a preference for the Triple Alliance, or at least one should thus interpret the new naval agreement among Rome, Berlin and Vienna, as well as that obliging Italy to send armed forces to the Rhine in the case of conflict between France and Germany. As a matter of fact, the leaning towards the Alliance was partly attenuated by the prudence of Giolitti and San Giuliano in evaluating the period between the Libyan campaign and the Balkan Wars. Prudence and wait-and-see seemed to be the key terms dominating the approach of Italian diplomacy, and it was precisely this attitude that French diplomacy looked at in particular, considering Italy the true weak link in the Triple Alliance.1

2. Italy’s Slow Journey toward ‘Neutrality as an Inevitable Choice’ When Antonino Paternò Castello, Marquis of San Giuliano2 (who remained in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the emergence of Antonio Salandra’s new government in March 1914) learnt of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, he saw it, first of all, as a stage exit of one of the characters who was most hostile to the Kingdom of Italy and, consequently, as an event that could improve relations between Rome and Vienna. In reality, it soon became clear that it would set European politics in motion and would lead Rome to far more absolute choices than those advanced up to that point. Théophile Delcassé’s foreign policy strongly favoured reaching out to Paris, presenting it as an instrument for making Italian foreign policy — seen as too closely tied to just the Triple Alliance — more ‘flexible’. The quarrel over Austria’s attack on Bosnia in 1908 and the war in Libya of 1911–12 had opened a front of a possible conflict with Vienna. A dual conviction was gradually taking hold: on the one hand, that the Triple Alliance was nothing but an obstacle to completing national unity. On the other, that Italy’s possibilities of becoming a ‘colonial power’ and consequently one of the ‘great powers’ risked being compromised precisely because of its close links with the Central Powers.3 Towards the middle of July, San Giuliano had become the representative of Italy’s early twentieth-century foreign policy. In fact, he could be defined as a ‘triplicist’ realist, in the sense that he considered the alliance with the Central Powers as one of the best results of post-unification Italian diplomacy; on the other hand, the Cabinet Minister was aware that if Italy truly wanted a policy aiming to make it a ‘world power’,

1 For the entire section here, see Antonio Varsori, Radioso maggio: come l’Italia entrò in guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015), pp. 21–55. 2 Gianpaolo Ferraioli, Politica e diplomazia in Italia tra il XIX e il XX secolo: vita di Antonino di San Giuliano (1852–1914) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007). 3 ‘Potenza coloniale’; ‘grande potenza’; Luca Riccardi, ‘La politica estera dell’Italia nei mesi della neutralità’, in Abbasso la guerra! Neutralisti in piazza alla vigilia della Prima guerra mondiale in Italia, ed. by Fulvio Cammarano (Florence: Le Monnier, 2015), pp. 105–14.

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it would have to approach the international scene by first starting to reconsider its own understanding of national interests. Consequently, for the moment, two cornerstones of Italian diplomacy could not be called into question: the parity of power between Rome and Vienna in the Balkans, and maintaining the Triple Alliance, perhaps exploiting the good relations with Berlin to obtain some compensation from Austria. It was in this climate that Austria’s note to Serbia suddenly appeared on 23 July 1914. The text was expressed in very strong terms; it irritated Italy because Vienna had not cared to inform Rome of it beforehand and if the violation of Serbian sovereignty were to become reality, the equilibrium in the Balkans and above all the Adriatic would swing in favour of Austria-Hungary.4 Reflecting on this with Salandra and the German Ambassador to Italy, Hans von Flotow, San Giuliano affirmed that, since there was no casus foederis, Italy had no obligation to intervene alongside Vienna (it was, in fact, an attack on Serbia on the part of Austria). He added that a possible intervention could not be excluded if Italy’s vital interests were brought into play.5 Writing to Victor Emmanuel III on 24 July 1914, San Giuliano reiterated that Italy should not intervene in a war that was initiated and conducted by Austria in its own interests, stating that, during the crisis, Italy should not make decisions that might restrict its freedom of action. Rome’s choice should be made solely in view of Italian national interests. The key words here are freedom of action and national interests.6 Among the continental diplomacies that were watching Italy, France was obviously very interested for reasons of proximity and shared borders. When he met with Salandra on 26 July 1914, France’s Ambassador to Rome, Camille Barrère, obtained an initial reassurance: Italy would not enter into war because it did not want to embark upon new adventures, and public opinion was totally unprepared for it.7 The picture, however, was very complex. The future Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sidney Sonnino, was of the opposite opinion. According to him, Italy had to entertain the thought of joining the war, particularly if the projections of a brief war were well-founded. What would happen if the Central Powers were to win quickly and consequently conclude the conflict without an Italian contribution? On 29 July 1914, he wrote to the editor of Il Giornale d’Italia, Alberto Bergamini: Italy has to make all the effort it can to maintain the general peace and to localize the conflict as much as possible but, if the situation worsens, it should fulfil its commitments towards its allies in a loyal and scrupulous manner.8

4 Varsori, Radioso maggio, pp. 62–63. 5 Gian Enrico Rusconi, L’azzardo del 1915: come l’Italia decide la sua guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 82–85. 6 Brunello Vigezzi, L’Italia neutrale (Naples: Ricciardi, 1966), pp. 8–9. 7 Cited in François Charles-Roux, Trois ambassades françaises à la veille de la guerre (Paris: Plon, 1928), pp. 99–104. 8 ‘Per il mantenimento della pace generale e per localizzare il più possibile il conflitto, ma se la situazione dovesse peggiorare, essa dovrebbe compiere in maniera leale e scrupolosa i propri impegni nei confronti degli alleati’; Sidney Sonnino, Carteggio 1914–1916, ed. by Pietro Pastorelli (Bari: Laterza, 1974), p. 7.

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Sonnino’s position would gradually evolve toward a convinced neutrality, coupled with continuous appeals for the defence sector to be improved in terms of personnel and materials. It was a neutrality, therefore, that did not exclude a priori the possibility of intervention. The military dimension was precisely another important topic at that stage. Politicians and military officials agreed that the situation for the Italian army was delicate. After the war in Libya, the armed forces did not seem capable of starting a new offensive. Yet, the new Chief of Staff appointed on 27 July, Luigi Cadorna, did not want to waste time and, on 29 July, issued a series of directives. He was strategically convinced of a rapid entry into the war alongside the Central Powers and thus wanted contingents prepared to be sent to fight on the Rhine with the German army. He also sought to convince the King on this point, reminding him of the risks that the Central Powers might gain a rapid victory and reiterating that war was still the only way to maintain the Triple Alliance and thus guarantee Italy’s standing.9 San Giuliano, however, seemed to have then chosen the path of neutrality, which he termed an ‘inevitable consequence’ of their Austrian ally’s aggressive choice in favour of war. On 31 July, the Council of Ministers met, and San Giuliano together with Salandra reiterated that there were no legal obligations for them to join the war. In the Council of Ministers’ subsequent meetings on 1 and 2 August, the choice of neutrality for legal and opportunistic reasons was repeated. In the end, the Minister of the Colonies, Martini, who was always opposed to the Triple Alliance, thus affirmed that ‘the Triple Alliance is the first corpse of this war’.10 Completing the picture, on 2 August, the Minister of Foreign Affairs wrote a letter to the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador in Rome, Mérey, confirming that Italy was under no obligation to intervene, but adding that the current crisis was transitory while the Triple Alliance was ‘destined to last at least another twelve years’. In conclusion, he did not exclude a future Italian intervention as part of the Triple Alliance but if that were to be the case, it would be a free and autonomous decision. Thus, on the eve of an official declaration of neutrality, the concepts of freedom of action and the absolute protection of national interests reappeared.11 For his part, Salandra wrote to the Italian Ambassador in Vienna, Avarna, who admitted that he did not understand the choice of neutrality, justifying it with ethical-political (public opinion was against the war), economic (war would inevitably impede growth) and military reasons (the English-French fleet would quickly destroy the Italian one).12 This demand for autonomy and freedom of decision, however, could also be seen from another point of view, emphasizing what remained, fundamentally, Italy’s marginality on the international stage. On the one hand, Vienna considered Italy to be militarily inadequate. On the other, the powers of the Entente, Paris in particular, 9 Vigezzi, L’Italia neutrale, pp. 32–32. 10 ‘La Triplice Alleanza è il primo cadavere di questa guerra’; cited in Charles-Roux, Trois ambassades, pp. 125–26. 11 ‘È destinata a durare almeno altri dodici anni’; reported in Vigezzi, L’Italia neutrale, p. 3. See also Ferraioli, Politica, pp. 875–76. 12 Rusconi, L’azzardo, pp. 91–94.

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considered it the weak link in the Triple Alliance and thought that there was a good chance of convincing it to change sides.13 In this context, on 3 August 1914, the official governmental declaration of neutrality was made.

3. The Dilemma of Whether to Seek Stability or Step Beyond Neutrality In reality, even if developments that might determine important changes in perspective did not yet occur in the theatre of war, from August San Giuliano confided to Salandra that Rome should begin to evaluate the hypothesis of intervening against Austria if Vienna should reveal that it had some difficulties. It would not be a ‘heroic’ effort (San Giuliano himself affirmed) but ‘wise and patriotic’ all the same. It was on this wave of ‘absolute realism’ that the Minister instructed Italy’s Ambassador in London, Guglielmo Imperiali, to approach the leaders of the British government to begin negotiations for Italy’s entry into war alongside the Entente. Nevertheless, that Italian diplomacy, San Giuliano’s in particular, was still evaluating various possibilities, and consequently not decisively opting to change sides, is confirmed by at least three other steps taken during the month of August. On 12 August, the Minister of Foreign Affairs wrote to the Ambassador in Paris Tommaso Tittoni (who was very close to leaders of the French government and very much in favour of the proposition of establishing an ever-closer bond between France and Italy) describing Italy’s situation to him: hatred for Austria, indifference for France and a feeling of friendship towards Berlin. The impression is that San Giuliano advanced these clarifications so that his representative would relay that picture to the transalpine government.14 At the end of the month, San Giuliano also wrote to Bernhard von Bülow to comment on Germany’s recent military successes and to claim that he had always believed in the German Empire’s ultimate victory. Finally, writing to Tittoni again on 30 August, he urged him to remain on the defensive, without believing too much in France’s promises. The English-French fleet seemed to spare the Austrian one, and Italy’s true ‘geopolitical’ enemy remained precisely Austria-Hungary because of the neighbouring irredentist lands and the Adriatic, and certainly not Germany.15 The war’s evolution, with the French resistance on the Marne and the end of the conjecture that the war might be a blitzkrieg, had a significant influence on Rome’s position. After all, the theory that neither side would gain a rapid, total victory served to confirm that Italy had made the right choice. It then became clear that talks should be reopened with London. The survey initiated in mid-September by Italian diplomacy

13 Varsori, Radioso maggio, p. 65. 14 Cited in Riccardi, ‘La politica estera’, p. 108. 15 I documenti diplomatici italiani: quinta serie, 1914–1918, ed. by Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 11 vols (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1954–86), I (1954), pp. 278–79.

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turned out to be the framework of what would become the backbone of the Treaty of London on 26 April 1915. There was already a demand that the English-French naval forces should attack the Austrian ones in the Adriatic; the restitution of Trento and Trieste was mentioned; and there was talk of financial negotiations that would open an important line of credit for Rome.16 This was the situation that San Giuliano, who died on 16 October 1914, left as a legacy to his successor, Sonnino.17 The conflict began to assume the characteristic of a war of attrition and, consequently, Italy’s intervention was increasingly expected. San Giuliano’s death was less than two months after the new pontiff came to the helm of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Giacomo Della Chiesa became pope, taking the name Benedict XV, on 3 September 1914. From a general point of view, it was Pius X, a few weeks before his death, who dictated the Vatican’s position on the war that had just broken out. In the exhortation Dum Europa of 2 August 1914, he located the conflict within a broader global criticism of a Europe that had become ‘secularized’ and ‘God-less’, and which was guilty of relegating the Holy See to playing a marginal role in international politics. From this perspective, war became divine punishment and, as La Civiltà Cattolica wrote shortly after, the true symbol of the failure of ‘atheistic’ society. The declaration with which Benedict XV inaugurated his pontificate on 8 September 1914 was in keeping with that position. His was a Europe put to steel and fire and painted with ‘Christian blood’. The new pontiff formalized his position at the beginning of November with the publication of his first encyclical, Ad beatissimi, in which he returned to, and emphasized, the themes of apostasy and of a Europe that was paying for its break with Catholic values by war.18 This was the general framework, but the specific condition of the state of relations between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy also has to be taken into account. At least at that moment, the choice for neutrality was rooted in that relationship.19 It was a choice accompanied by the Holy See’s official statement, which had appeared in L’Osservatore Romano on 5 August, in which Italian Catholics were advised to maintain the utmost secrecy on matters of war in general and particularly on Italy’s political

16 Riccardi, ‘La politica estera’, p. 109. 17 It should be noted that, at San Giuliano’s funeral, Salandra praised ‘his soul that was free of any preconception, any prejudice, any sentiment that was not that of exclusive and unlimited devotion to the homeland and of sacred selfishness for Italy’ (‘animo scevro da ogni preconcetto, da ogni pregiudizio, da ogni sentimento che non sia quello della esclusiva e illimitata devozione alla patria nostra, del sacro egoismo per l’Italia’); Varsori, Radioso maggio, p. 70. 18 For the wealth of literary material, see Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 15–36; Mario Bendiscioli, ‘La Santa Sede e la guerra’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 25–49; and John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 85–111. 19 For an overall picture, see the classic by Francesco Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966) and Italo Garzia, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981).

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choices.20 The new pontiff ’s first steps were marked by moderation and the greatest respect for prerogatives, so much so that, on 24 September, Baron Carlo Monti was able to report to Salandra that in his third meeting with Benedict XV the latter had reassured him about the text of the upcoming encyclical (the aforementioned Ad beatissimi): even if a mention of the Roman Question could not be avoided, ‘the matter would be stated in a measured and sober way that was not offensive’.21 Italian diplomacy, moreover, appreciated the conclave’s decision, and the future Minister of Foreign Affairs, writing to Bergamini, also did not hesitate to affirm, referring to the decision: ‘This election went well, and is one less concern for the government’.22 There was no lack of concern in Italian diplomacy, which had to make a choice, first of all taking note that Italy would not be able to wage war against Austria without also attacking Berlin nor prevent that the breakup of the Triple Alliance would be judged as a clear form of betrayal. For the time being, it was necessary to emphasize the continual pressure that Sonnino had to deal with, particularly from the German government, to keep Italy neutral or, eventually, to enter into war as part of the Triple Alliance. For example, on 10 November, the German government suggested Berlin’s mediation on behalf of the transfer of Tyrol to Italy in the event that Italy should decide to intervene in the conflict. On 17 November, the German Ambassador in Rome, Hans von Flotow, mentioned other, concrete advantages for Italy in such a case, even foreshadowing a joint Italian-German attack on France in Savoy.23 German diplomacy was laying the groundwork for Bülow’s lengthy Roman mission. In Italy from the beginning of December 1914, the former German Chancellor was closely tied to the country, having held the post of Ambassador between 1894 and 1897 besides having married Maria Minghetti, daughter of Marco Minghetti’s second wife, Laura Acton. In fact, as Sonnino recorded in his diary at the end of December, an increasingly obliging Bülow — on 28 December he promised to cede Trentino in exchange for Italy’s ‘benevolent neutrality’ — was contrasted to an increasingly firm and decided Sonnino. He increasingly saw relations with Austria as ‘an alliance without friendship’, and in that sense, ‘an empty and useless thing’. The head of Italian foreign policy was already working on how to enter the conflict alongside the Entente

20 In particular, see Pietro Scoppola, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’, in Benedetto XV, ed. by Rossini, pp. 95–151. 21 ‘La cosa sarà detta in forma misurata e sobria e non offensiva’; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, p. 174. Carlo Monti led a brilliant career in the Ministry of Grace and Justice and was a close collaborator of Giuseppe Zanardelli and then of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. Once a classmate of Giacomo Della Chiesa, when Della Chiesa ascended to the papal throne he indicated Monti to Prime Minister Salandra as his choice for managing official relations between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy. He carried out that mission until the pontiff ’s death in January 1922. 22 ‘Questa elezione è andata bene ed è un pensiero di meno pel governo’; Sonnino, Carteggio 1914–1916, p. 25. 23 For this entire section, see Rusconi, L’azzardo, pp. 118 ff.

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powers.24 The clear dimension of internal politics and possible developments of the country’s institutional equilibrium could not be ignored, either. As Salandra recalled in a conversation with Olindo Malagodi at the end of December 1914, at stake was more Italy’s image as a ‘world power’ than the question of its irredentist lands. That ‘role’ would come into question if the war were to finish before Italy joined. On the opposing side stood Giolitti, who again at the end of 1914 continued to repeat that Italy was unprepared for war — both militarily and as far as public opinion was concerned — and a war whose sole purpose was to aim definitively at a conflict that would accredit the image of the Statuto centred on the monarchy rather than on parliament.25 These were issues on which the Holy See held rather a clear opinion, and it was no coincidence that Benedict XV’s anxiety was growing. As Monti reported after his audience on 31 December 1914, the pontiff was highly concerned about Italy’s eventual intervention and about the ‘difficulties in which the Holy See would find itself, were Italy to participate in the war’.26 A further demonstration of the tension in the Vatican was that, at the beginning of January 1915, Benedict XV sent Eugenio Pacelli to Austria to speak to the Emperor to ascertain whether the eventuality of conflict between Italy and Austria were truly imminent and, if possible, to prevent it.27

4. Heading towards War: Diplomatic Intrigue and the Search for Guarantees At the beginning of the year, Sonnino was convinced that Italy’s position had to ‘transform itself’ definitively and, on 16 February, he authorized Imperiali to open official channels of contact with the ambassadors of the Entente. In order to better explain the chronology of events, one can say that from mid-February to mid-March the picture concerning the government’s choices and the pontiff’s opinion of Italy’s conduct became clearer. On the one hand, Sonnino, as he wrote in his diary on 23 and 24 February, found himself facing the final, strenuous attempts by Germany to avert Italian

24 ‘Benevola neutralità’; ‘alleanza senza l’amicizia’; ‘cosa vuota e inutile’; Sidney Sonnino, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), II, p. 55. 25 Varsori, Radioso maggio, pp. 74–75. 26 ‘Difficoltà nelle quali la S. Sede si troverebbe nel caso di partecipazione dell’Italia alla guerra’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 185. That the pontiff also feared, from a diplomatic point of view, Italy’s entry into war was more than justified, given the rupture between Rome and the Holy See. As Sonnino harshly recalled when speaking with the German Ambassador, Flotow, on 17 November 1914, Italy strongly opposed any proposal of a representative of the Holy See at the peace conference at the end of the war because it would mean assigning juridical status to a subject that, in not being recognized by the Kingdom of Italy, could not actually claim one; Sonnino, Diario, II, pp. 28–29. 27 Reported in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 190.

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intervention and to propose mediation concerning its territorial claims against Austria.28 In reality, the Minister of Foreign Affairs seemed determined not to accept any proposal that might put the Kingdom of Italy in a position of having to receive rather than direct diplomatic manoeuvres.29 In this regard, he spoke of all the risks inherent to a German mediation involving the Holy See that might wind up with Austria proposing to cede Trentino through Vatican diplomacy. Sonnino was categorical: such circumstances would end up ‘humiliating’ Italy, placing it in a position of ‘weakness’ for having to accept it and consequently of not being able to raise the stakes further. At the end of February, Benedict still seemed confident that the double mediation attempted by Bülow and Erzberger (the Zentrum leaders who were in Italy trying to prevent Italy’s exit from the Triple Alliance) would be successful. The Holy Father was also convinced that Franz Joseph and the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephan Burián were willing to make important concessions, even if some Austrian circles were speaking of possible internal revolutionary destabilization if territorial promises made to Italy were to become excessive. On 1 March, Italy accelerated its mobilization for war. Meanwhile, Sonnino did his best to make Italian neutrality seem ever more ‘expensive’, with the not overly concealed aim that the rupture of the Triple Alliance would come from Vienna. Berlin no longer seemed capable of making further offers, after having offered to cover Vienna’s costs for ceding Tyrol to Italy. By then, however, Italy’s position was clear: Salandra and Sonnino had decided in favour of entering the war alongside the Entente. In point of fact, Italian diplomacy claimed that it agreed with the German proposal but demanded its immediate implementation rather than wait until the end of the war. Salandra’s and Sonnino’s perspective was obvious: neutrality would mean the end to Italy’s prospects as a great power. On 7 March, Monti had an audience with Benedict XV and confirmed a kind of Italian ultimatum against Austria: Trentino would not suffice. The irredentist lands of Istria and the city of Trieste also had to be included. The pontiff bitterly stated that this was ‘bad news’.30 At this point it is interesting to observe the action and reflection of French diplomacy, which seems to have clearly ‘seen through the game’ that Sonnino and Salandra were playing, realizing that the Minister of Foreign Affairs was moving on two boards: one with German diplomacy and the other in secret meetings in London. On 7 March, Tittoni wrote from Paris that the French position was clear. First of all, Italy had to go to war, and then it would be possible to speak about

28 Sonnino, Diario, II, pp. 94 ff. 29 It should be recalled that, from mid-February, Sonnino appeared increasingly convinced that intervention was closely tied to the monarchy’s resuming a more active political role in the national context at the expense of Giolitti’s brand of parliamentarianism. In speaking of the need for ‘substantial compensations’ from Austria-Hungary for, hypothetically, remaining neutral, he reminded Bülow that the biggest risk in facing a ‘national sentiment’ of dissatisfaction might be ‘revolution’; Varsori, Radioso maggio, p. 85. 30 ‘Una brutta notizia’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 193.

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territorial acquisitions.31 On 20 March, Delcassé then confided to the Ambassador that the Entente’s diplomatic circles had finally understood that Italy’s resumption of negotiations were aimed at understanding how much Paris and London were willing to ‘pay’ for Italy to join the war alongside them.32 Salandra and Sonnino were then set on Italy’s entering the war in an alliance with London, Paris and Saint Petersburg for three essential reasons. First, if Italy decided not to enter, a long conflict would wind up killing all its dreams of being a world power. Second, Sonnino in particular was convinced that the most complicated part of the war concerned not completing reunification but rather Italy’s position in the Adriatic, starting with control of the Balkans. In order to understand this, it was necessary to look beyond Germany’s continual territorial proposals. A true Italian conquest would be to succeed in playing a leading role in the Mediterranean, above all in the Adriatic. In order to be able to propose something along these lines, Germany would have to abandon Austria. After Austria’s defeat in Galicia and Germany’s decision to attack Russia, however, that hypothesis was less and less plausible. On the contrary, the Entente forces, whose first objective was to defeat Germany, could guarantee, at least theoretically, more ample room for Italy to manoeuvre in the Adriatic. Finally, a third reason was tied to the country’s political circumstances. Sonnino was increasingly convinced that the war would potentially have repercussions on an institutional level. It was necessary to join the war so that the monarchy could confirm its centrality in the country’s institutional development. As noted, a victorious war would mark the primacy of a monarchical reading of Italian liberalism over Giolitti’s parliamentary outlook.33 This was the framework within which Gabriel Hanotaux’s second mission to the Holy See has to be seen. The former Minister of Foreign Affairs intended, on the one hand, to reaccredit France’s image as a bulwark of Christian values in a move seeking to repair the rupture that took place in the aftermath of the Loi de séparation of 1905.34 On the other, he proposed the creation of a sort of ‘Latin axis’ between Catholic France and the ‘very Catholic’ Italy as an alternative to the one that had worn thin between Vienna and Rome. According to Hanotaux, the Pope was severe as far as the responsibilities for, and conduct of, the war by the so-called ‘German Lutherans’ were concerned. Moreover, Benedict XV said that neutrality did not mean impartiality and agreed

31 I documenti diplomatici italiani, ed. by Ministero degli Affari Esteri, III, p. 28. 32 I documenti diplomatici italiani, ed. by Ministero degli Affari Esteri, III, p. 125. 33 Giovanni Sabbatucci, ‘La politica italiana dall’impresa libica alla Grande Guerra: continuità e mutamenti’, in Abbasso la guerra!, ed. by Cammarano, pp. 115–24. 34 For a general overview, see Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Religion et politique en France depuis 1789 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2007); Maurice Larkin, L’Église et l’État en France: 1905, la crise de la Séparation (Toulouse: Privat, 2004); and Nations et Saint-Siège au XXe siècle: actes du colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, octobre 2000), ed. by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse and Philippe Levillain (Paris: Fayard, 2003).

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with his interlocutor about how a Latin alliance against the Slavs might be preferable. Lutheran Prussia had dragged Catholic Austria into the abyss, but the great unknown of Italy’s intervention remained. The case, however, was treated in a peculiar manner. It was not so much the rupture between the two great Catholic powers (Austria-Hungary and Italy) that seemed to worry the pontiff but the unknown of the Vatican finding itself without any certainties, not even legal ones, within a Kingdom of Italy that, already divided by a clearly anti-clerical sentiment, would find itself destabilized by war. If we go to war, what will happen? What will become of us who are here defenceless? There is talk of mobilizing our gendarmes and our guards. In short, we will be at the mercy of events. In case of victory, everything will be fine. But facing the slightest threat, what chaos will rend spirits and what disturbance will perhaps run riot in the city. We think, we believe, that the Italian government will take every possible precaution, but will they be in command? How will this Law of Guarantees be applied, which has not yet received any international sanctions?35 Without drawing any conclusions, with the Pope speaking of the possibility that it might be the cult of Joan of Arc, and thus implicitly ‘Catholic France’, that would once again become the Holy See’s guardian, this passage is interesting for another reason. Benedict XV seemed to have already become aware of the impossibility of any general mediation and, consequently, the focus of his concern became the Holy See’s future and its possible inability to pursue an autonomous foreign policy at a time when it would be necessary to deal with a Kingdom of Italy that was no longer neutral but engaged in war and, moreover, had broken up the Triple Alliance.36

35 ‘Se andiamo verso la guerra, che cosa succederà? Che cosa ne sarà di noi che siamo qui senza difesa? Si parla di mobilitazione per i nostri gendarmi e per le nostre guardie. Insomma saremo alla mercé degli avvenimenti. In caso di vittoria, andrà tutto bene. Ma di fronte alla minima minaccia quale caos attraverserà gli spiriti e forse quali disordini in città. Noi pensiamo, crediamo che il Governo italiano prenderà tutte le precauzioni possibili, ma avrà il comando? Come si applicherà questa legge delle guarentigie che non ha ancora ricevuto alcuna sanzione internazionale?’; Gabriel Hanotaux, Carnets (1907–1925) (Paris: Pedone, 1982), p. 135. 36 It should be noted that, on 8 March 1915, Sonnino recorded a conversation with the Spanish Ambassador to the Holy See in his diary. According to the Minister, requests had been made regarding the application of the Law of Guarantees in the case of Italy’s entry into the war. Sonnino’s reply seemed to want to keep the issue undecided but also, on the whole, to reassure the Holy See. On the one hand, he said that no official negotiation had been initiated and, on the other, he expressed his personal point of view: ‘I could tell him what my personal opinion is on the subject: I would fully apply the Law of Guarantees, maintaining the Vatican’s complete freedom of communication with foreign countries. Representatives to the pontiff of the powers who were at war with Italy could continue to reside freely in Rome. However, these communications could not be completely free and secret except with and through the Vatican, which would be the only judge and responsible party for their permissibility and correctness. Thus, it would be that the Italian Law of Guarantees constitutes a greater guarantee of the pontiff ’s complete freedom than would its internationalization since, in the case of a world conflict such as the present one, such internationalization would not be practically effective for at least half of the major powers’ (‘Potergli io dire quale sarebbe la mia opinione personale sul tema: applicherei integralmente la

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To demonstrate how sceptical Benedict XV had become regarding the premise that Italy would avoid entry into the war, when he had a meeting with Monti on 17 April, he showed, on the one hand, that he understood the Italian government’s requests put to Vienna on 8 April perfectly well. On the other, however, and not so covertly, he understood that Italy was playing at a bidding war, while a possible way out would have been to seek the middle ground between ‘Italy’s greatest demand and the least amount of concessions that Austria-Hungary was willing to make’.37 Yet at this point, Benedict XV added something more. Mediation would be possible if Orlando or Salandra were guiding negotiations, not Sonnino, who by nature, both by birth as well as his English education, is more inclined towards the Triple Entente and, consequently, more obstinate in his demands on Austria-Hungary, even at the cost of war.38 By this time, the events of late April and early May were all heading in the direction of entering into war alongside the Entente. On 26 April 1915, Sonnino secretly signed the Treaty of London and, five days later, asked the Council of Ministers to break the Triple Alliance and proceed with signing a pact with the Entente forces (which in reality had already been signed).39 The resignations of Salandra’s government, then, were just a ploy for obtaining full powers and finally entering the war, which was declared on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915. There is, however, still a point worth considering more fully. Between 10 and 11 May, the Holy See’s two concerns — the question of the ‘constitutional’ guarantees that the Holy See could expect in the case of Italy’s entry into war and the Holy See’s strenuous attempts to avert such a decision — came together in Austria-Hungary’s final proposal that was put forward under pressure from Germany.

legge delle guarentigie, mantenendo completa libertà di comunicazione del Vaticano con l’estero; i rappresentanti presso il pontefice delle potenze che fossero in guerra con l’Italia potrebbero seguitare a risiedere liberamente in Roma; però le loro comunicazioni non potrebbero essere completamente libere e segrete sennonché col Vaticano e a traverso il Vaticano, il quale sarebbe solo giudice e responsabile della loro permissibilità e correttezza. Così si proverebbe che la legge delle guarentigie italiane costituisce una maggiore garanzia della completa libertà del pontefice di quel che non costituirebbe la sua internazionalizzazione, poiché nel caso di un conflitto mondiale come il presente questa internazionalizzazione non avrebbe efficacia pratica per una buona metà delle potenze maggiori’); Sonnino, Diario, II, pp. 100–01. 37 ‘Il massimo della domanda dell’Italia e il minimo delle concessioni che l’Austria-Ungheria era disposta a fare’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 195. 38 ‘Il quale sia per carattere, sia per l’origine, sia per l’educazione inglese, è propenso maggiormente per la Triplice intesa e, di conseguenza, più ostinato nelle domande verso l’Austria-Ungheria anche a costo di una guerra’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 196. 39 By then, in the second half of April, everyone was bluffing, including Bethmann-Hollweg. His new mission to Rome on 20 April 1915 had the sole purpose of delaying Italy’s entry into the conflict so that the German Empire would be able to finish its play on the Eastern front against Russia; Rusconi, L’azzardo, pp. 132–36.

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As Sonnino’s40 and Monti’s41 diaries report, Italy responded to the pontiff ’s legitimate concerns by guaranteeing the possibility for diplomatic representation of nations at war against Italy to maintain their own functionary with the Holy See. After speaking to Minister Orlando, Monti met the Pope, who was very attentive to some of the specific issues punctually reported by Sonnino in his document concerning the room for representatives for future belligerent nations to deal with the Holy See. Indeed, it was on the secrecy of communications between such nations and the Vatican that Benedict XV dwelt. He merely observes that it seems difficult to him to execute what is said in Point 3 concerning the correspondence of ministers accredited to the Holy See. In fact, how could the Holy See assume responsibility for their correspondence? It would have to read it, and one would not know what to expect if some notice or information that was serious for Italy were to leak out and be known to have come from one of those ministers, for which public opinion would hold the Vatican responsible.42 It is evident that the pontiff wanted, on the one hand, to protect his image in Catholic public opinion, in general, and in particular in that in Italy. On the other hand, however, it was an implicit possibility that the Holy See might maintain a minimum level of independence, functional to its hypothetical role as mediator, and which, on 10 May, Benedict XV still seemed to maintain some hope of effecting. This is where

40 ‘The trial by fire of the Law of Guarantees. I would give a very wide interpretation, in effect, without going into legal matters. Any affirmation of our reserve would result in protests over the inadequacy of the law. A broad treatment should not appear as our discretionary concession but as inherent to the law and deriving from it. Full freedom of the Vatican’s postal or telegraphic communications with foreign countries, with guarantees of secrecy, as long as they are initiated from the office recognized by the Vatican. Freedom of residence in Rome for representatives of foreign states, even ones that are belligerent towards Italy. But these would not have the absolute freedom of secret communication by telegraph, etc.’ (‘Prova di fuoco di legge guarentigie. Darei larghissima interpretazione di fatto, senza sofisticare sulle questioni di diritto. Ogni affermazione di riserve nostre darebbe luogo in avvenire a proteste sulla insufficienza della legge. Larghezza di trattamento non deve apparire come una concessione discretiva nostra ma come insita nella legge e derivante da questa. Piena libertà di comunicazioni postali o telegrafiche dal Vaticano con l’estero, con garanzie di segretezza, basta che partano dall’Ufficio riconosciuto dal Vaticano. Libera dimora a Roma dei rappresentanti degli Stati esteri, ancorché belligeranti contro l’Italia. Questi però non avrebbero libertà assoluta di comunicazione segreta per telegrafo, ecc.’); Sonnino, Diario, II, p. 144. 41 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 199. 42 ‘Soltanto osserva sembrargli di difficile esecuzione quanto detto al punto n. 3 circa la corrispondenza dei ministri accreditati presso la S. Sede. Difatti come potrebbe assumere la S. Sede la responsabilità della loro corrispondenza? Dovrebbe leggerla, il che non si saprebbe come pretendere e se qualche notizia e informazione, grave per l’Italia, si sapesse essere venuta fuori da qualcuno di detti ministri, ecco che il Vaticano, dalla pubblica opinione ne sarebbe chiamato responsabile’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 201. The aforementioned ‘Point 3’ of Sonnino’s indications concerns communications from belligerent countries, which should follow the same rules of ‘freedom’ and ‘secrecy’ as the Vatican ones. However, it is added, and herein lies the ambiguity, that the Vatican itself should carry out a, not further specified, control of communications so that they do not involve communications that would be potentially dangerous for the Kingdom of Italy.

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the mention of a slip of paper signed by both Bülow and Macchio (with authentic signatures, the Holy Father added to Monti) comes into play: it is supposed to report the maximum concessions to Italy on the part of Austria-Hungary (Italian Trentino, Gorizia, Gradisca, the Dalmatian State, Valona and freedom of action in Albania).43 This mention and the pontiff ’s tone do not hide the very clear criticism of Italy’s diplomatic conduct. It was a point of view that was confirmed the following day when Monti met Cardinal Gasparri, and was on the receiving end of his outburst, which could be defined as the Holy See’s standpoint on the matter. It is true that the Austrians were late in making their offers and that there was no desire for rapid or solitary concessions, but ‘the Italian government, for its part, could have been more energetic, and if it is now formally involved with the Triple Entente, it should break off negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary; if it is not involved, then it should continue and will undoubtedly obtain better concessions’.44 In short, the Holy See demanded a clarity that Italy’s diplomacy, from the outbreak of the Great War, had intentionally never revealed. Another conversation with Monti showed that this had become the Holy Father’s conviction. On 16 May, Benedict XV replied to Monti, who was committed to supporting the Salandra–Sonnino–Orlando ‘triad’s’ perspective (that Austrian concessions had come too late), without any particular excess of words. He had his convictions and had also identified the main person responsible: The Holy Father said it was his conviction that Minister Sonnino, because of his ties to England, never seriously wanted to come to an agreement with the two empires, while it was his responsability if, until 8 March, the concessions formulated in writing on 10 May had only been proposed verbally, and if the government had truly wanted to conclude, it should and could have demanded, from the outset, that the verbal proposals be put to paper and made concrete. He also stated that the formulation of the Austrian note of concession had already found Sonnino bound to the Triple Entente.45

43 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 202. Moreover, the same piece of paper is also mentioned by Salandra in his diary on the occasion of the meeting with Giolitti on the afternoon of 10 May. Copies of the same proposals are found in the hands of the former Prime Minister who, even on this occasion, maintained his opposition to Italy’s entry into the war, particularly insisting at this juncture on the lack of preparation and the armed forces’ unwillingness to fight, which was not the case during the war in Libya. ‘He said that he always had to fake the reports of skirmishes in order not to give away that they only won when they outnumbered [the enemy] ten to one. […] He foresaw a million Austro-Germans against us, the occupation of Verona, retreat behind the Po, the conquest of Milan and revolution in the country’ (‘Dice di aver dovuto sempre falsificare i bollettini degli scontri per non mostrare che non si vinceva se non si era dieci contro uno. […] Prevede un milione austro-tedeschi contro di noi, la occupazione di Verona, la ritirata dietro il Po, la conquista di Milano, la rivoluzione nel paese’); Antonio Salandra, Il diario di Salandra, ed. by Giambattista Gifuni (Milan: Pan Editrice, 1969), pp. 37 ff. 44 ‘Il governo italiano dal canto suo poteva essere più energico e ora se è impegnato in modo formale colla Triplice Intesa, tronchi le trattative colla Germania e l’Austria-Ungheria, in caso contrario le continui e otterrà certamente che saranno migliorate’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 205. 45 ‘Il S. Padre ha detto essere sua convinzione che l’on. Sonnino per i suoi legami coll’Inghilterra non abbia mai voluto seriamente venire ad accordi coi due imperi, mentre constava a lui che fino all’8 marzo erano state verbalmente proposte le concessioni che furono formulate per iscritto il 10 maggio

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That the Vatican was nurturing what Salandra, in 1916, defined in his diary as an ‘incurable aversion’46 to Sonnino is hardly debatable. What can be added, ultimately, is that, at the time, the two main subjects seemed to be acting and reflecting on different, disconnected levels. Sonnino, in fact, returned Bülow’s final, belated mediation and then focussed only on the issue of guarantees and the application of the Law of Guarantees during war-time, a situation that was by then imminent.47 On the other hand, the pontiff did not restrict himself to ‘personalizing’ his criticism of Italian diplomacy or choices in general, but extended the discussion, emphasizing how most of the population was still opposed to the conflict and also that, above all, Italy had made a ‘strategic’ mistake. His Holiness repeats and persists in believing that the war is truly a mistake for Italy because it would have obtained without serious sacrifices of all types what it will certainly not obtain by entering the field with the Triple Entente.48 By 23 May 1915, Italy’s diplomatic position had been clarified, as had also the difficulties Italy would face in conducting a linear and coherent foreign policy. In about ten months after the outbreak of the war, the former allies had felt it in their bones, but the new arrivals also already understood it during the long negotiations that had begun in the aftermath of August 1914’s declaration of neutrality.49 A clarification also occurred within Italy’s variegated and multiform Catholicism.50 In May 1915, the attitude of most of the Italian Catholic world was one of true ‘patriotic

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e che se il governo avesse voluto veramente concludere, avrebbe dovuto e potuto pretendere, sin dapprincipio, che le proposte verbali fossero poste in carta e concretate; egli ha affermato inoltre che la formulazione della nota delle concessioni austriache ha trovato il Sonnino già vincolato alla Triplice Intesa’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 207. ‘Avversione inguaribile’; Salandra, Il diario, p. 42. ‘The question here concerns not relations between sovereign countries but relations between the Italian State and the Holy Father, whose very special sovereignty is guaranteed by our laws. The Italian government is firmly resolved to assure this sovereignty in accordance with these laws, in all eventualities. I also added orally that the envoys of foreign governments to the pontiff can, in any event, reside freely in Rome and the Italian government will take every possible measure to guarantee their security’ (‘Il s’agit ici d’une question qui concerne non pas les rapports entre des Souverainetés d’États, mais les rapports entre l’État italien et le Saint-Père, dont la Souveraineté, toute spéciale, est garantie par nos lois. Le Gouvernement Italien est fermement résolu d’assurer cette Souveraineté conformément aux lois susdites, dans toutes les éventualités. Aggiunsi inoltre a voce in via d’informazione che gli inviati dei governi esteri presso il Pontefice possono in qualsiasi eventualità risiedere liberamente a Roma, e il governo italiano prenderà ogni possibile misura per garantirne la sicurezza’): this was the text that Sonnino delivered to Bülow in French, with his added comment in Italian; Sonnino, Diario, II, pp. 144–47. ‘Sua Santità ripete e persiste nel ritenere che la guerra rappresenta per l’Italia un vero errore, perché avrebbe ottenuto senza sacrifici gravissimi e di ogni genere quanto non è certo otterrà scendendo in campo colla Triplice Intesa’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 208. For a comprehensive perspective, see Michele Marchi, ‘L’Italie et “sa guerre de 1915”: entre ambiguïté et réalisme’, in Les Pays de Savoie en 1915: au cœur des enjeux internationaux, ed. by Claude Barbier and Frédéric Turpin (Chambéry: Éditions de l’Université de Savoie Mont Blanc, 2016), pp. 57–72. Edoardo Bressan, ‘I cattolici e lo choc della guerra europea’, in I cinque anni che sconvolsero il mondo: la prima guerra mondiale (1914–1918), ed. by Paolo Pombeni (Rome: Studium, 2015), pp. 87–96.

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loyalty’ within which there were two antipodal approaches at the moment of the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914: that of neutrality and that of interventionism. During the process of the nationalization of ‘Catholic Italy’, it was clear that there was enthusiasm for a war that would definitively smooth over old Risorgimento struggles. The case of Filippo Meda, who would become Minister of Finance in 1916, is emblematic and useful for describing the climate of the day. His situation developed through all the ‘versions’ of a ‘national Catholic’: from a neutralist he moved on to a wait-and-see attitude and finally fully embraced Italian intervention.51 Of course, in such a context Benedict XV’s position was even more disruptive, confirmed by his stance of impartiality and neutrality, which certainly reached its acme with his famous denunciation of the ‘useless slaughter’ in 1917. However, from the moment of his election to the papal throne, he sought — defining ‘nationalism’ as the enemy of any authentic Christian vision — to oppose that which remained and would remain, from his perspective, Europe’s apostasy.52

Bibliography Bendiscioli, Mario, ‘La Santa Sede e la guerra’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 25–49 Boudon, Jacques-Olivier, Religion et politique en France depuis 1789 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2007) Bressan, Edoardo, ‘I cattolici e lo choc della guerra europea’, in I cinque anni che sconvolsero il mondo: la prima guerra mondiale (1914–1918), ed. by Paolo Pombeni (Rome: Studium, 2015), pp. 87–96 Carrère d’Encausse, Hélène, and Philippe Levillain, eds, Nations et Saint-Siège au XXe siècle: actes du colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, octobre 2000) (Paris: Fayard, 2003) Charles-Roux, François, Trois ambassades françaises à la veille de la guerre (Paris: Plon, 1928) Ferragu, Gilles, ‘Au milieu des solliciteurs: le Saint-Siège entre en guerre mondiale’, in Les Pays de Savoie en 1915: au cœur des enjeux internationaux, ed. by Claude Barbier and Frédéric Turpin (Chambéry: Éditions de l’Université de Savoie Mont Blanc, 2016), pp. 73–86 Ferraioli, Gianpaolo, Politica e diplomazia in Italia tra il XIX e il XX secolo: vita di Antonino di San Giuliano (1852–1914) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007) Formigoni, Guido, L’Italia dei cattolici: dal Risorgimento a oggi, 2nd edn (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010)

51 Guido Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici: dal Risorgimento a oggi, 2nd edn (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 84 ff. 52 Among others, see Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV e il nazionalismo’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 17, 3 (1996), pp. 541–66; Giovanni Vian, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, in Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 736–43; and Gilles Ferragu, ‘Au milieu des solliciteurs: le Saint-Siège entre en guerre mondiale’, in Les Pays de Savoie, ed. by Barbier and Turpin, pp. 73–86.

ita l ia n fo r e ign p o l i t i c s at t h e daw n o f b e ne d i ct  xv’s po nt i f i cat e

Garzia, Italo, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981) Hanotaux, Gabriel, Carnets (1907–1925) (Paris: Pedone, 1982) Larkin, Maurice, L’Église et l’État en France: 1905, la crise de la Séparation (Toulouse: Privat, 2004) Marchi, Michele, ‘L’Italie et “sa guerre de 1915”: entre ambiguïté et réalisme’, in Les Pays de Savoie en 1915: au cœur des enjeux internationaux, ed. by Claude Barbier and Frédéric Turpin (Chambéry: Éditions de l’Université de Savoie Mont Blanc, 2016), pp. 57–72 Margiotta Broglio, Francesco, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966) Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV e il nazionalismo’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 17, 3 (1996), pp. 541–66 Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Riccardi, Luca, ‘La politica estera dell’Italia nei mesi della neutralità’, in Abbasso la guerra! Neutralisti in piazza alla vigilia della Prima guerra mondiale in Italia, ed. by Fulvio Cammarano (Florence: Le Monnier, 2015), pp. 105–14 Rusconi, Gian Enrico, L’azzardo del 1915: come l’Italia decide la sua guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005) Sabbatucci, Giovanni, ‘La politica italiana dall’impresa libica alla Grande Guerra: continuità e mutamenti’, in Abbasso la guerra! Neutralisti in piazza alla vigilia della Prima guerra mondiale in Italia, ed. by Fulvio Cammarano (Florence: Le Monnier, 2015), pp. 115–24 Salandra, Antonio, Il diario di Salandra, ed. by Giambattista Gifuni (Milan: Pan Editrice, 1969) Scoppola, Pietro, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 95–151 Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Sonnino, Sidney, Carteggio 1914–1916, ed. by Pietro Pastorelli (Bari: Laterza, 1974) Sonnino, Sidney, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), II Varsori, Antonio, Radioso maggio: come l’Italia entrò in guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015) Vian, Giovanni, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, in Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 736–43 Vigezzi, Brunello, L’Italia neutrale (Naples: Ricciardi, 1966)

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‘In pro della pace’: Benedict XV’s Diplomatic Steps to Prevent Italy’s Intervention in the Great War

1.

Benedict XV’s Vision of the War

Pope Benedict XV’s aversion to the war was well known. His actions, however, were not limited to condemnations of ‘perhaps the saddest and most mournful spectacle of which there is any record’, as he defined it in the encyclical Ad beatissimi in November 1914.1 Nor was it limited to — as evidenced by the Vatican’s substantial diplomatic activity — defending an abstract pacifist ideal.2 Throughout the entire war, the pontiff exercised a very active role that extended well beyond the boundaries of traditional pastoral outreach and spiritual care of the community of the faithful. In order to examine the diplomacy engaged in by the Holy See from 1914 to 1915 and, in particular, the proposal to cede the Italian territories in South Tyrol — something repeatedly requested by the Habsburg court in order to prevent Italy’s entry into the war —, it will be helpful first to frame the cultural and political horizon within which the papal initiatives took shape. From the first pronouncement of Benedict XV and his Secretary of State, there emerged a position that was essentially in line with that of the previous pontificate, aimed at condemning war and advancing a request for peace from the belligerent powers.3 In the months following the beginning of the hostilities, an interpretation of the conflict began to take shape, reading it from a perspective of divine providence that, essentially, revolved around three elements: the idea of the war as divine punishment for modern society’s secular drift, the cathartic potential of war and its possibility of re-establishing

1 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 2 See Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), p. 31. 3 See Benedict XV, ‘Ad universos orbis catholicos hortatio’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 65, 3 (1914), pp. i–iv.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 373–390 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118781

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the pontiff’s role on the international political stage.4 Interpreted in this way, which to some extent represented and relaunched themes that were dear to nineteenth-century intransigentism, the conflict represented a consequence of the abandonment of religion and the betrayal of the ecclesiastical magisterium resulting from secularization. As was recalled in Ad beatissimi, the origin of the ‘awful war’ (§ 5) was to be found in the abandonment of the norms and practices of ‘Christian wisdom’ (§ 5) by state systems and in the denial of divine authority on the part of human power and public institutions. The events that were shattering Europe were relocated within a metahistorical framework, at the centre of which lay not political and diplomatic equilibrium among nations but humanity’s departure from the message of the Gospel; not an analysis of the power politics of national states but the process of secularization and society’s turning away from religion. In a word, what they did was ‘to divorce themselves from the holy religion of Christ’.5 Consequently, the means for re-establishing peace could only be achieved by restoring ‘Christian principles’, the only way to be able to return to ‘the peace and harmony of human society’.6 In this sense, it was an interpretive model that was well-suited to the point of view of those who saw the war as an opportunity for the moral regeneration of the world. The metahistorical viewpoint proposed by the papal magisterium did not conflict with interpretations of the war provided by national churches. Partly departing from the Christian pacifism which traditionally guided their course, they sought within the interpretation of the conflict as divine providence a useful point of departure for defending the reasons of each church’s respective national causes. Naturally, the war was seen as an evil, but an evil that could no longer be avoided. In order to overcome it, it was necessary to invoke divine will, calling upon God for the victory of one’s armies.7 This interpretation of the war by national churches led to a sort of sanctification of the conflict, making relations between the Vatican — firmly anchored to a universalist perspective — and the national communities of the faithful particularly complex when they asked the Holy See to intervene directly in support of their reasons for waging war.8

2. The Holy See’s Diplomacy The papacy, however, did not restrict itself to providing a moral-theological framework within which to inscribe the conflict. Faced with the ‘terrible scourge’ and the ‘suicide

4 Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra, p. 15. 5 For this phrasing of the quotation and an analysis of Ad beatissimi, see John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), p. 86. 6 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 5. 7 Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82 (p. 168). 8 See Konrad Repgen, ‘Foreign Policy of the Popes in the Epoch of the World Wars’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), X: The Church in the Modern Age (1981), pp. 35–96 (pp. 35–40).

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of civilized Europe’,9 the Pope adopted an attitude that was anything but passive and resigned. His constant censure of the war was combined with an insistent political diplomacy aimed, even before any call for a return to peace, at preventing the war from escalating.10 At stake, after all, was the very principle of the unity of Catholics who, while ‘brothers, whose Father is in Heaven’,11 were taking up arms against one another. The war suggested to the Holy See that it take on a new, leading role on the international stage. In the topmost Vatican offices, it was soon clear that the Church’s position in the world was at stake12 and that, alongside prayer and charitable commitment, there was need for the renewed leadership of its diplomacy. The Roman Question had left the problem of the Vatican’s destiny as an international legal entity undecided. The war, in this sense, represented for the Holy See, in Murri’s words, a ‘magnificent opportunity […] to return […] to the circle of European politics’ and to give substance to the pontiff ’s ‘international command’ that had been ruinously limited by the Guarantees.13 The measures promoted by the Holy See during the war — from the attempt to obtain a truce during Christmas 1914, to the charitable outreach extended to belligerent governments and even the steps taken towards negotiating for peace — represented ‘the last area for exercising its supreme function of universal arbitration that apostate modern society denied the Pope in its fullness’.14 The re-establishment of the pontiff ’s role as arbiter could not be put forward publicly but, in its actions, Vatican’s diplomacy was directed along that line of intervention. The war had modified the



9 ‘Spaventevole flagello’; ‘suicidio dell’Europa civile’; as is known, the expressions Benedict XV used to describe the war were numerous and dramatic: ‘scourge of God’s wrath’, ‘horrendous carnage that dishonours Europe’, ‘world made hospital and charnel house’, ‘grim tragedy of human hatred and human dementia’, ‘useless slaughter’ (‘flagello dell’ira di Dio’, ‘orrenda carneficina che disonora l’Europa’, ‘mondo fatto ospedale e ossario’, ‘fosca tragedia dell’odio umano e dell’umana demenza’, ‘inutile strage’). 10 On Benedict XV’s attitude toward the war in general, see Giacomo Martina, Storia della Chiesa da Lutero ai nostri giorni, 4 vols (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1993–95), IV: L’età contemporanea (1995), pp. 136– 46; Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 37–47; Gabriele De Rosa, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), III, pp. 608–17. 11 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 3. 12 Giovanni Battista Varnier, ‘“Una guerra ingiusta”: la Santa Sede e l’Italia tra neutralità e intervento (1914–1915)’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 23 (2014), pp. 17–39 (p. 20). 13 ‘Una magnifica opportunità […] per rientrare […] nel circolo della politica europea’; ‘capacità internazionale’; Romolo Murri, La croce e la spada (Florence: Bemporad, 1915), p. 147. The regenerative attribute that Murri ascribes to the conflict is clear: ‘The war, the national Great War, appears as a powerful purifier. It compromises and disrupts the dominion of parasitic groups, replacing individuals — dominated and exploited until yesterday — before the true object of their faith and adoration; it dissolves and reconstitutes’ (‘la guerra, la Grande Guerra nazionale, apparisce come una possente purificatrice. Essa compromette e sconvolge il dominio dei gruppi parassitari, colloca di nuovo gli individui, fino a ieri dominati e sfruttati, dinanzi all’oggetto vero della loro fede e adorazione, dissolve e ricostruisce’); Murri, La croce e la spada, p. 28. 14 ‘L’ultimo spazio di esercizio di quella suprema funzione di arbitrato universale che l’apostata società moderna rifiuta(va) al papa nella sua pienezza’; Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra, pp. 25–26.

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Holy See’s international position and the pontiff was not, in this sense, a disinterested observer of events. A juncture when the Vatican’s efforts to exercise an active role in the international political order was clearly displayed was in the negotiations that involved Italy, Germany and Austria in order to prevent Italy’s entry into the war alongside the Triple Entente. The Holy See’s fears concerning Italian intervention in the war were very strong. On the one hand, there was Austria-Hungary’s fate, the last great Catholic power standing against Pan-Slavism and the Orthodox threat. On the other, there was the problem of the consequences that would unfold if the Kingdom of Italy were to abandon neutrality, which could have led to a progressive isolation of the Vatican. At stake were the important diplomatic relations with the Central Powers, since the Law of Guarantees was vague on what would happen should Italy find itself at war with powers that were close to the Holy See. The consequences in terms of loss of human life and the destruction that an expansion of the conflict would entail, or the particularly grave effects that opening a front in the South would have on the Italian-speaking population of the Empire, also had to be taken into consideration.15 The conditions that Italian intervention would have imposed on the Vatican’s international politics were at the origin of the Holy See’s clear opposition towards an eventual, further escalation of the conflict. The Vatican’s universal neutrality inscribed in its interpretation of the war from the perspective of divine providence, described above, would have found itself in an even more uncomfortable situation if a new front were to divide the community of believers: on the one hand, highly Catholic Austria and, on the other, the nation that harboured the See of Peter. In short, there were numerous reasons that drove the Pope and his Secretary of State to use every pressure at their means to ensure Italy’s neutrality, a pressure that even led them to suggest to the representatives of the Habsburg monarchy the opportunity of ceding the Trentino territories in order to keep Italy from leaving the Triple Alliance and entering the war. In his diary, Baron Carlo Monti, the Italian government’s representative to the Holy See, reported that, ‘regarding the AustriaHungary’s situation, he [the pontiff] also believes that the Empire is on the brink of

15 For Benedict XV, the two meetings he had with Alcide De Gasperi in November 1914 and the spring of 1915 were useful occasions for probing the consequences that possible war scenarios would have produced along the Empire’s southern border. They were occasions on which the Trentino politician obtained ‘the clear conviction that he [the pontiff] suffered immensely from not having found a way to save Belgium but, what touched me more closely, was that Benedict XV saw the entire disteresful situation of his children in the then-irredentist lands and understood their natural aspirations’ (‘la chiara convinzione ch’egli soffriva immensamente di non trovar modo di salvare il Belgio, ma, quello che mi toccava più davvicino, che Benedetto XV intravedeva tutta l’angosciosa situazione dei suoi figlioli delle terre allora irredente e che ne comprendeva le naturali aspirazioni’); Alcide De Gasperi, ‘L’omaggio di un cattolico trentino’, in Alcide De Gasperi, Scritti e discorsi politici, 4 vols (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006–09), II/1: Alcide De Gasperi dal Partito Popolare Italiano all’esilio interno, 1919–1942, ed. by Mariapia Bigaran and Maurizio Cau (2007), p. 790. On this point, see Maurizio Cau, ‘“Una svolta nella storia”: De Gasperi e la Prima guerra mondiale’, in De Gasperi e la prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Maurizio Cau and Marco Mondini (Trento: Fondazione Bruno Kessler Press, 2015), pp. 45–66 (pp. 53–55).

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falling apart, and its only salvation lies in the interest that Germany has in maintaining it, however much diminished’.16 The note was written on 31 December 1914 and revealed the political realism with which Giacomo Della Chiesa was operating in those months. Although openly condemning it, he accepted that the war existed and that it might become more widespread. The preference for maintaining Italian neutrality was evident, but the theory that negotiations might lead to war was admitted. In other words, Benedict XV did all he could to avoid Italy’s entry into the war, but he realistically accepted that, in order to remain outside the conflict, Italy should obtain some direct advantages from the war at Austria’s expense.17 The highly Catholic dual monarchy was to be preserved from dissolution, the consequences of which would have weighed heavily on the fate of the community of the faithful in Europe. Since this was the framework of reference for Vatican’s diplomacy, it is appropriate to review its evolution from the autumn of 1914, when benevolent neutrality and ‘the cordially friendly attitude towards the allies in accordance with the treaty’ — as Victor Emmanuel defined it in a telegram to Emperor Franz Joseph — began to undergo a significant reorientation.18 Everyone thought that the war would be brief, but instead it turned into a war of attrition, evolving unpredictably. As it continued to develop, the issue of Italy’s participation was reconsidered since it was likely to reshape Europe’s political map and because it had become increasingly difficult to remain neutral. In order to give vent to the, none too mild, expansionistic ambitions that ran through Italian public opinion, there were two paths from which to choose: obliging Austria-Hungary to cede the so-called irredentist lands in exchange for the preservation of neutrality, or participating in the war alongside the Entente. The latter possibility required a sudden change in Italian alliances, which would have inevitably broken the agreement with the Central Powers that had been formalized in 1871. Although they were a minority, those calling for intervention were becoming increasingly numerous in Italian society. At stake, far more than obtaining the territories of Trento and Trieste, was the desire — felt particularly by Salandra and Sonnino — to propel the Kingdom of Italy into the circle of world powers. Moreover, as Holger Afflerbach pointed out, ‘the spirit of the alliance had

16 ‘Circa la situazione dell’Austria-Ungheria, anch’egli ritiene che l’impero sia alla vigilia dello sfascio e che l’unica sua salvezza sia nell’interesse che la Germania ha di mantenerlo, per quanto diminuito’; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, p. 9. 17 See Brunello Vigezzi’s piece in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), p. 295. 18 ‘L’attitudine cordialmente amichevole verso gli alleati in conformità al trattato’; see Gian Enrico Rusconi, ‘L’azzardo del 1915: come l’Italia decide l’intervento nella Grande guerra’, in L’entrata in guerra dell’Italia nel 1915: atti del convegno internazionale ‘La decisione dell’intervento dell’Italia in guerra nel 1915’ (Trento, 31 maggio 2005), ed. by Johannes Hürter and Gian Enrico Rusconi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 15–74 (p. 40).

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already failed by the summer of 1914’.19 The outbreak of the war had, in fact, caused the failure of the Triple Alliance, which, as a political pact guaranteeing peace, had essentially become meaningless in the context of war. The alliance between Italy, Germany and Austria had, over the years, revealed all its weaknesses. In particular, relations between Italy and Austria were always rather tense, to the point that neither government had much trust in the territorial guarantees that lay at the heart of the alliance. The tensions related to the irredentist battles, the militarization of Austria’s southern borders and the disputes over the role of the Italian university in the multinational Empire all made the precariousness of an Italo-Austrian friendship obvious. Where the cordiality of political relations between the two countries ended, however, there was still the common interest of maintaining peace in Europe. Once that failed, the very reason for the existence of the Triple Alliance lost its significance. The terms of the negotiations that the two countries started to establish between the autumn of 1914 and the spring of 1915 explicitly revealed this situation. At the negotiating table, in no way did they appear to be two allies, but rather two countries motivated by suspicion and hostility. Given this context, it was not surprising that the German and Vatican representatives — who carried out an intense mediation to prevent the further expansion of hostilities — played such a central role. I have already spoken of Vatican’s fears. The German government had no less pressing concerns because Italy’s entry into the war represented a very serious threat to a favourable development of the conflict.20 This is the reason for the very clear pressure it exerted on Vienna for a favourable acceptance of the requests for compensation that the Italian government had begun to submit to the dual monarchy from the summer of 1914.21

3. Vatican Intercession for Conceding Trentino to Italy It was within this complex diplomatic triangulation that Benedict XV’s attempts at mediation took place. In December 1914, working together with the extraordinary mission of the Reich’s former Chancellor, Prince Bernhard von Bülow, who was in Rome in order to avert Italy’s plans for war, the picture became clear. On the German and Vatican side was a substantial acceptance of Sonnino’s requests, who believed in no uncertain terms — as he noted on 23 November — that ‘without the war we will have no territorial increases. At best, and even then only by threatening

19 ‘Lo spirito dell’alleanza era venuto meno già nell’estate del 1914’; Holger Afflerbach, ‘Da alleato a nemico: cause e conseguenze dell’entrata in guerra dell’Italia nel maggio 1915’, in L’entrata in guerra, ed. by Hürter and Rusconi, pp. 75–104 (p. 81). For an in-depth examination of the Triple Alliance and its limitations, see Holger Afflerbach, Der Dreibund: europäische Großmacht- und Allianzpolitik vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 2002). 20 See Alberto Monticone, La Germania e la neutralità italiana (1914–1915) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1971). 21 For an overview of the objectives and practices of Italian diplomacy in the aftermath of the outbreak of war, see Andrea Baravelli, ‘Diplomazia e scopi di guerra’, in Dizionario storico della Prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Nicola Labanca (Rome: Laterza, 2014), pp. 5–14.

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to intervene, [we shall obtain] Trentino as a compensation’.22 In short, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs no longer hid his intentions to derive significant territorial advantages from the ongoing war, regardless of whether he sent his own troops into the fray or not. It was precisely the Trentino region that represented this core issue. As Salandra communicated to Bülow on 19 December, the very fate of the Italian monarchy depended on the reunification, with or without going to war, with Trentino. Relaying the information to the German government, Bülow expressed the essential opportunity of ceding South Tyrol to Italy and the need to exert diplomatic pressure on Vienna to accept Italy’s requests. On the other hand, it should be suggested to the Kingdom of Italy that it reduces its demands by restricting its territorial requests to Trentino alone, leaving out the more fanciful claims that it had made around the Mediterranean. The Holy See’s position was the same, so much so that, on the very same days in January, both the German government and the Vatican organized a special mission to Vienna to convince the Habsburg political leaders of the absolute need for a territorial sacrifice in order to avoid even darker scenarios. The choice made by Benedict XV and Secretary of State Gasparri to promote diplomatic action directly with the Austrian rulers was the result of an autonomous decision that did not depend on any contact — which was, however, intense — with German diplomacy. As mentioned above, it was Benedict XV’s attempt to influence the future of the war by autonomously promoting a diplomacy aimed at ending the dramatic situation.23 An attempt to recognize the Pope’s active role in resolving this complicated international situation was advanced in November 1914 by Matthias Erzberger, an enterprising Catholic member of parliament for the Zentrum, who had proposed that Trentino be ceded to the Pope, who would later grant it to the Kingdom of Italy in exchange for the transfer of territories to the Holy See and an internationalization of the Law of Guarantees. Erzberger’s ambitious project, which in one fell stroke proposed preventing an escalation of the war that would include Italy and favoured the solution to the Roman Question that restricted the Vatican’s outreach, was received timidly by the Holy See and gained no following. On the other hand, intense diplomacy was stepped up with the Habsburg authorities to convince Emperor Franz Joseph to grant Trentino to the Kingdom of Italy. It was rather a complex initiative, as can be seen in the documentation kept in the Vatican Secret Archives.24 At the end of 1914, the ecclesial hierarchy, having become aware of the conspicuous offers extended by the Entente leaders to persuade Italy to join the war on their side,25 realized that it was evident that the margins of

22 ‘Senza la guerra non avremo aumenti di territorio. Tutt’al più, ma anche ciò a condizione di minacce di entrare in azione, il Trentino come compenso’; for an examination of Sonnino’s positions in relation to Trentino’s fate, see Umberto Corsini, Il colloquio De Gasperi-Sonnino, 16 marzo 1915: i cattolici trentini e la questione nazionale (Trento: G. B. Monauni, 1975), pp. 33–50. 23 On this point, see Varnier, ‘“Una guerra ingiusta”’, p. 27. 24 Of particular interest, from this point of view, is the ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28. Among its many documents is a manuscript of fourteen folders in which the numerous negotiations pursued by the Holy See in those weeks are summarized for the Nuncio. 25 Monticone, La Germania, p. 170.

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optimism with respect to Italy’s remaining neutral were continually diminishing and that the Habsburg court’s diplomatic intervention represented an obligatory point of passage — not just for keeping Italy out of the conflict, but also for safeguarding the Vatican’s own interests.

4. Pacelli’s Mission to Vienna The meetings on 3 and 4 January between Gasparri and the Prussian Minister to the Vatican, Otto von Mühlberg, convinced the pontiff of the need to send a mission to Vienna to persuade the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs to open serious negotiations with Rome. While the German Emperor, in concert with Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was preparing to send Prince Wedel to Vienna, the Holy See had selected the Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Eugenio Pacelli — who was very close to Gasparri and the pontiff —, as the right man to deal with the delicate mission. Gasparri met Mühlberg on 10 January to discuss the Pope’s choice of envoy. The name of the Dutch cardinal Willem van Rossum arose, but his unavailability due to illness had already motivated the Holy See to entrust the task to Pacelli. The reasons for Pacelli’s mission to Vienna were clearly spelt out in a document dated 12 January 1915, which was sent by the Vatican Secretary of State to the Nuncio in Vienna, Scapinelli di Leguigno. As Gasparri wrote: It is now almost certain that Italy, abandoning the neutrality it has maintained to this point, will soon enter into war in order to conquer those territories, at present subject to the Habsburg Crown, to which it has long aspired. Illusions concerning this point no longer seem possible, and it can be said, unhesitatingly, that whoever judges the situation otherwise and does not believe the danger of such a serious and imminent intervention will undoubtedly find himself in error. The preparations for war, which have been carefully and speedily conducted for months, are now complete down to the smallest details.26 This was confirmed by confidential news that spoke of the arrival in Rome of a Romanian agent who had come to agree on a joint action on the part of Italy and Romania, as well as information that spoke of parliamentary manoeuvres aimed at overthrowing the Salandra Cabinet in order to replace it with another radically based on the capacity to lead in war.

26 ‘Si ritiene ormai quasi certo che l’Italia, uscendo dalla neutralità mantenuta finora, entrerà fra breve essa pure nel conflitto, per muovere alla conquista di quei territori, soggetti presentemente alla Corona degli Asburgo, cui da lungo tempo aspira. Non sembra più possibile su questo punto illusione alcuna, e si può senza esitazione affermare che chi giudicasse altrimenti la situazione e non credesse il pericolo di tale intervento serio e imminente si troverebbe indubbiamente nell’errore. La preparazione della guerra, condotta già da mesi con ogni cura e alacrità, è ora completa fino nei più particolari dettagli’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, ff. 4–5.

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As has been recalled, this endangered not only the destiny of the dual monarchy, but the Vatican’s own interests as well, as Gasparri clearly reiterated to the Nuncio: Now the Holy Father, caring greatly about the existence of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, both with the particular affection that moves him towards it and towards its august and venerable sovereign, as well as with the evident and very great interest that the Church itself has to preserve the only great Catholic power and peace in Italy, has come to the decision to open his soul, through Your Eminence, to His Majesty the Emperor and to strongly advise him to avoid war with Italy at all cost by offering the appropriate concessions.27 The advice that the Holy Father intended to give the Emperor was well-circumstantiated. He considered it appropriate to express the proposal put forward by a competent person who was well-informed of the situation, according to which Austria should, without delay, enter into negotiations, permitting them on this basis, almost as a safeguard against a possible Slavic invasion, to occupy the various territories that Italy aimed to conquer for itself, and then surrender them at the end of the war, almost as compensation (to save the honour of the Empire), to a greater or lesser extent, to be agreed upon in the appropriate negotiations, depending on the outcome of the war while the remaining portion would return to Austria’s possession.28 For the pontiff, the Secretary of State noted, it was a painful step, also necessitated ‘by the indispensable duty of charity towards the monarchy in question and protection of the Holy See’s interests’.29 The Holy Father’s position in that instance was clearly summarized in Bernhard von Bülow’s memoirs: With wisdom and goodness, with finesse and firmness, without overreaching the limits of his spiritual ministry, Pope Benedict XV worked for peace as the true vicar of the Prince of Peace. […] He desired that the Habsburg Empire, 27 ‘Ora il S. Padre, avendo sommamente a cura l’esistenza della monarchia austro-ungarica, così per il particolare affetto ond’è animato verso di essa e verso il suo augusto e venerando sovrano, come pure per l’evidente ed altissimo interesse che ha la Chiesa stessa alla conservazione dell’unica grande potenza cattolica e della pace in Italia, è venuto nella determinazione di aprire, per mezzo della S. V., a S. M. l’imperatore l’animo Suo e di consigliarlo vivamente ad evitare ad ogni costo la guerra con l’Italia facendo le opportune concessioni’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, ff. 4–5. 28 ‘Di manifestare una proposta avanzata da persona competente e bene al corrente della situazione. Secondo essa, dovrebbe l’Austria senza indugio entrare con questa in negoziati, permetterle in base ad essi, quasi come a custode contro la possibile invasione slava, d’occupare i vari territori alla cui conquista l’Italia stessa mira, e cedergli poi al termine della guerra, quasi a titolo di compenso (per salvare così il decoro dell’Impero), in misura maggiore o minore, da convenirsi nelle adeguate trattative, a seconda dell’esito della guerra medesima, mentre la rimanente porzione tornerebbe in possesso dell’Austria’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, ff. 4–5. 29 ‘Da un imprescindibile dovere di carità verso contesta [sic] Monarchia e di tutela per gl’interessi della S. Sede’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, ff. 4–5.

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the last great Catholic power, be preserved, but he perfectly recognized that war could only be avoided if Austria did not hesitate to sacrifice Trentino. The Pope, who loves Italy, wished for Italy’s national aspirations be fulfilled, up to the limit compatible with the preservation of the Habsburg Empire.30 The Vatican and German diplomatic missions, prepared in parallel and to some extent in concert, began on 13 January with the arrival of their respective envoys in Vienna.31 A few days earlier, reports of the meeting between Baron Karl von Macchio and Sonnino had reached the Ballhausplatz, the seat of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Austria’s Special Ambassador to Rome communicated to the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Leopold Berchtold, the need to cede Trentino to the Kingdom of Italy.32 The signals to Vienna were clear: within a few weeks, most of the actors involved in the issue (Germany, the Holy See and the Austrian diplomatic representative to Rome) were convinced of the inevitability of Austria’s sacrifice and the concession of South Tyrol. Part of Austria’s political regency was not indifferent to the pressures being exerted upon it from several directions to open up a channel of negotiations with Italy. However, the leaders of the Hungarian government and Emperor Franz Joseph himself — for whom ceding Trentino was not feasible — were clear obstacles to the plan. It was hereditary Habsburg land, and there was also the problem of the large number of Trentino soldiers serving in the ranks of the Habsburg army. In Vienna, the intermediary role played by Berlin and the Vatican was received quite coldly. In Rome, the meetings between Bülow and Sonnino continued, even in the days immediately preceding the mission, for the first time dealing with what — from a geographical as well as administrative point of view — was meant by Trentino and whether it included the territories of Bolzano or not. The true negotiation, however, took place in the Austrian capital, where the efforts of the German and Vatican delegations did not produce the desired results. Shortly before Pacelli and Wedel’s arrivals, there was a political upheaval in the Austrian government, tied precisely to the possible concession of Trentino within the framework of negotiations attempting to avoid Italy’s intervention in the war. On 10 January, Count Berchtold, who had exerted direct pressure on the Emperor for him to consider the possible concession of the territories of South Tyrol, was

30 ‘Con saggezza e bontà, con finezza e fermezza papa Benedetto XV, senza punto oltrepassar i limiti del suo ministero spirituale, operava in pro della pace, da vero vicario dell’eterno Principe della Pace. […] Egli desiderava la conservazione dell’Impero d’Asburgo, ultima grande potenza cattolica; ma riconosceva perfettamente che la guerra poteva evitarsi soltanto se l’Austria non indugiasse oltre a sacrificare il Trentino. Il papa, che ama l’Italia, augurava l’adempimento delle aspirazioni nazionali italiane sino al limite compatibile con la conservazione dell’Impero d’Asburgo’; Bernhard von Bülow, Memorie, 4 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1930–31), III: Guerra mondiale e catastrofe, 1909–1920 (1931), p. 232. 31 On this point, see the still valid reconstructions of Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Österreich und der Vatikan 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960), pp. 202–11. 32 Monticone, La Germania, p. 177.

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forced to resign by the Hungarian Prime Minister, István Tisza, who conducted a forceful foreign policy that was much less open to negotiation. Stephan Burián was called in to succeed him at the helm of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and he was very unwilling to accept any deal that had territorial compensation tied to Trentino as its goal. Meeting the German envoy, Emperor Franz Joseph expressed his opposition to ceding hereditary lands, which would have had considerable repercussions for the political equilibrium of the dual monarchy. On 15 January, the Emperor made a similar refusal to Nuncio Scapinelli di Leguigno, whom the pontiff had sent to bear his message of peace and to whom Pacelli had communicated Benedict XV’s instructions. The pontifical mission was received with some surprise by the Habsburg court, given the rather unconventional nature of a Vatican intervention and the precision with which the Italian political situation was communicated to the sovereign. All the arguments defining the papal position were laid on the table: the importance of preserving the last great Catholic power, the risks that would beset the Vatican’s political and diplomatic endeavours if Italy entered the war and the opportunity to see territorial compensation, the concession of Trentino, as a guarantee of Italy’s neutrality. Scapinelli di Leguigno’s proposals were met with a sharp refusal, the shape of which was recalled in Pacelli’s notes on the conversation between the Nuncio and the Emperor: Knowing that Italy wants Trentino, [the Emperor] declared any territorial concession impossible, also because Romania would in turn take advantage of the precedent, which would provoke irritation and discouragement in public opinion.33 Attempts by Scapinelli di Leguigno and Pacelli to persuade Archbishop János Csernoch, Primate of Hungary, to put pressure on the Habsburg authorities also failed. As Burián confirmed to Pacelli himself, during a meeting at which there was no hesitation in urging the Holy See not to interfere, it was made clear that the Italian-speaking territories of the Empire were non-negotiable.34 Pacelli’s mission was not limited to delivering instructions to Scapinelli di Leguigno. He gathered impressions of the Viennese political climate, looking towards the effective feasibility of mediation focussed on the territorial concession of Trentino. Although the Emperor’s refusal was clear, Pacelli seemed to think that some margin

33 ‘Sapendo che l’Italia vuole il Trentino, dichiara impossibile qualunque cessione territoriale, anche perché la Rumenia vorrebbe a sua volta avvantaggiarsi di questo precedente si determinerebbero così l’irritazione e lo scoraggiamento dell’opinione pubblica’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 23. 34 In a note Pacelli sent following his meeting with Burián, he confirmed that ‘concessions are currently impossible. Austria intends to support the Italian government against the interventionist parties and advised the Holy See to work for neutrality, especially through the press’ (‘le cessioni sono al momento impossibili. L’Austria si propone di appoggiare il governo italiano contro i partiti interventisti e consiglia la S. Sede di lavorare per la neutralità, specialmente per mezzo della stampa’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 47.

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for action was still possible. The diplomatic mission’s failure did not mean that the Holy See would abandon its plans for mediation, which continued in the following months and were only interrupted when Italy joined the war.

5. The Continuation of the Vatican’s Diplomatic Attempts and the Progressive Slide Towards War The leading role played by the Vatican was tolerated with some ill will by the Italian government itself. This was clear from the pains that the Minister of Foreign Affairs took in the following weeks to avoid ‘defining the latest demands’ with respect to compensatory measures to avoid Italy’s intervention in the war. The risk, as Sonnino noted in his diary, was precisely of being put ‘in the Pope’s hand’. Austria, on the day that it should resolve to make a concession, would study the most unpleasant and disheartening form it could take. When it was sure of the limits of our demands, it might ask the Pope to offer those concessions through the Holy See. And where would we stand on that day? We could not, without scorn and injury and internal strife, reject what we had declared would suffice. We could not, without scorn and serious damage to the monarchy, accept either. As long as we have not compromised ourselves, they cannot play these games.35 The pontiff ’s outreach, as stated above, did not end with the Habsburg rejections. In early March, the Holy See again started to exert pressure for a favourable solution to the Trentino question. It did so with the involvement, through the Nuncio in Vienna, of the Cardinal Archbishop of the Austrian capital, Friedrich Gustav Piffl, after the city’s mayor openly expressed his opposition to ceding Trentino since he was afraid of the possible risk of revolution in the capital.36 If we can take what Bülow wrote in 35 ‘L’Austria che, nel giorno in cui si risolvesse a fare una concessione, si studierebbe di farla nella forma più antipatica e avvilente, potrebbe, quando fosse sicura dei limiti delle nostre esigenze, fare sulle istanze del papa quelle tali concessioni a traverso la S. Sede. E noi come resteremmo in quel giorno? Non potremmo, senza scorno e danno e divisioni interne, rifiutare quel che avremmo già dichiarato bastarci; non potremmo senza scorno e grave danno per la monarchia, nemmeno accettare. Finché invece non ci siamo compromessi non ci possono fare questi giochetti’; Sidney Sonnino, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), II, p. 94. 36 On 1 March, Gasparri wrote to Scapinelli di Leguigno: ‘As the Holy See has it, from a secure source, the Mayor of Vienna, Mr Weiskirchner, has made known to His Majesty the Emperor his open opposition to the possible concession of Trentino, even adding that, if such a concession were to be made, it would provoke a revolution in this city. Indeed, not only the Christian Social Party, to which the aforementioned gentleman belongs, but also the political group headed by Prince Liechtenstein are equally intransigent on this issue’ (‘secondo risulta alla S. Sede da fonte sicura, il sindaco di Vienna, sig. Weiskirchner, ha manifestato a S. M. l’Imperatore l’aperta sua opposizione ad un’eventuale cessione del Trentino, aggiungendo pure che, se tale cessione dovesse effettuarsi, provocherebbe una rivoluzione in codesta metropoli; consta anzi che non solo il partito cristiano sociale, al quale appartiene il detto signore, ma anche il gruppo politico, di cui è capo il principe Liechtenstein, è egualmente intransigente nella summenzionata questione’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 95. On 6 March, the Nuncio wrote to the Secretary of State

BENEDICT XV’S DIPLOMATIC STEPS TO PREVENT ITALY’S INTERVENTIOn

his memoirs at face value, the meeting between the Archbishop of Vienna (the new spokesman for the pontiff) and Franz Joseph was none too serene: The Emperor, already eighty-four years old, did not even let the Cardinal — who timidly proposed the Holy Father’s will to him — speak. His elderly face was flushed red with anger. He seized the Cardinal by the arm and literally pushed him out of the door.37 The Emperor’s resolve, however, did not prevent the offer in the following days by the Austrian government of the first concessions concerning the possibility of coming to an agreement with Italy. As Sonnino noted in his diary on 8 March, Bülow announced that ‘dispositions in Vienna had finally changed, so much so that there was reasonable hope that the negotiations might come to fruition’.38 The Viennese authorities’ openness, which was also confirmed in correspondence between Scapinelli di Leguigno and the Secretary of State,39 relaunched negotiations only in part, proceeding along wait-and-see lines. The timidity and circumspection of the concessions offered by the dual monarchy matched the Italian government’s ambiguous behaviour, since they had already decided to withdraw from the Triple Alliance and enter the war alongside the Entente.

that the party was not against it: ‘It seems the opposition comes from the Emperor and Tisza […]. A favourable outcome of negotiations is still hoped for in official circles’ (‘sembra opposizione venga da Imperatore e Tisza […]. Nei circoli ufficiali si spera ancora buon esito trattative’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 98. 37 ‘L’Imperatore, già ottantaquattrenne, non lasciò affatto parlare il cardinale, che timidamente gli esponeva il desiderio del S. Padre. Il suo volto senile si coperse del rossore della collera. Afferrò il cardinale per un braccio e lo spinse letteralmente fuori dell’uscio’; Bülow, Memorie, III, p. 233. 38 ‘Finalmente le disposizioni a Vienna si erano mutate, tantoché vi era fondata speranza che dette trattative potessero arrivare a buon fine’; Sonnino, Diario, II, p. 99. At Bülow’s requests for reassurances about the moderation of Italy’s requests, Sonnino replied that, although the intention was to avoid any exaggeration, waiting for a nod from the Austrian side regarding the possibility of starting real talks, it was not possible ‘to give any assurance today concerning the limits of our demands’ (‘dare oggi nessuna assicurazione sui limiti delle nostre domande’); Bülow, Memorie, III, p. 100. 39 Scapinelli di Leguigno wrote to Gasparri: ‘Count Tisza, although he continues to declare himself personally against concessions, in the Council of Ministers meeting held on Monday declared, expecting the necessity, his consent. That Ministry voted unanimously that concession would be the maximum agreed to. Now the question is in delimiting the terms, but mainly in the guarantee, which Austria considers necessary in order that new demands should not be added and neutrality be maintained until the end of the war’ (‘Conte Tisza, sebbene continui dichiararsi personalmente contrario cessione, e che nel consiglio ministri tenuto lunedì dichiarò, attesa necessità, acconsentire. In quel consiglio fu votata all’unanimità la cessione in massima. Ora questione sta nella delimitazione, ma principalmente nella garanzia, e che Austria ritiene necessaria perché non si affaccino poi nuove pretese e perché sia mantenuta neutralità sino al termine della guerra’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 103. To follow the feverish development of the negotiations between Rome, Berlin and Vienna, see Sidney Sonnino, Il libro verde: documenti diplomatici presentati al Parlamento Italiano dal Ministro degli Affari Esteri Sonnino nella seduta del 20 maggio 1915 (Milan: Treves, 1915), pp. 63–90; Bülow, Memorie, III, pp. 230–42.

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The Holy See continued its efforts at mediation aimed at inducing the parties to find a common agreement, which was very well-described in a page from Baron Monti’s diary dated 17 April: The Pope affirmed that, since it meant reaching an agreement between Austria and Italy, the solution was to be found in an intermediary point between Italy’s greatest demand and the least amount of concessions that Austria-Hungary was willing to make, both regarding the Eastern border and the Western border. Now the middle ground was to be found — these were his words — between ten of the Italian demands and six of the Austro-Hungarian concessions.40 Despite the apparent developments, the situation remained at an impasse from a diplomatic point of view. On the one hand, the lack of agreement on the subject of potential territorial concessions41 and, on the other, the dispute between the Austrian and the Italian governments on the degree of publicity to be given to the possible negotiations both complicated the agreements. Talks, therefore, remained suspended in an unproductive limbo marked by a growing restlessness. Vatican documents confirm the Holy See’s role at the time as a participant spectator. Gasparri’s insistent requests to Scapinelli di Leguigno to try to give ‘this government advice on compliance according to instructions already given, attempting to avoid possible conflict’ followed the Nuncio’s reports, which described the irritation of the top ranks of the Habsburgs in response to the Italians’ behaviour, considered exceedingly arrogant, irregular and offensive to the honour that the dual monarchy had the duty to preserve.42 The first weeks of May were hectic. In a vain attempt to unblock the situation, which had become desperate, Benedict XV took decisive steps to facilitate communications as far as possible between the Austrian and Italian governments.43 Monti’s diary is

40 ‘Il papa ha affermato che, trattandosi di venire a un accordo tra l’Austria e l’Italia, la soluzione era da trovarsi in un punto intermediario tra il massimo della domanda dell’Italia e il minimo delle concessioni che l’Austria-Ungheria era disposta a fare, tanto per quanto riguarda il confine orientale, che per quanto riguarda il confine occidentale. Ora — sono sue parole — tra il 10 delle domande italiane e il 6 delle concessioni astro-ungariche, era da trovarsi il termine medio’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 195. 41 The matter concerned not just Trentino, but also the destiny of Trieste, the territories along the Isonzo River and Albania. 42 ‘A cotesto governo consigli arrendevolezza secondo istruzioni già ante, affine evitare possibilmente conflitto’; see the documents held in ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, ff. 112–16. 43 An appeal to Benedict XV — so ‘that by the means possible to him to illuminate Italian public opinion, particularly concerning the scope of concessions, he may persuade influential people’ (‘affinché coi mezzi a lui possibili concorra illuminare opinione pubblica Italia particolarmente riguardo ampiezza cessioni e agisca su persone influenti’) — had come from Germany, which was concerned that the timid attempts by Austria were not being sufficiently taken into account by the Italian government; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 138. On 10 May, a document of the concessions that Austria was willing to grant concerning ‘1. all of Italian national Tyrol, 2. all of the Italian nationality territories along the western banks of the Isonzo River including Gradisca, 3. full municipal and university autonomy for Trieste, which will be a free city, 4. Valona,

BENEDICT XV’S DIPLOMATIC STEPS TO PREVENT ITALY’S INTERVENTIOn

replete with episodes that clearly show the Pope’s intention to overcome the continual diplomatic skirmishes that kept negotiations suspended. The Austrian concessions arrived, as we now know, after the game had already finished with the Treaty of London that was signed on 26 April, committing Italy to enter the war alongside the Entente within a month after the signing of the agreement. According to Monti’s notes, Benedict XV did not fail to highlight Sonnino’s responsibility, since he had never truly wanted to reach an agreement with the Central Powers and had not taken seriously the informal openings that, from the beginning of March, Vienna had seemed to offer.44 Equally critical words were reserved for the Austrian government that had failed to follow a ‘clearer and more decisive’45 line of political conduct, which was also due to Baron Macchio’s rather timid attempts at diplomacy. Benedict XV’s last, extreme attempt, which he carried out personally in the hours when everything (19 May) was already failing, also showed his extremely critical stance concerning Austria’s diplomatic conduct and its misalignment with Germany’s proposals. I refer to the telegram to the Nuncio in Vienna, in which the pontiff called for Franz Joseph to prevent Italy’s intervention in the war by telegramming the immediate concession of Trentino. [The] Italian Prime Minister declares that Austria has never made a concrete proposal for the immediate concession of Trentino, leading us to believe that if such an immediate proposal were to come before tomorrow, war could still be avoided. Your Eminence must immediately communicate this news in person to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, adding that, in the Holy Father’s judgement, a spontaneous and explicit telegram from the Emperor to the King of Italy might still save the situation. Certain information allows me to add that Baron Macchio’s conduct has been insufficient and uncertain.46

5. complete disinterest in Albania, 6. safeguarding the national interests of Italians in Austria, 7. a commission for the borders (Gorizia and the islands), 8. Germany acting as guarantor for the faithful and loyal implementation of the agreement’ (‘1. tutto il Tirolo di nazionalità italiana; 2. tutte le rive occidentali dell’Isonzo di nazionalità italiana compresa Gradisca; 3. piena autonomia municipale e universitaria per Trieste, che sarà una città libera; 4. Valona; 5. disinteresse completo per l’Albania; 6. salvaguardia degli interessi nazionali degli italiani in Austria; 7. commissione per i confini (Gorizia e le isole); 8. Germania fa da garante per l’esecuzione fedele e leale dell’accordo’); a copy of the document is found in ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 144. 44 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, pp. 187–89. 45 ‘Più chiara e decisa’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 205. 46 ‘Presidente Consiglio italiano dichiara che Austria non ha mai fatto proposta concreta immediata cessione Trentino e lascia credere che se tale proposta immediata cessione venisse prima di domani si potrebbe ancora evitare guerra. La S. V. comunichi subito a voce tale notizia a codesto ministro Esteri aggiungendo che a giudizio S. Padre un telegramma spontaneo ed esplicito imperatore al re d’Italia potrebbe ancora salvare situazione. Sicure informazioni mi permettono aggiungere condotta barone Macchio opera stata deficiente e incerta’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 158. The Pope’s disappointment at the inability of the two diplomatic sides to reach a fruitful agreement is confirmed by a memo from Baron Monti dated 22 May: ‘He spoke of the Green Book. His Holiness said that, while recognizing Austria’s attempts to buy time, he did not find any

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The ambiguities of the policy followed by the Italian government, together with the poor political sense revealed by the Austrian government and diplomacy, led to war.47 Naturally, with the onset of hostilities the meaning and role of pontifical action, which had taken a path of diplomatic arbitration in the preceding months, changed. As the Pope confessed to Monti on 22 May, ‘it is not the case at the moment, but as soon as the first drop of blood is spilt, we shall resume our work for peace, and may God protect all these poor children who are entering the conflict’.48 Italy’s intervention in the war had, as the ecclesiastical hierarchy had anticipated, important consequences for the Church’s international standing and freedom to operate. In August 1915, Gasparri confirmed this in a secret memo to the pontifical representatives, emphasizing how the current state of war that Italy finds itself in has highlighted the precariousness and abnormality of the Holy See’s position as well as the fundamental insufficiency of the so-called Guarantees that it was believed might regulate the Supreme Pontiff ’s situation.49 New paths of action were imposed on the Holy See. First of all, there was the charitable outreach of assistance to the troops at war and the populations who were victims of invasions. Secondly, and no less complex, were the repeated attempts to revive the Vatican’s role as peacemaker.

action by Sonnino recorded in the collected files that might have set a peremptory date for Austria to accept or reject Italy’s proposals. While there is no document signed by the Austrian government, its representatives, or Prince Bülow, specifying either minor or major Austrian offers, there are always affirmations from Sonnino or the Duke of Avarna, or Bollati. The publication would have had a much greater effect if some document, in the above sense, had been procured by the Italian government to have on hand. Nevertheless, His Holiness also confirms that Austria’s conduct was ambiguous since, ill-informed, it did not believe war possible although the Holy See sought, through more reasonable advice, to induce it to act’ (‘si è parlato del Libro Verde. S. S. ha detto che, pur riconoscendo la condotta tergiversante dell’Austria, non ha trovato nella raccolta dei documenti nessun atto per parte del Sonnino che fissasse un termine perentorio all’Austria per accogliere o rigettare le proposte dell’Italia. Come non si trova alcun documento firmato dal governo austriaco, dai suoi rappresentanti, o dal principe di Bülow, nel quale si precisino le offerte minori o maggiori austriache, sono sempre affermazioni del Sonnino o del duca d’Avarna o del Bollati. Ora la pubblicazione avrebbe avuto un effetto assai maggiore se qualche documento nel senso suesposto si fosse procurato, per parte del governo italiano, di avere in mano. Tuttavia conferma anche S. S. la condotta ambigua dell’Austria, la quale male informata non credeva alla guerra, per quanto anche la S. Sede abbia cercato di indurla a più ragionevole consiglio’); Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 217. 47 For a detailed examination of the negotiations of spring 1914 and of the steps that led to Italy’s entry into the war, see Rusconi, ‘L’azzardo del 1915’, pp. 86–89. 48 ‘In questo momento non sarebbe il caso, ma appena versata la prima goccia di sangue, riprenderemo l’opera nostra a favore della pace e Dio protegga tutti questi poveri figli che entrano nel conflitto’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 218. 49 ‘L’attuale stato di guerra in cui si trova l’Italia ha messo in evidenza quanto precaria e anormale sia la condizione fatta alla S. Sede e come siano per se stesse insufficienti le cosiddette guarentigie, con cui si è creduto di regolare la situazione del Sommo Pontefice’; published in Varnier, ‘“Una guerra ingiusta”’, pp. 36–37.

BENEDICT XV’S DIPLOMATIC STEPS TO PREVENT ITALY’S INTERVENTIOn

Bibliography Afflerbach, Holger, ‘Da alleato a nemico: cause e conseguenze dell’entrata in guerra dell’Italia nel maggio 1915’, in L’entrata in guerra dell’Italia nel 1915: atti del convegno internazionale ‘La decisione dell’intervento dell’Italia in guerra nel 1915’ (Trento, 31 maggio 2005), ed. by Johannes Hürter and Gian Enrico Rusconi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 75–104 Afflerbach, Holger, Der Dreibund: europäische Großmacht- und Allianzpolitik vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 2002) Baravelli, Andrea, ‘Diplomazia e scopi di guerra’, in Dizionario storico della Prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Nicola Labanca (Rome: Laterza, 2014), pp. 5–14 Bülow, Bernhard von, Memorie, 4 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1930–31), III: Guerra mondiale e catastrofe, 1909–1920 (1931) Cau, Maurizio, ‘“Una svolta nella storia”: De Gasperi e la Prima guerra mondiale’, in De Gasperi e la prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Maurizio Cau and Marco Mondini (Trento: Fondazione Bruno Kessler Press, 2015), pp. 45–66 Corsini, Umberto, Il colloquio De Gasperi-Sonnino, 16 marzo 1915: i cattolici trentini e la questione nazionale (Trento: G. B. Monauni, 1975) De Gasperi, Alcide, ‘L’omaggio di un cattolico trentino’, in Alcide De Gasperi, Scritti e discorsi politici, 4 vols (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006–09), II/1: Alcide De Gasperi dal Partito Popolare Italiano all’esilio interno, 1919–1942, ed. by Mariapia Bigaran and Maurizio Cau (2007), p. 790 De Rosa, Gabriele, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), III, pp. 608–17 Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Österreich und der Vatikan 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960) Martina, Giacomo, Storia della Chiesa da Lutero ai nostri giorni, 4 vols (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1993–95), IV: L’età contemporanea (1995) Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Monticone, Alberto, La Germania e la neutralità italiana (1914–1915) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1971) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82 Murri, Romolo, La croce e la spada (Florence: Bemporad, 1915) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Repgen, Konrad, ‘Foreign Policy of the Popes in the Epoch of the World Wars’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), X: The Church in the Modern Age (1981), pp. 35–96 Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Rusconi, Gian Enrico, ‘L’azzardo del 1915: come l’Italia decide l’intervento nella Grande guerra’, in L’entrata in guerra dell’Italia nel 1915: atti del convegno internazionale ‘La decisione dell’intervento dell’Italia in guerra nel 1915’ (Trento, 31 maggio 2005), ed. by Johannes Hürter and Gian Enrico Rusconi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 15–74

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Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Sonnino, Sidney, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), II Sonnino, Sidney, Il libro verde: documenti diplomatici presentati al Parlamento Italiano dal Ministro degli Affari Esteri Sonnino nella seduta del 20 maggio 1915 (Milan: Treves, 1915) Varnier, Giovanni Battista, ‘“Una guerra ingiusta”: la Santa Sede e l’Italia tra neutralità e intervento (1914–1915)’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 23 (2014), pp. 17–39

Guido Formigoni

Catholic Interventionism

Apparently, interventionism was somewhat weakly rooted in the Italian Catholic world from 1914 to 1915, but the connection is revealed to be far from negligible after events have been interpreted in greater depth. Looking beyond superficial appearances, things were undoubtedly far more complex than they seemed, and the weight of cultures and choices oriented toward intervention in World War I progressively increased, until they became decidedly incisive.

1.

The Initial Preference for Neutrality and Its Limits

It is well known that, at first, neutrality was the widely prevalent orientation of organized Catholicism, both among bishops and in the standpoints assumed by the main official, or semi-official, media publications. That disposition was certainly connected from the outset to a repeated emphasis on national and governmental loyalty. Essentially, indeed, it expressed approval of Salandra’s and San Giuliano’s choice — in agreement with the King — concerning which action to take in the face of the outbreak of the war. I believe that it can be said that neutrality strongly remained the main position in the Catholic world until the end of May 1915. It failed, however, to become an explicitly political plan, hence lacking the visible consolidation or the ability to structure a true social and political movement that could be decisive and cohesive enough to make a difference in public opinion. Instead, the already vast pluralism within organized Catholicism and the ecclesiastical structure became progressively more evident. Officially, the debate settled on a position of ‘conditional neutrality’ (‘neutralità condizionata’), that is, one linked ‘to the integrity of those supreme reasons of justice, in relation to our right to exist and our development of the world’ (‘supreme ragioni di giustizia, in ordine al diritto della nostra esistenza e del nostro sviluppo del mondo’). It was the stance established in 1915 by Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre, president of the Unione popolare (People’s Union) and shortly thereafter of Azione

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 391–404 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118782

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cattolica’s (Catholic Action) new steering committee.1 Beneath this so-to-speak official wait-and-see policy, lines of differing reasoning were expressed that revealed a readiness to modify such positions. Pope Benedict XV, as confirmed by the available recent studies and documents, was strongly opposed to the interventionist hypothesis.2 Indeed, he took every care to purge any hints of nationalism from the public positions expressed by Catholics, above all ecclesiastics, authorizing the line of conditional neutrality very cautiously and restrictedly. He doggedly tried to revive anti-war principles, internationally promoting the ‘great prayer for peace’ (‘grande preghiera per la pace’) of 7 February, the Sexagesima Sunday. In Italy, this act obviously assumed the explicit meaning of disengaging religious discourse from any acceptance of a choice in favour of war.3 It is difficult to underestimate the symbolic impact of such an initiative when multiplied throughout such a system. Recent research, which has studied how people were mobilized on behalf of neutrality (generally less well-known than interventionist efforts), has highlighted the experience of large crowds gathered by the call for neutrality in cathedral and parish churches in different parts of the country.4 Nevertheless, the Pope certainly had no intention of antagonistically soliciting a large popular movement against the government, with which he was establishing a line of dialogue through Baron Monti,5 nor, obviously, like nearly all Catholics, was he sympathetic towards socialist neutrality. This reduced the impact and effectiveness of the papacy’s clear and profound preference for Italy’s neutrality.

1 For two recent summaries, see Guido Formigoni, ‘Il neutralismo dei cattolici’, in Abbasso la guerra! Neutralisti in piazza alla vigilia della Prima guerra mondiale in Italia, ed. by Fulvio Cammarano (Florence: Le Monnier, 2015), pp. 71–82 (pp. 71–74); Guido Formigoni, ‘Il mondo cattolico italiano tra neutralismo, interventismo e pacifismo’, in Chiese e popoli delle Venezie nella Grande Guerra: atti dei convegni di studio (Trento, 8–9 aprile 2016 e Vicenza–Asiago, 27–28 maggio 2016), ed. by Francesco Bianchi and Giorgio Vecchio (Rome: Viella, 2016), pp. 69–97. 2 Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 188–93. More than just a summary is Alberto Monticone, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200; John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999); Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82; and Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 77–88. 3 ‘Il Santo Padre e la preghiera per la pace’, La Settimana Sociale, 23 January 1915; Filippo Meda, ‘Per la pace’, L’Italia, 17 February 1915. 4 See Abbasso la guerra!, ed. by Cammarano. 5 Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997).

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2. The First Manifestations of Conservative Interventionism Meanwhile, explicitly interventionist minorities had formed quite early on, from the autumn of 1914, in the Italian Catholic world. Let us try to focus on, and describe better, the two most significant strands in this standpoint and alignment. The first was similar to nationalist positions (typical of some conservative Catholic circles) that had been influenced by the war in Libya and also developed through some connection to the Associazione nazionalista italiana (Italian Nationalist Association). Catholic interaction with nationalists in these early years of the century still needs to be clarified. There were widespread Catholic sympathies for anti-Masonic struggles as well as for the ‘spiritualist’ recovery proclaimed by nationalism, fighting against material and scientific positivism, which was inextricably linked to anti-clericalism. There were nationalists, especially Luigi Federzoni, who wanted to build a political dialogue with organized Catholicism in the belief that the emergence of a political Catholicism would be a factor in strengthening national cohesion.6 There were some Catholics that were sensitive to these ideas, especially among university students and within the young Federazione universitaria cattolica italiana (Italian Catholic University Federation). There were occasions of more or less instrumental local alliances, such as the convergence of Catholic organizations supporting, against the bloc of Left parties, nationalist candidatures that already existed on some constituencies in the capital city in 1913 and then in Marostica during the supplementary elections of spring 1914, in which nationalist leader Enrico Corradini himself was a candidate.7 Generally speaking, however, a convergence of the two factions was not particularly widespread. On the contrary, the internal rift in the Italian Nationalist Association of 1912 had cooled relations with the Christian democrats who were sympathetic to the ‘democratic’ minority that had moved away from the movement. In 1913, a ‘centrist’ Catholic leader, Filippo Meda, who by then had become authoritative, had established rather solid blocks restricting any link between Catholic national sentiment and the nationalist positions.8 Even an Italian Gioventù cattolica (Catholic Youth) leader with nationalist sympathies such as Francesco Aquilanti, who held that the two movements might share some common battles (against Freemasonry, against the bloc of the Left, against the socialists), still saw there were ‘supreme divergences’ of an ideological nature.9 Even if less radical than the nationalist ones, a few Catholic members of parliament still did not delay in taking up clear interventionist positions that, essentially,



6 Renato Moro, ‘Nazionalismo e cattolicesimo’, in Federzoni e la storia della destra italiana nella prima metà del Novecento, ed. by Benedetto Coccia and Umberto Gentiloni Silveri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 49–112. 7 This is reiterated in the first edition of Gabriele De Rosa, Storia politica dell’Azione cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1953–54), II (1954), pp. 364–81. 8 Filippo Meda, ‘Dal nazionalismo al pacifismo’, La Rassegna Nazionale, 16 June 1913, pp. 521–40. 9 ‘Divergenze supreme’; Francesco Piva, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015), p. 76.

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converged with interventionist drive after the sudden decision to abandon the Triple Alliance. As early as in October 1914, Luigi Montresor, from the Veneto region, told L’Idea Nazionale that he believed war with Austria was ‘inevitable’ and would serve to reiterate ‘Italy’s inviolable rights over all Italian lands’, proclaiming loyalism to the government’s decisions, because he was sure that the situation was going to evolve in that direction. Scandalous, also for the form it took, was the declaration of his confidence in the fact that, once war broke out, ‘the bishops will certainly bless the Italian armies; none of the clergy and Italian Catholics will let themselves be seen as weaker in their patriotism than the clergy and Catholics of other nations’.10 Such positions were close to those held by the Milanese Member of Parliament, Cesare Nava, elected in Monza (far more anti-Giolitti and pro-Salandra than Filippo Meda, his old colleague in the Catholic Youth movement). In a speech given in February 1915, he reaffirmed his repugnance of violence and then stated: When the supreme interests of the nation may demand it, and the wise and peaceful work of diplomacy no longer be enough to protect them against the resistance or arrogance of others, every repugnance of feeling or principle may have to be overcome and the use of force become, not only legitimate, but dutiful. […] If war is a calamity, for a nation it is always preferable than the condition of moral abjection or political servitude.11 There was, however, no strict conservative-interventionist equation, in the sense that other conservative Catholic members of parliament and public figures maintained instead a cautious wait-and-see policy, preferring neutrality, some even strongly so. The venerable and authoritative journal for conciliatory conservatives, La Rassegna Nazionale, in its commentary on the events of the world war, printed an article by Pietro Fea, who was essentially in favour of neutrality, that was critical of the Entente and especially of France, supporting therefore a prudent, wait-and-see attitude, without forgetting the unredeemed (‘irredente’) Italian lands that were still under the Habsburgs in the event of substantial changes to the European equilibrium.12 In the following issue, the Marquis of Lesegno responded to these theses in a far more anti-German tone.13 Edoardo Soderini followed a similar line. He was also critical of Germany but

10 ‘Ineluttabile’; ‘i diritti imprescrittibili dell’Italia su tutte le terre italiane’; ‘certo i vescovi benediranno le armi d’Italia, tutto il clero e i cattolici italiani non si mostreranno inferiori nel loro patriottismo al clero e ai cattolici delle altre nazioni’; ‘Le parole italiane di un deputato cattolico: la guerra all’Austria è inevitabile, dice l’on. Montresor’, L’Idea Nazionale, 24 October 1914. 11 ‘Quando i supremi interessi della patria lo esigessero e l’opera sagace e pacifica della diplomazia non bastasse più a tutelarli contro l’altrui resistenza o prepotenza, ogni repugnanza di sentimento o di principio dovesse essere vinta e fosse, non soltanto legittimo, ma doveroso il ricorso alla forza. […] Se la guerra è una calamità, essa però è preferibile sempre per una nazione alla condizione di abiezione morale e di servitù politica’; the speech was recorded later in Cesare Nava, Discorso dell’on. Cesare Nava ai suoi elettori: Monza, 12 gennaio 1919 (Monza: Tipografia Sociale Monzese, 1919), pp. 7–8. 12 E. A. Foperti [pseudonym of Pietro Fea], ‘La crisi europea e l’Italia’, La Rassegna Nazionale, 1 September 1914, pp. 112–17. 13 Cesare Ceva di Lesegno, ‘La crisi europea e l’Italia’, La Rassegna Nazionale, 15 September 1914, pp. 224–29.

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detached, too, defining the war ‘a question of peoples’ pre-eminence’ and judging it imprudent to ‘compromise with any decision’, although he did hypothesize that, in the event of a Slavic victory in the East, Italy would have to occupy the unredeemed lands. After all, Italy had fought alone during the war in Libya. Consequently, the count criticized the initial trends of the socialist reformers towards a Latin axis, thus including France. Honour also required that Italy not abruptly switch alliances.14 At the beginning of 1915 in the same journal, Ferdinando Nunziante di San Ferdinando, the Calabrian Member of Parliament, developed an argument that started with a criticism of the conflict (‘cursed by God and men’), adding however: ‘It’s not enough to desire peace and hate war to get an eternally lasting peace and to avoid war!’. There was a sort of ugly fatality in the conflict that gave birth to new alignments. Faced with these perspectives, ‘Can Italy be sure of maintaining neutrality, can it want peace at any cost, can it forget the task that Count Cavour assigned our generation?’. Thus it was necessary ‘to desire peace’ but ‘not to fear war’. In fact, it was necessary to be present when future arrangements for Europe were decided.15 In short, he quite clearly inclined towards abandoning neutrality. The journal also printed another article in March which distanced itself from nationalist proposals, arguing that it was necessary to show loyalty to alliances without entering into a war, the only sense of which was the contest between Germany and England for European dominance. It thus openly supported requesting compensation from Austria for remaining neutral.16

3. Varieties of Conservatism and Interventionist Shifts in the Name of National Loyalty Other figures, whether ultra-moderate or explicitly conservative ones, such as the old head of the Milanese supporter of a compromise between Catholics and Liberals (‘transigenti’), Carlo Ottavio Cornaggia Medici, also promoted a rigorous and lasting neutrality. Italy waited, ‘confident and armed. One day its legitimate aspirations may come about, but do not forget to be prudent and loyal’. This is what he said in Milan in September 1914, insisting above all on the loyalty due to alliances (i.e. the Triple Alliance), in tones that were paradoxically similar to the position held by

14 ‘Una questione di preminenza di popoli’; ‘compromettersi con una decisione qualsiasi’; Edoardo Soderini, ‘Con chi dobbiamo andare?’, La Rassegna Nazionale, 1 October 1914, pp. 347 ff. 15 ‘Maledetta da Dio e dagli uomini’; ‘non basta desiderare la pace e odiare la guerra, per ottenere che la pace duri eternamente e che la guerra ci sia evitata!’; ‘può l’Italia esser sicura di mantenere la neutralità, può voler la pace a ogni costo, può dimenticare quel compito che il conte di Cavour assegnava alla nostra generazione?’; ‘desiderare la pace’; ‘non temere la guerra’; Ferdinando Nunziante, ‘L’Italia e la guerra’, La Rassegna Nazionale, 1 January 1915, pp. 6–12. 16 ‘Neutralità o guerra’, La Rassegna Nazionale, 16 March 1915, pp. 112–19.

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the intransigent L’Unità Cattolica.17 He thus hoped that Italians could ‘escape this scourge unharmed’. Our sword can weigh vigorously on the scales for peace, and on that day we shall acquire great merit for civility and not just for the Latin world. But let us keep this sword well sharpened for whatever other occurrence, and our powder kegs well dried.18 When Italy entered the war, Cornaggia Medici — like the rest of the Italian Catholics, with a few, rare exceptions — wound up adhering to the national motivations for the war, but without any particular enthusiasm. Similar lines were followed by the leading exponent of moderate and conservative Catholicism Filippo Crispolti. He expressed the same prudence in avoiding (or polemically criticizing) nationalist and belligerent excesses, defending at the same time the papal line in regard to the state and liberal public opinion, although his national-patriotic tones increased in the course of time.19 In any case, it was to be some members of more official Catholic organizations that soon supplied a version of ‘conditional neutrality’ that seemed to change into a type of disguised crypto-interventionism, since it hid behind the government’s unavoidable decisions to support national interests and overcome neutralist hesitation. It was not by chance that in the Catholic Youth a heated discussion was initiated on how deeply one could be opposed to the war while maintaining a patriotic conscience (organized Catholicism’s claim of a sense of patriotism was a sore and delicate point in those circles, precisely because it still had a much-reduced legitimacy).20 Such was the case of Brescia’s Il Cittadino, whose editor, Paolo Cappa, emphasized the theme of preparing for war, criticizing Milan’s Catholics’ initial, decisive plea for neutrality (even if then, at the beginning of 1915, these arguments seemed to have become attenuated). Turin’s Il Momento had more pro-Giolitti nuances and was oriented toward defending national interests, even if it was open to considering the possibility of war once other diplomatic paths were proven to be impossible or less favourable. Bologna’s L’Avvenire d’Italia can also be mentioned as running along similar lines.21 Fundamentally, also the Corriere d’Italia, the main publication of Grosoli’s journalism

17 ‘Fidente e armata; un giorno le legittime sue aspirazioni potranno avverarsi, ma non dimentichi d’essere prudente e leale’; L’Italia, 25 September 1914. 18 ‘Uscire immuni da questo flagello’; ‘La spada nostra può pesare vigorosamente su la bilancia della pace, e quel giorno acquisteremmo grandi benemerenze per la civiltà e non la latinità soltanto; ma questa spada teniamola bene affilata per qualunque altro evento e bene asciutte le nostre polveri’; Silvia Pizzetti, ‘Cornaggia Medici, Carlo Ottavio’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XXIX (1983), pp. 107–13. 19 Matteo Baragli, ‘I “cattolici nazionali” nella Grande Guerra: gli orientamenti di Filippo Crispolti’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 135–58 (pp. 139 ff.). 20 Piva, Uccidere senza odio, p. 77. See also Roberto P. Violi, ‘La Gioventù cattolica italiana e la prima guerra mondiale’, Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa, 40, 2 (2011), pp. 129–80. 21 On these various local situations, see the essays by Pietro Scoppola, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’; Alfonso Prandi, ‘La guerra e le sue conseguenze nel mondo cattolico italiano’; Antonio Fappani, ‘I cattolici bresciani e la prima guerra mondiale’; and Giorgio

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trust, defended neutrality from this perspective until the government switched sides, at which point it proved to be obsequious.22 Behind these developments, there was already, therefore, an attitude that was very favourable to considering the possibility of entering the war, which was very different from those genuine positions of neutrality that, in many cases, were espoused even after the so-called ‘Radiant May’ (‘maggio radioso’), for example, by some Christian democratic parliamentary members. On the contrary, some cases are recorded where strictly neutralist positions suddenly yielded in the last days of the controversy, essentially converting to an acceptance of the conflict for pro-government reasons, as with the most striking and important case of Filippo Meda himself23 (but in a certain sense also Father Agostino Gemelli, with his emphasis on Catholic obedience to authority, which veiled his move from favouring Catholic Austria to an opposition to the Triple Alliance).24 Choices leading to an acceptance of the war as a necessity, however, displayed a wide variety of different nuances ranging from mere acceptance to emphasizing the nation’s unitary convergence behind the government. In some cases, it was even cloaked in an invocation of religious reasons: the ‘holy war’ (‘guerra santa’) was an expression that a Catholic member of parliament let slip, connecting it to the pursuit of the nation’s ‘natural borders’ (‘confini naturali’).25

4. The Debate in Christian Democrat Groups The other significant trend was the democratic interventionism of former Christian democrats. The Lega democratica nazionale’s (National Democratic League) policy in particular, which was relaunched with a slightly different name by Eligio Cacciaguerra and Giuseppe Donati after the break with Murri’s group in 1910, has been studied at length. These positions, however, did not emerge extemporaneously. The group had been opposed to the Libyan war while it sought to converge with young, idealistic democratic approaches in the struggle against power structures that were seen as gangrenous and transformist. The new small Christian Democratic League’s interventionism came about, mainly, as a development of their profound disapproval of Giolitti and their claimed

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25

Gualerzi, ‘La neutralità italiana e Il Momento’, in Benedetto XV, ed. by Rossini, pp. 95–151, 153–205, 481–98, 527–46; Lorenzo Bedeschi, ‘L’Avvenire d’Italia durante la prima guerra mondiale’, Rassegna di politica e storia, 13, 152 (1967), pp. 173–78. Paolo Giovannini, Cattolici nazionali e impresa giornalistica: il trust della stampa cattolica, 1907–1918 (Milan: Unicopli, 2001), pp. 261 ff. Guido Formigoni, ‘Stato e partiti nel pensiero di Filippo Meda’, in Filippo Meda tra economia, società e politica, ed. by Guido Formigoni (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1991), pp. 181–225. Agostino Gemelli, ‘In tema di neutralismo e intervenzionismo’, Vita e Pensiero (30 March 1915), pp. 316–21; Luigi Bruti Liberati, ‘“Guerra nazionale” o “guerra imperialista”? Un dibattito tra cattolici lombardi negli anni 1915–1916’, Studi lombardi, 1 (1984), pp. 278–93; Mimmo Franzinelli, Padre Gemelli per la guerra (Ragusa: La Fiaccola, 1989), pp. 36–44; Sante Lesti, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015), pp. 101 ff. See Guido Formigoni, I cattolici-deputati, 1904–1918: tradizione e riforme (Rome: Studium, 1988), p. 83.

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separation from a quietist and conservative Catholic tradition.26 Cacciaguerra’s first articles in August 1914 presented a criticism of the Triple Alliance, which was understood as a symbolic synthesis of social conservatism and clericalism. Their appreciation of national discourse, with tones of Mazzini and Gioberti, thus influenced that vision. It was all a ferment of ideas that had developed somewhat alongside the nationalist movement (at least before the internal rupture between the imperialist and the ‘democratic’ sides), revolutionary unionism, and even some sympathy for Mussolini’s intransigentism, against the socialist reformism that was too enmeshed in Giolitti’s whorls. The ecclesiastic mentor of the group, Don Brizio Casciola, shared the ideal of a nation strongly influenced by Mazzini’s writings. It therefore remained distant from Enrico Corradini’s and Francesco Coppola’s aggressive and imperialist nationalism in that it dreamt of a harmony among the various nations, but at the same time was attracted by suggestions from Alfredo Oriani and his conception of a strong state.27 Casciola, therefore, precisely during the course of the war, came to advocate a kind of ‘spiritual aristocracy’ (‘aristocrazia spirituale’) that had anti-parliamentary tones and was suspicious of the public duty to care for the masses.28 The League, however, was deeply divided over the question of intervention.29 In October 1914, some of the directors of L’Azione were already decidedly in favour of entering the war. Casciola himself, instead, initially supported neutrality. The Savonarola group in Turin reinforced the stand for neutrality, connecting it to the growing criticism of the war.30 The League’s congress in Bologna in January 1915 thus saw a heated exchange of viewpoints. In the opening speech, Eugenio Vaina de Pava expressed the League’s stance on the war in clear terms of democratic interventionism, depicting the confrontation between justice for the peoples — which had to be affirmed — and the power structures of the traditional empires — which could be attacked precisely because they had in the end become weak. To defend justice at the European level meant that Italy had to stand up against the Triple Alliance, and the need to cooperate with the new national movements was emphasized. Giuseppe Donati also expressed a similar position, greatly influenced by Gaetano Salvemini and La Voce.31

26 Maurilio Guasco and Francesco Traniello, ‘Cacciaguerra nella politica italiana del suo tempo’, in Eligio Cacciaguerra e la prima Democrazia cristiana, ed. by Paolo Colliva, Giovanni Maroni and Clemente Riva, 2 vols (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1982), I, pp. 35–83. 27 Ferdinando Aronica, Don Brizio Casciola tra nazionalismo e fascismo (Rome: Spes, 2003), pp. 51–52. 28 Aronica, Don Brizio Casciola, p. 25. 29 On these aspects, see also Giovanni Tassani, ‘La Lega democratica nazionale di fronte al fenomeno nazionalista’, in Eligio Cacciaguerra, ed. by Colliva, Maroni and Riva, II, pp. 451–68 (pp. 463–67). 30 Alessandro Zussini, ‘I savonaroliani e la polemica con Cacciaguerra’, in Eligio Cacciaguerra, ed. by Colliva, Maroni and Riva, I, pp. 227–60. 31 Maurilio Guasco, ‘Giuseppe Donati e la Lega democratica dopo Murri’, in Giuseppe Donati tra impegno politico e problema religioso, ed. by Roberto Ruffilli and Pietro Scoppola (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1983), pp. 10–33; on Salvemini and his influence, see Andrea Frangioni, Salvemini e la Grande Guerra: interventismo democratico, wilsonismo, politica delle nazionalità (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2011).

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On the whole, it was a fairly straightforward nationalistic idealism, but it was also clearly riddled with naivety. In fact, political judgements were formulated on the deployments underway in the immense conflict but they were immersed within a very precise and determined cultural horizon, which created some undeniable generalizations. What might expressions such as ‘principle of fully and entirely realized nationality’ (‘principio di nazionalità pienamente ed integralmente effettuato’), written in the final motion of the League’s congress, mean? The critical point was the lack of dispassionate discussion on the specific matter of Italian national goals, which remained, in some way, entrusted to governmental interpretation. In short, the meaning of some myths and expectations were radicalized without fully evaluating their consequences. A strong cultural prejudice (anti-Giolitti, anti-positivist, spiritualist, anti-political power of the popes), meanwhile, impeded a consideration of the reasons promoted by supporters of neutrality, which came precisely from some Catholics and, more precisely, from Christian democrats. It was not by chance that, in the following months, some elements in the group came to be influenced by D’Annunzio’s rhetoric, developing as nationalists a hatred for Giolitti’s attempts at mediation.

5. The Fragility of Democratic Interventionism In the small group of Catholic parliamentary members, Marco Ciriani was the only one to hold these positions, helping to stop any convergence of the ‘gruppo cristiano-sociale’ (Social Christian Party), as it called itself, which had just been established in opposition to the vote of confidence in Salandra’s government at the beginning of 1914. This parliamentarian from Friuli expressed the illusory hope that the greater spending capacity granted to the executive branch with the provisional exercise of balancing the budget at the end of 1914 would be used to meet the people’s needs, thus attempting to save his democratic options.32 He would later defend interventionism on religious grounds: My religious ideas and my Christian democratic conscience, from the very beginning, have contributed to making me an advocate for our entry into the struggle, into this struggle for justice, for civilization and for rights […]. Christianity, at its roots, in its essence, is self-denial, love of sacrifice, love in its renunciation of earthly pleasures for a higher possession of ideals.33

32 Atti del Parlamento Italiano, Camera dei Deputati, Legislatura XXIV, 1ª sessione, Discussioni, Tornata di martedì 8 dicembre 1914, pp. 5764–67. 33 ‘Le mie idee religiose, la coscienza di democratico-cristiano hanno contribuito fin dalla prima ora a rendermi fautore del nostro intervento nella lotta, in questa lotta per la giustizia, per la civiltà e per il diritto […]. Il cristianesimo, nelle sue radici, nella sua essenza, è abnegazione, è amore del sacrificio, è amore nella rinuncia ai godimenti terreni per un più alto possesso degli ideali’; Atti del Parlamento Italiano, Camera dei Deputati, Legislatura XXIV, 1ª sessione, Discussioni, Tornata di venerdì 30 giugno 1916, pp. 10950. See also Paolo Ziller, ‘Marco Ciriani dalla Lega democratica nazionale a Giustizia e libertà’, Civitas, 36, 2 (1985), pp. 19–32 (pp. 21–28).

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These arguments led him from a disappointment with the Salandra government’s scarce ‘vigour of intention, resolution and capacity’, to emphasizing a nationalist radicalization, even to the point of joining in 1917 the Fascio parlamentare di difesa nazionale (Parliamentary Union for National Defence). He tried to define ‘the claims of the nation’, that is to say, ‘its territorial aspirations of land and sea’, as ‘nothing other than necessary presuppositions of those freedoms from which alone flow the recognition of the rights of all classes and from which a better organization may arise after the war’.34 That is to say, after starting out by evaluating war as a path to strengthening democracy, this approach ended up by placing expansionist goals ahead of those of political renewal in order to maintain its coherence. It is not difficult to see here a reflection of the more general check on democratic interventionism. It is still difficult today to judge the spread of impact that these positions, which were supported by rather elitist intellectual and political circles, had on the country. It can be noted that a young priest such as Primo Mazzolari — who at the time had just concluded the seminary in Cremona, where he had studied under Bishop Bonomelli’s conciliatory magisterium — found himself approving Benedict XV’s first encyclical, which was strongly critical of the European conflict. However, his initial, quite clearly pacifist, position began to change precisely by thinking of the objective of a ‘just peace’ (‘pace “nella giustizia”’) that respected national demands. It was a painful matter, that negated the value of a resigned pacifism even if it did not have many political tools to clarify the national objectives to be achieved, the term ‘just’ (‘giusti’) being used in a very general sense.35 Continuing in this vein, we can recall that Pietro Scoppola, in his still fundamental report on the topic, intended to clearly distinguish these positions from the bent taken by Romolo Murri after his excommunication, embracing radicalism and breaking with the Christian Democratic League itself.36 It is also certainly true that Murri had started to express his vague new spiritualism using harsh tones as far as the Church and Catholicism were concerned, deviating from the path that Christian democrats had followed until then. Yet if we remain in the field of the possible options in the face of war, there were many reasons that did not, however, conflict with those underlining the proposal from the interventionist component of the League. Indeed, these reflections, in some ways, illuminate some common roots. Murri interpreted the war as a religious phenomenon in itself, in that it was a shared experience, capable of overcoming the age of materialistic individualism

34 ‘Vigoria di intenti, di proposti e di capacità’; ‘le rivendicazioni della patria’; ‘le sue aspirazioni territoriali, di terra e di mare’; ‘nient’altro che il presupposto necessario di quelle libertà dalle quali soltanto scaturisce il riconoscimento dei diritti di tutte le classi e dalle quali può sorgere un migliore assetto nel dopo guerra’; Atti del Parlamento Italiano, Camera dei Deputati, Legislatura XXIV, 1ª sessione, Discussioni, Tornata di mercoledì 13 febbraio 1918, p. 15613. 35 See the introduction to Primo Mazzolari, Scritti sulla pace e sulla guerra, ed. by Massimo De Giuseppe and Guido Formigoni (Bologna: EDB, 2009), pp. 7–9 as well as Giancarlo Minighin, ‘Don Primo Mazzolari e la Grande Guerra’, Studi storici, 43, 1 (2002), pp. 107–51, and Giovanni Maroni, La stola e il garofano: Mazzolari, Cacciaguerra e la rivista ‘L’Azione’ (1912–1917) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2007). 36 Scoppola, ‘Cattolici neutralisti’, pp. 143–44.

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and of provoking a fusion of consciences. The calculations of ecclesiastic pacifism, which he considered petty, forgot that the Gospel required each person to play a role in history. This led him to embrace the spiritual fervour of interventionism and to prophesy a new religious renaissance, one that was unrelated to the abhorrent hierarchical arrangement. He then outlined a criticism of the Triple Alliance as the seat of imperialist violence, presenting France and England, on the contrary, as countries imbued with evangelical democracy. Actually, in his writings from these months, he developed the theory, in a rather tortured manner, that the conflict might lead humanity towards a definitive elimination of war, which Murri recognized as a tragedy of epic dimensions.37 Once again, however, there was the risk that this type of discussion might slip into standpoints that were in point of fact similar to nationalist ones because of the extremely thin political mediation of his intellectual theories.38

6. Conclusions From these brief notes we have confirmed, in short, the very complex and articulated condition within the cultural and ecclesial horizon of Italian Catholicism. The call to intervene in the war, which was initially promoted by a small minority, took root through different channels and a variety of cultural and intellectual perspectives. On the one hand there was the conservatism of some spheres that were close to the governmental establishment and Salandra’s liberal party right. On the other, were a series of groups close to official Catholic channels that essentially fell into an interventionist position in line with governmental decisions, albeit passively and in an unprepared manner. Finally, small groups of Christian democrats came close to a democratic interventionism rooted in an interpretation of the war as an occasion to fight against the reactionary conservatism of the Central Powers and to realize national demands in the (illusory) hope of a spontaneous convergence on a European scale. Starting from different arguments and cultural impulses, the various threads of Catholicism that were inclined towards entering the war, in the end, found themselves on similar ground. Sometimes motivated religiously, they often expressed themselves in nationalistic terms that were both emphatic and generic. They suffered from a lack of ability to mediate their choices politically and thus could not attribute any original meaning to their support for the war efforts that had been undertaken by the Italian ruling class.

37 Above all, see Romolo Murri, La croce e la spada (Florence: Bemporad, 1915). See also Matteo Caponi, ‘La religione della patria nella collaborazione di Romolo Murri a “L’Idea democratica”’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 311–34. 38 Claudio Giovannini, Romolo Murri dal radicalismo al fascismo: i cattolici tra religione e politica (1900–1925) (Bologna: Cappelli, 1981), p. 32. See also Angelo Ventrone, La seduzione totalitaria: guerra, modernità, violenza politica (1914–1918) (Rome: Donzelli, 2003), pp. 273–76.

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Bibliography Aronica, Ferdinando, Don Brizio Casciola tra nazionalismo e fascismo (Rome: Spes, 2003) Baragli, Matteo, ‘I “cattolici nazionali” nella Grande Guerra: gli orientamenti di Filippo Crispolti’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 135–58 Bedeschi, Lorenzo, ‘L’Avvenire d’Italia durante la prima guerra mondiale’, Rassegna di politica e storia, 13, 152 (1967), pp. 173–78 Bruti Liberati, Luigi, ‘“Guerra nazionale” o “guerra imperialista”? Un dibattito tra cattolici lombardi negli anni 1915–1916’, Studi lombardi, 1 (1984), pp. 278–93 Caponi, Matteo, ‘La religione della patria nella collaborazione di Romolo Murri a “L’Idea democratica”’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 311–34 De Rosa, Gabriele, Storia politica dell’Azione cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1953–54), II (1954) Fappani, Antonio, ‘I cattolici bresciani e la prima guerra mondiale’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 481–98 Formigoni, Guido, I cattolici-deputati, 1904–1918: tradizione e riforme (Rome: Studium, 1988) Formigoni, Guido, ‘Il neutralismo dei cattolici’, in Abbasso la guerra! Neutralisti in piazza alla vigilia della Prima guerra mondiale in Italia, ed. by Fulvio Cammarano (Florence: Le Monnier, 2015), pp. 71–82 Formigoni, Guido, ‘Il mondo cattolico italiano tra neutralismo, interventismo e pacifismo’, in Chiese e popoli delle Venezie nella Grande Guerra: atti dei convegni di studio (Trento, 8–9 aprile 2016 e Vicenza–Asiago, 27–28 maggio 2016), ed. by Francesco Bianchi and Giorgio Vecchio (Rome: Viella, 2016), pp. 69–97 Formigoni, Guido, ‘Stato e partiti nel pensiero di Filippo Meda’, in Filippo Meda tra economia, società e politica, ed. by Guido Formigoni (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1991), pp. 181–225 Frangioni, Andrea, Salvemini e la Grande Guerra: interventismo democratico, wilsonismo, politica delle nazionalità (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2011) Franzinelli, Mimmo, Padre Gemelli per la guerra (Ragusa: La Fiaccola, 1989) Gemelli, Agostino, ‘In tema di neutralismo e intervenzionismo’, Vita e Pensiero (30 March 1915), pp. 316–21 Giovannini, Claudio, Romolo Murri dal radicalismo al fascismo: i cattolici tra religione e politica (1900–1925) (Bologna: Cappelli, 1981) Giovannini, Paolo, Cattolici nazionali e impresa giornalistica: il trust della stampa cattolica, 1907–1918 (Milan: Unicopli, 2001) Gualerzi, Giorgio, ‘La neutralità italiana e Il Momento’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 527–46 Guasco, Maurilio, and Francesco Traniello, ‘Cacciaguerra nella politica italiana del suo tempo’, in Eligio Cacciaguerra e la prima Democrazia cristiana, ed. by Paolo Colliva, Giovanni Maroni and Clemente Riva, 2 vols (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1982), I, pp. 35–83

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Guasco, Maurilio, ‘Giuseppe Donati e la Lega democratica dopo Murri’, in Giuseppe Donati tra impegno politico e problema religioso, ed. by Roberto Ruffilli and Pietro Scoppola (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1983), pp. 10–33 Lesti, Sante, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015) Maroni, Giovanni, La stola e il garofano: Mazzolari, Cacciaguerra e la rivista ‘L’Azione’ (1912–1917) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2007) Mazzolari, Primo, Scritti sulla pace e sulla guerra, ed. by Massimo De Giuseppe and Guido Formigoni (Bologna: EDB, 2009) Minighin, Giancarlo, ‘Don Primo Mazzolari e la Grande Guerra’, Studi storici, 43, 1 (2002), pp. 107–51 Monticone, Alberto, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200 Moro, Renato, ‘Nazionalismo e cattolicesimo’, in Federzoni e la storia della destra italiana nella prima metà del Novecento, ed. by Benedetto Coccia and Umberto Gentiloni Silveri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 49–112 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82 Murri, Romolo, La croce e la spada (Florence: Bemporad, 1915) Nava, Cesare, Discorso dell’on. Cesare Nava ai suoi elettori: Monza, 12 gennaio 1919 (Monza: Tipografia Sociale Monzese, 1919) Piva, Francesco, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015) Pizzetti, Silvia, ‘Cornaggia Medici, Carlo Ottavio’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XXIX (1983), pp. 107–13 Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Prandi, Alfonso, ‘La guerra e le sue conseguenze nel mondo cattolico italiano’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 153–205 Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Scoppola, Pietro, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 95–151 Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009)

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Diplomacy through Aid

Jan De Volder

Benedict XV: Aid to Belgium

The start of World War I catapulted Belgium into the centre of the international scene. Indeed, it was with the country’s invasion by German troops on 4 August 1914 that the war began.1 From 1830, the year when it declared its independence, Belgium officially advocated its neutrality — a situation similar to Switzerland’s today — such status being imposed and guaranteed by the European powers, including Prussia. However, in the scenario conceived by the Schlieffen Plan at the beginning of the twentieth century, the most direct route to Paris for troops from Berlin passed through the Meuse Valley. German leadership considered violating Belgian neutrality a lesser evil compared to the great advantage to be gained by a swift victory against France. Moreover, from the German perspective, in the new European order Belgium would lose its status of neutrality regardless and be annexed to the German Empire, or at least become a vassal state serving as a protection against England.2

1.

The Achilles’ Heel of the German Cause

The plan did not come to fruition because, as is known, the German offensive was stopped along the Marne at the beginning of September 1914, changing the tactics of manoeuvre warfare into one of drawn-out, static, trench warfare. The violation of Belgian neutrality and the subsequent, harsh regime of occupation instituted in the country, however, revealed itself to be not only the ‘original sin’, but also the Achilles’





1 The literature on the invasion and Germany’s occupation of Belgium is vast. Above all, see the extensive bibliography of La Belgique et la Première guerre mondiale: bibliographie, ed. by Patric Lefèvre and Jean Lorette (Brussels: Musée Royal de l’Armée, 1987), which thirty years ago already contained over 11,000 titles. For the following period, research was based on the bibliography in Sophie De Schaepdrijver, De Groote Oorlog: Het Koninkrijk België tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Houtekiet, 2013). For articles in English, see also the 1914–1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War [accessed 10 January 2019]. 2 On the aims of Germany’s war efforts, especially in regard to the Belgian question, the fundamental texts are still Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1961) and Frank Wende, Die belgische Frage in der deutschen Politik des Ersten Weltkrieges (Hamburg: Böhme, 1969).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 407–416 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118783

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heel of the German cause both during and after the war. For England, intervening in defence of Belgian neutrality, it constituted the casus belli for entering the war on the side of the Entente. For its part, Allied propaganda fully exploited Germany’s error. At issue was not simply a juridical question, appertaining to international law. Faced with the resistance of the Belgian army and the populace’s hostile and patriotic reaction — which in Germany’s calculations seemed to be underestimated —, the German troops, irritated by delays in their offensive strategy, abandoned themselves to unprecedented acts of violence in Belgium. From the very first weeks, many civilians were taken hostage in reprisal for any attempts at resistance or as a measure of intimidation. In many cases, they were also shot.3 After the experience gained in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the German troops were particularly sensitive to the dangers of the so-called ‘franc-tireurs’, civilian snipers who committed acts of guerrilla warfare against the regular troops. The German propaganda machine attempted, with little success, to justify its behaviour during and after its advance in Belgium as a legitimate act. The Allied press made the atrocities committed there an effective indictment against Germany. In some areas, the Germans were responsible for true massacres that remain in the collective memory of Belgians even today.4 In the villages parish priests were taken hostage and, in dozens of cases, also shot. The Germans were convinced that the clergy were the soul of the resistance of the Belgians and that neutralizing them would make it possible to repress the entire resistance. The tragic symbol of this anti-Catholic ‘Teutonic fury’5 was Leuven, seat of an ancient and prestigious Catholic university. On 25 August 1914, German troops occupied the city and took revenge on hundreds of civilians, burning houses and churches. Moreover, they destroyed the university library, which contained hundreds of incunabula and other works of inestimable value.6

2. Benedict XV Facing the Belgian Dilemma When Benedict XV was elected on 3 September 1914, the tragedy underway in Belgium, a Catholic nation, was already creating much embarrassment in the apostolic palaces. Some Roman prelates argued that the country would have been spared the





3 On the atrocities committed in Belgium, the fundamental study is John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), as well as Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007). 4 In passing, it can be noted that Belgium is probably one of the few countries where the memory of the Great War — which united the Belgians despite their numerous internal divisions — is more deeply rooted that than of World War II, which was more divisive. 5 The expression was widely used during and after the Great War. For example, the inscription on Leuven’s university library, rebuilt after the conflict, ‘Furore teutonico diruta, dono americano restituta’ (‘Destroyed by Teutonic Fury, Restored by American Gifts’), was the object of a bitter controversy between those who wanted to preserve the memory and those who, instead, were open to reconciliation with the Germans. 6 For a reconstruction of the events in Leuven, see Lipkes, Rehearsals, pp. 379–542.

b e n e d i ct  xv: ai d to b e lgi u m

misfortune if it had limited its resistance to firing some ‘symbolic cannon shots’ (as the Papal States had done in 1870 when Porta Pia was breached). At least, that was the comment that Cardinal Archbishop Désiré Mercier of Mechelen overheard during the conclave at the end of August.7 Benedict XV and his closest collaborators did not lack true concern regarding the dramatic news arriving from Belgium, and there was a widespread awareness in the Vatican that the violation of Belgium’s neutrality represented a clear transgression of international treaties. However, having adopted a position of strict impartiality meant not expressing clear and explicit condemnations of the conduct of one of the belligerents. Moreover, in those early months of the war, the objective of avoiding the Kingdom of Italy’s entry into the war was paramount in Vatican politics.8 The Holy See’s political line of prudence and its failure to condemn the violation of Belgium’s neutrality and the massacres carried out against civilians, clergy and church property were criticized by Catholics in Belgium, France and elsewhere. Léon Bloy spoke of ‘Pilate XV’, and many Catholics, including the French journalist and politician André Tardieu, considered it the Pope’s duty ‘to choose between good and evil’.9 The Holy See’s impartiality was interpreted, as often happens in similar cases, as sympathy for the enemy. This feeling of incomprehension and rage was reinforced by Allied propaganda, which accused the Holy See of being a friend to Germany and spread the myth of the ‘pape boche’ (‘Kraut Pope’). Despite the Holy See’s efforts in favour of the Belgian cause and the people affected, this feeling of abandonment remained strong among Belgians during and after the war, finding a place in some of the historical accounts.10 Spurred by the Nuncio in Brussels, Archbishop Giovanni Tacci Porcelli, who reported the growing anti-Roman sentiment among Belgian Catholics, Benedict XV decided to write a letter replete with sympathy for the ‘beloved Belgian people’, sent through Mercier on 8 December 1914. He also suggested that the Belgian Church should not give the traditional Peter’s Pence donation to the Holy See but use the funds to meet local needs.



7 On Mercier’s role in the conclave of 1914, see Roger Aubert, ‘Le cardinal Mercier aux conclaves de 1914 et 1922’, Académie Royale de Belgique: Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres, 6, 11 (2000), pp. 165–236 (pp. 169–70); Gabriele Paolini, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008), p. 24; and Jan De Volder, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War: Belgium, Germany and the Catholic Church (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2018), pp. 34–39. 8 On the Holy See’s political efforts in regard to Belgium during the first months of the conflict until Italy’s entry into the war, see Jan De Volder, Benoît XV et la Belgique durant la Grande Guerre (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1996), pp. 21–71; and De Volder, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War, pp. 39–45; Paolini, Offensive di pace, pp. 355–56. 9 ‘Prendre parti entre le bien et le mal’; on Benedict XV’s position of impartiality and reactions to it, see Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Guerre mondiale (première)’, in Dictionnaire historique de la papauté, ed. by Philippe Levillain (Paris: Fayard, 1994), pp. 775–79, and Xavier Boniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014), pp. 273 ff. 10 This trend is evident, for example, in Alois Simon, Le cardinal Mercier (Brussels: La Renaissance du livre, 1960).

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Mercier published the Pope’s letter at the end of his famous pastoral letter of Christmas 1914, Patriotisme et endurance.11 The Germans immediately attacked what Mercier had written, which in their eyes sought to keep Belgian resistance alive. At first, the occupying authorities were tempted to arrest the Cardinal, but they were stopped by Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, who wanted to avoid any conflict with the Holy See.12 Nevertheless, the patriotic role assumed by Mercier constituted a true problem for German diplomacy, which, at the end of 1915, attempted to convince the Holy See to invite him to Rome to offer him a post in the curia, promoveatur ut amoveatur. The initiative, however, proved counterproductive since the six weeks that Mercier spent in Rome from January to February 1916 represented, on the contrary, a triumphal journey for the Cardinal who was celebrated as a patriotic hero and was considered by liberals an ‘antipope ally’. In response to the Belgian Primate’s patriotic and anti-German attitude, the Holy See engaged in a diplomatic and pastoral balancing act that attempted to defend the Cardinal from German reprisals (obviously without rendering that policy public) besides inviting him to moderate his sentiments in order not to jeopardize the Holy See’s impartiality and undermine its peace-making role.13 It is also interesting to note that even King Albert of Belgium, the other great symbol of Belgian resistance during the war, was critical of the Cardinal’s hyper-patriotic position, believing it contrary to Belgium’s interests in the ‘future European configuration’, which in the sovereign’s opinion would inevitably be dominated by Germany.14

11 Mercier’s pastoral letter, Patriotisme et endurance, is printed in De Volder, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War, pp. 228–46. 12 On the conflict between the Belgian Primate and the occupying authorities, see Roger Aubert, Les deux premiers grands conflits du cardinal Mercier avec les autorités allemandes d’occupation (Louvainla-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1998); De Volder, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War; Ilse Meseberg-Haubold, Der Widerstand Kardinal Merciers gegen die deutsche Besetzung Belgiens (1914–1918): ein Beitrag zur politischen Rolle des Katholizismus im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1982). 13 On Benedict XV’s policy toward Belgium and the Mercier case, especially the Belgian Cardinal’s stay in Rome in January and February 1916, see Aubert, Les deux premiers, pp. 265–86, which also includes the Cardinal’s entire travel diary; De Volder, Benoît XV, pp. 73–116; De Volder, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War, pp. 102–16; Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV e il nazionalismo’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 17, 3 (1996), pp. 541–66. 14 Indeed, he wrote in his diary on 6 February 1916: ‘The fact remains that the Eternal City, for several weeks, has seen the curious spectacle of two prelates who, in their character, their attitude and even their popularity, constituted the most astonishing contrast. The disadvantage for us Belgians is that passions of hatred will be even more inflamed, but where can it lead us if not to exaggerations that tarnish the beautiful, steadfast and dignified attitude of most of the Belgian people? A cardinal must be an element of moderation’ (‘Toujours est-il que la Ville éternelle a vu pendant plusieurs semaines, le curieux spectacle de deux prélats qui constituaient, par leur personne et leur attitude et même leur popularité, le plus étonnant contraste. L’inconvénient pour nous Belges, c’est que les passions de haine en seront encore plus surexcitées, or où cela peut-il nous mener sinon à des exagérations qui ternissent la belle, ferme et digne attitude de la masse du peuple belge? Un cardinal doit être un élément de modération’); Albert I of Belgium, Carnets et correspondance de guerre 1914–1918, ed. by Marie-Rose Thielemans (Paris: Duculot, 1991), p. 248.

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Although the Belgian situation, which had weighed on it so heavily during the early months of the war, progressively disappeared from the priorities of the international scene as the conflict drew on and newer and greater tragedies appeared, the events that had occurred in that country remained an important concern for the Holy See’s political efforts.

3. The Diplomatic and Humanitarian Commitment On the diplomatic front, during the war the Holy See was strongly committed to defending the case for the full restoration of Belgium’s independence within the framework of an eventual peace treaty. Benedict XV explicitly named Belgium for the first time in his consistorial address of 22 January 1915. Initially, ecclesiastical diplomacy explored the possibility of a separate peace treaty between Germany and Belgium, which would have freed the smaller nation of the invaders.15 Realising early on that it was unrealistic to attempt to implement such a plan, the Holy See then made Belgium’s independence the keystone of its proposal for peace, as outlined in Benedict XV’s famous letter to the leaders of the warring nations on 1 August 1917. This intention was evident in the efforts of the Nuncio to Bavaria, Eugenio Pacelli, who earnestly worked to achieve at least an unambiguous declaration of principle on the part of the authorities of the Empire concerning the restoration of Belgian independence, efforts that proved fruitless.16 At the end of the war, the restoration of Belgian sovereignty occurred as a result of the disintegration of the Central Powers, not of a negotiated peace treaty. In the area of humanitarian assistance, the Belgians were also the beneficiaries of the Holy See’s outreach. The archives of the Nunciature in Brussels are full of requests for intercession to help the many civilians interned by the occupier in Belgium and Germany. They were frequently, but not always, priests, men of religion, or members of noble or bourgeois families. In their desperation, even the common people willingly turned to the Nunciature or directly to the Pope to obtain freedom, transfer, a reduction in sentence or merely news of their loved ones.17 Despite an abundance of documentation, it is not always easy to understand whether these requests were successful. In cases where news of the repatriation of a prisoner is given, it is not always clear whether this was a result of the Holy See’s intervention or of other factors. The documentation does show, however, that the Nunciature in Brussels and the Holy See took up cases seriously, when their help was requested, with the German authorities.18

15 Paolini, Offensive di pace, pp. 94–105; De Volder, Benoît XV, pp. 118–21. 16 De Volder, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War, pp. 186–91. 17 For a set of samples, see Antonietta Pini-Tronati, ‘Jules Van den Heuvel, ambasciatore presso la Santa Sede: lettere del 1917’, Risorgimento, 19 (1977), pp. 51–94 (pp. 61–62). 18 Paolini, Offensive di pace, pp. 260 ff.

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Then there were other situations in which the Holy See worked to assist Belgium and its citizens, with proposals for the exchange of prisoners, the forwarding of correspondence with soldiers or civilians who had been detained and aid to the suffering peoples. Parishes in Italy, Spain and other countries organized collections to feed hungry children. Catholic solidarity was not alone. The International Red Cross also played an important role in assisting prisoners.19 Other diplomats from neutral countries also intervened seeking the liberation of internees. However, it was above all the Commission for Relief in Belgium led by the businessman and future American President Herbert Hoover that, thanks to the aid collected from the people of the United States, effectively organized the provisioning of the Belgian populace that was suffering direly from hunger. The operation was carried out in partnership with the Belgian Comité national de secours et d’alimentation led by the Belgian banker Émile Francqui under the protection of the American Ambassador Brand Whitlock and the Spanish diplomat Marquis of Villalobar.20 For the Holy See, accustomed to operating discreetly, it was not always easy to show the Belgian populace, even its Catholic factions, the efforts being carried out in the attempt to respond to their needs. In common opinion, it was rather Americans like Whitlock or the Spanish Marquis of Villalobar who were working in their favour. In 1916, when the Holy See finally deemed it appropriate — given the centrality the Comité had earned — for the Nuncio in Brussels, Achille Locatelli, to join its advisory board, it met with strong resistance from Villalobar. In the Nuncio’s opinion, Villalobar was a ‘proud and authoritarian personality’ who was anxious not to lose his primary standing among the ‘saviours of Belgium’. Finally, thanks to the pressure exerted on Madrid and some honours granted to the Marquis, his resistance was overcome, and Locatelli was admitted to the Comité’s board.21

4. Deportations If there was one area in which the Belgians placed their hopes for the Holy See’s intervention, it was that of stopping the deportations since the Germans had begun the mass deportation of Belgian workers in the summer of 1916. Although Berlin defended the practice as a measure necessary to maintain public order, counteracting the Belgians’ unemployment as a result of the Allied naval blockade and combatting its dangerous consequences, it was clear that the measure was wholly to the advantage

19 For relations between the Holy See and the Red Cross, see Paolini, Offensive di pace, pp. 262–69. 20 On Francqui, see Liane Ranieri, Émile Francqui ou l’Intelligence créatrice (1863–1935) (Paris: Duculot, 1985). On Brand Whitlock, see the biography by Robert Crunden, A Hero in Spite of Himself: Brand Whitlock in Art, Politics and War (New York: Knopf, 1969). On Rodrigo de Saavedra y Vinent, the Marquis of Villalobar’s contribution in Belgium, see Truus van Bosstraeten, Bezet maar beschermd: België en de markies van Villalobar tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Leuven: Acco, 2008). 21 ‘Personaggio orgoglioso e autoritario’; ‘salvatori del Belgio’. The documentation on this matter is kept in AES, Belgio 1904–22, fasc. 232.

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of the German war industries, making up for the reduction in their own labour force due to enlistments.22 Mass deportations — which affected not only unemployed adult males but also workers in general and minors — severely harmed the already exhausted population and exacerbated the extreme poverty from which many Belgian families were suffering. On 7 November 1916, the bishops published a heartfelt Cri d’alarme à l’opinion publique. In the letter, the episcopate criticized the occupying authority’s actions, describing the reality in harsh terms: Teams of soldiers force their way into these peaceful homes, tearing young men from their parents, husbands from their wives, fathers from their children. Using bayonets, they prevent wives and mothers wishing to rush out from saying goodbye to them one last time. The captives are arranged in groups of forty or fifty and forced into trucks […]. Here are another thousand Belgians reduced to slavery and, without any prior judgement, condemned to the penal code’s harshest penalty after execution, deportation. They do not know where they are going or for how long. All they know is that their work will only benefit the enemy.23 In the neutral countries, particularly the United States, this denunciation of a ‘new slavery’ did not go unnoticed. Some scholars have described the deportations as a trial run for the practices that would be implemented by Hitler’s regime in World War II.24 From the end of 1916 to the beginning of 1917, the Holy See frequently intervened with German authorities in an attempt to stop the practice,25 especially through Pacelli, who had been sent as Nuncio to Germany in May 1917. Through his political contacts in Berlin, he urged the German authorities to show signs of good will, complying with Vatican demands with a view to creating a climate favourable to a peace based on compromise. At first, papal diplomatic efforts seemed to be successful. Some deportees, particularly the sickest, were allowed to return home, and the deportations seemed 22 On the deportations of the Belgian workforce, see De Schaepdrijver, De Groote Oorlog, pp. 238–50, as well as the ‘classic’ Fernand Passelecq, Déportation et travail forcé des ouvriers et de la population civile de la Belgique occupée, 1916–1918 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1928). 23 ‘Des équipes de soldats pénètrent de force dans ces foyers paisibles, arrachant les jeunes gens à leurs parents, le mari à sa femme, le père à ses enfants; gardent, à la baïonnette, les issues par lesquelles veulent se précipiter les épouses et les mères pour dire aux parents un dernier adieu; rangent les captifs par groupes de quarante ou de cinquante, les hissent de force dans les fourgons […]. Voilà un nouveau millier de Belges réduits en esclavage et, sans jugement préalable, condamnés à la peine la plus forte du code pénal, après la peine de mort, à la déportation. Ils ne savent ni où ils vont, ni pour combien de temps. Tout ce qu’ils savent, c’est que leur travail ne profitera qu’à l’ennemi’; the document is reproduced in Fernand Mayence, La correspondance de S. E. le cardinal Mercier avec le gouvernement général allemand pendant l’occupation, 1914–1918 (Brussels: Albert Dewit, 1919), pp. 290–96. 24 Larry Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York: New York University Press, 2004). 25 On the protests of the Belgian Church and the Holy See’s diplomatic efforts to stop deportations, see De Volder, Benoît XV, pp. 127–31; De Volder, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War, pp. 137–45; Paolini, Offensive di pace, pp. 296 ff.

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to stop in February 1917. In reality, the German authorities never completely ceased forced deportations. From the summer of 1917, political power was increasingly in the hands of military extremists, represented by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who were in no way interested in humanitarian considerations or concessions.26 The hardship suffered by civilians during the final period of Germany’s occupation of Belgium during World War I greatly exceeded that suffered (other than by Jews) during World War II. Not only were workers deported to Germany, but Belgian factories were dismantled, and livestock, trees, metals and raw materials were transferred en masse to Germany to support the war industry.27 The Catholic Church obtained only a small victory: the occupier’s project to requisition and transfer church bells and organ pipes to Germany was abandoned following the unanimous protests of the Holy See and the Belgian Episcopate, not to mention the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Felix von Hartmann.28

5. A Very Belated Appreciation After the rather unexpected end of the war, with the collapse of the German Empire and the restoration of Belgian independence in the autumn of 1918, public opinion in Belgium — exultant after the victory — long harboured a poor opinion of the Holy See’s actions concerning Belgium. In June 1918, La Libre Belgique, the patriotic Catholic newspaper that was clandestinely established during the occupation, did not hesitate to define the Holy See’s policy as ‘the most painful test’ for the Belgians during the long war. This was the common opinion of occupied Belgium, as Locatelli pointed out in his end-of-mission report in July 1918: The Belgians cannot comprehend why the Nunciature does not support their invective against the Germans, why it does not openly despise them, and why it does not consider them the most treacherous of enemies. The Nuncio needs a high level of tact and savoir-faire because, if they ever discovered a weak sentiment not consonant with theirs for him, the Belgians would detest him, and his mission would be made difficult, impossible. If, on the other hand, the occupying authorities came to discover that he was hostile to them, one can easily imagine what would happen. The position is difficult and very delicate: a maximum of circumspection is needed. And note that the Belgians’ requests are accentuated in particular in regard to the Nunciature. They easily close their eyes in the case of other diplomats.29

26 On the development of German politics, I have relied on the recent Patrick Dassen, Sprong in het duister: Duitsland in de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Van Oorschot, 2014). 27 De Schaepdrijver, De Groote Oorlog, pp. 229–39. 28 De Volder, Benoît XV, p. 199. 29 ‘I belgi non arrivano a comprendere come la nunziatura non si associ alle loro invettive contro i tedeschi, come non li disprezzi apertamente, come non li consideri come i più perfidi nemici. Al nunzio è necessaria una dose elevata di tatto e di savoir faire, perché, se mai si scoprisse in lui un

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Some publications promoted by the Belgian bishops after the war tried to influence public opinion positively, illustrating the Holy See’s various humanitarian and diplomatic efforts to alleviate the Belgians’ suffering. These efforts were mostly in vain. A few years later, in 1925, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Catholic University of Leuven, this could clearly be seen. Celebrating its renaissance after the Great War, it conferred honorary degrees upon two diplomats present in Belgium during the occupation, the American Brand Whitlock, and the Dutchman Cornelis van Vollenhoven, for their work carried out in support of the Belgians. Nuncio Clemente Micara was overlooked, and he complained about this in a report to the Holy See, recalling how his predecessor had been ‘a zealous instrument of the Holy Father’s charity and fatherly solicitude’.30 It is only in recent decades that Belgian and international historiography has rendered greater justice to the Holy See’s role, which was the first to understand the character of the war’s ‘useless slaughter’ and ‘suicide of Europe’, and was also close to those populations most affected with discreet but effective solidarity.

Bibliography 1914–1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War Albert I of Belgium, Carnets et correspondance de guerre 1914–1918, ed. by Marie-Rose Thielemans (Paris: Duculot, 1991) Aubert, Roger, ‘Le cardinal Mercier aux conclaves de 1914 et 1922’, Académie Royale de Belgique: Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres, 6, 11 (2000), pp. 165–236 Aubert, Roger, Les deux premiers grands conflits du cardinal Mercier avec les autorités allemandes d’occupation (Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1998) Boniface, Xavier, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014) Crunden, Robert, A Hero in Spite of Himself: Brand Whitlock in Art, Politics and War (New York: Knopf, 1969) Dassen, Patrick, Sprong in het duister: Duitsland in de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Van Oorschot, 2014) De Schaepdrijver, Sophie, De Groote Oorlog: Het Koninkrijk België tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Houtekiet, 2013)

debole sentimento non consono al loro, i belgi lo detesterebbero e la sua missione sarebbe resa difficile, impossibile. Se poi le autorità occupanti, d’altro lato, venissero a scoprire nel nunzio dei sentimenti ostili a loro, si può facilmente comprendere quel che avverrebbe. La posizione è difficile e delicatissima: la massima circospezione è necessaria. E si noti che tali esigenze dei belgi sono accentuate in modo speciale di fronte alla nunziatura: chiudono facilmente gli occhi di fronte agli altri diplomatici’; AES, Belgio III (1904–22), fasc. 156, pos. 302, ff. 40–51, final report of Nuncio Locatelli to Gasparri, 31 July 1918. The emphasis is in the original. 30 ‘Zelante istrumento della carità e della paterna sollecitudine del S. Padre’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Belgio, rubr. 80, 1927, fasc. 2, ff. 62–68, Micara’s note, June 1927.

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De Volder, Jan, Benoît XV et la Belgique durant la Grande Guerre (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1996) De Volder, Jan, Cardinal Mercier in the First World War: Belgium, Germany and the Catholic Church (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2018) Fischer, Fritz, Griff nach der Weltmacht (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1961) Horne, John, and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001) Lefèvre,, Patric, and Jean Lorette, eds, La Belgique et la Première guerre mondiale: bibliographie (Brussels: Musée Royal de l’Armée, 1987) Lipkes, Jeff, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007) Mayence, Fernand, La correspondance de S. E. le cardinal Mercier avec le gouvernement général allemand pendant l’occupation, 1914–1918 (Brussels: Albert Dewit, 1919) Meseberg-Haubold, Ilse, Der Widerstand Kardinal Merciers gegen die deutsche Besetzung Belgiens (1914–1918): ein Beitrag zur politischen Rolle des Katholizismus im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1982) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV e il nazionalismo’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 17, 3 (1996), pp. 541–66 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Guerre mondiale (première)’, in Dictionnaire historique de la papauté, ed. by Philippe Levillain (Paris: Fayard, 1994), pp. 775–79 Paolini, Gabriele, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008) Passelecq, Fernand, Déportation et travail forcé des ouvriers et de la population civile de la Belgique occupée, 1916–1918 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1928) Pini-Tronati, Antonietta, ‘Jules Van den Heuvel, ambasciatore presso la Santa Sede: lettere del 1917’, Risorgimento, 19 (1977), pp. 51–94 Ranieri, Liane, Émile Francqui ou l’Intelligence créatrice (1863–1935) (Paris: Duculot, 1985) Simon, Alois, Le cardinal Mercier (Brussels: La Renaissance du livre, 1960) Van Bosstraeten, Truus, Bezet maar beschermd: België en de markies van Villalobar tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Leuven: Acco, 2008) Wende, Frank, Die belgische Frage in der deutschen Politik des Ersten Weltkrieges (Hamburg: Böhme, 1969) Zuckerman, Larry, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York: New York University Press, 2004)

Georges-Henri Ruyssen

Benedict XV and the Armenian Question

1. Introduction Although there is a substantial bibliography on the Armenian Genocide, the Holy See and the Pope’s true role in the affair has still not been established, owing also to a lack of documentation. The Holy See appears mainly in the background of the collected documents that have been published so far, and its charitable role has been noted […]. However, how did Pope Benedict XV react when faced with this crisis of the coexistence between Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire?1 In order to answer this question, Vatican sources are a testimony that is as fundamental as it is ‘unexplored’2 as far as what happened to Christians in the Empire is concerned.3 The following pages can only offer a rather summary reconstruction of the role played by the Holy See and Benedict XV in connection to the Armenian Question. The Pope was heir to Leo XIII’s Eastern policy. As a member of the Secretariat of State, Giacomo Della Chiesa had participated in ‘the Holy See’s efforts in Ottoman affairs, during a particularly turbulent moment for Eastern Christians, especially for the





1 ‘Il vero ruolo della S. Sede e del papa nella vicenda non è stato finora ricostituito, anche per carenza di documentazione. La S. Sede appare piuttosto sullo sfondo nelle raccolte documentarie finora pubblicate e si nota il suo ruolo caritativo […]. Ma quale fu l’atteggiamento di papa Benedetto XV di fronte a questa crisi della convivenza tra cristiani e musulmani nell’Impero ottomano?’; Andrea Riccardi, ‘Benedetto XV e la crisi della convivenza multireligiosa nell’Impero ottomano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 83–128 (p. 94). 2 ‘Inesplorata’; Riccardi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 86. 3 The most complete documentary collection is La questione armena, ed. by Georges-Henri Ruyssen, 7 vols (Rome: Orientalia Christiana, 2013–15), which highlights the Holy See’s humanitarian commitment and diplomatic efforts to protect the rights of Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire and then in the Turkish State. See also Marco Impagliazzo, La finestra sul massacro: documenti inediti sulla strage degli armeni (1915–1916) (Milan: Guerini, 2000) and Mario Carolla, La Santa Sede e la questione armena (1918–1922) (Milan: Mimesis, 2006), which reproduce some archival documents.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 417–437 FHG

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Armenians’,4 which culminated in the Hamidian massacres carried out between 1894 and 1896. The diplomatic policy that the Vatican decided to adopt was one of ‘active impartiality’ based on the good relations between the Holy See and the Sublime Porte. The massacres continued during the period when Della Chiesa was Archbishop of Bologna, for instance on the occasion of the Adana massacre in April 1909,5 culminating in the years of his pontificate, when he supported the birth of an independent Armenia6 and attempted to end the violence perpetrated by the Ankara government against the Armenians, which continued even after the end of World War I and Benedict XV’s death.7

2. The Ottoman Empire on the Eve of the Great War8 World War I marked the eclipse of an era, in particular of a Western and European presence in the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Catholic and Protestant missionaries had previously created a vast educational and charitable network, and they were followed by the European powers, whose religious interests were often intertwined with geopolitical and economic ones (for example, railway concessions). Officially, France protected the interests of Catholics, Russia those of the Orthodox, Great Britain and the United States those of Protestants and Jews. Armenian interests were protected to a certain degree by all the powers. Very frequently, the Christian minorities were influenced by nationalist currents following a European model that gave rise to differences among the various confessions.9 An alternative to the pressures from the European powers and the centrifugal nationalisms was the Young Turks’ nationalist



4 ‘All’azione della S. Sede nelle vicende ottomane, in una stagione particolarmente turbolenta per i cristiani orientali, specie per gli armeni’; Giorgio Del Zanna, ‘Benedetto XV e la questione armena’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 125–37 (pp. 127–28). 5 See Giorgio Del Zanna, Roma e l’Oriente: Leone XIII e l’Impero ottomano (1878–1903) (Milan: Guerini, 2003), pp. 351–56; Georges-Henri Ruyssen, La Santa Sede e i massacri degli armeni (1894–1896) (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2012), p. 274; Georges-Henri Ruyssen, ‘Una mediazione pontificia: Leone XIII e gli armeni negli anni 1894–1896’, in Suavis laborum memoria: Chiesa, papato e curia tra storia e teologia: scritti in onore di Marcel Chappin SJ per il suo 70° compleanno, ed. by Roberto Regoli and Paul van Geest (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2013), pp. 287–98; furthermore, the documents collected in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, I: Documenti dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV), 1894–1896 (2013), pp. 40–62 and II: Documenti dell’Archivio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali (ACO), 1894–1896 (2013), pp. 451–68, from the small book Les massacres d’Adana et nos missionnaires: récit de témoins (Lyon: Vve M. Paquet, 1909). 6 See Carolla, La Santa Sede. 7 La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, VII: 1908–1925 (20 febbraio 1923–24 gennaio 1930): documenti dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV) e dell’Archivio Storico della Segreteria di Stato, Sezione per i rapporti con gli Stati (SS.RR.SS.) (2015). 8 For a general overview, see Riccardi, ‘Benedetto XV’, pp. 85–87 and Del Zanna, ‘Benedetto XV’, pp. 125 ff. 9 It suffices to mention the members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation who occupied the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople on 26 August 1896.

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movement that developed a Pan-Turkism, aimed at strengthening Turkish identity and an Ottoman renaissance (‘Turkey for the Turks’).10 The multinational presence of the Christian minorities impeded this Turkish integration, since the political, socio-economic and intellectual elites of these minorities, educated by missionaries, were traditionally pro-Western. All these tensions exploded on the eve of the war, causing profound tension in the secular fabric of coexistence between Muslims and Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Faced with the distressing chaos in the entire Balkan, Russian and Eastern world, the Holy See found itself alone in managing Catholic interests, no longer being able to rely on the traditional protectorate of France and Italy. In general, the Holy See did not have a political plan, but its mediation in those years during and after the War pursued a purely humanitarian purpose, that is, to protect persecuted Christians, by ending, or at least moderating, the persecution, sending aid and finally consolidating the Catholic Church’s presence in the East. In short, in those years, the Church aimed to ‘offer itself as an asylum for persecuted Christians’.11 The events occurring in the East and in Russia during World War I led to a new sensibility of the Church towards the world of Eastern Christians. It was not by chance that, in 1917, Benedict XV founded the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and the Pontifical Oriental Institute. During the Great War, particularly from 1915 to 1916, about two million Christians were killed in massacres and deportations, for the most part Armenians but also Assyrians, Chaldeans, Maronites and Syrians. It suffices to recall the persecution of the Maronite elite in Lebanon and Syria, victims of a coordinated policy to reduce them to starvation, or the massacres of Assyrians and Chaldeans in Salmas and Urmia, Mesopotamia.12 The consequence was that, throughout entire regions, in particular Anatolia, the nearly two-thousand-year-old presence of Christians came to an end.

3. The Holy See’s Diplomatic Action When Faced with the Armenian Issue The Armenian Genocide began on 24 April 1915 with the arrest of more than 300 Armenians in Constantinople, who were deported to areas within the Ottoman Empire.13 10 ‘La Turchia per i turchi’; Del Zanna, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 130; Andrea Riccardi, Mediterraneo: Cristianesimo e Islam tra coabitazione e conflitto (Milan: Guerini, 1997), p. 125. 11 ‘Qualificarsi come asilo per i cristiani perseguitati’; Riccardi, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 88. 12 La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III: 1908–1925: documenti dell’Archivio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali (ACO) (2014), pp. 519–72; Joseph Yacoub, Qui s’en souviendra? 1915: le génocide assyrochaldéo-syriaque (Paris: Cerf, 2014), p. 301. 13 On the genocide, see Yves Ternon, Les Arméniens: histoire d’un génocide (Paris: Seuil, 1977); Gérard Chaliand and Yves Ternon, Le génocide des Arméniens: 1915–1917 (Brussels: Complexe, 1984); Vahakn N. Dadrian, Storia del genocidio armeno: conflitti nazionali dai Balcani al Caucaso (Milan: Guerini, 2003). For a brief summary of the Vatican documents, see Georges-Henri Ruyssen, ‘La Santa Sede e il genocidio armeno del 1915’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 81 (2015), pp. 195–214. For example, see the passage from the memorandum of the Capuchin Norberto Hofer, a missionary to Erzurum, from 18

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In order to understand the Vatican’s policy, it is appropriate to begin with the report in which, on 20 August 1915, Apostolic Delegate Angelo Maria Dolci14 confirmed the overall picture of the genocide: Gruesome horrors were committed by this government against innocent Armenians in the within of the Empire. In some regions they were massacred, others were deported to unknown places and starved to death during the journey. Mothers have sold children to save them from certain death. I am working incessantly to stop this barbarity. Some favours for Armenian Catholics have been obtained.15 At first, Dolci strove to get Ottoman authorities to distinguish between Catholic and Orthodox Christians, with the aim of saving the former from deportation. He

October 1915: ‘The word “deportation” means: 1. the absolute separation of husbands from their wives and mothers from their children; 2. threats and enticements by Turkish emissaries in order to force one or the other to apostatise. The apostates then — and there are many — are immediately sent to exclusively Muslim areas, from which they never return; 3. the abduction of women who, according to their physical qualities, are either sold to harems or used to satisfy the base passions of leaders or their custodians; 4. little girls from various areas are sent as minor servants to Turkish houses, which then have the obligation to impart a Muslim education to them. Some have even arrived in Constantinople. Elsewhere, all the Christian children are surrounded, then interned in Turkish houses. […] Survivors are forced to abandon everything they have […] and forced to leave for the interior, accompanied mostly by brutal police squads, migrating from village to village, from plains to plains, without respite, always toward an unknown destination. Morally, they are crushed by the pain and separation they suffer, so that their bodies are no longer able to withstand the elements and deprivations, and many die on the journey. Others are even massacred. Thus, there is confirmed news of a general massacre of Armenians in Van and Bitlis; then the one in Mardin where the Catholic Bishop was massacred together with 700 of his faithful’ (‘La parola “deportazione” significa: 1. la separazione assoluta dei mariti dalle loro mogli, e delle madri dai loro fanciulli; 2. minacce e lusinghe di emissari turchi, affine di costringere gli uni e gli altri ad apostatare. Gli apostati poi — e ve ne sono molti — sono immediatamente spediti in località esclusivamente musulmane, da dove non si dà più ritorno; 3. ratto di donne, secondo che per le loro qualità fisiche convengono alla vendita nei harem, o a contentare le basse passioni dei notabili o dei custodi; 4. le piccole fanciulle di diverse località si destinano in qualità di piccole serve di case turche che hanno poi l’obbligo di dar loro la rispettiva educazione musulmana. Ve ne sono giunte perfino a Costantinopoli. Altrove si circondino tutti i fanciulli cristiani, per internarli poi in case turche. […] I superstiti sono costretti ad abbandonare tutto il loro avere […] e forzati a partire per l’interno, accompagnati per lo più da gendarmi brutali, migrano di villaggio in villaggio, di pianura in pianura, senza tregua, sempre verso destinazione ignota. Moralmente abbattuti pei dolori e le separazioni subiti, il loro organismo non è più atto a resistere alle intemperie ed alle privazioni, cosicché ne muoiono molti per istrada. Altri vi sono addirittura massacrati. Così, su conferma, la notizia di un massacro generale di armeni a Van e Bitlis; poi quello di Mardin, dove fu massacrato il vescovo cattolico insieme con 700 dei suoi fedeli’); La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV: 1908–1925: documenti dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV) e dell’Archivio Storico della Segreteria di stato, Sezione per i rapporti con gli Stati (SS.RR.SS.) (2015), p. 122. 14 At the time, Archbishop Dolci was the Apostolic Delegate to Constantinople (from 13 November 1914 to 14 December 1922). 15 ‘Orrori raccapriccianti sono stati commessi da questo governo contro armeni innocenti nell’interiore dell’Impero. In alcune regioni sono stati massacrati, in altri deportati in luoghi incogniti per morire di fame durante tragitto. Madri hanno venduto figli per sottrarli a certa morte. Lavoro incessantemente per arrestare questa barbarie. Si è ottenuto qualche cosa favore armeni cattolici’; Dolci to Gasparri, 20 August 1915, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III, pp. 92–95.

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insisted on the ‘distinction that must necessarily be made between Catholic and non-Catholic Armenians’, speaking to the German and Austrian ambassadors and to the Ottoman Grand Vizier. ‘The former’, he maintained, ‘have nothing to do with politics and are faithful subjects of the Empire’; he also expressed interest ‘in those non-Catholics who abstain from all revolutionary activities’.16 From the very outset, a distinction was made between those Armenians who were Catholic and those who were schismatic. In some regions, local authorities had followed the government’s instructions, while in others, Catholics were confused with the rest. I then pursued my practices more insistently with the Grand Vizier and the ambassadors and obtained telegraphed orders from the Minister of the Interior17 that were sent to require that Catholics and Protestants be respected.18 However, as the violence escalated and the massacres became more widespread, this position was modified. Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri19 thus telegraphed Dolci several times: ‘I am concerned that Your Eminence should continue to insist to the Ottoman Government that they cease the Armenian persecution’.20 From September to October 1915 and afterwards, the Holy See’s intercessions no longer distinguished between Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant Christians, the sole goal being to end the massacre. What prompted Benedict XV to make a direct, public appeal was the report sent on 28 August 1915 by the Abbot General of the Mekhitarists of Venice, Ignazio Ghiurekian: Most Holy Father, in the immense disaster into which our poor nation has been plunged […] only an authoritative word, only the valid intercession of Your Holiness, will be able to obtain from the Ottoman government a cessation of the horrible massacres and a more humane behaviour towards the innocent, helpless and troubled people. […] The Armenian people in Turkey are living the last days of their lives. We no longer have any means to delay their deaths and, given that even the Armenians who are abroad cannot move the neutral governments, in a

16 ‘Distinzione da farsi necessariamente tra armeni cattolici e non-cattolici’; ‘che i primi non si occupano di politica e sono fedeli sudditi dell’Impero’; ‘per quelli dei non-cattolici che si astengono di ogni moto rivoluzionario’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, pp. 82–83. 17 This refers to Mehmed Talaat Pasha who was Minister of Interior Affairs for the Ottoman Empire, then Grand Vizier from 4 February 1917 to 8 October 1918. 18 ‘Già fin da principio si era ottenuta una distinzione fra cattolici armeni e quelli scismatici. Le autorità locali avevano in alcune regioni seguito le istruzioni del governo, in altre invece confuso i cattolici cogli altri. Continuai allora più insistenti le pratiche presso il Gran Vizir e gli ambasciatori e si ottenne dal ministro dell’Interno che venissero inviati ordini telegrafici per rispettare cattolici e protestanti’; Dolci to Gasparri, 19 September 1915, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III, p. 96. 19 Cardinal Pietro Gasparri was Secretary of State from 21 October 1914 to 7 February 1930. 20 ‘Interesso V. S. insistere ancora presso governo ottomano perché cessino persecuzioni armeni’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, p. 96. The same instruction was repeated in telegrams on 16 October and 4 November 1915 (La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, pp. 119, 136).

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few months only traces of a people numbering around 1,500,000 will be found. Their extermination is inevitable.21 Concerned by this tragic perspective, Benedict XV sent a handwritten letter to Sultan Mehmed V Reşâd on 10 September 1915:22 Your Majesty, while I extend condolences for the horrors of the tremendous struggle in which Your Majesty’s mighty Empire is involved, together with the great European nations, Our soul is tormented by the anguished echo of the cries of an entire people that reaches Us, subjected to unspeakable suffering in the vast Ottoman domains. The Armenian nation has already seen many of its sons sent to the gallows and many — among whom were more than a few ecclesiastics and even some bishops — imprisoned or exiled. Now we are told that entire populations of villages and cities are being forced to abandon their homes and travel, suffering incredible hardships, to distant concentration camps where, besides moral anguish, they must endure the privations of the most squalid misery and even the torture of starvation. We believe, Sire, that such excesses are occurring against the will of Your Majesty’s government. […] If there are traitors or those guilty of other crimes among the Armenians, let them be legally judged and punished. But, Your Majesty, with Your very great sense of justice, do not allow innocents to be devastated by punishment. May Your sovereign mercy also descend upon the misguided.23 In his response on 10 November 1915, the Sultan said that, faced with the intentions of the Armenian revolutionaries who sympathized with the enemies of the Ottoman Empire, especially with the Russians, there was no means available other than to 21 ‘Beatissimo Padre, nell’immane sciagura piombata sulla nostra povera nazione […] solo una parola autorevole, solo la valida intercessione di V. S. potranno ottenere dal governo ottomano la cessazione degli orribili massacri ed un contegno più umano verso un popolo innocente, inerme e tanto travagliato. […] Il popolo armeno in Turchia vive gli ultimi giorni della sua vita; e a noi non è più rimasto alcun mezzo per ritardarne la morte, e se anche gli armeni che si trovano all’estero non potranno impietosire i governi neutrali, dopo alcuni mesi appena si troveranno le traccia di un popolo di circa 1,500,000. Lo sterminio è inevitabile’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, pp. 91–93. 22 Mehmed V Reşâd was the thirty-fifth and penultimate Ottoman Sultan reigning from April 1909 until 3 July 1918. 23 ‘Maestà, mentre il cordoglio per gli orrori della lotta tremenda nella quale insieme con le grandi nazioni dell’Europa è coinvolto il possente Impero di Vostra Maestà, Ci strazia l’animo, Ci giunge pure dolorosissimo l’eco dei gemiti di tutto un popolo, il quale nei vasti domini ottomani è sottoposto a inenarrabili sofferenze. La nazione armena ha già veduto molti dei suoi figli mandati al patibolo, moltissimi tra i quali non pochi ecclesiastici ed anche qualche vescovo, incarcerati o inviati in esilio. Ed ora ci viene riferito che intere popolazioni di villaggi e di città sono costretti ad abbandonare le loro case per trasferirsi con indicibili stenti e patimenti in lontani luoghi di concentrazione, nei quali oltre le angosce morali debbono sopportare le privazioni della più squallida miseria e sin le torture della fame. Noi crediamo, Sire, che tali eccessi avvengono contro il volere del governo di Vostra Maestà. […] Se vi sono tra gli armeni traditori o colpevoli di altri delitti, che essi siano legalmente giudicati e puniti. Ma non permetta Vostra Maestà nell’altissimo Suo sentimento di giustizia che nel castigo siano travolti gli innocenti ed anche sui traviati scenda la sovrana Sua clemenza’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, p. 98.

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move the Armenian populations. He also asserted that it was impossible to make a distinction between peaceful and disruptive elements.24 Meanwhile, the Sultan’s reply had not prevented Benedict XV from explicitly mentioning the Armenian nation in his consistorial address Nostis profecto of 6 December 1915: Remain steadfast, despite the immense ruins that have already amassed in the course of these sixteen months, despite the growing, heartfelt desire for peace and the cry of many families as a last appeal for peace, despite Our having used every means that may somehow count to hasten peace and settle discord, even though this fatal war still rages on at sea and on land while, on the other hand, extreme ruin looms in the misery of Armenia.25 In the meantime, Gasparri mobilized the Vatican’s diplomatic network to move Turkey’s allies, namely the Austro-Hungarian and German governments, to assert pressure to end the massacres. Otherwise, Gasparri intimated, they would be judged by history as co-conspirators in the horrors being committed. In the august name of His Holiness, therefore, Your Eminence will present with all delicacy but also fervently that the laws of humanity and civilization demand that Austria (Germany) exercise the maximum pressure upon the Ottoman government in order that it should promptly cease the acts of barbarity that dishonour not only those who commit them but also those who, while capable of doing so, do not prevent them.26

24 The Sultan affirmed: ‘Moreover, Our government was obliged to resort to general measures and to evacuate Armenians from the areas in the immediate proximity of the fields of military operations. Consequently, there can be no question of any measure of repression or of any reprisals applied indiscriminately to the guilty and the innocent, but simply of a general displacement necessitated by the greater interests of Our Empire, threatened on all sides by powerful enemies. Our government […] continues to ensure that these displacements are carried out in a way that is not detrimental to the displaced population’ (‘aussi, Notre gouvernement se vit-il obligé de recourir à des mesures générales et de faire évacuer aux arméniens les régions situées immédiatement à proximité des champs d’opérations militaires. Il ne saurait en conséquence être question d’une mesure de répression ou de représailles quelconque appliquée indistinctement aux coupables et aux innocents, mais simplement d’un déplacement général nécessité par les intérêts supérieurs de Notre Empire menacé de tous côtés par de puissants ennemis. Notre gouvernement […] ne cesse encore de veiller à ce que ces déplacements ne soient effectués d’une façon préjudiciable aux populations déplacées’); La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, pp. 141–42. 25 ‘Per fermo, nonostante che immense rovine si sian già accumulate nel corso di questi sedici mesi; nonostante che cresca nei cuori il desiderio della pace, e alla pace anelino nel pianto sù numerose famiglie; nonostante che Noi abbiamo adoperato ogni mezzo che valesse in qualche modo ad affrettare la pace e a comporre le discordie, pur nondimeno questa guerra fatale imperversa ancora per mare e per terra, mentre, d’altra parte, sovrasta alla misera Armenia l’estrema rovina’; Benedict XV, Nostis profecto, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7, 19 (1915), pp. 509–25 (p. 523) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 26 ‘V. S. pertanto, nel nome augusto di Sua Santità, farà presente con ogni delicatezza, ma anche con grande energia, che le leggi dell’umanità e della civiltà esigono che l’Austria (la Germania) eserciti sul governo ottomano la massima pressione affine di far cessare prontamente atti di barbarie i quali

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The Nuncio in Vienna insisted that Austria-Hungary had a limited influence over the course of events and suggested: I believe that, more effective than Austria’s intervention, would be that of Germany, which is the great mistress of Turkey today. […] It would thus be necessary to involve personally Emperor Wilhelm II and perhaps he, better than others, could obtain favourable results for the cause of Catholics.27 However, what effect did the Pope’s handwritten letter and the diplomatic efforts of the Holy See have? As Dolci pointed out, Benedict XV was ‘the one and only Sovereign to have strongly raised his voice against the terrible and barbarous extermination of their [the Armenian] race, amongst the glacial indifference of the neutral powers’ and thus ‘with that act, at least, brought to the public eye’28 the massacres. This attracted an appreciation for the papacy on the part of international powers. Most Eminent Prince, it is of inexpressible comfort to me, in these mournful events of the massacres of the unhappy Armenian nation, to see how the figure of our beloved Holy Father is majestically elevated in these schismatic regions. ‘His is a grand gesture’, the United States Ambassador told me upon reading the handwritten letter, which he found vigorous. The Dutch Minister: ‘He is the Pope chosen by Providence in this tragic hour of European crisis’. The late Ambassador of Germany and likewise the Danish Minister, with deep admiration, noted the papal document’s diplomatic value and added: ‘His Holiness is very diplomatic. He plays an important role in this war’. The abovementioned United States Ambassador (a Jew and former Rabbi),29 together with his main dragoman, an Armenian Protestant, were joyously enthusiastic when they noted, reading the cited papal letter, that the Pope had made no distinction of religion, his intercession being on behalf of the entire Armenian nation.30

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disonorano non solo chi li commette, ma anche chi, potendolo, non li impedisce’; Gasparri to Scapinelli di Leguigno and Früwirth, 2 October 1915, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, pp. 104–05. ‘Io credo che più efficace dell’intervento dell’Austria sarebbe quello della Germania, la quale è oggi la gran padrona in Turchia. […] Occorrerebbe interessare personalmente l’Imperatore Guglielmo II, e da lui si potrebbe forse ottenere risultati favorevoli alla causa dei cattolici, più che da altre parti’; Scapinelli di Leguigno to Gasparri, 18 October 1915, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, p. 120. ‘L’unico e solo Sovrano che abbia alzato forte la voce contro il terribile e barbaro sterminio della loro razza, fra l’indifferenza glaciale delle potenze neutre’; ‘veniva, almeno col fatto, a imprimere una nota di pubblicità’; Dolci to Gotti, 24 November 1915, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III, pp. 104–07. This refers to Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to Constantinople from 1913 to 1916. He denounced the general massacre of the Armenians in his memoirs Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York: Doubleday, 1918). Together with other Americans, he founded the Committee on Armenian Atrocities that was later renamed Near East Relief. ‘È per me, Em.mo Principe, d’inesprimibile conforto, in questi luttuosi avvenimenti di stragi dell’infelice nazione armena, il constatare in queste regioni scismatiche, come si elevi maestosa la figura del nostro amatissimo S. Padre. “Il suo gesto è il gesto dei grandi”, mi diceva l’ambasciatore degli Stati Uniti nel leggere l’autografo che trovava energico. Il ministro d’Olanda: “è il papa scelto

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It seems that, along with German pressure, the pontifical efforts had at least reduced the measures taken against the Armenians, even if the deportations and massacres continued until the end of 1916, mainly against the convoys of Armenians heading for Syria. The Committee of Union and Progress had no intention of suspending their extermination project. Moreover, information reaching the Vatican concerning the fate of Christians in the Asian and Caucasian regions occupied by the Turks was equally alarming.31 The Christian minorities were living in a climate of insecurity and uncertainty marked by deportations, the dispossession of their property and forced conversions to Islam. Undoubtedly, the imminent withdrawal of Russian troops under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March 1918 was one of the main reasons for this uncertainty. This left the various provinces of the Caucasus that were inhabited by Christians open to the Ottoman troops. This new threat of massacres of Armenians caused the Holy See to extend a second diplomatic attempt. Between February and March of 1918, Gasparri had already instructed the apostolic nuncios, which included Archbishop Pacelli in Munich: ‘Your Eminence is to make the most energetic request to the Foreign Minister and the Emperor, in the name of the Holy Father, so that the poor Armenians be respected by the Turks who are reoccupying the territories attributed to them in the peace treaty with Russia’.32 On 12 March 1918, Benedict XV sent a second handwritten letter to Mehmed V, urging him to show mercy: By virtue of the peace treaty that Your Majesty’s armies, united with those of your allies, imposed upon Russia, considerable territories have been returned to Turkish domination, and these lands are largely inhabited by Armenians. By grace, let the unarmed and innocent people, especially women and children, be spared, they who, among the horrors of war, have traversed such bloodshed and ruin, who have seen their sons slaughtered, their homes ruined, their property destroyed! It is a gift of the Mighty to know how to practise generosity and mercy. And now there is no motive for fearing the reasons of military order outlined by Your Majesty in his letter of 10 November [1915]; quite the contrary, since the

dalla Provvidenza in quest’ora tragica della crisi europea”. Il defunto ambasciatore di Germania e così pure il ministro di Danimarca, con ammirazione profonda rilevavano il valore diplomatico del documento pontificio ed aggiungevano: “Sa Sainteté est très diplomatique. Il joue un grand rôle dans cette guerre”. Il prefato ambasciatore degli Stati Uniti (giudeo ed ex rabbino), come pure il suo primo dragomanno armeno protestante, erano entusiasti di gioia quando dalla lettura del citato autografo rilevavano che il papa non faceva distinzione alcuna di religione, essendo il suo intervento per tutta intera la nazione armena’; Dolci to Gotti, 24 November, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III, p. 106. 31 This refers, for example, to the massacres of Urmia and Salmas (Southern Kurdistan) in 1918 during which the Assyrian Patriarch, Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin, the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Jacques-Émile Sontag, C. M., and the Chaldean Bishop of Urmia Tommaso Audo were killed (La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III, pp. 519–72). 32 ‘V. S. faccia nome S. Padre le più vive istanze presso cotesto ministro Esteri e presso Imperatore affinché i poveri armeni siano rispettati dai turchi rioccupanti i territori attribuiti loro nel trattato di pace con Russia’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, p. 395.

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Ottoman Empire extends its vast domains to the North, may the poor Armenians see sovereign pity and clemency pour upon them in abundance!33 In his response on 15 May 1918, the Sultan confirmed that the Armenian population would be protected, not without denouncing the resistance and violence of Armenian gangs who had massacred Muslims.34 However, in May 1918, Pacelli received an alarming report from the German military chaplain Josef Theodor Engert concerning the fate of Christians in the Ottoman Empire.35 Such reports did not leave the Pope unmoved. Through a note from the Secretariat of State to the governments of Berlin and Munich on 1 July 1918, he launched an appeal in favour of Christians: The Sovereign Pontiff ’s paternal heart has felt a fervent emotion and deep sorrow upon reading a report that reached him from a reliable source and exposed the appalling situation of Christians in the East. Sworn eyewitnesses enumerated the incredible suffering, the executions, the massacres to which the poor Christian populations, especially the Armenians, were subjected. They gave striking descriptions of the systematic destruction of their villages, of the daily hunger of hundreds of victims, of the torture of many unfortunate innocents who had become the playthings of lawless and unrestrained soldiers. Above all, the news that children were forcibly enrolled in Islam and that women were forced to renounce the Christian faith or suffer the most atrocious martyrdom deeply moved the soul of the Father, shared by all the faithful, to his very core. […] In

33 ‘En vertu du traité de paix que les armées de Votre Majesté unies à celle de vos alliés ont imposé à la Russie, des territoires considérables rentrent sous la domination de la Turquie et ces contrées sont en grande partie habitées par des arméniens. De grâce, que l’on épargne et que l’on protège les populations désarmées et innocentes spécialement composées de femmes et d’enfants qui parmi les horreurs de la guerre ont traversé tant de sang et de ruines, qui ont vu leurs fils massacrés, leurs maisons ruinées, leurs biens anéantis! C’est un don des Puissants de savoir pratiquer la générosité et la miséricorde. Et maintenant qu’il n’y a plus de motifs de craindre, maintenant que cessent les raisons d’ordre militaire signalées par Votre Majesté dans sa lettre du 10 novembre et que bien au contraire, l’Empire ottoman étend au nord ses vastes domaines, puissent les pauvres arméniens voir s’abaisser sur eux en abondance la pitié et la clémence souveraines!’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, pp. 397–98. 34 ‘So your Holiness can be assured that those who do not deviate from the right path and do not fail in their duties toward their country will continue to enjoy, like all Our faithful subjects, all Our paternal protection. Although the Russian armies have evacuated our invaded provinces, Armenian bands have endeavoured to oppose Our troops who have been charged with the reoccupation of said provinces and they were fiercely committed to their labour of death against the defenceless Muslim population’ (‘Donc Votre Sainteté peut être assurée, que ceux qui ne dévient pas du droit chemin et ne manquent pas à leurs devoirs envers leur pays continueront à jouir, à l’instar de tous Nos fidèles sujets, de toute Notre paternelle protection. Bien que les armées russes aient évacué Nos provinces envahies, les bandes arméniennes se sont efforcées d’opposer de la résistance à Nos troupes chargées de la réoccupation desdites provinces et elles se sont livrées avec acharnement à leur œuvre de mort contre la population musulmane sans défense’); La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V: 1908–1925 (27 maggio 1918–3 marzo 1921): documenti dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV) e dell’Archivio Storico della Segreteria di Stato, Sezione per i rapporti con gli Stati (SS.RR.SS.) (2015), pp. 39–40. 35 This refers to Denkschrift über die Lage der Christenheit im Orient (La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, pp. 27–36, 43–45).

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view of the painful facts found in the report in question, His Holiness again addresses […] your government to ask it to be informed by this report and to make further efforts to assist these unfortunate people.36 The change of regime that took place with the Grand National Assembly in Ankara under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha37 and its impact on the resumption of the persecution of Armenians in various forms (massacres, harassment, deportations, dispossession, forced exile and forced conversion to Islam) characterized the post-war years. Faced with France’s abandonment of Christians in Cilicia — French troops had already retreated from Maraş on 17 February 1920 — and the disastrous situation of Armenians in the Caucasus, the Armenian Catholic Bishop of Trabzon, Jean Naslian, drafted a letter in November 1920 aimed at obtaining papal outreach toward the governments of the Entente to save the Armenian nation from the Kemalists. In Cilicia, Christians are threatened with oppression following France’s abandonment of that region. […] A telegram from Erevan […] announces the disastrous situation created in Armenia in the Caucasus. […] Effective intervention by the August Pontiff, whose authoritative voice would opportunely move the world’s governments to act in favour of this nation, is thus required. […] The Holy See is therefore implored to act urgently to do everything possible to save this population in Armenia, in Cilicia and in Turkey.38

36 ‘Le cœur paternel du Souverain Pontife a éprouvé une vive émotion et une profonde douleur à la lecture d’une relation qui lui est parvenue d’une source digne de foi et exposant la situation épouvantable des chrétiens en Orient. L’énumération, sur la foi de témoins oculaires, des souffrances inouïes, des exécutions, des massacres auxquels ont été soumises les pauvres populations chrétiennes, spécialement celle des arméniens, la saisissante description de la destruction systématique de leurs villages, de la faim qui fait chaque jour des centaines de victimes, des tortures de tant de malheureux innocents, devenus le jouet d’une soldatesque sans loi et sans retenue, et par-dessus tout, l’annonce que les enfants inscrits de force à l’islam, et que les femmes sont contraintes ou à renoncer à la foi chrétienne ou à subir le plus atroce martyre, a profondément ému, jusque dans ses fibres les plus intimes, l’âme du Père commun des fidèles. […] En considération des faits si douloureux relevés dans la relation dont il est question, Sa Sainteté s’adresse de nouveau […] à Votre gouvernement pour le prier de prendre lui-même connaissance de cette relation et de tenter encore un effort en faveur de ces infortunés’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, pp. 67–68. 37 Mustafa Kemal was president of the Grand National Assembly of Ankara (1920), and founder (1923) and first President of the Republic of Turkey (1923–1938). He was given the name Atatürk (Father of the Turks) by the Turkish Parliament in 1934. 38 ‘In Cilicia i cristiani sono minacciati di oppressione in seguito all’abbandono di quella regione da parte della Francia. […] Un telegramma da Erevan […] annunzia la disastrosa situazione creata nell’Armenia del Caucaso. […] S’impone quindi un efficace intervento dell’Augusto Pontefice di cui la voce autorevole commoverebbe opportunamente il mondo civile a favore di questa nazione. […] E però si supplica la S. Sede di fare d’urgenza tutto quello che le è possibile per salvare questa nazione in Armenia, in Cilicia ed in Turchia’; Naslian to Cerretti, 21 November 1920, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, pp. 403–04. Point 6 of the note reads: ‘Particularly convince France to care for the fate of Christians in general and for the Armenians, especially in Cilicia, because (a) it cannot be considered a Muslim region such as Algeria or Morocco; Cilicia is Christian by tradition and the 270,000 Christians who have survived the massacres, invited by the French government itself to return after the 1918 armistice, have more rights than the Muslims to see their life and

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The Vatican did not hesitate to appeal to the Swiss President, Motta, besides to the ambassadors of Spain and Brazil to the Holy See, for them to urge the League of Nations to strive to protect the Armenians in Cilicia after France’s withdrawal.39 In December 1920, the latter still reassured the Holy See that its troops would only retreat after having obtained from the Turks, in particular from Mustafa Kemal, rigorous guarantees for Christian minorities: The peace treaty that the Allied Powers signed with Turkey provides for an entire series of measures for the protection of minorities in the Ottoman Empire. The French government has been particularly obliged vis-à-vis the other Allied Powers to ensure the application of these measures in order to protect the Christian minorities in Cilicia and in the entire area where their special interests have been recognized. I am authorized to say that the Holy See can assure the President of the Armenian National Delegation that France will not shirk the commitments that it has undertaken.40 Concerned by the fate of Christians in Anatolia and the Caucasus, which had been reoccupied by Turkish troops, Gasparri appealed to Mustafa Kemal’s sentiments of humanity and mercy, the Holy See having decided to establish telegraphic contact with him on 9 March 1921. In the name of the Sovereign Pontiff, I have the honour to appeal to your (noble) sentiments of humanity that beseech you (and I beseech you) to give, as soon as possible, the appropriate orders to ensure respect for the life and property of the Christians in the Caucasus, Asia Minor and Anatolia. After all the suffering that

liberty ensured; (b) France is committed by its honour and its interests to remain there to protect the Christians; […] (d) France must not deliver Cilicia to the Kemalists, who cannot represent the Turkey that signed the Treaty of Sèvres; (e) it must not even hand it over to the government of Constantinople before it has promptly and fully carried out all the clauses of the aforementioned treaty’ (‘interessare più particolarmente la Francia della sorte dei cristiani in genere e degli armeni in specie nella Cilicia che (a) non può e non deve essere riguardata regione maomettana come l’Algeria e il Marocco; la Cilicia è per tradizione cristiana ed i 270,000 cristiani superstiti dei massacri, invitati dal governo stesso francese a rientrarvi dopo l’armistizio del 1918, hanno diritti più che i maomettani a vedervi assicurata la loro vita e libertà; (b) la Francia vi è impegnata per suo onore e per gli interessi suoi rimanervi a protettrice dei cristiani; […] (d) non deve la Francia fare la consegna della Cilicia ai kemalisti i quali non possono rappresentare la Turchia firmataria del trattato di Sèvres; (e) non deve consegnarla neanche al governo di Costantinopoli prima che questo abbia puntualmente e pienamente eseguito tutte le clausole del trattato suddetto’). 39 La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, pp. 408, 436. 40 ‘Le Traité de Paix que les Puissances alliées ont signé avec la Turquie prévoit toute une série de mesures pour la protection des minorités dans l’Empire ottoman; et le Gouvernement français s’est spécialement obligé vis-à-vis des autres Puissances alliées à veiller à l’application de ces mesures de protection des minorités chrétiennes dans la Cilicie et dans toute la zone où des intérêts particuliers lui ont été reconnus. Je suis autorisé à dire que le Saint-Siège peut assurer au Président de la Délégation nationale arménienne que la France ne se dérobera pas aux engagements qu’elle a souscrits’; French Embassy to the Holy See to Gasparri, 9 December 1920, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, pp. 410–11.

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humanity has endured, it is to be hoped that the voice of clemency and mercy be promulgated everywhere.41 Mustafa Kemal replied to the Pope immediately, invoking the equality of all citizens in Turkey: The obligation to ensure the security and happiness of all the inhabitants of our country without distinction of religion is an imperative duty for us, commanded by our humanitarian sentiments as well as by the Muslim religion. Consequently, Christians in all areas under the authority and influence of the Turkish Grand National Assembly enjoy the utmost tranquillity.42 Nevertheless, nothing could stop the evacuation of French troops from Cilicia following the London agreement in March 1921. The Franco-Turkish Agreement of Ankara on 20 October 1921 sanctioned the end of the Armenian nation in Cilicia, condemning Armenians to exile in Syria and Lebanon. Given the Armenians’ desperate situation in Cilicia, the Holy See redoubled its diplomatic efforts in favour of an Armenian homeland43 through mediation by the apostolic nuncios in Paris (Cerretti) and Bern (Maglione) at the conference in Lausanne from 1922 to 1923. Until the end, the Holy See sought to obtain guarantees from the Kemalist government for the protection of

41 ‘Au nom du Souverain Pontife, j’ai l’honneur de faire appel à Vos (nobles) sentiments d’humanité en Vous conjurant (et je Vous conjure) de vouloir bien donner aussitôt que possible des ordres opportuns pour assurer le respect de la vie et des biens des chrétiens du Caucase, de l’Asie mineure et de l’Anatolie. Après tant de souffrances que l’humanité a endurées, il est à souhaiter que la voix de la clémence et de la pitié s’impose partout’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, p. 25. 42 ‘L’obligation d’assurer la sécurité et le bonheur de tous les habitants de notre pays sans distinction de religion est pour nous un devoir impérieux commandé par nos sentiments humanitaires ainsi que par la religion musulmane. Par conséquent, les chrétiens de toutes les régions où s’étendent l’autorité et l’influence du Gouvernement de la Grande Assemblée de Turquie, jouissent de la tranquillité la plus complète’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, p. 25. 43 The Apostolic Delegate to Syria, Giannini, strenuously dedicated himself to achieving this goal, as is seen in his various reports to Gasparri on 18 June, 31 October, 9, 12, and 16 November 1921; in his letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris Louis-Ernest Dubois on 19 May 1921; and in the report of 15 July 1921 to Franklin Bouillon, negotiator of the agreement between France and Turkey; see La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, VI: 1908–1925 (9 marzo 1921–20 febbraio 1923): documenti dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV) e dell’Archivio Storico della Segreteria di Stato, Sezione per i rapporti con gli Stati (SS. RR.SS.) (2015), pp. 48–52, 60–62, 111–18. The three religious leaders of the Armenian communities (Protestant, Catholic and Gregorian) signed numerous declarations, on the one hand, invoking the intervention of the Holy See in favour of a homeland for the Armenians in Cilicia and, on the other, protesting against its transferral from France to the Ankara government. The Holy See remained convinced that the only possible solution was the creation of a homeland for the Armenians, a project that was unanimously confirmed by the General Assembly of the League of Nations on 22 September 1921 and 23 September 1922. Faced with the general exodus of Armenians from the Caucasus, Anatolia and Cilicia, that solution was also fully shared by the three religious leaders of the Armenian communities in their note to Pius XI on 4 March 1922 (La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, VI, pp. 173–75). The Apostolic Nuncio in Paris, Bonaventura Cerretti, however, was very sceptical about the realization of such a project, pointing out how, during the Conference for the East in Paris, the French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré and the British Foreign Minister Lord George Curzon had received the idea of an independent Armenian homeland with little enthusiasm (La questione

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Christian minorities. Every attempt proved futile, however, the Turkish delegation remained inflexible, and the Western powers, tired of negotiations, wound up being satisfied with vague promises. The work of ‘Turkification’ (for example, through the law of the confiscation of assets declared ‘abandoned’ by Armenian emigrants or the one requiring that history and geography be taught exclusively by Turkish teachers) continued inexorably, reaching a climax with the pressure of the Kemalists on the various minorities (Greeks, Armenians and Jews), driving them to renounce their already very fragile rights that had been sanctioned by the Treaty of Lausanne. Even at this stage, the Holy See did not lose faith and mobilized its diplomatic network to convince the members of the League of Nations to counteract Ankara’s policy. In 1928, a specific appeal in favour of this goal was introduced in the League of Nations by the Armenian Catholic hierarchy with Vatican support. It achieved nothing for the simple reason that Turkey was not a member of the League. Of the fifteen Armenian Catholic dioceses in Turkey and their thriving communities, there soon remained nothing but relics. In July 1928, the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate was also transferred from Constantinople to Lebanon. Concerning the creation of a free and independent Armenian state, Benedict XV explicitly mentioned Armenia as one of the territorial issues to be solved after the war in his famous Note of 1 August 1917: ‘The same spirit of fairness and justice should guide the examination of all other territorial and political issues, including those relating to Armenia, the Balkan States and the territories composing the ancient Kingdom of Poland’.44 armena, ed. by Ruyssen, VI, pp. 190–91). Despite such scepticism, Gasparri did not forget to instruct the Apostolic Nuncio in Bern, Luigi Maglione, to support any project for an Armenian national homeland at the Lausanne Conference. 44 Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. See also La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, VI, p. 336. Despite some criticism from the Turkish point of view, this pontifical support increased Benedict XV’s standing among the Armenian nation. ‘(c) “That the Holy Father has made mention of Armenia, which has displeased the government”. Although in a rather vague and indeterminate, besides delicate, manner I added to him [Dolci to the camp adjutant of the German general, Bronsart von Schellendorf], no leader of a neutral nation would have expressed himself thus, which is also very reconcilable with the Ottoman Empire’s territorial integrity. Openly and covertly, they would undoubtedly have connected the Armenian issue to the massacres of thousands and thousands of Christians, which would once again have reignited world opinion against the Turkish government. The Holy Father, on the contrary, did not make the slightest mention of it, and yet innocent victims have fallen, even thousands of our Catholics, among them many bishops and very many priests whose lives were without any political stain. If it gives rise to reflection, I continued, the government should be satisfied not only with the way the Holy Father alluded to Armenia, but with the allusion itself. […] However, from the Minister of Bulgaria who came to present me with best wishes on his ascension to the throne, I [Dolci] learned that the Grand Vizier would have wished that the Pope, instead of alluding to Armenia, had made it understood by the generic expression of “oppressed populations”. He also informed me that, regarding Armenia, the government will adhere to the papal

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It should be noted that, on 8 November 1918, three days before the end of World War I, the Pope sent a letter to the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, mentioning the creation of a free and independent Armenia. Outside Poland, there was and still is another nation that deserves the sympathies of Your Excellency and of all men of heart. We are referring to Armenia. It is useless to recount how much this unfortunate nation has suffered, especially in recent years! Although the Armenian people, for the most part, do not belong to the Catholic religion, the Holy See on a number of occasions took an interest in their defence, whether by special mention made in the Note to the Heads of the Belligerent Peoples of 1 August 1917, or in writing to the Sultan to obtain the cessation of the massacres of the poor Armenian peoples, or by sending materials to help soften their suffering a little. But all this is futile if one does not recognize the full independence of Armenia, which it deserves from all points of view. This is why the whole of humanity has its eyes fixed upon the great President of the largest democracy in the world.45 In the same vein, in January 1919, the Armenian Catholic Patriarch Terzian sent a note to Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Albert I of Belgium seeking their support: ‘Among these peoples it is superfluous to say that the Armenian nation, condemned

note with the clause “save the territorial integrity of the Empire”’ (‘(c) “Che il Santo Padre ha fatto menzione dell’Armenia, ciò che ha dispiaciuto al governo”. Il modo per quanto vago e indeterminato, altrettanto delicato, gli soggiunsi, nessun capo delle nazioni neutre si sarebbe espresso sotto questa forma, la quale è pure conciliabilissima coll’integrità territoriale dell’Impero ottomano. Apertamente e velatamente, avrebbe senza dubbio motivato il richiamo della questione armena coi massacri di migliaia e migliaia di cristiani, ciò che avrebbe riacceso ancora una volta l’opinione mondiale contro il governo turco. Il Santo Padre al contrario non vi ha fatto il minimo accenno, eppure sono cadute vittime innocenti, anche migliaia dei nostri cattolici, e fra questi, molti Vescovi e moltissimi sacerdoti, la cui vita era senza veruna macchia politica. Se si dà luogo alla riflessione, continuai, il governo dovrebbe essere invece soddisfatto non solo del modo con cui il Santo Padre ha fatto allusione all’Armenia ma dell’allusione stessa. […] Io però, dal Ministro di Bulgaria, che venne a presentarmi gli auguri per il Santo Padre in occasione dell’esaltazione al trono, seppi che il Gran Vizir avrebbe desiderato che il Papa, anziché fare allusione all’Armenia l’avesse compresa sotto l’espressione generica di “popolazioni oppresse”. Mi informò ancora che sull’Armenia il governo aderirà alla nota pontificia con la clausola “salvo l’integrità territoriale dell’Impero”’); Dolci to Gasparri, 8 September 1917, in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, IV, p. 343. 45 ‘En dehors de la Pologne, il y avait, il y a encore une autre nation qui mérite les sympathies de V. E. et de tous les hommes de cœur, Nous voulons parler de l’Arménie. Il est inutile de rappeler combien cette infortunée nation a souffert, spécialement dans ces dernières années! Bien que le peuple arménien, dans sa plus grande majorité, n’appartient pas à la religion catholique, le Saint-Siège, à différentes reprises, s’est intéressé à sa défense, soit par la mention spéciale qu’il en a faite dans sa Note aux puissances belligérantes du 1er août 1917, soit en écrivant au Sultan pour obtenir en faveur des pauvres arméniens la cessation des massacres, soit en envoyant des secours matériels pour adoucir un peu leurs souffrances. Mais tout cela est inutile si on ne reconnaît pas à l’Arménie réunie la pleine indépendance, qu’elle a méritée du reste à tous les points de vue. C’est pourquoi l’humanité entière a les yeux fixés sur le grand Président de la plus grande démocratie du monde’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, p. 137.

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to extermination, […] has more than any other the need to be extracted from the yoke of slavery and tyranny’.46 The leaders of the victorious powers, therefore, needed ‘to take an interest in the most just way on this eve of the Armenian nation and to secure its complete liberation by ensuring its independence within limits that have been historically defined and demanded by imprescriptible right’.47 Moreover, the Holy See did not hesitate to express its good wishes for the birth of the young Armenian Republic.48 Benedict XV’s intercession for the Armenians was not limited to diplomatic actions but also included humanitarian outreach. It is true that his ‘efforts in favour of Armenian refugees constitute one of the greatest humanitarian issues after World War I’.49 Except for the Red Cross and the Near East Foundation, which was founded in those difficult years precisely to aid Christians of the East, there were still no international humanitarian organizations comparable to the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) or UNICEF (the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund). The Holy See’s humanitarian intervention was extended, without any confessional distinction, by sending assistance to the threatened Christian populations or drafting lists of survivors. In those years, pontifical charitable outreach was very active, mainly thanks to Dolci’s tireless labour: he set up charitable organizations, such as Les Larmes Cachées, Œuvre de Bienfaisance de Benoît XV, and especially the Benedict XV Orphanage. The orphanage was established in Constantinople — on 5 November 1918 — as well as in other places, such as Ankara, to gather together

46 ‘Parmi ces peuples, il est superflu de le dire, la nation arménienne condamnée à l’extermination […] a, plus que tout autre, besoin d’être soustraite au joug de l’esclavage et de la tyrannie’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III, p. 228. 47 ‘S’intéresser dans la mesure la plus juste au soir de la nation arménienne et en obtenir la complète libération en assurant son indépendance dans les limites historiquement définies et réclamées par un droit imprescriptible’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, III, pp. 228–30. 48 In a note dated 5 March 1920, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches suggested to the Secretary of State that the Holy See express its congratulations for the recognition of the new Armenian Republic: ‘After the invocation of Armenian independence made solemnly first by the Holy Father in the famous Note of August 1917, it would seem opportune that, taking the occasion of the recognition of the small Armenian Republic already made by the Conference, while waiting for it to be assigned wider boundaries, the Holy See should hasten to write in a flattering way to the President of the New Republic […] to express the congratulations of the Holy See for the recognition obtained and vows that the new Republic gain the full achievement of its just aspirations, assuring that our interests in that nation’s prosperity and happiness will never fade’ (‘Dopo l’invocazione dell’indipendenza armena fatta solennemente per primo dal S. Padre nella celebre nota dell’agosto 1917, sembrerebbe opportuno che, prendendo occasione dal riconoscimento della piccola Repubblica armena fatto fin d’ora dalla Conferenza in attesa che le siano assegnati più larghi confini, la S. Sede si affretti a scrivere in modo lusinghiero al Presidente della nuova Repubblica, […] per esprimere le felicitazioni della S. Sede per il riconoscimento ottenuto e i voti che la nuova Repubblica ottenga il completo raggiungimento delle sue giuste aspirazioni assicurando che non verrà mai meno il suo interesse per la prosperità e la felicità di quella nazione’); La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, p. 312. 49 ‘Il lavoro in favore dei profughi armeni costituisce una delle più grandi questioni umanitarie dopo la Prima guerra mondiale’; Riccardi, Mediterraneo, p. 142.

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Armenian orphans regardless of their religion. A certain number of orphans were also hosted in Castel Gandolfo later, under Pius XI. Although the results of his diplomatic and humanitarian efforts were not sensational, the Catholic Church received immense gratitude from the Armenian people, as is proven by numerous newspaper articles, letters and testimonials. For example, in a letter dated 24 March 1919, the President of the Armenian National Assembly Boghos Nubar wrote: We know that it is not the first time that His Holiness has deigned to grant the support of His supreme moral authority in the world to the Armenian issue, and the Armenians will forever have engraved in their hearts the memory of the beneficent effects of His august intercessions. I thus pray Your Eminence to offer the Very Holy Father the most respectful homage of the deep gratitude of all the Armenian people who, more than ever, set an invaluable value on His protection in these days when the fate of Armenia is on the eve of being definitively decided.50 The Gregorian Patriarch Zaven I Der Yeghiayan of Constantinople also expressed gratitude in a letter dated 10 April 1919: Most Holy Father, among the innumerable marks of concern and Christian solidarity that Your Holiness was pleased to lavish on Armenian victims during the war, on our return from exile we were informed of the steps You took with the late Mehmed V in support of our unfortunate flock, which has been persecuted by the most merciless death. During the course of a conflict, which seemed to have stripped all reason from a part of suffering humanity, the Christian world at least had the consolation of finding such high apostolic virtues as those everywhere and constantly exercised under Your Holiness’s personal impetus. It is, therefore, greatly moved that we come, in the name of the Armenian nation, to offer to you, Most Holy Father, an expression of all our gratitude and admiration for the person and virtues of Your Holiness.51

50 ‘Ce n’est pas la première fois, nous le savons, que S. S. a daigné accorder l’appui de Sa suprême autorité morale dans le monde à la question arménienne, et les arméniens garderont à jamais gravé dans leurs cœurs le souvenir des bienfaisants effets de Ses augustes interventions. Je viens donc prier V. E. de vouloir bien offrir au Très Saint-Père les très respectueux hommages de profonde gratitude de tout le peuple arménien, qui attache plus que jamais un prix inestimable à Sa protection, en ces jours où le sort de l’Arménie est à la veille d’être définitivement décidé’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, p. 213. 51 ‘Très Saint-Père, parmi les innombrables marques de sollicitude et de solidarité chrétienne que Votre Sainteté s’est plu à prodiguer durant la guerre, aux victimes arméniennes, on nous a signalé à notre retour d’exil, la démarche qu’Elle a bien voulu faire auprès de feu Mahomet V, en faveur de nos malheureuses ouailles persécutées par la mort la plus impitoyable. Au cours d’un conflit qui semblait avoir enlevé la raison à une partie de l’humanité souffrante, l’univers chrétien a eu, du moins, la consolation de rencontrer de hautes vertus apostoliques comme celles dont l’action réparatrice s’est partout et constamment exercée sous l’impulsion personnelle de Votre Sainteté. C’est donc avec émotion que nous venons, au nom de la nation arménienne, Vous offrir, Très Saint-Père, l’expression de toute notre gratitude et de notre admiration à l’égard de la personne et des vertus de Votre Sainteté’; La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, p. 232.

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This sentiment reached its height on 11 December 1921, with the inauguration of a bronze statue of Benedict XV — one of the very rare statues of this Pope in the world — in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Constantinople, which bears the inscription: ‘To the Great Pontiff | in the world’s tragic hour | Benedict XV | Benefactor of Peoples | without regard | to nationality or religion | as a sign | of recognition | The East | 1914–1919’.52 It bears mentioning that this statue, the initiative for which dates back to Dolci, was entirely financed by contributions from non-Catholics and non-Christians.

4. Conclusions In conclusion, we can cite the consistorial address Antequam ordinem of 10 March 1919,53 in which Benedict XV summarized the fundamental lines of his efforts to assist the Armenians and Eastern Christians: In fact, we have seen entire peoples massacred almost to their extermination. There, hosts of unhappy people had to leave their homes and take refuge in the mountains, victims of the weather and starvation. Elsewhere, Christian communities were undone, priests expelled and imprisoned; churches, monasteries, schools and hospices were converted to profane use; ecclesiastical and private assets were left to ruin or dispersed. We tried to remedy all these evils as much as possible and without any distinction of nationality or religion. We were especially concerned with the Armenians and the inhabitants of Syria and Lebanon, as they were the ones most frequently seen plagued by deportations, exposed to the tortures of hunger and even subject to mass murder. Therefore, We personally and repeatedly turned to the Ottoman Emperor, or fervently recommended the cause to those sovereigns who seemed more influential with him in assistance of the Armenians in general and in particular of those who were condemned to death or otherwise in need of Our help. Thus, with divine aid, We managed to prevent massacres in many places and to save many lives. Moved to compassion by the numerous orphans of Armenia, We opened a sanctuary for them in Constantinople. As for Syria and Lebanon, in order to remove the feared horrors and to provision those inhabitants, We have appealed for the intercession and support of various governments. In short, We have sought to succour, with moral and material means, all the unhappy of the East, assisted in this labour by the zeal of Our representatives.54

52 See the discussion of this statue in Rinaldo Marmara’s contribution later in this volume. 53 Benedict XV, Antequam ordinem, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 11, 4 (1919), pp. 97–108 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 54 ‘Infatti scorgevamo qui interi popoli massacrati fin quasi allo sterminio; là, schiere d’infelici abbandonare le loro case e rifugiarsi sui monti, vittime delle intemperie e dell’inedia; altrove, comunità cristiane disciolte, sacerdoti espulsi e imprigionati; chiese, monasteri, scuole, ospizi

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It cannot be said that the Holy See was unaware of the tragedy that accompanied the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, it was a privileged observer of the dramatic events that struck down mainly Christians, and most particularly the Armenians. Benedict XV twice addressed the Sultan to end the massacres and supported the creation of a free and autonomous Armenia. For his part, Dolci worked tirelessly to guarantee the safety of Christians under the Ottoman government. Moreover, the Holy See did not forgo attempts to involve Germany and Austria-Hungary, urging them to use their good standing with their ally for the benefit of Christians. As Del Zanna sums up very well, The documentation reveals how the Church of Benedict XV, while maintaining a position of impartiality, sought to carry out political-diplomatic efforts aimed at avoiding the Christian holocaust in Anatolia. The Pope was directly involved in the matter, appealing, often in person, to the Ottoman government and the European governments. Diplomatic operations and concrete support to the affected populations appear as the qualifying points of a policy that found its most immediate precedents in Pope Leo XIII’s policies of the late nineteenth century.55 During his visit to Armenia in September 2001, Pope John Paul II evoked Benedict XV’s commitment to avert the Armenian Genocide in his prayer before the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan: ‘Listen, Lord, to the voice of the Bishop of Rome, echoing the plea of his Predecessor Pope Benedict XV, when in 1915 he raised his voice in defence of “the sorely afflicted Armenian people brought to the brink of annihilation”’.56

convertiti ad usi profani; i beni ecclesiastici e privati dilapidati e dispersi. A tutti questi mali procurammo di portar rimedio per quanto Ci fu possibile e senza distinzione alcuna di nazionalità o di religione. Ci preoccupammo soprattutto degli Armeni e degli abitanti della Siria e del Libano, come quelli che più frequentemente vedevamo afflitti dalle deportazioni, esposti alle torture della fame e persino trucidati in massa. Perciò a favore degli Armeni in generale, e di coloro in particolare che erano o condannati a morte o bisognosi comunque del Nostro aiuto, personalmente e ripetutamente Ci siamo rivolti all’Imperatore degli Ottomani, ovvero ne abbiamo caldamente raccomandato la causa a quei Sovrani che ci parevano su di lui maggiormente influenti. Riuscimmo così, col divino aiuto, a impedire in vari luoghi le stragi e a salvare non poche vite. Mossi a compassione dei numerosi orfanelli d’Armenia, aprimmo per loro un asilo a Costantinopoli. Per quanto riguarda la Siria e il Libano, per allontanarne i temuti orrori e per il vettovagliamento di quegli abitanti, abbiamo sollecitato l’intervento e l’appoggio dei vari governi. Tutti insomma gl’infelici d’Oriente Noi cercammo di soccorrere, con mezzi morali e materiali, coadiuvati in ciò dallo zelo dei Nostri rappresentanti’; cited in La questione armena, ed. by Ruyssen, V, pp. 208–10. 55 ‘Dalla documentazione emerge come la Chiesa di Benedetto XV, pur mantenendo una posizione d’imparzialità, cercò di svolgere un’azione politico-diplomatica tesa ad evitare l’olocausto cristiano in Anatolia. Il papa si occupò direttamente della questione, intervenendo, spesso di persona, sul governo ottomano e le cancellerie europee. Attività diplomatica e sostegno concreto alle popolazioni colpite appaiono come i punti qualificanti di una linea che trovava i suoi precedenti più immediati nella politica leonina di fine Ottocento’; Del Zanna, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 132. 56 John Paul II, prayer visit to the Memorial of Tzitzernagaberd, Yerevan, 26 September 2001 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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A more recent tribute to the memory of Benedict XV was given by the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II during the Mass commemorating the centenary of the genocide, held in St Peter’s Basilica on Sunday 12 April 2015: During this Holy Liturgy, celebrated in memory of our innocent victims on the occasion of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, we remember Your Holiness’s venerable predecessor, Pope Benedict XV, who made his voice heard in protest of the Armenian Genocide. […] In this respect, the publication of unpublished documents preserved in the Vatican archives is of great importance.57

Bibliography Carolla, Mario, La Santa Sede e la questione armena (1918–1922) (Milan: Mimesis, 2006) Chaliand, Gérard, and Yves Ternon, Le génocide des Arméniens: 1915–1917 (Brussels: Complexe, 1984) Dadrian, Vahakn N., Storia del genocidio armeno: conflitti nazionali dai Balcani al Caucaso (Milan: Guerini, 2003) Del Zanna, Giorgio, ‘Benedetto XV e la questione armena’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 125–37 Del Zanna, Giorgio, Roma e l’Oriente: Leone XIII e l’Impero ottomano (1878–1903) (Milan: Guerini, 2003) Impagliazzo, Marco, La finestra sul massacro: documenti inediti sulla strage degli armeni (1915–1916) (Milan: Guerini, 2000) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Les massacres d’Adana et nos missionnaires: récit de témoins (Lyon: Vve M. Paquet, 1909) Morgenthau, Henry, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York: Doubleday, 1918) Riccardi, Andrea, ‘Benedetto XV e la crisi della convivenza multireligiosa nell’Impero ottomano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 83–128 Riccardi, Andrea, Mediterraneo: Cristianesimo e Islam tra coabitazione e conflitto (Milan: Guerini, 1997) Ruyssen, Georges-Henri, ‘Una mediazione pontificia: Leone XIII e gli armeni negli anni 1894–1896’, in Suavis laborum memoria: Chiesa, papato e curia tra storia e teologia: scritti in onore di Marcel Chappin SJ per il suo 70° compleanno, ed. by Roberto Regoli and Paul van Geest (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2013)

57 ‘Durant cette Divine Liturgie célébrée en mémoire de nos victimes innocentes à l’occasion du centenaire du Génocide des Arméniens, nous nous souvenons des vénérables prédécesseurs de Votre Sainteté, le pape Benoît XV, qui fit entendre sa voix en protestant contre le génocide des arméniens. […] À ce propos, la publication de documents inédits conservés dans les archives du Vatican, est d’une grande importance’; Karekin II, speech given in St Peter’s Basilica, 12 April 2015 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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Ruyssen, Georges-Henri, ed., La questione armena, 7 vols (Rome: Orientalia Christiana, 2013–15) Ruyssen, Georges-Henri, ‘La Santa Sede e il genocidio armeno del 1915’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 81 (2015), pp. 195–214 Ruyssen, Georges-Henri, La Santa Sede e i massacri degli armeni (1894–1896) (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2012) Ternon, Yves, Les Arméniens: histoire d’un génocide (Paris: Seuil, 1977) Yacoub, Joseph, Qui s’en souviendra? 1915: le génocide assyro-chaldéo-syriaque (Paris: Cerf, 2014)

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Aid to the Syrians (1916–17): A Failure

The Great Famine that decimated the Syrians, especially the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon, during World War I, still strikes the heart today. At the time, it did not go unnoticed and was in fact denounced, as is proved by the abundance of newspaper articles and diplomatic dispatches devoted to it. In particular, it constitutes a large part of the diplomatic correspondence exchanged between the French Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of the Navy with their representatives in Egypt, the United States, Great Britain and Italy. It also occupies a large section in the Vatican Secret Archives.1 The famine, which was reported in early 1915, affected the Ottoman province of Syria, occupied by the troops from Constantinople, whose access to the sea was blocked in 1915 by a British and French decision. The two blockades, the Ottoman by land and the British-French by sea, seemed to be a formidable weapon by which to make the population disappear without combat. Syrian Christians and Jews throughout the world sought to help their fellow believers. However, the blockades were not broken. The Pope soon appeared to be the last possible recourse. In the end, his efforts to rescue the Syrians in 1916 and 1917 failed; the cause of this is undoubtedly to be found in the Holy See’s own diplomatic efforts during the war.

1.

The War in Greater Syria: The Army of Djemal Pasha, the Coastal Blockade and Famine

When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I alongside Germany and AustriaHungary in November 1916, the British presence in Egypt, the strategic position of the Suez Canal and Syria’s wide access to the Mediterranean Sea led the Ottomans to organize the defence of the province of Syria effectively. It is for this reason that Ahmed Djemal Pasha, one of the members of the triumvirate at the head of the Ottoman Empire, together with Ismail Enver Pasha and Mehmed Talaat Pasha, was entrusted with the mission to drive the British out of Egypt and dominate ‘Greater Syria’ in order to prevent the French and British from seizing it. Greater Syria then

1 AES, Stati ecclesiastici; AMAE, Série Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, vols 866–86.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 439–457 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118785

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included Palestine and Mount Lebanon. It was rich in agricultural products that, in times of peace, were enough to feed the population. Foreign consuls resided in Damascus and Beirut, with some in Jerusalem due to the presence there of the Holy Places, of the Mosque of Omar and of the Wailing Wall. At the beginning of 1915, the Fourth Army of Djemal Pasha tried unsuccessfully to seize the Suez Canal and then invaded the entire province of Syria, supported by some German and Austrian officers. There was, however, neither an Ottoman nor a German fleet to defend the Syrian coasts and ports. The French and British quickly considered using a blockade of the Turkish coasts, from Smyrna to the Suez Canal, as a weapon of war to prevent the Ottoman armies from being supplied by sea. From the beginning of 1915, they obstructed access to the Syrian coast. In brief, the gradual cessation of supplies from Russia or Anatolia, the speculation by some traders on food and the depreciation of paper money quickly led to crucial supply problems. From Cairo, where he represented France, Albert Defrance reported in April 1915: All normal trade with Palestine and Syria is suspended, and the surveillance of Allied ships makes smuggling impossible. Little by little the stock of goods from abroad is thus going to decrease. Oil, coal, sugar and coffee were initially scarce and are now reaching prices that will make them unaffordable in modest markets. Without oil, the engines that supply water will stop. […] The Turkish authorities, haunted by fears of an Allied landing, are reducing the country’s grain reserves to a minimum.2 In the summer of 1915, locusts struck the country, destroying all crops, fruits and even grass. During the same summer, the French Third Naval Squadron was sent to block the coasts of Syria, according to the decree of 23 August 1915; it occupied the Isle of Ruad off the coast of Tripoli. In response to this blockade, Djemal Pasha took measures that weighed heavily on the civilian population: requisitioning supplies for the army, monopolizing means of transport and draught animals and giving priority to supplying the army at the expense of the civilians. Putting the blame for the difficulties of supplies solely on the Franco-English maritime blockade, he penalized the Maronites in particular, whom he suspected of being Francophiles. As Albert Defrance also wrote: ‘The Turkish authorities allow in only the strictly necessary quantities of wheat, flour, barley and straw. Their goal would thus be to



2 ‘Tout commerce extérieur normal avec la Palestine et la Syrie se trouve suspendu et la surveillance des navires alliés rend la contrebande impossible. Peu à peu le stock de marchandises provenant de l’étranger est donc allé se réduisant. Le pétrole, le charbon, le sucre, le café se sont d’abord fait rares pour atteindre maintenant des prix qui les rendent inabordables aux bourses modestes. Faute de pétrole les moteurs qui fournissent l’eau vont s’arrêter. […] Les autorités turques, hantées par crainte d’un débarquement allié, réduisent au minimum les réserves de grains dont dispose le pays’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 868, f. 138, Defrance to Delcassé, 8 December 1915.

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keep the population at their mercy and to be able to starve them at the first sign of an Allied landing’.3 The Iranian student Qasem Ghani, who was studying medicine at the American University of Beirut after having begun at the University of St Joseph, wrote about the sombre days of the famine. He attributed them to the Entente Powers’ total blockade of the Syrian coast, the inadequacy of the Ottoman supply strategy, the inadequate harvests and bad weather, the diversion of supplies from Syria as a result of the Arab revolt further South, the speculative activities of some local grain merchants, the unhelpfulness of German military officials in Syria.4 In two articles, dated 30 and 31 March 1916, the newspaper al-Mokattam of Cairo attacked the initiatives of the Ottoman military: The horses and cattle have been requisitioned for the army; impossible imports lead to high prices. The Turkish government has limited the amount of bread for each person per day to one third of an ocque. The bread is baked in the ovens on behalf of the government, and it is the government that distributes it according to vouchers. The bread is black and dirty. In Beirut, men and women and children are hungry. […] Coffee has become a luxury; we drink coffee made from peas or lupin seeds. The famine from Beirut to Tripoli is atrocious; it is aggravated by the scarcity of means of transport; the trains do not have the coal to run. Typhus is spreading.5 The Vincentian visitor, who was temporarily residing in Alexandria, also denounced the genocidal initiatives of the Ottomans: ‘The famine would ravage the mountain, a famine intended’, he said, ‘to turn Syria into another Armenia’.6







3 ‘Les autorités turques ne laissent entrer que les quantités strictement nécessaires de blé, farine, orge et paille. Leur but serait ainsi de tenir la population à leur merci et de pouvoir l’affamer au premier danger en cas de débarquement allié’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 871, f. 109, Defrance to Briand, 24 April 1915. See Martin Motte, ‘La seconde Iliade: blocus et contre-blocus au Moyen-Orient (1914–1918)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 54, 214 (2004), pp. 39–53. 4 Houchang E. Chehabi, ‘An Iranian in the First World War Beirut: Qasem Ghani’s Reminiscences’, in Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years, ed. by Houchang E. Chehabi (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 120–35. 5 ‘Les chevaux et les bestiaux ont été réquisitionnés pour l’armée; les importations impossibles entraînent la cherté des prix. Le gouvernement turc a limité à un tiers d’ocque la quantité de pain pour chaque personne et par jour. Le pain est cuit dans les fours pour le compte du gouvernement et c’est lui qui le distribue suivant des bons. Ce pain est noir et malpropre. A Beyrouth hommes et femmes et enfants ont faim. […] Le café est devenu un luxe; on boit du café de pois ou de lupin. La famine est atroce de Beyrouth à Tripoli; elle est aggravée par la raréfaction des moyens de transport; les trains manquent de charbon pour circuler. Le typhus se répand’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, SyriePalestine, 872, f. 63, attachment to dispatch 115, Defrance to Briand, April 1916. Toufic Youssef Aouad, Le Pain (Arles: L’Orient des Livres, 2015). An ‘ocque’ is a Turkish unit of weight, equal to 1.25 kg. 6 ‘La famine ravagerait la montagne, famine voulue, dit-on, destinée à faire de la Syrie une autre Arménie’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, f. 74, the Vincentian visitor Romon to Defrance, June 1916.

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Bishop Joseph Darian, the Maronite Patriarchal Vicar in Egypt, sent a letter to Defrance in which he stigmatized the ambiguity of French politics: With this blockade, France believed that it was striking Turkey. In reality, it struck those whom it had to protect: the Syrian Christians in general and the Lebanese. […] It might be objected that many other nations, such as Belgium, Poland or Serbia, suffer as cruelly as Lebanon, perhaps even more so. […] The Lebanese, on the other hand, are slowly dying, without glory. At the moment, Lebanon is suffering at the hands of France and because of it. […] The only hope for the Lebanese Maronites is a generous and chivalrous France.7 The responsibility for the famine was thus sometimes placed on the Ottomans, sometimes on the French and the British, according to each person’s affinities and interests. Defrance took his reflections further. He could not help but write that the blockade of the Syrian coast set up by a French squadron not only hindered the provision of supplies to Mount Lebanon but that the presence of the French squadron had raised the hopes of the Syrians, which were ultimately disappointed. He ended with a discreet warning aimed at reminding the ministers in Paris that France was in danger of being the great loser by not taking the necessary steps to stop the famine: It is therefore not true to say that Lebanon is starving because we [the French] prevent the necessary foodstuffs from reaching it by sea, but it is unfortunately true that if its inhabitants are reduced to famine, mistreated, condemned, deported and hanged by the Turks, it is because they are partisans of France and because our fleet constitutes, on a permanent basis, a hope for them and a threat to their oppressors, a hope and a threat left unfulfilled. We must not hide the fact that we have incurred, and continue to incur on this account, a serious responsibility towards the Syrians in general and the Maronites in particular.8 The French Ambassador to Washington, Jean-Jules Jusserand, also suggested that France could be accused of having sacrificed its assistance to the people of Syria to callous military imperatives. He recalled that, in response to the American proposals





7 ‘Par ce blocus, la France croyait frapper la Turquie, en réalité elle a frappé ceux qu’elle devait protéger: les chrétiens de Syrie en général et les Libanais. […] Il pourrait être objecté que bien d’autres nations souffrent aussi cruellement que le Liban, peut-être plus encore, comme la Belgique, la Pologne, la Serbie. […] Les Libanais, eux, meurent petit à petit, sans gloire. En ce moment le Liban souffre par la France et à cause d’elle. […] Le seul espoir des Maronites libanais est la France généreuse et chevaleresque’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, f. 4, Mgr Darian to Defrance, 22 May 1916. 8 ‘Il n’est donc pas vrai de dire que le Liban meurt de faim parce que nous empêchons les denrées nécessaires d’y arriver par mer, mais il est malheureusement vrai que si ses habitants sont réduits à la famine, molestés, condamnés, déportés et pendus par les Turcs, c’est parce qu’ils sont partisans de la France et parce que notre flotte constitue, à titre permanent, une espérance pour eux et une menace pour leurs oppresseurs, espérance et menace restées sans réalisation. Nous ne devons pas nous dissimuler que nous avons encouru et continuons à encourir, de ce chef, une lourde responsabilité à l’égard des Syriens en général et des Maronites en particulier’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, SyriePalestine, 873, f. 1, Defrance to Briand, 23 April 1916.

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to take aid to the Armenians, the German Ambassador to Washington had replied that the Armenian massacres were imaginary. He knew from several sources that the number of deaths due to famine in Syria was constantly increasing and regretted the reduced revision of the number of famine victims in Syria by the American Secretary of State, Robert Lansing: From a private source the American Chargé d’Affaires has learned that the situation in Syria, particularly the Lebanon region, has long been desperate. The Acting Spanish Consul at Beirut, who recently arrived at Constantinople, states that he does not believe the Turkish Government is carrying out a previously conceived plan of starving the inhabitants of Lebanon, or that the entry of food into that region is prevented by a military cordon; he did believe that on account of the great scarcity of food products many thousand have died of starvation, but he added that Mr Hollis, the American Consul-General at Beirut, thought that the number was nearer 20,000 than 80,000. Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurance of my highest consideration. Robert Lansing.9 In March 1916, Enver Pasha took eight carts of wheat to Syria; in November, Djemal Pasha himself tried to alleviate the famine by organizing purchases to be stored10 but without any significant result because at the beginning of 1917 the Apostolic Delegate to Beirut, Bishop Frediano Giannini, announced 100,000 deaths and a depreciation of the paper currency by 60 per cent of its nominal value.11 In March 1917, the situation was still as dramatic as ever, according to the appeal by Chekri Ghanem in an article in the newspaper La Dépêche coloniale et maritime of 9 March entitled ‘La Syrie martyre sans témoins’.12 An article in the newspaper La Croix, ‘La Syrie martyre’, dated 10 March, reported extracts from letters from American pastors who had remained in Beirut, very weakened by the lack of food; the latter pointed to the difference in the treatment suffered by Syria, on the one hand, and by Mount Lebanon, on the other: I recently visited the city of Jounié where I met the man in charge of distributing food. He told me that the number of those who had died in the city and its surroundings reaches 5000 and that at a distance of two miles there is a village



9 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, ff. 122–24, Lansing to Jusserand, 26 June 1916, and Jusserand to Briand, 28 June 1916. Jean-Jules Jusserand was the French Ambassador to Washington from 1903 to 1925. Robert Lansing was Secretary of State of the United States from June 1915 to February 1920. W. Stanley Hollis was US Consul General in Beirut from 1911 to 1917. 10 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 874, f. 181. The 8 November 1916 issue of La Croix cites an article in the Beirut journal al-Bilagh signed by J. S. Nagyar on a meeting in Damascus of notable Syrians tasked with going ahead with the purchases and storing them. 11 Giannini to Gasparri, 14 February 1917, cited by Gabriele Paolini, ‘Contre la guerre par la faim: le Saint-Siège et les tentatives de ravitaillement des populations civiles des territoires occupés (1915–1918)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 258 (2015), pp. 57–70. 12 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 876, f. 28, received on 14 March 1917. Chekri Ghanem, a journalist and Francophile man of letters, founded the Comité Libanais de Paris in 1912. In 1916 he founded the paper al-Moustaqbal and then led the Comité National Syrien.

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whose population has been completely annihilated. I visit Lebanese villages from time to time where I have seen that famine is causing even more damage than in Syria. As a result, we have decided to distribute more relief in Lebanon. The governor of this country called me over a few days ago to thank me for the services I had rendered and to ask me to request the help of benefactors in America to come to the aid of the country because the number of those who had died from famine and disease was already 200,000. I believe that this number has increased since then. I have been told that half the population of Tripoli was exterminated by the same causes. In Homs, the same situation is estimated to be 10,000, of whom 60 per cent are women and children.13 In June, the French delegate François Georges-Picot described from the city of Cairo a still difficult situation around Beirut, due to the paper money crisis and Djemal Pasha’s requisitions for the army,14 even if the announcement of a good harvest offered some hope for a slight improvement. Today, historians such as Henry Laurens and Linda Schatkowski Schilcher estimate that there were more than 200,000, perhaps even 500,000, victims of famine on the Lebanese coast during World War I.15

2. Attempts to Supply Syria with Provisions by Relief Committees Created in Neutral Countries The French and English foreign ministers, Théophile Delcassé and Sir Edward Grey, set the tone as early as December 1914. They did not refuse the American Jewish Committee’s request to send food ‘to the destitute of Palestine’ outright but subjected this operation to conditions that made it practically impossible: In order to be able to respond, it would be necessary to be assured that the supplies that would be sent to Palestine by the Israelite Committee would be

13 ‘J’ai visité dernièrement la ville de Jounié où j’ai rencontré celui qui a la charge de distribuer les vivres. Il m’a dit que le nombre de ceux qui sont morts dans la ville et ses environs atteint 5000 et qu’à une distance de deux miles il y a un village dont la population a été complètement anéantie. Je visite de temps en temps les villages libanais où j’ai constaté que la famine fait encore plus de ravages qu’en Syrie: en conséquence nous avons décidé de distribuer davantage de secours au Liban. Le gouverneur de ce pays m’a appelé près de lui, il y a quelques jours, pour me remercier des services rendus et me demander de solliciter l’aide des bienfaiteurs d’Amérique pour venir en aide à la population, car le nombre de ceux qui sont morts par la famine et les maladies était déjà de 200,000. Je crois que ce nombre a augmenté depuis lors. Je me suis laissé dire que la moitié de la population de Tripoli est exterminée par les mêmes causes. A Homs, même situation: on évalue à 10,000 dont 60% sont des femmes et des enfants’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 876, f. 181, Lacaze to Ribot, 8 April 1917. 14 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 878, ff. 173–83, Georges-Picot to Ribot, 6 June 1917. 15 Henry Laurens, La question de Palestine, 5 vols (Paris: Fayard, 1999–2015), I: 1799–1922: l’invention de la Terre sainte (1999), p. 311; Linda Schatkowski Schilcher, ‘The Famine of 1915–1918 in Greater Syria’, in Problems of the Modern Middle East in Historical Perspective: Essays in Honour of Albert Hourani, ed. by John Spagnolo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 229–58.

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distributed under the control of the American consuls, that serious guarantees would be provided against interference by local authorities, and that destitute people of all nationalities, and not only Israelites, would participate in the distributions.16 When Delcassé agreed in January 1915 that a neutral ship would carry provisions collected by a committee chaired by Professor Gottheil of the University of Columbia, it was the French Minister of the Navy who declared himself ‘against any such authorization which would result in an increase in the Ottoman government’s resources for the supply of its armed forces’.17 Very quickly, the American Presbyterian missions proposed to send food as well, which would be received by their missionaries who had remained in Syria. They began by agreeing with the Jewish societies to charter a ‘relief ship’: ‘the suffering in our Syria Mission is getting to be tragic and acute, as it is in Palestine. As a consequence, a Committee composed of representatives of Mission Work in Asiatic Turkey and of the Jewish Societies in New York has been formed to send a relief ship’,18 wrote Stanley White, the Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in February 1915. Grey again opposed the action, but when he agreed, at the request of General John Maxwell who was in command in Egypt, to let oil into Syria, it was Delcassé’s turn to oppose it in order to prevent Great Britain from reaping a ‘moral profit’ at France’s expense. In Paris, Deputy Pierre-Étienne Flandin had formed, as early as December 1914, a Syrian Parliamentary Committee, whose presidency was entrusted to Georges Leygues. The incessant pressure that the committee exerted on the French government throughout the war allowed it to obtain permission to set up relief projects for the Syrians — which, however, never reached them. This was not because the French government opposed the delivery of this help but because it wanted to avoid that the British might benefit from the action. While the French Navy took help to the Armenians of Musa Dagh in September 1915, it had not supported the requests for assistance to the Lebanese on the part of the Lebanon League of Progress in New York: ‘The country lacks provisions and foodstuffs of all descriptions. It is on the verge of famine and disease. […] We refuse to give the Turks a chance to make of us

16 ‘Pour pouvoir répondre, il faudrait avoir l’assurance que les approvisionnements qui seraient envoyés en Palestine par le Comité israélite seraient distribués sous le contrôle des consuls américains, que des garanties sérieuses seraient fournies contre l’ingérence des autorités locales, enfin que les indigents de toutes nationalités, et non seulement les israélites, participeraient aux distributions’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Approvisionnement, 866, ff. 1–2, Delcassé and Grey to the American Jewish Committee, 10 December 1914. 17 ‘Contre toute autorisation de ce genre dont le résultat serait d’augmenter les ressources du gouvernement ottoman pour l’approvisionnement de ses forces armées’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Approvisionnement, 866, f. 7, Delcassé to the French Minister of the Navy Victor Augagneur, 7 January 1915; and f. 20, Delcassé to Augagneur, 20 January 1915. 18 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Approvisionnement 866, f. 40, Stanley White to John Foster and Jusserand, 25 February 1915.

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another Armenia or submit to the fate of the Christians of Urmia. Such a calamity could be averted if the Allies could help us avert it’.19 For its part, in the United States, the American Red Cross continued to ask relentlessly for medical supplies to be sent to its hospital in Beirut, directed by Dr Edwin Ward. In May 1916, the French officials in turn became concerned about the state of the Syrian population, both for humanitarian reasons and due to France’s reputation and future policy in the Middle East. The President of the Council, Aristide Briand, began to act discreetly to solicit and promote the intervention of neutral countries, according priority to the United States because France had no official relationship with the Vatican. In agreement with him, the British advocated the distribution of food by a neutral organization: His Majesty’s Commissioner at Cairo reports that considerable agitation reigns amongst the Syrians there owing to what seems to be the deliberate policy of the Turks to exterminate by starvation the population of Lebanon. […] Sir McMahon understands that a suggestion is being made to the French and United States Governments by their respective representatives at Cairo as to the necessity of affording relief to that starving people and arranging for a distribution of food supplies through a neutral agency on the lines of the Belgian relief organization.20 In June and July 1916, initiatives multiplied. The French government itself requested the intervention of the American representative to Constantinople to ask the Ottomans to permit the Syrians to receive supplies. For his part, Georges Leygues called for ‘energetic measures to put an end to atrocities and to ensure that these unfortunate populations are supplied by neutral powers’ (‘des mesures énergiques pour mettre fin aux atrocités et faire ravitailler par des neutres ces malheureuses populations’). Chekhri Ghanem preferred a Spanish solution to an American one. Pierre de Margerie, head of the political department of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accepted the Spanish option while fearing that the role thus conferred on Spain in Syria would run counter to French interests. The French Minister of the Navy, Lucien Lacaze, affirmed that all relief ships, whether Spanish or American, would be authorized to cross the blockade. In July, Briand in turn recommended that the American relief committee — then led by two former American ambassadors to Paris — should address the King of Spain.21 However, while Alphonse XIII did indeed offer to send a warship to supply the Syrians with the help of the American committee, in Constantinople the American chargé d’affaires, Hoffman Philip, encountered first

19 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 869, f. 35, Naoum A. Mozarkel (a member of the Lebanon League of Progress) to Jusserand, 4 June 1915. At that time, the Armenians in Turkey were victims of the massacre perpetrated by the Ottoman authorities. The Christians in the villages in the region of Urmia, in Iranian Azerbaijan, had been the victims of massacres during the occupation of the region by the Ottoman army from January to May 1915. 20 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, f. 41, Lord Bertie of Thame (British Ambassador to Paris) to Briand, 2 June 1916. 21 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, ff. 76, 81 and 111, 14–22–26–27 June and 5–13 July 1916, correspondence between Briand, Lacaze, Margerie, Leygues, Geoffray and Flandin.

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the Ottoman refusal to permit the arrival of relief, then their delaying responses. In Washington, Jusserand wondered whether it would be better to send medicines to the Germans and pay for their intercession with the Sublime Porte. However, the Ottomans persisted in their refusal, claiming that the harvest had been good and that ‘these are only political manoeuvres by the Allies which, while using an American committee, would suggest to the Syrians that they are in reality their benefactors’.22 While the Vatican was in turn called upon, there was talk of a possible association of the Ottoman Red Crescent and the American Red Cross, an association of which Pierre de Margerie was very sceptical. While the negotiations continued, with difficulty, in Washington, Constantinople, Paris, London, Madrid, in the Vatican and in Cairo, the idea arose of using the services of the American Committee of Armenian and Syrian Relief, set up in New York in October 1915 by a Presbyterian at the request of the American Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Henry Morgenthau. This committee was supposed to take help to the Armenians and Syrians in the Ottoman Empire, but the Ottomans never granted it permission. Officially supported by President Wilson in July 1916 and, with the strong help of American Protestant Churches, this committee focussed its efforts on the Caucasus and northern Iran.23 Jusserand supported the latter solution: Rather than forming, as we had thought, a special committee that would have taken on a French character in the eyes of the Turks due to the presence at its head of two former ambassadors to Paris, it is preferable to make use of the committee already operating here for the aid to Syrians and Armenians, which has a number of high-profile personalities offering us every guarantee. […] It is better to run the risk of a diversion of part of the food by the Turks and to give aid to people who are so cruelly affected than to remain, in the presence of their misfortunes, powerless to make even an attempt.24 However, as the supply of food was again refused by the Ottomans in November 1916, Briand accepted the idea of channelling funds to Syria through the French squadron and Albert Trabaud, who was in command on the Isle of Ruad. The Maronites, with Bishop Darian, and the Syrians of Egypt opened subscriptions and also collected money, which Rear Admiral de Spitz agreed to transfer to Syria. However, the British government opposed the removal from Egypt of the money collected because ‘of the 22 ‘Ce ne sont là que des manœuvres politiques des Alliés qui, tout en se servant d’un Comité américain, donneraient à entendre aux Syriens qu’ils sont en réalité leurs bienfaiteurs’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 874, f. 14, Jusserand to Briand, n.d. (received on 10 August 1916). 23 Florence Hellot-Bellier, Chroniques de massacres annoncés: les Assyro-Chaldéens d’Iran et du Hakkari face aux ambitions des empires (1896–1920) (Paris: Librarie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 2014), pp. 473–76. 24 ‘Au lieu de former, comme nous y avions pensé, un comité spécial qui eût pris aux yeux des Turcs un caractère français à cause de la présence à sa tête de deux anciens ambassadeurs à Paris, il est préférable de se servir du Comité fonctionnant déjà ici pour le secours des Syriens et des Arméniens et qui compte nombre de personnalités très en vue nous offrant toutes garanties. […] Il vaut mieux courir les risques de détournement d’une partie des vivres par les Turcs et faire porter à des populations si cruellement éprouvées une aide, même réduite, que de demeurer, en présence de leurs malheurs, impuissants à effectuer même une tentative’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, SyriePalestine, 874, f. 134, Jusserand to Briand, n.d.

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necessity of safeguarding the monetary situation in Egypt that was already affected by gold withdrawals’.25 The French had to increase their efforts with the British to obtain permission to take money out of Egypt and to release funds deposited in the Ottoman Bank — without result. France’s relations with its British ally were strained. The French felt that their interpretation of the recently signed Sykes–Picot Agreement was different from that of the British government. The English army was preparing to send its troops to Syria to play the card of an Arab revolt and erase the old relations established between the French and the Syrians. The proposed French humanitarian aid was sacrificed to British military interests. Only the hope of an eventual Vatican intervention in Syria remained.

3. The Vatican Attempts to Aid the People of Syria, 1916–17 The Holy See had denounced the war itself; it then interceded to have the prisoners released. But when the war also became economic, and the Entente Powers decided to isolate Germany, Austria-Hungary and their allies economically by means of a policy of blockades, the neutral countries that supplied them were also penalized.26 The Holy See then expanded the humanitarian action it had begun in 1915, an action that was in line with the values of Christian charity but which would also enable it to establish or strengthen diplomatic relations with neutral countries during the war. The Holy See thus hoped to justify its interventions and moral force at the time of the settlement of the conflict and to be able to solve the Roman Question, that had remained open since the proclamation of Rome as capital of Italy in 1870.27 The Holy See had already intervened in Syria, Albania and Montenegro in 1915 by sending funds to the Archbishop of Bar. In 1916, it continued its action by joining forces with the Spanish Red Cross and the English, but it came into conflict with the Italian government, which claimed that it was the state’s responsibility to provide for the needs of its people. They found better reception among the Austro-Hungarians who made the delivery of aid conditional to the Holy See’s taking charge of it. At the request of Jules Van den Heuvel, Minister Plenipotentiary of Belgium to the Holy See,28 the Apostolic Nuncio in Brussels, Achille Locatelli, had participated in the 25 ‘De la nécessité de sauvegarder la situation monétaire de l’Egypte déjà éprouvée par des retraits d’or’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 875, f. 214, Paul Cambon to Briand, February 1917. 26 Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte, F12, F23. Marjorie Milbank Farrar, Conflict and Compromise: The Strategy, Politics and Diplomacy of the French Blockade (1914–1918) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). 27 The Roman Question was not solved until 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaty between Gasparri and Mussolini and the delivery to the Pope of the Vatican in exchange for his recognition of the Italian State: see Stewart A. Stehlin, ‘The Emergence of a New Vatican Diplomacy during the Great War and its Aftermath’, in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, ed. by Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard (New York: Praeger, 1994), pp. 75–85. 28 AES, Stati ecclesiastici, pos. 1337, fasc. 487, Bonzano to Gasparri, 19 August 1916. Jules Van den Heuvel was Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See from 1915 to 1918: see Antonietta Pini-Tronati, ‘Jules Van den Heuvel, ambasciatore presso la Santa Sede’, Risorgimento, 18 (1976), p. 38.

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actions of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, created in 1914 to provide food to the people of Brussels and then Belgium. The Holy See had then intervened to ensure that the immunity of the Spanish and Dutch ships bound for Rotterdam would be recognized. The Pope had also taken into account the appeals from Poland and Lithuania. Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State, had also intervened in May 1916 to send carriages of provisions through Switzerland to the occupied French provinces. He had asked the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Léon-Adolphe Amette, to approach Denys Cochin, President of the Comité de restriction des approvisionnements et du commerce de l’ennemi, to facilitate their delivery.29 The Holy See was therefore well versed in relief operations when it was asked in 1916 to assist the people of Syria, who were severely affected by the war led by Djemal Pasha at the head of the Fourth Turkish Army and by the British and French blockade of the coasts. To the obvious humanitarian reasons that prompted it to intercede in order for Syria to receive basic supplies there was also the additional desire not to allow the holy places to fall into the wrong hands. In the eyes of the Holy See, republican France, which itself claimed a century-old duty to protect these places but which had not been able to prevent the fall of papal Rome in 1870, no longer seemed to be in the best position to continue playing this role. The French had no diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but Pope Benedict XV could raise the issue of the blockade with the Catholic Sir Henry Howard, who had been sent by the English government on a temporary mission to the Vatican since November 1914. Sir Henry Howard had come to congratulate the Pope on his election and had remained to explain English politics to the Vatican and seek ways to accelerate the return of peace, counterbalancing the influence of the Central Powers in the Vatican.30 In April 1916, the English Prime Minister, Sir Henry Asquith, was received by the Pope, to whom he presented the British plans for Syria.31 In May 1916, the Maronites in Egypt asked the Pope to approach Germany and Austria to act against Djemal Pasha. For his part, Mgr Schedid, Procurator of the Maronite Patriarch in Rome, did everything possible to raise funds for the Maronites in Syria, under the cover of the Vatican. He also convinced Bishop Francesco Tedeschini, the Undersecretary for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, to address the Ottomans directly, or through the Germans as intermediaries, to request a softening of the Turkish policy towards the Syrians. For their part, the Lebanese in Alexandria and Mansoura, Egypt, sent a telegram to the Pope, as did Michel Bey Lahoud in June 1916, appealing to his solicitude. It was finally at the same time that the American Committee of Armenian

29 ‘Committee to Restrict Supplies for and Trade with the Enemy’; Denys Cochin was later Undersecretary of State for foreign policy matters responsible for dealing with the blockade of Germany, in the French Foreign Ministry. 30 ‘The British Mission to the Vatican’, The American Journal of International Law, 9, 1 (1915), pp. 206–08. Massimo De Leonardis, ‘Le relazioni anglo-vaticane durante la prima guerra mondiale: l’imparzialità di Benedetto XV e la sua nota dell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV e la pace (1918), ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 171–211. 31 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 872, f. 68, Loiseau to Barrère, April 1916. Asquith was Prime Minister from 1908 to December 1916.

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and Syrian Relief requested the Holy See’s support for obtaining permission from the Ottomans to take supplies to Syria. Thus, in the space of three months (April–June 1916), Pope Benedict XV had become the main hope of the Syrians, and particularly the Maronites, against the famine that was decimating them. The Spaniards offered to be essential auxiliaries of the Holy See in delivering food aid, as they had done in Belgium. At the same time, the idea of addressing the King of Spain arose in June 1916, both in the correspondence between the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Georges Leygues and the French government, as well as in a note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dedicated to ‘provisions for Syria’: Mr Chekri Ghanem believes that the King of Spain would be happy to provide supplies for the starving Syrian peoples and send a warship to the Syrian coast. He considers that, from the French perspective, a Spanish intervention would be preferable to an American one, whose representatives in Turkey have never shown any great zeal towards us and whose government follows, in the eyes of the Syrians, a policy opposed to ours. Senator Flandin would share these ideas.32 The idea of an appeal to the Spanish to transport food was taken up by Pierre-Étienne Flandin and the Committee for French Action in Syria, who sent a letter to this effect to King Alfonso XIII.33 Then, in a letter sent by the White Fathers to the Œuvre d’Orient in Paris on 24 June 1916, the order’s Vice Procurator in Rome reported on the steps taken with the Pope: His Holiness will gladly take the necessary steps in the direction indicated. He would like these gentlemen to send their request to His Eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State [Gasparri] who will resubmit the matter to him and take action: ‘The members of the committee are too well known, the Holy Father kindly said, to need to be introduced’. For the request itself, the best thing to do would be simply to say what the committee wants to obtain and what it considers necessary or useful in the accomplishment of its charitable work. Let us therefore indicate the requests to be made to Turkey, either in favour of the Lebanese or to ensure the complete freedom of action of the local relief committees. Let us also say how these local distribution committees might be composed so that the Holy See can give instructions, if necessary, either to the Apostolic Delegate or to the

32 ‘M. Chekri Ghanem croit que le roi d’Espagne se chargerait volontiers d’assurer le ravitaillement des populations syriennes affamées et enverrait un navire de guerre sur les côtes de Syrie. Il estime que l’intervention espagnole serait, du point de vue français, préférable à celle des Etats-Unis dont les représentants en Turquie n’ont jamais fait preuve d’un grand zèle à notre égard et dont le gouvernement suit, aux yeux des Syriens, une politique opposée à la nôtre. M. Flandin, sénateur, partagerait ces idées’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, f. 111, note of the French Foreign Minister, 22 June 1916. 33 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, f. 235, Jules Cambon to Léon Geoffray (French Ambassador to Madrid), 20 July 1916.

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superiors of the religious communities. Father Burtin provided an oral outline of the project based on Father Féderlin’s letter: the Holy Father made no objection.34 Driven by the urgency of the situation, the applicants had found in the Pope an attentive ear. However, they experienced, just like the nations at war or the neutral countries, the lapse of time that separated the Holy See’s promises of intervention and their fulfilment. It was first necessary to assess the consequences of the planned intervention in terms of the diplomatic imperatives that would make it possible, when peace was achieved, to promote the Vatican’s political interests and the solution to the Roman Question successfully. The lengthy process of diplomacy dampened the enthusiasm of those who wanted to help the Syrians without any further delay. Meanwhile, in Constantinople, the Apostolic Delegate, Bishop Angelo Maria Dolci, had been asked to address the Ottoman Foreign Minister, as Amette had informed him in Paris. The Secretary General of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jules Cambon, took note of this, revealing the expectations of the French government in a letter to Margerie: ‘Ask the Cardinal, by acknowledging receipt of this letter from Cardinal Gasparri, to be so kind as to invite the Apostolic Delegate to Constantinople to monitor the implementation of the assurances given by the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs carefully and not to be content with his good words’.35 Gasparri wrote the following letter to Amette: The Apostolic Delegate to Constantinople has informed me that, following the strong protests that he had made to the [illegible] the feared persecution of Christians in Syria or especially in Lebanon, the Ottoman Foreign Ministry instructed him to reassure the Holy Father on his behalf that there had been and will be no massacres in these countries. In Syria, twenty-three Muslim notables were hanged because they were considered political offenders. Their respective families were deported, and this caused the alarm of the Christians. In Lebanon, some religious figures were then deported. These measures, the Minister himself stated, were taken due to any hatred for the Christian religion but only for political

34 ‘S. S. fera volontiers les démarches dans le sens indiqué. Elle désire que ces messieurs envoient leur requête à S. E. le Cardinal secrétaire d’Etat qui lui soumettra de nouveau la chose et fera les démarches: “Messieurs les Membres du Comité sont trop honorablement connus, a dit aimablement le Saint-Père, pour avoir besoin d’être présentés”. Pour la requête elle-même, le mieux sera de dire simplement ce que le Comité désire obtenir et qu’il juge nécessaire ou utile à l’accomplissement de son œuvre de charité. Qu’on indique donc les demandes à faire à la Turquie, soit en faveur des Libanais [sic], soit pour assurer la complète liberté d’action des comités locaux de secours. Qu’on dise aussi comment pourraient être composés ces comités locaux de distribution, pour que le Saint-Siège puisse au besoin donner des instructions soit à M. le Délégué apostolique, soit aux supérieurs des communautés religieuses. Le p. Burtin a indiqué de vive voix les grandes lignes du projet d’après la lettre du p. Féderlin: le Saint-Père n’a fait aucun objection’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, SyriePalestine, 873, f. 115, Father Delpuch (Vice Procurator General of the White Fathers in Rome) to Abbé Lagier (Vice Director of the Œuvre d’Orient, auxiliary of the Director, Mgr Charmetant), 24 giugno 1916. 35 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, f. 59, note of Jules Cambon to Pierre de Margerie, n.d., in the margins of Gasparri’s letter cited in the following note.

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reasons. Finally, he added that the Maronite Patriarch had already returned to his usual residence in Lebanon. I have made it my duty to communicate this news to Your Eminence, and I believe that it will also be appreciated by this government that has been so deeply concerned about the fate of Christians in the abovementioned regions.36 The Ottoman Foreign Minister acted surprised, saying that everything was in order and that there was no reason to intervene, since the harvest was good. Why were they forgetting, on the other hand, to aid the hungry in Smyrna and in Constantinople? Was not their aim perhaps, under the guise of provisioning, to encourage the Arab uprising against the Ottomans?37 Yet the Syrians continued to starve. At the beginning of 1917, the possibility of a concerted action by the Holy See, the King of Spain and Great Britain resurfaced, as is proved by a note inspired by the English Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, and written by the English Ambassador to Paris, Lord Bertie of Thame, for use by the Quai d’Orsay: His Majesty’s Government has received from His Majesty’s Envoy at the Vatican a proposal made by the Papal Secretary of State for the relief of the population of Syria, whereby the Spanish Governement [sic] should undertake to convey supplies, and a Commission in Beyrut, under the presidency of the Apostolic Delegate in Syria, should supervise their distribution. The Pope has promised to contribute a million lire for the purpose, and the Secretary of State enquires whether the ships conveying these supplies would be allowed free passage. His Majesty’s Ambassador has the honour, under instructions from the Secretary Balfour, to request that he may be favoured with the views of the French Government with regard to this proposal. So far as His Majesty’s Government are concerned, they entertain objections to all relief schemes of this kind, whether in Syria or elsewhere, which do not provide for proper guarantees from the enemy covering all the resources of the population to be relieved.38

36 ‘Mons. Delegato Apostolico di Constantinopoli mi ha comunicato che, in seguito alle energiche rimostranze da lui fatte presso la [illeggibile] la temuta persecuzione contro i cristiani di Siria o specialmente del Libano, il ministro degli Esteri ottomano lo ha incaricato di rassicurare in suo nome il S. Padre che nei paesi suddetti non vi sono stati né vi saranno massacri. In Siria furono impiccati 23 notabili musulmani, perché ritenuti rei politici. Le loro rispettive famiglie furono deportate e ciò ha causato l’allarme dei cristiani. Nel Libano, poi, vennero deportati alouni [sic] religiosi. Tali misure, affermava lo stesso ministro, sono state prese non per odio alla religione cristiana, ma solamente par ragioni politiche. Aggiungeva, infine, che il patriarca maronita era già tornato alla sua abituale residenza nel Libano. Ho stimato mio dovere di comunicare queste notizie a V. E. e ritengo che esse giungeranno gradite anche a cotesto Governo il quale si è preoccupato così vivamente della sorte dei cristiani delle regioni anzidette’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 873, f. 59, Gasparri to Amette, 9 June 1916. 37 AES, Stati ecclesiastici, pos. 1418, fasc. 562, Gasparri to Dolci, 27 June 1916; and Dolci to Gasparri, 29 July 1916. 38 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 876, f. 28, the British Ambassador to Ribot, 12 March 1917.

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At the end of March 1917, the French Minister of the Navy indicated the conditions under which the chartered Spanish ship could cross the blockade line: The carrier vessel should proceed to a designated port, preferably Port Said or Alexandria, where it would receive from the Admiral Commander of the Syrian Division the necessary instructions to cross the blockade line and proceed to the chosen Syrian port. The list of provisions will be communicated in advance to the Admiral Commander of the Syrian Division and no supplies other than those sent to the Syrian populations for humanitarian purposes could be delivered. On their return, no merchandise of any kind whatsoever could be delivered to Syria. In both directions, no passenger other than those in charge of distribution, the list of these being communicated, could be carried aboard this ship. Finally, the Allied governments will decline all responsibility for any damage, loss of ships and personnel that may occur as a result of the mines that the Ottoman government has laid along the Syrian coast.39 The United States then also entered the war against Germany in April 1917. The Ottoman government once again refused to let a ship chartered by the American Red Cross, the Caesar, dock, and it was forced to unload the food that it had transported in Alexandria. However, the Vatican seemed to score some points, since the provisioning project presented by Dolci first caught the attention of the Ottoman government on 22 July 1917: I. The Imperial Government, in response to the request expressed by Archbishop Dolci, Apostolic Delegate, on behalf of His Holiness the Pope, will protect and guarantee supplies destined for the civilian needy in Syria, grant exemption from all customs duties and facilitate as far as possible in the present circumstances the transport of food by rail and by any other means at its disposal. II. Since the supply operation is essentially a humanitarian work, it must be free of any political character. The foodstuffs transported by neutral boats flying the pontifical flag will be distributed not in the name of this or that committee but in the name of His Holiness the Pope. III. The Central Committee, on which the carrying out of the supply and distribution of food and its related control depend, will be composed as follows: The Apostolic Delegate to Syria as President. The Procurator of the Custody of the Holy Land 39 ‘Le navire transporteur devrait se rendre en un port désigné, de préférence Port-Saïd ou Alexandrie, où il recevrait de l’Amiral commandant la Division de Syrie, les indications nécessaires pour franchir la ligne de blocus et se rendre dans le port syrien choisi. La liste des approvisionnements serait communiquée à l’avance à l’Amiral Commandant la Division de Syrie et aucun autre approvisionnement que ceux envoyés aux populations syriennes dans un but humanitaire ne pourrait être débarqué. Au retour, aucune marchandise de quelque nature que ce soit ne pourrait être embarquée en Syrie. A l’aller comme au retour aucun passager autre que les personnes chargées de la distribution, dont la liste serait communiquée, ne pourrait prendre passage à bord de ce navire. Enfin, les Gouvernements alliés déclineront toute responsabilité au sujet des avaries, pertes de navires et de personnel qui pourraient survenir du fait des mines que le Gouvernement ottoman a mouillées sur les côtes de Syrie’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 876, f. 71, Lacaze to Ribot, 23 March 1917.

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as Vice President, and eight other members, of which two will be chosen by the Imperial Government from the Beirut Municipal Corps, and the others by the Apostolic Delegate to Constantinople from among the priests of any nationality. IV. The Local Committee will be composed of a local Catholic priest and two clergymen chosen by the Apostolic Delegate to Syria without regard to their respective nationalities. V. The Local Committees will be constituted by the Central Committee in Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo and Lebanon and in other places where they are deemed necessary. In the same place there may be one or more local committees as the need arises. VI. The mode of distribution of aid will be as follows: The main task of the Local Committee shall be to draw up the list of needy persons; to determine the aid to be given to each person, to submit the said list to the Central Committee (which will have full power to make any modifications deemed appropriate), and to send individually to each of the needy persons the aid finally decided by the Central Committee. VII. The stock of food shall be entrusted to the custody of His Catholic Majesty’s Consul, the King of Spain, or to a person appointed by him, who, at the request of the Central Committee, shall deliver the quantity of food designated by the said committee and shall take the necessary steps with the authorities in Beirut for the sending of food to its destination.40

40 ‘I. Le Gouvernement impérial à la prière exposée par Mgr Dolci Délégué apostolique au nom de S. S. le Pape, protégera et garantira l’approvisionnement destiné aux nécessiteux civils de la Syrie, accordera l’exemption de tout droit de douane, et facilitera autant que possible dans les circonstances actuelles le transport des denrées alimentaires par chemin de fer et par tout autre moyen à sa disposition. II. L’œuvre de ravitaillement étant essentiellement une œuvre humanitaire doit être exempte de tout caractère politique. Les vivres transportés par des bateaux neutres battant pavillon pontifical seront répartis pas au nom de tel ou tel autre Comité, mais au nom de S. S. le Pape. III. Le Comité central, dont dépend l’exécution du ravitaillement et la répartition des vivres ainsi que le contrôle y relatif [sic] sera composé comme il suit: Du Délégué apostolique de la Syrie comme du Président [sic]. Du Procureur de la Custodie de Terre Sainte comme vice-président, et huit autres membres, dont deux seront choisis par le Gouvernement impérial dans le Corps municipal de Beyrouth, et les autres, par le Délégué apostolique de Constantinople parmi les prêtres de n’importe quelle nationalité. IV. Le Comité local sera composé du curé catholique de l’endroit et de deux ecclésiastiques choisis par le Délégué apostolique de la Syrie sans tenir compte de leur nationalité respective. V. Les Comités locaux seront constitués par le Comité central à Jérusalem, Beyrouth, Damas, Alep, le Lyban [sic] et dans les autres endroits où ils seront jugés nécessaires. Dans un même endroit il pourra exister un ou plusieurs comités locaux selon que le besoin s’en fera sentir. VI. Le mode de répartition des secours sera le suivant: Le Comité local aura pour charge principale de rédiger la liste des nécessiteux; fixer à chacun les secours à donner, soumettre la susdite liste au Comité central (qui aura plein pouvoir pour y apporter toutes les modifications jugées à propos) et de faire parvenir individuellement à chacun des nécessiteux, les secours décidés en dernier lieu par le Comité central. VII. Le stock de vivres sera confié à la garde de M. le consul de Sa Majesté catholique, le Roi d’Espagne, ou à une personne nommée par lui qui, sur la demande du Comité central, livrera la quantité des denrées désignée par le susdit comité et fera les démarches nécessaires auprès des autorités de Beyrouth pour l’envoi des vivres à leur destination’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 878, f. 194, project transmitted by Dolci to Ribot, 22 July 1917.

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In the scheduled provisioning, the Holy See played the principal role through its apostolic delegates in Constantinople and Syria and the Procurator of the Custody of the Holy Land. The foodstuffs transported ‘in the name of His Holiness the Pope’ (‘au nom de S. S. le Pape’) would be distributed by a Central Committee which would distribute them among the local committees in the cities in Syria. Representatives of the city of Beirut would sit on the Central Committee. It was only a question of Catholics and Ottoman representatives. Shortly afterwards, however, the King of Spain faced a new refusal by the Ottoman government to allow a ship to dock: ‘The government cannot welcome the suggestion of His Majesty the King of Spain, as food is not lacking either in Syria or in Lebanon’.41 In September 1917, in response to a note from the British Ambassador to Paris on the aid to Syrians by the Holy See, Pierre de Margerie stressed how much the absence of direct relations with the Vatican isolated France: ‘Thus the absence of any French diplomatic representation at the Vatican leads to the result that the essential things concerning Syria, a traditionally French land, are referred to England alone’ (‘C’est ainsi que l’absence de toute représentation diplomatique française au Vatican aboutit à ce résultat que les choses essentielles concernant la Syrie, terre traditionnellement française, soient référées à la seule Angleterre’). In fact, the contacts established between the Germans and the King of Spain and, once again, the English approaches to the Holy See seemed to bear fruit: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has the honour of acknowledging receipt to the Embassy of England of its note of 10 September relative to the provisioning of the civilian population in Syria. The French government appreciates the generous thought that has dictated the actions of the Holy See and will be happy to facilitate the organization of relief for the unjustly afflicted peoples of Syria. Like the British government, it is mindful of the need to offer in Syria the same guarantees that the two Allied governments considered useful when sending supplies to Belgium and the invaded French departments. The German government, in response to the King of Spain’s requests, has undertaken not to requisition the local resources strictly necessary to the indigenous population. It therefore seems that it is the Holy See’s responsibility, on the strength of precedent, to obtain from the Ottoman government similar guarantees in favour of the peoples under Ottoman control and as a condition for an additional provisioning, undoubtedly necessary, to which the French government is ready to lend its support.42 41 ‘Le gouvernement ne peut accueillir favorablement la suggestion de S. M. le roi d’Espagne, les vivres ne manquant ni en Syrie, ni au Liban’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 876, f. 193, Lord Bertie of Thame to Margerie, 10 September 1917. 42 ‘Le Ministère des Affaires étrangères a l’honneur d’accuser réception à l’ambassade d’Angleterre de sa note du 10 septembre relative au ravitaillement de la population civile en Syrie. Le gouvernement français apprécie la pensée généreuse qui a dicté les démarches du Saint-Siège et il sera heureux de faciliter en ce qui le concerne l’organisation de secours aux populations injustement éprouvées de la Syrie. De même que le gouvernement britannique, il est attentif à la nécessité de prendre en Syrie les mêmes garanties que les deux gouvernements alliés ont jugé utiles au ravitaillement de la Belgique et des départements français envahis. Le Gouvernement allemand, cédant aux démarches

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The French and English governments were not convinced, however: the French Minister said that he was sensitive to ‘the generous thought that dictated the Holy See’s actions’ (‘la pensée généreuse qui a dicté les démarches du Saint Siège’) and ready to support it, while noting, as did the British government, that the Ottomans were not stopping their requisitions in Syria, Ottoman territory. He thus feared that the food shipments would indirectly benefit the Ottoman army. In December, Gasparri became concerned about the hesitations of Great Britain in the transport of food to Syria, and he received Benedict XV’s support to criticize the delay.43 The entry of General Edmund Allenby’s British army into Jerusalem on 10 December 1917 put an end to these projects. It was the English Protestants who took over. A Bishop MacInnes Fund for Relief in Syria and Palestine was indeed created in Cairo. It had an office in London and was presided over by the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem. Food distribution was controlled by the English military authorities.

4. Conclusions Who or what is to be blamed for Pope Benedict XV’s failure to supply the Syrians who starved to death during World War I? Not the lack of efforts to charter even one ship: since the army of Djemal Pasha was blocking the interior, food had to be delivered by sea. However, off the coast of Syria, the French squadron had set up its blockade. It was therefore necessary to persuade one of the belligerent forces to let a convoy of food pass through or to ask a neutral power to transport the food. When the Syrians exiles found that the Americans were unable to do so, they turned to the Vatican, whose Apostolic Delegate in Belgium belonged to the relief committee that had managed to open a breach in the existing military system. In Syria, neither the Americans, before April 1917, nor the Pope succeeded in weakening the determination of the warring powers not to allow anything that might give the enemy the slightest advantage. They also came up against the will of these same belligerents not to abandon the benefit of humanitarian relief to another power, even to an ally. What was left was the power of a disinterested diplomacy: yet the Vatican hoped to obtain from its charitable interventions the international recognition it lacked. It was not able, nor even knew how, to find ways quickly to circumvent the procrastination policies of the Ottomans or the British. The famine slaughtered a large number of Syrians while they waited in vain for ships carrying food.

du Roi d’Espagne, a pris vis-à-vis de lui l’engagement de ne pas réquisitionner les ressources locales strictement nécessaires à la population indigène. Il semble donc qu’il appartient au Saint-Siège, fort de ce précédent, d’obtenir du gouvernement ottoman des garanties du même ordre en faveur de populations de sujétion ottomane et en comme condition d’un ravitaillement de complément, sans aucun doute nécessaire, auquel le gouvernement français est disposé à prêter son concours’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 874, f. 87, note of the French Foreign Minister, 19 September 1917. 43 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Turquie, Syrie-Palestine, 880, f. 163, Barrère to Pichon, 10 December 1917.

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Bibliography Aouad, Toufic Youssef, Le Pain (Arles: L’Orient des Livres, 2015) Chehabi, Houchang E., ‘An Iranian in the First World War Beirut: Qasem Ghani’s Reminiscences’, in Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years, ed. by Houchang E. Chehabi (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 120–35 De Leonardis, Massimo, ‘Le relazioni anglo-vaticane durante la prima guerra mondiale: l’imparzialità di Benedetto XV e la sua nota dell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV e la pace (1918), ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 171–211 Farrar, Marjorie Milbank, Conflict and Compromise: The Strategy, Politics and Diplomacy of the French Blockade (1914–1918) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974) Hellot-Bellier, Florence, Chroniques de massacres annoncés: les Assyro-Chaldéens d’Iran et du Hakkari face aux ambitions des empires (1896–1920) (Paris: Librarie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 2014) Laurens, Henry, La question de Palestine, 5 vols (Paris: Fayard, 1999–2015), I: 1799–1922: l’invention de la Terre sainte (1999) Motte, Martin, ‘La seconde Iliade: blocus et contre-blocus au Moyen-Orient (1914–1918)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 54, 214 (2004), pp. 39–53 Paolini, Gabriele, ‘Contre la guerre par la faim: le Saint-Siège et les tentatives de ravitaillement des populations civiles des territoires occupés (1915–1918)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 258 (2015), pp. 57–70 Schatkowski Schilcher, Linda, ‘The Famine of 1915–1918 in Greater Syria’, in Problems of the Modern Middle East in Historical Perspective: Essays in Honour of Albert Hourani, ed. by John Spagnolo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 229–58 Stehlin, Stewart A., ‘The Emergence of a New Vatican Diplomacy during the Great War and its Aftermath’, in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, ed. by Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard (New York: Praeger, 1994), pp. 75–85

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The International Committee of the Red Cross, the Vatican and Prisoners of War

This contribution aims to show and describe the structure and actions of the two ‘offices’ which operated on behalf of prisoners of war, among other things, during World War I: the International Prisoners of War Agency (IPWA) of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)1 and the Provisional Office for Information on Prisoners of War (POIPW) in the Vatican. The scope of this comparison is to analyse the similarities and differences in their activity, structure and possibilities of action, shedding light on the dynamics that brought them into limited collaboration during the conflict.

1.

The International Prisoners of War Agency: The Precursors

The role of the IPWA2 was born from the experience of several agencies for prisoners of war that operated between 1870 and 1914 in Basel, Trieste and Belgrade.

1 On the history of the organization, see Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, 5 vols (1963–2015), I: De Solferino à Tsushima, ed. by Pierre Boissier (Paris: Plon, 1963) and II: De Sarajevo à Hiroshima, ed. by André Durand (Geneva: Institut Henry-Dunant, 1978); the essays of Daniel Palmieri, ‘An Institution Standing the Test of Time? A Review of 150 Years of the History of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, International Review of the Red Cross, 94, 888 (2012), pp. 1273–98 and François Bugnion, ‘Birth of an Idea: The Founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross and of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: From Solferino to the Original Geneva Convention, 1859–1864’, International Review of the Red Cross, 94, 888 (2012), pp. 1299–338; Stefano Picciaredda, Diplomazia umanitaria: la Croce Rossa nella seconda guerra mondiale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003); Hans G. Knitel, Les délégations du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge (Geneva: Droz, 1967). 2 Histoire du Comité, I and II; Gradimir Djurovič, L’Agence centrale de recherches du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge: activité du CICR en vue du soulagement des souffrances morales des victimes de guerre (Geneva: Institut Henry-Dunant, 1981); Les procès-verbaux de l’Agence internationale des prisonniers de guerre (AIPG), ed. by Daniel Palmieri (Geneva: ICRC, 2014).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 459–478 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118786

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The first of these experiences was that in Basel during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), during which, on 18 July 1870, the ICRC decided to set up an agency to search for, and help, the wounded and sick from the two armies on the basis of the resolution of the International Conference of the Red Cross held in Berlin on 22–27 April 1869. At the beginning of its activities, along with the assistance it offered, the agency had already activated a service for the exchange of correspondence between prisoners and their families. The circular with which the agency was started (31 July 1870) represented the paralegal basis for later undertakings.3 Alongside this agency, the ICRC decided to set up an office with five employees at its headquarters in Geneva in order to deal with the most difficult cases that Basel had not been able to solve. This created an overlapping of tasks and types of competition between Geneva and Basel, in particular with respect to the exchange of lists of prisoners, on no juridical basis, which Gustave Moynier4 had requested from the warring nations. When the agency began its activity in Basel, it was not imagined that the amount of work would be so great (exchange of correspondence, money and parcels, for instance, without any distinction between the sick and the wounded). As a consequence, only a couple of people were initially employed, a number that was shortly multiplied, while the agency was transferred to the premises of the city casino. The activity of this dozen employees was divided between sending correspondence, receiving and transferring money and seeking the whereabouts of prisoners on the basis of two alphabetical lists (one of the wounded, received from the warring countries, and the other drawn up as a result of requests from families). Towards the end of the year, the agency began to work on the basis of fiches compiled with data received from various regiments. On 19 August 1870, Berlin started a central (government) office for research, as did Paris, both using this fiche system. On 22 November 1870, the International Committee for Aid to Prisoners of War was set up in Brussels to distribute aid, letters and money. Together with a process for the internment of French prisoners in Switzerland, the Bern government decided to create its own office and, on 10 February 1871, the International Red Cross chose to institute a central agency in collaboration with it for aid to those soldiers interned in Switzerland for research and communication. The declaration of peace, however, did not coincide with the closure of the office in Basel, which remained active until 4 March 1871 in order to finish sending the money and letters received. This experience shed light on two facts: the ICRC controlled, and thus guaranteed, the work of the agency in regard to the warring nations; and, notwithstanding the lack of a juridical basis, no belligerent





3 How did this idea come about? In the correspondence of Moynier, and in the reports of the agency at Basel, precedents are not found. However, there was a precedent during the Crimean War with the activity of Count Demidov (a member of the Russian delegation to Vienna), cited by Dunant. Moynier’s circular of 31 July 1870 refers to the activity cited by Dunant. The new aspect concerning it is that it does not differentiate between sick and healthy prisoners. Another possibility that may be a precedent in regard to this institution might be found in the experience of the German-Danish War in 1864, in which the first delegates of the ICRC worked. 4 See Jean de Senarclens, ‘Moynier, Gustave’, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz [accessed 10 January 2019].

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was opposed to such activity with the exception of the Berlin Resolution of 1869. A few years later, in occasion of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), the ICRC decided to create an agency exclusively for the transmission and coordination of aid to the different national Red Cross societies, establishing Trieste as the safest place in the vicinity of the combat. The lists of Turkish prisoners of war who were in the hands of the Russian Empire arrived in Geneva despite everything through the efforts of British diplomacy, while the Sublime Porte declared that it had never received this list and hence neither applied the principle of reciprocity nor sent any list. On 18 May 1899, the First Hague Conference opened, during which various conventions were developed. In relation to the regulations concerning the laws and customs of war on land tied to the Second Convention, for the first time the structure and organization of each office of research were set out clearly (Art. 14–16), without, however, highlighting the hierarchical relationships among the various offices.5 Only in 1902, at the Seventh International Conference of the Red Cross in Saint Petersburg, was it decided that each one would be responsible for its own national office, while an international office with the role of being an intermediary among the national offices would be established in Geneva. This process was reflected in the revision of the Geneva Convention in 1906, particularly in Art. 4. In the following year, the Eighth International Conference of the Red Cross was held in London, during which a disagreement occurred among the various national societies in regard to the need for an office for prisoners of war after the experience of the Russo-Japanese War.6 The conference’s resolutions constituted one of the paralegal sources for the transmission of information between national Red Cross societies and ICRC. In 1912 the First Balkan War broke out, and the ICRC sent as its delegate to the opposing forces Dr Carl de Marval, with the request that he be able to organize an agency for the prisoners. The most suitable place for this seemed to be Belgrade, and thus the agency came into operation there on 15 November 1912 under the control of the Swiss Consul, Mr Gharle Voegeli. It continued the actions of the previous agencies by distributing donations and managing correspondence and money sent between the prisoners and their families. For greater efficiency, the agency printed and sent to all of the Red Cross’s national societies in warring countries forms with the information necessary for the completion of the fiches.7 The Belgrade agency officially closed on 30 November 1913, but its work of delivering correspondence, parcels and money continued until the spring of 1914. When this work was concluded, Voegeli proposed creating branches of the agency in all prison camps.

5 See Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its Addendum Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, 29 July 1899 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 6 The Russian representative, Fyodor Martens, rejected the need for this office, which the French representative, Hussenot de Senonges, on the contrary, said was fundamental. 7 Number, name rank, place, regiment, department, weapon, room number, entry, exit, observations.

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On 21 August 1914, with the ICRC Circular 159 of 15 August 1914, the IPWA opened in Geneva within the same legal framework of the Balkan Wars experience.8 The first list of the French prisoners in Germany arrived in Geneva on 7 September 1914, through the hands of the President of the Red Cross in Freiburg. However, since the French list was late in arriving and Germany was threatening retaliation, Gustav Ador,9 the ICRC President, went to Bordeaux to request the document, which arrived in Geneva on 26 September. By invoking the principle of reciprocity, the ICRC managed to convince the countries to send their lists as regularly as possible, even using traditional diplomatic channels. In light of previous experience, the activities of the agency were structured so that they divided the areas of competence according to the lines of battle, thus, in as far as the Eastern front between Russia and Germany was concerned, the Danish Red Cross was asked to deal with it. The Austro-Italian front, instead, was managed directly by the national societies of the Italian and the Austro-Hungarian Red Crosses, notwithstanding the unfavourable opinion of the ICRC. In September 1914, the agency, which was based in the Rath Museum in Geneva, consisted of eight members and a hundred collaborators, who began to develop the particular working method that characterized this institution.10

2. The International Prisoners of War Agency during World War I Marguerite Frick-Cramer11 shows that in setting up an office for research it was very necessary to find a place where all the fiches produced could be stored as soon



8 The Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907, Geneva Convention, 1906. At the level of paralegal norms, this refers to the resolutions of the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth International Conferences of the Red Cross, in particular the Ninth (Washington, DC, 1912), which concluded with a resolution concerning assistance to prisoners, according to which the ICRC could open an agency for international research without asking for authorization from the belligerents, but merely by communicating the fact to them by means of a circular. See also Histoire du Comité, II, p. 249. 9 See François Walter, ‘Ador, Gustave’, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz [accessed 10 January 2019]. 10 Djurovič, L’Agence centrale, pp. 7–37. 11 See Martine Piguet, ‘Frick [-Cramer], Marguerite’, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz [accessed 10 January 2019]; Marguerite Frick-Cramer, Organisation d’un bureau central de renseignements (Geneva: ICRC, 1932), which illustrates the form of the organization of a central office for research relating to prisoners on the basis of the experience of World War I. Only with the 1929 Convention was the necessity of establishing, in a case of war, a central office for prisoners of war in neutral countries sanctioned. Frick-Cramer then observed how this centralization was fundamental to the greater accuracy of the information. The neutrality of the host country ensured the continuity of the actions and let them avoid having to be subject to the contingencies of the war. Finally, using specialized, non-deployed, personnel meant the work would be more precise and could be studied in greater depth in favour of whoever the subject was, a prisoner or a missing person.

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as possible. For the IPWA12 this meant a space of around 2238 m2, which required three relocations during the war. The necessary personnel were then chosen with great care, some of whom could be volunteers — although they had to agree to work regularly, at least for three half-days a week — but most of the personnel had to be trained as technicians and understand historical methodology, phonetic classification (as archivists, as we would say today) and the languages of the warring countries,13 while for the administrative sector and the treasury accounting experts were needed. In general, the agency required typists and shorthand typists with a knowledge of foreign languages (during the conflict the IPWA had over a hundred typists and about forty shorthand typists). To these personnel a sufficient number of available substitutes had to be added. Another question that arose immediately was the economic one, i.e. the agency’s budget. In the case of IPWA, almost all this work was carried out free of charge. The monthly budget was 42,000 Swiss francs, and donations during the conflict amounted to about 2.7 million francs. Frick-Cramer argues that the IPWA work had to focus on three questions: centralizing the individual requests for information, organizing the sending of correspondence and parcels for the prisoners and gathering general information about the countries involved with the consequent reporting and furnishing proof to the ICRC of possible violations of conventions. IPWA’s work had to be based on three principles: the division of the work (each of IPWA’s collaborators had to be specialized in a well-defined activity, and no individual initiative was allowed); the use of scholarly methods (any information had to be communicated only after the original sources had been consulted, and the indications of these had to be precise); on top of all this there had to be a steering committee that could control the work of the different sections on a weekly basis.14 IPWA’s operations materialized thanks to the passage of information through different phases, which broadly corresponded to the various sectors: arrival and sorting, copying and typing, research, sending correspondence, parcels and money 12 For an overview of the work relating to the actions of ICRC during World War I, see Le rôle et l’action de Comité international de la Croix-Rouge pendant la guerre européenne de 1914 à 1916, ed. by Paul Des Gouttes (Geneva: Imprimerie du Journal de Genève, 1917); Antoine Fleury, ‘La Croix-Rouge Internationale et son action durant la première guerre mondiale’, in 17e Congrès international des sciences historiques, ed. by Manuel Espadas Burgos and Eloy Benito Ruano, 2 vols (Madrid: Comité Español de Ciencias Históricas, 1992), II, pp. 1017–21; Jacques Moreillon, Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et la protection des détenus politiques (Lausanne: Éditions L’Age d’Homme, 1973); Matthew Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians by Belligerent States during the First World War and the Response of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41, 1 (2006), pp. 5–19. See also Les procès-verbaux, ed. by Palmieri, where, together with a report on the information that arrived at and left from the agency, the minutes reported in minute detail the hiring of personnel each time it happened, the type of remuneration (in the case of typists, also the model of typewriter being used, and sometimes rented, the transfer of personnel from one job to another inside the same agency, and the areas which handled the various services). 13 In the minutes of the agency for 4 February 1915, we read about how the Ministry of Public Education had furnished the agency with 150 teachers for afternoon and evening activities from Thursday to Saturday. See also Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, C G1A, 02, 03–02. 14 Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 13–18.

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to prisoners, civilian service, repatriation and hospitalization in neutral countries and service in the treasury and administration. The arrival and sorting service received the requests for information,15 both written and verbal,16 and thus had to be separated into the different agency areas. There were three phases in processing the information within this sector. Initially, communications were selected according to their external characteristics. Internal agency communications had a double label, coloured according to the internal sender.17 External ones, without a label, were sorted according to their geographical provenance.18 The next phase concerned the content, and each geographical area was assigned to a particular employee, according to that person’s linguistic competence. This employee then drafted a certificate of reception of the communication (which was sent to the applicant), prepared the data for the typist who would compile the fiches de demande (request forms), and classified them according to precise categories.19 Those communications that were classified as being in the ‘other’ section were put through a third phase, a specialized one, while the others were channelled to the agency’s different sections on standardized forms. The contents of the request were transcribed on a fiche, and an immediate response would be given simultaneously on the basis of the information received from the IPWA. If a request needed research, the corresponding fiche was put into the written request circuit. In this case, too, the acceptance service kept a copy of the fiche in order to keep track of it.20 The typing and copy service had various duties: copying the edited lists on the basis of the requests for information, lists which were then sent to the warring nations and to the national Red Cross societies; drafting the fiches de demande and the fiches de renseignements (information cards); preparing the different models, circulars and reports; verifying the lists that had been produced; preparing a preliminary classification in order to subdivide the fiches afterwards. As soon as it arrived, each information list was put into an entry register, which provided the following data: the code given by the office that had sent it, IPWA’s code, the date of its arrival in Geneva and the date on which it was resent to the office responsible for it. On the same list, the date on which it had arrived at IPWA and the number of pages of the list itself were indicated. These specific codes for every office revealed, for example, whether the information had arrived from the national offices, and thus indicated the capture of soldiers; whether it referred to the dead or buried; whether the information was unofficial and had arrived from those who were responsible in the prison camps, from Red Cross sections or from private individuals.

15 About 3000 communications per day, after Marne and Verdun up to 30,000. 16 Between 1914 and 1918, about 120,000 persons showed up in person at the headquarters of the IPWA looking for information. 17 Red for communications of the committee, green for the services of the Entente, pink for those of the Central Powers, and yellow for civil communications. 18 Postal stamp or other geographical information gleaned from the outside of the letters. 19 First question of missing military, question regarding the civilians, repatriation or internment, transmission of correspondence, treasury, other. 20 Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 19–22.

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This code was written on the fiche de renseignements as a summary of the information about the origin of the data. The lists were then sent to the typing service (about fifty typists), who quickly copied them, paying attention to ordering the sheets, graphic particulars and abbreviations. At the same time, the collation service checked the correctness of the copies made in Geneva, which were then initialled on every sheet by the person who had completed the collation. While the original list remained in Geneva, the copy was sent to the designated office (whether Red Cross or governmental) by the following day. Along with the respective government, the other recipient of this information was the family of the dead or imprisoned soldier. In a case in which the family’s address was already on the arriving list (usually only for the British or American lists), the agency contacted the family directly and the date of that communication was indicated both on the original list and on the fiche de renseignements concerning the person. If the address was not known, the agency waited for a request. The fiches de renseignements (8 × 12.5 cm) were of different colours according to the warring powers: green for the Entente, pink for the Central Powers, and yellow for civilians. They reported the name and information pertaining to the identity of the person (prisoner, wounded or dead), without any other information other than the page in the list. They thus represented a kind of alphabetical index of all of the information lists so that the workers did not have to check the original lists, which were accessible to only a couple of specialized people. The one who wrote the fiche de renseignements had to write on the original list the date of compilation of the fiche and his or her own name. These fiches became the central alphabetic-phonetic archive, the heart of the IPWA.21 Along with them, there were also those that became part of the topographical archive described below. The letters with requests for information were sent from the receiving service to the copying service in a file of one hundred requests, numbered with the signature of the typist who wrote the fiche and the date of the arrival of the file. All the fiches de demande, which were in the same format as the fiches de renseignements, were written on white fiches. The first three letters of the last name (in capital letters) were in the upper left corner, and the number of the file or the classification letter for the request was written in the upper right corner. The fiche then noted the first name, last name, rank, military affiliation and date of disappearance of the person, as well as the name and address of the requester. All this was written in the first half of the right-hand side of the fiche. The rest of the space was dedicated to the IPWA communications. The order was the same across the sectors (Entente, Central Powers, civilians and treasury). Like the fiches, the fiches de renseignements and the fiches de demande were filed with the original information. These fiches were then placed in the central alphabetic-phonetic archive and thus mixed with the others, in alphabetical order, in groups corresponding to the nationalities of the missing and the prisoners, according to the corresponding archive (German, French, British, Romanian, etc.).

21 See the 1914–1918 Prisoners of the First World War ICRC Historical Archives at [accessed 10 January 2019].

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At this point, the classification was complete. The fiches arrived at the proper archive, usually on the day following the arrival of the information list or the letter of request. Obviously, the speed and rigour of the transcriptions was essential.22 The research service was divided into three sections (Entente, Central Powers and civilians) which were, in turn, subdivided according to the language of the missing person or prisoner and the research method used. The following presents the method for seeking prisoners and those missing; a different method was used for civilians. The work was based on a central archive comprised of the fiches de demande and the fiches de renseignements of either one of the warring powers or of a nationality,23 which permitted the reconstruction of any communication with IPWA. Each morning, the workers received the fiches, placed in alphabetical order and ready to be copied: At the IPWA, each worker was placed in front of a kind of desk that was large enough for him/her to be able to write comfortably. Above this were five shelves on which the boxes of fiches were placed. These were of the same height and width as the fiches and were about forty centimetres long, with the first three letters of the names contained within it on the front.24 The fiches could be of four types: (1) First, a fiche de demande about a missing person (white) was placed into the archive in alphabetical order. (2) The second was a fiche de demande about a missing person that had already been made by another applicant (double, white); in this case the worker verified whether this referred to the same missing person, thus indicating on the older fiche the name of the new informant (only in the case when that informant was a relative or an official institution), while, on the first fiche, the number of the file from which the new information had been received was marked; only at this point could the second fiche be destroyed. (3) Additional information furnished by an applicant about a missing person or prisoner (white) was attached to the first fiche. (4) The fiche de renseignements (coloured) was put into its correct category with the fiche de demande. If the file of the fiches de demande and the fiches de renseignements were completed without errors, the fiches de renseignements (coloured) relating to the dead or to prisoners were automatically placed in alphabetical order next to the fiches de demande (white) relating to the same person.

22 Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 23–31. 23 At a later time, some national archives were combined according to their common language (such as British and American, or Austrian and German, French and Belgian) or by the front on which they fought. 24 ‘À l’AIPG chaque travailleur était installé devant une sorte de pupitre composé d’une tablette suffisamment profonde, sur laquelle il pouvait commodément écrire et surmontée de cinq rayons sur lesquels étaient posées les boîtes à fiches. Ces boîtes appropriées à la hauteur et à la largeur des fiches étaient longues d’environ 40 cm et portaient sur le devant l’indication des trois premières lettres des noms qu’elles contenaient’; Frick-Cramer, Organisation, p. 33.

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However, there were infinite variations in spelling (and thus difficulties). The original lists that were compiled in the camps were often written by people who did not know the prisoners’ language, and did not indicate the person’s information correctly; this was especially true as far as those who had died were concerned.25 The fiches de demande might also contain errors, or might have many requests for the same person, but with the name spelt in totally different ways. For this reason, IPWA set up a particular cataloguing system that listed the names according to phonetic and graphic rules,26 a system that was risky at first glance, but which was then used by other offices for prisoners of war.27 If a match was found between the fiche de renseignement and the fiche de demande, the worker wrote (in pencil) the code of the first on the second, then sent the latter to the listing service for verification and possible contact. Given that taking a fiche from the archive could be risky (due to loss, the arrival in the meantime of further information, mistakes in the re-filing), a non-removable placeholder card in a different format was put in its place, with the date of retrieval, first name, last name, regiment and code of the file from which the original information came. The fiche de demande that was sent to be verified carried a sign near the request for information, in case they did not match; otherwise, this would be sent to the communications service, which would write a letter to the family, noting the date when it was sent on the same fiche; it would then be sent back to the central archive. The communication included the code and date of the list, plus the information concerning how it had arrived. The communication was phrased in a hypothetical way in case the information did not match. From the first month of the war, the agency principally concentrated on communicating cases of capture and death to those who had sent requests for information, so that during the conflict a norm was established that prisoners were made to write a postcard to their families immediately after reaching a prison camp. However, given the difficulties involved in understanding the data correctly, IPWA decided to create three linked archives that were constructed on the basis of different data. The first was the topographical archive, which classified information on subjects in relation not to the individual, but to the place of internment or burial. Besides affording greater detail, this classification had the effect of quickly identifying the mortality rate in the different camps and areas, and thus, when this was possible, they were able to send adequate aid. A second archive was constructed according

25 Examples of such errors can be found in Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 35–36. 26 For example, in French names, there is no great difference between u and n, hence Audibert and Andibert were classified together. The same is true of the letters l and b, or k and h. In the same way, at the phonetic level, no difference was made between single and double letters. In the French archives, the names Lefevre, Lefaivre e Lefebvre were all classified together; in the German one, words which began with Sz, Z, Ch, Sch. Within the archives, they were then put in alphabetical order, with the surname first followed by the first name. In a case where there was more than one first name, crossreferenced fiches were compiled for each of the first names. In the case of very common names, the fiche was also filed by regiment. 27 On 27 October 1914, Gardy, the Director of the Public Library in Geneva, also consulted it; Les procèsverbaux, ed. by Palmieri, p. 38.

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to regiment. Each large fiche represented a regiment and carried the names of the members of the military unit, with other data on the individual soldiers,28 classified by army type (cavalry, infantry, artillery, engineers, etc.) and in numerical order, which could report on a maximum of 220 subjects. The third (less important) archive was the chronological one, constructed on the basis of the data concerning the principal battles. The cross-checking of the different archives made it possible to check the information that arrived from the offices of the warring nations, fill gaps, find errors and, above all, give applicants information. The research section worked according to three categories (missing persons, prisoners and the dead), not necessarily acting on requests to the agency. Theoretically the warring parties exchanged information about these categories, but, in reality, the delays in communication were such that the IPWA initiated its own searches. In other cases, communications were interrupted or very slow; one can think, for instance, of the situation in the occupied zones,29 the Eastern front or the prison camps in Siberia. In these cases, the IPWA initiated regimental enquiries by asking for information from companions in arms, and then drafting the lists of the missing on the basis of the fiches de demande to which there had still been no reply. After this, up to 200 copies of these lists were printed and sent to all the known members of the regiment30 in order to obtain further clarification or confirmation. The information that was gathered was then reproduced in triplicate for the Ministry of War, the family of the missing person and for the agency that entered the information in the archive. Other requests, which were related to enquiries from the families about the health of prisoners, were handled by specialized personnel with a knowledge of the details of events in the different areas, both in prisons and in hospitals. Enquiries about the dead might also be initiated in response to requests from the families, or they might be started spontaneously by the IPWA. The families turned to the agency in order to learn the particulars relating to the last moments in the life of their relative, about the people who had been close to him, his place of burial, and perhaps to obtain personal objects, a death certificate or even simply a photo of the grave and the possibility of repatriating his remains. The IPWA prepared forms in the languages of the detaining power and of the deceased, and these had to be completed by the doctor in charge and two witnesses. With the form thus completed, it was sent to the family and was considered an official death certificate. Furthermore, the IPWA acted as a sort of ‘antenna’ for the ICRC in order to gather various types of information concerning which the ICRC in Geneva was expected to

28 Rank, first name, place and date of capture, place of internment and reference to the research. 29 Annette Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914–1918: populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Noêsis, 1998). 30 In the case of naval battles, all those who were on a ship constituted a regiment. In the case of aerial battles, the information received from the two sides and from the press were compared; requests were then sent for information to the military departments that were closest to the place where the battle had occurred, and also to the competent military authorities.

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intervene or assume a standpoint.31 The sources from which such information could be drawn were varied, e.g. the press (from which the most relevant news for the ICRC was gathered and archived) and the requests from the families to the agency. From the internal viewpoint, an important source was the confidential reports written by the delegates of the protecting powers and those of the ICRC and of the Young Men’s Christian Association, who visited the prison camps. Finally, the ICRC also received reports about those who were interned in Switzerland, which enabled them to complete the overview. The series of information was categorized by theme (treatment, correspondence, hygiene in the camp, etc.) for each country considered. This permitted a typological comparison and a rapid evaluation of the application of the principle of reciprocity, or the lack thereof. Given the confidentiality of the reports of the delegates of the protecting powers, few IPWA workers were authorized to see these texts. From 1916, the ICRC published a weekly summary of general information, divided according to country, in the journal Nouvelles de l’Agence internationale des prisonniers de guerre. Another service provided by the agency was the transmission of letters, packages and money from families to prisoners. Initially, all the communications went through Geneva; later, the belligerent and protecting powers established specific agreements and postal services. This permitted the IPWA to concern itself with the communications in only the most inaccessible areas. At this point, Bern ran the mail service for the Eastern front directly, while Denmark and Sweden ran the one for the Western front. When a letter did not have a complete address, the archive in Geneva was searched for the information and the letter was then sent, in a closed envelope bearing the emblem of the Red Cross, to the relevant office.32 As far as the families resident in the occupied zones were concerned, the whole affair was handled by the civilian section of IPWA. Where there were prisoners who had been without news from their families for long periods, an express message service was effected in which a form in multiple copies was sent, on which the prisoners could write a maximum of twenty words, and their family had a similar space for their reply.33 Packages, instead, which were exempt from customs fees, were handled by the Natural Le Coultre & Cie shipping agency in Geneva. From December 1914, together with the individual parcels, wagonloads of collective gifts also began to be sent. Other sectors were responsible for the distribution of money to prisoners through the agency. To retain transparency in this activity, a special file was started which reported the sender, the receiver and any other information on each fiche.34

31 For example, failures to abide by the Rights of Geneva or The Hague, forbidding communications, prisoners working for the war, but also questions relating to situations that had not yet been included in the instruments of international humanitarian law, but which would, however, see codification in later years, such as the conditions of the populations in occupied areas, or of the civilian populations in general, or of the Armenian Genocide in 1915. See Les procès-verbaux, ed. by Palmieri, p. 17. 32 Office of Research of the Minister of War in Paris, postal administration in Bern, Danish Red Cross in Copenhagen, or the research office in London. 33 Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 32–60. 34 Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 61–68; Djurovič, L’Agence centrale, pp. 56–59.

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The section for repatriation and hospitalization in neutral countries dealt with various categories of subjects involved in different ways in the conflict: health personnel, or in any case those protected by the conventions as not participating in the conflict; those who were able-bodied, but who had been in captivity for a long time; the wounded and the seriously ill who, by international agreement, had the right to repatriation or to internment in neutral counties. Since Articles 9 and 12 of the Geneva Convention of 1907 protected health personnel, the issue should not have been a concern of the IPWA. The countries, however, had begun to hold such personnel with the prisoners in numbers proportionate to those of the prisoners, claiming that this was a necessity that was tied to the numbers of the sick and the danger of epidemic. In December 1914, the ICRC communicated an interpretation of the two articles of the Geneva Convention of 1907 to the belligerent nations and demanded the restitution of health personnel. In April 1915, nearly all the belligerent nations accepted this interpretation, but the health workers were held in retaliation, so everything depended on possible agreements between the parties. As far as repatriation or hospitalization in neutral countries were concerned, the ICRC dealt with diplomatic and general questions, while the IPWA recorded individual cases. According to reports from the Swiss doctors who visited the prison camps, there were cases of ‘iron thread psychosis’, a form of psychic suffering that was found in those held in prison for over eighteen months, together with other similar pathologies, such that the IPWA worked for the repatriation, amongst others, of the fathers of families with three children who had been prisoners for two years.35 One sector that is missing in this description is that of the care for the civilians, which arose following the wishes of Dr Frederic Ferrière36 in the IPWA. This represented one of the sources of the later development of international human rights in regard to the civilian population.37 Finally, the service for the treasury and the administration was concerned with transporting the money sent by the prisoners’ families and the management of the agency’s resources. In numerous cases, the IPWA appealed to governments and to the national societies of the Red Cross to obtain financing in order to be able to continue its work.38 The agency’s activities underwent great changes after the armistice, in as much as the sector pertaining to the Entente was noticeably reduced, while that relating to the Central Powers grew, and after the end of the war the repatriation of prisoners began. It did not, however, entail reciprocity between the two blocks, because the prisoners of the Entente, including the sick and the wounded, returned home more quickly than those of the Central Powers. On 20 April 1919, the agency suspended its activities concerning American, British, Belgian, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian and Serbian prisoners, while the section for Russian prisoners continued to work long after this date. The civilian section saw an increase in its 35 Djurovič, L’Agence centrale, pp. 59–61; Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 69–71. 36 Adolphe Ferrière, Le Dr Frédéric Ferrière: son action à la Croix-Rouge internationale en faveur des civils victimes de la guerre (Geneva: Suzerenne, 1948). 37 See Corpi disarmati: riflessioni sulla condizione umana dei combattenti nella Prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Mara Dissegna (forthcoming). 38 Frick-Cramer, Organisation, pp. 81–85; Djurovič, L’Agence centrale, pp. 71–72.

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activities due to the appearance of a new category of requests that concerned the inhabitants of territories that had recently been conquered or requisitioned by the Entente, in particular, Alsace-Lorraine. In the same way, Belgium and Romania were also involved in this change. The activities of the IPWA officially ceased in 1923, but between the two wars it continued to use a special research service for individual cases, continuing to deal with, and receive, cases from World War I.39 How was it possible for this agency to have grown so much that it had seven million fiches at the end of the war? On the one hand, there was the tradition arising from experiences in Basel and Belgrade which had brought about this important situation for the IPWA, and, on the other, there were national societies and government information offices that did not have sufficient connections to permit the exchange of information. The issue was rendered even more evident with the creation of the civilian section of the IPWA, a new and, at the time, very strong requirement that was a consequence of the war. To this one can add the experimental development of a division of work and organization that allowed the agency to respond to the requests of the outside world in the most efficient way possible. Alongside this description, we have to consider the close relationship between the ICRC and the Swiss Political Department and, in general, the government of the Swiss Confederation, which in many cases acted as a connection with the international community. Others will need to treat the analysis of Swiss politics in order to complete the reconstruction of this web of international relationships.40

3. The Provisional Office for Information on Prisoners of War The Holy See’s participation in the various diplomatic activities to avert, stem and stop the war were both numerous and varied.41 During World War I, diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Switzerland, where the main international diplomatic personnel had taken refuge at different times, were interrupted and were taken up

39 Djurovič, L’Agence centrale, pp. 72–73. 40 Pierre Dubois, ‘L’action humanitaire de la Suisse durant la première guerre mondiale’, in 17e Congrès, ed. by Espadas Burgos and Ruano, II, pp. 1006–14; Jean-François Tiercy, ‘Le tentatives de médiation suisses pendent la première guerre mondiale’, Relations internationales, 9, 30 (1982), pp. 125–40. 41 Maria Eugenia Ossandón, ‘Una aproximación a la acción humanitaria de la Santa Sede durante la prima guerra mundial, a partir de fuentes publicadas’, Annales Theologici, 23, 2 (2009), pp. 311–52; Gabriele Paolini, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008); Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004); Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990); Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009); Annie Lacroix-Riz, ‘Le Vatican et les buts de guerre germaniques de 1914 à 1918: le rêve d’une Europe allemande’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 42, 4 (1995), pp. 517–55; Joseph Joblin, ‘Le cadre de l’action humanitaire à l’ouverture du conflit de 1914: la position du Saint-Siège’, in 17e Congrès, ed. by Espadas Burgos and Ruano, II, pp. 1021–35; John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 85–111.

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again, at first in an informal way, through Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, and, later, by Luigi Maglione.42 Here, we shall take into consideration, however, only that aspect of the relationship involving the institution of the POIPW. A kind of Vatican counterpart to the Geneva agency that I have just described,43 it was instituted in early 1915 at the heart of the Secretariat of State, on the basis of the idea of the American former diplomat Bellamy Storer. During the first winter of the war, he had spoken to Mgr Federico Tedeschini and, following the exchange of opinions, the project was carried forward, the running of its office being entrusted to the American Franciscan Dominique Reuter, a penitentiary of St Peter’s Basilica, and to the Dutchman Henry Huisman. It is not merely by chance that they both came from neutral countries. About two hundred lay people and clergy worked in this office. The requests for information were transcribed on white fiches, and those relating to the dead and wounded prisoners onto coloured fiches. The numbers of fiches produced were around 700,000 white and 600,000 coloured fiches, and there were around 500,000 letters of reply to the families. In order to obtain information, the office activated all the Vatican’s diplomatic channels, starting with the apostolic nunciatures, but some centres were specifically dedicated to this purpose: the office searching for the missing in Paderborn, which was created by Bishop Karl Joseph Schulte; the Swiss Catholic Mission in Fribourg, set up by the Bishop of Geneva and Lausanne, Andreas Bovet; and, finally, the office of Mgr Max Brenner in Vienna.44 Like the IPWA, the office used a geographical division of its work, leaving to the Swiss Catholic Mission the management of the Western area, and reserving for itself the Eastern and Austro-Italian fronts. The office proceeded to draw up lists containing the names, surnames, regiment or company and badge numbers of the missing, which were then sent to the different prison camps or military hospitals, where delegates or military chaplains collected information that was then exchanged with Paderborn or Fribourg to be sent on to the countries of origin of the prisoners. For the situation of the British and Belgian prisoners, there also existed the Catholic Mission of Keer (Maastricht), which undertook the same work. The gathering of information by the Swiss religious delegates or those working at the nunciatures was often difficult, and these people were, in fact, accused of espionage; another problem was that the data was not sent to the delegates because the prison camps had first to send the information through the ministries competent for this, thus slowing down the process.45

42 See, among others, Karl Kistler, Die Wiedererrichtung der Nuntiatur in der Schweiz (1920): ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Kirchenpolitik (1914–1925) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1974). 43 Maria Eugenia Ossandón, ‘Colaborar en el terreno de la caridad’: Santa Sede y Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja entre los siglos XIX y XX (Rome: EDUSC, 2014); Becker, Oubliés. 44 Alberto Monticone, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella grande guerra, 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013); Frédéric Yerly, ‘Grande guerre et diplomatie humanitaire: la Mission catholique suisse en faveur des prisonniers de guerre (1914–1918)’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 58, 1 (1998), pp. 13–28. 45 Paolini, Offensive di pace, pp. 255–62.

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4. Observations The first necessary observation regards the concept of neutrality that these two agencies proclaimed as the principal aspect of their conduct. Clearly, it distinguished itself not so much in action as in principle. In the case of the Vatican, the neutrality claimed was that of the Holy See in respect of the warring powers, which was expressed through an implicit superiority of the religious and papal character insofar as the Pope is the ‘Holy Father’. Naturally, it would be limiting to remain only with this vision, since ‘the Papacy is a moral and religious power, not a secular and territorial one. Even so it has its own interests which can be at odds with those of other powers and thus ultimately make it impossible to be entirely impartial’.46 Neutrality, which instead represents one of the seven principles of the operations of the ICRC — as yet not expressly formulated —, is a secular principle, born from the philanthropy that was the daughter of the Enlightenment,47 and it does not depend on a prior principle, deriving its own authority precisely on being part of the same humanity that is in difficulty.48 This claim of neutrality, taken in this sense, is also expressed through the continual emphasis, in the minutes of the IPWA and in the repeated editions of manuals and handbooks for their workers, on the necessity to act always and in any case with the most rigorous respect for the relevant protocols of the agency in order to maintain the most neutral attitude possible concerning the war. It should definitely be noted that this production of explanatory materials is also tied to the size of the structures which — given the number of collaborators, often voluntary ones, and the flow of communications — was larger than the Vatican’s office. In the same way, the actions of the ICRC, up to the highest spheres of diplomatic intervention, was always characterized by a clear reliance on a legal or ‘paralegal’ basis to which they could refer in order to defend the neutrality of the enterprise, even when this involved slowing down its work. Unlike the Vatican office, which was set up within the Secretariat of State, the IPWA depended on the ICRC and was thus officially external to the bureaucratic structure of the Swiss Confederation. Its ties to the Political Department of the Confederation were, however, very strong so that in 1917 the ICRC’s President, Gustave Ador, was asked to succeed Hoffmann as the Director of that same Department. In this sense, the consideration of the ICRC as the humanitarian agency of the Confederation was made explicit. At the same time, however, it was the very same political office that, in order to preserve — both on paper and in reality — its neutrality and independence, sometimes put the brakes on the ICRC’s proposals; it was thus not totally independent of the country in which it resided.

46 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 135. 47 Philanthropies et politiques sociales en Europe (XVIIIe–XXe siècles): actes du colloque, Paris, 27–28 mars 1992, ed. by Colette Bec and others (Paris: Anthropos, 1994). 48 Ossandón, ‘Colaborar’; Becker, Oubliés.

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The study of the two structures49 brings to light the scarcity of contacts between these two active realities during the same period, despite having practical and pragmatic aims that are clearly very similar. Analysis of the documentation that has been retained at the ICRC shows that the two agencies had only sporadic contact, contact that was often subsidiary and which was nearly always mediated by the Catholic Mission in Fribourg.50 It is clear that the two agencies were aware of the reciprocal activity, in so far as when Maglione was nominated as Nuncio to Switzerland, Huisman, the Director, asked for a renewal of their subscription to Nouvelles.51 ICRC’s steps in the Vatican were principally of the diplomatic sort, used at times to give greater resonance to its appeals, but these were not always taken up. Collaboration with respect to the actions of the IPWA and the Vatican office were, instead, of a subsidiary type, as mentioned above: in those cases, where it did not have collaborators or access to the prisoners, the Vatican turned to the IPWA in Geneva, and vice versa. This was the case when the Secretary of State turned to IPWA in order to obtain news of some sisters who were being held in Russia, since they did not have the means to reach them. Another example is reported in the minutes of the IPWA for 20 December 1915, with the outreach of Ador to Marchetti Selvaggiani in order for him to esatblish a contact with the occupied regions:52 an action in which the ICRC appealed to the Holy See. In respect to the literature that has been published on these issues, the experience of the two ‘agencies’ for prisoners can add some elements to the discussion. It is certain that there were reservations on the part of the Holy See in regard to the ICRC, a new organization, born of the Geneva bourgeoisie, which had a Calvinist stamp to it, and in the face of which Vatican assumed an attitude of wait and see. In the minutes of the IPWA, the actions of the Vatican are mentioned concerning the organization of the exchange of prisoners, for which it asked the ICRC to show how the IPWA had proposed this type of agreement to the Swiss Political Department before the papal representative had done so, but this is an isolated observation.53 The minutes make

49 On the relationship between the two, see Delphine Debons, ‘Le CICR, le Vatican et l’œuvre de renseignements sur les prisonniers de guerre: rivalité ou collaboration dans le dévouement?’, Relations internationales, 36, 138 (2009), pp. 39–57; Roland-Berhard Trauffer, ‘Les relations entre le Saint-Siège et le Comité International de la Croix-Rouge: les relations postérieures à 1947 avec une présentation complémentaire du rôle du Saint-Siège dans les Conférence internationales de la Croix-Rouge et une note sur le développement du Droit international humanitaire’ (doctoral thesis, Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, 1980). 50 Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, C G1 A 11–03, Transmission of the information on captured, wounded or deceased soldiers in combat in Belgium and the north of France by the Gazette des Ardennes, by the Bishop of Namur and by the Vatican, 20 April 1915–4 March 1918, in Nouvelles de l’Agence international des prisonniers de guerre, 23 February 1918. 51 ASV, Archivio della nunziatura di Svizzera, 1915–35, b. 43, fasc. 163, ff. 26–27. 52 Minutes, 20 December 1915; Les procès-verbaux, ed. by Palmieri. 53 Minutes, January 1915; Les procès-verbaux, ed. by Palmieri, p. 57.

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further reference to the Vatican in relation to the audience accorded by Benedict XV to Gustav Ador in January, 1916: Mr Ador, on a business trip to Rome, has had an audience with the Pope, twenty minutes in person. He understood the issue of the isolation of the population of the occupied regions without new developments — a situation that the Pope was not aware of and with which he promised to occupy himself; the issue of the internment of those with tuberculosis in Switzerland; and finally the prohibiting of the collective sending of bread to persons of trust and to humanitarian societies (20 December).54 In this sense, I do not feel that I can characterize all the actions of the two offices on the basis of these affirmations. In regard to the Vatican action concerning the relationship between Italy and Austria and the suspected humanitarian competition, it should be considered that the relations between the two national societies of the Red Cross in question were direct and were not mediated by Geneva. This case appears to be fairly isolated within the Red Cross’s diplomatic system and it was not appreciated by Geneva, which wanted to coordinate the actions of all the national societies. The fact that the Vatican entered into an area that was not tied to Geneva and managed in the most efficient way possible by the two national agencies is thus to be seen not as an objective attained in a contest of humanitarian supremacy but as a sector in which the Vatican undertook a valuable action in regard to a structure that would perhaps not have managed to operate in the best possible way. Both actors initially presented themselves in secondary positions in regard to the international scene. The Vatican needed to take up its position in the international forum after the Italian wars of the Risorgimento, while the Red Cross was preparing to face an event that would put it to the severest test in its brief existence as the first international humanitarian organization on the world stage. In both cases, they had to appear to find their own way to act in a context that was new to all the actors, maintaining their own background, which was more or less cumbersome, of actions, principles and forecasts. In this sense, I would not speak so much of humanitarian competition, but of a different way of tackling the same problem and of finding their own roles in the international arena and in the new humanitarian sector that was just putting in an appearance.

54 ‘M. Ador en voyage d’affaires à Rome a eu une entrevue avec le pape, 20 minutes de tête-à-tête, et l’a entendu de la question de l’isolement de la population des régions occupées sans Nouvelles — situation que le pape ignorait et dont il a promis de s’occuper; de la question de l’internement des tuberculeux en Suisse; enfin de l’interdiction des envois collectifs de pain aux hommes de confiance et sociétés de secours (20 décembre)’; Minutes, 13–14 January 1916; Les procès-verbaux, ed. by Palmieri, pp. 127–28.

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Bibliography Bec, Colette, and others, eds, Philanthropies et politiques sociales en Europe (XVIIIe–XXe siècles): actes du colloque, Paris, 27–28 mars 1992 (Paris: Anthropos, 1994) Becker, Annette, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914–1918: populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Noêsis, 1998) Bugnion, François, ‘Birth of an Idea: The Founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross and of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: From Solferino to the Original Geneva Convention, 1859–1864’, International Review of the Red Cross, 94, 888 (2012), pp. 1299–338 Debons, Delphine, ‘Le CICR, le Vatican et l’œuvre de renseignements sur les prisonniers de guerre: rivalité ou collaboration dans le dévouement?’, Relations internationales, 36, 138 (2009), pp. 39–57 Des Gouttes, Paul, ed., Le rôle et l’action de Comité international de la Croix-Rouge pendant la guerre européenne de 1914 à 1916 (Geneva: Imprimerie du Journal de Genève, 1917) Dissegna, Mara, ed., Corpi disarmati: riflessioni sulla condizione umana dei combattenti nella Prima guerra mondiale (forthcoming) Djurovič, Gradimir, L’Agence centrale de recherches du Comité international de la CroixRouge: activité du CICR en vue du soulagement des souffrances morales des victimes de guerre (Geneva: Institut Henry-Dunant, 1981) Dubois, Pierre, ‘L’action humanitaire de la Suisse durant la première guerre mondiale’, in 17e Congrès international des sciences historiques, ed. by Manuel Espadas Burgos and Eloy Benito Ruano, 2 vols (Madrid: Comité Español de Ciencias Históricas, 1992), II, pp. 1006–14 Ferrière, Adolphe, Le Dr Frédéric Ferrière: son action à la Croix-Rouge internationale en faveur des civils victimes de la guerre (Geneva: Suzerenne, 1948) Fleury, Antoine, ‘La Croix-Rouge Internationale et son action durant la première guerre mondiale’, in 17e Congrès international des sciences historiques, ed. by Manuel Espadas Burgos and Eloy Benito Ruano, 2 vols (Madrid: Comité Español de Ciencias Históricas, 1992), II, pp. 1017–21 Frick-Cramer, Marguerite, Organisation d’un bureau central de renseignements (Geneva: ICRC, 1932) Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, 5 vols (1963–2015), I: De Solferino à Tsushima, ed. by Pierre Boissier (Paris: Plon, 1963) and II: De Sarajevo à Hiroshima, ed. by André Durand (Geneva: Institut Henry-Dunant, 1978) Joblin, Joseph, ‘Le cadre de l’action humanitaire à l’ouverture du conflit de 1914: la position du Saint-Siège’, in 17e Congrès international des sciences historiques, ed. by Manuel Espadas Burgos and Eloy Benito Ruano, 2 vols (Madrid: Comité Español de Ciencias Históricas, 1992), II, pp. 1021–35 Kistler, Karl, Die Wiedererrichtung der Nuntiatur in der Schweiz (1920): ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Kirchenpolitik (1914–1925) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1974) Knitel, Hans G., Les délégations du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge (Geneva: Droz, 1967) Lacroix-Riz, Annie, ‘Le Vatican et les buts de guerre germaniques de 1914 à 1918: le rêve d’une Europe allemande’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 42, 4 (1995), pp. 517–55

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Monticone, Alberto, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella grande guerra, 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013) Moreillon, Jacques, Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et la protection des détenus politiques (Lausanne: Éditions L’Age d’Homme, 1973) Ossandón, Maria Eugenia, ‘Una aproximación a la acción humanitaria de la Santa Sede durante la prima guerra mundial, a partir de fuentes publicadas’, Annales Theologici, 23, 2 (2009), pp. 311–52 Ossandón, Maria Eugenia, ‘Colaborar en el terreno de la caridad’: Santa Sede y Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja entre los siglos XIX y XX (Rome: EDUSC, 2014) Palmieri, Daniel, ‘An Institution Standing the Test of Time? A Review of 150 Years of the History of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, International Review of the Red Cross, 94, 888 (2012), pp. 1273–98 Palmieri, Daniel, ed., Les procès-verbaux de l’Agence internationale des prisonniers de guerre (AIPG) (Geneva: ICRC, 2014) Paolini, Gabriele, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008) Picciaredda, Stefano, Diplomazia umanitaria: la Croce Rossa nella seconda guerra mondiale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003) Piguet, Martine, ‘Frick [-Cramer], Marguerite’, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Rumi, Giorgio, ed., Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Senarclens, Jean de, ‘Moynier, Gustave’, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz Stibbe, Matthew, ‘The Internment of Civilians by Belligerent States during the First World War and the Response of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41, 1 (2006), pp. 5–19 Tiercy, Jean-François, ‘Le tentatives de médiation suisses pendent la première guerre mondiale’, Relations internationales, 9, 30 (1982), pp. 125–40 Trauffer, Roland-Berhard, ‘Les relations entre le Saint-Siège et le Comité International de la Croix-Rouge: les relations postérieures à 1947 avec une présentation complémentaire du rôle du Saint-Siège dans les Conférence internationales de la Croix-Rouge et une note sur le développement du Droit international humanitaire’ (doctoral thesis, Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, 1980) Walter, François, ‘Ador, Gustave’, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz Yerly, Frédéric, ‘Grande guerre et diplomatie humanitaire: la Mission catholique suisse en faveur des prisonniers de guerre (1914–1918)’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 58, 1 (1998), pp. 13–28

47 7

Stefano Picciaredda

Neutral Switzerland: The Hospitalization of the Wounded and the Credit Owed to Carlo Santucci

The grave events unfolding in this present, sad moment, which fill the Holy Father’s heart with an anguish no less than Your Excellency’s, both of you attentively keen to limit the spread of so many misfortunes and to pour the balm of Christian piety upon the painful wounds of so many individuals and families so harshly tried by the horrors of the current war, suggest to the August Pontiff that he enter into discreet dialogue with Your Excellency on a matter of great public importance. However, for reasons too-obvious, as it is not possible either for the August Pontiff to travel there or for Your Excellency to come to the Vatican now, His Holiness has thought of sending to you a person of the finest qualities and worthy of complete trust, someone who is able to inform Your Excellency of all the things of which the Holy Father has desired to speak to you personally. His Holiness has chosen the illustrious Count Carlo Santucci, ‘commendatore’ and barrister, bearer of the present letter, and prays Your Excellency to welcome him in private audience and to graciously listen to him, according him the trust that He would honour the Holy Father’s own words.1



1 ‘I gravi avvenimenti che si maturano nella triste ora presente e che riempiono di angoscia il cuore del S. Padre non meno che quello dell’E. V., ambedue premurosamente solleciti di porre un argine al dilagare di tante sciagure e di versare balsamo di cristiana pietà sulle dolorose ferite di tanti individui e di tante famiglie duramente provate dagli orrori della guerra attuale, suggeriscono all’augusto Pontefice di intrattenersi alquanto in intimo colloquio con V. E. in ordine di affari di grande pubblica importanza. Per ragioni, peraltro, troppo evidenti, non essendo possibile che l’augusto Pontefice si rechi costà né che l’E. V. si porti ora in Vaticano, S. S. ha pensato di inviarle una persona, ornata delle più belle qualità, e degna di piena fiducia, che sia capace di mettere l’E. V. al corrente di tutte quelle cose, intorno alle quali il S. Padre tanto volentieri le avrebbe parlato personalmente. Tale persona S. S. l’ha trovata nell’ill.mo sig. conte comm. avv. Carlo Santucci, latore della presente e che prego l’E. V. di volersi compiacere di accogliere in privata udienza e di ascoltarlo benignamente prestandogli quella fede di cui Ella onorerebbe le parole stesse del S. Padre’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Gasparri to Motta, 28 April 1915.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 479–498 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118787

48 0

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With these words, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri presented Carlo Santucci to Giuseppe Motta, President of the Swiss Confederation, having sent him on a secret mission on 1 May 1915 as the personal representative of Pope Benedict XV. The Holy See’s request had several points: it implored that accommodation be offered, in various locations throughout the Swiss national territory, to sick and wounded prisoners from both fronts — that is to say, the French, English and Belgians who found themselves in Austria and Germany, as well as to Austrians and Germans being held in France and England — with Russia in mind, although this was as yet still unexpressed. The proposal was accompanied by a set of guarantees and conditions among which were: the exclusion of the contagious; the commitment to return those healed not to the countries to which they belonged but to the power that had delivered them; the reimbursement of expenses by the governments of the beneficiaries; and the possibility of requesting the doctors needed from France and Germany when Swiss ones were insufficient. In the instructions given to him on the eve of his mission, Santucci was entrusted with the task of ‘obtaining the greatest number [of prisoners] possible’ and of insisting on ‘pointing out the truly humanitarian labours that would honour Switzerland and engender the sympathies of the entire civilized world as well as not being without material advantage’.2 If the President were to reject the proposal, Santucci was to ask him to receive at least prisoners held by the Central Powers while the Holy See committed itself to seeking other arrangements for those captured by the powers of the Entente. Motta’s reaction, however, surpassed even the most optimistic expectations, and Santucci’s mission gave birth to a long diplomatic, technical, organizational and logistic operation that took 67,726 sick and wounded prisoners to Switzerland within a so-called ‘internment’ programme that involved the twenty-six cantons until 1919 and even later.3 Documentation from the Vatican Secret Archives and the Carlo Santucci Fund kept in the Archives of the Institute for the History of the Italian Catholic Action and the Italian Catholic Movement — to which the Count’s descendants have donated part of his papers that were in their possession — were used to reconstruct this mission and the more general picture of collaboration between the Holy See and Switzerland for the benefit of war victims. These sources illuminate the motivations behind choosing a layman — and Santucci in particular — to initiate negotiations with Bern as well as the reactions and objectives of the Swiss government, the warring governments and the various subjects involved, in regard to the Vatican initiative.



2 ‘Ottenere il numero più alto possibile’; ‘facendo rilevare l’opera veramente umanitaria che onorerebbe la Svizzera e le concilierebbe le simpatie di tutto il mondo civile, non disgiunte da vantaggi materiali’; AISACEM, Fondo Carlo Santucci, b. 1, fasc. 8. 3 As we shall see, the entire operation was described in detail in three volumes by Major Édouard Favre, L’internement en Suisse des prisonniers de guerre malades ou blessées, 2 vols (Geneva: Georg, 1917–18).

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1.

Carlo Santucci: A National Conservative

Santucci’s itinerary was already reconstructed many years ago by Gabriele De Rosa, who first had access to the Roman lawyer’s personal papers, among which an autobiographical manuscript is particularly important.4 De Rosa was mainly interested in the affair from the standpoint of national conservatism, of which the nobleman — born on the day of the Roman Republic’s foundation, 9 February 1849 — seemed to him to be an illustrious figure. Santucci had participated as secretary in the meeting held in the Roman house of Count Campello in 1879, during which the possibility of forming a conservative national party to involve Catholics in Italian political life had been debated. The project did not materialize but, in 1881, with other associates of the Campello family, he formed the Circolo romano di studi sociali (Roman Social Studies Association), which he served as president, and the journal Rassegna Italiana. Carlo expanded his father’s law firm, held local administrative offices, was president of the Banco di Roma, was a consistorial lawyer, collaborated in the drafting of the Code of Canon Law and joined Sturzo’s Italian People’s Party — from which he resigned in disagreement with its ‘turn to the left’ and its opposition to the Acerbo Law — gravitating towards the Centro nazionale (National Centre) along with Giovanni Grosoli. In January 1923, he hosted a first, secret meeting between Mussolini and Gasparri at his beautiful home in Via Ripetta. It was his relationship, indeed friendship, with Gasparri that was basis of the choice to assign Santucci to the Bern mission. His autobiography narrates the first encounters between the young student and the future Secretary of State, mediated by the canonist Francesco Santi. His [Santi’s] express kindness and their being often together offered me the opportunity early on to become friends with two who were his young students and relatives: Augusto Silj, who is now Vice Camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, and Pietro Gasparri, current Cardinal Secretary of State.5 In 1927, Gasparri was ‘deeply touched’ (‘commossissimo’) to be asked to celebrate the marriage of Carlo’s daughter in the family chapel. Furthermore, in 1919, it was Gasparri to whom Santucci immediately went after having learnt of his appointment as senator for life, asking his advice on the advisability of accepting.





4 Gabriele De Rosa, I conservatori nazionali: biografia di Carlo Santucci (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1962). See also Ornella Confessore Pellegrino, ‘Santucci, Carlo’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), pp. 576–79. On Santucci’s mission to Switzerland, see also Italo Garzia, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981), pp. 64–68. 5 ‘La sua particolare benevolenza e la frequente consuetudine mi offrirono occasione di legarmi fino dai primi anni in amicizia carissima con due che erano suoi giovani allievi e parenti, Augusto Silj ora vice camerlengo di S. R. C. e Pietro Gasparri ora cardinale segretario di Stato’; AISACEM, b. 1, fasc. 4, Autobiographical notes, 1918, p. 11.

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Besides their personal relationship, the fact that the Count was a figure standing outside the limelight, totally trustworthy, capable of passing unnoticed and guaranteeing total discretion and confidentiality to the mission also influenced the decision. As the documentation shows, a positive outcome was not a foregone conclusion; it was feared that Bern would reject the proposal. Such an eventuality greatly worried the Secretariat of State, which recommended absolute secrecy to its emissary. It was precisely for that reason that Santucci was not accompanied by one of his staff but by his daughter Maria. Confirmation of the atmosphere is found in a letter from his son, Francesco, who recounted how Santucci also explained the measures of confidentiality even to him, noting the need to not expose the Holy Father to repercussions should he fail. Francesco, himself only partially informed of the purpose of the trip, constituted the go-between while the negotiations were underway, delivering the telegrams addressed to him by his father to Gasparri. In them, Motta was the ‘hotel manager’ and Councillor Arthur Hoffmann the ‘vice-director’.6

2. A Roman in Bern The Vatican initiative concerning Switzerland originated, as is known, from a French request, that is to say, from information sent to the Secretariat of State by Cardinal Archbishop Léon-Adolphe Amette of Paris regarding the wave of emotion aroused in public opinion by the news of the conditions of French prisoners in Germany.7 Amette advised the Pope to intervene directly with the Swiss presidency (and, ‘if necessary’, with the Queen of the Netherlands), considering that it might be successful. In the Vatican, it was then discussed whether to make the proposal to all the neutral powers to accommodate all prisoners, with the expenses being covered by the warring powers alone. This consideration was soon discarded in order to focus on efforts aimed solely at wounded and sick prisoners of war. On 23 April, once assurances had been received from the French government concerning the political commitment from Paris to recommend such a proposal to the other powers of the Entente, the Santucci mission was quickly arranged and the Count prepared to depart. He travelled with a passport from the Holy See and letters of presentation and recommendations, such as the one quoted in the opening section here. His arrival, on 30 April, does not appear to have been announced, nor were any appointments scheduled. To reach Motta, Santucci first met the Federal Councillor and Secretary of the Foreign Affairs Division of the Political Department, Alphonse Dunant, who was on ‘long-standing and friendly terms’ (‘antiche ed amichevoli relazioni’) with the Roman Commander of the Swiss Guards. In the diary that he kept up wrote

6 ‘Direttore dell’albergo’; ‘vicedirettore’; Telegrams, AISACEM, b. 1, fasc. 8; Diary of his son Francesco, AISACEM, b. 3, fasc. 5. 7 La Civiltà Cattolica supplied constant news regarding the initiatives of humanitarian diplomacy carried out by the Holy See, mainly in the form of brief notices and then, once the war had ended, with a wider, more exhaustive treatment. See [Giuseppe Quirico,] ‘L’opera del S. P. Benedetto XV in favore dei prigionieri di guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 3 (1918), pp. 401 ff.

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day by day, the Count noted that he had arrived at 5:27 p.m. and was increasingly worried about the mission: ‘At times it seems that it will be difficult to succeed’.8 However, his fears soon gave way to enthusiasm with the positive turn of events that soon occurred. On 1 May, Dunant set up meetings, first with Federal Councillor Hoffmann, whose role was analogous to that of minister of Foreign Affairs, and then with Motta. Santucci was informed that the Swiss government ‘had already had a similar idea and had made vague hints about it to the German and French ambassadors, without, however, any results ensuing thus far, much less any particular political outcome’. For their part, those in charge expressed their consent. Switzerland was in complete agreement with the proposal. Talks continued on the following day and turned immediately to logistics. The goal was to have the Federal Council approve a general internment plan, having the characteristics desired by the Pope, in their 7 May meeting. The details of the first part of the mission were very efficiently summarized by Santucci himself in his diary-report that he drafted for the Secretary of State. The longest part referred to the second, decisive, meeting that he had with Motta on 3 May.9 It emerged that the President and Hoffmann were ‘totally in favour of the proposal’, although the latter was unable to draw it up in time for 7 May due to prior commitments and having to wait for further clarifications from the army’s health services. If Santucci were willing to stay in Bern, he would do his best to get the proposal approved on 7 May. In essence, regarding the need for the work to have an ‘extension proportionate to the need and the importance of the Holy See’s initiative’, the President recognized that it was ‘true and possible to give the project the greatest possible extension immediately’. He added that it was not himself personally, but Hoffmann, having regard to the sensitivity of the Swiss government, who preferred to make it known that ‘Switzerland had previously undertaken an earlier initiative and that the Holy Father’s intervention merely amplified the matter far more and made it easier, through his august intercession, to execute the matter together with the two sides at war’. Santucci replied that the Pope ‘cared far more about the initiative than about petty sensitivities’; nevertheless, the importance of his role had to stand out. Santucci then informed the President of an article in The Times according to which the United States was ready to offer hospitality and provisions to the prisoners, emphasizing the need to ‘act with greater urgency and extension in order for it not to seem that they had been tardy’. Motta agreed but responded, ‘No one can accomplish what Switzerland can under the Holy Father’s great influence’. Concerning the question as to whether it was necessary to maintain a strict equality in the number of prisoners assisted from each side since, according to Hoffmann, the French ones in Germany



8 ‘A momenti mi pare che sarà difficile il riuscire’; AISACEM, b. 1, fasc. 8. 9 ‘Aveva già concepito un’idea simile e ne aveva fatto cenno vagamente ai due ambasciatori tedesco e francese, senza però che la cosa avesse avuto per ora alcun seguito, e molto meno alcun esito particolare politico’; AISACEM, b. 1, fasc. 8.

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were far more numerous and in worse conditions and that it would therefore be appropriate to take a greater number of them, the Count replied: Objectively speaking, that would be just, and perhaps it was the reason why France had turned to the Holy See. However, it would not be prudent, at least in principle, to propose a noticeable inequality. Perhaps later on, Germany, finding the number of prisoners it had to keep and care for unwieldy and suffering from a scarcity of supplies, would consent in practice to the aforementioned inequality.10 Motta then revealed that he had great faith in the Holy See’s undisputed influence over Austria and Germany to overcome any resistance that he feared would arise. Their talk then turned to issues of the future peace conference, diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Bern and the Roman Question: According to the President, Mr Hoffmann was very impressed with the Holy Father’s noble sentiments that I expressed to him and hoped, when the time came, that the Pope would be able to maintain this attitude in regard to the peace treaties, abstaining from any political prejudice, particularly as far as the Roman Question was concerned. I assured him about this, asking the President to be of the utmost discretion about it all, particularly before the Federal Council, since the matter was going beyond the bounds of my mission and was extremely delicate. The arrival in the Vatican of an unofficial Dutch delegate was also alluded to in order to prepare the way for future peace negotiations. The President further added that this had given him the idea of speaking to Mr Hoffmann again of the opportunity that Switzerland, as I had already insisted, should send some unofficial representative to Rome, if only to flesh out the matter at hand. However, Mr Hoffmann proved to be against it. I added that, if not today, it might be tomorrow, since on the day when it will be possible to speak of peace, it will be good for the neutral powers to gather around the Pope in order to make their collective action more effective. The President did not exclude this.11

10 ‘Oggettivamente parlando, ciò sarebbe stato giusto e forse per questo la Francia si era rivolta alla S. Sede. Ma non sarebbe stato prudente, almeno al principio, mettere avanti una disuguaglianza sensibile. Forse in seguito la Germania stessa che si trova ingombra dal numero dei prigionieri che deve curare e custodire, e sente la scarsezza degli approvvigionamenti, potrà nella pratica attuazione acconsentire alla disuguaglianza indicata’; AISACEM, b. 1, fasc. 8. 11 ‘Il sig. Hoffmann, secondo il presidente, è rimasto molto bene impressionato dagli elevati sentimenti del S. Padre che io gli esposi e dall’atteggiamento che esso spera di poter prendere in relazione alle trattative di pace, quando sarà il momento, senza preconcetti politici, specie in riguardo alla questione romana. Ho confermato ciò pure pregando il presidente di fare uso assai riservato di tutto questo, specie in seno al Consiglio federale, uscendo la cosa dai limiti della mia missione ed essendo delicatissima. Si è alluso alla venuta presso il Vaticano di un inviato officioso dell’Olanda anche per preparare la via alla futura negoziazione di pace. Ed ha soggiunto il presidente che ciò gli aveva suggerito l’idea di riparlare con il sig. Hoffmann della opportunità che la Svizzera, come io avevo già insistito, mandasse qualche incaricato ufficioso a Roma, se non altro per concretare la questione di cui stiamo trattando, ma il sig. Hoffmann si era dimostrato contrario. Ho soggiunto che se questo non

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There were essentially three reasons that led to such a wide range of views: the impasse that Switzerland had encountered in carrying out this plan for assistance, which was particularly dear to them; the President’s devotion and Catholic faith; and the positive experience of a recent collaboration with the Holy See on another initiative connected to the exchange of prisoners. The first and third factors were explicitly mentioned in the Federal Council’s third report before the Federal Assembly, presented on 15 May 1916, on the measures taken up to that point in dealing with the war emergency. It stated: At the end of October 1914, the Council contacted the German and French governments regarding an exchange, mediated by Switzerland, of seriously injured prisoners from both sides. We started from the principle that both had to exchange those imprisoned officers and prisoners who, according to medical diagnosis, would be incapable of resuming military service in the long term and were therefore no longer of use for war purposes in the current conflict. This step was received sympathetically. Questions of details to be resolved, however, continued to present difficulties. We have, therefore, gratefully welcomed the intercession of the Holy See, which at the beginning of 1915 submitted a similar proposal to the various heads of state and gave a strong impetus to the efforts made to carry out this humanitarian work. On 11 January 1915, we sent our representatives to Paris and Berlin to make the Swiss Red Cross and the army’s health services trains available to the governments. At the end of February, the agreement regarding conditions of exchange was concluded and, on 2 March 1915, transports began. By the end of the current year, 8166 severely wounded French and 2201 severely wounded Germans have been transported in fifty trains to places throughout Switzerland.12 Here we have the first recognition of the role of Vatican diplomacy in sponsoring the exchange of the so-called grands blessés (‘severely wounded’). The report then

sarà oggi, potrà essere domani, visto che il giorno in cui potrà parlarsi di pace sarà bene che le potenze neutre si raggruppino intorno al papa per rendere più efficace la loro azione collettiva. E il presidente non ha escluso’; AISACEM, b. 1, fasc. 8. 12 ‘Alla fine del mese di ottobre 1914 il Consiglio si è messo in contatto con i governi tedesco e francese in vista dello scambio, mediato dalla Svizzera, dei prigionieri gravemente feriti dell’uno e dell’altro. Partivamo dal principio che entrambi dovevano scambiarsi quegli ufficiali e soldati prigionieri che, secondo le risultanze mediche, sarebbero stati per lungo tempo incapaci di riprendere il servizio militare, dunque non più utilizzabili a scopi bellici nell’attuale conflitto. Tale passo fu accolto con simpatia; ma le questioni di dettaglio che occorreva risolvere presentavano consistenti difficoltà. Abbiamo quindi salutato con riconoscenza l’intervento della S. Sede che, all’inizio del 1915, ha sottoposto analoga proposta a vari capi di Stato e dato forte impulso agli sforzi fatti per condurre in porto questa opera umanitaria. L’11 gennaio 1915 abbiamo inviato nostri rappresentanti a Parigi e Berlino per mettere a disposizione dei governi la Croce Rossa svizzera e i treni sanitari dell’esercito. A fine febbraio l’accordo sulle condizioni di scambio era concluso e il 2 marzo 1915 i trasporti cominciavano. Alla fine del corrente anno sono stati trasportati attraverso la svizzera in 50 treni 8166 feriti gravi francesi e 2201 feriti gravi Tedeschi’; a printed copy of the report is found in ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40.

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focussed on the next step concerning those soldiers whose condition prohibited them from serving in battle but not in offices or at the rear. They had the possibility of internment in Switzerland. The government had chosen to open talks with the German and French concentrating on tuberculosis patients. While the project was being studied, on 1 May 1915, a special delegate from the Holy See presented a larger project to us, in which not only those suffering from tuberculosis or invalids in the strictest sense, but all categories of sick and wounded — with the exception of the contagious — could be interned in our country: soldiers, officers and non-commissioned officers. We immediately declared our appreciation of the Holy See’s extremely precious collaboration and our pleasure at working together to bring the project to fruition.13 Motta, moreover, was ‘very effusive in declaring himself a convinced and practising Catholic, full of reverence for the Holy See and admiration for the Holy Father’.14 Above all, he agreed that the initiative should, from the beginning, contemplate significant numbers, not just a few cases that were bound to increase, and on this point exceeded Hoffmann’s more cautious attitude. Santucci’s proposal to begin the ‘hosting’ (‘ospitalizzazione’) — in Vatican terms — and ‘internment’ — in Swiss wording — of 10,000 prisoners per side had therefore been accepted.

3. Switzerland and the Vatican United for the Prisoners In that tragic hour, the Holy See knew how to seize the opportunity. For his part, Motta sought to honour his mandate in the best way possible. He was the Confederation’s first Italian President, from the Ticino canton, and his term was historically important. He was a Catholic, lawyer, notary and, above all, a long-standing politician. He co-founded Switzerland’s Christian democratic structure, served several times as President of the Confederation and was subsequently President of the League of Nations Assembly.15 Between him and the Holy See, a special collaboration arose, which culminated in a permanent Vatican representative being sent to Bern once Santucci’s brief mission was concluded. That news, which was leaked by the Swiss

13 ‘Un inviato speciale della S. Sede ce ne ha sottoposto, il primo maggio 1915, uno più vasto, nel quale non solo gli affetti da tbc e gli invalidi in senso stretto, ma tutte le categorie di malati e feriti, ad eccezione dei contagiosi, potevano essere internati nel nostro paese, soldati, ufficiali e sottufficiali. Abbiamo immediatamente dichiarato di apprezzare il concorso estremamente prezioso della S. Sede e la nostra felicità di lavorare con essa alla realizzazione del progetto’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40. 14 ‘Molto espansivo nel dichiararsi cattolico convinto e praticante, pieno di ossequio per la S. Sede e di ammirazione per il S. Padre’; [Quirico,] ‘L’opera’, p. 401. 15 On this figure, among the few studies, see Michela Trisconi, Giuseppe Motta e i suoi corrispondenti (1915–1939) (Locarno: Armando Dadò, 1996).

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daily Journal de Débats, was sharply denied by the Secretariat of State,16 but it was only a matter of timing. On 1 July 1915, Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, until then an auditor in Munich’s Nunciature in Bavaria, was assigned as the Holy See’s unofficial representative in Bern and had the explicit mandate of carrying out the initiative of accommodating prisoners of war.17 Until the end of the war, Marchetti Selvaggiani was Gasparri’s voice in Switzerland, in constant contact with the federal government and the representatives of all the powers. He was an important weathervane during a period that saw much information pass through neutral Switzerland, at the same time as the Holy See, due to the unsolved Roman Question, was lamenting the impossibility of being able to host representatives of the Triple Alliance in Rome following Italy’s change in status from a neutral to a belligerent power. The intense correspondence between Marchetti Selvaggiani and the Secretariat of State makes it possible to reconstruct the development of the initiative, its slow implementation, the difficulties encountered and the failure to extend the project to other nations and other categories of prisoners. The Secretariat of State’s commitment was constant and, to put it briefly, focussed in two directions: pressurizing and urging governments that were slow or cautious or downright recalcitrant towards the proposal and increasing the number of powers that were actively interested. The dream, in this sense, was to involve Russia. On 16 June 1915, we thus see Gasparri write to the representatives of Austria-Hungary, Germany, Great Britain and Belgium present in Rome to report on Switzerland’s acceptance of Benedict XV’s proposal, the details of which were outlined.18 As for the German, Austrian and Ottoman prisoners held in Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, ‘since they cannot be hosted in Switzerland, they will be the focus of the Holy See’s further concern, which will not refrain from initiating discussions about the matter with their respective governments’.19 Germany was the only government that was slow to respond. Its assent and implementation of the plan, however, were obviously essential for initiating the project. Gasparri then repeated the plea to the Prussian Ambassador to the Holy See, Otto von Mühlberg, who had moved to Lugano after Italy entered the war. Gasparri also involved the Nuncio to Bavaria, Cardinal Andreas Frühwirth, who managed to obtain, through the mediation of Count Georg von Hertling, written

16 Trisconi, Giuseppe Motta, p. 410. 17 On this, see Fabrizio Panzera, ‘Benedetto XV e la Svizzera negli anni della Grande Guerra’, Revue suisse d’histoire, 43 (1993), pp. 321–40; Karl Kistler, Die Wiedererrichtung der Nuntiatur in der Schweiz (1920): ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Kirchenpolitik (1914–1925) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1974). 18 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, drafts of Gasparri’s letters to Sir Henry Howard, British Minister Plenipotentiary, Otto von Mühlberg, Prussian Minister Plenipotentiary, and Austrian Prince Alois Schönburg-Hartenstein, 16 June 1915. 19 ‘Non potendo essere ospitati in Svizzera, saranno oggetto di ulteriori sollecitudini da parte della S. Sede, che non mancherà di iniziare conversazioni in proposito con i rispettivi governi’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40.

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word from the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. According to the latter: It is the Emperor himself who wishes that all the difficulties of a military nature opposed to the execution of the Holy Father’s initiative regarding the hosting of German prisoners in Switzerland be overcome and that His Holiness’s noble desire be swiftly executed. The Holy Father’s will must be carried out immediately.20 The second half of 1915 saw the project take concrete form, with operations commencing on 25 January 1916. Four days later, Gasparri wrote to express the Holy See’s appreciation for the start of the project of hosting prisoners. The Vatican Secret Archives contain a collection of the many letters of gratitude addressed to the Pope from the first French prisoners to benefit from the initiative and their families. In May, even the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Gustav Ador, wrote, expressing his satisfaction with the work carried out. This gesture was notable because the relations between the two were characterized by some mistrust.21 Ador wrote: Eminence, the newspapers announce that, thanks to the mediation of the Holy See, an agreement was reached between Great Britain and Germany concerning the internment in Switzerland of wounded and sick British prisoners. Recalling with gratitude the benevolent welcome that the Holy See extended to me in January, I ask that you would express my gratitude to His Holiness for his valuable and helpful intercession on behalf of the unfortunate victims of the war. Our joint efforts, assisted by Mgr Marchetti, have been crowned with success. It is a great joy for our Committee to finally see the large-scale achievement of what it has been pursuing for so long.22

20 ‘È l’Imperatore stesso a volere che siano superate tutte le difficoltà d’indole militare che si opponevano all’esecuzione dell’iniziativa del S. Padre relativamente all’ospitalizzazione dei prigionieri tedeschi in Svizzera, e che fosse data pronta esecuzione all’alto desiderio di S. S. La volontà del S. Padre deve essere subito eseguita’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Früwirth to Gasparri, n.d. 21 As far as the Vatican was concerned, this was because of the ICRC’s ‘genetic’ flaw, having been created by Protestants and linked to Freemasonry, as recounted in Santa Sede e Croce Rossa (1836–1953) (Vatican City: n. pub., 1954), a private publication that makes clear mention of the reasons for advising prudence. This did not prevent collaboration between the two from developing at various times. Moreover, the close link that united many of Switzerland’s humanitarian efforts to the ICRC, the symbol of which is precisely the Swiss flag with its colours reversed, did not escape notice. On this, see Stefano Picciaredda, Diplomazia umanitaria: la Croce Rossa nella Seconda guerra mondiale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 203–12. See also Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, 5 vols (1963– 2015), II: De Sarajevo à Hiroshima, ed. by André Durand (Geneva: Institut Henry-Dunant, 1978). 22 ‘Éminence, les journaux annoncent que grâce à l’interlocution du Saint-Siège, l’accord e été conclu entre la Grande Bretagne et l’Allemagne au sujet de l’internement en Suisse des blessés et des prisonniers anglais malades. Me souvenant avec reconnaissance de l’accueil si bienveillant que le Saint-Siège a daigné me faire en janvier, je vous prie de dire à S. S. ma gratitude pour sa précieuse et utile intervention en faveur des malheureuses victimes de la guerre. Nos communs efforts, secondés

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The start of the project of hosting prisoners was neither the first humanitarian initiative carried out by Switzerland during the Great War nor its first collaboration with the Holy See. As a matter of fact, this followed, as mentioned, an important agreement mediated by the federal government at the urging of the ICRC, in which the Secretariat of State participated, concerning the exchange between Germany and France of the grands blessés, among whom there was a very high death rate.23 Between March 1915 and November 1916, 2343 seriously wounded Germans and 8668 seriously wounded French soldiers were repatriated through Switzerland on convoys provided by the Swiss Red Cross. Returning to the issue of hosting prisoners, its practical implementation was entrusted to the Swiss army’s health services, which identified twelve pathologies, or rather, twelve types of patients, to propose for transfer. Identification of the ‘candidates’ was entrusted to various medical commissions constituted by health professionals from neutral countries — Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden — who visited the prisoner of war camps. On 14 February 1916, 883 sick and wounded French — of whom 104 were officers — were interned in the municipalities of Montana, Montreaux, Leysin and the canton of Bern, while 364 Germans — including three officers — were interned in the Quattro Cantoni and Davos. At the end of March, a further 117 were added. These were the first beneficiaries of the agreement. As mentioned, all the expenses, board, lodging and care, were encharged to the two governments. For its part, Switzerland required all those who were capable of doing so to work or resume their studies, at all levels. Soon, the categories of sick and injured were increased to twenty and, in April, the places available for occupancy reached 12,000. The system, therefore, was ready to operate on a larger scale. In May, England joined the initiative, as mentioned in Ador’s letter to Gasparri. The following year, the Federal Council’s aforementioned report stated: The Holy See has nominated a delegate as unofficial representative, Monsignor Marchetti Selvaggiani, thus demonstrating its great interest in the humanitarian objective. Together, we have endeavoured to triumph over considerable difficulties. At the beginning of this year, an understanding was reached between the governments involved. Many categories of illness, infirmity and war wounds have been decided on as qualifying for internment. All serious mental and neurotic illnesses requiring treatment in specialized centres, chronic alcoholism and all transmissible diseases have been excluded. The rest can be interned without maintaining a reciprocity of quantity. Swiss doctors have taken to going around the prisoner of war camps in France and Germany in order to identify prisoners

par Mgr Marchetti, sont couronnés de succès. C’est une grande joie pour notre Comité de voir enfin se réaliser sur une grande échelle, le but qu’il poursuivait depuis longtemps’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Ador to Gasparri, 9 May 1916. 23 Switzerland already had a rather significant experience of accommodating the French wounded during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, when over 90,000 disarmed soldiers and officers were quartered in the Confederation; see Richard Gaudet-Blavignac, ‘L’internement des Bourbakis en Suisse’, Le Brécaillon. Bulletin de l’Association du Musée Militaire Genevois, 27 (2006), pp. 68–103.

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who can be interned. Various private organizations are providing spiritual and material assistance in Switzerland. We are also working for civilians and are making ourselves available to the governments of Belgium, Italy, Austria-Hungary and England for the internment of their prisoners of war.24

4. Towards a Broader Treaty: Successes, Difficulties and Denials During the months of June and July 1916, the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts intensified. A door seemed to open for involving Russian prisoners — and consequently those of the Central Powers being held in Russia — in the plan for hosting prisoners in neutral countries. In February, the Austro-Hungarian government had already requested the Holy See’s intercession in the matter, proposing the involvement of Sweden and asking the Pope to exercise at the same time his moral authority in Stockholm and Saint Petersburg. It was the Pro-Nuncio in Vienna, Cardinal Raffaele Scapinelli di Leguigno, who informed Gasparri that the imperial government ‘would be very grateful to the Holy See if it would be so good as to intercede with Sweden in order to make it agree to hosting prisoners within its territory […] and with Russia for a rapid realization of the project’.25 This was a further, authoritative recognition of the Holy See’s role as an impartial subject of high moral standing, capable of promoting humanitarian initiatives and of dealing with impasses between belligerents blocked by mutual vetoes. The new front in negotiations that opened to the Vatican was rather complex at this time because there were various types of technical issues — long distances, the need to cross various countries and war fronts — besides political issues that presented obstacles to their achievement. In a message dated 31 May, Marchetti Selvaggiani described the situation to the Secretary of State.26 He wrote that the Russians had mainly looked to other powers to carry out prisoner exchanges with the Germans, something Berlin was very keen

24 ‘La S. Sede ha delegato un rappresentato ufficioso, mons. Marchetti Selvaggiani, mostrando così il grande interesse per l’obiettivo umanitario. Insieme ci siamo sforzati di trionfare sulle difficoltà considerevoli. All’inizio di quest’anno l’intesa era fatta tra i governi interessati. Si sono decise numerose categorie di malattie, infermità e conseguenze di ferite che entrano nel conto dell’internamento. Sono escluse tutte le malattie mentali e nervose gravi che esigono cure in centri specializzati, l’alcolismo cronico e tutte le patologie trasmissibili. Gli altri possono essere internati, senza rispettare reciprocità di quantità. Gruppi di medici svizzeri hanno preso a girare per i campi di prigionia di Francia e Germania per individuare i prigionieri internabili. Vari organismi privati assicurano assistenza spirituale e materiale in Svizzera. Si lavora anche sui civili e siamo a disposizione dei governi di Belgio, Italia, Austria Ungheria, Inghilterra per l’internamento dei loro prigionieri di Guerra’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40. 25 ‘Sarebbe gratissimo alla S. Sede se volesse intercedere verso la Svezia perché accordasse ospitalizzazione in suo territorio […] e sulla Russia per una pronta realizzazione del progetto’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Scapinelli di Leguigno to Gasparri, 8 March 1916. 26 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 31 May 1916.

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to do, but, having noted the excellent treatment offered to the sick Belgians, French, British and Germans in Switzerland, they had also requested that their prisoners be sent there. The Confederation’s Political Department, however, had responded that it could not take the Russians because there were too many of them (Marchetti Selvaggiani emphasized that, since the plan for hosting prisoners was in full operation, Switzerland was facing more than a few practical difficulties), and they could not maintain the necessary condition of reciprocity since it was impossible to reach the German prisoners being held in Russia. Negotiations were not interrupted, however, and this led to a partial opening ‘that seemed to satisfy everyone’: Russian prisoners (in Germany) and German prisoners (in Russia) who were suffering from curable forms of tuberculosis would be eligible for internment. For other diseases, the countries affected could request assistance from the other neutral nations. One necessary condition was the organization of safe transport by sea and land. The Reich’s Ambassador had informally asked Marchetti Selvaggiani whether the Holy See could officially formulate a proposal to all involved. Austria was also increasing pressure in that direction, above all upon the government in Bern, so that the number of persons accepted could be increased to the maximum. Marchetti Selvaggiani wrote: The survey that I made in this regard was not very encouraging, although it does not remove all hope. Count Valffy told me that Mr Hoffmann, who was asked about this by the Austro-Hungarian Minister Baron de Gapern, had not seemed entirely foreign to accepting a small number. Hence Austria’s greater insistence that it please the Holy Father to request this favour of Switzerland, asking it to welcome the greatest possible number of Austrian prisoners with tuberculosis. Naturally, it must be a bilateral operation, therefore, if Switzerland commits itself to accepting Austrians, it must also take a good number of Russian patients who are now in Austria.27 The Holy See’s diplomacy was set in motion. Talks with the government in Saint Petersburg went through the Russian chargé d’affaires, Nikola Bock. The privileged channel for the Germans remained Otto von Mühlberg. A letter from Gasparri, through Marchetti Selvaggiani’s mediation, was sent to Mühlberg, outlining the difficulties and informing him of having asked the Russian government to work with its allies for the agreement of safe transport by sea for German prisoners who would then cross France, which had already agreed to passage within its territory of German prisoners from England who were sent to Switzerland.28

27 ‘Il sondaggio che io ho fatto in proposito non è troppo incoraggiante, sebbene non tolga ogni speranza. Il conte Valffy mi diceva che il sig. Hoffmann, richiesto da questo ministro di AustriaUngheria, barone de Gapern, non si era mostrato del tutto alieno dall’accettarne una piccola quantità. Di qui le maggiori insistenze dell’Austria, perché il S. Padre si compiaccia chiedere alla Svizzera tanto favore, domandando che essa accolga il più grande numero possibile di prigionieri austriaci tubercolotici. Naturalmente la cosa deve essere bilaterale e quindi se la Svizzera si impegnerà ad accettare gli austriaci, dovrà anche prendere un buon numero di malati russi ora in Austria’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 7 July 1916. 28 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Gasparri to Mühlberg, 7 June 1916.

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On 15 July, however, harsh reality cropped up. Officially charged with the task by Benedict XV,29 Marchetti Selvaggiani met Hoffmann who, while asking for time to consult the army’s health authorities, held firm to the numbers set forth in the agreement: ‘Switzerland, making the utmost effort, could still accommodate a few hundred tuberculosis patients, for example, 300 Austrians and just as many Russians’.30 Marchetti Selvaggiani rightly noted that such a quantity might seem ‘grand in itself, but was relatively minimal in the light of the recently received news that the Russians may have over 15,000 tuberculosis sufferers among their prisoners’.31 He continued: I cannot say exactly what the definitive result of this business will be. It seems to me that Switzerland, for many reasons, does not intend to increase the number of those interned and much less wishes to put up tuberculosis patients outside the centres designated for them. In order to avoid any risk of contagion (among the Swiss population as well), many hygienic precautions are necessary, and it is not possible to observe them if the ill are too numerous or not properly accommodated and cared for. In any case, I have already told Count Valffy that His Holiness had immediately accepted the request with paternal benevolence and concern and that I had been encharged with taking the appropriate steps. If the venture does not succeed, it will certainly not be because of a lack of good will on the part of the Holy See.32

29 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Gasparri to Marchetti Selvaggiani, 13 July 1916. 30 ‘La Svizzera, facendo il massimo sforzo, potrebbe accogliere ancora qualche centinaio di tubercolosi, per esempio 300 austriaci e altrettanti russi’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 15 July 1916. 31 ‘In sé grande ma relativamente minima, poiché dalle notizie giunte recentissimamente si ritiene che i russi abbiano tra i loro prigionieri oltre 15,000 tubercolosi’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 15 July 1916. 32 ‘Non potrei dire esattamente quale sarà il risultato definito di tale affare. A me sembra che per moltissime ragioni la Svizzera non intenda aumentare il numero degli internati, né tanto meno desideri stabilire i tubercolosi fuori di quei centri che sono loro destinati, tanto più che per evitar ogni pericolo di contagio (anche per la popolazione svizzera) sono necessarie moltissime precauzioni igieniche, non possibili ad osservarsi se i malati fossero troppo numerosi e non convenientemente alloggiati e curati. In ogni modo, ho già detto al conte Valffy che S. S. aveva subito accolto con paterna benevolenza e premura la richiesta e che ero stato incaricato di fare i passi opportuni: se non riuscirà non sarà certo per difetto di buona volontà da parte della S. Sede’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 15 July 1916. The note concludes: ‘Count Valffy, while he begs me to express, on his behalf, his most heartfelt gratitude to Your Eminence, he asks me to plead with Your Eminence that it pleases you to ensure by any means (regardless, that is, of the answer that will eventually be given to Switzerland) that Russia enter into the agreement with Austria in order to host their sick prisoners in neutral countries. As he tells me, they are now negotiating with other northern states (Sweden and Norway), which seem willing to welcome the prisoners themselves. It is urgent, however, that the question with Russia be settled in principle’ (‘Il conte Valffy, mentre mi prega di porger da sua parte all’E. V. i più sentiti ringraziamenti, mi domanda di supplicare V. E. a volersi compiacere di fare in ogni modo (prescindendo cioè dalla risposta che eventualmente darà la Svizzera), la proposta alla Russia di entrare in una convenzione

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The dream of extending the plan to accommodate prisoners to Russia and the East was not achieved in the manner hoped for. The numbers were large and frightening, and the practical difficulties severe. There was not even a small-scale exchange of a few hundred patients. The Holy See, however, did not renounce following the case, which was reopened over than a year later, in September of 1917, when the Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna, Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, communicated to Gasparri the recent achievement of an agreement to exchange disabled prisoners of war between AustriaHungary and Russia as part of a conference in Stockholm promoted by Prince Carl of Sweden. Having discarded a plan for naval transport, it was decided ‘to establish a neutral zone in an area close to the front dedicated to prisoners for exchange who, from there, would be sent to their homeland’.33 A plan numbering 18,000 exchanges per month was proposed, involving all those over sixty years old, those who had been prisoners for more than twenty-four months and those suffering from illnesses. Gasparri responded: I should like to express my pleasure at learning that this agreement now seems close to implementation and that the conditions for the exchange under discussion are inspired by fairly extensive criteria. I would then point out, as Your Excellency well knows, that such a project, where happily carried out, will increase the number of those many measures whose generous initiative must be attributed to the Holy See’s assiduous care, in its unflagging efforts to alleviate the sorrows of this present war. I therefore charge you to use your wisdom and care in emphasizing how this was inspired by the Holy See in the definitive and official version of the aforementioned agreement. Moreover, it is my wish that you take the appropriate steps so that the public, by means of the press, is made aware of the role of, and merit due to, the Holy Father in an act intended to relieve the many unfortunate and their families.34 It cannot escape one’s notice, therefore, how much the Secretariat of State urged that the Holy See’s humanitarian role be recognized and appropriately highlighted to governments, professionals in the field and the public opinion. If the powers meant

coll’Austria al fine di ospitalizzare in paesi neutrali i loro prigionieri malati: come egli mi dice, si stanno facendo ora trattative cogli stati del nord (Svezia, Norvegia) i quali sembrano disposti ad accogliere i prigionieri stessi; urge però che colla Russia sia regolata la questione in principio’). 33 ‘Di stabilire, in una località vicina al fronte, una zona neutra nella quale verrebbero concentrati i prigionieri da scambiarsi e dalla quale questi passerebbero in patria’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 5 September 1917. 34 ‘Godo di significarle il mio compiacimento nell’apprendere che detto accordo sembra ormai prossimo ad effettuarsi e che le condizioni per lo scambio in parola s’ispireranno a criteri piuttosto larghi. E poi manifesto, come ben sa V. E., che tale progetto, ove sia felicemente attuato, verrà ad accrescere la serie di quei molti provvedimenti, la cui generosa iniziativa deve attribuirsi all’assidua premura onde la S. Sede non cessa di lenire i dolori della presente guerra. Interesso pertanto la sagace di Lei sollecitudine ad ottenere che nell’atto definitivo ed ufficiale dell’accennato accordo non si ometta di rilevare come questo sia stato ispirato dalla S. Sede medesima. Ella inoltre, vorrà opportunamente adoperarsi affinché il pubblico, per mezzo della stampa, sia reso consapevole della parte e del merito spettanti al S. Padre in un beneficio destinato a sollevare tanti infelici con le loro famiglie’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Gasparri to Valfrè di Bonzo, 28 September 1917.

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to continue the ‘useless slaughter’, the humanitarian efforts of those who condemned and denounced it from the beginning must be underlined and highlighted. Such recognition was not lacking on the part of the Swiss, as two small facts show. In the Federal Council’s reports to the Federal Assembly regarding the process, there is no lack of mention of the Pope’s influence, which is designated as decisive. The main, official publication, which illustrates and outlines the plan’s budgets — the three volumes on L’internement en Suisse des prisonniers de guerre malades ou blessés that were edited by Major Édouard Favre and contemporary to the events35 — praises the Vatican’s intercession. The documents in the Vatican Secret Archives, however, also note the failures and the delicate natures and sensitivities of those involved in the humanitarian diplomacy. A partial failure was recorded in the further campaign promoted by the Holy See in 1916 to obtain the release of prisoners who had three or more children and those who had been detained for at least eighteen months. It was a very precise and specific initiative, aimed at rescuing a particular category of prisoner from the severity of imprisonment and formulated in such a way as to appeal to the sensitivity of the warring nations. Marchetti Selvaggiani inserted the proposal among the points under discussion in the negotiations regarding prisoners that had been permanently established in Bern following the implementation of internment. The negotiations, however, only concluded with the signing of a multilateral agreement known as the Bern Protocol on 24 April 1918. There were some issues that had to be solved concerning prisoners of war, civilian internees, and repatriation and internment. On 22 December 1917, Marchetti Selvaggiani wrote to Gasparri concerning the stalemate in discussions: Your Most Reverend Excellency, from the enclosed, unofficial communiqué you will see that all the grand plans that I reported to Your Excellency months ago concerning the exchange of a given quantity and quality of prisoner (including primarily fathers of families) have vanished. The negotiations that took place in Bern for over two weeks, in which Mr Artov, who directed them, was warmly interested, have obtained a poor, very poor outcome. The two sides’ points of view were too different, and it was not possible to find a way to reconcile them. The French insisted on the repatriation and internment of healthy men, and the Germans, given the great disproportion existing in the number of prisoners they would receive compared to those they would cede, did not feel willing to consent because, in addition to provoking a public outcry in Germany, it would, as they say, damage their interests. Perhaps in the future, if this terrible war is to continue, we can achieve some result!36

35 Favre, L’internement en Suisse. 36 ‘Dall’accluso comunicato officioso, l’E. V. R. vedrà che tutti i grandi piani che mesi indietro riferii a V. E. circa lo scambio di una data quantità e qualità di prigionieri (tra cui in primo luogo i padri di famiglia), sono svaniti. Le trattative che per oltre due settimane hanno avuto luogo a Berna e delle quali s’interessò caldissimamente il sig. Artov, che le diresse, hanno dato magro, magrissimo risultato. I punti di vista delle due parti erano troppo lontani, né si è potuta trovare la via di conciliarli. I francesi insistevano sul rimpatrio e internamento per categoria di uomini sani e i tedeschi, vista

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Another example also regards 1917. Marchetti Selvaggiani communicated that he had learnt from the German representative that the plan for hosting prisoners would have to be interrupted due to the limited number of spaces available.37 Gasparri then decided to write to Germany immediately through the usual channel, Mühlberg. No matter how much the pause that has been mentioned may seem justified by the intense movement of internees who have so far been accommodated by this hospitable country, I cannot remain silent before Your Lordship regarding the unfavourable, indeed the painful, impression that a suspension by the protectorate powers would make on the Holy Father’s soul, if, in fact, this provision could not be reconciled in any way out of a special concern due to the august person who initiated the generous proposal and thus the one to whom requests for hosting prisoners in Switzerland are still addressed by many. If those concerned bear these reasons in mind, Your Lordship can see how the environment destined to welcome the internees can certainly not be so crowded as to be unable to receive those prisoners — which are not so very numerous after all — to whom the Holy Father will continue to grant his benevolent protection. Once the land has been cleared of the various categories of prisoners who might be repatriated and the negotiations now in progress concluded, the Holy See will not fail to adhere strictly to the new criteria, and the humanitarian work it has inspired and ceaselessly sought will be able to continue on a much larger scale to the full advantage of the countless victims of the war.38

la grande sproporzione esistente nel numero dei prigionieri che essi avrebbero avuto nei confronti di quelli che avrebbero dato, non credono poter acconsentire, poiché ciò, oltre a irritare l’opinione pubblica in Germania, avrebbe, come essi dicono, danneggiato i loro interessi. Forse in futuro, se la terribile guerra durerà, si potrà giungere a qualche risultato!’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 22 December 1917. 37 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 26 May 1917. 38 ‘Per quanto la sosta a cui si accenna sembri giustificata dall’intenso movimento d’internati verificatosi fin qui in cotesto paese ospitale, non posso nondimeno tacere alla S. V. la poco favorevole anzi la penosa impressione che produrrebbe nell’animo del S. Padre il provvedimento di sospensione preso per le potenze protettrici; se di fatto questo provvedimento non potesse in nessun modo conciliarsi con uno speciale riguardo dovuto all’augusta persona di Colui che fu l’iniziatore della generosa proposta e al quale perciò si rivolgono tuttora da più parti le domande di ospitalizzazione in Svizzera. Facendo presenti queste ragioni a chi di dovere, la S. V. potrebbe far osservare altresì come l’ambiente destinato ad accogliere gli internati non si può, certo, supporre così saturo da non poter più ricevere quei prigionieri — ora, del resto, non molto numerosi — a cui il S. Padre vorrà continuare a concedere la sua benevola protezione. Sgombrato poi il terreno dalle varie categorie di prigionieri che possono essere rimpatriati e terminate le trattative ora in corso, la S. Sede non mancherà di attenersi strettamente ai nuovi criteri e l’opera umanitaria da essa ispirata e proseguita senza interruzione di sorta potrà continuare sulle più vaste proporzioni a tutto vantaggio delle innumerevoli vittime della guerra’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Gasparri to Mühlberg, 13 June 1917.

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The German response came immediately: I should, however, without delay, like to protest seriously against an observation Your Eminence makes, that is, against the interpretation that a temporary suspension of applications for hosting prisoners in any way touches upon the particular regard due to the August Person of His Holiness. I should like to believe that the Vatican can, in good conscience, bear witness that the imperial government, more than all the other states, despite the fact that sometimes there were almost insurmountable difficulties, has done everything to make a good start, in the Holy Father’s name, to His humanitarian work and to support it vigorously. I am convinced that my government will not tire of also doing so in the future.39 Gasparri felt compelled to send a reply in which he concluded the incident by speaking of a ‘misunderstanding’ and renewing the sense of cordial collaboration with the German government. The episode is yet another demonstration of how frequently the humanitarian agencies ran up against the brick walls erected by the belligerent governments, whose refusals and heel-dragging were difficult to surpass.

5. Conclusions It was 7 February 1919 when the new representative in Bern, Archbishop Luigi Maglione, sent Gasparri a communiqué from the federal government of the previous day which officially announced that the internment of French, English and Belgian soldiers in Switzerland had ended on 31 January. A clipping from a Swiss newspaper reporting the news was attached to the dispatch, and specified that 180 French, 25 English and 22 Belgians would remain to complete treatment in two countries while the others seen in circulation were not to be considered interned. The saga of internees in Switzerland, however, was still not over. On Armistice Day there were still 25,614 remaining, of whom 12,555 were French. But France, having obtained the repatriation of its citizens, refused to grant repatriation to Germans and Austrians, who numbered around 8700. Only after strong pressure was applied were they granted permission, on the symbolic date of 14 July 1919, to return home, which they did during the first two weeks of the following month. The internment in Switzerland can be said to have been concluded only at that point. During World War I, there were over seven million prisoners of war. The suburbs and fields of the various European countries were filled with detention camps. Local

39 ‘Io vorrei però fin d’ora seriamente protestare contro un’osservazione di S. E., cioè contro l’interpretazione che una sospensione temporanea delle domande di ospitalizzazione non si lascia in modo alcuno congiungere coi speciali riguardi dovuti all’Augusta Persona di S. S. Io vorrei credere che il Vaticano può, con buona coscienza, dare testimonianza che il governo imperiale più che tutti gli altri stati, nonostante che qualche volta vi fossero difficoltà quasi insormontabili, ha fatto tutto per bene avviare, in nome del S. Padre, la Sua umanitaria operosità e per appoggiarla con tutte le forze. Io son convinto che il mio governo non si stancherà di fare ciò anche in futuro’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 40, Mühlberg to Gasparri, 19 June 1917.

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people learned to recognize them. Those wishing to defend their rights could appeal to the articles of the Hague Convention of 1907 concerning them. The First Geneva Convention of 1864 prescribed treatment of the wounded and sick, at least in the countries that had ratified it. Legal means were disproportionate to the size and character of this total war. The fate of prisoners of war was extremely harsh during the conflict, more so perhaps, for some categories, than during the next war, when an entire series of guarantees were in operation according to the Geneva Convention of 1929. Reciprocity frequently had the effect of aggravating matters rather than working as a deterrent, incentivizing better treatment: captured prisoners were punished in response to the enemy’s crimes or in retaliation for the adversary’s alleged mistreatment of their own prisoners. Not sufficiently defended by their governments and states, the fate and daily life of prisoners of war weighed upon, and greatly interested, the public at large. This also explains the value and popularity of the Holy See’s and Switzerland’s humanitarian efforts. Both were capable of overcoming sensitivities and mistrust in order to work together in a humanitarian labour of wide breadth. Both recognized, during and after the conflict, that they had created an effective cooperative force. Without the Holy See’s diplomacy, the internment of sick prisoners would have been smaller and had greater organizational difficulties. Without Switzerland’s responsiveness, Benedict XV’s appeals would not have found concrete formulation. As for Switzerland, something very common in history occurred. Although these events date back exactly 100 years, the army and the government felt the need to publish the three aforementioned volumes on internment starting in 1916 in order to counter rumours among the public following press campaigns that were based on untruthful data and news, such as those reporting incidents of prisoner insubordination that never occurred and which made common people think that internment was a matter of hotel accommodation. In some prison camps, it is said that the fortunate ones are interned because hoteliers in Switzerland are very powerful and want to host wealthy internees who will bring their family and spend generously. The health question, therefore, is thought to be secondary, and the wealth of the internees and the interest of the hoteliers to be foremost.40 This was calumny, according to the author of the report, who refused to consider internment an economic affair that had been conceived in order to benefit some crafty businessmen. Favre continued: It is certain that Switzerland, thanks to its hotel industry, lent itself to internment better than other countries. It is certain that internment saved certain establishments from closing or being liquidated. However, there is no need to know the service

40 ‘L’internement est une affaire d’hôteliers. Dans certains camps de prisonniers, on dit que quiconque a de la fortune peut se faire interner, parce que les hôteliers en Suisse sont de puissants personnages et qu’ils désirent héberger de préférence des internés riches qui feront venir leur famille et dépenseront largement; la question de santé serait, de ce fait, reléguée au second plan; la fortune de l’interné et l’intérêt des hôteliers primeraient’; Favre, L’internement en Suisse, I (1917), p. vi.

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of internment thoroughly or the integrity with which it was carried out, the nobleness of the views of those who directed it, the manner in which we acted concerning any hotelier who would try to evade the commitment undertaken, in order to understand how far from the truth are those who would seek to debase the service of confinement to the level of a hotel enterprise.41 These then were the first reactions of the public concerning internment: it appeared to be a manoeuvre by hoteliers to become rich from the war at the state’s expense. A year later, however, things had changed but suspicions remained, so much so that the situation was compared to a pressure cooker ready to explode. From a domestic point of view, the attitude of the Swiss population changed: the excessive passion was followed, due to circumstances, by a feeling that was difficult to define. Our population suffered morally and materially; if our suffering cannot be compared to that of the belligerents, it is, nonetheless, great. Having no responsibility for the cause of the conflict and nothing to expect from it, Switzerland suffers because of, and for, others, which makes us feel nervous. The situation is reminiscent of a boiler without a release valve that has been placed in the middle of a furnace. Many Swiss are unhappy to see so many foreign uniforms in our territory. They fear that they will no longer be masters in their own homes when they realize that certain places — as has been said and even written by strangers — seem transformed into ‘small garrison towns’.42 ‘No longer masters in their own home’. That was the impression of many, seeing the villages transformed into ‘garrisons’. Indeed, in every age, the act of extending welcome needs those who go beyond prejudice and fear and can appreciate the value of human life, together with, in many cases, economic convenience.

41 ‘Il est certain que la Suisse, grâce à son industrie hôtelière, se prêtait mieux que d’autres pays à l’internement. Il est certain que l’internement a sauvé certains établissements de la fermeture ou de la liquidation; mais il n’y a pas besoin de connaître bien à fond le service de l’internement et la façon intègre dont il est dirigé, la hauteur de vues de ceux qui y président, la manière dont on agit à l’égard de tout hôtelier qui chercherait à éluder les engagements pris, pour comprendre combien sont éloignés de la vérité ceux qui cherchent à rabaisser le service de l’internement au niveau d’une entreprise hôtelière’; Favre, L’internement en Suisse, I, p. vi. 42 ‘Au point de vue intérieur, l’attitude de la population suisse a changé; à l’engouement excessif a succédé, par le fait des circonstances, un sentiment difficile à définir: notre population souffre moralement et matériellement; si sa souffrance n’est pas à comparer à celle des belligérants, elle est grande cependant; la Suisse n’ayant aucune responsabilité dans l’origine du conflit et n’ayant rien à en attendre, ne souffre que par et pour les autres, aussi devient-elle nerveuse. Sa situation fait penser à une chaudière sans soupape placée au centre d’un brasier. Beaucoup de Suisses voient sans plaisir tant d’uniformes étrangers sur notre territoire; ils craignent de ne plus être maîtres chez eux, lorsqu’ils constatent que certaines localités — cela a été dit et même écrit par des étrangers — semblent transformées en “petites villes de garnison”’; Favre, L’internement en Suisse, II (1918), p. vii.

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Bibliography Confessore Pellegrino, Ornella, ‘Santucci, Carlo’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), pp. 576–79 De Rosa, Gabriele, I conservatori nazionali: biografia di Carlo Santucci (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1962) Durand, André, ed., Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, 5 vols (1963–2015), II: De Sarajevo à Hiroshima (Geneva: Institut Henry-Dunant, 1978) Favre, Édouard, L’internement en Suisse des prisonniers de guerre malades ou blessées, 2 vols (Geneva: Georg, 1917–18) Garzia, Italo, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981) Gaudet-Blavignac, Richard, ‘L’internement des Bourbakis en Suisse’, Le Brécaillon. Bulletin de l’Association du Musée Militaire Genevois, 27 (2006), pp. 68–103 Kistler, Karl, Die Wiedererrichtung der Nuntiatur in der Schweiz (1920): ein Beitrag zur schweizerischen Kirchenpolitik (1914–1925) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1974) Panzera, Fabrizio, ‘Benedetto XV e la Svizzera negli anni della Grande Guerra’, Revue suisse d’histoire, 43 (1993), pp. 321–40 Picciaredda, Stefano, Diplomazia umanitaria: la Croce Rossa nella Seconda guerra mondiale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003) Santa Sede e Croce Rossa (1836–1953) (Vatican City: n. pub., 1954) Trisconi, Michela, Giuseppe Motta e i suoi corrispondenti (1915–1939) (Locarno: Armando Dadò, 1996)

499

The Note of 1917

Alfredo Canavero

The Papal Peace Note of 1917: Proposals for Armaments, Arbitration, Sanctions and Damages

1.

An ‘Obsession’ with Peace

Of Benedict XV’s many intercessions during the Great War, the best known is undoubtedly the Note, or more precisely, the Dès le début exhortation to the leaders of the nations at war of 1 August 1917. It is also the only public papal intervention in the war years that presents ‘concrete and practical proposals’ to ‘hasten the end of this calamity’ and obtain a ‘just and lasting peace’1 after three years of conflict. From the dawn of his pontificate, three factors guided Benedict XV’s actions: a rigorous impartiality towards the warring nations, humanitarian assistance and intercession for the people involved in the war with a constant appeal for peace.2 Benedict XV did not spare himself in calling for peace in all his speeches from the day following his election,3 particularly in the Ad beatissimi encyclical, in which he affirmed that there were other ways and other means, not only war, ‘whereby violated rights can be rectified’.4 However, here, besides on other occasions, the pontiff had not gone into detail or advanced concrete proposals on how to end the war. His speeches called for peace and continued the traditional interpretation of war as a ‘scourge’ through which

1 Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. 2 See Konrad Repgen, ‘Foreign Policy of the Popes in the Epoch of the World Wars’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), X: The Church in the Modern Age (1981), pp. 35–96 (p. 36). 3 Gabriele Paolini, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008), p. 16. 4 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 [accessed 10 January 2019].

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 501–522 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118788

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God ‘exacts of the people penance for their sins’,5 having lost the true path. War, like social unrest, the greed for material goods and the ‘injustice [that] reigns in relations between the classes of society’,6 were generated by straying from the true faith, by a contempt for divine authority and by not recognizing that all power comes from God, not from the will of men. Addressing everyone, not Catholics alone, the Pope called for peace and presciently stressed the danger of ‘racial hatred’ that had now ‘reached its climax’.7 In the encyclical, Benedict XV also lamented ‘the abnormal position of the Head of the Church’, which prevented him from complete freedom of action. Yet it was more a question of the need to protect ‘the rights and dignity of the Apostolic See’8 than of a traditional protest against the Italian State. On closer inspection, rather than a protest, it was the bitter realization that that abnormal situation threatened to make his peace efforts less effective. Benedict XV had assured Baron Carlo Monti, the chargé d’affaires unofficially responsible for communication between the Italian government and the Holy See,9 that in his first encyclical, ‘even if he was not able to avoid mentioning the conditions in which the Holy See found itself in, the matter would be stated in a measured and sober way that was not offensive’.10 The war was devastating, not only for the combatants, but also for the civilian populations, which posed problems for the Church that were largely new and difficult to solve and which rendered the traditional category of a ‘just war’ inapplicable.11 According to traditional doctrine, the ius in bello forbad harming innocent civilians, but the war under way had involved everyone, and not even civilians were spared. Deeply affected by the new instruments of war used by the warring nations, Benedict XV sought to put forward some concrete proposals in order to make the conflict, as far as possible, less inhumane. He invited the belligerent nations to a truce for Christmas in 1914:12 unfortunately, the initiative ‘was not, however, crowned with happy success’.13 5 Benedict XV, Ubi primum, 8 September 1914 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 128–29. 6 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 5. 7 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 7. 8 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 31. 9 Officially, Monti was the Director General of the Fondo per il Culto (Fund for Religion) in the Italian Ministry of Grace and Justice. 10 ‘Pur non potendo prescindere da un accenno alle condizioni in cui si trova la S. Sede, la cosa sarà detta in forma misurata e sobria e non offensiva’; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, p. 174. 11 See Matteo Caponi, ‘“Guerra giusta” e guerra ai civili: la Chiesa e i bombardamenti sulle città’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 13–42. 12 Benedict XV, Discorso del santo padre Benedetto XV in occasione del primo incontro con il Collegio Cardinalizio svoltosi alla vigilia della Solennità del Natale, 24 December 1914 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 145–46. 13 Benedict XV, Discorso del santo padre Benedetto XV in occasione del primo incontro con il Collegio Cardinalizio (Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, p. 145). On the reactions to the proposal of a truce for Christmas, see Francis Latour, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996), pp. 42–47.

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

He intervened several times to ask for a proper, humane treatment of the populations of the occupied territories, with the special recommendation not to touch the ‘sacred temples, the ministers of God, the rights of religion and of faith’14 and to treat prisoners of war ‘according to all the dictates of charity […] without distinction of religion, nationality or condition’.15 He proposed ‘the simultaneous cessation of the war of starvation: neither blockades nor submarines, for everything necessary to provide nourishment’.16 He also sought to convince the belligerents to refrain from the aerial bombardment of the open cities, in this case also unsuccessfully.17 However, these were efforts to contain the severity of a devastating war, not concrete proposals for stopping the war itself. On the other hand, the Pope had to act cautiously. He could not give cause for even the slightest suspicion of supporting one of the parties in the conflict because Catholics were fighting on both sides in a fratricidal war. As he himself said: ‘Who would recognize [them as] brothers, whose Father is in Heaven?’.18 Impartiality, therefore, was essential if the Holy See wished to have some possibility of being heeded by the warring parties and, therefore, of affecting the progress of the war, or at least of carrying out humanitarian efforts for well-being. However, the fact that the contenders’ diplomatic representatives to the Holy See were biased in favour of the Central Powers needed to be taken into account. They had regular diplomatic relations, even if difficulties arose after their representatives left Rome when Italy entered the war. As far as the Entente was concerned, diplomatic relations existed only with Russia and Belgium. Shortly after the war began, England had sent its own representative on a mission of a ‘temporary nature, but of indefinite duration’,19 while France and Italy, as is known, did not have official diplomatic relations with the Holy See, even if Italy entertained an unofficial dialogue thanks to the person

14 Benedict XV, Convocare vos, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7, 2 (1915), pp. 33–36 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 151–54. In the same sense, see also his consistorial address Quandoquidem, 4 December 1916, [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig pp. 220–21. 15 Benedict XV, letter to Archbishop Dobrečić of Bar Ex quo pontificatum, 8 November 1914 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, p. 140. 16 ‘La cessazione simultanea della guerra di affamamento: né blocco, né sottomarini, per tutto ciò che serve all’alimentazione’; Gasparri’s note, 27 February 1917, in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, pp. 70–71, n. 222. 17 Francesco Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966), pp. 38–39. See also Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, pp. 15–16 (21 January 1917) and Caponi, ‘“Guerra giusta”’, pp. 24–42. 18 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 3. 19 ‘Carattere temporaneo, ma di durata indefinita’; Massimo De Leonardis, ‘Le relazioni anglo-vaticane durante la Prima guerra mondiale: l’imparzialità di Benedetto XV e la sua nota dell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 171–212 (p. 172).

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of Baron Monti, a childhood friend of Benedict XV. It should also be added that the Holy See’s location within the Italian State made secure communications between the Secretariat of State, the nunciatures and the other diplomatic representatives problematic. According to David Alvarez, the Italian security services kept constantly abreast of most of the Vatican’s initiatives.20 The absolute impartiality that Benedict XV had imposed permitted him only to call for peace without being able to condemn concrete acts committed by the belligerents except in the most generic terms. Benedict XV stated this clearly in his address on 22 January 1915, indirectly responding to those who accused him of not having openly condemned the German invasion of neutral Belgium.21 The Pope would have done anything to stop ‘this fatal war, this awful massacre’, or at least to ‘alleviate its deplorable consequences’. However, to do more today is not in the power given to Us by Our Apostolic task. To proclaim that for no reason is it permissible to offend justice is assuredly a duty that belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff, who is the divinely authorized supreme interpreter of the eternal law. And that We proclaim without waste of words, denouncing all injustice on whatever side it has been committed. But it would be neither proper nor useful to entangle the pontifical authority in disputes between the belligerents.22 The pontiff, who had to ‘preserve the most absolute neutrality’,23 therefore, was able only to call for peace, while the episcopates of the warring states could respond with prayers for peace, but only after the victory of their own country.24 The fact that the text of the prayer for peace,25 issued on 7 February 1915, was kept under wraps in France26 and manipulated for war purposes in other countries upset the pontiff. Between the Pope and the powers at war, a veritable dialogue among the deaf was established, which in some cases also included the episcopate and the clergy. 20 See David Alvarez, ‘Vatican Communication Security, 1914–1918’, Intelligence and National Security, 7, 4 (1992), pp. 447–54, and David Alvarez, I servizi segreti del Vaticano: spionaggio, complotti, intrighi da Napoleone ai giorni nostri (Rome: Newton Compton, 2008), pp. 127–34. 21 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 189 (19 January 1915). 22 Benedict XV, Convocare vos (Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, p. 152). 23 Benedict XV, Convocare vos (Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, p. 152). See Jean Leflon, ‘L’action diplomatico-religieuse de Benoît XV en faveur de la paix durant la première guerre mondiale’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 53–71 (p. 54): ‘Universal Pastor, the Pope must stand above the fray, without leaning toward either side’ (‘Pasteur universel, le Pape doit se tenir au dessus de la mêlée, sans incliner vers l’un ou l’autre camp’). 24 Maria Paiano, ‘Pregare per la vittoria, pregare per la pace: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto’, in La Chiesa italiana, ed. by Menozzi, pp. 43–73. 25 For the text of the prayer, see Sante Lesti, ‘Pregare per la pace, legittimare la guerra: la ricezione della preghiera per la pace di Benedetto XV nei santini di guerra (1915–1918)’, in La Chiesa italiana, ed. by Menozzi, pp. 75–98 (p. 78). 26 See Americo Miranda, ‘Il papa non “ammesso tra le grandi potenze”: Benedetto XV e l’esclusione della Santa Sede dalla conferenza di pace di Parigi’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 45, 2 (2009), pp. 341–67 (p. 344).

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

Various testimonials show that Benedict XV wanted at all costs to find a way to stop the war, or at least to avoid its escalation, even by seeking contact with international pacifist organizations. In 1915, Benedict XV and Gasparri received, albeit unofficially, the representatives of the Women’s Committee for Permanent Peace.27 The Vatican attentively followed the activities of Matthias Erzberger, a Zentrum parliamentary member, maintaining close relations with him.28 Through the discrete endeavours of Vatican diplomacy, Benedict XV attempted to prevent Italy’s entrance into the war,29 for the additional reason that the autonomy of the Holy See’s judgement — once it was surrounded by a belligerent country — would have been less credible to the European governments. All efforts for a return to peace, however, were unsuccessful. The diplomatic defeat was very bitter, but the pontiff ’s efforts did not diminish. As Paulucci di Calboli, the Italian Minister in Bern, wrote to Sonnino after a meeting with the papal representative in Bern, Mgr Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, in July 1915, the pontiff had an ‘obsession’ with peace and complained ‘of not being able to realize his aspirations in any practical way’.30 The President of the Swiss Confederation, Giuseppe Motta, said the same thing to Paulucci di Calboli: ‘The Holy Father lives ideally […] for one idea alone, an idea of peace, without as yet being able to find a way of putting his thought into practice’.31 As mentioned above, ‘Benedict XV’s efforts to end the conflict, undertaken during the first three years of war, had no precedent in extension or in means employed’,32 yet had come to nothing. It was necessary to think up a different approach. Father Angelo Martini33 illustrated, as early as in 1962 (and Nathalie RenotonBeine more recently),34 how the Note came about in August 1917. That the war had continued beyond any initial predictions had led the Holy See to increase its diplomatic efforts, particularly after the peace offer extended by the Central Powers,

27 See Maria Cristina Giuntella, Cooperazione intellettuale ed educazione alla pace nell’Europa della Società delle Nazioni (Padua: Cedam, 2001), p. 93. 28 See Emma Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede: le nunziature di Pacelli tra la Grande Guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), pp. 46–48. 29 See Alberto Monticone, La Germania e la neutralità italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1971). On the multiple motivations for the pontifical intervention, see Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004), pp. 27–36. 30 ‘L’idea fissa’; ‘di non riuscire a concretare in una forma pratica le sue aspirazioni’; Raniero Paulucci di Calboli to Sidney Sonnino, 13 July 1915, in Sidney Sonnino, Carteggio 1914–1916, ed. by Pietro Pastorelli (Bari: Laterza, 1974), p. 540. 31 ‘Santo Padre perfettamente non vive […] che per una idea ed è quella della pace, senza riuscire finora a trovare una forma pratica del suo pensiero’; Paulucci di Calboli to Sonnino, 13 July 1915, in Sonnino, Carteggio 1914–1916, p. 539. 32 ‘Gli sforzi di Benedetto XV, intrapresi nei primi tre anni di guerra per porre fine al conflitto, non avevano precedenti per estensione e mezzi impiegati’; Miranda, ‘Il papa non “ammesso tra le grandi potenze”’, p. 344. 33 Angelo Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV alle potenze belligeranti nell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV, ed. by Rossini, pp. 363–87. An initial part of the speech was previously published: Angelo Martini, ‘La preparazione dell’appello di Benedetto XV ai governi belligeranti (1 August 1917)’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 113, 4 (1962), pp. 119–32. 34 Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées.

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which was announced on 12 December 1916, but was communicated to the Holy See on the day before that.35 Germany and Austria had hoped that Benedict XV would intervene publicly in support of their proposal,36 but the Pope, well aware that such an intervention would be exploited, decided to remain silent although he believed that the Entente Powers ought to respond to a proposal that he considered serious.37 He preferred instead to act discreetly through Vatican diplomatic channels, without compromising the Holy See’s impartiality, in order to try to induce the Central Powers to give a concrete form to the vague offer of peace. Benedict XV also hoped that the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts might facilitate the success of the plan proposed by the American president, Woodrow Wilson, on 18 December,38 which the pontiff viewed very positively.39 All the belligerent countries were to express the conditions each deemed indispensable to ending the war. Collecting such aims of the war from the contenders would allow a balanced peace proposal to be drafted that might have some hope of success. However, faced with public opinion that had been poisoned by war propaganda, it was rather ‘naive’ to expect a serious exchange of respective war goals. Benedict XV and his Secretary of State Gasparri knew that they were treading on slippery ground. Nevertheless, the pontiff, eager to achieve peace and fearing that the German proposals would fall on deaf ears, attempted to support Berlin and Vienna’s proposals by means of a mediation on the part of the Holy See. This explains Gasparri’s offer to Baron Monti, at the end of December 1916, for the Vatican to exert pressure on the new Emperor of Austria, Karl I, who had recently succeeded the late Franz Joseph I, and his Empress Zita to satisfy at least some of Italy’s territorial requests and to end the conflict on the southern front.40 Unable to achieve a general peace, Benedict XV pursued the goal of at least limiting the war.

35 See Italo Garzia, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981), p. 141. Karl, then still Archduke of Austria, had already sent a draft of the peace proposals to Benedict XV in November asking him to ‘make good use of the influence that You have over all the belligerent parties, to make them decide to put an end to this terrible struggle, which covers Europe with blood and tears’ (‘bien user de l’influence qu’Elle possède sur tous les partis belligérants, afin de les décider à mettre un terme à cette lutte terrible qui couvre l’Europe de sang et de larmes’); Karl I to Benedict XV, November 1916, in Benedetto XV e la pace, ed. by Rumi, p. 29. 36 See Stefano Trinchese, ‘I tentativi di pace della Germania e della Santa Sede nella Prima Guerra mondiale: l’attività del deputato Erzberger e del diplomatico Pacelli (1916–1918)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 35 (1997), pp. 225–55 (p. 238). 37 See Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 540 (24 December 1916): ‘The Holy Father believes it is inappropriate to reject Germany’s proposals without examination’ (‘S. Padre ritiene che non conviene respingere senza esame proposte Germania’). Gasparri also expressed himself in the same manner, see Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 541. 38 Secretary of State Lansing to the ambassadors and ministers of the belligerent countries, 18 December 1916, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1916, Supplement, The World War, ed. by Joseph V. Fuller (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1929), pp. 98–99. 39 Through the Spanish government, Benedict XV congratulated Wilson for his speech; see Spanish Ambassador Juan Riano y Gavangos to Lansing, 27 December 1916, in Papers, ed. by Fuller, p. 118. 40 See Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 542. See also Sidney Sonnino, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), III, pp. 268–71 (25 April 1918).

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

Unlike the Holy See, the Entente Powers considered the Central Powers’ peace offer insincere and hardly serious and made it known to the Vatican, on 5 January 1917, that ‘any step in favour of peace taken by the Holy See would in no way be welcomed by England and France’.41 This did not make the Vatican cease its efforts to work towards a mediation that might lead to peace. The dramatic events of the first months of 1917, with the resumption of indiscriminate submarine warfare on the part of Germany, and the United States’ subsequent entry into the war, not to mention the revolution in Russia, led Benedict XV to intervene publicly with the Note to the belligerent powers. It was necessary, however, to ensure first a general assent from the powers, beginning with Germany.

2. The Cornerstone: Disarmament Through its diplomatic representatives in Bern, Munich and Vienna, the Holy See sought to induce Germany to express its conditions for peace explicitly and concretely, suggesting some general foundations that would serve as a starting point for further, direct negotiations among the warring nations. In the instructions to the nuncios there was no mention of territorial issues but only of some general themes that would guarantee the maintenance of peace once the war ended. It was evident that the implicit thought, from a territorial point of view, was of returning, perhaps with some limited modification, to the pre-war status quo. Among the points of discussion proposed by the Holy See, some themes were characteristic of the pontiffs’ thoughts for quite some time, such as disarmament, which was closely linked to an active stance for peace. During Leo XIII’s pontificate, in his Nostis errorem address of 11 February 1889, the pontiff had already affirmed that he ‘cannot keep from trembling for the dangers which threaten’ the Christian peoples in the case of war, considering the progress of military science and the new ‘instruments of destruction thereby multiplied’.42 Again, at the end of the century, Leo XIII recalled the countless times that the ‘Roman Pontiffs’ had interceded to ‘put a stop to oppressions, to dispel wars, to obtain truces, agreements, treaties of peace’ and ‘to curb the inhuman instincts of tyranny and conquest’.43 The pontiff’s vocation to be a ‘mediator of peace’ was also recalled in the letter sent to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands on the occasion of the Hague Peace Conference in 1899.44 In a subsequent address, complaining of the Holy

41 ‘Sarebbe stato all’Inghilterra ed alla Francia del tutto sgradito qualsiasi passo della S. Sede per la pace’; Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 365. 42 Leo XIII, Nostis errorem, 11 February 1889 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 47–49. 43 Leo XIII, Allocuzione al Sacro Collegio dei Cardinali, 11 April 1899; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 96–97. 44 Leo XIII, letter to Queen Wilhelmina of Holland, 29 May 1899 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 99–100.

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See’s exclusion from that same Conference at Italy’s request, Leo XIII reiterated that the papacy’s mission was ‘to contend for justice, to bring about peace, to prevent quarrels’.45 Pius X also touched on the question of limiting arms, which had become so destructive. He wrote, that ‘they portend wars which must be a source of fear even to the most powerful rulers’.46 The issue of disarmament was central to the Holy See’s careful and discreet efforts to induce Germany to declare its conditions for peace explicitly. It was already mentioned in the dispatch that Gasparri sent the nuncios in Vienna and Munich on 20 December 1916, proposing an eleven-point plan for testing its acceptability to Austria and Germany.47 It was then spoken of in four points that Gasparri sent to the Nuncio in Munich, Archbishop Giuseppe Aversa, on 17 January 1917, for submission to the German government. They explicitly reference a ‘proportional reduction of arms in order to make any aggression against one another impossible in the future’. Gasparri clarified that ‘this point would undoubtedly satisfy the Entente very much, and it does not seem to be displeasing to the Central Powers’.48 The issue of disarmament was taken up again on 13 June in the instructions that Gasparri sent to Eugenio Pacelli, who was appointed Nuncio in Munich after Aversa’s death. Pacelli was set to go to Berlin to meet with Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann and Emperor Wilhelm II himself. The third point insisted on the need for Germany to be open to discussing ‘the reduction or suppression of armaments’.49 Gasparri attached great importance to this point because a German declaration in favour of disarmament would remove, he said, many serious obstacles to peace.50 The results of Pacelli’s talks in Berlin and then in Munich, where he met the Austrian Emperor, who was passing through there, on 30 June, were deemed encouraging by the Vatican and convinced Benedict XV and Gasparri that the moment was favourable for the pontiff to take public steps to call for an end to the carnage. The military offensives continued to cause many deaths without substantially changing the front lines, and the desire for peace was growing within the warring countries.

45 Leo XIII, Auspicandae celebritatis, 14 December 1899 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, p. 101. On the Holy See’s exclusion from the conference, see Angelo Martini, ‘La questione romana e il mancato invito alla Santa Sede per la prima conferenza dell’Aja nel 1899’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 113, 1 (1962), pp. 221–35. 46 Pius X, letter to the Archbishop Falconio, 11 June 1911; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, p. 122. 47 See Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées, p. 151, n. 2; in ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 365, Martini speaks of ten points. 48 ‘Diminuzione proporzionale degli armamenti, in modo da rendere impossibile per l’avvenire qualsiasi aggressione degli uni contro gli altri’; ‘questo punto senza dubbio soddisfarebbe molto all’Intesa, e non sembra possa dispiacere agl’Imperi Centrali’; Gasparri to Aversa, 17 January 1917, in Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 367. 49 ‘La diminuzione o la soppressione degli armamenti’; Gasparri to Pacelli, 13 June 1917, in Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 373. 50 Gasparri to Pacelli, 22 June 1917, in Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 373.

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

It was necessary to know in advance, however, which kind of reception the papal intervention would have, particularly in Germany, rightly considered the determining factor in the initiative’s success. Gasparri then summarized the proposal into seven points (the ‘Pacelli Seven Points’, according to some German historians, but perhaps better named the ‘Gasparri Points’)51 to be submitted to Germany in order to discover ‘what Germany would make of such a peace proposal’.52 The second of the Seven Points called for a ‘simultaneous and reciprocal disarmament’, also adding that an international sanction, as yet to be established, would be imposed on any nation ‘that dared violate it’.53 Gasparri clarified that ‘every state should have only the number of soldiers necessary to maintain domestic public order’. The Secretary of State was confident that disarmament would put an end to aggressive militarism and remove ‘the danger of any military imperialism’. It would also improve the states’ economic standing, allowing them to allocate more money to ‘civil progress, the sciences and trade, without mentioning other higher-order advantages’.54 Imagining that the German government — or rather, the military — would create obstacles concerning this point, Pacelli asked Gasparri to formulate it in more flexible terms. Gasparri responded that disarmament was the main cornerstone of the peace proposals: Number 2 is the cornerstone of the project. It can be modified as follows: simultaneous and reciprocal reduction of armaments in such a way that each state has the number of soldiers with corresponding arms necessary for the maintenance of public order. The peace conference will assign the number of soldiers and arms for each state and will determine the international sanctions against the state that violates the agreed commitment.55 Disarmament was certainly not the only non-territorial point in the proposal. Other issues were also introduced in the Seven Points that would make peace more stable once the war had ended: freedom of the seas, arbitration for international disputes with relative sanctions for non-compliance and regulation of economic issues to be discussed at the peace conference. Each point was briefly outlined in the dispatch. The first point, freedom of the seas, referenced Wilson’s support and an address Gasparri to Pacelli, 4 July 1917, in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, pp. 126–29. ‘Quale viso farebbe la Germania a tale proposta di pace’; in Scottà ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 127. ‘Disarmo simultaneo e reciproco’; ‘che osasse violarlo’; in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 128. ‘Ogni Stato non dovrebbe avere che quel numero di soldati che è necessario per il mantenimento dell’ordine pubblico interno’; ‘il pericolo di qualsiasi imperialismo militare’; ‘progresso civile, le scienze, i commerci, per tacere di altri vantaggi di ordine superiore’; in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 128. 55 ‘Il numero 2 è il caposaldo del progetto. Può modificarsi nel modo seguente: diminuzione simultanea e reciproca degli armamenti in guisa che ciascuno Stato abbia il numero dei soldati coi relativi armamenti necessari al mantenimento dell’ordine pubblico. La conferenza della pace fisserà per ciascuno Stato tale numero dei soldati coi relativi armamenti e determinerà la sanzione internazionale contro lo Stato che violerà l’impegno assunto’; Gasparri to Pacelli, 22 July 1917, in Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 375. 51 52 53 54

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given by Churchill without further clarification. The third point, arbitration, was considered ‘the consequence and corollary of disarmament’ and a means to achieving lasting peace in Europe ‘with all the advantages that come from it’.56 Disarmament and arbitration, ‘accompanied by due sanction’, were closely linked to one another and were a constant in the Vatican proposals.57 The fifth point deferred economic divergences to the future peace conference. Gasparri highly optimistically believed that disarmament would make economic divergences among the states disappear, or at least attenuate them. On the other hand, the Secretary of State continued, ‘a continuation of the current slaughter for a question of money will not be permitted by the peoples’.58 The fourth, sixth and seventh points concerned territorial proposals. It can be seen that the Seven Points did not speak of war damages or repairs, putting all the belligerents on the same level, without attributing any blame or specific responsibility for the outbreak of war. The idea of a peace that returned everything to a status quo ante bellum was implied, which was difficult to accept after three years’ sacrifice. Shortly thereafter, on 19 July, the Reichstag approved a resolution for a peace without ‘territorial acquisitions imposed by force or political, economic or financial abuses’.59 It was Erzberger and the Catholic Zentrum’s initiative that had gathered votes from parties in the centre and on the left. Pacelli thus returned to Berlin full of hope on 24 July to expound the Seven Points but found a different situation from the one he had expected. Bethmann-Hollweg had been replaced as chancellor by Georg Michaelis, who was more acceptable to the military forces, which had thereby noticeably increased their command over the civil element.60 The climate was hardly favourable to peace negotiations. After a further meeting with Michaelis in Munich on 30 July, convinced that it would be difficult to obtain concrete answers from the German government, Pacelli refused to return to Berlin once more, as Gasparri wanted, and suggested that the Secretary of State proceed without waiting for any German resolution.61

3. The ‘Useless Slaughter’ From the end of July to the first days in August, the Vatican had already begun work on the text for the peace proposal that the Pope would put forward without waiting

56 ‘La conseguenza e come il corollario del disarmo’; ‘con tutti i vantaggi che ne derivano’; Gasparri to Pacelli, 4 July 1917, in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 128. 57 See Jean-Marc Ticchi, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1872–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002), p. 373. 58 ‘La continuazione dell’attuale carneficina per una questione di denaro non sarebbe ammessa dai popoli’; Gasparri to Pacelli, 4 July 1917, in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, pp. 128–29. 59 ‘Acquisti territoriali imposti con la forza e sopraffazioni politiche, economiche o finanziarie’; see Fritz Fischer, Assalto al potere mondiale: la Germania nella guerra 1914–1918 (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), p. 502. 60 Fischer, Assalto al potere mondiale, pp. 498–501. 61 Gasparri to Pacelli, 6 August 1917, in Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées, p. 267 and in Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 376.

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

for German feedback on the Seven Pacelli/Gasparri Points. The plan was to present the Pope’s proposal while the leaders of the Entente were gathered in London around 2 August, which was the anniversary of the start of the war.62 It seems that there was also another reason for hastening the document’s appearance. The Holy See did not want to be pre-empted by a peace initiative proposed by the Socialist International, which had scheduled a meeting in Stockholm during those weeks.63 Additionally, the decision to intercede publicly was not extraneous to the Pope’s correspondence with bishops, particularly those in or near war zones. Benedict XV was aware of the error of a war ‘that only envisioned its end with the radical annihilation of the adversary’.64 The war was a ‘useless slaughter’ not only because of the immense loss of human life but also because, whoever eventually prevailed, the common European homeland would have been destroyed. We know that the final document underwent three revisions before its translation into French, the document’s official language. The document’s development was anything but simple. Draft after draft, the Holy See sought, as Angelo Martini noted, to avoid any expression that might ‘offend the sensibilities’ of the powers.65 Benedict XV wanted to abstain from phrases that could cast doubt on his impartiality among the contenders. There was, therefore, no condemnation, and no responsibility for the war was pointed out, while a diplomatic approach was favoured.66 It was only in the third part, the final appeal, that the text assumed a tone of a moral condemnation of the war. On the other hand, the document was intended for the governments and was to provide a basis for the belligerents to meet and discuss how to achieve peace. As La Civiltà Cattolica put it, the Note is not an encyclical or an address […]; it is not an instruction or a regulation to peoples. Nor is it an imposition or imperious command to the leaders of the peoples. Instead, it is a noble and paternal proposal, as befits the Father and Supreme Master, as well as an act of mediation and is therefore a peaceful and friendly act.67 Instead, what was supposed to be a document reserved for the governments was disclosed and made an enormous impact on civilians and the military. As Gasparri

62 Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 378. 63 See Olindo Malagodi, Conversazioni della guerra 1914–1919, ed. by Brunello Vigezzi, 2 vols (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1960), I, p. 159 (14–16 August 1917). 64 ‘Che prevedeva la sua fine solo con l’annientamento radicale dell’avversario’; Gabriele De Rosa, ‘Presentazione’, in I vescovi veneti e la Santa Sede nella guerra 1915–1918, ed. by Antonio Scottà, 3 vols (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991), I, pp. v–xxvii (p. xxv). 65 ‘Urtare la suscettibilità’; Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV’, p. 377. 66 See Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 42–44. 67 ‘Non è una lettera enciclica; non è un discorso […]; non è una istruzione o prescrizione ai popoli; non è neppure una imposizione o un comando imperioso ai capi dei popoli: è invece un’alta e paterna proposta, quale si conviene al Padre e Maestro supremo, ed insieme un atto di mediazione, perciò atto pacifico ed amichevole’; [Enrico Rosa,] ‘L’appello del papa per la pace e le prime risposte dei governi belligeranti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 4 (1917), pp. 3–24 (p. 5).

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said to Baron Monti, the document’s publication was ‘due not to the Holy See but to the Entente, England having published it first’.68 It followed that the governments of the powers at war had to take into account their countries’ public opinion, inflamed by years of propaganda and certainly not inclined to return to the status quo ante bellum or to accept, after so many sacrifices, even the slightest territorial changes. In the first draft of the Note, which needed to be re-elaborated, there was no mention of concrete proposals, which perhaps were envisioned as separate attachments or aspects to be developed after Germany’s response. In fact, it read: ‘But in order not to limit ourselves to general terms, as in the past, We shall now go into more practical and more particular determinations, which We add almost as cornerstones or essential conditions for a just and lasting peace’.69 No list, however, followed, but rather a reference to the supreme principle of government, which the Church always intimates to rulers: that they are not masters or absolute arbitrators of the lives of their subjects but their guardians and patrons. Nor are their subjects a thing or property or chattel of the state, as the pagan world considered them, but creatures of God, made in the image and likeness of God, ordered by God to live in society, not for the profit of one or a few, but for the happiness of all, for a common good that, albeit transitory, serves as preparation not an obstacle to the eternal.70 This part completely disappeared in the second draft. The first draft turned out to be more a call for peace, like those produced previously, which were recalled, albeit generically, and described the calamities of war. In particular, it was recalled ‘that warm appeal that came from Our anguished heart when the first year of war was drawing to an end’. That appeal called upon all to ‘enter willingly into a direct or indirect exchange of views in order to remember, as much as possible, those rights and aspirations and thereby to bring an end to the immense struggle’.71 The first draft continued that, unfortunately, the appeal had not been heeded and that ‘the voice of reason and faith was overcome by the tingle of

68 ‘Dovuta non alla Santa Sede ma all’Intesa, l’Inghilterra avendola essa per la prima pubblicata’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 161 (28 September 1917). 69 ‘Ma per non contenerci su le generali, come nel passato, scenderemo ora a determinazioni più pratiche e più particolari, che qui uniamo quasi capisaldi o condizioni essenziali di una pace giusta e duratura’; the first two drafts of the Note are found at the end of De Rosa, ‘Presentazione’, in I vescovi veneti, ed. by Scottà. The extract quoted is on p. 6 of the first draft. 70 ‘Principio sommo di governo, sempre intimato dalla Chiesa ai governanti: che essi non sono padroni, o arbitri assoluti delle vite dei loro sudditi, ma loro tutori e patroni; né i sudditi sono una cosa o proprietà o mancipii dello Stato, come li considerava il mondo pagano, ma sono creature di Dio, fatte a immagine e somiglianza di Dio, da Dio ordinate a vivere in società, non per l’utile di uno o di pochi, ma per la felicità di tutti, per un bene comune che sebbene transitorio, sia di preparazione, non di ostacolo all’eterno’; p. 6 in the first draft. 71 ‘Quell’appello caloroso, che ci uscì proprio dal Cuore trambasciato, sul chiudersi del primo anno di guerra’; ‘iniziare con animo volonteroso uno scambio diretto od indiretto, di vedute allo scopo di tener conto, nella misura del possibile, di quei diritti e di quelle aspirazioni, e giunger così a por termine all’immane lotta’; p. 4 in the first draft.

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

passions, always easily misled, even when moved by principles, such as a noble and generous patriotic zeal’. The criticism of patriotism, however, seemed excessive and was corrected by a handwritten note in this way: ‘It is believed that the solution to the conflict can only come from the sword’. The previous sentence was then restored in the second draft, but definitively abandoned in the final text. The first draft talked about the ‘horrors’ of war, explicitly mentioning the hunger ‘sharpened by ruthless blockades and the cruel bombardment of planes and submarines’.72 In the second draft, however, this part was modified in order not to irritate either Great Britain or Germany, and was limited to emphasizing the exacerbation of war ‘upon the face of the land, upon the sea and even in the sky’.73 The point pertaining to the ‘universal madness’ of the war and to Europe having ‘a hand in her own destruction’74 already appeared but not yet the famous ‘useless slaughter’ expression. The second draft instead considered merit, and the proposals were those found in the definitive text, except for a few minor changes in form. The proposals returned to issues already mentioned previously in diplomatic talks with Germany. After a mention of the necessity that ‘the moral force of right shall be substituted for the material force of arms’, the first point consisted in the ‘simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of armaments’, limiting them to what was necessary for maintaining public order. The use of arms was to be replaced with arbitration, with sanctions to be defined for any state that might refuse arbitration or not accept the decisions outlined therein. The second point envisioned the freedom of, and common rights over, the seas, ‘which on the one hand would eliminate numerous causes of conflict, and, on the other, would open to all new sources of prosperity and progress’.75 Regarding ‘the damages and costs of the war’, ‘an entire and reciprocal condonation’ was called for, which was justified — as had already been mentioned in the Seven Points — ‘by the immense benefits which will accrue from disarmament’.76 The economic issue was returned to in the final section, after having listed the territorial foundations of a future European structure, asserting that accepting the papal proposals would prepare a solution to the economic question. Then came the famous phrase ‘useless slaughter’. The printed draft hoped to see ‘an end to this tremendous struggle, which has now proven to be a useless slaughter’, which was then corrected to ‘the terrible struggle which increasingly seems to be a useless slaughter’.77 Immediately after this

72 73 74 75

‘Orrori’; ‘acuita dal blocco spietato e dall’efferata lotta aerea o sottomarina’; p. 5 in the first draft. ‘Per terra, per mare e perfino nell’aria’; p. 4 in the second draft. ‘Follia universale’; ‘vero e proprio suicidio’; p. 5 in the second draft. ‘Prevalenza del diritto sulla forza’, ‘simultanea e reciproca degli armamenti’; ‘mentre eliminerebbe molteplici cause di conflitto, aprirebbe a tutti nuove fonti di prosperità e di progresso’; p. 5 in the second draft. 76 ‘Danni e spese di guerra’; ‘intera e reciproca condonazione’; ‘dai benefici immensi del disarmo’; p. 5 in the second draft. 77 ‘Terminare la lotta tremenda, la quale si dimostra oramai inutile strage’; ‘questa lotta tremenda, la quale ogni giorno più apparisce inutile strage’; p. 6 in the second draft.

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came a reference to the honour of the armies of both sides. With a few corrections, therefore, the second draft had taken on the almost definitive form, which was then translated into French and included the date of 1 August, which thereby became the official one of the document. In the Note there was an openness towards the populations’ national aspirations, albeit attenuated by the assertion ‘as far as justice and feasibility permit them’. It was somehow a principle of nationality based on the Latin tradition or, in a sense, on the principles of Giuseppe Mazzini. For the Pope, an explicit adherence to nationality was necessary: traditional, objective requirements of language, custom, religion, etc., were not enough. As Benedict XV himself wrote in a handwritten note in the margin of a copy of the Note: Principle of nationality: beautiful when it is free; ugly when coerced. The so-called territorial issues are regulated on the basis of this principle, thus understood, which is equivalent to the aspiration of the peoples. Nationalities stand upon territory, but territory must not be surrendered for the sake of nationality, people’s aspiration is required.78

4. Dashed Hopes Although it was dated 1 August, the Note was, as is known, delivered only from 9 to 12 August — directly to those powers that had relations with the Holy See and, through them, to the other belligerents. Optimism concerning the outcome of the Note reigned in the Vatican. Speaking to General Giovanni Garruccio, Head of the Italian Military Information Service, who then reported the conversation to Olindo Malagodi, Gasparri said: Our strength is our good faith, our desire for the good of all. The Note was a personal labour of His Holiness’s and mine. We sat at the table and examined, very attentively, the most recent declarations that from one side and the other had been made regarding peace: the motion of the Reichstag, the addresses and declarations of Michaelis and Czernin, and the opposing camp of Lloyd George, Wilson and the Russians. We noticed that the terms have now drawn quite close; there is no longer an abyss between one and the other and, based on these findings, we extended our proposals. The rest is in God’s hands.79

78 ‘Principio di nazionalità: bello quando è libero; brutto quando è coattivo. In base a questo principio così inteso, il che equivale al principio delle aspirazioni dei popoli, si regolino le questioni così dette territoriali. Sul territorio stanno le nazionalità, ma non pel fatto che vi è una nazionalità, il territorio deve essere ceduto, occorre l’aspirazione del popolo’; reported in I vescovi veneti, ed. by Scottà, I, p. lxxxvi. La Civiltà Cattolica also insisted greatly on this aspect ([Rosa,] ‘L’appello del papa’, pp. 18–20). 79 ‘La nostra forza è la nostra buona fede; il desiderio di fare il bene per tutti. La Nota è stato un lavoro personale di Sua Santità e mio. Ci siamo messi al tavolo, ed abbiamo passate in esame, con ogni attenzione, le più recenti dichiarazioni che da una parte e dall’altra sono state fatte riguardo alla pace;

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

Speaking to Baron Monti a few weeks later, Benedict XV said he was certain that the Note would not be just a ‘dead letter’. The pontiff asserted the appropriateness of his intercession at a moment when ‘all governments were calling for peace’. The Note had been ‘welcomed by everyone with great deference and respect’, even if there had been ‘attacks by some interested in diminishing its value’.80 In point of fact, there were more than a few negative responses. As La Civiltà Cattolica bitterly noted, the number of those opposed to it also included ‘quite a few weak Catholics […] blinded by narrow nationalism, which is not true love of one’s country’.81 The governments of the Entente, particularly Italy, were also irritated by the Note. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sidney Sonnino, believed that the papal intervention could not ‘take place at a more inappropriate moment’ and that it had ‘the entire aspect of being orchestrated with Austria, in collusion with Germany’. Without referencing the non-territorial aspects, he judged it to be not very ‘friendly toward Italy’ and represented ‘nothing whatsoever on which to base eventual negotiations’. Above all, it risked ‘weakening the patriotic resolution of public opinion that had proven to be convinced of the need for war’.82 The other powers of the Entente did not receive the pontifical effort very well, either, beginning with Belgium.83 Their dissatisfaction was not so much with the proposals for disarmament and arms but with the territorial proposals — or rather, their vagueness. The new government of Petrograd considered them directed against Russia. In France, the Note was seen very negatively both because of its vagueness concerning the question of Alsace-Lorraine and because it made no distinction between the aggressor and those who had been attacked.84 Only Great Britain carefully considered the proposal of the freedom of the seas, which obviously did not please London. At the British War Cabinet meeting, the discussion did not concern the substance of the proposal but the appropriateness of responding to the pontiff or not.85 Sonnino openly expressed the opinion that it was inappropriate to respond,

80 81 82

83 84 85

la mozione del Reichstag, i discorsi e le dichiarazioni di Michaelis e Czernin, e nel campo opposto quelle di Lloyd George, di Wilson e dei russi. Abbiamo rilevato che ormai i termini si sono assai avvicinati; che non vi è più un abisso fra l’una e l’altra parte; e in base a queste constatazioni abbiamo estese le nostre proposte. Il resto è nelle mani di Dio’; Malagodi, Conversazioni della guerra, I, p. 161 (14–16 August 1917). ‘Tutti i governi invocavano la pace’; ‘accolta da tutti con grande deferenza e rispetto’; ‘gli attacchi degli interessati a diminuirne il valore’; in Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 146 (18 September 1917). ‘Parecchi deboli cattolici […] accecati da un gretto nazionalismo, che non è il vero amore della patria’; [Rosa], ‘L’appello del papa’, p. 4. ‘Avvenire in un momento più inopportuno’; ‘tutto l’aspetto di essere stato prima concertato con l’Austria, con la connivenza della Germania’; ‘amichevole verso l’Italia’; ‘un bel niente come base di eventuali trattative’; ‘di affievolire i propositi patriottici di una parte dell’opinione pubblica che si era dimostrata convinta della necessità della guerra’; Sonnino, Diario, III, p. 182 (20 August 1917). The Plenipotentiary Minister in Belgium, Brand Whitlock, to Lansing, 20 August 1917, in Papers, ed. by Fuller, p. 165. See Jean-Michel Guieu, Gagner la paix 1914–1929 (Paris: Seuil, 2015), pp. 140–41 and Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede, pp. 65–66. De Leonardis, ‘Le relazioni anglo-vaticane’, pp. 179–80.

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revealing difficulties within the coalition ‘in the event that the allies’ response would leave any doubt that they share the Pope’s point of view’.86 While the Entente Powers discussed whether or not to respond, without consulting his ‘associates’ Wilson decided to reply publicly. While recognizing the generous motivations that had driven Benedict XV, the American President refused to return to the status quo ante bellum implied in the pontifical proposal and strongly argued that, without the democratization of Germany, that is to say, without the elimination of the Kaiser and Prussian militarism, the proposals for disarmament and arbitration, even if they were to be accepted by Berlin, could not be considered certain or guaranteed. His assertion was drastic: ‘We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure’.87 The United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing sent Wilson’s response to the American Ambassador to Great Britain so that he would see that a copy was sent to the Vatican through the British extraordinary minister. Speaking of Wilson’s response with Baron Monti, Gasparri grasped the central point of the American President’s reasoning: ‘Wilson, then, has instead declared that the peace desired by the Pope is not possible until Prussian militarism, namely the Kaiser, is destroyed’.88 Benedict XV’s hope that Germany would provide an encouraging answer evaporated on 21 September when the German text was officially delivered.89 After a long preamble illustrating the Kaiser’s efforts for peace and a reference to the motion for peace approved by the Reichstag on 19 July, the German government declared that it agreed with the pontiff ’s proposals on the issue of limiting arms and on arbitration, particularly the need for the moral force of the law to replace material force. Everything, however, had to be subordinate to the ‘vital interests of the Empire and the German people’. Despite the pressure exerted by the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, nothing was said about Belgium or the other territorial proposals.90 Commenting on the German response, Benedict XV complained that ‘the letter could be shorter and leave aside the useless retrospective premises for greater clarity

86 ‘Qualora la eventuale risposta degli alleati lasciasse un dubbio qualsiasi che gli alleati condividano il punto di vista del papa’; Sonnino to Giuseppe Salvago Raggi and Guglielmo Imperiali, 20 August 1917, in Sidney Sonnino, Carteggio 1916–1922, ed. by Pietro Pastorelli (Bari: Laterza, 1975), p. 276. 87 Lansing to the Ambassador in Great Britain, Walter Hines Page, 27 August 1917, in Papers, ed. by Fuller, p. 179. 88 ‘Wilson, poi, invece ha dichiarato che la pace voluta dal papa non è possibile finché il militarismo prussiano, vale a dire il kaiser, non è distrutto’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 149 (20 September 1917). 89 A ‘draft response’ was however delivered on 14 September to Pacelli who immediately forwarded it to Rome (Pacelli to Gasparri, 14 September 1917, in Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede, pp. 289–90). The German newspapers published the response on 22 September 1917. 90 The text of the German response, signed by Chancellor Michaelis and translated into English, is in Papers, ed. by Fuller, pp. 217–19. See also Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées, pp. 317–20 and Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede, pp. 53–62.

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

on one issue in the papal Note: that concerning territorial questions’.91 Nevertheless, the pontiff did not appear disappointed in his expectations. Germany was ‘victorious with arms’, and an explicit response could not be expected immediately. The Pope then went on to specify that guarantees were needed for disarmament to be effective, which would carry with it the abolition of compulsory leverage. If a state did not adhere, the other states would have to resort to commercial boycotts.92 Together with Gasparri and Pacelli, Benedict XV interpreted Germany’s response optimistically, which the allies of the Entente could not but judge differently in its being an insufficient basis for coming to the discussion table. Mgr Marchetti Selvaggiani, Nuncio to Bern, however, speaking to a representative of the British delegation, said he was ‘disappointed’ by Germany’s ‘polite, but far too vague’ response, arguing for the need for a response from the Entente to reinforce the non-military elements in Berlin.93 Germany’s silence on territorial issues was also echoed in Austria’s response, which arrived on 27 September. Emperor Karl I welcomed, ‘with all the ardour of deep conviction’, the papal proposals on the predominance of law, on disarmament, arbitration and the freedom of the seas. Nothing, however was said of the rest except for a vague mention of ‘a satisfactory solution conceived in a spirit of justice’ and that it granted Austria-Hungary the guarantee of its free development in the future.94 Two weeks later, in a très confidentielle letter, Karl refused ‘the slightest territorial concession in favour of Italy’ since ‘such a concession would be neither just nor possible’.95 He then spoke of the ‘legitimate aspirations’ of Austria and its allies’ in the Balkans. In essence, the responses of the Central Powers insisted on the acceptability of the non-territorial proposals, which would be implemented only at the end of the war but did not budge in any way on the territorial questions, which Austria, in particular, firmly rejected. Nevertheless, the Holy See was convinced that Germany’s and Austria’s answers represented a sufficient basis for opening negotiations. It was therefore necessary for the Entente to proffer a response. Sending the text of the responses from Germany and Austria to Lloyd George through John Francis Salis, the British representative to the Holy See, on 28 September, Gasparri, reiterating the essence of Pacelli’s observations,96 interpreted them as a substantial acceptance of the pontifical Note and invited the Entente ‘to enter into negotiations’. 91 ‘Che la lettera poteva essere meno lunga e lasciar da parte le inutili premesse retrospettive storiche ed essere più chiara su qualche punto della nota papale: quello riflettente le questioni territoriali’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 155 (26 September 1917). 92 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 156 (26 September 1917). 93 Horace Rumbold to Arthur James Balfour, 28 September 1917, in British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office: Part II, from the First to the Second World War: Series H, the First World War, 1914–1918, ed. by David Stevenson, 12 vols (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1987–91), III (1989), p. 208. 94 ‘Avec toute l’ardeur d’une conviction profonde’; ‘une solution satisfaisante conçue dans un esprit de justice’; Karl I to Benedict XV, 4 October 1917, in Benedetto XV e la pace, ed. by Rumi, pp. 33–35. 95 ‘La moindre concession territoriale en faveur de l’Italie’; ‘une pareille concession ne serait ni juste ni possible’; Karl I to Benedict XV, 4 October 1917, in Benedetto XV e la pace, ed. by Rumi, pp. 35–36. 96 Pacelli to Gasparri, 14 September, in Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede, pp. 289–90.

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Germany’s response contains an explicit acceptance of the first and second points of the pontifical appeal. Regarding the other four, acceptance is implicit as can be deduced from the various phrases of the answer. […] In the Austrian answer, the acceptance of the papal proposals is clearer, not excluding the fifth and sixth points and, having been drafted with a common understanding, it does not seem possible to doubt that the two answers complement each other.97 Gasparri then focussed on the question of disarmament. Returning to what had already been expressed by Benedict XV in private conversations, he emphasized that the only guarantee of disarmament could be the simultaneous and reciprocal suppression of compulsory military service, with the establishment of a tribunal of arbitration to decide international disputes and how to sanction general isolation (boycotts) of any nation that attempts to restore compulsory military service or refuses to submit the international question to arbitration or to accept its decision.98 Gasparri insisted on the need for ‘reciprocal and simultaneous’ disarmament, on the suppression of compulsory military service and on the establishment of an arbitration tribunal. He also offered the Holy See’s availability ‘to extend its efforts to request, as if for itself, further clarifications and determinations concerning the points indicated’.99 It was one of the last (or perhaps the very last) attempts to induce the Entente to respond and enter into negotiations for peace. Gasparri was still optimistic, while Benedict XV began to evaluate the situation with greater objectivity. During the first two weeks of October, the speeches before their respective parliaments of the AustroHungarian Foreign Minister, Czernin, on 2 October, and his German counterpart, Kühlmann, on 9 October, ended any possibility of agreement with their rejection of any territorial concessions. Gasparri, however, still thought, despite the statements of the two foreign ministers, that it would not be difficult to reach an agreement. Speaking to Baron Monti on 12 October, he insisted that the Entente should respond, perhaps overturning ‘every responsibility attributable to the Central Powers’,

97 ‘Ad entrare in trattative’; ‘La risposta della Germania contiene un’accettazione esplicita del primo e del secondo punto dell’appello pontificio. Degli altri quattro l’accettazione è implicita, quale si deduce dalle varie frasi della risposta. […] Nella risposta austriaca è anche più chiara l’accettazione delle proposte pontificie, non escluso il quinto e sesto punto, ed essendo state redatte di comune intesa, non sembra potersi dubitare che le due risposte si completino a vicenda’; the text of the note from Gasparri in Sonnino, Carteggio 1916–1922, pp. 303–04. 98 ‘Soppressione simultanea e reciproca del servizio militare obbligatorio, con la istituzione di un tribunale arbitrale per definire le controversie internazionali e come sanzionare l’isolamento (boicottaggio) generale contro la nazione che tentasse ristabilire il servizio militare obbligatorio ovvero rifiutasse di sottomettere la questione internazionale all’arbitrato o di accettarne la decisione’; Sonnino, Carteggio 1916–1922, pp. 303–04. 99 ‘Reciproco e simultaneo’; ‘a prestare l’opera sua per domandare, come da sé, ulteriori schiarimenti e determinazioni sopra i punti che le venissero indicati’; Sonnino, Carteggio 1916–1922, pp. 303–04.

T h e Papal Pe ace Note o f 1917

which had blocked any possibility of negotiation with those declarations.100 Sonnino’s speech to the Chamber of Deputies on 25 October,101 which ignited fiery reactions in the Catholic camp,102 cancelled any residual hope. In the papal proposals, Sonnino saw ‘that same indeterminacy that characterizes the enemy’s communications and which makes any consequent exchange of views impossible or useless’.103 Little by little, Gasparri also became convinced that the hypotheses of peace in the near future were vane and that Czernin and Kühlmann’s addresses had strengthened the front of those who wished to continue the war until their adversaries were destroyed. The Entente’s lack of response, which the Holy See considered — not without some reason — in support of Sonnino’s drastically contrary position104 since it was also shared by the French Foreign Minister, Alexandre Ribot, put an end to Benedict XV’s peace initiative. Italy and France’s total opposition also convinced Great Britain, which had initially been less hostile, giving at least a nod of confirmation to the Note. Benedict XV was left with bitter feelings and commented negatively on the fact that in the new Orlando Cabinet Sonnino, ‘the person principally responsible for the war and a supporter of a disastrous foreign policy for Italy’, had been retained in the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs.105 Benedict XV was particularly struck by the accusations of having acted in favour of, or upon the suggestion of, one side or the other and of having wanted to deflate the morale of armies or populations. The rout at Caporetto, with the consequent accusations that the Note and the clergy’s preaching had caused the collapse of the Italian front, increased the Pope’s bitterness even more. Even the King of the United Kingdom, George V, returning to ideas and impressions that were circulating in the Foreign Office, during a phone call to the Italian Ambassador Guglielmo Imperiali, released his feelings and went so far as to swear against the Pope, whom he linked to the neutralist socialists for his defeatist action.106

100 ‘Ogni responsabilità sugli Imperi Centrali’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 179 (12 October 1917). 101 Atti del Parlamento Italiano, Camera dei Deputati, Legislatura XXIV, 1ª sessione, Discussioni, Tornata di giovedì 25 ottobre 1917, pp. 15017–24. 102 See Giuseppe Dalla Torre to Sonnino, 26 October 1917, in Sonnino, Carteggio 1916–1922, pp. 313–14. 103 ‘Quella medesima indeterminatezza che caratterizza le comunicazioni da parte nemica, e che rende impossibile o inutile qualsiasi conseguente scambio di vedute’; Atti del Parlamento Italiano, Camera dei Deputati, Legislatura XXIV, 1ª sessione, Discussioni, Tornata di giovedì 25 ottobre 1917, p. 15019. 104 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 182 (21 October 1917). On another occasion (24 October), Gasparri told Monti that Sonnino, with his refusal to respond, had committed ‘a real villainy’ (‘una vera mascalzonata’); Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 185 (21 October 1917). 105 ‘Responsabile principale della guerra e sostenitore di una politica estera nefasta per l’Italia’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 191 (31 October 1917). Taking leave of the Baron Monti at the end of the audience, Benedict XV told him ‘to advise Orlando to not let himself be dragged about by the nose by Sonnino!!!’ (‘di raccomandare a Orlando di non lasciarsi menare pel naso da Sonnino!!!’). 106 Imperiali to Sonnino, 1 November 1917, in I documenti diplomatici italiani: quinta serie, 1914–1918, ed. by Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 11 vols (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1954–86), IX (1983), p. 240.

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For the man who had made absolute impartiality the rule of the pontificate, it was truly ‘perhaps the most bitter [moment] in Our life’.107 An echo of this bitterness was also noticed in the speech to the College of Cardinals on Christmas Eve 1917. ‘Our endeavours to effect a reconciliation among peoples had failed’, Benedict XV said. Moreover, ‘We were either unheeded or looked upon with suspicion’.108 The failure of Benedict XV’s labours in favour of peace, in particular the Note of August 1917, does not, however, detract from his intentions. The Pope waged a difficult battle, maintaining his proposed impartiality and succeeding in helping the Holy See overcome one of the most difficult moments in its centuries-old history.

Bibliography Alvarez, David, I servizi segreti del Vaticano: spionaggio, complotti, intrighi da Napoleone ai giorni nostri (Rome: Newton Compton, 2008) Alvarez, David, ‘Vatican Communication Security, 1914–1918’, Intelligence and National Security, 7, 4 (1992), pp. 447–54 Caponi, Matteo, ‘“Guerra giusta” e guerra ai civili: la Chiesa e i bombardamenti sulle città’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 13–42 De Leonardis, Massimo, ‘Le relazioni anglo-vaticane durante la Prima guerra mondiale: l’imparzialità di Benedetto XV e la sua nota dell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 171–212 De Rosa, Gabriele, ‘Presentazione’, in I vescovi veneti e la Santa Sede nella guerra 1915–1918, ed. by Antonio Scottà, 3 vols (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991), I, pp. v–xxvii Fattorini, Emma, Germania e Santa Sede: le nunziature di Pacelli tra la Grande Guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Fischer, Fritz, Assalto al potere mondiale: la Germania nella guerra 1914–1918 (Turin: Einaudi, 1965) Fuller, Joseph V., ed., Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1916, Supplement, The World War (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1929) Garzia, Italo, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981) Giuntella, Maria Cristina, Cooperazione intellettuale ed educazione alla pace nell’Europa della Società delle Nazioni (Padua: Cedam, 2001) Guieu, Jean-Michel, Gagner la paix 1914–1929 (Paris: Seuil, 2015) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) 107 ‘Forse la più amara di nostra vita’; Benedict XV to Karl I, 24 October 1917, in Benedetto XV e la pace, ed. by Rumi, p. 37. 108 Benedict XV, Discorso del santo padre Benedetto XV al Sacro Collegio dei Cardinali nella vigilia della Solennità del Natale, 24 December 1917 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 241–43.

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Latour, Francis, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996) Leflon, Jean, ‘L’action diplomatico-religieuse de Benoît XV en faveur de la paix durant la première guerre mondiale’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 53–71 Lesti, Sante, ‘Pregare per la pace, legittimare la guerra: la ricezione della preghiera per la pace di Benedetto XV nei santini di guerra (1915–1918)’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 75–98 Malagodi, Olindo, Conversazioni della guerra 1914–1919, ed. by Brunello Vigezzi, 2 vols (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1960), I Margiotta Broglio, Francesco, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966) Martini, Angelo, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV alle potenze belligeranti nell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 363–87 Martini, Angelo, ‘La preparazione dell’appello di Benedetto XV ai governi belligeranti (1 August 1917)’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 113, 4 (1962), pp. 119–32 Martini, Angelo, ‘La questione romana e il mancato invito alla Santa Sede per la prima conferenza dell’Aja nel 1899’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 113, 1 (1962), pp. 221–35 Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Miranda, Americo, ‘Il papa non “ammesso tra le grandi potenze”: Benedetto XV e l’esclusione della Santa Sede dalla conferenza di pace di Parigi’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 45, 2 (2009), pp. 341–67 Monticone, Alberto, La Germania e la neutralità italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1971) Paiano, Maria, ‘Pregare per la vittoria, pregare per la pace: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 43–73 Paolini, Gabriele, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008) Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Repgen, Konrad, ‘Foreign Policy of the Popes in the Epoch of the World Wars’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), X: The Church in the Modern Age (1981), pp. 35–96 Rumi, Giorgio, ed., Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Sonnino, Sidney, Carteggio 1914–1916, ed. by Pietro Pastorelli (Bari: Laterza, 1974) Sonnino, Sidney, Carteggio 1916–1922, ed. by Pietro Pastorelli (Bari: Laterza, 1975) Sonnino, Sidney, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), III

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Stevenson, David, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office: Part II, from the First to the Second World War: Series H, the First World War, 1914–1918, 12 vols (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1987–91), III (1989) Ticchi, Jean-Marc, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1872–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002) Trinchese, Stefano, ‘I tentativi di pace della Germania e della Santa Sede nella Prima Guerra mondiale: l’attività del deputato Erzberger e del diplomatico Pacelli (1916– 1918)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 35 (1997), pp. 225–55

Patrick J. Houlihan

Reshaping Borders: Europe and the Colonies in Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 Peace Note

1. Introduction Territorial reordering is one of the main theoretical and practical means of interpreting Benedict XV’s 1 August 1917 Peace Note. This is due to the great weight of history placed on the Great War’s rationale: not only the road to war and the debates about war aims but also the shifting worldviews of the decision makers throughout the conflict. Furthermore, the end of the conflict left unsettled questions regarding what kind of post-war order the decision makers envisioned. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 ended combat on the Western front, but armed conflict continued to destabilize socio-political orders around the globe. There was no common agreement on what kind of order there was at the war’s outset, during the conflict or in the post-war settlement. Thus, on the territorial question, Benedict XV’s Peace Note highlighted the global confusion and lack of consensus concerning these issues; however, the Peace Note was a highly significant achievement in terms of proposals to end the war. While the Peace Note was ultimately idealistic and unachievable, it nevertheless sheds light on the issue of territoriality as a rationale for war, integral to conceptualizing modern statehood and its imperial entanglements on a global level.1 This contribution contextualizes the specific questions of territoriality mentioned in Benedict XV’s Peace Note and addresses the implicit issues caused by questions of European territoriality, emphasizing that it was the imperial dimensions of Britain, the US and Germany that made the Note unfeasible. The essay argues that the Peace Note explicitly demonstrates a predominant Eurocentrism and an inherent unfeasibility even in its stated aims of territorial reordering. However, this essay contends that the Peace Note highlights a more global outlook that is instructive in its contrasts between historical and contemporary principles of nationhood, showing sensitivity to identity politics in the past, present and future. The Peace Note was driven by an ultimately hopeful and mature view of reasoned diplomacy and the peaceful settling

1 Charles S. Maier, ‘Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood’, in A World Connecting (1870–1945), ed. by Emily S. Rosenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 29–284.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 523–531 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118789

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of differences through international arbitration. The Vatican’s emergence as a relatively impartial agent standing above questions of territoriality was a development that paradoxically clashed with Benedict XV’s short-term wishes, yet ironically suited his long-term humanitarian aims.

2. Territoriality in the Peace Note Pope Benedict XV’s Peace Note was remarkable for its attempt to make concrete proposals in order to achieve its aim. The Note began with a powerful philosophical preamble, which declared the intent to help secure a ‘just and lasting peace’ based on a ‘perfect impartiality’ and a ‘universal law of charity’.2 After an invocation of the horrors of a mutually destructive war, the Peace Note proceeded to make ‘concrete and practical proposals’ calling on the belligerent states to ‘agree on the following points, which seem to have to be the cornerstones of a just and lasting peace’. Crucially, the Peace Note contained an escape clause to international arbitration that would become critical since governments were left the task of specifying and completing the final points in the Note.3 Territoriality was central to the Peace Note’s concerns. Benedict warned that ‘these peaceful agreements, with the immense benefits derived from them, are not possible without the mutual return of the territories currently occupied’.4 The focus on central Europe highlighted the Eurocentric nature of the Peace Note, accompanied by mentions of global problems. The Peace Note mentioned the need for the ‘total evacuation’ of the occupied territory of both Belgium and France with a guarantee of ‘full political, military and economic independence’ of the territories. While perhaps apparently reasonable at first glance, the suggestion highlighted the Peace Note’s unfeasibility since it did not specify whether French territory included Alsace-Lorraine, a key sensitive point for French revendications in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. The element of major flexibility in the Peace Note was the provision that disputes would be settled by international arbitration.5 To a certain extent, Germany’s occupation of Belgium, and its complete evacuation on which the Entente Powers insisted, was the lynchpin of any territorial settlement.6 From around the world, the vast flood of personal correspondence sent to the Pope 2 Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 (§ § 1–2) [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. For the final version, see AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. III, ff. 267r–277v, Proposta di trattative di Pace della Santa Sede, Nota definitiva (in Italian, Latin, and French); draft versions can be found in ff. 246–66. 3 Benedict XV, Dès le début, § 4. 4 Benedict XV, Dès le début, § 8. 5 Benedict XV, Dès le début, § 5. 6 John F. Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 64–65.

Europe and the Colonies in Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 Peace Note

argued that Germany had to restore all Belgian and French territory completely.7 Regarding this question in particular, Benedict had sent Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli to Germany to sound out both Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, who, at the time, at least appeared to consider the matter for discussion.8 The ‘distress of Belgium’, in particular, became a quasi-religious point of fervour, helping the Entente Powers to justify their case to a global public, particularly through the leadership of Cardinal Désiré Mercier, who remained in occupied Belgium and became a figure of heroic resistance.9 The case of Belgium was one of the war’s key moral and legal interpretive points by turning the conflict into a global war involving Great Britain and its Empire. The Entente had always made the return of Belgium a key reason for entering the war, but this also highlighted the Peace Note’s unfeasibility because the return of Belgian territory caused a clash of imperial aims among Germany, the US and Britain. Benedict had hoped for an ameliorating Catholic influence on the German Empire represented by the leader of the Catholic Centre Party, Matthias Erzberger, who made several trips to Rome.10 With the Zentrum’s leadership, the Reichstag peace resolutions of 19 July 1917 renounced annexationist claims and indemnities, among other points. By August 1917, however, unforeseen circumstances thwarted these possibilities. The German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg had been replaced by Georg Michaelis, who was subservient to the military dictatorship of the Oberste Heeresleitung (Supreme Army Command) headed by Paul von Hindenburg and Eric Ludendorff. The hardline, reactionary militarists strengthened their hold on the German political system and refused to renounce Belgium, which was essential to their military-industrial complex. Furthermore, British imperial global government interests had to be taken into account. Cardinal Bourne in Westminster informed Benedict XV that the British government would not look favourably on a papal peace initiative.11 British commercial power necessitated not only Germany’s renunciation of territory and a return to the status quo ante, but British global commerce also required an active punishment of Germany to impair its economic foundations. For its part, Germany tried to avoid a punitive peace treaty. Writing in September 1917, Germany’s new Chancellor, Michaelis, argued that Wilson’s peace overtures were based on the assumption that Germany would be disarmed and hobbled, which Germany could not accept. Michaelis complained about the tone of the peace initiatives, in which the Entente Powers sounded like ‘prosecutors before a tribunal



7 For numerous examples, see ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 80–83. 8 Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), II, pp. 74–75 (17 April 1917). 9 For the Belgian government’s enthusiastic and appreciative response to the Peace Note’s focus on Belgium, see AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. IV, f. 90. 10 For an overview of Catholic society in the Central Powers, see Patrick J. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary (1914–1922) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 11 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, pp. 34–35 (13 February 1917). See Pollard, The Papacy, p. 63.

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of strict judges’. Michaelis, on the contrary, argued in favour of a peace based on a ‘new foundation’: namely that ‘neither of the opposing parties would be conquered’.12 For the balance of European power in the eyes of Britain and France, Belgium was a key point. Simply renouncing territory would not be enough; German reparations had to follow this. Without any explicit, extreme punishment, Benedict’s Peace Note was unlikely to receive a warm reception in Entente circles. Therefore, with little positive reception on the part of the Entente, Wilson was not likely to support the Peace Note. In any case, Wilson considered himself to be the leader of the peace movement, and undoubtedly some fundamental parts of his Fourteen Points were inspired by Benedict XV’s Peace Note.13 In passing, Benedict’s Note also mentioned the return of German occupied colonies together with the references to those of Belgium and France, but as far as the German colonies are concerned, the Pope did not specify whether he meant in both Africa and Asia. Given its focus on European territories and by extension on their colonial systems, the Eurocentric Peace Note referred solely to Africa, as the original draft version called only for Britain to return German colonies.14 Germany’s colonies in the Pacific seized by Japan were not mentioned, highlighting a decree of papal focus limited to the Mediterranean and Atlantic world in what was, after all, a global war. The Japanese had embarked on an empire-building programme that would culminate in World War II. Thus, they were not favourably disposed towards returning German colonies in the Pacific. The Peace Note then returned to the level of generalities. It described examples of ‘territorial issues’ between Italy and Austria, as well as between Germany and France, and argued that the contending parties would see ‘immense advantages from a lasting peace with disarmament’. Attempting to solve their disagreements, the Peace Note advised the antagonists to embrace a ‘conciliatory spirit’ that would take into account the ‘aspirations of peoples’ by resolving their interests towards the ‘greater common good of human society’.15 Such a vague approach sidestepped important specific questions of territorial sovereignty in the era of nationhood, particularly when two nations historically aspired to control the same territory, such as Trentino or Alsace-Lorraine. Again, the Peace Note placed its faith in international arbitration. In the final paragraph that named specific territories, the Peace Note continued in the same spirit. It named three places, however, that underscored the incompatibility of the Great War and conflicting aspirations of national sovereignty with the reality of nations belonging to multinational imperial frameworks. For example, the Peace Note referred to the Great War’s proximate cause, the Balkan States, without specifying which states were to be part of this group. The confused, entangled Balkan nationalisms 12 ‘Angeklater vor dem Tribunale strenger Richter’; ‘auf einer neuen Grundlage’; ‘Keine von beiden Parteien besiegt sei’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. III, ff. 191–93, letter from Michaelis to Pacelli, 24 September 1917. 13 Pollard, The Papacy, p. 67. 14 Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), p. 210. 15 Benedict XV, Dès le début, § 9.

Europe and the Colonies in Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 Peace Note

would culminate in vicious ethnic cleansing in World War II and continue in some fashion in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.16 The example of the Balkans showed how difficult it was for Benedict XV to bring even practising Catholics into line with his wishes. On 4 October 1917, the Austrian Emperor Karl I send a handwritten personal note, within a more formal bureaucratic letter, responding to Benedict’s Peace Note with general wishes of praise and benevolence, even signing the letter ‘your obedient son, Karl’. Karl I’s obedience to the Holy Father, however, had its limits, for Karl I wrote that territoriality in the Balkans was a subject ‘where it is a matter of maintaining the full integrity of the first Catholic power in Europe’. Consequently, Karl I refused to concede any Balkan territory in a future peace settlement. The territorial integrity of the Habsburg state was the foremost concern for the Emperor, even when he professed his loyalty to the Pope.17 The Note also mentioned the ‘ancient Kingdom of Poland’ thus highlighting the tension between a cultural nation and its contemporary political status. In August 1917, the Poles sat uneasily across the borders of three empires: Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia.18 This would continue well past November 1918. Indeed, during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–20, the Apostolic Nuncio was the future Pope Pius XI, Achille Ratti, who remained in Warsaw as the Bolshevik armies advanced on the Polish capital, only to be turned back surprisingly in the Battle of Warsaw. Seeing the Bolsheviks march towards Western Europe first-hand would colour Ratti’s views on the threat of Communism, shaping his views on the Vatican’s relations with the undesirable alternatives of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.19 At a key point in the European bloodshed, Poland would be at the centre of territorial conflicts leading to World War II.20 In mentioning these issues of historical-cultural nations, however, Benedict went beyond merely a status quo ante, with a vision that looked both backwards and forwards. Far from being an out-of-touch idealist, by February 1918, Benedict XV was advising Emperor Karl I of Austria to seek the future in Woodrow Wilson, the ‘President of the great American Republic’ because ‘only he can bring about peace or the continuation of the war, and he wishes to dictate the peace in the time that remains of his presidential term’. Until the autumn of 1918, Benedict still envisioned the preservation of Austria-Hungary, but sensing the tides of change, he and Cardinal Gasparri quickly moved to vest their hopes in the overwhelmingly Catholic Poland

16 John Paul Newman, Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building (1903–1945) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 17 ‘Le très obéissant fils, Charles’; ‘pleine intégralité de la première puissance catholique en Europe’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. IV, ff. 40–44, personal letter, 4 October 1917. Largely for his efforts to bring about peace during the Great War, there is a movement to canonize Karl I, Emperor of Austria, now beatified as Blessed Karl of Austria: see [accessed 10 January 2019]. 18 Benedict XV, Dès le début, § 10. 19 AES, Polonia, III, pos. 101, fasc. 73, ff. 19–20, letter from Ratti to Gasparri, 20 July 1920. 20 Neal Pease, Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland (1914–1939) (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009).

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as a counterbalance to both Germany and Russia.21 Hence, Benedict’s historical vision looked both to the past and to the future. The August Peace Note’s mention of Armenia represented the most difficult and yet suggestive example of historical territoriality. Similar to the Kingdom of Poland, mentioning Armenia drew up the problematic interpretation of a nation’s historical legacy and its modern political representation. It also highlighted the problems of a historic ethnic nation’s multi-religious character. The Armenian Genocide during the Great War was the extreme point. Through the Vatican’s network of diplomatic correspondence, Benedict XV had been kept reasonably apprised of the Ottoman actions against Armenian civilians from April 1915.22 However, while Benedict spoke out on behalf of the populations of Syria and Palestine, defying Western expectations he did not speak out in public about specific Ottoman actions against the Armenians on their own soil. He offered a hazy generic injunction against organized persecution and massacre. This was in keeping with his philosophy that focussed on Christian love for neighbours as the root of caritas.23 However, in private, Benedict XV was far more active on behalf of the Armenians. In July 1915, the Apostolic Delegate in Constantinople, Monsignor Angelo Dolci, lodged an official protest at the massacres, with the Vatican also lobbying Germany and Austria-Hungary to put pressure on the Ottomans to cease the killing. On 10 September, Benedict XV sent an autographed letter to the Sultan, appealing to him as the Caliph of Islam and a religious leader of worldwide appeal.24 Benedict XV’s policy and the actions he took concerning the Armenian genocide suggest many comparisons with the philosophy and actions of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust, in their attempts to adhere to concepts of neutrality and impartiality.25 With the Peace Note’s mention of Armenia, however, Benedict XV left a mixed legacy on the territorial reordering in the Middle East in particular. Diplomatically tending towards contacts with the Central Powers at the war’s outset, Benedict XV made special efforts to engage the Sublime Porte during the war, reaching out to Sultan Mehmed V with personal letters. In recognition of his efforts to alleviate excruciating suffering in Syria and Palestine during the Great War, in the post-war era, Jews, Christians and Turkish Muslims erected a statue to Benedict XV in the heart of Istanbul at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit.26 The public in the West, however, did not fully appreciate Benedict’s humanitarian interventions, remaining on the 21 Pollard, The Papacy, p. 71. 22 Valentina Vartui Karakhanian and Omar Viganò, La Santa Sede e lo sterminio degli armeni nell’Impero Ottomano (Milan: Guerini, 2016). 23 ASV, Archivio della Delegazione apostolica in Turchia, b. 97, fasc. 503 (1), f. 74, letter from Dolci to Gasparri, 29 September 1917 (copy). See Agnes de Dreuzy, The Holy See and the Emergence of the Modern Middle East: Benedict XV’s Diplomacy in Greater Syria (1914–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016). 24 For the Holy See’s self-presentation of its neutrality and impartiality, see ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 64–66. For Benedict XV’s 10 September 1915 note to Mehmed V, see AES, Austria, III, pos. 1069, fasc. 462, ff. 22–24. See Pollard, The Papacy, pp. 56–57. 25 For background, see Pollard, The Papacy, pp. 326–63. 26 De Dreuzy, The Holy See, p. 259.

Europe and the Colonies in Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 Peace Note

contrary disappointed at what was perceived as his public silence on the Armenian Question during the war. With an eye on humanitarian universalism, during the war Benedict XV refrained from publicly criticizing the Ottoman Empire on the issue of the genocide of the Armenians; consequently, the Sublime Porte responded favourably during the war.27 Generic treatment instead of specific denunciation permitted engagement with regimes, in the hope that the power to change might improve things in the future. While hope may be a Christian theological virtue, this lack of a direct, forceful, explicit, public condemnation set a deceptive precedent for relations with the genocide of the Nazi regime. Pope Benedict XV’s specific mentions of certain cultural-historical nations such as Armenia also caused problems precisely because other historical nations felt excluded. On the occasion of a meeting held in Constantinople on 29 August 1917 Abdur-Rabb, the Secretary of the ‘Central Committee of Indian Moslem Nationalists’, wrote to Benedict XV to express the Central Committee’s displeasure with the Pope. Claiming to speak for all Indian Muslims, the Committee acknowledged that they ‘most heartily welcome and duly appreciate the efforts’ of the Pope to ‘put an end to these most unprecedented hostilities’, and that the Pope had undoubtedly been ‘prompted by humane feelings’. However, they claimed to feel ‘great sorrow’ that the Pope had befriended an as-yet unnamed nation ‘which is so insignificant both politically and numerically and whose only merit, which perhaps appeals to His Holiness, is its being a Christian community’. Abdur-Rabb noted that the Pope omitted ‘even the mention of countries like Maroco [sic], Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt, Persia, Caucasus, Crimea, Bukhara [sic], Khiva [sic], etc. that are growning [sic] under the oppression and tyranny of the foreign rule’. Highlighting the entangled problems of imperial administration and decolonization movements, Abdur-Rabb pointed out the particularly blatant omission of India ‘whose three hundred and ten millions are being crushed out of all shape and recognition by the iron heel of England’.28 Abdur-Rabb’s message then removed all doubt about the mysterious nation befriended by the Pope, venting the Central Committee’s vitriol on the Armenian people: Armenia is a misnomer which Europe still persists in applying to a tract of country where the Moslem population far exceeds the Armenians. Armenia has ceased to exist long before the advent of the Ottoman Empire in these parts. On the other hand the country mentioned above still exists and possess [sic] not only homogenous races and faith, but was the cradle of civilization and enlightenment and birthplace of great nations, nations whose only fault is to be of Moslem and non-Christian persuasions; and whose present misfortune is perhaps greater than their past greatness.29

27 L’Osservatore Romano, 3 October 1917; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione apostolica in Turchia, b. 97, fasc. 503 (1), f. 371. 28 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. V, f. 318. 29 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. V, f. 318.

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Abdur-Rabb’s note then closed with an attempt to mortify the Pope by playing on his sense of guilt: On hearing the attempt of His Holiness in the direction of peace, we were naturally expecting a good word on behalf of these down trodden countries, from the representative and first servant of Christ, who, we are told, is the personification of justice, charity and toleration.30 The chaos of territorial reordering in the post-war world would dirty the hands involved in redrawing the maps at the Paris Peace Conference.

3. Conclusions The question of territorial settlement provoked a variety of responses among both statesmen and the people they led. In particular, in Catholic nations championed by the bishops, they concentrated on questions of territory as such. Thus, in this sense, the Peace Note was bound to displease large areas of the world simply because vague conceptions of pre-war and post-war order were incompatible and ultimately insoluble. However, for vast sectors of the public that were interested not in territorial questions but above all in peace, the Peace Note was a shining inspiration and, if one can indulge in some of the language of the contemporary historical actors, a ‘blessing’ to the world.31 It had been Benedict XV’s wish to participate in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. To his disappointment, like other neutrals, the Pope was not invited in order to preserve the appearance of ecumenical non-favouritism among religions. There was, however, a strong element of hidden diplomatic realpolitik. With Article 15 of the secret Treaty of London of 1915, Italy had insisted that the papacy would not participate in any peace conference.32 Ironically, this non-invitation ultimately furthered Benedict’s humanitarian aspirations. Despite the idealistic aspirations of the diplomats in Paris in 1919 to remake the world in the cause of righteousness (with Wilson as the head of this moral crusade), the reality fell far short of the ideal. The length of the Conference caused a loss of consensus to any great idealist aims, and it deteriorated into a petty punitive settling of grievances.33 In fact, behind the scenes, through Monsignor Bonaventura Cerretti, Benedict was able to make unofficial key moves to strengthen diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Entente Powers, especially lobbying for German Catholic missions, which would have been impossible had the papacy been officially represented at the

30 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. V, f. 318. 31 For numerous examples of public approval, see ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 82, f. 210r, letter from Dr Emil Rüegg to Benedict XV, 9 September 1917; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 82, ff. 248r–249r, ‘Appel de S. E. le Cardinal-Archevêque de Bordeaux a l’occasion de la Note du Pape Benoît XV aux Chefs des peuples belligérants’, 28 August 1917. 32 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, vol. X. 33 Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002).

Europe and the Colonies in Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 Peace Note

negotiating table. Thanks to what was perceived as its neutrality and impartiality, the Vatican emerged strengthened in the interwar period, with more states choosing to enter into official diplomatic relations with the Holy See. There was thus a drastic change in the diplomatic isolation that had characterized the previous period.34 The territorial disputes and reorganizations in Paris became some of the most bitter legacies of the Peace Conference. Precisely because the Vatican was not invited to Paris, however, the Catholic Church did not have to assume an official stance concerning the justice of the territorial questions. This permitted the Vatican to emerge in the interwar era relatively diplomatically strengthened as a non-governmental humanitarian organization standing above the partisanship that lay at the heart of the Great War. Considering the heated issue of territoriality and the politics of nationalism in interwar Europe, Pope Benedict XV’s absence at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was a blessing in disguise.

Bibliography Dreuzy, Agnes de, The Holy See and the Emergence of the Modern Middle East: Benedict XV’s Diplomacy in Greater Syria (1914–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016) Houlihan, Patrick J., Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary (1914–1922) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) MacMillan, Margaret, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002) Maier, Charles S., ‘Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood’, in A World Connecting (1870–1945), ed. by Emily S. Rosenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 29–284 Newman, John Paul, Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building (1903–1945) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Pease, Neal, Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland (1914–1939) (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009) Pollard, John F., The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Vartui Karakhanian, Valentina, and Omar Viganò, La Santa Sede e lo sterminio degli armeni nell’Impero Ottomano (Milan: Guerini, 2016)

34 Pollard, The Papacy, pp. 120–21.

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The Italian and French Bishops Dealing with the Note of 1917

1. Introduction Since the 1960s, the conduct of the Catholic bishops during World War I has been the object of specific studies,1 of publications of sources2 and of some attempts to provide overviews on a national scale.3 All these have allowed light to be shed on







1 For example, see Giovanni Mantese and Aristide Dani, ‘Il vescovo Rodolfi e il clero vicentino nell’ora più cruciale della guerra 1915–1918’ in Atti del convegno regionale Veneto sulla prima guerra mondiale (Venezia, 5 maggio 1968) (Venice: Tipografia G. Rumor, 1968), pp. 96–121; Chantal Renaud-Antier, ‘L’évêque de Meaux, image de l’alliance du clergé et de l’armée pendant la Grande Guerre’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 47, 187 (1997), pp. 41–57; Roger Aubert, Les deux premiers grands conflits du cardinal Mercier avec les autorités allemandes d’occupation (Leuven: Peeters, 1998); Bernhard Lübbers, ‘“Segne die Waffen unserer Brüder!”: die Hirtenbriefe des Regensburger Bischofs Antonius von Henle aus der Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Regensburg im Ersten Weltkrieg: Schlaglichter auf die Geschichte einer bayerischen Provinzstadt zwischen 1914 und 1918, ed. by Bernhard Lübbers and Stefan Reichmann (Regensburg: Morsbach, 2014), pp. 105–18; Marcello Malpensa, ‘Registro pubblico e registro interno: il discorso sulla guerra del vescovo Conforti’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 99–133; and Giovanni Vian, ‘Clero e guerra nel diario del patriarca La Fontaine’, Annali di scienze religiose, 8 (2015), pp. 105–24. Regarding the case of Archbishop Andrea Giacinto Bonaventura Longhin of Treviso, see Alberto Guasco, ‘I vescovi francescani italiani e la Grande Guerra’, Studi francescani, 113, 3–4 (2016), pp. 385–403. 2 For example, see Giovanni Brotto, Diario di guerra 1915–1918 di Andrea Giacinto Longhin, vescovo di Treviso, il vescovo del Montello e del Piave (Treviso: Editrice Trevigiana, 1969); I vescovi veneti e la Santa Sede nella guerra 1915–1918, ed. by Antonio Scottà, 3 vols (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991); and Gabriel de Llobet, Un évêque aux armées en 1916–1918: lettres et souvenirs (Limoges: PULIM, 2003). 3 Alberto Monticone, ‘I vescovi italiani e la guerra 1915–1918’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 627–59; Pierre Renouvin, ‘L’épiscopat français devant l’offre de paix du Saint-Siège (August 1917)’, in Mélanges offerts à G. Jacquemyns (Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Éditions de l’Institut de Sociologie, 1968), pp. 551–61; Jacques Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 1990), pp. 223–46; Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991); Wilhelm Achleitner, Gott im Krieg: die Theologie der österreichischen Bischöfe in den Hirtenbriefen zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997); Roland

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 533–553 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118790

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various aspects of the issue: from the charitable assistance offered in benefit of the enlisted men and their families to the search for information regarding prisoners and those missing in action; from the desire for peace to a theology of war; and from pastoral letters to relationships with civil and military authorities. Despite the progress made in recent decades, the framework of what is known remains fragmentary because not every relevant moment or figure has received due attention. For example, there has been a lack of methodical inquiry concerning Cardinal Francis Alphonsus Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, and Cardinal Felix von Hartmann, Archbishop of Cologne, who were important protagonists in the public life of their respective countries, as well as an underestimation of the fundamental labour of mediation undertaken by the bishops, combining the needs of the homeland at a time of war with the needs of the subordinate classes and the exhortations for peace on the part of the Vatican. From this point of view, the most delicate moment came in the aftermath of the pontifical Note of 1 August 1917. In it Benedict XV invited the leaders of the powers involved in the war to find a diplomatic solution to the controversies and to put an end to the ‘useless slaughter’.4 A century later, the document and its consequences continue to constitute a problem for historiography, which has emphasized the governments’ cold and hostile reception of the Note,5 but has only partly investigated society’s reaction to it. Some research has reconstructed the criticisms put forward in the press from both sides, which judged the Note as too vague or even inspired by the enemy,6 while others insisted on the discontent that the initiative caused among Catholics themselves. From this point of view, the most famous case was undoubtedly that of the French Dominican Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges who, in December 1917, went so far as to declare from the pulpit of La Madeleine in Paris: ‘Most Holy Father, we cannot at the moment entertain your appeals for peace’, arousing the enthusiasm of his audience and inciting the anger of the Vatican.7



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Haidl, ‘La première guerre mondiale au miroir des lettres pastorales de l’épiscopat allemand’, 14–18 aujourd’hui, 1 (1998), pp. 39–51; and Marcello Malpensa, ‘I vescovi davanti alla guerra’, in Un paese in guerra: la mobilitazione civile in Italia (1914–1918), ed. by Daniele Menozzi, Giovanna Procacci and Simonetta Soldani (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 295–315. For the text of the document, see Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004), pp. 271–99. René Schlott, Die Friedensnote Papst Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917: eine Untersuchung zur Berichterstattung und Kommentierung in der zeitgenössischen Berliner Tagespresse (Hamburg: Kovac, 2007); Pierre Renouvin, ‘Le gouvernement français devant le message de paix du Saint-Siège (août 1917)’, in Religion et politique: les deux guerres mondiales; histoire de Lyon et du Sud-Est; mélanges offerts à M. le Doyen André Latreille (Lyon: Audin, 1972), pp. 291–94. ‘Très Saint Père, nous ne pouvons pas, pour l’instant, retenir vos appels de paix’. On the issue, see Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Les conférences de guerre du père Sertillange (1914–1918)’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire, 32, 129 (2016), pp. 95–107.

the i ta l ia n an d fr e n c h b i s h o p s d e al i ng w i t h t he  not e o f 1917

This essay aims to continue along this line of research, analysing the document’s reception by the episcopacy in France and Italy, where the governments’ attitude was particularly hostile. Examining its analysis in diocesan journals and documents preserved in the Vatican Archives — particularly the correspondence between bishops and the Holy See — will allow us to take a fresh look at the issue and to highlight common elements, differences and the tensions that characterized public and private discourse regarding a document that was destined to mark a turning point in the centuries-old Catholic doctrine of legitimizing war.8

2. The French Episcopacy, the Note and the Sertillanges Affair In an essay of 1968, Pierre Renouvin inquired into how the Note was received by the French bishops, examining seventy diocesan bulletins. The result was a panorama that was far from homogenous, with the majority of the periodicals inclined to opt for a ‘middle ground’, oscillating between a ‘tendentious interpretation’, ‘reticent deference’ and attempts ‘to explain — in short, to excuse — the papal initiative’.9 The Parisian historian’s considerations are confirmed by documentation in the Vatican Archives, to which he did not have access. As evidence of the embarrassment caused by the Note, very, very few bishops wrote to the Pope to congratulate him, revealing that such enthusiasm was often kept private. For example, Bishop Joseph Métreau of Tulle praised the Pope’s words (‘too wise, too elevated and too nobly moved for the souls of his children to remain closed to him’) and declared himself to be confident that the ‘Christian nations’ would carry out ‘their filial duty’. The diocesan semaine religieuse, however, was far more cautious, limiting itself to reproducing the Note and comments made in the wider Catholic press.10 In this very first phase, the Note’s most articulate defence came from Bishop Emmanuel Martin de Gibergues of Valence, whose pastoral letter carried a certain weight in the public debate, earning him the approval of his superiors. Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, in fact, wrote to him to thank him and to point out a few delicate points, such as the reciprocal pardon for war damages or the future of Alsace-Lorraine,

8 Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008). 9 ‘Ligne moyenne’; ‘interprétation tendancieuse’; ‘déférence réticente’; ‘[d’]expliquer — en somme [d’] excuser — l’initiative pontificale’; Renouvin, ‘L’épiscopat français’. 10 ‘Trop sage, trop élevée et trop noblement émue pour que les âmes de ses enfants lui restent fermées’; ‘nations chrétiennes’; ‘leur devoir de filles’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Métreau to Benedict XV, 20 August 1917; Renouvin, ‘L’épiscopat français’, pp. 554–55. On the Bishop, see Lucien Lajonchère, ‘Métreau ( Joseph)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle (hereafter DEFVS), ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 473–74.

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concluding that ‘if there is a nation favoured in a special way in the pontifical letter, it is Belgium and France’.11 Gasparri’s words were received positively by French Catholics producing — as Archbishop Alfred de Cormont of Aire et Dax asserted — ‘a very good impression and […] a healing effect’.12 Above all, his observation regarded the question of war damages, concerning which the Cardinal explained that, as exceptional cases, France and Belgium had the right to claim reparations. The assertion was of paramount importance because, in proposing what seemed to be an equivalence between the damages suffered by the Central Powers and the devastation of Belgium and north-eastern France, the Pope had touched on a raw nerve. To put it in the words of Cardinal Auguste Dubourg of Rennes: France will never accept that. It is impossible to imagine how far our spirits have been incensed by the atrocities and barbarities committed by our enemies, coldly and without any ‘necessity of war’ in our provinces that they occupied. ‘Necessities of war’ might be understood at a pinch. But these entirely unmotivated cruelties, which have been committed out of a perversion of the soul or an inexcusable ferocity, the French — who also have their faults but whose soul is higher and whose sentiments are more generous — will never understand. Above all, where our enemies have passed through, everything has been ransacked, churches have been destroyed, homes razed, women assaulted or sent into captivity and people tortured. The depredations exceed the most horrendous things that can be imagined. And to those who claim that the allies would have been just as cruel, it is easy to respond that they could not be so in any case, since the Prussians came to us and we did not go to them. Therefore, it is not possible for us to be put on the same footing from this point of view, Germans and French, nor to make us, we French, condone this deliberate annihilation, this abominable destruction, without the victims being compensated for the losses they have suffered.13

11 ‘Si dans la lettre pontificale il y a une nation favorisée d’une manière spéciale, c’est la Belgique et la France’; ‘Mgr De Gibergues et la Note pontificale’, La Croix, 30 August 1917; ‘Mise au point par S. E. le card. Gasparri’, La Croix, 2 October 1917. On the Bishop, see Philippe Ploix and Dominique-Marie Dauzet, ‘Martin de Gibergues (Emmanuel)’, in DEFVS, pp. 453–54. 12 ‘Une très bonne impression et […] un salutaire effet’; AES, Francia, 1917–18, pos. 1292, fasc. 681, de Cormont to Gasparri, 15 October 1917. 13 ‘Jamais la France n’acceptera cela. Il est impossible de se figurer au loin combien les esprits sont montés chez nous contre les atrocités et les barbaries commises par nos ennemis, froidement et sans “nécessité de guerre” dans nos provinces occupées par eux. Les “nécessités de guerre” on les comprend à la rigueur. Mais ces cruautés que rien ne motive, que l’on a exercées par une perversion de l’âme ou par un sentiment de férocité inexcusable, les Français, qui ont aussi leurs défauts, mais dont l’âme est plus haute et les sentiments plus généreux, ne les comprendront jamais. Surtout où ont passé nos ennemis, tout est saccagé, les églises sont détruites, les maisons rasées, les femmes outragées ou envoyées en captivité, les populations torturées. Les déprédations dépassent tout ce que l’imagination peut inventer de plus horrible. Et à ceux qui prétendent que les alliés auraient été aussi cruels, il est facile de répondre qu’ils n’ont pas pu l’être en tout état de cause, puisque les Prussiens sont venus chez nous et que nous ne sommes pas allés chez eux. Il n’est donc pas possible de nous mettre ex aequo à ce point de vue, Allemands et Français, ni de nous amener, nous Français, à faire

the i ta l ia n an d fr e n c h b i s h o p s d e al i ng w i t h t he  not e o f 1917

It must be said, however, that neither the letter to Martin de Gibergues nor the one sent later to Archbishop Émile Chesnelong of Sens14 succeeded in easing the public discontent or the bishops’ unease, especially among those who had made the tie between faith and patriotism the keystone of their conduct. Among these, Cardinal Léon-Adolphe Amette of Paris, the unofficial intermediary between the Holy See and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, refused to publish the Note in the diocesan bulletin and, when Benedict XV asked for an explanation, justified his action by saying that it ‘did not appear to me to have the character of a religious document’.15 While no less nationalistic, Cardinal Stanislas Touchet of Orléans had a rather different reaction, committing himself more than any other to convincing his compatriots of the goodness of the papal initiative. In addition to publishing the text in his diocese’s semaine religieuse, accompanied by a few observations, he sought various ways to exploit his reputation as a patriot to restore the Vatican’s reputation. For example, when the Italian army was defeated at Caporetto and — as will be seen in the next section — the Note was accused of having weakened the troops’ spirit of resistance, Touchet conceded an interview to L’Écho de Paris, attributing responsibility for the disaster to socialist propaganda.16 Clearly, for men like Amette and Touchet, the papal initiative jeopardized the fruits of three years’ efforts connected to reconciling and ultimately resuming diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See. This was not the case for other members of the episcopacy. For example, in a letter to Benedict XV, Cardinal Louis-Ernest Dubois of Rouen denounced the ‘old coin of Gallicanism’ that remained in the country and confessed to feeling a deep pain […] in noting that France often remains deaf and hostile to all the Pope’s appeals and initiatives. They are the blind leading the blind… I would have hoped that all the bishops of France would gather together to thank Your Holiness, especially for your call for peace. But on this point, as with others, unity is still difficult. A good number take up solely a patriotic standpoint and, yielding to public opinion, will only accept peace in and through France’s victory over her allies… Will God deign to take pity upon France by giving her this victory condonation de ces anéantissements réfléchis, de ces destructions abominables, sans que les victimes soient indemnisées des pertes qu’elles ont subies’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Dubourg to Benedict XV, 12 October 1917. On the Cardinal, see Frédéric Le Moigne, ‘Dubourg (Auguste)’, in DEFVS, pp. 222–23. 14 ‘Importante lettre de S. E. le card. Gasparri secrétaire d’État de Sa Sainteté à Mgr l’évêque de Sens’, La Croix, 23 October 1917. On the Bishop, see Dominique-Marie Dauzet, ‘Chesnelong (Émile)’, in DEFVS, pp. 149–50. 15 ‘Ne m’avait pas paru avoir le caractère d’un document religieux’; AHAP, 1DXI,13, Audiences at the Vatican, 15 November 1917. On the Cardinal, see Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Le chauvinisme épiscopal: les cardinaux de Pise et de Paris entre catholicisme et religion de la patrie’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 17–29. 16 ‘Annales religieuses du diocese d’Orléans’, 25 August 1917, pp. 531–35; Paul Delay, ‘Le Vatican et les événements d’Italie: interview de Mgr Touchet évêque d’Orléans’, L’Écho de Paris, 30 November 1917. On the Bishop, see Sévérine Blenner-Michel, ‘Touchet (Stanislas)’, in DEFVS, pp. 641–42.

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that she counts upon so confidently? And do we deserve such victory? I dare not answer.17 The fundamental problem characterizing the French episcopate in these years — above all the varying degrees to which they embraced the national cause and the gap between their public conduct and personal convictions — exploded in the aftermath of the aforementioned address by Sertillanges, which posed, with unprecedented clarity, the dilemma that rent the consciences of French Catholics: how could they follow papal directives when they seemed to contradict the elementary demands of justice and national security? The issue was certainly not a new one, but the Note’s peculiarity, which advanced concrete proposals to launch negotiations instead of limiting itself to an appeal for charity, the outcry incited by the speech and the general exasperation caused by the long years of war gave it new vigour, compelling the bishops to take a stand on it. The group in favour of Sertillanges was led by the Cardinal of Paris, who had read the speech before the ceremony at La Madeleine and was present in the front row on that 10 September. Once the matter had broken out, he sought every means to defend the Dominican and himself, noting to Gasparri that, beyond the ‘manner of speaking, which may have seemed inappropriate’, the speech was aimed at refuting those who saw Catholics as proponents of the feared ‘peace without victory’ or allied with socialists.18 Amette was not alone because, one week later, Bishop Charles Gibier of Versailles sent a letter to Sertillanges that was full of praise and admiration for having given voice to the clergy’s ‘true’ feelings: Taken collectively, the Church of France does not, alas!, know how to make itself understood, and many are asking themselves what it is thinking in these tragic days. You were its mouthpiece and you have said exactly what it should say officially. You have accomplished a major feat.19

17 ‘Vieux fonds de gallicanisme’; ‘peine profonde […] à constater que la France demeure souvent sourde et hostile à tous les appels, à tous les avances du pape. Ce sont des aveugles conduits par d’autres aveugles… J’aurais souhaité que tous les évêques de France se regroupent pour remercier ensemble V. S., notamment pour son appel à la paix. Mais sur ce point comme sur d’autres encore l’union est difficile. Bon nombre se placent au seul point de vue patriotique et, cédant à l’opinion, n’acceptent la paix que dans et par la victoire de la France et de ses alliés… Dieu daignera-t-il avoir pitié de la France en lui donnant cette victoire sur laquelle elle compte avec tant de confiance? Et l’avons-nous méritée cette victoire? Je n’ose répondre’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Dubois to Benedict XV, 21 November 1917. On the Cardinal, see Frédéric Le Moigne, ‘Dubois (Louis- Ernest)’, in DEFVS, pp. 215–17. 18 ‘Forme oratoire qui a pu paraître déplacée’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Amette to Gasparri, 30 December 1917. 19 ‘L’Église de France, prise collectivement, ne sait hélas! comment se faire entendre et beaucoup se demandent quelle est sa pensée en ces heures tragiques. Vous avez été son organe et vous avez dit exactement ce qu’elle devrait dire officiellement. Vous avez accompli une grande fonction’; Archives of the Dominican Province of France, Paris, 5, series 4, Sertillanges, file 15, Gibier to Sertillanges, 18 December 1917. On the Bishop, see Mathilde Guilbaud, ‘Gibier (Charles)’, in DEFVS, pp. 297–98.

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Although reserved, these pronouncements aroused great concern in the Holy See, which since 1914 had been accustomed to the disputes among the episcopacies of the belligerent powers, but was shocked by the fact that the same defenders of orthodoxy might openly endorse their distance from the pontiff ’s directions. To survey the effective spread of an attitude that threatened to undermine the project of resuming relations with the Quai d’Orsay, Pope Benedict XV and Gasparri carried out a rather discreet inquiry among the French bishops, asking the ordinaries of Bordeaux, Orléans, Rouen, Sens and Valence for their thoughts on the Sertillanges affair. Small yet highly varied, the group consisted of cardinals, archbishops and bishops, of Amette’s allies and Maurras’s supporters who had already expressed a variety of feelings in their reactions to the Note. To give just one example, in an appeal that had appeared in France’s major Catholic daily, Cardinal Paulin-Pierre Andrieu of Bordeaux insisted on the intransigent line — which was barely mentioned in his confreres’ public documents — inviting all to pray and do penance to hasten the end to the war that was caused by German militarism and even more by humanity’s sins.20 Likewise, after the episode of La Madeleine, some proved more zealous than their colleagues. In particular, Dubois, anticipating his superiors’ request and ‘to undermine the unfortunate impression provoked by Father Sertillanges’s recent address’, had, since 22 December, repeated the cornerstone of the Catholic defence of the Note — impartiality, justice, primacy of right over force, etc. — clearly alluding to the Dominican (‘may imprudent Catholics who criticize the Pope reflect, and may their murmurs soon be changed into testimonies of filial respect and gratitude’).21 These differences were greatly attenuated in opinions regarding Sertillanges because the respondents were unanimous both in criticizing the accused harangue and in warning against taking any disciplinary action that might incite people to contest the Holy See. The most original and articulate response came from Touchet, who not only sought to distance himself from ‘political discourse’ but also sought to explain its success. In his view, people were ‘enchanted’ because everyone found grounds for excitement in it. Everyone saw it as a shot of confidence in an unattainable victory. Atheists and ‘half-believers’ saw it as a full-blown ‘revolt’ against the Pope. Catholics saw it as an opportunity for detachment from Rome’s pro-German stance.22 If the Dominican’s words had been received with such fervour by the faithful, the fault lay

20 ‘Appel de S. E. le card. archevêque de Bordeaux à l’occasion de la note du pape Benoît XV aux chefs des nations belligérantes’, La Croix, 22 September 1917. The superiors fully approved of the appeal; see ‘Lettre de S. E. le card. Gasparri à S. E. le card. Andrieu’, La Croix, 14 October 1917. On the Cardinal, see Marc Agostino, ‘Andrieu (Pierre-Paulin)’, in DEFVS, pp. 34–35. 21 ‘Calmer l’impression fâcheuse produite par le récent discours du p. Sertillanges’; ‘que les catholiques imprudents qui critiquent le pape, réfléchissent, et leurs murmures se changeront bien vite en témoignages de respect filial et de reconnaissance’; Louis-Ernest Dubois, ‘La note pontificale du 13 août 1917 aux chefs des nations belligérantes’, Bulletin religieux de l’archidiocèse de Rouen, 22 December 1917, pp. 1146–56; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Dubois to Benedict XV, 22 December 1917. 22 ‘Discours politique’; ‘enchanté’; ‘demi-croyants’; ‘fronde’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Touchet to Gasparri, 1 January 1918.

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with a hierarchy that was incapable of effectively defending them from the accusations of those who were against the clergy: There were also Catholics at La Madeleine. There are some in France. A large number of them did not hide their satisfaction. Where does it come from? The press has said it and repeated it for the past three years: the Pope is pro-German. It then added, either explicitly or implicitly, ‘So you too, Catholics, who profess the duty of submission to the Pope, you too are pro-German’. The first assertion unsettles them; the second scares them. Those here who had to defend the Pope and Catholics, we bishops, I confess for my part, did not do it energetically enough. Many of us, I know, were hesitant to speak up. We looked to the cardinals — which is still a tribute to the Apostolic See — and, noting either their silence or their inconsistent explanations, kept quiet for fear of adding to the cacophony. […] Whatever the case, these abstentions arose from an unfortunate state of mind among Catholics. Their opinion, no longer guided by natural factors, becomes a simplistic and stupid formula — stupid rather than simple — the Pope wants a German peace. I guess that if Father Sertillanges had restricted himself to not doing it justice, he would have gone further than he did. But the theme he chose — a French peace that covers damages — became the antithesis to a German peace. Then even Catholics cried out ‘Bravo! The Cardinal of Paris and Father Sertillanges distance us from the Pope!’.23 To remedy the situation, the prelate suggested two measures: on the one hand, to canonize Joan of Arc — whose beatification had increased Pius X’s popularity — and, on the other, to point out to the French cardinals which line to uphold should the pontiff make any new appeal to the belligerent powers. At the time, Gasparri and Benedict XV chose not to follow Touchet’s advice because the canonization would have displeased the Central Powers and sending directives would have set the cardinals apart, making them a kind of new and unso-

23 ‘Il y avait aussi des catholiques à la Madeleine. Il y en a en France. Un grand nombre d’entre eux n’a pas caché sa satisfaction. D’où procède-t-elle? La presse l’a dit et redit, depuis trois ans passés: le pape est pro-allemand. Elle a ajouté ou clairement ou sournoisement: vous aussi donc, catholiques, en tant que professant un devoir de soumission au pape, vous êtes pro-allemands. La première circulation a inquiété des catholiques: elle les trouble; la seconde leur fait peur. Ceux qui devaient défendre le pape et les catholiques, nous évêques, je le confesse pour ma part, nous ne l’avons pas fait avec assez d’énergie. Plusieurs d’entre nous, je le sais, hésitaient à parler. Ils regardaient du côté des cardinaux: ce qui est encore un hommage rendu au Siège Apostolique; et constatant ou leurs silences ou leurs explications peu concordantes, ils gardèrent la réserve, de peur d’ajouter à la cacophonie. […] Quoiqu’il en soit, de ces abstentions a suivi un état d’esprit fâcheux parmi les catholiques. Leur opinion n’étant plus faite par ses directeurs naturels, elle s’est incarnée dans une formule simpliste et stupide, aussi stupide que simpliste: le pape veut une paix allemande. Supposé que le p. Sertillanges se fut borné à n’en pas faire justice, il n’aurait au surplus fait que ce que tant ont fait. Mais le thème qu’il a choisi: la paix française avec les développements a pris allure d’une antithèse contre la paix allemande; et alors des catholiques même ont crié: “Bravo! Le cardinal de Paris et le p. Sertillanges nous désolidarisent d’avec le pape!”’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Touchet to Gasparri, 1 January 1918.

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licited intermediate authority between Rome and the French episcopate. Touchet, however, was not discouraged and — unlike his confreres who preferred to wait until the waters calmed down — continued with what he had been doing up to that time: publicly defending the Peace Note. Indeed, it was the Bishop of Orléans who offered France’s most profound writing on the war, a work of about sixty pages entitled La paix pontificale, which appeared in March 1918. Here he attempted make the document a question of the day, showing its affinity with the most recent pronouncements of Allied statesmen, such as Lloyd George in his speech of 5 January 1918 at Caxton Hall, on the British objectives of war, and Wilson’s much more famous address on 8 January 1918 to the United States Senate on the famous Fourteen Points.24 It was not a new technique. As early as September of 1917, in a widely circulated article, Father Yves de La Brière — one of the leading writers for the review Les Études — had sought to show a convergence between the Note and Wilson’s speech to the US Senate on 22 January of that year.25 That being said, Touchet’s effort had less effect than La Brière’s26 because, by that time, the vast majority of French Catholics wanted to turn their backs on the polemics raised by the Note and to take advantage of the great German offensive in the spring of 1918 to reaffirm their patriotism. As far as the Vatican was concerned, Amette’s official apology (‘I humbly admit that I was wrong in my appreciation of this speech and that I judged it with too much indulgence’) was considered to be sufficient, at least at first.27 In point of fact, the La Madeleine matter would only be considered closed after the war and the Cardinal’s death, when — with the fear of repercussions in public opinion having evaporated — Sertillanges was punished with exile to Jerusalem, then Holland and finally Belgium, where he remained until 1939.28

3. The Italian Episcopacy, the Note and Caporetto In Italy the Note also received a varied response from the episcopate, which was marked by divisions that were not reducible to binomials such as intransigent/ moderate or nationalist/compassionate.

24 Stanislas Touchet, La paix pontificale: étude sur la note du pape du 1er août 1917 (Paris: Lethielleux, 1918). On the British leader’s address, see David R. Woodward, ‘The Origins and Intent of David Lloyd George’s January 5 War Aims Speech’, The Historian, 34, 1 (1971), pp. 22–39. 25 Yves de La Brière, ‘L’offre de médiation diplomatique de Benoît XV’, Études, 54, 152 (1917), pp. 641–59. On its author, see Marc Agostino, ‘Le père Yves de la Brière et la diffusion des orientations pontificales’, in Histoire religieuse: histoire globale, histoire ouverte: mélanges offerts à Jacques Gadille, ed. by Jean-Dominique Durand and Régis Ladous (Paris: Beauchesne, 1992), pp. 249–64. 26 For example, see Julien de Narfon, ‘La diplomatie de la présence’, Le Figaro, 22 June 1918. 27 ‘Je reconnais humblement que je me suis trompé dans mon appréciation de ce discours et que je l’ai jugé avec trop d’indulgence’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, III periodo, pos. 1317, vol. 5, Amette to Gasparri, 14 January 1918; and Gasparri to Amette, 23 January 1918. 28 Pierre Colin, ‘Sertillanges, Antonin-Dalmace’, in Catholicisme: hier, aujourd’hui, demain, ed. by Guillaume Jacquemet, 15 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1948–2000), XIII: Rites-Sida, ed. by Gérard Mathon, Gérard-Henry Baudry and Paul Guilluy (1993), cols 1150–54.

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This plurality of standpoints was revealed by letters that a small minority of bishops sent to the Pope or to the Secretary of State in the days following the document’s publication. Some limited themselves to a formal appreciation. This was the case of Bishop of Cremona, Giovanni Cazzani, known for his not exactly blindly patriotic ideas, who begged Gasparri to ‘find pleasure at the sincere expression of the admiration, applause and gratitude of my people […] for the recent Note to the heads of the belligerent peoples’.29 Others took the opportunity to argue against the internal enemy. Bishop Giovanni Vincenzo Tasso of Aosta, for example, considered the appeal ‘paternal’, ‘prudent’ and very appropriate at a moment when everyone is sighing for peace so hard that they are even willing to obtain it at the price of a violence and civil war worse than we are suffering now. May everyone accept the true peace that is offered by God and set forward by His Vicar, a gentle, just and lasting one, and reject the underhanded, violent and deceitful one that others wish to impose.30 Still others submitted to their superiors some proposals to contribute to the initiative’s success. Among these, Bishop Carmine Cesarano of Ozieri stands out for calling for a kind of episcopal referendum: If it would please the Holy Father to give permission, every bishop in the belligerent countries could send a letter of thanks to the Pope from their respective dioceses and a plea to their respective governments for them to accept the Supreme Pontiff ’s peace-making directive. The voice of the entire episcopate speaking on behalf of the people to thank the Holy Father for an act intended to bring peace to the world would be, without doubt, a great comfort for the Pope’s fatherly heart. And urging the governments to accept the pontifical proposal could have the value of a referendum.31

29 ‘Di voler gradire l’espressione sincera dell’ammirazione, del plauso e della riconoscenza del mio clero e del mio popolo […] per la recente Nota ai capi dei popoli belligeranti’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 82, Cazzani to Gasparri, 18 August 1917. On the Bishop’s conduct, see Luigi Bruti Liberati, ‘Vescovo e clero a Cremona durante la prima guerra mondiale’, Nuova rivista storica, 63, 3–4 (1979), pp. 415–34. 30 ‘Paterno’; ‘prudente’; ‘tutti sospirano tanto la pace da volersela procurare fin colla violenza e colla guerra civile, peggiore di quella che già si subisce. Che tutti accettino la vera pace offerta da Dio e proposta dal Suo Vicario, soave, giusta e duratura, e rigettino quella subdola, violenta e menzognera che altri vorrebbero imporre’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 82, Tasso to Benedict XV, 29 August 1917. 31 ‘Se il S. Padre si compiacesse dare il permesso, ogni vescovo dei paesi belligeranti potrebbe dirigere a nome della propria diocesi una lettera di ringraziamento al papa e una supplica al rispettivo governo perché si accogliesse la parola pacificatrice del Sommo Pontefice. La voce di tutto l’episcopato che parla a nome dei popoli per ringraziare il S. Padre di un atto destinato ad apportare la pace al mondo sarebbe senza dubbio un gran conforto per il cuore paterno del papa; e per premere sui governi ad accogliere la proposta pontificia potrebbe avere un valore plebiscitario’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 80, Cesarano to Gasparri, 17 August 1917.

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A further distinguishing element arose in the characteristics that the bishops attributed to peace. Although they all desired a ‘just and lasting one’, Bishop Pasquale Ragosta of Ischia interpreted it as the immediate cessation of that ‘horrendous carnage of so many young lives’. Carlo Dalmazio Minoretti, Bishop of Crema, meanwhile, wanted one that ‘corresponded to the dignity of the nations’ — that is, a victorious one.32 Among the prelates who wrote to the Secretary of State during this first phase, the most illustrious was certainly Cardinal Pietro Maffi of Pisa who — already an adversary of Della Chiesa during the 1914 conclave — had become, since Italy’s entry into the war, a symbol of the union between the faith and the homeland. His conduct deserves careful analysis because it illustrates, with particular clarity, the distance between private and public declarations. In a letter to the Pope he did not hesitate to declare the Note ‘one of the grand documents and glories of the Roman pontificate’, assuring his prayers and having others pray for the initiative’s success. His assertion was of the greatest importance considering the Cardinal’s close and cordial relationship with the country’s political and military vertices. His enthusiasm, however, greatly diminished with the transition to a public plan. In fact, the press controlled by Maffi pointed out that the Pope had not invoked the dreaded ‘peace without victory’, but the just peace called for by the Entente (Alsace-Lorraine to France, Trento and Trieste to Italy, etc.), attributing any other interpretation to Masonic propaganda. This reduced the pontiff ’s words to a support for the Allies, effectively eliminating the diplomatic path.33 The Cardinal’s ambiguity highlighted a more general fact: the Note caused acute discomfort among the bishops, who in many cases — from Arezzo to Cariati, from Perugia to Ravenna, from Marsi to Mazara, etc. — decided not to publish it in their diocesan bulletin or to make any pronouncement on it. In order to avoid complete silence, some restricted themselves to merely publishing it, abstaining from any comment — as was the case in Agrigento, Concordia, Lucca, Modena, Reggio Calabria, etc.34 In such situations, the Catholic press, more or less authorized, were the ones to deal with the Note, which did not protect the bishops from possible

32 ‘Orrenda carneficina di tante giovini esistenze’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 80, Ragosta to Gasparri, 19 August 1917; and ‘rispondente alla dignità delle nazioni’, Minoretti to Gasparri, 23 August 1917. 33 ‘Uno dei grandi documenti e delle glorie del pontificato romano’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 80, Maffi to Benedict XV, 17 August 1917. ‘Dalla formula massonica alla proposta del pontefice’, Il Messaggero Toscano, 19 August 1917. On the Cardinal, see Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Per una più grande Italia’: il cardinale Pietro Maffi e la prima guerra mondiale (Pisa: Pacini, 2015). 34 ‘Lettera di S. S. Benedetto XV ai capi dei popoli belligeranti’, Bollettino ecclesiastico della diocesi di Girgenti, August 1917, pp. 27–29; ‘Ai capi dei popoli belligeranti’, Rassegna ecclesiastica lucchese, 28 August 1917, pp. 584–86; ‘Nota del S. Padre Benedetto XV ai capi delle potenze belligeranti’, Bollettino del clero: ufficiale per gli atti di mons. Arcivescovo di Modena ed Abate di Nonantola e delle due diocesi, August 1917, pp. 129–32; ‘Nuovo appello del papa per la pace ai capi dei popoli belligeranti’, Rassegna ecclesiastica concordiese, September 1917, pp. 117–19; and ‘Ai capi dei popoli belligeranti’, Bollettino ecclesiastico delle diocesi federate di Reggio Calabria, Mileto, Gerace, Oppido Mamertina, Bova, September 1917, pp. 177–80.

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complications. The most significant example of this is provided by the Corriere del Friuli, which was published in Udine, close to the High Command. It was suspended by the military authorities and then suppressed by the Holy See due to an article ‘regarding the pontifical Note on peace, in which it said that it was neither the leaders of the belligerent countries nor journalists who should respond to the Pope, but the soldiers in the trenches. Its formulations were so negative as to let it be thought that it was trying to incite the soldiers to rebellion in the Pope’s name’.35 These words, written with evident disapproval by Antonio Anastasio Rossi, Archbishop of Udine, revealed the risks associated with excessive prudence, which left the door open to ‘subversive’ interpretations of the Note, encouraged by the climate of exhaustion and exasperation arising from the war’s indefinite prolongation. Even if the case of the Corriere del Friuli was isolated, the bishops tried to prevent similar incidents by giving guidelines to the diocesan press or by issuing declarations to explain the ‘correct’ interpretation of the document. For example, in a notice dated 23 August, Bishop Luigi Maria Marelli of Bergamo advised his clergy to exercise great caution in explaining the text in order not to arouse false hopes that peace would arrive soon: I strongly desire that all the faithful be brought to know and appreciate this document; in this moment of such anxiety, they hope to see in it the rising — even if afar — of some star that hints at the peace desired. May this also serve as proof, which was needed to dissipate the foolish and already denied accusation that the Pope wanted war, as the enemies of the Church would have us believe. I therefore recommend to the well-known prudence and wisdom of my clergy that, in speaking of this very important fact, we manage to engender in people a sense of the just relief that they have a right to after such long tension in the soul. Do not, however, exaggerate in a way that might make them almost believe that it is something attainable this very day. Let their spirits be raised in the confidence that peace is approaching, but do not give hope for a brief time frame in that which does not depend on us. What is most urgent is that the Christian people feel that the Pope loves us and is working hard to relieve us of the sorrows that are oppressing us. We thank God for the intercession of His vicar in this important moment and let everyone, in public and in private, pray that humankind may make itself worthy of the gift of peace and may generously

35 ‘Nel quale a proposito della nota pontificia sulla pace, si diceva che non i capi dei belligeranti, non i giornalisti dovevano dare la risposta al papa, ma i soldati delle trincee: e le espressioni erano così infelici da lasciar credere si volesse incitare i soldati alla ribellione in nome del pontefice’; ‘Ai capi dei popoli belligeranti’, Rivista diocesana udinese, September 1917, pp. 185–86; Rossi to Gasparri, 26 August 1917, reported in I vescovi veneti, ed. by Scottà, II, pp. 534–36. Max [Guglielmo Gasparutti], ‘La risposta alle trincee’, Corriere del Friuli, 21 August 1917. On the incident of the Corriere del Friuli see Luigi Bruti Liberati, Il clero italiano nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1982), pp. 76 ff. On the Bishop, see Angelo Robbiati, ‘Rossi, Antonio Anastasio’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III/2, p. 742.

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know how to contribute to the triumph of justice and the truth upon which alone a lasting peace can rest.36 And again, in a long letter to the clergy of his diocese dated 29 August, Bishop Luigi Pellizzo of Padua repeated three times that the Pope called for a ‘just and lasting’ — that is, victorious — peace. Mainly, the Note allowed him to defend Catholics — who had been accused of undermining internal resistance but who, in reality, were committed to strengthening the spirit of sacrifice through personal discipline and action — and to exhort the faithful to prayer and penitence, recalling the episode of Sodom and Gomorrah.37 This was not a simple reproposal of the clichés and watchwords of Catholic discourse from earlier years, but a call to order. The Bishop, in fact, had witnessed the enthusiasm that the Note had unleashed among military personnel in his diocese. It was a sentiment that, if not properly tamed and focussed, risked leading to acts of rebellion. Pellizzo noticed it from mid-August: The day of the Assumption seemed a delirium, especially among the military, who were impatient to hear the document. It came to the point that, not only were they crying out ‘long live the Pope’, ‘long live peace’, but they were openly hugging and kissing one another, almost as if they were to be released that evening. In the hospital of Santa Giustina — which has 2000 beds — there was such a burst of joy that the patients got up, and it took everything they had to reinstate order. For fear of similar outbursts and ensuing disorder, the director of the seminary’s hospital forbade the circulation of newspapers in order to maintain calm at least for that day. There was no less expectation and enthusiasm shown 36 ‘È vivissimo mio desiderio che abbiano a conoscere e ad apprezzare questo documento tutti i fedeli che in quest’ora di tanta ansia desiderano di scorgere almeno in lontananza qualche astro che accenni alla desiderata pace. Valga anche questa prova, ve ne era bisogno, a sventare la sciocca e già rifiutata accusa che il papa abbia voluto la guerra, come i nemici della chiesa vorrebbero far credere. Mi raccomando pertanto alla ben nota prudenza e saggezza del mio clero, perché nel parlare di questo fatto così importante procuri di ingenerare nelle popolazioni un senso di giusto sollievo a cui si ha diritto dopo una così lunga tensione di animi. Non si esageri però nel senso di far quasi credere trattarsi di cosa raggiungibile in giornata. Si sollevino gli animi colla fiducia di una pace che si avvicina, ma non si diano affidamento di breve tempo che non dipendono da noi. Quello che preme è questo: senta il popolo cristiano che il papa ci ama e si adopera a sollevarci dai dolori che ci opprimono; si ringrazi Dio dell’intervento del suo vicario in questo supremo momento e si preghi da tutti in pubblico e in privato, perché tutti gli uomini si rendano degni del dono della pace e tutti generosamente sappiano concorrere al trionfo della giustizia e della verità su cui unicamente può riposare una pace duratura’; ‘Dopo la nota del S. Padre ai capi delle nazioni belligeranti’, La vita diocesana: periodico ufficiale per gli atti del vescovo e della curia di Bergamo, August–September 1917, pp. 177–78. On the Bishop, see Una diocesi smarrita: l’episcopato di Luigi Maria Marelli nei documenti della Congregazione Concistoriale (Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 1920–1934), ed. by Ermenegildo Camozzi (Sant’Omobono Terme: Centro Studi Valle Imagna, 2014). 37 ‘Appello alla preghiera e penitenza pel dono della pace’, Bollettino diocesano di Padova: ufficiale per gli atti vescovili, 15 September 1917, pp. 236–45. On the Bishop, see Angelo Gambasin, ‘Monsignor Luigi Pellizzo vescovo di Padova e la prima guerra mondiale’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 19 (1965), pp. 86–165; and Liliana Billanovich, ‘Il vescovo Luigi Pellizzo di fronte alla guerra del 1915–1918’, in Monastica et Humanistica: scritti in onore di Gregorio Penco O. S. B., ed. by Francesco G. B. Trolese, 2 vols (Cesena: Badia di Santa Maria del Monte, 2003), II, pp. 877–910.

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at the front, according to reports I have received during these days: anything but having to keep up the troops’ moral! But the sorrowful episodes that continue to occur clearly show what their true state of mind might well be, and what a terrible catastrophe is on the cards for the coming winter if peace, or at least an armistice, does not come first. […] By now, there is a kind of feeling circulating through the army that everyone knows that the war must end, not with weapons but with a general defection when winter approaches if the belligerents do not listen to the Holy Father’s call first.38 Between the two extremes of silence and timely personal commentary were those who, deeply embarrassed by the document, started to speak up after some delay. For example, on 12 September, Bishop Giustino Sanchini of Fano sent his parish priests a notice setting out the guidelines for explaining the Note to the faithful. According to him, the document that had appeared in the diocesan bulletin was ‘an act of paternal charity’, which was ‘absolutely impartial’ because the Pope (‘the universal father of all Christians’) was only focussing on ending the war that had been orchestrated by Masons with a ‘just and lasting’ peace, which would be ‘a blessing for all the nations at war and especially the one that is also his beloved homeland’. Above all, the Note was not a treaty but a proposal containing the fundamental outlines for peace, which depended on the governments and, even more, upon God. Since the ultimate destiny of the world was in the Lord’s hands, prayer appeared to be the clergy and the people’s ‘main duty’.39 The most interesting case of a delayed response is seen in Cardinal Giorgio Gusmini, Archbishop of Bologna. Having succeeded Giacomo Della Chiesa at the helm of the Diocese of Bologna, he first let L’Avvenire d’Italia — a tool of the city’s moderate Catholics that followed the same patriotic lines as the Pisan press controlled by Maffi — deal with the matter. Subsequently, the Archbishop had the text

38 ‘Il giorno dell’Assunta sembrava un delirio, specie tra i militari, impazienti di conoscere il documento. Si arrivò a tal punto che non solo si gridava: viva il papa, viva la pace; ma graduati pubblicamente si abbracciavano, si baciavano, quasi fossero per congedarsi quella sera. All’ospedale di S. Giustina — di 2000 letti — fu tale uno scatto di allegria che tutti i malati si alzarono e ci volle del bello e del buono per mettere l’ordine. Per tema di una simile esplosione e conseguente disordine, il direttore dell’ospedale del seminario proibì l’introduzione dei giornali per mantenere la calma almeno quel giorno. Né minore aspettativa ed entusiasmo si manifestò al fronte, come da notizie giuntemi questi giorni; altro che morale alto dei soldati! Ma quale sia il vero stato d’animo di questi e quale terribile catastrofe si vada apparecchiando per il prossimo inverno, qualora non avvenga prima la pace o almeno un armistizio lo dimostrano chiaramente i dolorosi episodi che del continuo succedono. […] Ormai nell’esercito è una specie di autosuggestione che la guerra deve finire non colle armi tutti lo sanno, ma colla generale defezione all’avvicinarsi dell’inverno, se prima i belligeranti non ascolteranno l’invito del S. Padre’; Pellizzo to Benedict XV, 18 August 1917, in I vescovi veneti, ed. by Scottà, I, pp. 160–64. 39 ‘Atto di paterna carità’; ‘assolutamente imparziale’; ‘padre universale di tutti i cristiani’; ‘una pace giusta e duratura’; ‘una benedizione per tutte le nazioni in guerra e specialmente per quella che è anche la sua patria diletta’; ‘dovere principalissimo’; ‘La nota del S. Padre Benedetto XV per la pace e Lettera di S. E. mons. nostro vescovo’, Bollettino ufficiale per la diocesi di Fano, September 1917, pp. 33–39.

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published in the diocesan bulletin, releasing a notice of public and formal adherence to the initiative (‘an act that history will record in gold letters’) only in October. This did not, however, hide the difficulties ‘in moving from theory to practice, from the saying to the doing’.40 By this time, the failure of the papal project was plain to everyone so, when the Austro-German forces broke through the Italian lines at Caporetto and swept across the Northeast, the bishops did not consider it appropriate to dwell on the issue, leaving it to the Catholic press to protest against those who considered the Note detrimental to the spirit of resistance or — as the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sidney Sonnino put it to the Chamber of Deputies — scarred by ‘the ambiguity that characterizes the enemy’s communications and makes any further exchange of viewpoints impossible or useless’.41 One of the few exceptions was Bishop Andrea Cassulo of Fabriano, whose newsletter briefly mentioned the Note (‘we joyfully greeted a radiant dawn of peace that came to us from the wise words of the paternal heart of the Holy Father but, alas, the heavens have again darkened, and we find ourselves in even more dire moments’) then focussed, like most of his confreres, on the need to pray, to help refugees and to obey the authorities in order to hasten the advent of a ‘just and lasting peace’.42 Bishop Giacinto Gaggia of Brescia, one of the most aggressively patriotic members of the episcopate, was inspired by the same goal. In a piece written in an entirely different vein, he sought belie those who tried to veil their own faults by unloading the responsibility for Caporetto onto the Pope. On the one hand there were the governments that — starting with the British — had published a confidential document. On the other were the socialists and ‘fanatical interventionists’ who had ‘dishonestly commented on and even distorted [the Note] with the most obvious and blatant lies’. As usual, the underlying idea was that the homeland had nothing to fear from Catholics (‘men of duty and discipline’).43

40 ‘Atto che registrerà a caratteri d’oro la storia’; ‘nel passare dalla teoria alla pratica, dal dire al fare’; Paolo Mattei Gentili, ‘Restaurazione’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 17 August 1917; Bollettino della diocesi di Bologna, September 1917, pp. 226–28; ‘Pel mese di ottobre!’, Bollettino della diocesi di Bologna, October 1917, pp. 254–56; Marcello Malpensa, ‘Religione, nazione e guerra nella diocesi di Bologna (1914–1918): arcivescovo, laicato, sacerdoti e chierici’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 383–408. 41 ‘Indeterminatezza che caratterizza le comunicazioni da parte nemica e rende impossibile o inutile qualsiasi conseguente scambio di vedute’; [Luigi Albertini,] ‘Inutile strage?’, Corriere della Sera, 19 August 1917. Benito Mussolini, ‘Il documento’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 17 August 1917. ‘Situazione internazionale — nota del papa’, in Sidney Sonnino, Discorsi parlamentari, 3 vols (Rome: Tipografia della Camera dei Deputati, 1925), III, pp. 569–80. For an example of Catholic reactions to the Foreign Minister’s address, see ‘Polemica partigiana’, Il Messaggero Toscano, 28 October 1917. 42 ‘Salutammo con gioia un’alba radiosa di pace che ci veniva dalla parola sapiente, dal cuore paterno del S. Padre, ma ohimè il cielo si è oscurato un’altra volta e ci troviamo in più gravi momenti!’; ‘pace giusta e duratura’; ‘La parola del pastore’, L’Azione (Fabriano), 11 November 1917; Bruti Liberati, Il clero, pp. 97 ff. 43 ‘Interventisti fanatici’; ‘disonestamente commentata e financo stravolta col sofisma più manifesto e aperte menzogne’; ‘uomini del dovere e della disciplina’; Giacinto Gaggia, Lettere e scritti pastorali (1913–1933), ed. by Livio Rota (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1998), pp. 98–100. On the Bishop, see Antonio

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As can be seen, for the episcopate, the invasion of the Veneto and Friuli regions marked the definitive upset of the hopes raised by the Note, which was recalled only rarely and mainly polemically in the debate over responsibility for the catastrophe. What is certain is that, even before that moment, the unity of purpose and tone that Cesarano had hoped for was never realized because the papal initiative had laid bare the divisions within the hierarchy and, more generally, the limits of Catholic discourse during the conflict.

4. Conclusions Analysing the documentation reveals that, beyond the private demonstrations of enthusiasm and the formulaic homage paid to Benedict XV, the Italian and French bishops were mainly concerned with making the Note acceptable in the eyes of their countrymen, struggling to show a convergence between the papal cause, a defence of Catholicism and national interests. In other words, even on this occasion they resorted to the discourse carried out from the beginning of hostilities that held that the advent of the Christian peace that the pontiff called for would only be possible with a military defeat of the enemy (Lutheran and militarist Germany),44 which was chiefly responsible for the world’s neo-pagan decline. The process was anything but painless, as is seen in the Sertillanges case and the trials for defeatism waged against many Italian clerics, but tensions never resulted in a schism, and the Roman Church managed, albeit with difficulty, to maintain its unity. A different interpretation of the Note on the part of the episcopate appeared well after the end of the conflict, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the death of Benedict XV. For example, Camille Pic, Bishop of Gap, who had served as a stretcher bearer in the military medical service and had been shocked by the horrors he had seen, committed himself to defending the peace after the end of the hostilities. In December of 1931, he addressed a pastoral letter on the Church and peace among nations to diocesans. In it he held that the proposals contained in the Note and in Gasparri’s letters to the bishops of Sens and Valence (on the prevalence of right over might, disarmament, arbitration, condoning war expenses and the abolition of obligatory military service) remained sound.45 A few months later, Archbishop Giovanni Battista Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano of Bologna commemorated Benedict XV, dedicating some space to the Note. Unlike

Fappani, Giacinto Gaggia vescovo di Brescia, 2 vols (Brescia: Associazione Don Peppino Tedeschi, 1984–85), I: Lo studioso, il pastore nella prima guerra mondiale (1984); and Flora Zanetti, ‘Nazione e “patria del cielo”: il vescovo Gaggia e la Grande Guerra’, Studi bresciani, 5, 13 (1984), pp. 77–100. 44 Menozzi, Chiesa, pace, pp. 15–46. 45 Camille Pic, ‘Lettre pastorale de Mgr l’évêque de Gap au clergé et aux fidèles de son diocèse sur l’Église et la paix entre les nations’, Quinzaine religieuse du diocèse de Gap, 10–24 December 1931, pp. 377 ff. Pic’s thoughts were fully approved by La Croix: see ‘Dixième anniversaire de la mort du Pape Benoît XV’, La Croix, 22 January 1932. On the Bishop, see Frédéric Le Moigne, ‘Pic (Camille)’, in DEFVS, pp. 525–26.

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Pic, he focussed not only on the concrete proposals for an initiation of negotiations, but also on the phrase that had so irritated interventionists and nationalists: He [the Pope] did not say the wise and subtly diplomatic ‘useless slaughter’ in disdain of the magnificent heroism and undisputed valour shown. No, but useless for the delusion that would follow such extermination in not being able to achieve those goals of well-being that each people expected from the war. Slaughter because it cannot be denied that with the refined means of modern warfare it had truly become a slaughter even more than a demonstration or satisfaction of individual valour and strategy. […] They even wanted to charge the Pope for the injuries of war and the following catastrophes, almost as if he had drained the energy from the soldiers’ hearts. What a mad suggestion! The arms referred to should have been dropped by all the soldiers, on both sides, because the Pope was speaking to everyone! Now history will see justice done and will reveal the origin of the disasters, over which — for our Italy — the valour and strategy of the soldiers and the leaders gave the ultimate triumph of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.46 It was an opportune clarification because the traces of those polemics remained fixed in collective memory, ready to re-emerge even after the Lateran Treaty. Not surprisingly, less than a year earlier, in the all-out clash between the regime and Azione cattolica (Catholic Action), in the Chamber of Deputies Mussolini had praised the exploits of the Brescian Fascist, Lino Vitale Domeneghini, who had fought in the Kolovrat mountain range in October 1917, ‘when the criminal words of the “useless slaughter” and “next winter, no longer in the trenches” had already wrought their harmful effects’.47 Nasalli Rocca’s words shed light on the atmosphere of the early 1930s and cannot in any way be considered an indication of a change, within the Italian hierarchy, in Catholic doctrine on the subject of war. In fact, shortly thereafter, in 1935, the invasion 46 ‘Non diceva il savio e finissimo diplomatico “inutile strage” a disprezzo dei magnifici eroismi e di indiscussi valori, no: ma inutile per la delusione che sarebbe succeduta a tanto sterminio nel non poter raggiungere quei fini di benessere che dalla guerra ciascun popolo si aspettava; strage perché non potrà negarsi che coi mezzi raffinati della guerra moderna questa divenne realmente una strage, anche più che una dimostrazione e una soddisfazione di valore individuale e di strategia. […] Al papa si vollero perfino addebitare gli infortuni della guerra, le catastrofi che seguirono; quasi avesse negli animi dei soldati diminuite le energie. Proposizione folle! Avrebbero dovuto le armi in caso cadere dalle mani di tutti i soldati, da una parte e dall’altra, poiché il papa parlava a tutti! Ora la storia fa giustizia e si vede l’origine dei disastri ai quali, per l’Italia nostra, il valore e la strategia dei suoi soldati e dei suoi duci hanno dato poi il finale trionfo di Vittorio Veneto’; Giovanni Battista Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano, Benedetto XV: commemorazione letta all’inaugurazione dell’anno accademico universitario del circolo Malpighi il 7 marzo 1932 e in quella del seminario regionale Benedetto XV il 5 novembre 1934 (Bologna: Libreria arcivescovile Bononia, 1934), pp. 19–23. On the Cardinal, see Giovanni Turbanti, ‘Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano, Giovanni Battista’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXVII (2012), pp. 818–20. 47 ‘Quando le parole criminose della “inutile strage” e del “prossimo inverno non più in trincea” avevano già prodotto i loro effetti deleteri’; Benito Mussolini, ‘Lino Vitale Domeneghini’, in Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, ed. by Duilio Susmel and Edoardo Susmel, 36 vols (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–63), XXV (1958), pp. 12–13.

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of Ethiopia was greeted with enthusiasm by the bishops, whom the Undersecretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Domenico Tardini called ‘more verbose, more excited, and more […] unbalanced than anyone else’.48 It was only many years later that a different attitude began to take hold, when John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in terris was promulgated in 1963, triggering a process that, however, was not without difficulties and uncertainties at the magisterial level. In 1968, it was precisely the Diocese of Bologna that offered the most striking testimony of this when Archbishop Giacomo Lercaro was removed from office due to his homily against the United States’s bombarding of Vietnam.49

Bibliography Achleitner, Wilhelm, Gott im Krieg: die Theologie der österreichischen Bischöfe in den Hirtenbriefen zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997) Agostino, Marc, ‘Andrieu (Pierre-Paulin)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 34–35 Agostino, Marc, ‘Le père Yves de la Brière et la diffusion des orientations pontificales’, in Histoire religieuse: histoire globale, histoire ouverte: mélanges offerts à Jacques Gadille, ed. by Jean-Dominique Durand and Régis Ladous (Paris: Beauchesne, 1992), pp. 249–64 Aubert, Roger, Les deux premiers grands conflits du cardinal Mercier avec les autorités allemandes d’occupation (Leuven: Peeters, 1998) Battelli, Giuseppe, ‘Lercaro, Dossetti, la pace e il Vietnam: 1° gennaio 1968’, in Araldo del Vangelo: studi sull’episcopato e sull’archivio di Giacomo Lercaro a Bologna (1952–1968), ed. by Nicla Buonasorte (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004), pp. 185–304 Billanovich, Liliana, ‘Il vescovo Luigi Pellizzo di fronte alla guerra del 1915–1918’, in Monastica et Humanistica: scritti in onore di Gregorio Penco O. S. B., ed. by Francesco G. B. Trolese, 2 vols (Cesena: Badia di Santa Maria del Monte, 2003), II, pp. 877–910 Blenner-Michel, Sévérine, ‘Touchet (Stanislas)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 641–42 Brotto, Giovanni, Diario di guerra 1915–1918 di Andrea Giacinto Longhin, vescovo di Treviso, il vescovo del Montello e del Piave (Treviso: Editrice Trevigiana, 1969) Bruti Liberati, Luigi, Il clero italiano nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1982) Bruti Liberati, Luigi, ‘Vescovo e clero a Cremona durante la prima guerra mondiale’, Nuova rivista storica, 63, 3–4 (1979), pp. 415–34

48 ‘Più verbosi, più eccitati, più… squilibrati di tutti’; Lucia Ceci, Il papa non deve parlare: Chiesa, fascismo e guerra d’Etiopia (Rome: Laterza, 2010), pp. 86–87. 49 Giuseppe Battelli, ‘Lercaro, Dossetti, la pace e il Vietnam: 1° gennaio 1968’, in Araldo del Vangelo: studi sull’episcopato e sull’archivio di Giacomo Lercaro a Bologna (1952–1968), ed. by Nicla Buonasorte (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004), pp. 185–304.

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Camozzi, Ermenegildo, ed., Una diocesi smarrita: l’episcopato di Luigi Maria Marelli nei documenti della Congregazione Concistoriale (Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 1920–1934) (Sant’Omobono Terme: Centro Studi Valle Imagna, 2014) Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Le chauvinisme épiscopal: les cardinaux de Pise et de Paris entre catholicisme et religion de la patrie’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 17–29 Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Les conférences de guerre du père Sertillange (1914–1918)’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire, 32, 129 (2016), pp. 95–107 Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Per una più grande Italia’: il cardinale Pietro Maffi e la prima guerra mondiale (Pisa: Pacini, 2015) Ceci, Lucia, Il papa non deve parlare: Chiesa, fascismo e guerra d’Etiopia (Rome: Laterza, 2010) Colin, Pierre, ‘Sertillanges, Antonin-Dalmace’, in Catholicisme: hier, aujourd’hui, demain, ed. by Guillaume Jacquemet, 15 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1948–2000), XIII: Rites-Sida, ed. by Gérard Mathon, Gérard-Henry Baudry and Paul Guilluy (1993), cols 1150–54 Dauzet, Dominique-Marie, ‘Chesnelong (Émile)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 149–50 Fappani, Antonio, Giacinto Gaggia vescovo di Brescia, 2 vols (Brescia: Associazione Don Peppino Tedeschi, 1984–85), I: Lo studioso, il pastore nella prima guerra mondiale (1984) Fontana, Jacques, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 1990) Gaggia, Giacinto, Lettere e scritti pastorali (1913–1933), ed. by Livio Rota (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1998) Gambasin, Angelo, ‘Monsignor Luigi Pellizzo vescovo di Padova e la prima guerra mondiale’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 19 (1965), pp. 86–165 Guasco, Alberto, ‘I vescovi francescani italiani e la Grande Guerra’, Studi francescani, 113, 3–4 (2016), pp. 385–403 Guilbaud, Mathilde, ‘Gibier (Charles)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 297–98 Haidl, Roland, ‘La première guerre mondiale au miroir des lettres pastorales de l’épiscopat allemand’, 14–18 aujourd’hui, 1 (1998), pp. 39–51 Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) La Brière, Yves de, ‘L’offre de médiation diplomatique de Benoît XV’, Études, 54, 152 (1917), pp. 641–59 Lajonchère, Lucien, ‘Métreau ( Joseph)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 473–74 Le Moigne, Frédéric, ‘Dubois (Louis- Ernest)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 215–17

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Le Moigne, Frédéric, ‘Dubourg (Auguste)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 222–23 Le Moigne, Frédéric, ‘Pic (Camille)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 525–26 Llobet, Gabriel de, Un évêque aux armées en 1916–1918: lettres et souvenirs (Limoges: PULIM, 2003) Lübbers, Bernhard, ‘“Segne die Waffen unserer Brüder!”: die Hirtenbriefe des Regensburger Bischofs Antonius von Henle aus der Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Regensburg im Ersten Weltkrieg: Schlaglichter auf die Geschichte einer bayerischen Provinzstadt zwischen 1914 und 1918, ed. by Bernhard Lübbers and Stefan Reichmann (Regensburg: Morsbach, 2014), pp. 105–18 Malpensa, Marcello, ‘Registro pubblico e registro interno: il discorso sulla guerra del vescovo Conforti’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 99–133 Malpensa, Marcello, ‘Religione, nazione e guerra nella diocesi di Bologna (1914–1918): arcivescovo, laicato, sacerdoti e chierici’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 383–408 Malpensa, Marcello, ‘I vescovi davanti alla guerra’, in Un paese in guerra: la mobilitazione civile in Italia (1914–1918), ed. by Daniele Menozzi, Giovanna Procacci and Simonetta Soldani (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 295–315 Mantese, Giovanni, and Aristide Dani, ‘Il vescovo Rodolfi e il clero vicentino nell’ora più cruciale della guerra 1915–1918’ in Atti del convegno regionale Veneto sulla prima guerra mondiale (Venezia, 5 maggio 1968) (Venice: Tipografia G. Rumor, 1968), pp. 96–121 Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Monticone, Alberto, ‘I vescovi italiani e la guerra 1915–1918’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 627–59 Mussolini, Benito, ‘Lino Vitale Domeneghini’, in Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, ed. by Duilio Susmel and Edoardo Susmel, 36 vols (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–63), XXV (1958), pp. 12–13 Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano, Giovanni Battista, Benedetto XV: commemorazione letta all’inaugurazione dell’anno accademico universitario del circolo Malpighi il 7 marzo 1932 e in quella del seminario regionale Benedetto XV il 5 novembre 1934 (Bologna: Libreria arcivescovile Bononia, 1934) Pic, Camille, ‘Lettre pastorale de Mgr l’évêque de Gap au clergé et aux fidèles de son diocèse sur l’Église et la paix entre les nations’, Quinzaine religieuse du diocèse de Gap, 10–24 December 1931, pp. 377 ff. Ploix, Philippe and Dominique-Marie Dauzet, ‘Martin de Gibergues (Emmanuel)’, in Dictionnaire des évêques de France au XXe siècle, ed. by Dominique-Marie Dauzet and Frédéric Le Moigne (Paris: Cerf, 2010), pp. 453–54

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Renaud-Antier, Chantal, ‘L’évêque de Meaux, image de l’alliance du clergé et de l’armée pendant la Grande Guerre’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 47, 187 (1997), pp. 41–57 Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Renouvin, Pierre, ‘L’épiscopat français devant l’offre de paix du Saint-Siège (August 1917)’, in Mélanges offerts à G. Jacquemyns (Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Éditions de l’Institut de Sociologie, 1968), pp. 551–61 Renouvin, Pierre, ‘Le gouvernement français devant le message de paix du Saint-Siège (août 1917)’, in Religion et politique: les deux guerres mondiales; histoire de Lyon et du SudEst; mélanges offerts à M. le Doyen André Latreille (Lyon: Audin, 1972), pp. 291–94 Robbiati, Angelo, ‘Rossi, Antonio Anastasio’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III/2, p. 742 Scheidgen, Hermann-Josef, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991) Schlott, René, Die Friedensnote Papst Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917: eine Untersuchung zur Berichterstattung und Kommentierung in der zeitgenössischen Berliner Tagespresse (Hamburg: Kovac, 2007) Scottà, Antonio, ed., I vescovi veneti e la Santa Sede nella guerra 1915–1918, 3 vols (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991) Sonnino, Sidney, Discorsi parlamentari, 3 vols (Rome: Tipografia della Camera dei Deputati, 1925), III Touchet, Stanislas, La paix pontificale: étude sur la note du pape du 1er août 1917 (Paris: Lethielleux, 1918) Turbanti, Giovanni, ‘Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano, Giovanni Battista’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXVII (2012), pp. 818–20 Vian, Giovanni, ‘Clero e guerra nel diario del patriarca La Fontaine’, Annali di scienze religiose, 8 (2015), pp. 105–24 Woodward, David R., ‘The Origins and Intent of David Lloyd George’s January 5 War Aims Speech’, The Historian, 34, 1 (1971), pp. 22–39 Zanetti, Flora, ‘Nazione e “patria del cielo”: il vescovo Gaggia e la Grande Guerra’, Studi bresciani, 5, 13 (1984), pp. 77–100

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Xavier Boniface

The Note of 1 August 1917 and Its Failure

Benedict XV’s Peace Note of 1 August 1917, on the symbolic date of the third anniversary of the outbreak of the war, has given rise to fierce controversy, which may explain the significant number of international historical studies on the subject. The Spoleto conference Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale1 was a first step in 1962, before the opening of the archives of Benedict XV in 1984 relaunched the research. In the light of this documentation, historians have focussed on the ways in which the text was elaborated, the preliminary diplomatic approaches (Eugenio Pacelli’s missions to Germany),2 possible influences, as well as the 1917 context: the ‘people’s fatigue’, the Russian Revolution, the United States’ entry into the war and the various peace proposals (that of President Wilson at the end of 1916, then that of Karl I, Nathan Söderblom and the proposed Socialist Conference in Stockholm). Historians have equally been interested in the reception of the pontifical peace offer and its failure in the various belligerent countries. We must now return to this point because it sheds light in its own way on the nature and limits of relations between Catholics and the Pope, which were dominated at the time by tensions, expectations and disappointments. The failure of the pontifical initiative reveals some international and religious issues. From a synthetic historiographical perspective, using the French example in a comparative way, we shall examine the nature, the causes and, finally, the scope of the Note.

1. 1.1.

A Failure on Three Levels A Failure in Regard to Diplomatic and Political Leaders

Addressed to the ‘leaders of the belligerent peoples’ and written in French — the language used in international relations, particularly by the Holy See — the Note

1 Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963). 2 Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 555–570 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118791

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presents itself first and foremost as a diplomatic and political text.3 In this way, the Pope attempts to establish himself as a sovereign among the heads of state. He communicated his text to all the leaders of the belligerent and neutral countries, whether they had representatives in the Vatican or not: Great Britain was invited to send the document to France, Italy and the United States, who did not have embassies to the Pope. It was above all in the diplomatic and political field that the reception of the Note failed. The Pope was met with indifference, polite refusal or irritation on the part of the principal government offices. Without going into the details of all the diplomatic reactions, which have already been thoroughly studied, a few examples are worth mentioning. On 23 August, the British representative to the Holy See, Count de Salis, gave Cardinal Gasparri his government’s dilatory reply: it did not seem possible to him to ‘express an opinion […] until the Central Powers and their allies had officially declared the aims they were pursuing in the war’ (‘prononcer une opinion […] tant que les Puissances centrales et leurs alliés n’auront pas déclaré officiellement les fins qu’ils poursuivent par la guerre’). After consulting the allies, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, deferentially rejected the pontifical proposal on 27 August.4 Some countries refrained from sending any official reply. France, which had broken off its diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1904, did not reply directly. After considering the silence, which it also wanted to impose on its allies and associates, it wanted to adhere to the British response, on condition that it would have an influence on it, a move which London rejected. On 19 September, Alexandre Ribot, Minister of Foreign Affairs, explained to the Chamber of Deputies: ‘If we have not replied to the Pope’s Note, we agree with our allies. Do we have to respond, even given the great authority of the Pope, to all these invitations to conversations?’.5 Italy adopted an attitude similar to that of France with no direct response sent to the Pope and a critical speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sidney Sonnino, to the Chamber of Deputies on 25 October. The later reactions of Germany and Austria came after further requests from the Secretariat of State. In Berlin, the leaders, who were subjected to the influence of the military, responded on 19 September, without alluding to the ‘total evacuation of Belgium’ requested by Benedict XV, by blaming the responsibility of the war on the Entente: it was a kind of non-reception. The next day, Karl I of Austria wrote a respectful letter to the Pope expressing his great interest in his peace proposal, but

3 Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. 4 Francis Latour, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996), pp. 178, 183. 5 ‘Si nous n’avons pas répondu à la note du Pape, nous sommes d’accord avec nos alliés. Avons-nous à répondre, malgré la haute autorité du Pape, à toutes ces invitations à des conversations?; cited in A. Avril, ‘La Chambre’, Le Figaro, 20 September 1917.

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adding that he also thought ‘that [his] current enemies would also be animated by the same thought’, and he avoided addressing territorial issues: this was a way of rejecting the provisions of the Note.6 This diplomatic failure contributed to a relative political discrediting of the Holy See. Benedict XV was aware of this, which is why, until the end of the war, he hardly ever made any efforts for peace after the failure of his Note. 1.2.

A Failure in Regard to Public Opinion

Failure can also be found in the negative reactions of the public, of which newspapers are the indicators, even if they only partly reflect the many varied opinions, ideas and perceptions of the people. The Note was published on 16 August in most of the newspapers of the Entente countries. ‘The newspapers and conversations are full of it’, Mgr Baudrillart noted the day after its publication.7 Many feared that a peace without victory, namely, a return to the pre-war situation, would in reality have meant a success for Germany. Much of the press in the Allied countries even assumed there to be an Austro-German influence on the Note. In France, the Paris newspapers, such as Le Matin or Le Journal, along with the organs of the liberal and national right such as Le Figaro or L’Écho de Paris, besides numerous anti-clerical publications, expressed harsh words when referring to the supreme pontiff. Some, for example Le Temps, also held ‘that it is no longer necessary to speak of resuming official relations with the Pope’ (‘qu’il ne faut plus parler de reprendre les relations officielles avec le pape’), while others, on the contrary, such as Fernand Laudet of La Revue hebdomadaire, persisted in their commitment to their resumption.8 Close to Laudet, Baudrillart considered that ‘we can now, more than ever, argue in favour of the need for an ambassador’.9 In London, The Daily Telegraph affirmed that the Note was sent after Benedict XV had received direct reports from the Central Powers describing their situation ‘in very dark colours’. For The New York Herald, ‘any proposal that does not include the outright surrender of Germany is not worth being taken into consideration’.10 For its part, some of the Italian papers accused Benedict XV of ‘weakening the patriotic spirit’ and even ‘spreading defeatism’, going as far as to call him ‘Maledetto XV’ (‘Cursed XV’).11 Sonnino would have liked his country’s refusal of the Note to be reported in the newspapers. However, the 6 ‘Que [ses] ennemis d’aujourd’hui soient également animés de la même pensée’; Latour, La Papauté, pp. 184–90. 7 ‘Remplit les journaux et les conversations’; Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), I (1994), p. 617 (17 August 1917). 8 Pierre Renouvin, ‘Le gouvernement français devant l’offre de paix du Saint-Siège’, in Religion et politique, les deux guerres mondiales, histoire de Lyon et du Sud-Est: mélanges offerts à M. le doyen André Latreille, ed. by Marcel Pacaut (Lyon: Audin, 1972), pp. 287–302. 9 ‘On peut plus que jamais soutenir la nécessité d’un ambassadeur’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, pp. 617–18 (17–18 August 1917). 10 Cited in ‘Le Saint-Siège et la paix’, Le Temps, 17 August 1917. See also Yves Chiron, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014), p. 221. 11 Chiron, Benoît XV, p. 219.

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Entente press was not unanimous in its condemnation of the pontifical text, and some newspapers, for example the Westminster Gazette, were open to a possible discussion. In France, some pacifist socialists, despite their anti-clerical tradition, approved of the Pope’s gesture. In the Central Powers, opinions seemed a little more measured. However, in Germany,12 the strong reaction of some Protestants aroused the fear of a return of the Kulturkampf among some Catholics. The Note was also seen to be biased. The Kreuzzeitung wrote that it ‘breathed the spirit of the Entente’ and that ‘the Holy See no longer believes in the victory of the Central Powers’.13 The Austrians, at first sight, seemed rather in favour of the text, but the criticism of the liberals in regard to territorial provisions shifted public opinion towards a greater reserve.14 The virulence of public opinion was equal to its disappointment. The Pope was held to be, in effect, ‘the only guarantor of truth’15 in the world at war. Thus, his spiritual and moral influence made all the peoples involved expect him to recognize their cause. 1.3.

A Failure with Catholics

The failure was also that of the Pope’s message to Catholics themselves. In France, where the Gallican tradition was still present, the reactions were among the most virulent. Baudrillart was an informed witness to this. On 17 August, he wrote: The Pope’s Note […] is very unwelcome, and it may have no other result in our country than to silence the peaceful desires that were manifesting themselves. One does not dare attack the socialists; one does dare attack the Pope. At the funeral of [the Bishop of Digne], the bishops and priests present were unanimous in their censure of it. What is most striking […] is that the Pope did not consider matters from the moral perspective. It is always the Secretary of the Embassy talking. And yet the Pope could not have written this without having the support of some of the powers. And can he not say that, after all, in the present, it is the Germans he is asking for sacrifices […]. We believe the Pope is mistaken, and he believes we are deluding ourselves. And this is what explains this phrase that shocks us so deeply, ‘useless slaughter’, when we are aware that we are fighting for a great cause: that of our freedom, of our independence in the future, from the ruin of militarism and German imperialism.16 12 Victor Conzemius, ‘L’offre de médiation de Benoît XV du 1er août 1917: essai d’un bilan provisoire’, in Religion et politique, ed. by Pacaut, pp. 303–26. 13 Cited in Jacques Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 1990), pp. 202–03. 14 Latour, La Papauté, p. 197. 15 Annette Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914–1918: populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Noêsis, 1998), p. 166. 16 ‘La note du pape […] est très mal accueillie, et il se peut qu’elle n’ait d’autre résultat chez nous que de faire taire les velléités pacifiques qui se manifestaient. On n’osait pas s’en prendre aux socialistes; on osera s’en prendre au pape. Aux obsèques de [l’évêque de Digne], évêques et prêtres présents étaient

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The famous Catholic pamphleteer Léon Bloy also inveighed against the pontifical text in an article of September 1917 entitled ‘Pilate XV: où sont les clés?’; the text, however, remained unpublished for a long time: Really, it is too much! This chalice is not possible […]! And yet this supreme misfortune has been announced by the Pope himself […]. One then wonders whether the Holy Spirit is still with the Church […]. If there is no longer a pope, where are the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven now?17 The discourse on La paix française by the Dominican Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, held on 10 December 1917 at the church of La Madeleine in Paris, is better known: ‘Most Holy Father, we cannot, for the moment, accept your calls for peace […]. We are sons who sometimes say: no, no, like the apparent rebel in the Gospel’ (‘Très Saint-Père, nous ne pouvons pas, pour l’instant, retenir vos appels de paix […]. Nous sommes des fils qui disent parfois: non, non, comme le rebelle apparent de l’Évangile’). This was part of a series of lectures that Sertillanges had been holding since the beginning of the war. It had received the prior authorization of Cardinal Amette, under whose responsibility this event was held in order to promote a war loan. Baudrillart, Rector of the Institute Catholique de Paris where the Dominican taught, praised his way of discussing ‘the Pope’s Note with great boldness’.18 The Holy See, which at first wanted to dismiss Sertillanges, finally decided not to sanction him in order not to block the process of a possible resumption of diplomatic relations with France, as the Archbishop of Paris explained to him, and for fear of internal opposition on the part of the French bishops.19 Some of them indeed clearly opposed the pontifical text. According to Baudrillart, Cardinal Amette, ‘judges it […] severely […] and declares the conditions that it puts forward unacceptable. But above all, he cannot admit at the same time that the Pope should not make pronouncements on the responsibilities of the war’. The Archbishop did not publish the Note in the Semaine religieuse of the diocese on the grounds that ‘its diplomatic

unanimes dans le blâme. Ce qui frappe surtout […], c’est que le pape ne se soit pas placé au point de vue moral. C’est toujours le secrétaire d’ambassade qui parle. Et pourtant le pape n’a pas dû écrire cela sans avoir quelques puissances derrière lui. Et ne peut-il se dire qu’après tout, dans le présent, c’est aux Allemands qu’il demande des sacrifices […]. Nous croyons le pape dans l’illusion et lui croit que nous nous faisons des illusions. Et c’est ce qui explique ce mot qui nous choque si profondément “massacre inutile”, alors que nous avons conscience de nous battre pour une grande cause: celle de notre liberté, de notre indépendance à venir, par la ruine du militarisme et de l’impérialisme allemand’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, pp. 617–18 (17 August 1917). 17 ‘Vraiment, c’est trop! Ce calice n’est pas possible […]! Et cependant ce malheur suprême est notifié par le Pape lui-même […]. On se demande alors si l’Esprit-Saint est encore avec l’Église […]. S’il n’y a plus de pape, où sont maintenant les clefs du Royaume des cieux?’; Léon Bloy, ‘Pilate XV: où sont les clés?’, in Léon Bloy, ed. by Michel Arvellier and Pierre Glaudes (Paris: L’Herne, 1988), pp. 279–80. 18 ‘Avec beaucoup de hardiesse la note du pape’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 702 (10 December 1917). 19 Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Le chauvinisme épiscopal: les cardinaux de Pise et de Paris entre catholicisme et religion de la patrie’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 17–29 (p. 24).

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nature does not make it appropriate’ for it to be included.20 Cardinal Cabrières (Montpellier) declared for his part: Even among us, among the submissive and grateful sons of the supreme pontiff, it seemed impossible to accept, in its sense and with its current significance, such a paternal exhortation in harmony with the character and mission of the Head of the Church.21 However, the hostility of Catholics towards the Note must be qualified, even if those who accepted it completely were rare. The attachment to the Pope, in the Ultramontane tradition, had not disappeared despite the war. Divided between fidelity to the Pope and attachment to their country, anxious not to compromise the Church of France by political controversies when the union sacrée had eased tensions with the state, there were differences in the bishops’ reactions, as Pierre Renouvin has shown, noting five types of attitudes evidenced in their Semaines religieuses. These are: a ‘rejection’ of the Note; an ‘evasion’, shifting the responsibility for the rejection of the Note onto the government; a ‘reluctant deference’, justifying the intervention of the Pope but leaving the response open; a ‘free interpretation’, which consisted in presenting the Note as being in favour of French interests, even at the cost of distorting the meaning of the text; and finally ‘approval’, which was the position of only a minority of diocesan bulletins.22 The attitude of Italian bishops, who had been reserved with regard to Italy’s entry into war in 1915, was broadly in line with that of their French colleagues.

2. The Causes of a Failure There are several interwoven causes of the failure of the Note: some are due to national characteristics, others are transversal and some depend on the position of the Holy See. A brief typology of these reasons can distinguish the form, content and context of the Note. 2.1.

The Formal Ambiguities of the Note

The form of the document has been the source of confusion that may have contributed to its poor reception. (1) The language used: as Philippe Levillain has shown, the Note could be read ‘from two angles, normative and political’. However, ‘seen from Rome’s perspective, the

20 ‘Juge […] sévèrement […] et déclare inacceptables les conditions qu’il met en avant. Mais surtout, il ne peut admettre lui non plus que le pape ne se prononce pas sur les responsabilités de la guerre’; ‘sa nature diplomatique la rend inapte’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 622 (27 August 1917). 21 ‘Même chez nous, chez les fils soumis et reconnaissants du souverain pontife, il a paru impossible d’accueillir, dans son sens et avec sa portée actuelle, une exhortation si paternelle et si bien en harmonie avec le caractère et la mission du chef de l’Église’; Fontana, Les catholiques, p. 201. 22 Pierre Renouvin, ‘L’épiscopat français devant l’offre de paix du Saint-Siège (août 1917)’, in Mélanges offerts à G. Jacquemyns (Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1968), pp. 551–60.

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normative language is also political’, but ‘received outside Rome, it is taken as the language of the Church’.23 This confusion between two registers is thus thought to have distorted the interpretation and perception of the text. The most virulent critics, moreover, focussed more on the concrete, political points highlighted in the exhortation than on the more normative aspects of the preamble, which evoked moral principles. (2) The nature of the text: the document was at times presented by contemporaries as a ‘note’ or a ‘letter’, while the heading of the official text published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis calls it an ‘exhortation’.24 However, it does not meet the usual canonical norms for this type of document, which does not constitute an ‘apostolic exhortation’. This uncertainty testifies to the original nature of the text, which ‘remains unprecedented’ and which resembles, on the one hand, a political document in its concrete proposals in favour of peace and, on the other, a moral or even spiritual text in its recalling principles and its religious invocations in the preamble and conclusion. In fact, it is a kind of ‘open letter’ to rulers on the subject of temporal questions that did not concern ‘the spiritual magisterium of the Pope directly’.25 The result is a formal ambiguity that may have blurred its reception. (3) The text leaves room for a margin of interpretation concerning the role that the Pope was prepared to assume. Benedict XV did not place himself as an arbiter: he did not seek ‘to settle the question of law’26 and he had not previously entered into contact with the different governments — except that of Germany — to propose his arbitration. It is not even a question of ‘good offices’, since the papacy did not intervene in the conflict that divided the two camps, nor was it solicited by either side to solve it. Is it a question of ‘mediation’? The text proposes the bases for negotiations but does not mention any possible mediation by the Pope to carry them out. Even if it indirectly suggests it, the Pope was in any case in no position to propose it openly because, in the event of failure or rejection by one of the camps, it was the prestige, the authority, or even the ‘function of the Pope’, that would be questioned.27 2.2.

The Content of the Note

Basically, there are two main reasons why its addressees blocked or even rejected the Note: some are territorial, others are related to the general solution to the conflict.

23 ‘Sous deux angles, le normatif et le politique’; ‘vu de Rome, le normatif est aussi un langage politique’; ‘reçu hors de Rome, il passe pour un langage d’Église’; Philippe Levillain, ‘Le Saint-Siège et la Première Guerre mondiale’, in Les internationales et le problème de la guerre au XXe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome; Milan: Università di Milano, 1987), pp. 123–37 (p. 130). 24 Benedict XV, Dès le début, p. 417. This is also reflected today in the online version. 25 ‘Reste sans précédent’; ‘lettre ouverte’; ‘pas directement le magistère spirituel du pape’; Jean-Marc Ticchi, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1878–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002), p. 371. 26 ‘À trancher la question du droit’; Fontana, Les catholiques, p. 199. 27 Antoine Fleury, ‘Le Saint-Siège et les négociations de 1917’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 43, 170 (1993), pp. 17–29 (p. 26).

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The first one was probably the most important for most countries. Thus, the French deplored the fact that Alsace-Lorraine was not explicitly mentioned in the Note, nor did it recognize that it was theirs. The Pope had only asked that ‘the parties in conflict’ examine ‘the territorial questions’, such as those debated between Germany and France, ‘with conciliatory dispositions’. However, the French did not intend to give up Alsace-Lorraine, their primary war aim, nor even to discuss the subject. Thus, for Le Rappel, a radical socialist newspaper, it was not possible to ‘accept conciliation’. The Catholic press followed the same line. The nationalist L’Écho de Paris held that Alsace-Lorraine was ‘the touchstone’ of any future peace. The ‘solution’ conceived by the Pope was ‘indecisive and ambiguous’. La Croix pointed out that the return of lost provinces to France was similar to the ‘restitution of forcibily acquired property to its legitimate owner’.28 Even the Jesuit Yves de La Brière, who was in favour of the Note, showed his reserve, writing in Études that ‘perhaps some recriminations […] would have diminished […] if the formula concerning Alsace-Lorraine had been made a little less elliptical’.29 For its part, Italy stood firm on the question of Trentino and Istria, which were not mentioned by the Pope but constituted one of the points disputed with Austria. As for the borders of Eastern Europe, particularly those with Russia, these are not even indicated in the Note, which does not even designate ‘by name’ Serbia and Romania as territories that must ‘regain independence’.30 The fact of not mentioning or taking a position on certain territorial disputes certainly deprived the Vatican of potential support from the countries concerned. Moreover, the Note seemed to focus more on disputes involving countries with a large number of Catholics. The second series of problems regards reparations, which each party expected to be equal to the colossal losses and destruction they suffered from. However, on this subject, the Pope called for a ‘full and reciprocal condoning’ of the war damages. This meant that no power could seek damages from another. The first effect of this measure was to recognize no winner and no loser, since reparations are classically sought by the former from the latter. On the other hand, the French and the Belgians pointed out that most of the destruction and civilian casualties suffered in the war were inflicted on them while Germany suffered practically no damage. According to Archbishop Chollet of Cambrai, the population of his occupied diocese believed that ‘the Pope had exempted Germany from paying for its requisitions and the destruction that was effected freely and off the battlefield. This was not acceptable to the inhabitants

28 ‘Accepter de conciliation’; ‘la pierre de touche’; ‘solution’; ‘indécise et équivoque’; ‘restitution à son légitime propriétaire d’un bien acquis par la force’; Nicolas Thévenin, ‘La note de Benoît XV du 1er août 1917 et les réactions des catholiques français’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 103, 3–4 (1989), pp. 285–337 (pp. 306–10). 29 ‘Peut-être certaines récriminations […] auraient-elles diminué […] si la formule concernant l’Alsace-Lorraine aurait été rendue un peu moins elliptique’; Yves de La Brière, ‘L’offre de médiation diplomatique de Benoît XV’, Études, 62, 152 (1917), pp. 641–59, reprinted in Yves de La Brière, Les luttes présentes de l’Église, 6 vols (Paris: Beauchesne, 1913–24), IV: Janvier 1916–décembre 1917 (1919), p. 146. 30 La Brière, Les luttes présentes, IV, p. 147.

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of the countries invaded, whose wealth had been ruined by Germany’.31 Mutual condoning was therefore perceived as an injustice by the Entente countries, who felt that Rome did not recognize their suffering. They rejected the supposed equality between the various damages which needed reparation, overlooking the fact that the pontifical text stated that ‘in certain cases […] some particular reasons’ need to be weighed ‘with justice and equity’. Thus, the Holy See was aware of the problem. In a letter to Bishop of Valence, Emmanuel Martin de Gibergues, written to thank him for his support, Cardinal Gasparri stated that ‘the right to demand reparation for damages caused by malicious acts of military commanders’ may ‘be included in [this] exception’ for ‘particular reasons’. He also explained that ‘if there is a nation that is in favour of a special way in the pontifical letter, it is Belgium and France’.32 2.3.

A General Context not in Favour of the Holy See

The general context of the war but also the situation of the Holy See at the time of the publication of the Note contributed to its failure. (1) The logic of total war — or rather the ‘totalization’ of war —, aggravated by three years of conflict, led to a desire for total victory involving the complete defeat of the adversary, to whom no rights were recognized. The losses and sacrifices made from the beginning of the conflict could not remain in vain, either. That is why the expression condemning the ‘useless slaughter’, in particular, was misunderstood and badly received. The damages suffered demanded equivalent compensations, something a compromise peace would not permit. The Great War was characterized by a new form of conflict where each belligerent ‘had the feeling of risking its existence’ and where nationalisms triumphed.33 From this perspective, there was no room for accommodation and negotiation. To take up a stand without openly taking sides was perceived by one or the other side as necessarily favourable to its adversary. This was why the French and Allied press saw an Austro-German influence on the Note. The Pope’s proposals thus had little chance of being accepted, even by believers, who were first and foremost loyal to their country. (2) The Holy See’s isolation on the international scene did not make its diplomatic interests easier. It did not incorporate or associate itself with other contemporary

31 ‘Le pape dispensait l’Allemagne de payer ses réquisitions et destructions faites volontairement et en dehors du champ de bataille. Voilà ce que ne pouvaient admettre les habitants des pays envahis dont l’Allemagne avait ruiné tout l’avoir’; cited by Joseph Brugerette, Le prêtre français et la société contemporaine, 3 vols (Paris: Lethielleux, 1933–38), III: Sous le régime de la Séparation: la reconstitution catholique (1908–1936) (1938), pp. 542–43. 32 ‘Le droit d’exiger la réparation des dommages causés par la malveillance de commandants militaires’; ‘être comprise dans [cette] exception’; ‘raisons particulières’; ‘si dans la lettre pontificale il y a une nation favorisée d’une manière spéciale, c’est la Belgique et la France’; cited in ‘Mise au point par S. E. le card. Gasparri’, La Croix, 2 October 1917. 33 ‘A le sentiment de jouer son existence’; Jean-Jacques Becker, Le Pape et la Grande Guerre (Paris: Bayard, 2006), pp. 68–69.

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peace proposals, such as that of Wilson in December 1916, because it did not want to or could not.34 Admittedly, several points in the Note were inspired by, or convergent with, Wilson’s ideas, for example the freedom of the seas, but there was no effective rapprochement between the two. Moreover, according to a French diplomat in Rome — perhaps Charles Loiseau — ‘in the Vatican, Mr Wilson is considered a little like an old ally in pacifism, who deserved to be sued for his defection’.35 The lack of any territory of its own since the end of the Papal States deprived the Pope of a political reality on which to base his diplomatic influence. Furthermore, several belligerents, such as France and Italy, did not have any official representation at the Holy See, which did not facilitate its action. The papacy had difficulty making itself heard by secular or Protestant countries for which Catholicism was not ‘a trait of civilization’.36 Finally, the Pope had no material, political or symbolic means to bring pressure to bear on the addressees of his Note. He could only count on his moral authority.

3. An Immediate Failure, but Not a Long-Term One? To understand the true significance of the Note, we must view it in the long term while questioning its originality in the light of previous pontifical interventions. Certainly, in 1917, following the publication of the Pope’s text, it became clear that he had not achieved his objectives and that none of his proposals had been accepted. However, if we take a broader view, we realize that Benedict XV’s intervention also represents a turning point in the history of the papacy’s relationships with war and peace. 3.1.

An Intervention Marked by Continuity

This text followed several historical precedents, either distant or immediate. (1) It is first and foremost a result of the Pope’s previous interventions in favour of peace. As soon as he got to the throne of Peter in September 1914, Benedict XV spoke publicly on the subject and returned to it many times, as in 1915, when he condemned the ‘horrible butchery that dishonours Europe’, or in 1916, when he deplored ‘the suicide of civilized Europe’. This is one of his central, constant concerns, although it is not exclusive. With the Note, the intention remained to end the war that was tearing the world apart, even though the form had changed. Indeed, instead of remaining at the level of ‘general terms’ regarding peace, Benedict identified the points of conflict and made ‘more concrete and practical proposals’, such as disarmament or arbitration.

34 Fleury, ‘Le Saint-Siège’, p. 26. 35 ‘Au Vatican, on considère un peu M. Wilson comme un ancien allié en pacifisme, qui a mérité qu’on lui intentât un procès en défection’; CADN, Rome-Quirinal, 754, note ‘à propos d’un article de la Nuova Antologia: la note pontificale et Wilson’, 17 September 1917. 36 Levillain, ‘Le Saint-Siège’, p. 129.

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(2) The exhortation is part of the continuation of the work of mediation exercised by Leo XIII for the solution to inter-state conflicts, for instance that concerning the Caroline Islands between Germany and Spain in 1885 or the border dispute between Peru and Ecuador in 1893. His biographers have highlighted this Leonine heritage that Benedict preserved.37 The diplomatic formation and the first years of the future Pope in the Secretariat of State during the pontificate of Leo XIII certainly influenced his conceptions of world affairs in the long term. Although deprived of its territory since 1870, the Holy See strove to regain international influence by assuming a significant role in promoting peace-building. (3) Finally, in the very long term, Benedict XV also revived the medieval and modern tradition of a papacy seeking to impose its mediation, in particular by sending legates, in the conflicts that at the time mainly opposed Catholic sovereigns and powers. This was still the case in the sixteenth century, after an eclipse during the Renaissance.38 Even if Benedict XV did not offer his mediation in the strictest sense of the term, he expressed its spirit when he wrote that he wanted ‘to ask the governments of the belligerent peoples to come to an agreement’ on the points he put forward. 3.2.

A Solemn and Prophetic Text

The Note bears, at least in its long preamble, a solemn and serious character that contributed to its widespread, lasting resonance despite its immediate failure. Some powerful expressions attract attention, such as ‘useless slaughter’. Thus, the text does not leave the reader indifferent and it did not go unnoticed. Some historians even underline its prophetic tone, which is also reflected in other interventions by Benedict XV. Olivier Prat sees in him a ‘sign of prophetic contradiction’; for Jan De Volder, a century later, ‘the prophetic significance of his judgements on the war […] is universally recognized’.39 According to André Vauchez, ‘Benedict XV became a prophet of peace contrary to a Catholic mass conquered […] by aspirations of war and nationalism’. But this is not the sense in which Max Weber understood it: he opposed the prophet to the priest and to the Church. The prophetism that Benedict XV represents is defined more by its ‘disturbing and shocking dimension’.40 Vauchez explains that ‘in a Christian perspective’ the role of the prophet ‘is to reveal to people the meaning of the history of the world in order to enable them to find their place in

37 Ticchi, Aux frontières. 38 Alain Tallon, ‘Les missions de paix de la papauté au XVIe siècle’, in Guerres et paix en Europe centrale aux époques moderne et contemporaine: mélanges d’histoire des relations internationales offerts à Jean Bérenger, ed. by Daniel Tollet (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003), pp. 165–80. 39 Olivier Prat, ‘La position du Saint-Siège face au conflit du XXe siècle’, Résurrection, 102–03 (2002–03), pp. 41–72; Jan De Volder, Benoît XV et la Belgique durant la Grande Guerre (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1996), p. 253. 40 ‘Benoît XV se fait prophète de la paix contre une masse catholique acquise […] aux aspirations guerrières du nationalisme’; ‘dimension dérangeante, il secoue’; Jean-Dominique Durand, ‘Conclusion’, in L’intuition prophétique, enjeu pour aujourd’hui, ed. by André Vauchez (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 2011), pp. 177–186 (pp. 182, 184).

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God’s plan and to play the role that God expects of them’, to ‘bring out something new’, and to ‘try to thwart a threatening future’.41 The pontifical exhortation rightly calls on humanity to build peace for a better world. The prophet is ‘the one who speaks’, who writes and who testifies.42 From this point of view, the papacy wanted to confirm its Christian charity towards all the members of the belligerent countries. Its commitment in favour of peace requires human action for the benefit of prisoners, refugees and occupied populations suffering from the war. However, this does not mean that it was heard — which is often the characteristic of a prophet. However, its word, while fragile and barely audible, testified to a desire not to be stopped or trapped by the logic of war, which it sought to overcome, both in the immediacy of the conflict and also in the long term. 3.3.

A Magisterium with a More Marked Orientation towards Peace

Of all the interventions of Benedict XV, it is that of 1917 which is still remembered. By describing the war as a ‘useless slaughter’, the Pope affirmed its lack of moral legitimization, contrary to the ‘principle of presumption’ which traditionally left it up to civil authorities to define the legitimacy of the war themselves.43 In this way, he put forward a theology of peace, and no longer a theology of war. The appeal of Benedict XV for a ‘just and lasting peace’, based on ‘the moral force of law’, disarmament and ‘arbitration, with its high peace-making function’, also aimed to go beyond the Great War: it initiated a ‘new orientation’ of the papacy in international affairs. As early as 1917, La Brière was convinced that this was a ‘diplomatic event […] that would leave its mark on the history of the contemporary world’.44 From that point on, the defence of peace would be a major focus in the discourse of Benedict’s successors, for whom the Note represents a kind of model. Relying on the neutrality and impartiality of the Holy See, they exercise a moral magisterium that permits them ‘to leave behind intra-ecclesial concerns’.45 After his election, Pius XI explained that, ‘wishing to devote [his] efforts to the work of world peace, to which [his] predecessor dedicated himself’, he chose to call himself Pius because this is ‘a name of peace’.46 However, the twentieth-century popes rarely mention the Note, perhaps due to its failure. In 1957, L’Osservatore Romano simply alluded to it at the signing of the Treaty of Rome, forty years after the pontifical text, 41 ‘Dans une perspective chrétienne’; ‘est de révéler aux hommes le sens de l’histoire du monde afin de leur permettre de se situer dans le plan de Dieu et d’y jouer le rôle que ce dernier attend d’eux’; ‘faire advenir du nouveau’; ‘tenter de contrecarrer un avenir menaçant’; André Vauchez, ‘Introduction’, in Prophètes et prophétismes, ed. by André Vauchez (Paris: Seuil, 2012), pp. 9–19 (pp. 16–17). 42 Durand, ‘Conclusion’, p. 179. 43 Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra del Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), p. 46. 44 ‘Événement diplomatique […] qui marquera dans l’histoire du monde contemporain’; La Brière, ‘L’offre de médiation’, p. 122. 45 ‘Sortir [des] préoccupations intra-ecclésiales’; De Volder, Benoît XV, p. 254. 46 ‘Désireux de vouer [ses] efforts à l’œuvre de pacification mondiale, à laquelle s’est consacré [son] prédécesseur’; ‘un nom de paix’; cited in Nadine-Josette Chaline, Empêcher la guerre: le pacifisme du début du XIXe siècle à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Amiens: Encrage, 2015), p. 140.

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in presenting Pius XII in continuity with Benedict XV, among others.47 In 2002, John Paul II described Benedict as ‘the tireless herald of peace’.48 Benedict XVI, who chose his name in deference to his predecessor, presented him as a ‘courageous prophet of peace’, stressing the significance of the Note on the occasion of its ninetieth anniversary: [It] was not limited to condemning the war; it also pointed out in a juridical perspective the ways to build a just and lasting peace […] [It] was oriented to the future of Europe and the world. It complied with a project that was Christian in inspiration but could be shared by all since it was based on the rights of peoples. This was the same structure to which […] Paul VI and John Paul II adhered in their memorable Discourses to the United Nations Assembly, repeating on the Church’s behalf: ‘War never again!’.49 This means a continuity of spirit, of attitude, of a message about peace that contributed to the moral influence of the papacy on the international stage. The Note, with the hostile reactions it provoked, was undoubtedly also paradoxically one of the factors that led to the resumption of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See three years later. Paris was able to measure the disadvantages of not being represented in the Vatican while other influences were expressing themselves. At the beginning of the war, the French Embassy to Italy charged Charles Loiseau with informally following the affairs of the Church. In 1917, he summarized the Vatican proposals, recorded the reactions of the different government offices to the Note and reported on the Holy See’s disappointments.50 This was a sign of the interest of French diplomats in these subjects, even if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government did not express themselves publicly. In the end, the long memory of Catholicism, particularly in France, recalled above all Benedict XV’s pacifist commitment, without returning to past controversies. Like the excesses of the propaganda, the hostility towards the Pope was then largely forgotten.51 However, negative reactions, without doubt the minority, transmitted orally by families, continued to circulate among some for several decades.52 Catholic

47 Philippe Chenaux, Une Europe vaticane? Entre le Plan Marshall et les Traités de Rome (Brussels: Ciaco, 1990), p. 251. 48 John Paul II, General Audience, 20 November 2002 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 49 Benedict XVI, Angelus, 22 July 2007 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 50 CADN, Rome-Quirinal, 754. On 3 November 1917, the Office of Political and Commercial Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided on an ‘collective mailing’ of a four-page note of the Press Office of the Embassy of Rome, dated 31 October, exposing ‘the views of the Vatican on that which concerns peace’. 51 Annette Becker, ‘L’histoire religieuse de la guerre 1914–1918’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 86, 217 (2000), pp. 539–49 (p. 549). 52 In the Diocese of Belley, an elderly woman of the parish explained to her priest, at the moment of the election of Benedict XVI, that she did not like that name because her father had an aversion toward Benedict XV (oral testimony, 6 October 2016). In the 1960s, Benedict XV was not popular in the Christian democrat family of a journalist of Saint-Malo (oral testimony, 21 October 2016).

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publicists, however, conveyed a more positive image of the Pope in the interwar period. Canon Victor Lemaître, who published a biography of Benedict XV in 1931, described him as ‘a great artisan of peace’. Assumptionist Father Lucien Guissard, in a preface to a 1963 French edition of Pacem in terris, described Benedict XV as a ‘heroic Pope’, whose fidelity he praised ‘in the work of peace when he made his proposals, dreaming above all of the future, that is […] of international order’.53 The Catholic daily newspaper La Croix, in its 4 September 2014 issue, celebrated the centenary of the election of the ‘Pope of Peace’.

4. Conclusions At the end of the summer in 1917, one month after the Note had been received by the different belligerent countries, Benedict’s action appeared to have failed in its pacifist objective, whether among the heads of state or government, in public opinion or among Catholics themselves. Bitterness was real in the Vatican, while the peoples at war continued to condemn a text that they blamed for lacking a spirit of justice. Certainly, a few isolated voices interpreted, justified or, more rarely still, accepted the pontifical proposals. However, the Pope seemed to be ignored, marginalized and inaudible more than ever. Yet, through his prophetic tone, by his determination to put an end to the war and by his determination to promote a just and lasting peace, Benedict initiated a turning point for the Holy See that would last for a long time. With his Note, he inaugurated a new style that would make the papacy a central, universal figure of peace. Its immediate failure was therefore transcended by its long-term consequences.

Bibliography Becker, Annette, ‘L’histoire religieuse de la guerre 1914–1918’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 86, 217 (2000), pp. 539–49 Becker, Annette, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914–1918: populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Noêsis, 1998) Becker, Jean-Jacques, Le Pape et la Grande Guerre (Paris: Bayard, 2006) Bloy, Léon, ‘Pilate XV: où sont les clés?’, in Léon Bloy, ed. by Michel Arvellier and Pierre Glaudes (Paris: L’Herne, 1988), pp. 279–80 Brugerette, Joseph, Le prêtre français et la société contemporaine, 3 vols (Paris: Lethielleux, 1933–38), III: Sous le régime de la Séparation: la reconstitution catholique (1908–1936) (1938)

53 ‘Pape héroïque’; ‘à l’œuvre de paix quand il faisait ses propositions en songeant surtout à l’avenir, c’est-à-dire […] à l’ordre international’; Victor Lemaître, Un grand artisan de la paix: S. S. Benoît XV et la guerre (1914–1918) (Avignon: Aubanel, 1931); Lucien Guissard, ‘Introduction’, in John XXIII, La paix entre les nations, fondée sur la vérité, la justice, la charité, la liberté: encyclique du 11 avril 1963 (Paris: Centurion, 1963), p. 16.

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Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Le chauvinisme épiscopal: les cardinaux de Pise et de Paris entre catholicisme et religion de la patrie’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 17–29 Chaline, Nadine-Josette, Empêcher la guerre: le pacifisme du début du XIXe siècle à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Amiens: Encrage, 2015) Chenaux, Philippe, Une Europe vaticane? Entre le Plan Marshall et les Traités de Rome (Brussels: Ciaco, 1990) Chiron, Yves, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014) Christophe, Paul, ed., Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), I (1994) Conzemius, Victor, ‘L’offre de médiation de Benoît XV du 1er août 1917: essai d’un bilan provisoire’, in Religion et politique, les deux guerres mondiales, histoire de Lyon et du SudEst: mélanges offerts à M. le doyen André Latreille, ed. by Marcel Pacaut (Lyon: Audin, 1972), pp. 303–26 De Volder, Jan, Benoît XV et la Belgique durant la Grande Guerre (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1996) Durand, Jean-Dominique, ‘Conclusion’, in L’intuition prophétique, enjeu pour aujourd’hui, ed. by André Vauchez (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 2011), pp. 177–186 Fleury, Antoine, ‘Le Saint-Siège et les négociations de 1917’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 43, 170 (1993), pp. 17–29 Fontana, Jacques, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 1990) Guissard, Lucien, ‘Introduction’, in John XXIII, La paix entre les nations, fondée sur la vérité, la justice, la charité, la liberté: encyclique du 11 avril 1963 (Paris: Centurion, 1963) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) La Brière, Yves de, Les luttes présentes de l’Église, 6 vols (Paris: Beauchesne, 1913–24), IV: Janvier 1916–décembre 1917 (1919) La Brière, Yves de, ‘L’offre de médiation diplomatique de Benoît XV’, Études, 62, 152 (1917), pp. 641–59 Latour, Francis, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996) Lemaître, Victor, Un grand artisan de la paix: S. S. Benoît XV et la guerre (1914–1918) (Avignon: Aubanel, 1931) Levillain, Philippe, ‘Le Saint-Siège et la Première Guerre mondiale’, in Les internationales et le problème de la guerre au XXe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome; Milan: Università di Milano, 1987), pp. 123–37 Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra del Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Prat, Olivier, ‘La position du Saint-Siège face au conflit du XXe siècle’, Résurrection, 102–03 (2002–03), pp. 41–72 Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004)

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Renouvin, Pierre, ‘L’épiscopat français devant l’offre de paix du Saint-Siège (août 1917)’, in Mélanges offerts à G. Jacquemyns (Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1968), pp. 551–60 Renouvin, Pierre, ‘Le gouvernement français devant l’offre de paix du Saint-Siège’, in Religion et politique, les deux guerres mondiales, histoire de Lyon et du Sud-Est: mélanges offerts à M. le doyen André Latreille, ed. by Marcel Pacaut (Lyon: Audin, 1972), pp. 287–302 Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale : atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Tallon, Alain, ‘Les missions de paix de la papauté au XVIe siècle’, in Guerres et paix en Europe centrale aux époques moderne et contemporaine: mélanges d’histoire des relations internationales offerts à Jean Bérenger, ed. by Daniel Tollet (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003), pp. 165–80 Thévenin, Nicolas, ‘La note de Benoît XV du 1er août 1917 et les réactions des catholiques français’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 103, 3–4 (1989), pp. 285–337 Ticchi, Jean-Marc, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1878–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002) Vauchez, André, ‘Introduction’, in Prophètes et prophétismes, ed. by André Vauchez (Paris: Seuil, 2012), pp. 9–19

Part Two

Problems

The Missions

Vefie Poels and Hans de Valk

Cardinal Willem van Rossum, Benedict XV and the Centralization of the Pontifical Missionary Works in Rome (1918–22)

1. Introduction Benedict XV has often been called one of the great ‘missionary popes’ — and rightly so, thanks to the new direction and impetus he imparted to the Catholic missions after World War I. Nevertheless, Pope Benedict has more or less remained an ‘unknown pope’, as John F. Pollard calls him.1 From the historiographical point of view, his pontificate lies in the shadows cast by his predecessor Pius X and his successor Pius XI. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to his main assistant in the missionary field, the Dutch Cardinal Willem van Rossum, Prefect of Propaganda Fide from 1918 and a major architect of Benedict’s new missionary policy. In his turn, however, van Rossum also lived in the shadow cast by the ‘unknown’ Pope and, being a ‘foreigner’, it was his fate to remain even deeper in the background.2 Obviously, when dealing with the Roman curia, it is never easy to determine the relative impact of single officials on the policy of a pontificate. Nevertheless, the analysis of the documents held in the Vatican archives and elsewhere seems to point to a far more important role for Cardinal van Rossum than the one with which he has hitherto been attributed, not only in implementing the Pope’s policy, but in shaping it as well. Some years ago, this was already suggested by the French historian Claude Prudhomme.3 The case





1 John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999); for a succinct examination of the Pope’s missionary policy, see pp. 201–04. 2 Vefie Poels and Hans de Valk, ‘A Stranger in the Sacred College of Cardinals: Contextual and Heuristic Problems in Investigating Cardinal van Rossum’, in Cardinaux et cardinalat: une élite à l’épreuve de la modernité, 1775–1978, ed. by François Jankowiak and Laura Pettinaroli, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines, 128, 1 (2016) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 3 Claude Prudhomme, ‘Le cardinal Van Rossum et la politique missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Benoît XV et Pie XI (1918–1932)’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 123–41.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 575–589 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118792

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of the centralization of the Pontifical Missionary Works in Rome in about 1920, and more specifically the transfer of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, is a fitting example of this. One of his most vocal opponents, the American prelate Mgr Francis C. Kelley, openly stated in his memoirs that ‘it is chiefly to Cardinal van Rossum that the credit should go for the most enlightened and progressive step made in centuries for the advancement of the Catholic missions of the world’.4 An introduction, therefore, to this relatively unknown Dutch Cardinal is in order since his background in many ways influenced his ideas about the Catholic missions.

2. A Short Biography of Willem van Rossum Willem van Rossum5 was born in the northern, mainly Protestant region of the Netherlands into a lower middle-class family. At the age of nine, both his parents had died, and he was placed in an orphanage in his native city of Zwolle. Having successfully attended the Culemborg minor seminary of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, run by the Jesuits, in 1873, he professed his vocation for the regular clergy and applied for the noviciate of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, commonly known as the Redemptorists. Here, he was trained in the theology of St Alphonsus and later developed into a leading expert in this field. For ten years, from 1883 until 1893, he taught dogmatic theology, published several treatises and came to be known as a very critical, orthodox guardian of the faith and of the congregational rule. In the Redemptorist Dutch province, he made a career for himself. From 1893, he acted as Rector of the Dutch province’s major seminary in Wittem. In 1895, the Superior General called him to Rome, with a view to the establishment of a theological schola major. Although this institution was not yet functioning at the time, van Rossum stayed in Rome at the service of the Generalate. It so happened that the Holy Office was looking for an expert in Alphonsian teachings, and he was already appointed a consultor in 1896.6



4 Francis C. Kelley, The Bishop Jots It Down: An Autobiographical Strain on Memories (New York: Harper, 1939), p. 218. 5 Two rather hagiographic biographies have been published in Dutch: one by his former Secretary Josephus Maria Drehmanns, Kardinaal van Rossum: korte levensschets (Roermond: Romen, 1935), and a short one by the Dutch bishop and Canon of St Peter’s Basilica, Jan Olav Smit, Willem Marinus kardinaal van Rossum: een groot mens en wijs bestuurder (Roermond: Romen, 1955). Josef Metzler, ‘Präfekten und Sekretäre der Kongregation’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum 1622–1972, ed. by Josef Metzler, 3 vols (Rome: Herder, 1971–76), III/2 (1976), pp. 313–15. More recent contributions to his biography include Joop Vernooij, ‘Cardinal Willem van Rossum, “the Great Cardinal of the Small Netherlands” (1854–1932)’, Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 55 (2007), pp. 347–400, and Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), containing 13 papers. If not otherwise specified, biographical details in this chapter are taken from these sources. 6 Giuseppe Orlandi, ‘S. Alfonso negli archivi Romani del Sant’Officio: dottrine spirituali del Santo Dottore e di Pier Matteo Petrucci a confronto, in due voti del futuro cardinale W. M. van Rossum’, Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 47 (1999), pp. 205–38. For van Rossum’s activities in the Holy Office and the Index Congregation as consultor and member, see Otto Weiss,

THE C ENTR ALI Z AT ION OF T HE PON T IFI C AL M ISSIONA RY WORKS IN ROME

Van Rossum held strong views on modernism and in 1901 was the first to denounce the French exegete Alfred Loisy for his heretical teachings. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the pontificate of Pius X (1903–14), a kindred spirit, suited him well. To defend the true faith, any eventual error had to be fought. The Dutch consultor proved to be an excellent worker in this field, always ready to point a warning finger. He assisted in drawing up a list of 96 errors that became the basis of the anti-modernist decree Lamentabili (1907). Together with the French Jesuit Louis Billot, he formulated the anti-modernist oath, to be sworn by every priest from 1910.7 In the meantime, as an assistant to Mgr Pietro Gasparri, he collaborated in codifying the canon law.8 In these years, a cordial relationship developed between Pius X and van Rossum. In 1909, the Pope put him forward as the new Superior General of the Redemptorists but did not succeed in having him elected.9 He then created him a cardinal in November 1911, the first Dutchman to hold this rank since the sixteenth century. Initially, as a junior cardinal, he had a smooth curial career. In 1912, he was the papal legate to the International Eucharistic Congress in Vienna.10 In the following year, he was appointed a member of the Holy Office and a member, soon thereafter President, of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. He was close to the influential group of the cardinals Merry del Val, De Lai and Pompilj, known for their severe integralism and orthodoxy. However, he kept his distance from Umberto Benigni’s famous Sodalitium Pianum as he did not like its methods of spying, suspicion and slander. Under Pope Benedict XV, van Rossum’s career initially seemed to come to a standstill since in 1915 he was appointed major penitentiary, head of one of the tribunals of the curia.11 This was an honourable position indeed, yet one with little influence. It came as a surprise, therefore, when in March 1918, while World War I was still raging, the Dutch Cardinal was promoted to one of the highest-ranking positions within the Roman curia and made Prefect of Propaganda Fide. We may suppose that his appointment as the new ‘Red Pope’ was — at least partly — related to his nationality: he was one of the few curia cardinals originating from a non-belligerent country. During the war, the Netherlands had supported Benedict XV in his pursuit of peace and, moreover, the country had maintained its neutrality. In this way, by appointing van Rossum, many political problems could be avoided. Furthermore, for six years van Rossum had already shown his qualities as a cardinal-member of Propaganda Fide and other congregations, and he was known to be a capable administrator. To



7 8



9

10 11

‘Glaubenswächter van Rossum’, in Life with a Mission, ed. by Poels, Salemink and de Valk, pp. 67–82; a more elaborate version is in Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 58 (2010), pp. 85–138. Claus Arnold, Kleine Geschichte des Modernismus (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2007), pp. 96–98, 120–22. Anna Luisa Casiraghi, ‘The Proceedings of the Codification of Canon Law and the Contribution of Willem van Rossum’, in Life with a Mission, ed. by Poels, Salemink and de Valk, pp. 83–96. Vefie Poels, ‘The One and Only Candidate: Willem van Rossum at the 1909 Redemptorist General Chapter’, Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 62 (2014), pp. 421–38. Marcel Chappin, ‘Cardinal van Rossum and the International Eucharistic Congresses’, in Life with a Mission, ed. by Poels, Salemink and de Valk, pp. 97–107. Johan Ickx, ‘Cardinal Willem van Rossum as Penitenziere Maggiore (1915–1918)’, in Life with a Mission, ed. by Poels, Salemink and de Valk, pp. 109–22.

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underline the importance of his new function, Pope Benedict himself ordained him bishop in the Sistine Chapel, on Whit Sunday (19 May) 1918.12

3. The Policy of Willem van Rossum as Prefect of Propaganda Fide As Prefect of Propaganda Fide, van Rossum based his policy on the traditional and hierarchical view of the universal church that was dear to him, with Rome as the centre of the world and the pope as its undisputed leader. With remarkable energy, he set himself to his new task, having as his objective the conversion of millions of people. He reorganized the Congregation’s offices to increase their efficiency and sought new, reliable and keen cooperators, amongst them Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII. Within a few months, he established a strategy to change Propaganda Fide from a dicastery with primarily executive tasks into a policy-making instrument. We may safely assume that van Rossum took an active part in drafting the apostolic letter Maximum illud (30 November 1919), the programmatic document of such importance that it has been called the Magna Carta of missions. On several occasions, it has been claimed that he was its auctor intellectualis.13 A primary goal in the Cardinal’s and the Pope’s policy, as expressed in Maximum illud, was to overcome the problems caused by imperialist, nationalist and colonial dynamics that in some aspects had grown into key elements in missionary activity. On the contrary, the universal and supranational character of the Church was to be emphasized. This was all the more necessary with a view to the future political emancipation of many of the missionary territories. In 1920, van Rossum ordered all missionaries to remain aloof from politics.14 He stimulated the training and ordination of indigenous clerics, the incorporation of indigenous sisters into female congregations and the election of non-Western bishops; the first six of these, Chinese, would be ordained in 1926. Moreover, he felt that an active, expansive missionary policy could only be founded on a modern, well-organized and streamlined infrastructure of fundraising and publicity. In his view, this would only succeed if Rome, and Rome alone, took charge. Therefore, the existing general missionary works — whose importance was expressly stressed in Maximum illud — should be revived, transferred to Rome and closely controlled by Propaganda Fide. These works were, in particular, three fundraising organizations: the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (generally known by its original French name as the Œuvre

12 ACPF, Carte van Rossum, scatola 4.H, Lettere private, 1911–19, Benedict XV to W. van Rossum, 18 May 1918. 13 In his biography, Jan Olav Smit states that the Cardinal personally drafted Maximum illud and the encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae (1926): Smit, Wilhelmus Marinus kardinaal van Rossum, p. 25; see also Celso Costantini, Ultime foglie: ricordi e pensieri (Rome: Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1953), pp. 417–18. 14 ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 649, ff. 375–76, circular instruction of Propaganda Fide, 6 January 1920: a true missionary has no country, any nationalist or political activity is against his vocation. See also van Rossum’s undated note on the same subject in ACPF, Carte van Rossum, scatola 2.

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de la Propagation de la Foi), the Society of the Holy Childhood (Association de la Sainte-Enfance), and the Society of St Peter the Apostle (Œuvre de St Pierre Apôtre) for the training of indigenous clergy. The three missionary works had their roots in France. Together with these societies that had a practical aim, a worldwide association of priests was to take the lead in spreading the new missionary ideas.

4. The Centralization of the Pontifical Missionary Works 4.1.

The Missionary Union of Priests

The first step to be taken was the establishment of one internationally accepted missionary association of priests, with the task of encouraging the missionary action carried out by the fundraising organizations, under the leadership of the clergy rather than laymen. Two weeks after his appointment as Prefect of Propaganda Fide, van Rossum already suggested to the Director of the Œuvre de Propagation de la Foi and the Society of the Holy Childhood in the Netherlands a close cooperation with the so-called Lega Apostolica.15 This Dutch branch of the Italian Lega, established by the Jesuits in 1915–16, would be helpful in stimulating the clergy to support the missionary works. In 1916, however, the Italian priest Paolo Manna founded his Pia Unio Cleri Pro Missionibus (in Italian known as the Unione missionaria del clero), a similar organization. Both organizations had been approved by Benedict XV, but in July 1918 the Pope showed his preference for Manna’s organization, which, unlike the Lega, was under the direct control of Propaganda Fide.16 In August 1918, Guido Maria Conforti, Archbishop of Parma, was appointed as its first president and Manna as its general secretary. In November 1918, Benedict XV showered the Pia Unio Cleri with many spiritual privileges, as proposed and formulated by van Rossum.17 The Cardinal made his predilection for a centralized control very clear when, in January 1919, he obliged the Dutch branch of the Lega (which at the time had over 2300 members and thus outnumbered Manna’s organization in Italy) to become part of the Pia Unio Cleri Pro Missionibus.18

15 ‘Twee brieven van Z. Em. Kardinaal van Rossum’, Apostolische Priesterbond, 1 (1917–18), pp. 78–80. 16 See the important letter of Paolo Manna to van Rossum, 22 December 1918, ACPF, Carte van Rossum, scatola 1, fasc. 1918. 17 See KDC, Archive W. M. van Rossum, n. 82; Jan Olav Smit, ‘Annotationes: Conspectus historicus, Statuta Unionis Cleri pro Missionibus’, Periodica de re morali, canonica, liturgica, 27 (1938), pp. 56–69; Giovanni Zampetti, ‘Le opere pontificie missionarie’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, ed. by Metzler, III/2, pp. 413–49 (pp. 427–28); Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 11, 1 (1919), pp. 20–21. 18 Vefie Poels, ‘“Een jezuïetenstreek”: vrije concurrentie in de missie, 1916–1919’, in Vrienden met de Mammon: de levensbeschouwelijke dimensie in de economie, ed. by Paul van Geest and others (Almere: Parthenon, 2013), pp. 166–84.

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4.2.

The Society of St Peter the Apostle

The Society of St Peter the Apostle for the training of indigenous clergy had been founded in France in 1889.19 In 1904, it was transferred to Switzerland and left in the care of a congregation of religious sisters, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Freiburg. For several reasons, the Society’s activity gradually diminished during World War I. In May 1919, the French Monsignor, Roger de Teil, who was in charge of the Society of the Holy Childhood, obtained permission from Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri to include the Society of St Peter the Apostle in his own tasks. Immediately after the publication of Gasparri’s letter on the matter,20 van Rossum protested to Benedict XV in an audience (19 June 1919). In his view, the Society of St Peter the Apostle belonged to Propaganda Fide, as established by the Franciscan sisters in 1917.21 The Pope agreed with van Rossum, and Gasparri’s decision was reversed. To assure a better control on the part of Propaganda Fide, the Prefect now drafted new rules and statutes for the Society of St Peter the Apostle, which were then approved by the General Board of Propaganda Fide and confirmed by Benedict XV in April 1920. One month later, the Pope also endorsed its status as an opera pontificia, and the headquarters were established in the Propaganda Fide palace in Rome.22 In June 1920, van Rossum appointed the board: the president ex officio was the Secretary of the Propaganda Fide, and the French curia prelate, Jules Tiberghien, was secretary. The most important task, that of treasurer, was assigned to the Cardinal’s Private Secretary and confidant, the energetic but rather unruly Dutch Redemptorist Joseph Drehmanns, who thanks to his headstrong and ambitious character soon became the organization’s mainstay. His appointment lasted ten years until Pope Pius XI personally banished him from Rome, partly at least due to his financial mismanagement.23 4.3.

The Œuvre de Propagation de la Foi

Established in 1822 and based in France, the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi was administrated by two boards or conseils centraux, in Lyon and Paris, and was mainly run by laymen. Every year, they distributed the funds collected in Europe and in the United States to the worldwide missions. Previously, the Œuvre had offered sound support to the missions, but its income had decreased dramatically due to World War I and the accompanying nationalist and anti-French feelings. Moreover,

19 Zampetti, ‘Le opere pontificie’, pp. 425–27. 20 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 11, 7 (1919), p. 250. 21 See van Rossum’s note ‘Opera di San Pietro’ for the papal audience of 19 June 1919, ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 732, ff. 2–3. In 1916, the congregation of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMM) had been placed directly under the authority of Propaganda Fide. 22 See ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 732, ff. 4–54, esp. ‘Statuts de l’Œuvre de St Pierre pour le Clergé Indigène des Missions’, 25 January 1920 (ff. 4–7); Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 12, 6 (1920), p. 247. 23 See the letters of van Rossum to Drehmanns 1930–32 in KDC, Archive W. M. van Rossum, n. 338.

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according to rumour, the Protestant churches managed to collect much larger funds for their missionary activities.24 Improving this situation must have been one of van Rossum’s first priorities. Soon after his appointment as Prefect of Propaganda Fide, he drew up a plan to reorganize the Œuvre in order not only to increase its proceeds but also to ‘keep the hysteria of nationalism outside the missionary work’. To achieve these aims, the Œuvre was to be founded worldwide on a diocesan and national basis under the leadership of the clergy and seconded by the Unio Cleri. To accentuate its supranational and universal character, the headquarters should be moved to Rome, under the direct control of Propaganda Fide. All this, of course, had to wait for the end of the Great War. During an audience in January 1919, van Rossum shared his intentions with Pope Benedict XV, who (according to the Prefect’s notes) reacted enthusiastically.25 Consequently, the Cardinal started to implement his plans. The apostolic letter Maximum illud advocated universalism, centralization, independence for local churches in the mission areas if possible and the training of an indigenous clergy. Needless to say, these basic ambitions and aims of the new missionary policy in general clashed with both the interests of the colonial powers and the nationalist spirit of the age. Opposition to it became manifest as soon as the consequences of the new policy became apparent and practical details were elaborated. Between 1918 and 1922, the most serious problems arose in France and the US, and they were interconnected. In the latter case, the problems were caused by imposing the ‘French’ Propagation of the Faith on the American bishops, while the French protested against the transfer of ‘their’ organization to Rome. The problems with France have been described by Stefano Trinchese, but only from late 1921.26 According to the evidence provided by the archival documents that have recently been made accessible, one must conclude that in both cases Cardinal van Rossum had already taken the initiative in 1919. Because of the resistance arising from his initiatives, on several occasions he had to use the full weight of his rank and office to tip the scale in his favour and obtain Pope Benedict’s support. The Prefect’s strategy was well thought-out: to take over the lead from France and, at the same time, to prevent it slipping into the hands of the United States, as would almost certainly ensue from the growing affluence of American Catholicism. As mentioned above, this meant embedding control of all financial missionary activities on a general level in the centro della cattolicità, that is in Rome. It would turn out not to be an easy task because although the Dutch Cardinal may well have been a very

24 The previous history of the Propagation de la Foi and the background of the problems caused by the war are synthetically treated in the first part of his study by Stefano Trinchese, ‘L’accentramento a Roma dell’Opera della propagazione della fede: la missione Roncalli–Drehmanns nel 1921’, in Fede tradizione profezia: studi su Giovanni XXIII e sul Vaticano II, ed. by Giuseppe Alberigo (Brescia: Paideia, 1984), pp. 105–38. 25 ‘Propagazione della Fede: il lato finanziario’; notes by van Rossum for the papal audience on 16 January 1919. ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 731, ff. 13–14. 26 Trinchese, ‘L’accentramento a Roma’.

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competent manager, on the other hand, he was definitely lacking in certain other qualities. As Mgr Kelley correctly noted, his plans were generally excellent, but Italian tact, Italian caution, Italian tradition would have been helpful to him. Cardinal van Rossum was no diplomat. He was a good man but stubborn. He did not understand how anyone, anywhere, could see the smallest flaw in what he thought flawless.27 However, flexibility and adaptability were essential in this case because van Rossum’s plans met with resistance not only from the American bishops, the Œuvre and the French government but also within the Roman curia. From the perspective of Secretary of State Gasparri, it was important not to hurt French feelings more than necessary, while at the same time remaining on good terms with the American episcopate, the main financial supporters of the Holy See. Moreover, a full-blown struggle for power arose between Propaganda Fide and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, which had been detached from Propaganda Fide in 1917. It had important financial interests in the United States and did not want Propaganda Fide to gain the upper hand.

5. Transfer of the Œuvre from France to Rome Immediately after obtaining Pope Benedict’s approval of his plans, in January 1919, van Rossum set to work. It would, however, take more than two years for the French to yield. Van Rossum’s plans were resisted by the Œuvre mainly for reasons of national interest and pride; therefore, the central councils in Lyon and Paris were supported not only by the French Catholic hierarchy but also by the government. After World War I, the stakes for France were high, in both the control of missionary funds and French hegemony in the missionary field. In post-war Europe, however, the situation had changed. Not only Austria and Germany, who had lost the war, but also other countries, such as the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, were no longer willing to grant France its traditional leading role in missionary activities.28 In January 1919, Cardinal van Rossum entered into correspondence with the boards of the Œuvre, asking them to consider solutions to the ever-increasing financial problems, but without revealing as yet the ultimate implication of a transfer to Rome.29 The boards, however, sensed the danger and proposed a meeting in Rome, which took place in May 1919. Here, van Rossum disclosed his decisions. Georges Letourneau, a

27 Kelley, The Bishop Jots It Down, p. 218. 28 See ‘Propagazione della Fede: il lato finanziario’; notes by van Rossum for the papal audience on 16 January 1919. ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 731, ff. 13–14. 29 ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 731, ff. 15–16, 30 January 1919: W. van Rossum to Conseils Centraux. If not otherwise indicated, the archival documents cited below can be found in the file on the transfer of the Propagation of the Faith from France to Rome, 1918–22, in ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 731, ff. 1–416. Another important source is a note on the same subject in ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, scatola 386, written by the French priest Georges Letourneau, member of the Paris board, and sent to the papal Nuncio Bonaventura Cerretti on 27 November 1922.

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member of the board from Paris who was present at the meeting, noted: ‘He did not ask us for a reform; he suddenly asked us to move the headquarters of the Œuvre to Rome’; ‘the Cardinal was inflexible’ (‘il ne nous demanda pas de réforme; il nous demanda brusquement de transférer le siège de l’Œuvre à Rome’; ‘le cardinal fut inflexible’). On the occasion of their stay in Rome, the representatives of the Œuvre put their case to Pope Benedict. Transferring the Œuvre to Rome would arouse terrible reactions in France. According to Letourneau, the French representatives were successful. The Pope, he noted, ‘was influenced by the reasons given by Cardinal van Rossum, but he was benevolent’ (‘était influencé par les raisons du Cardinal van Rossum, mais il fut bienveillant’). He replied that the case required a profound study. In August of the same year, the boards submitted a memorandum to Benedict XV, protesting against what they called ‘a bitter humiliation’ (‘une humiliation amère’) for the Œuvre and France. Secretary of State Gasparri replied that the Pope had been struck by their arguments and promised that the headquarters of the work would remain in France. In October, Cardinal Louis-Joseph Maurin, Archbishop of Lyon, visited van Rossum to reiterate the Œuvre’s complaints and to warn him against the consequences of his plans: a slap in the face of France, from which her enemies would not hesitate to profit. Maurin foresaw several problems.30 Hence, as the result of lobbying by the members of the central councils amongst the cardinals of the Propaganda Fide, in January 1920 the General Congregation did indeed almost unanimously reject the proposal of the Prefect of Propaganda Fide to transfer the Œuvre to Rome. It was decided that the headquarters would stay in France; the councils in Lyon and Paris, however, should reserve more seats for the clergy and a greater number of foreign members should be appointed. Van Rossum was appalled by the decision of the General Congregation and for a moment considered handing in his resignation.31 By a fortunate coincidence, however, at that very moment the French were increasingly driven into a corner by the eventual consequences of the November 1919 American proposals (see below). If these were to be executed, a major financial source would run dry. This made it possible for the Prefect to play off the French against the Americans. During the year 1920, the boards of the Œuvre showed themselves increasingly willing to make concessions. The establishment of an independent Italian branch under Angelo Roncalli in March 192132 helped as much as the papal

30 It is interesting to note that a report of this conversation made by van Rossum (ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 731, ff. 9–10) and included in the file for a meeting of the General Congregation of Propaganda Fide was evidently reported to Maurin, who in a letter of 18 December 1919 to an unknown (Italian) cardinal stated that he had been misrepresented. The addressee noted on the letter that to him the transfer seemed to be the effect of a ‘fury of excessive centralization’ (‘furia di centralizzazione à outrance’); when even the works of charity were confiscated by the supreme Church authorities, ‘this leads to state socialism’ (‘andiamo così al socialismo di stato’). Strangely enough, Maurin’s letter can be found in the archives of Propaganda Fide (ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 731, ff. 262–63). 31 According to his Secretary: Drehmanns, Kardinaal van Rossum, pp. 96–97. 32 See the file ‘Sulla fondazione in Roma di un Consiglio centrale per l’Opera della Propagazione della Fede in Italia’, ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 681, ff. 565–606.

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decision — ‘secretely, without hearing us, without telling us’ (‘secrètement, sans nous entendre, sans nous avertir’), as Letourneau noted — that henceforth all nations would be free to send their contributions to France or directly to Rome. In fact, this was the final blow for the Œuvre: ‘He broke up our Œuvre. […] As a result of this act, the headquarters actually moved from France to Italy’ (‘Il brisait notre Œuvre. […] Par suite de cet acte, le Centre passait réellement de France en Italie’). In October 1921, the French finally succumbed. However, the letter in which, on 24 January 1922, they ‘spontaneously’ offered to transfer their headquarters to Rome, did not reach Pope Benedict, who had died unexpectedly at the same time. Pope Pius XI’s decree Romanorum Pontificum of 3 May 1922 promulgated the transfer of the Œuvre to Rome on the day of its centenary. The whole situation was so traumatic for the French that it seemed as if they had lost a part of their national identity. As a result, the transfer of the Society of the Holy Childhood — also an essentially French work — was delayed until 1929 (due to the strong protests of the French government, however, its headquarters were not moved to Rome).33

6. The American Board of Catholic Missions In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Catholicism in the United States had been steadily growing in wealth and political influence. Emancipated from their own mission status in 1908 through the apostolic constitution Sapienti consilio, American Catholics, led by Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, sought to play their own role in foreign missionary activities. The Œuvre de Propagation de la Foi had been present in the US since 1840, albeit only on a territorial level and without a local section in some of the important dioceses. An American missionary organization, the so-called Extension Society, established in 1905 by Francis Kelley, focussed as yet primarily on the home missions among black and indigenous people. However, in October 1918, Kelley sent a report to Pope Benedict XV presenting a survey of the activities of the Extension Society and announcing that he wanted to expand its activities both nationwide and abroad, particularly in the ‘colonies’ of the United States (i.e. the Philippines and Puerto Rico).34 Six months later, the Pope and Cardinal Gasparri reacted favourably to this idea. As a result, in July 1919, Kelley proposed the establishment of a single committee for all missionary activities to be controlled by the American episcopate. In the American proposal, the US branch of the Œuvre would be disbanded and incorporated into the American Board — the US was not ‘a French colony’ — and supervised by the episcopate, which adopted his proposal in September. Five bishops would administrate the American Board of Catholic

33 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, periodo IV, pos. 315, fasc. 74, f. 47, P. Gasparri to W. van Rossum, 17 December 1929. 34 AES, America, periodo III, pos. 258, fasc. 119, ff. 25–31: F. Kelley to Benedict XV, ‘Report of the Extension Society’, 24 October 1918, p. 8.

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Missions (ABCM), presided over by Archbishop Henry Moeller of Cincinnati and directed by Mgr Kelley. Erroneously convinced of Cardinal van Rossum’s approval, the bishops informed him of the intended establishment of the ABCM and its consequences and asked for papal approval. Almost at the same time, Maximum illud was published, where the Œuvre was indicated as the universal and central umbrella organization for the collection of funds. It is clear that the American proposal upset van Rossum’s plans, which was a serious problem since Propaganda Fide needed the Americans because they contributed increasingly to missionary funds. The basic motives of the US bishops to establish and defend the American Board, and those of Cardinal van Rossum to reject it, can be reconstructed in detail in the Vatican archives.35 For many reasons, the Prefect could in no way accept the American Board.36 If the Americans had their way, the missionary efforts would again become national, setting a dangerous precedent. It went against his centralized and hierarchical views on the government of the Church, and it offended his conception of missionary work as a universal task. The American project had definite nationalistic overtones, which made it incompatible with the Cardinal’s own ecclesiological views and the establishment of a supranational institution in Rome and controlled by Rome as a logical consequence of Maximum illud. The American bishops, however, refused to accept the Œuvre as a universal organization, not only because they felt that their own American methods of fundraising were much better than the French ones, but even more so because they considered the Propaganda Fide request to be an undesirable interference in their national and episcopal affairs. The conflict developed into a full-blown test of strength, in which van Rossum had to contend with both the Americans and internal opposition. After the first request in November 1919, from 1920 to 1922 the independent national missionary organization in spe was discussed no less than five times by the General Board of Propaganda Fide. The Prefect, needless to say, wanted to oblige the Americans to establish the Propagation in all dioceses. However, it was only in Cardinal William O’Connell, Archbishop of Boston and struggling for leadership within the episcopate himself,37 that van Rossum found a loyal supporter. On several occasions, aware that they had supporters within the curia, the American episcopate bluntly rejected the decisions of Propaganda Fide. The founders of the American board, led by Moeller and Kelley, were supported by their Roman friends

35 Primarily the file headed ‘Circa il progetto del cosiddetto American Board per le missioni’, 1919–22, ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 729, ff. 2–679. 36 For a more detailed overview of this conflict within the highest levels of the Catholic Church, see Vefie Poels, ‘Cardinal Van Rossum and the American Board of Catholic Missions (1919–1924)’, in A Realist’s Church: Essays in Honor of Joseph A. Komonchak, ed. by Christopher Denny, Patrick Hayes and Nicholas Rademacher (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), pp. 41–60. 37 James O’Toole, ‘The Name that Stood for Rome: William O’Connell and the Modern Episcopal Style’, in Patterns of Episcopal Leadership, ed. by Gerald P. Fogarty (New York: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 171–84.

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and allies in the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. Cardinal Niccolò Marini, Secretary of that congregation (the Pope was the nominal prefect at the time), without van Rossum’s knowledge, informed the ABCM in formation that his congregation and the Pope supported them. According to Benedict XV, the American episcopate was free to choose the best way to organize the missionary works in their country.38 Subsequently, in the US, the rumour was spread that ‘superior Vatican authorities’ had stated that the decisions of Propaganda Fide could be disregarded; hence the ABCM was officially established in December 1920. The founding of the Board came to mean the end of the Œuvre in the United States. As a consequence, Propaganda Fide was immediately showered with protests, particularly from France. In January 1921, van Rossum lodged a formal protest with Pope Benedict, in which he called the behaviour of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches a slap in the face of Propaganda Fide and a danger to the authority of the Holy See. He asked the Holy Father to state clearly that henceforth no one was allowed to interfere in Propaganda Fide’s affairs without consulting its prefect.39 It would, however, take another year and a half of great effort before, in the end, the prefect had his way, with the help of Cardinal O’Connell, who stated in February 1922, after he had visited van Rossum in Rome: Let us have less nationalism and petty politics and more real Catholicism in America and elsewhere. Let it be understood that the Congregation of Propaganda Fide is in reality the Roman authority in the work of the missionary field.40 In the autumn of 1922, American support for Moeller and Kelley began to flag. Pius XI’s decree Romanorum Pontificum and the subsequent transfer of the Œuvre to Rome had probably broken their resistance. In November 1922, the American bishops finally withdrew their project, abandoning the American Board that had once been so promising and installing the Œuvre in each and every American diocese.

7. Conclusions During the long pontificate of Leo XIII, the Catholic Church had presented itself as a universal and supranational moral force, while continually centralizing its authority. This policy was continued by van Rossum as Prefect of Propaganda Fide. In order to support the Cardinal’s missionary ambitions, it was crucial to organize the missions in a new way, that is to say, no longer linked to national and colonial interests but through a worldwide network based on the idea of the universal missionary task of the faithful, and strictly controlled from the very heart of Rome. Therefore, it was of paramount importance to organize the missions’ fundraising and publicity activities

38 ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 729, ff. 237–38, Congregation for the Oriental Churches to Henry Moeller, Archbishop of Cincinnati, 31 August 1920. 39 ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 729, ff. 133–35, Willem van Rossum to Benedict XV, 21 January 1921. 40 ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 729, ff. 607–10, William O’Connell to Willem van Rossum, 20 February 1922.

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on a supranational level, too. By establishing, on the one hand, the branches of the Pontifical Missionary Societies on a national and diocesan level, while, on the other hand, concentrating their central authority in Rome, Cardinal van Rossum not only managed to redress nationalistic influences on missionary activities but also introduced a healthy competitive spirit. These societies would indeed be rediscovered later by Vatican II as ‘the universal missionary work of the Church’.41 Stressing the universal character of the missions also put an end to the idea that missionary efforts were a continuing prerogative of the Western world. Van Rossum strove for indigenous churches, with local priests and bishops. At the same time, and certainly according to his wishes, the reforms he implemented in the end resulted in institutions in which the lay element was conspicuously missing. There can, however, be little doubt that if the French and the Americans had had their way, it would have been far more difficult for Propaganda Fide to convince the faithful worldwide to unite their missionary efforts.

Bibliography Arnold, Claus, Kleine Geschichte des Modernismus (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2007) Casiraghi, Anna Luisa, ‘The Proceedings of the Codification of Canon Law and the Contribution of Willem van Rossum’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 83–96 Chappin, Marcel, ‘Cardinal van Rossum and the International Eucharistic Congresses’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 97–107 Costantini, Celso, Ultime foglie: ricordi e pensieri (Rome: Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1953) Drehmanns, Josephus Maria, Kardinaal van Rossum: korte levensschets (Roermond: Romen, 1935) Ickx, Johan, ‘Cardinal Willem van Rossum as Penitenziere Maggiore (1915–1918)’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 109–22 Kelley, Francis C., The Bishop Jots It Down: An Autobiographical Strain on Memories (New York: Harper, 1939) Metzler, Josef, ‘Präfekten und Sekretäre der Kongregation’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum 1622–1972, ed. by Josef Metzler, 3 vols (Rome: Herder, 1971–76), III/2 (1976), pp. 313–15

41 Vatican II, Ad Gentes, 7 December 1965, § 20 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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O’Toole, James, ‘The Name that Stood for Rome: William O’Connell and the Modern Episcopal Style’, in Patterns of Episcopal Leadership, ed. by Gerald P. Fogarty (New York: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 171–84 Orlandi, Giuseppe, ‘S. Alfonso negli archivi Romani del Sant’Officio: dottrine spirituali del Santo Dottore e di Pier Matteo Petrucci a confronto, in due voti del futuro cardinale W. M. van Rossum’, Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 47 (1999), pp. 205–38 Poels, Vefie, ‘Cardinal Van Rossum and the American Board of Catholic Missions (1919–1924)’, in A Realist’s Church: Essays in Honor of Joseph A. Komonchak, ed. by Christopher Denny, Patrick Hayes and Nicholas Rademacher (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), pp. 41–60 Poels, Vefie, ‘“Een jezuïetenstreek”: vrije concurrentie in de missie, 1916–1919’, in Vrienden met de Mammon: de levensbeschouwelijke dimensie in de economie, ed. by Paul van Geest and others (Almere: Parthenon, 2013), pp. 166–84 Poels, Velfie, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk, eds, Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932) (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)) Poels, Vefie, ‘The One and Only Candidate: Willem van Rossum at the 1909 Redemptorist General Chapter’, Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 62 (2014), pp. 421–38 Poels, Vefie, and Hans de Valk, ‘A Stranger in the Sacred College of Cardinals: Contextual and Heuristic Problems in Investigating Cardinal van Rossum’, in Cardinaux et cardinalat: une élite à l’épreuve de la modernité, 1775–1978, ed. by François Jankowiak and Laura Pettinaroli, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines, 128, 1 (2016) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Prudhomme, Claude, ‘Le cardinal Van Rossum et la politique missionnaire du SaintSiège sous Benoît XV et Pie XI (1918–1932)’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 123–41 Smit, Jan Olav, ‘Annotationes: Conspectus historicus, Statuta Unionis Cleri pro Missionibus’, Periodica de re morali, canonica, liturgica, 27 (1938), pp. 56–69 Smit, Jan Olav, Willem Marinus kardinaal van Rossum: een groot mens en wijs bestuurder (Roermond: Romen, 1955) Trinchese, Stefano, ‘L’accentramento a Roma dell’Opera della propagazione della fede: la missione Roncalli–Drehmanns nel 1921’, in Fede tradizione profezia: studi su Giovanni XXIII e sul Vaticano II, ed. by Giuseppe Alberigo (Brescia: Paideia, 1984), pp. 105–38 Vernooij, Joop, ‘Cardinal Willem van Rossum, “the Great Cardinal of the Small Netherlands” (1854–1932)’, Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 55 (2007), pp. 347–400 Weiss, Otto, ‘Glaubenswächter van Rossum’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans

THE C ENTR ALI Z AT ION OF T HE PON T IFI C AL M ISSIONA RY WORKS IN ROME

de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 67–82 Weiss, Otto, ‘Glaubenswächter van Rossum’, Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris, 58 (2010), pp. 85–138 Zampetti, Giovanni, ‘Le opere pontificie missionarie’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum 1622–1972, ed. by Josef Metzler, 3 vols (Rome: Herder, 1971–76), III/2 (1976), pp. 413–49

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The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission to the French and German Offices for Missionary Work (1921)

1.

The Turning Point of the Maximum illud

During Benedict XV’s pontificate, as decreed in his apostolic letter Maximum illud,1 regional seminaries were also opened in missionary areas. In this way, mistrust of indigenous African and Asian elements began to be overcome, particularly regarding the Chinese, who had long been considered incapable of the slightest task that required more than mere support. A report by Father Gabet, a missionary in China, described the inhabitants of those regions as ‘lacking in intelligence and weak in character, incapable of conceiving of the greatness and dignity of the priesthood’. Added to this was the rigid territorial division of the missions between individual missionary institutions and those of religious orders that had been codified in the juridical system of the commissio since 1827, which prohibited indigenous clergy from the possibility, even hypothetically, of actively participating in the religious life of their assigned mission. A reversal of this tendency — indeed, already established by Pius X with Propaganda Fide’s specific focus on Africa and Asia — had actually already been preceded by Leo XIII in his apostolic letter Ad extremas of 1893 and, in a limited manner, at the local church level, by a few remarkable persons. Such was the case with Father Lebbe, a person capable of personally experiencing the risks of institutional isolation; in 1908, he had stated that it was necessary ‘to break with this past as soon as possible and to create Chinese Christians, along with an indigenous priesthood’. It was World War I, however, that made profound changes in the structure of the missionary organization. After the collapse that was caused, on the one hand, by tensions that were accentuated by the events of the war and, on the other, by the 1 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 2, 13 (1919), pp. 440–44 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also Tiziano Scalzotto, ‘L’encyclique Maximum illud et son importance historique’, Omnis Terra, 19 (1980), pp. 13–24.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 591–608 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118793

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stagnation in subsidies for missions during and immediately after the conflict, other far-reaching problems, with all their effects, could be seen looming on the horizon: first of all, a certain type of colonial model came to an end, and the urgent demand for funds from the missions, led by a France which no longer appeared capable of satisfying the needs of colonial territories, increased visibly in Africa and the Middle East after the disappearance of the German and Ottoman Empires. Furthermore, there was a complete lack of the basic possibility for any single nation to coordinate missionary efforts or to collect and channel funds once Germany had been defeated, along with the blatant lack of freedom for non-French missionaries, who in any case were subject to the jurisdiction of military commands. Finally, a pressing need was seen to create new local churches in the missions, centred around an indigenous clergy that could be offered with greater credence to the attention of the people and satisfy better the organizational demands of Roman centralization. Both these final reasons removed such churches from the complex and, by then, confused game of the various European centres of power, which had come out of the world conflict weakened, even if victorious. However, these underlying causes also have to take into consideration the highly determinant factor of the economic-political dominance that the United States had acquired on an international level as well as the decisive prevalence of the dollar over the franc, with the rapid decline of France’s pre-eminence on the world stage. This gave rise to a clear contradiction represented by the permanence of managerial missionary centres, besides the various works supporting missionary activities, held exclusively by France, to which the missionary world was not able, and no longer wanted, to consider the privileged centre for the collection or, above all, the destination — differentiated according to discretionary and often arbitrary criteria — of the funds reserved for Catholic missions. This provided the basis for an insistence on greater freedom, which the Holy See set out to establish for Catholic missions, removing them from the European colonial game and aiming instead at an effective realization of a proper autonomy for those same missionary communities. It is very clear that all this was more concretely motivated by the improved possibilities for control that Roman centralization guaranteed to the missions. With the aforementioned apostolic letter, Maximum illud, conceived during the Peace Conference, the de-Europeanization of the missions began. Among the document’s authors, if not its most immediate and direct inspirers, were unquestionably Archbishop Guido Conforti, founder of the Xaverian Missionary Fathers of Parma and an innovative bishop in the field of missions, along with the Dutch Redemptorist Cardinal Willem van Rossum,2 Prefect of Propaganda Fide. The period lasting from 1919 to 1921 marked a notably profounder evaluation of the missionary setup and of the criteria to be studied and tested for its restructuring, a solution to which was soon found in a rigid centralization.



2 On Cardinal van Rossum, see Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 1–2.

The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission

2. Placing Rome at the Core Van Rossum’s work, supported by Benedict XV’s open-mindedness, since he was also aware of the problems of the missionary world, focussed on a new way of making decisions, even if it was one taken for granted, which would suit the new reality immediately after the war: the centralization in Rome of the management of missionary works and the channelling of all missionary efforts into a single coordinating body under direct Roman control. Similarly, and again in 1921, an initial experiment of the Consiglio nazionale per l’Opera della propagazione della fede (National Council for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith) was launched in Italy. With this unexpected new approach, two needs were met: that of a centralized system contemporaneously achieving the concentration in Rome of all the hierarchical and administrative entities that had previously been located in the councils of Lyon and Paris in France, and that of delegating activities to individual peripheral national bodies, which in turn were divided up into the various dioceses and parishes, in order to respond to more modern, functional criteria for fundraising and extending missionary activity.3 Chosen to head the National Council for Italy, which took into consideration the legacy of previous similar experiences, was a priest of just under forty years of age from Bergamo, Angelo Roncalli, former Personal Secretary to Bishop Giacomo Maria Radini Tedeschi.4 After some initial perplexity and following the advice of Cardinal Andrea Ferrari, who by then was very elderly, Roncalli accepted the delicate task of organizing ex novo this pilot model within the project of a renewed management of activities supporting and encouraging Catholic missions. Roncalli thus came from a prolonged isolation, which had occurred to him after the death of Radini Tedeschi, who had been the vigorous interpreter of an intransigent attitude that was open to the most controversial social issues of his time. A student at the Bishop’s school, Roncalli had seized the opportunity to form his mindset within a cultural and spiritual climate of considerable commitment and openness, developing decisive experiences and personal contacts for the following stages in his ecclesiastical





3 Silvio Beltrami, L’Opera della Propagazione della Fede in Italia (Rome: Pontificia Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1961), pp. 67, 115, 163, 159; Silvio Beltrami, Prima semina: testimonianze missionarie nel primo decennio in Italia dell’Opera della propagazione della fede 1835–1845 (Rome: Pontificia Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1963); Candido Bona, La rinascita missionaria in Italia: dalle ‘Amicizie’ all’Opera per la Propagazione della Fede (Turin: Edizioni Missioni Consolata, 1964), p. 326. Regarding Conforti, see Unione missionaria del clero, ed. by Franco Teodori (Rome: Procura Generale Saveriana, 1978). On Father Manna, see Giuseppe Butturini, ‘Una nuova collocazione del problema missionario in un inedito del padre Manna (1872–1952)’, Humanitas, 32 (1977), pp. 822–42; Giuseppe Butturini, Le missioni cattoliche in Cina tra le due guerre mondiali: osservazioni sul metodo moderno di evangelizzazione di padre Paolo Manna (Bologna: Editrice Missionaria Italiana, 1998); Gian Battista Tragella, Un’anima di fuoco: Padre Paolo Manna (Naples: Pontificio Istituto Missioni Estere, 1954); Paul Catrice, Le Père Manna, fondateur de l’Union Missionnaire du Clergé (Paris: Lethielleux; Rome: Secrétariat International UMC, 1965). 4 For a biographical sketch, see Francesco Traniello, ‘Giovanni XXIII’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II, pp. 243–54.

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service. Under Radini Tedeschi’s successor in Bergamo, Bishop Luigi Marelli, Roncalli, demonstrating from that time a considerable willingness to adapt, had maintained total reserve for a long period that was interrupted by parenthesis of military service as a chaplain and medical services sergeant during the world war.5 After nine months in his new role as President of Italy’s Society for the Propagation of the Faith, Roncalli was commissioned, in December of 1921, to undertake an exploratory mission to the Society’s French and German offices. This ‘study visit’, as Roncalli called his journey in a detailed report from 14 February 1922, was a reflection of the Holy See’s attempt to transfer the Italian experiment onto an international level. This would thus create the immediate conditions for removing France from the managerial structures of the missions and works of assistance that were related to them along with providing a basis for restructuring the Society’s entire system.6 The principle guideline, to be implemented in 1922, was to work on establishing a new superior general council having its seat in Rome at Propaganda Fide but autonomous from, yet not independent of, it. The various national councils, together with the plethora of minor movements and local missionary cooperatives, the peripheral extensions of an entity that was strictly centralized in Rome, would be connected to that council. It was precisely the intention to carry out such a project, which had been elaborated for a long time during the period of convoluted colonial relations among the powers and hastened by jolts to the ancient colonial system determined by events connected to World War I, that motivated the mission entrusted to Roncalli, who represented the link connecting two distant, almost antithetical, models of managing activities that supported the missions. The verification of the intentions and moods of the central European offices, particularly of the delicate French situation, did not in itself suffice to dissuade the clear determination, rigidly assumed by the Vatican, to hasten the definitive transfer of power from Lyon to Rome. Little more than a month before Benedict XV’s death, the Vatican’s policy for centralization thus began to be implemented. Given the substantial resistance it would inevitably encounter, it was a laborious process that confirmed an attentiveness to intentions and procedural directives, which also revealed in other areas of application Della Chiesa’s operational vision and resoluteness, qualities he had developed in the climate of diplomacy in Rampolla’s time. The Pope’s death relegated to his successor, Pius XI, the task of developing a definitive implementation of the decision regarding the structure of the missionary





5 At the beginning of December 1920, Roncalli had received the first formal announcement of his call to Rome, which resolved the not minimal doubts concerning that position after interviews with persons of trust, including the one with Cardinal Ferrari, who at the time was close to death. Roncalli’s acceptance seemed inspired by an attitude of obedience, as was common in his choices, rather than by a genuine personal conviction. Officially invited to assume the new position on 14 January 1921, Roncalli was appointed President of the Italian National Council on 12 March 1921. 6 The lack of documentary material at this moment on Roncalli’s career does not make it possible to establish when he came to the decision of inspecting the Society’s French offices nor when — or why precisely — the task was entrusted to Roncalli and Drehmanns. The hypotheses advanced regarding Manna and van Rossum, also possibly connected, appear convincing.

The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission

world.7 Within the framework of restructuring the Society, the ‘study visit’ assumed a particular importance. An inspection of the French and German offices reflected the setting that had been definitively given to the problem, lending ample confirmation of the many perplexities previously raised concerning the proper conduct of the activities that supported the missions. At the time of the visit to the missionary centres in France and Germany in December 1921 — that is, on the immediate eve of the transference to Rome of the powers and competencies of the Lyon and Paris centres — the internal situation of the Society in Lyon, which until then had truly represented the fulcrum of the entire international apparatus of support for the missions, was still relatively solid and, above all, well-structured. Lyon’s central council was presided over by Mgr Emmanuel Béchetoille, who had held the office since 1920 and would remain in the management of the renewed Society until 1929 in the function of a privileged representative of France. The Honorary President of the Council itself was a layman, Henri Saint-Olive, and lay persons constituted most of the other members of the Council for a total of twelve people, who all remained in charge of the Society even after the Roman centralization of 1922. Both the Vice President, Charles Gindre — who had been a curator of the museum of the Society in Lyon until 1919 — and the Secretary General, Valerien Groffier, were laymen. The latter remained only as a consultant member of the Council but was its ‘true pivot upon whom’, according to Roncalli, ‘everything hinged’.8 The presence of so many lay persons in the Council’s prominent roles expressed the predominance of French financial and political circles to which most of the members of the Lyon Society belonged. Moreover, two special commissions were appointed, one for auditing its accounts and the other for editing its two official periodicals, Missions Catholiques and Les Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, while a lawyer organized meetings aimed at financing its various organizational activities. There were twenty-five employees, furthermore, who worked permanently under the direct management of the individual branches of the Lyon Council. This entire structure was modified in 1922, when it was still widely questioned how the new Italian headquarters — established in Rome the year before at the Propaganda Fide Collegio in Piazza di Spagna and entrusted to Roncalli — would relate to the French ones, which were still considered primary.9

7 On the missionary renewal and the new approach implemented by Pius XI, see the contributions by Christophe Dumont, ‘Pio XI e i cristiani separati’ and Sergio Pignedoli, ‘Pio XI e le missioni’, in Pio XI nel trentesimo della morte 1939–1969: raccolta di studi e memorie, ed. by Carlo Colombo and others (Milan: Opera diocesana per la preservazione e diffusione della fede, 1969), pp. 325–75 and pp. 295–324. Pignedoli makes significant mention of Roncalli’s close and friendly relationship with the Missionary Union (p. 372). 8 ‘Vero perno’; ‘che tutto sostiene’; ACPF, Consiglio Superiore Generale, Membri, fasc. A, s.n., Roncalli’s report, Relazione della visita di studio ai centri dell’Opera della Propagazione della Fede in Francia e in Germania, 14 February 1922, p. 3. Edward John Hickey, The Society for the Propagation of the Faith: Its Foundation, Organization and Success (1822–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1922), p. 102. 9 Hickey, The Society, p. 102.

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3. The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission The careful Roman inspection, the ‘römischer Besuch’, as it was registered in the records of the Missionary Work in Aachen, was carried out from 17 to 30 December 1921 at the Society’s French and German offices; it also including brief stops in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is possible to retrace the stages of this trip through the register of Masses, which has been reconstructed by Mgr Loris Capovilla.10 Roncalli left Genoa on 16 December together with the Dutch Redemptorist, Joseph M. Drehmanns, van Rossum’s Special Secretary at Propaganda Fide and participant in the mission as the Cardinal Prefect’s longa manus, an important interpreter of the Congregation’s true reformative directions as well as a skilled polyglot.11 The inspection was carried out for six days in France and, after brief stops in Brussels and Wittem, Holland, for four days in Germany. Having been able to retrace personally the steps of that 1921 inspection during a documentation trip, it is possible for me to refer more precisely to the particular context of the offices visited by Roncalli and Drehmanns and to place their mission within an integrated historical framework better. From this analysis new reasons have emerged for the perplexities nurtured in Rome regarding the Society’s functioning and other important details that would otherwise have been lost. In no way secondary, Drehmanns’s personality emerges from documents and testimonies relative to the 1921 mission that were collected in Amsterdam, and special attention must be paid to him. The positions he held, the difficulties and ruptures documented by his curriculum vitae, certain frictions with the Roman curia after van Rossum’s death and, finally, his own temperament, reconstructed through the memory of his confreres and fellow Dutchmen who were contacted in Amsterdam and Wittem, advise against a hasty consideration of his character. He was too lively and sanguine, besides too personally involved during the 1921 mission, to be considered simply Roncalli’s companion or interpreter. Among other things, Drehmanns continued to speak of Roncalli, in documents used here, as ‘my travel companion’ (‘mijn reisgenoot’). Working through his letters and some of his later memoirs — written in Dutch after Roncalli’s election to the papacy, therefore to be suspected of some lack of clarity, but almost entirely devoid of encomiums, hence always precise, and rich in the occasional entertaining detail — one can expand considerably on the essential chronological information that had hitherto been known about that journey, making a more complete understanding possible.12 According to Drehmanns’s testimony, the two men had met at Propaganda Fide sometime between the end of 1918 and early 1919. It was more likely, however, that they met in 1921, when Drehmanns was already working at Propaganda Fide for van 10 See Loris Francesco Capovilla, Giovanni XXIII: quindici letture (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970), pp. 5–11. 11 On Drehmanns, see Theo Berkhout, ‘In memoriam. Pater dr. Jos Drehmanns CssR, persoonlijke vriend van de Paus, secretaris van kardinaal Van Rossum’, De Tijd, 24 September 1959. 12 Joseph M. Drehmanns, ‘Herinneringen aan Mgr Roncalli’, Missie-actie, 53 (1959), pp. 70–73. Also, for further information from Drehmanns on the trip, see the preceding note.

The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission

Rossum and Roncalli had begun his new position with the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Drehmanns recalled that he frequently visited Roncalli’s office, even after the Roman centralization in the winter of 1921. Drehmanns had long discussed with Father Manna the dysfunctions of the missionary organization managed by the French centres, which languished, as Drehmanns wrote, in a state of decay. The sum of money collected there was barely enough to support the missionaries’ journeys to their assignments and, moreover, most of the funds were monopolized by France. Manna, together with Drehmanns, had long insisted on the desirability of transferring the missionary headquarters to Rome. It was a need that was shared entirely by van Rossum, even if Drehmanns claimed to have personally influenced the cardinal’s opinion decisively. When speaking to him, Drehmanns recalled having discussed the problem several times and, noticing van Rossum’s lively interest, had explained to him the original idea for centralization in Rome, succeeding in ‘convincing the Cardinal that the transfer was strictly necessary’. In point of fact, Drehmanns’s statement appears to be somewhat exaggerated, even if it is true that his interest in missionary activities at Propaganda Fide dated back to a few years earlier and that he had been in long standing contact with Father Fréri, one of the representatives of the most innovative current in the debate on the reform of the missionary system. An epistolary exchange between him and Fréri was found among Drehmanns’s papers in Amsterdam, among which there is also an — unsigned but almost certainly Fréri’s — report entitled Why the Society for the Propagation of the Faith Should Live, which can be dated to sometime between the end of 1915 and early 1918.13 According to Drehmanns, however, it was necessary ‘not to offend too much’ French sensitivities, particularly since the government of the Republic continued to insist to Cardinal Gasparri on a solution to the situation that was favourable to France, although, fundamentally, Drehmanns remained an advocate of an apparently more rigid line. It was precisely this state of affairs that justified the visit to France: ‘For these reasons, Mgr Roncalli and I were sent to France to make contact with the two central councils of Lyon and Paris’. Moreover, Drehmanns was necessary, given that ‘Mgr Roncalli did not speak French’. Departing from Rome by train on the evening of 16 December 1921 and arriving in Genoa on 17 December, Roncalli and Drehmanns continued that very same evening for Chambéry, arriving there that night. The following morning, they celebrated Mass at a side altar in the cathedral, since the ordinations of priests were taking place. This is what Roncalli wrote to Mgr Vincenzo Bugarini, his former Rector at the Roman seminary and his host in Rome for a few months: Extremely good trip; excellent health; accompanied by dear and precious Father Drehmanns. Yesterday I celebrated in Genoa; today in the Cathedral of Chambéry 13 Geschiedenisarchief Redemptoristen, Amsterdam, Correspondentie R. P. Drehmanns, b. 3, no. 23. This can be compared to the examination of the inadequacies of the Propagation of the Faith during the post-war reality in the critical piece by Joseph Fréri, Une Œuvre à reformer: la Propagation de la Foi (New York: n. pub., 1918).

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during ordinations. This evening we shall be in Lyon by five. Affectionate greetings to Mgr Re and the sisters. Pray hard for the work I am carrying out.14 On the evening of 18 December, having indeed reached Lyon, they were greeted by Cardinal Maurin’s Secretary. The day of 19 December saw their visit to the Society’s offices, which was, however, limited by the fact that the material relative to the financial management, as Drehmanns reported, was not fully usable, as it was transcribed rather summarily in small notebooks. After a visit to the Lyon ecclesiastic headquarters, Roncalli and Drehmanns took part in an interesting council meeting, traces of which remain in the Society’s archives. After Roncalli and Drehmanns had been presented by Mgr Béchetoille who read out the credentials given to them by the Pope, they participated in the proceedings of the meeting of the Council. Béchetoille then presented the circular Gloriosissima memoria of 3 December 1921, with which van Rossum announced to the leaders of the Society the first plans for the festivities on the occasion of the third centenary of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, while a member of the Council noted how that would coincide with the first centenary of the Society.15 After this, they went on to discuss various topics, among which was the Pope’s desire that the bishops expound ‘the apostolate’s immense needs and the duty imposed upon all the faithful, first of all, to pray to God and the Virgin for the propagation of the faith’ in their pastoral letters. Roncalli then spoke, declaring on the one hand van Rossum’s willingness to provide ‘new recommendations to the episcopacy on the Jubilee of 2 May’ as indicated in the minutes from Lyon and, on the other, ‘that Pope Benedict XV has just given the missions new testimony of his particular kindness by composing a very beautiful prayer’.16 In Drehmanns’s address, which concludes the report, after having spoken of their extreme satisfaction with the welcome received in France, he finally began to speak of a ‘transfer to Rome of the Society’s centre’, certainly not for it to be discussed, but simply to point out the Roman decision that had been made. ‘In asking you to abandon your glorious and age-old privilege, the Holy See has asked you for a great sacrifice, but God will reward you with great consolation’. The recorder of the minutes, almost

14 ‘Ottimo viaggio; salute eccellente: compagnia di p. Drehmanns carissima e preziosa. Ieri ho celebrato a Genova; oggi nella cattedrale di Chambéry durante le ordinazioni. Stasera saremo a Lione alle cinque. Saluti affettuosi a mons. Re e alle sorelle. Preghi molto per l’opera a cui attendo’; Roncalli to Bugarini, 20 December 1921, in Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Fiducia e obbedienza: lettere ai rettori del Seminario Romano (1901–1959), ed. by Carlo Badalà (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1997), p. 218. 15 OPM, Procès-verbal de séance du Conseil de Lyon, 19 December 1921. 16 ‘Les immenses besoins de l’apostolat et le devoir qui s’impose à tous les fidèles, d’abord de prier Dieu et la Vierge pour la Propagation de la foi’; ‘nouvelles recommandations à l’épiscopat à propos du jubilé du 2 mai’; ‘que le pape Benoît XV vient de donner aux missions un nouveau témoignage de sa particulière bienveillance en composant une très belle prière’; ‘transfert à Rome du centre de l’Œuvre’. In addition to the Jubilee of 3 May, there was also the need for greater support of the Society in raising missionary funds. The subsequent notices regarding that meeting are from the same report in Lyon.

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certainly Groffier, also noted that Drehmanns ‘is not afraid to draw a parallel between the central councils’ acquiescence to the Sovereign Pontiff’s will and the infinite act of humility of the eternal Word in becoming man to obey his Father’. In a different tone, the document at that point highlights how ‘from these elevated mystical considerations, Father Drehmanns goes on to outline some projects relating to the organization of the Society’s offices in Rome’. At this point, however, the minutes are interrupted.17 Drehmanns’s memoir also refers to the entire meeting, including, among other things, the presence of Cardinal Merry del Val as an interpreter of the Vatican’s position. In point of fact, however, this statement is not reported in the Society’s French or Roman archives. All the members of the council met and all, except Cardinal Merry del Val who was the speaker, were against the centre’s transfer to Rome. Mgr Roncalli was Moses and I Aaron among the pharaohs of Egypt. I began my speech by freeing them from an illusion. They were convinced that we had come to negotiate and that their opinion would therefore prevail. But we were obliged to admit that the deal had already been decided and that we had only come to make contact and to evaluate the best way to concentrate the office in Rome. Mgr Roncalli had thought of a comparison: if a man succeeds in giving his daughter in marriage to a rich tycoon, this is a great honour and a clear advantage. By relying on reasons of faith, we easily found an agreement and were able to leave for Paris. Neither Drehmanns nor Roncalli spoke about talks with Maurin, who subsequently was the one to carry out the phase of the Society’s centralization.18 Leaving the same night, they reached Paris on the morning of 20 December. Roncalli and Drehmanns took up residence with the Redemptorists of Montparnasse, where Roncalli celebrated Mass and then went to visit the Congregation of the Virgins of Jesus and Mary at Saint-Jacques. On 21 December, Roncalli said Mass at Montmartre, 17 ‘En vous demandant d’abandonner votre glorieux et secolaire privilège, le St Siège vous a demandé un grand sacrifice; mais Dieu vous en récompensera par de grandes consolations’; ‘ne craint pas d’établir un parallèle entre l’acquiescement des Conseils centraux à la volonté du Souverain Pontife et l’acte infini d’humilité du Verbe éternel se faisant homme pour obéir à son Père’; ‘de ces hautes considérations mystiques, le p. Drehmanns descend à l’exposé de quelques projets relatifs à l’organisation des bureaux de l’Œuvre à Rome’; the minutes record that the meeting was ended immediately after this. 18 ‘Si riunirono tutti i membri del Consiglio e tutti, tranne il card. Merry del Val, che era relatore, erano contrari al trasferimento del Centro a Roma: mons. Roncalli fu Mosè e io Aronne presso i faraoni d’Egitto. Iniziai il mio discorso liberandoli da un’illusione: loro erano convinti che noi fossimo venuti per negoziare e che quindi la loro opinione sarebbe prevalsa. Ma noi fummo obbligati a riconoscere che l’affare era già stato deciso e che eravamo venuti solo per prendere contatto e per valutare il modo migliore per concentrare l’ufficio a Roma. Mons. Roncalli aveva pensato a un paragone: se un uomo riesce a dare sua figlia in sposa a un ricco magnate, questo è un grande onore e un indubbio vantaggio. Appoggiandoci a ragioni di fede, trovammo facilmente un accordo e potemmo partire per Parigi’; Drehmanns, ‘Herinneringen’, p. 71. Of the visit to Lyon, however, no trace is found in Maurin’s letters in the archdiocese’s archives. On the entities of the Society, Annales de la Propagation de la Foi and Les Missions Catholiques, or on the bulletins, Semaine religieuse du diocèse de Lyon (an instrument of Lyon’s curia) and L’Écho de Fourvière, are rich sources of attentive reports of the Lyon diocese’s activities.

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where he sent a greetings card to Mgr Domenico Spolverini, another of his professors from the Roman seminary. On the same day, Roncalli and Drehmanns were received by the Society’s Secretary General, Alexandre Guasco, ‘a small man, aware of the weight of his dignity’, as Drehmanns recalled, ‘who had the task of preparing us for future defeat: the victim had to be prepared for the sacrifice’. Even in Paris, there was a widespread belief that the decision of a possible Roman centralization still had to be discussed. Drehmanns reports on the happenings of that session, on 21 December, in these terms: In a rather large room, we found a group of eight or ten people seated in a semicircle, like judges. We had to sit on a bench in front of them, like defendants. The discussion began with the reading aloud of a letter against the unjust transfer to Rome. But they failed in their intent because we explained that they were quite wrong about the purpose of our mission, as it was not up to us to decide anything, for the simple reason that everything had already been decided. The only one who was not completely opposed was Mgr Glorieux, who lived in Rome and thus had a better perception of reality. After much discussion and with difficulty, we managed to counter their statements to such an extent that we were sure we had achieved a resounding success.19 At a subsequent meeting of the Council of Lyon, on 30 December, after the inspection had been concluded, a letter was received from the Council of Paris, dated 22 December, concerning the visit of Roncalli and Drehmanns to Guasco, the driving force behind the Parisian Society, on the extraordinary meeting described above, during which Drehmanns had praised the ‘full union of ideas, thoughts, and hearts’ found between the two French offices and Rome, above all declaring that he was ‘very happy that the Society is not bicephalous, as we often say’. The study of the administrative model used in Paris led to no better results than the similar experience in Lyon, as can be deduced from Drehmanns’s recollection, which appears to be weaker on those points where he minimizes the study of the administrative structures of the two French councils. The visit to Paris was concluded with the interview of two persons belonging to the other aspect of the French missionary environment, that of the religious congregations that had been appointed to the concrete management of the missions’ activities: Mgr de Guébriant, General of the Foreign Missions Society of Paris, and Father Le Roy, General of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. They declared that they were aware of the need for a

19 ‘In una sala piuttosto vasta trovammo un gruppo di otto o dieci persone sedute in semicerchio come giudici; noi ci dovemmo sedere su di una panca dinanzi a loro, come degli imputati. Il dibattito iniziò con la lettura ad alta voce di una lettera contro l’ingiusto trasferimento a Roma. Ma non riuscirono nel loro intento perché noi spiegammo che erano del tutto in errore circa lo scopo della nostra missione, dal momento che non stava a noi decidere alcunché, per il fatto che tutto era già stato deciso. L’unico a non esserci completamente contrario era mons. Glorieux, che viveva a Roma e aveva quindi una migliore percezione della realtà. Dopo molte discussioni e faticosamente riuscimmo a controbattere alle loro dichiarazioni in misura tale da esser sicuri di aver raggiunto un clamoroso successo’; OPM, Correspondance diverse, dossier E, cartes Glorieux, p. 114.

The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission

Roman centralization but were also more than a little concerned about what such a provision would mean for subsidising ordinary missionary activity. In the archives of the Archdiocese of Paris there remains no trace of the visit to Cardinal Louis-Ernest Dubois, of whom Roncalli spoke in his report, also mentioning an interview with the Nuncio to Paris, at the time Archbishop Bonaventura Cerretti, and other representatives of the Parisian Catholic world. Even Dubois’s personal notebooks do not record any trace under the dates when Roncalli and Drehmanns were in Paris, despite abundant information about various commitments, including Masses and personal audiences. Among Dubois’s letters, however, there is a no extensive correspondence with van Rossum and Cardinal Laurenti. It is mostly comprised of auspicious exchanges that never refer to the occurrences in the Roman centralization. The only unpublished trace concerning Roncalli’s visit to Paris that emerged from the archives of the Society’s Parisian Council, which was greatly damaged during the war, is a farewell card sent by Roncalli, on 22 December, to Guasco, Secretary General of the Paris council: Mgr A. Roncalli, upon leaving Paris, again sends his warmest thanks to the illustrious and excellent Mr Guasco, being pleased to have made his acquaintance, which he hopes will be a pledge of many good things for the future of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in France and in all the Catholic nations. He sends heartfelt wishes for a good and holy Christmas holiday and promises to write to him from Rome, where he will hold dear his name and memory.20 A shrewdness of a diplomatic nature had probably suggested that he send this message, addressed to one of the most ardent supporters of the ‘Frenchness’ of the Missionary Work. In this regard, it should be noted that Drehmanns, in his later report, had distanced himself from an excessive condescension towards French claims, stating that all the concessions subsequently granted to them were not for the good of the missionary work. Roncalli in his report, on the other hand, held that the sacrifice imposed on France had been ‘somewhat heroic’. On 20 December, he had written to Bugarini: I am still very well, and the matters of the Propagation of the Faith are coming together nicely. The Lord helps us usque in finem. I shall go to Brussels and, barring any impediments, to the Netherlands, Cologne, Freiburg and Munich. I shall be in Rome by Saturday, the 9th. So I hope.21

20 ‘Mons. A. Roncalli sul punto di partire da Parigi lascia nuove vivissime grazie all’ill.mo e ottimo sig. Guasco, compiacendosi di aver fatto la sua conoscenza, che spera sarà pegno di molte buone cose per l’avvenire dell’Opera della Propagazione della Fede in Francia e in tutte le nazioni cattoliche. Gli augura di cuore buone e sante feste di Natale e promette di scrivergli da Roma dove porterà carissimo il nome e il ricordo di lui’; OPM, Correspondance diverse, dossier A, n. 11, p. 4. In commemorating Guasco, Les Missiones Catholiques connected his death with the end of the French management of the Society as an almost ‘remarkable coincidence’ (‘coïncidence remarquable’); Valerian Groffier, ‘M. Alexandre Guasco’, Les Missions Catholiques, 54 (1922), pp. 317–18. 21 ‘Sto sempre molto bene e le cose della Propagazione della Fede si compongono benissimo. Il Signore ci aiuti usque in finem. Passerò a Bruxelles e, salvo impedimenti, in Olanda, a Colonia, a Friburgo e a Monaco. Sarò a Roma per sabato 9. Così spero’; Roncalli to Bugarini, 20 December 1921, in Roncalli, Fiducia e obbedienza, p. 218.

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The ‘impediments’ were, in fact, the difficulties in obtaining transit visas for Germany, since Roncalli had planned to complete the mission with visits to the organizational centres in the Rhineland, Baden and Bavaria, even though Drehmanns considered the task to have been completed. It was, therefore, necessary to obtain the visas in France, which Drehmanns again recalled was not easy. He took care of the matter in a chaotic office on the Quai d’Orsay while Roncalli visited the centre of Paris accompanied by a Redemptorist father. During the curious continuation of the journey, the two decided to obtain Belgian visas in Liège, and to reach Aachen through the Netherlands in order to permit Drehmanns to visit his family — from whom he had been separated throughout the entire war and the period immediately following it — in Roermond. To tell the truth, their journey does not seem to have been dominated by any great sense of planning. In particular, to judge from Drehmanns’s account, its appendix in Belgium, Holland and Germany seems to have been decided on the autonomous initiative of the two Vatican emissaries. Moreover, the trip to Liège occurred when the offices were closed, it being a Sunday, so the two decided to continue to Brussels, where Drehmanns was able to procure border visas for transit to the Netherlands and Germany.22 After arriving in Brussels, the two went on to Wittem as guests of the diocese for Christmas. Roncalli remained to speak to Father Lysdman, who described the activities of the diocese, while Drehmanns went on to Roermond. The records of the Redemptorists’ house in Wittem noted the presence of the two, without mentioning Roncalli by name: 24–26 December 1921. Visit. Father Drehmanns, Personal Secretary to his eminence Cardinal W. van Rossum in Rome, was given hospitality with the reverend Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, Italian Council. Both stayed two days over Christmas.23 The records of the Redemptorists’ house in Brussels, on the other hand, registered the presence of Drehmanns and ‘an Italian priest’, heading for the Netherlands.24 The two men arrived in Aachen on the following Monday and were welcomed warmly, as Drehmanns recalled. Despite the extreme lack of resources, which recent events had precipitated in Germany, the work of Dr Louis and his colleagues appeared extraordinarily efficient even if, according to Drehmanns, a process completely contrary to the French situation had been achieved, that is, an excessive bureaucratization of

22 The chronology established by Drehmanns and the one reconstructed by Capovilla do not coincide perfectly, since Drehmanns reported that he left ‘the day after from Brussels’ (24 December) with the destination of Wittem, Holland, while Capovilla mentions a stop in Aachen on 24 December and the arrival in Wittem on 25 December. 23 ‘24–26 dicembre 1921. Visita. Il reverendo p. Drehmanns, segretario personale di S. E. il card. W. van Rossum a Roma è stato ospitato col rev. direttore dell’Opera della propagazione della fede, Consiglio italiano. Entrambi si sono trattenuti qui per due giorni sotto Natale’; Archive of the Redemptorists, Wittem, Kroniekboek, MS, p. 25. 24 ‘D’un prêtre italien’; St Joseph’s House, Brussels, Livre de chronique, MS, ad indicem.

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the entire fundraising activity. In this regard, Konrad Simons reported, translating it into German, an assessment that he attributes to Roncalli during that visit: ‘the German art of good organization’ (‘die deutsche Kunst der guten Organisation’). In Aachen, as attested by photographic documentation, Roncalli and Drehmanns met Dr Mergentheim, Ludwig Berg, Mgr Serres, the Secretary General Dr Louis, the Treasurer Frehn, the Canon Pies and the editor of the Rhineland’s missionary periodical Weltmission, the Jesuit Rudolf Schütz. They were all members of Aachen’s Verein. It is not certain that Roncalli and Drehmanns stayed with the Redemptorists in Aachen.25 On 27 December, Roncalli celebrated Mass in the Cathedral of Cologne and that evening he was in Frankfurt, from where he wrote to Bugarini: ‘We are on our way back. I hope to reach Rome on Friday evening. Everything still fine. Greetings to the sisters of the house. Today I was in Cologne, tomorrow we shall be in Munich and after that Innsbruck and Trent, in Italy’.26 They were also unexpected in Munich but equally welcomed very cordially by Mgr Neuhäusler. On 28 and 29 December, Roncalli and Drehmanns visited an administrative centre that was limited and impoverished by the lack of resources, personnel and office space as a result of the war.27 The two returned to Italy through the Brenner Pass on 30 December. Generally speaking, it can be concluded that the reception of the Roman decisions was far more cautious and diversified on the part of the French than the Germans, who were much more open since, compared to the former, they had much less to preserve or defend, and were being granted a re-evaluation and re-introduction to the missionary area from which they had been expelled. The reasons for the perplexities that emerged in Germany were presumably of a different nature and inspiration, focussing on practical problems, such as the way in which the new organizational model was to be carried out and concretely implemented, highlighting the remaining German concerns for the regime of strict subsistence established for their missions after the first months of the world war.28

4. The Roncalli Report Having returned to Rome in the first days of January 1922, Roncalli wrote a detailed report of his recently concluded trip in February. This document, found in Rome in

25 Redemptorists’ priory, Aachen, Buch der Chronik, ms, ad indicem. See Konrad Simons, Missio: die Geschichte einer Bewegung: das internationale katholische Missionswerk in Aachen von 1832 an (Aachen: Missio, 1983). 26 ‘Siamo sulla via del ritorno. Spero di giungere a Roma venerdì sera. Sempre bene. Saluti in casa alle sorelle. Oggi fui a Colonia, domattina saremo a Monaco e di là, per Innsbruck e Trento, in Italia’; Roncalli to Bugarini, 20 December 1921, in Roncalli, Fiducia e obbedienza. See also the Loris Capovilla Archive, Bergamo, Roncalli to the sisters (19 December) and to Spolverini (21 December). 27 Drehmanns, ‘Herinneringen’, p. 72. 28 ACPF, Consiglio superiore generale, n. 9, report of the presidency of Verein für die Verbreitung des Glaubens, 9 November 1922, p. 2.

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the Archives of the Superior General Council of the Propagation of the Faith during documentary research on the activity of the Italian National Council, systematically reflected the context and results of the 1921 trip and amplified the suggestions that the minutes of the Lyon meeting in December had mentioned.29 Structured in three parts and dated 14 February 1922, the report consisted of eighteen densely typed folders. In the first of its three parts, after a description of the welcome received, the differences and the points of contact of the two French offices were listed, besides certain concerns or reservations raised by those French secular environments, and finally the different situation presented by the German environment. In the second part, which is the most interesting and concerns the Society’s internal structure, particular attention was paid to the composition and institutional working of the board of governors and, finally, to the essential role played by each general council and its coadjutors. Roncalli then dedicated three dense folders of data to the issue of the collection and distribution of missionary funds, a true source of research for him relative to future implementation and innovation within the Italian National Council that he headed until 1925. Similar inspiration was derived from reading the French missionary press, which Roncalli subsequently used for ideas and motivations in a Roman bulletin, La propagazione della fede nel mondo.30 The third part of the report expressed the systems of advertising adopted in the various areas of the Society’s jurisdiction in France and Germany. A concluding note left a glimpse of the immediate possibilities of implementing the centralization, channelling ‘the wonderful energies that are now spreading through Europe’s Catholics [into] a single address’.31 Responding to the purpose of the investigation, Roncalli’s report revealed, moreover, an official capable of consolidating situations that had been rendered difficult by that particular historical situation. In his role of envoy, Roncalli precisely noted the prevalence of French laity at the heart of the missionary management besides the not infrequent shortcomings in the collection of funds. With mentalities that were

29 ACPF, Consiglio Superiore Generale, fasc. A, s.n., Membri, sedute ordinarie, 1922–23. 30 In 1923, Roncalli founded La propagazione della fede nel mondo, the official periodical of the Society’s Italian presidency, which included schematic accounts that listed, diocese by diocese, the amount of offerings collected, the number of persons involved and an average percentage between the two figures. This documentary source was accompanied by colourful reports of various situations from the missionary world. In its typographical presentation as well as its contents, Roncalli’s bulletin copied the format of the French magazines of the same type. Several articles, although unsigned, can be directly attributed to Roncalli. They were subsequently collected and reproduced, with some minor modifications and without a precise chronological arrangement, in John XXIII [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli], La propagazione della fede nel mondo, 1921–1925 (Rome: Pontificia Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1959). 31 ‘Le belle energie che ormai si destano fra i cattolici dell’Europa [verso] un indirizzo unico’. This reveals the systems of ‘personal propaganda’ that were prevalent in Germany, and especially in Munich, where a Vertrauensmann, a trusted man in the Missionary Union, was represented in every deanery. Publicity in the press was analysed site by site and is, perhaps, the most interesting part (ACPF, n. 15, p. 7).

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still prevalently and stubbornly attached to a framework that was clearly outmoded, it did not escape Roncalli’s attention either that the persistence of motivations and mental reservations was linked to residual colonial ambitions or, on the other hand, a realistic consideration of the larger picture of the true situation, in order to recommend immediately certain concessions to the French requests under consideration. Considering the situation in Lyon, Roncalli’s approach appeared organic and in line with the individual realities at stake, above all in light of the obvious resistance shown by the French. A more careful reflection on the various parts of Roncalli’s report, however, reveals other particular aspects. For the time being, it is clear that, at the time of the journey of 1921 and of the report of February 1922, the ways of implementing the Roman centralization, which had already been maturing for some time, were yet to be forged. Roncalli’s clarifications on the management of the administration at the four sites he visited with Drehmanns appear to be an attempt to bridge this delay between decision and the manner of implementation, which had become imminent. In reality, Roncalli’s positive observations concerning the possibility of observing the entire dynamic of the administration in Lyon and Paris appear in stark contrast to Drehmanns’s contrary statements, according to which the enquiry was limited and incomplete in those two places. On the one hand, the limited time available — two days in Lyon and three in Paris — taken up, moreover, by the board meetings held at both sites, would seem to confirm Drehmanns’s opinion. This does not, however, explain Roncalli’s precision in describing the dynamics of the working of the individual entities of the Society, which is extraordinary and therefore incompatible with the previous observations on the duration of the visit and Drehmanns’s recollections. Whatever the circumstances, the series of differences between Lyon and Paris highlighted by Roncalli appears to be very well founded. Moreover, there is evidence of the admiration aroused in Roncalli by the missionary press, which he immediately imitated in his Roman office. His observations of the French anxieties and concerns regarding the Society’s reorganization are interesting. In comparison, Drehmanns’s version is not substantially different but is certainly less perceptive and more direct, which brings us back to the same questions on the highly different way that the two interpreted the reality that they were investigating during the 1921 trip. One can only advance some perplexity regarding Roncalli’s assertion when, on the same point, he declared ‘our task is purely to study the Society’s organization at the various centres’. In reality, while such a ‘study’ was conducted in rather restricted times and ways, the Roncalli–Drehmanns mission expressed an extreme and decisive phase in executing pre-established decisions, without even that formal prudence that Roncalli perspicaciously attempted to safeguard. If the implementation of the Roman centralization was anything but diplomatic, also considering the limited time available for its realization and the sudden manner of its introduction, the unfolding of the mission, beyond Roncalli’s clear care, did not seem to deviate excessively from the ‘hard line’ drawn by van Rossum in Rome, which Drehmanns faithfully interpreted. These differences in approach seem to signal a marked division of competencies between the two Propaganda Fide delegates, to the point of leaving the true motivations behind

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their appointment to the 1921 mission open to interpretation. While Drehmanns was sent to confirm the irrevocability of the Roman provision, which had already been adopted, to the French councils, Roncalli went to France and Germany with the sole purpose of studying how the administrative offices managed the collection of funds and the propagation of the missionary ideal. These two functions, in fact, appear much closer to Roncalli’s skills and competencies, who however, at the time, must surely have lacked any certain knowledge of the complex organization of the missionary structure as well as its connection to French colonialism. Barely a year and a few months had passed from the time when he had been called to Rome to begin his service at the Society, and it does not seem that he was particularly well-informed of the missionary problem, doubting, among other things, his own ability to respond to the task conferred on him by van Rossum. Conversely, Drehmanns had already accumulated several years of experience alongside van Rossum, the main exponent of missionary renewal, and had even taken an interest in the question of the evangelization of ‘pagans’ previously, as he revealed in the aforementioned articles in 1959 and as can be seen in his records from the period around World War I, including some correspondence with Fréri. In short, everything leads one to believe that Drehmanns was invited to represent van Rossum and the interests of centralizing Propaganda Fide while Roncalli was a proponent for a modernization concerning the re-establishment of a higher body for allocating funds correlated to the need to solidify the Italian model’s experiment — following the centuries-old example of the French, and German, systems — of an office charged with fundraising. Roncalli’s entire subsequent experience of the Italian presidency from 1921 to 1925, including the manner of bureaucratically channelling the distribution of requests in the various dioceses and the dissemination of the issue of missions through the press and specific questionnaires, was influenced by the French approach, thus confirming the hypothesis advanced above. The conduct of the two men during the journey of 1921 supplies further elements for reflection. In Lyon and Paris, it was Drehmanns who spoke, introducing the topic of the Roman centralization to the leaders of the respective council organizations who were completely unaware of the Holy See’s intentions. It is true that Roncalli was not able to express himself properly in French, but it would be rash to think of Drehmanns as a simple interpreter. Moreover, it does not seem necessary to have recourse to van Rossum’s Secretary for a task that could have otherwise been handled by any French-speaking priest. Finally, the fact that Drehmanns, in his recollection of the trip, attributes the decision — considered useless by the Dutchman — to visit the German offices of the missionary organization to Roncalli responds well to Roncalli’s need to increase his knowledge of the administrative apparatus, studying its versions as organized by the German offices.

5. A Difficult Reception The transfer of the executive and administrative offices of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to Rome aroused worried reactions in France, while a

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more open attitude persisted in Germany, since that nation, deprived of its colonies and overwhelmed by a burdensome peace treaty, was thereby reintegrated into the missionary world from which its religious members had been purged. However, the reception of Roman decisions remained slow and laborious everywhere, while the Holy See met with strong diplomatic pressure from the French. On the other hand, the transfer to Rome of the management of the missionary support entities, ratified by Pius XI with his motu proprio Romanorum Pontificum on 3 May 1922, sanctioned, along with a clear desire for centralization, some substantial differentiations of a structural nature. First of all, it changed from being managed by a largely lay majority, as seen in Lyon and even more in Paris, to a model almost exclusively run by religious representatives. Needless to say, the fundamental innovations occurred, however, in addition to the transfer to Rome:32 a characteristic of being beyond nationalities that was conferred on the Society; the creation of national councils, a truly novel innovation, which were headed by a sole Superior Council, thus overcoming the heightened aspects of nationalism that had previously prevailed; and, finally, the reduction of the four peripheral branches, with their related satellite offices, to a single, centralized administrative dimension in Rome. Moreover, while the Society had maintained its national characteristics and private nature, albeit having a charitable purpose without any precise juridical or legal recognition until 1922, when it became an official instrument of the Holy See, subject to the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, it thereby assumed the character of a moral entity, erected and approved by the church (fidelium associatio), with the right to purchase and administer goods for non-private purposes. It thus acquired legal personhood distinct from the collective one of the members that belonged to it. In short, the typically paternalistic inspiration conferred on the French offices by the massive presence of elements of high finance and industry, as in Lyon, or of academics and the military, as in Paris — according to the mention Fréri had already made — began to wane. It is true, however, that the price paid for this renewal was a rigid subjection to an equally strong and direct Roman influence.

Bibliography Beltrami, Silvio, L’Opera della Propagazione della Fede in Italia (Rome: Pontificia Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1961) Beltrami, Silvio, Prima semina: testimonianze missionarie nel primo decennio in Italia dell’Opera della propagazione della fede 1835–1845 (Rome: Pontificia Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1963) Bona, Candido, La rinascita missionaria in Italia: dalle ‘Amicizie’ all’Opera per la Propagazione della Fede (Turin: Edizioni Missioni Consolata, 1964)

32 Hickey, The Society, pp. 53–60, where greater attention is paid to the Paris branch’s being influenced by, and dependence on, the Americans. See also, Fréri, Une Œuvre à reformer, pp. 55–56.

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Butturini, Giuseppe, ‘Una nuova collocazione del problema missionario in un inedito del padre Manna (1872–1952)’, Humanitas, 32 (1977), pp. 822–42 Butturini, Giuseppe, Le missioni cattoliche in Cina tra le due guerre mondiali: osservazioni sul metodo moderno di evangelizzazione di padre Paolo Manna (Bologna: Editrice Missionaria Italiana, 1998) Capovilla, Loris Francesco, Giovanni XXIII: quindici letture (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970) Catrice, Paul, Le Père Manna, fondateur de l’Union Missionnaire du Clergé (Paris: Lethielleux; Rome: Secrétariat International UMC, 1965) Drehmanns, Joseph M., ‘Herinneringen aan Mgr Roncalli’, Missie-actie, 53 (1959), pp. 70–73 Dumont, Christophe, ‘Pio XI e i cristiani separati’, in Pio XI nel trentesimo della morte 1939–1969: raccolta di studi e memorie, ed. by Carlo Colombo and others (Milan: Opera diocesana per la preservazione e diffusione della fede, 1969), pp. 325–75 Fréri, Joseph, Une Œuvre à reformer: la Propagation de la Foi (New York: n. pub., 1918) Groffier, Valerian, ‘M. Alexandre Guasco’, Les Missions Catholiques, 54 (1922), pp. 317–18 Hickey, Edward John, The Society for the Propagation of the Faith: Its Foundation, Organization and Success (1822–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1922) John XXIII [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli], La propagazione della fede nel mondo, 1921–1925 (Rome: Pontificia Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1959) Pignedoli, Sergio, ‘Pio XI e le missioni’, in Pio XI nel trentesimo della morte 1939–1969: raccolta di studi e memorie, ed. by Carlo Colombo and others (Milan: Opera diocesana per la preservazione e diffusione della fede, 1969), pp. 295–324 Poels, Vefie, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk, eds, Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932) (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)) Roncalli, Angelo Giuseppe, Fiducia e obbedienza: lettere ai rettori del Seminario Romano (1901–1959), ed. by Carlo Badalà (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1997) Scalzotto, Tiziano, ‘L’encyclique Maximum illud et son importance historique’, Omnis Terra, 19 (1980), pp. 13–24 Simons, Konrad, Missio: die Geschichte einer Bewegung: das internationale katholische Missionswerk in Aachen von 1832 an (Aachen: Missio, 1983) Teodori, Franco, ed., Unione missionaria del clero (Rome: Procura Generale Saveriana, 1978) Tragella, Gian Battista, Un’anima di fuoco: Padre Paolo Manna (Naples: Pontificio Istituto Missioni Estere, 1954) Traniello, Francesco, ‘Giovanni XXIII’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II, pp. 243–54

Claude Prudhomme

Maximum illud, a Missionary Turning Point?

Described as the ‘charter of missions’ in association, or in competition, with Pius XI’s Rerum Ecclesiae encyclical of 1926, Maximum illud, promulgated in Rome on 30 November 1919, seems to be an atypical text.1 The document is, strictly speaking, an apostolic letter and thus should be addressed to a precise recipient in order to impart a general lesson. In this case, it is more similar to an encyclical because it is addressed to ‘the patriarchs, primates, archbishops and bishops of the Catholic world concerning the activity performed by missionaries in the world’. Another unique aspect, contrary to the great majority of pontifical texts, is that the letter does not refer to any previous pontifical text and includes fourteen quotations, all taken from the Bible. It does not endeavour to be legitimated by being inscribed itself into the pontifical magisterial tradition by means of references to a series of declarations. In this way, it can be compared to Rerum novarum. Here, however, the appropriateness of a pontifical statement is not justified by the need to respond to a new situation, such as ‘the spirit of revolutionary change’2 and the industrial revolution referred to by Leo XIII. On the contrary, Maximum illud is considered to be the fruit of a long history, and from the first sentence invokes the testimony of the Church’s fidelity, from its very origins, to Christ’s commandment: ‘Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature’ (Mark 16. 15). This is why the universal proclamation of salvation constitutes ‘a momentous and a holy charge’ which falls to the successors of the apostles ‘as long, that is, as there remained on this earth men whom the truth might set free’.3

1 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 2, 13 (1919), pp. 440–44 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 2 Leo XIII, Rerum novarum, § 1 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 3 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, § 1.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 609–627 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118794

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1. Was Maximum illud an Important Papal Document that Divided? If Maximum illud was hailed as a pontifical document ‘of exceptional importance’ by the Annuaire pontifical catholique of Albert Battandier,4 judgements are far from unanimous, and the obituaries published on the death of Benedict XV focus instead on the Pope’s standpoints during World War I or the Roman Question. This pontifical letter initially aroused reactions that hint at astonishment and reservations on the part of those faced with a text that was unusual in both form and content. Its categorization as an apostolic letter (Epistola apostolica) was the first element likely to raise questions: the first ‘encyclical’ specifically dealing with missions belongs to a literary genre that is a priori less prestigious. Claude Soetens hypothesized here that calling it a letter might emphasize the strict correlation desired by Benedict XV between ‘his function as holder of the Apostolic Seat and the universal apostolic activity of the Church’.5 This constituted, in any case, a peculiarity that would gradually be lost. The visible gap between the universal horizon of the discourse and this more sober designation prompted most commentators in the following years, even the editors of pontifical documents, to assign to it spontaneously, albeit wrongly, the status of an encyclical. However, it is above all the reception of the letter that raises questions. There was no haste to report it in part of the French Catholic press. On 11 December, La Croix announced the appearance in the Acta Sancta Sedis of ‘an important apostolic letter on the missions’ and provided a summary of it that ignored the developments concerning the harmful effects of missionary nationalism. The weekly publication of the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, Missions catholiques, did not publish it until 23 January 1920, omitting the first part. A few years later, the encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae of Pius XI would benefit from a far more favourable treatment and the publication of the full text. Resistance to the text can also be seen in the missions themselves. In 1920, the Vincentian Antoine Cotta reviewed the missionary reactions in China and highlighted the extent of the resistance expressed in Le Bulletin catholique de Pékin and L’Écho de Chine. He deplored the surprising silence of the two journals run by the Jesuits in Shanghai, Le Messager du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus and the Revue catholique, and denounced the manoeuvres of certain Jesuits to impede its diffusion.6 Not least, he criticized the stand taken by the Jesuit Alexandre Brou, responsible for the mission bulletin in the journal Études, accusing him of a watered-down presentation of the inadequacies of missionaries’ activity, particularly when he turned the letter into a kind of consecration of their aspirations for the promotion of an indigenous clergy.7 4 Annuaire pontifical catholique (Paris: Bonne Presse, 1898–1948), XXIII (1920), p. 560. 5 ‘Sa fonction comme titulaire de siège apostolique et l’activité apostolique universelle de l’Église’; Pour l’Église chinoise: recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe, ed. by Claude Soetens, 3 vols (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de la Faculté de Théologie, 1982–83), III: L’encyclique Maximum illud (1983), p. i. 6 Pour l’Église chinoise, ed. by Soetens, pp. 84 ff. 7 Alexandre Brou, ‘L’encyclique sur les missions: le clergé indigène, sa formation, détails rétrospectifs’, Études, 57, 162 (1920), pp. 592–612.

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However, reservations, even mistrust, were not universal, and the Annales des missions étrangères de Paris opened the first issue of 1920 with the full text of the Pope, published, nevertheless, without commentary. It is probable that the influence of a French missionary in the Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP; Foreign Missions Society in Paris), the Apostolic Vicar of Canton Jean Budes de Guébriant, played a role in the commitment of the Jesuits to the pontifical policy. He was noted for his diagnosis of the problems of the missions in China during the investigation conducted in 1918 by Propaganda Fide into six apostolic vicars. He became an indispensable go-between for Rome, as both a member of the principal missionary society in Asia and part of the majority national group among the missionaries.8 His importance in the eyes of Rome was clearly testified by his designation as Apostolic Visitor to the Chinese Missions by a decree of Propaganda Fide dated 27 July 1919, four months before the publication of Maximum illud. These reactions betray, beyond the apparent unanimity in favour of the mobilization of the missions, the tensions present in Roman Catholicism, in particular in the missionary world, in the aftermath of World War I. Before considering the text within the development of Roman strategy as a whole, it is worthwhile returning to the text as it stands in order to identify its specific features and measure its novelty.

2. Realities and Limits of the Turning Point It is necessary to examine the contents of the text in order to evaluate the extent to which Maximum illud truly constituted ‘a turning point’ in the development of the Roman missionary doctrine. The letter opens with an extensive evocation of the deployment of missions from the origins of Christianity. The first surprise is the image, of a lyrical strain, describing the efforts used since antiquity, which leads to a bitter observation that contrasts the extent of the effort to the results obtained: The realization must come as a shock that right now, there still remain in the world immense multitudes of people who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death. According to a recent estimate, the number of non-believers in the world approximates one billion souls.9 The main part of the letter then addresses, in hierarchical order, the heads of missions, missionaries and all the faithful, and the pontiff dedicates to them a series of observations, recommendations and counsels that express his enduring desire to identify priorities and aspects that need to be reformed. Aware of the need to address sensitive issues, in particular in the Asian countries where very old divergences sometimes persisted in regard to the method of carrying out the apostolate, the Pope prefaced his remarks to the heads of missions with a

8 ACPF, Acta, vol. 293 (1922), ff. 272–81. 9 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, § 6.

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sentence which could be either a captatio benevolentiae or a call to obedience implying the acceptance of the message without dispute: ‘Cognizant as We are, however, of their respect for this Apostolic See and their devotion to it, We do not hesitate to act as a father with his sons, and open Our mind to them’.10 There follows a lengthy reflection on the essential role of the head of a mission. He sketches a portrait of a profoundly religious man, experienced, entirely devoted to his task, dedicating himself to the point of exhaustion to the salvation of the inhabitants and the geographical expansion of his mission territory. To the inimical criticism of a lack of zeal among certain heads of missions, the Pope adds a vigorous warning against the temptation to claim for oneself the territory entrusted to him by Rome and to refuse access to collaborators from other religious families or to those from other nations. He also insists on the need to avail themselves of women’s collaboration in the work. This mobilization, which puts effectiveness before congregational or patriotic sensitivities, requires developing consultations and collaboration with neighbouring territories. This first part concludes with an urgent call for the proper formation of an indigenous clergy in order to prepare them to govern the mission territories, on which depended the very future of the missions. This formation was not to lack anything: ‘It is only right, then, that those who exercise her sacred ministry should come from every nation, so that their countrymen can look to them for instruction in the law of God and leadership on the way to salvation’.11 Criticism of the situation in the missions takes an even more radical turn in the second part, which is addressed explicitly to missionaries. It is organized around three points: the national question, the place of material interests in the apostolate and the academic and spiritual preparation of candidates for the missions. In line with his teaching from 1914, Benedict XV openly tackled missionary nationalism in terms that could not fail to offend the national spirit of missionaries, in particular the Belgian and French, who saw in the victory of 1918 a just recompense and God’s will. In a climate of patriotic exaltation, the injunction to missionaries to put an end to the confusion of objectives and to cease confusing the celestial homeland with the earthly one rang out like a call to order. This undoubtedly reflects Benedict XV’s stand, yet it assumed a different hue at the end of November 1919, five months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Moreover, the document is not afraid to conclude this second part with a particularly severe paragraph expressing the pontiff ’s feeling that he was ‘deeply saddened’ at ‘some recent accounts of missionary life, accounts that displayed more zeal for the profit of some particular nation than for the growth of the kingdom of God’.12 This process is so unusual that we need to reflect on it. In the absence of a systematic study, the review of some online journals seems to confirm that the positions adopted by Benedict XV during the war were relayed a minima. The

10 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, § 9. 11 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, § 16. 12 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, § 20.

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periodicals of missionary congregations, most of which in French, were mainly concerned during the war with manifesting their patriotism. The periodicals assumed to be closest to the Roman position, those of the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, can barely be distinguished from the journals of religious congregations. They avoid an overly partisan engagement, but the editions in the different languages show a preferential, almost exclusive attachment to the country to which they are addressed. The French edition of Missions catholiques, like that of the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, echoes the life of the French missionaries and the faithful. The initiatives of the Pope in favour of peace were passed over in silence when they went beyond the religious context and became diplomatic action or appealed to opinion. The prayers for peace ordered by the Pope were announced, but the most controversial initiatives of the pontiff, notably that of 1917, were not mentioned. The German edition of Catholic Missions (Die katholischen Missionen), which had become independent in 1917, adopted a more nuanced position. It made a concession to the prevailing nationalism by abandoning a subtitle that placed it within the sphere of influence of Lyon where the Œuvre had been founded. However, it was not content with providing information on the missions entrusted to German personnel; it seemed to reflect the pontifical positions during the war better. The question of nationalism was not the only matter about which Maximum illud elicited a vigorous warning. The letter also denounced seeking material and financial profit before the salvation of souls. In addition to recalling the prohibition imposed since the seventeenth century on missionaries from engaging in trade with local populations, the document attacks the temptation to cede to ‘a craving for financial gain […] the meanest of vices. Nothing is more unworthy of the kingdom of God’.13 It insists on the obligation to live an austere life that unambiguously witnesses the disinterested nature of missionaries. Continuing its critical examination of a missionary’s lifestyle, contrary to a whole host of edifying literature, Maximum illud insists on the need to acquire a good culture, to possess the scientific knowledge necessary for disputes with ‘ministers of error’ and, above all, to master local languages in order to preach without intermediaries and translate Christian texts. The call for holiness in life is more classical because the practice of virtues is necessary to open souls to the truth. The third part, dedicated to the duties of all Catholics, whether clerics or laymen, is the part that many missionary journals chose to reprint. It is widely quoted in articles that announced the publication of the letter and seemed likely to satisfy all missionary circumstances. However, the way in which the letter is drawn up is different from the normal style of appeals in favour of missions. The emphasis on the duty of all the faithful, ‘absolutely all’, to pray for the missions, is traditionally associated with the duty to overcome the shortage of personnel and to provide missions with the abundant resources they require. However, the Pope slips in observations that resemble new implicit criticisms. A particular 13 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, § 21.

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recommendation for the superiors of missionary societies underlines the need to retain for missions ‘only the best of their men, those who are outstanding in virtue, in devotion, in zeal for souls’.14 Does this mean that this was not always the case? And if the three main associations responsible for collecting donations from the faithful are once again recommended, the Pope expressed his support above all for the establishment of the Unione missionaria del clero (Missionary Union of Clergy), a new clerical association founded by Father Paolo Manna15 and immediately approved in 1916. The Pope stressed that it was to be placed under the direct authority of Propaganda Fide. This support for an association of clerics subject to the direct authority of Rome is no accident at a time when delicate transactions were in course to impose the transfer to Rome of the three organizations founded in France, whose principal organization, the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, was under lay management.

3. Back to the Sources and a New Foundation The lack of any explicit reference to the documents produced by Propaganda Fide in Benedict’s letter does not signify a discontinuity with the directives issued by the congregation. On most of the points developed, the Pope reiterated the recommendations that had been expressed since the first instructions, notably those by Ingoli (first Secretary of the congregation from 1622–49), affirmed and condensed in the Instruction of 1659 for apostolic vicars of China.16 Attention to the latter, thanks to the archives of the MEP, was renewed in the mid-nineteenth century by the activity of Mgr Luquet, a missionary of the MEP, who criticized the society for its lack of zeal in forming an indigenous clergy. His criticisms, based on the Instruction of 1659, were echoed very favourably by Propaganda Fide in 1845 and largely inspired the instruction Neminem profecto of 1845. It enjoined missionaries to train a cultured, not merely auxiliary indigenous clergy rapidly and to stay away from politics.17 Under Leo XIII, the encyclical Ad extremas Orientis and the instruction of Propaganda Fide Cum postremis in 1893 had recalled that these orientations were not intended to be simple counsels but were orders. A table summing up the principal directives of Maximum illud affords an understanding of this continuity and strongly relativizes the feeling of innovation

14 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, § 35. 15 Giuseppe Butturini and Gianni Colzani, Illuminata passione: il beato Paolo Manna nella storia della missione contemporanea (Bologna: EMI, 2001). 16 An excellent analysis of the Instructio Vicariorum Apostolicorum ad regna Sinarum, Tonchini et Cocincinae proficiscentium (1659), with an Italian translation of the document, can be found in Massimo Marcocchi, Colonialismo, cristianesimo e culture extraeuropee: l’Istruzione di Propaganda Fide ai vicari apostolici dell’Asia orientale (1659) (Milan: Jaca Book, 1981). 17 The episode was explained by Paul Coulon, ‘Un mémoire secret de Libermann à la Propagande en 1846?’, Mémoires spiritaines, 3 (1996), pp. 19–50.

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that contemporaries may have experienced and which subsequent literature has amplified. Maximum illud

Prior instructions of Propaganda Fide

Independence from nations Independence from politics in general Obedience to civil authorities Exclusive dependence on Rome Careful selection of missionaries

1659 Instruction 1659 Instruction; Neminem profecto (1845) 1659 Instruction 1659 Instruction18 Propaganda Fide, Collectanea 1, 1625 pp. 6–7 and 1630 p. 51 1659 Instruction 1659 Instruction Recommendations by Ingoli (1625) 1659 Instruction Recommendations by Ingoli (1625, 1628, 1644) 1659 Instruction 1659 Instruction Encyclical 1659 Instruction Neminem profecto Encyclical Ad extremas Orientis (1893) Instruction Cum postremis (1893) Instruction Cum postremis

Spiritual formation Disinterestedness in the material goods of the apostolate Evangelical poverty Prohibition of trade Language learning Respect for the customs of the country Mobilization of the faithful Priority of indigenous clergy

Preparation of an indigenous clergy for all functions Promotion of indigenous clergy Essential role of the schools

Recommendations by Ingoli (1628) 1659 Instruction Instruction Cum postremis

4. A Novelty without Innovation Several other earlier documents can be mentioned concerning the subjects addressed by Benedict XV. The instructions of the Pope do not make any truly new proposals. Contrary to the instructions of 1659, which envisioned the sending of nuncios,19 the 18 ‘Your first intention must therfore be to write as frequently as possible to the Holy See, and so that you may more scrupulously do so, this is strictly imposed upon you in the Lord’ (‘Il vostro primo proposito deve essere dunque quello di scrivere il più frequentemente possibile a questa Santa Sede, e affinché più scrupolosamente lo adempiate, vi è severamente imposto nel Signore’); Marcocchi, Colonialismo, p. 74. 19 ‘You should understand that, if God will permit the Christian religion to plant more stable roots in China, the pontiff will also overcome the distance more completely through nuncios, without taking into account costs or difficulties, as in any case already occurs without discomfort for other countries, even though these are not as remote as China’ (‘Fate intendere che, se Dio concederà che la religione

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letter avoids dealing with the question of the diplomatic relations with China and Japan. This silence, imposed by the diplomatic context, does not signify renouncing the objective. For China, the failure recorded in the previous year with the French veto of the nomination of Mgr Petrelli as nuncio, whose departure for Peking had already been announced, and subsequently of Mgr Pisani, explains the Roman prudence. With Japan, the negotiations reactivated in 1915 led to a compromise on 26 November 1919, four days before the publication of the letter. In the absence of a nuncio, the Holy See obtained the creation of a diplomatic delegation in Tokyo.20 It can also be seen that Maximum illud does not take up some of the older stands of the Roman dicastery on how to approach societies and cultures. It does not evoke the famous paragraph of the 1659 Instruction that warns against the temptation of the missionary to impose his habits, his rites and his customs.21 If the letter is concerned with the question of indigenous languages and adds them to the long list of recommendations of Propaganda Fide on the matter, it leaves aside the central question of adaption to the culture of the societies encountered by the missionaries. Yet the feeling of novelty experienced by contemporaries attests to the fact that the letter manages to contribute something new with a discourse set in an ancient tradition which does not renounce prudence when it treats certain points. It owes much to this in the way in which the Pope approaches the missionary question in regard to delicate points (confusion with political interests, denunciation of European nationalism, indigenous clergy) and affirms his authority. The pontifical lesson dispels a doctrinal vagueness that favoured divergent apostolic conceptions. cristiana metta in Cina più stabili radici, il Pontefice ovvierà alla distanza in modo più completo anche per mezzo di Nunzi, senza tener conto di spese o di difficoltà, come del resto già avviene senza disagio in altri paesi, anche se non così lontani come la Cina’); Marcocchi, Colonialismo, p. 73. 20 Olivier Sibre, ‘Le Saint-Siège et les recompositions stratégiques politico-missionnaires dans le Pacifique (1914–1919)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 65, 4 (2014), pp. 119–29. 21 ‘Do not make any effort, do not use any means of persuasion to induce these people to change their rites, their habits and their customs unless they are openly contrary to religion and good customs. What is more absurd, in fact, than transplanting France, Spain, Italy or some other European country to China? This is not what you must introduce, but the faith, which neither rejects nor damages the rites and customs of any people, as long as they are not evil. It wants rather to safeguard and consolidate them. And since it is a common characteristic of human nature to prefer and love one’s own customs and in particular one’s own national traditions to those of others, there is nothing that generates more hatred or resentment than to change national customs, especially those to which one has been accustomed since time immemorial, and particularly if they are asked to substitute for them the importation of the traditions of another’s country’ (‘Non compite nessun sforzo, non usate alcun mezzo di persuasione per indurre quei popoli a mutare i loro riti, le loro consuetudini e i loro costumi, a meno che non siano apertamente contrari alla religione e ai buoni costumi. Che cosa c’è infatti di più assurdo che trapiantare in Cina la Francia, la Spagna, l’Italia o qualche altro paese d’Europa? Non è questo che voi dovete introdurre, ma la fede, che non respinge né lede i riti e le consuetudini di alcun popolo, purché non siano cattivi, ma vuole piuttosto salvaguardarli e consolidarli. E poiché è carattere comune della natura umana preferire nella stima e nell’amore le proprie usanze e in modo particolare le proprie tradizioni nazionali a quelle altrui, non c’è nulla che generi maggiormente l’odio o il risentimento che il far mutare le consuetudini patrie, soprattutto quelle a cui si è abituati da tempo immemorabile, e particolarmente se al loro posto uno voglia sostituire, importandole, le tradizioni del suo paese’); Marcocchi, Colonialismo, p. 80.

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It sets in order the collection of responses provided by Rome to the most diverse questions encountered in missionary countries in Propaganda Fide’s Collectanea S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide: seu decretal, instructiones, rescripta pro apostolicis missionibus.22 This was encyclopaedic in nature, organized chronologically and more apt to define the law than to prioritize and define policy. More general works were also in circulation, in particular the Monita ad Missionarios edited by the first apostolic vicars of the MEP based on the instructions in Propaganda Fide. They were approved and recognized by the latter and translated and republished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the missionary societies under the title Instructions aux missionaires de la S. Congrégation de la Propagande. They made the way in which the missionary should behave, live and act on a daily basis explicit, and what a missionary apostolate should be. One already finds in all this documentation the advice given to missionaries to preserve their independence from princes and civil authorities, the urgency to open schools and form an indigenous clergy, the need to live an exemplary life and the prohibition of engaging in activities irreconcilable with the mission, in particular trade. However, the warning against the risk of subordination to countries and nations is no longer aimed at the exacerbation of nationalisms that characterized the post-war period and requires the removal of any ambiguities.

5. Back to the Origins and a New Foundation In point of fact, Maximum illud marks the affirmation of the authority of the papacy over the missions in unprecedented terms and with a new firmness. As Prefect van Rossum commented in 1926, in a preface to Rerum Ecclesiae, Maximum illud very quickly appeared to be ‘the lodestar, which in the vast programme of restoration of Pope Benedict XV of blessed memory was to stimulate the more concerted and methodical recovery of the modern apostolate’.23 No pope had in the same text affirmed his responsibility and the central place of the missions, set out the duties of the heads of missions and missionary societies, the need for missionaries to distinguish carefully the Kingdom of Christ from human kingdoms, and finally the urgency for all believers to mobilize. It presents a synthesis of teachings hitherto dealt with separately and translates the determined desire to complete the instructions of Propaganda Fide to the missionaries, in particular by specifying that the promotion of an indigenous clergy implies their access to the episcopacy. This makes Maximum illud a foundational document, or more precisely a refoundational document which, in returning to the origins of Propaganda Fide, brings the purpose of the 1659 Instruction up to date and solemnly endows them 22 Collectanea S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide: seu decreta, instructiones, rescripta pro apostolicis missionibus (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta, 1893). 23 ‘La diana sacra, che nel vasto programma di restaurazione di PP. Benedetto XV di venerabile memoria doveva stimolare la ripresa più concorde e metodica dell’apostolato moderno’; ACPF, Nova Series, vol. 949, rubr. 71/5, f. 486, preface to the encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae to be published in a collection of encyclicals with a commentary for use by Catholic university students.

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with pontifical legitimacy. We can speak of a qualitative leap symbolized by the affirmation of the rights of an indigenous clergy to govern without further delay and with their vocation to replace the missionaries. It is not surprising that the successors of Benedict XV acknowledged in their missionary encyclicals the paternity of Maximum illud by citing it as the first of all the other pontifical documents upon which they drew.24 What led to the publishing of this text in November 1919, however, is still to be established.

6. Was Maximum illud a Letter for China? Despite the universal nature of the address, contemporaries, and subsequently historians, have seen in the pontifical intervention a text addressed primarily and principally to the missions in China. The most rigorous works published by the historian Claude Soetens from the archives of Vincent Lebbe in Louvain, those carried out since the 1980s by Belgian, French and Italian academics, have confirmed this reading of a document that owed much to the reports sent to Rome by Lebbe and by his friend Cotta, relayed by Gaston Vanneufville, a correspondent of the paper La Croix in Rome, who was their effective spokesman to Propaganda Fide and to the curia in general.25 The convergence of the works, heirs to older studies, enriched by the opening of the Roman archives and up to the pontificate of Benedict XV, pays true credit to this interpretation. Whether we examine it through the diplomatic choices of the Holy See or the ‘problem of the missions’, the desire to reorganize the missions or to promote indigenous clergy, the Roman centralization of the works in favour of the missions or the affirmation of the trans-nationality of Catholicism, we always find a concern for what Rome perceived to be an irritating and at times exasperating resistance of China to the missionary efforts and the search for a strategy capable of overcoming the impasse. To tell the truth, this feeling of failure in point of fact is of ancient origin.26 It was expressed as early as the rites controversy, became established with the expulsion of the missionaries and was reactivated with the meagre results obtained after the reopening of China in the nineteenth century and the signing of the treatises aimed at creating favourable conditions for the freedom of the missions. The disillusionment was proportional to the hopes aroused during the pontificate of Leo XIII, who repeatedly expressed his bitterness after the failure to open diplomatic relations with China. Conceived as a weapon against the subordination to France, which had established itself as the protector of Catholic missions, the establishment of direct relations suffered a new and very painful episode for the Holy See in 1918 24 This is the same for Rerum novarum in encyclicals on social doctrine. 25 For a summary of these positions, see the important contributions collected in Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV, ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Studium, 1999). 26 Claude Prudhomme, ‘Résistances à l’évangélisation et stratégies missionnaires romaines: l’exemple de la Chine (XIXe–XXe s.)’, in Résistances à l’évangélisation: interprétations historiques et enjeux théologiques, ed. by Jean Pirotte (Paris: Karthala, 2004), pp. 209–32.

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with the French veto that forced the Chinese government to cancel the exchange of official representatives between Rome and Peking. While Maximum illud, as we have seen, carefully avoided raising the issue, at a time when the resumption of diplomatic relations with France was on the agenda, the affirmation of the necessary independence of the missions with regard to politics and nationalism proves that Rome had not abandoned its objective even if it chose another path. In the absence of direct diplomacy, the papacy decided to appoint apostolic delegates that were not in principle of a diplomatic nature. In actual fact, the boundary was sufficiently fluid for the delegates to have the opportunity to play a diplomatic role. Rome saw this strategy lead, four days before the publication of Maximum illud, to the nomination of the first apostolic delegate to Japan. Under Pius XI, China and Indochina followed in 1922 and 1925 respectively. However, it is above all the many analogies between the proposals of Lebbe and Cotta and the contents of Maximum illud that have convinced historians of a direct influence. On this point, however, some nuances should be added. As we have observed, the orientations set by Benedict XV for the most part find antecedents in the instructions of Propaganda Fide. One could also add to this the memoirs which, since the Vincentian Joseph Gabet in 1846,27 arrived in the office of the congregation, and the successive files which were composed from the documents in the archive by the minutanti and the secretaries of dicastries in order to prepare the meeting of the cardinals (‘congresso’). These constitute an abundance of material regularly cited in the Acta. It shows that Propaganda Fide sought to establish an accurate diagnosis of the situation by diversifying its information in order to understand the failure of the missions in China and to find appropriate remedies. From this perspective, the reports of Lebbe and Cotta are only one particular element that was added to the collection of reports of the heads of mission and to the spontaneous correspondence of some missionaries, and the specific influence of each cannot be evaluated with any certitude. The points of agreement in the criticisms, confirmed by personal meetings with the Pope and with the heads of Propaganda Fide, without doubt convinced the Pope and his closest advisers to intervene after the war in the missionary issues that had become the subject of a heated confrontation among the missionaries in China. Nevertheless, the focus on China alone, in a document with a general scope, cuts off the Roman perspective from its universal ambitions. The importance attributed to China should not in effect lead to minimizing the implications of Maximum illud for the other regions in Asia. Information that had arrived from the missions since the war indicated the extent of the changes that were in progress throughout the continent. The evolution of Japan, the other great Asian nation that remained independent, had been followed very closely since the Japanese Empire made a spectacular entry into the circle of the great powers in the first decade of the century. All missionary correspondence tended to show that the country was at a crossroads in its history, fascinated by Western modernity and

27 Joseph Gabet, Coup d’œil sur l’état des missions de Chine présenté au Saint-Père le pape Pie IX (Poissy: G. Olivier, 1848; reprint edition, Paris: Valmonde, 1999).

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proud of its culture, concerned with safeguarding its independence and preserving its traditions. Moreover, if the Japanese missions did not possess a critical core of missionaries, as in China around Lebbe, the stagnation in conversions provoked an unease that called for effective remedies. Thanks to their population and their resources, the British Indies constituted a third major point of interest for the Holy See, which had inaugurated a policy of direct intervention in the life of these missions during the pontificate of Leo XIII. This is reflected in the erection of an ordinary hierarchy in 1886 and by the nomination, from 1887, of apostolic delegates:28 Aiuti, followed by Zaleski, then Fumasoni Biondi. The latter were charged with implementing the Roman directives in order to coordinate the action of the missions and accelerate the indigenization of the clergy. An encyclical, Ad extremas Orientis (of 1893), and some specific instructions on the part of Propaganda Fide, Cum postremis in 1893, then the foundation of a central seminary in Kandy, Sri Lanka, in 1894, increased pressure on the missionaries. The reports of the delegates had in effect afforded the papacy a more precise and critical view of the insufficiencies of missionary action than the reports of the heads of missions. They all agreed in pointing out the need to effect the indigenization of the clergy truly and to take account of anti-colonial sentiments. Without doubt, it was not for Rome to openly criticize British colonization, although it was judged severely by the Apostolic Delegate Zaleski, and the question of national interests was posed in very different terms in the British colonies, where the majority of the missionaries were not British. However, in 1919 Maximum illud gave a new impulse to these orientations in the Indies. Can one say the same for French Indochina? The Roman perception of the situation in the missions and colonization there seems more positive. The protection of France and the links of the missions with the colonial administration were not overtly discussed as long as the functioning of the missions did not seem to be hindered. However, the fact that the promotion of an indigenous clergy was very slow was also a cause for concern. The reawakening of Annamite nationalism, mentioned in the reports of the missionaries, and the sending of three Vietnamese priests to the penal colony of Poulo Condor in 191029 reinforced Propaganda Fide’s conviction that it was necessary to anticipate indigenous criticisms against the exogenous character of the missions. The situation was judged to be sufficiently serious to justify the hypothesis of nominating an apostolic delegate dependent on Propaganda Fide having the task of applying the Roman directives. Following the mode of operation used in China, the sending of an apostolic visitor in 1922, the French Jesuit Lécroart, who was the Apostolic Vicar to Southeast Tcheli, allowed for the preparation of the nomination of an apostolic delegate in 1925.

28 This issue has been developed in Claude Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878–1903) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994). 29 Claire Tran Thi Liên, ‘Religion et pouvoir colonial dans les pays de l’Indochine’, in Religion et colonisation: Afrique-Asie-Océanie-Amériques (XVIe–XXe siècles), ed. by Dominique Borne and Benoît Falaize (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 2009), pp. 185–201 (p. 198).

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The similarity of approaches thus attests to the development of a coherent action under Benedict XV that targeted all missions in Asia and was part of a geopolitical missionary approach in the aftermath of World War I. For the time being, the Pacific and African colonies were not the main concern, but they were not missing on the Roman horizon. Australasia (Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand) received an Apostolic Delegation at the end of the pontificate of Pius X, on 15 April 1914. The repartition of territories was adapted in 1921 to the new map of the Pacific by linking the Caroline, Marshall and Mariana Islands to the Delegation of Japan. Hawaii was attached to the US Delegation and Guam to that of the Philippines. In the Dutch Indies, the criticism of the methods of colonization and the missionary apostolate had been expressed before the war by the Jesuit Franciscus van Lith, who advocated investment in schools, the study of traditions and the formation of an indigenous clergy. The foundation of Islamic associations posed, at the same time in political terms, the question of the future of Indonesian culture. The possibility of an indigenous representation on an advisory council was discussed from 1918.30 Propaganda Fide was also aware of the changes that were on their way in Africa, without being able to anticipate their effects. At least it was convinced that it was urgent to extend ‘a network of missions’31 across the whole continent if Catholicism did not want to be surpassed by Protestantism. It applied there the nomination of apostolic delegates dependent on Propaganda Fide, first in Southern Africa with a brief of 7 December 1922. It extended this under Pius XI to most of colonized Africa on 11 January 1930 and to the Belgian Congo on 19 January 1930. The residence of the delegate was established in the capital for China and Japan, suggesting that the delegate was far more than the mere representative of Propaganda Fide, that is to say, a quasi-nuncio. In the colonies, the choice was made for a city where the Catholic presence was sound: in the Indies in Bangalore, in Southern Africa in Bloemfontein and in Indochina in Hué.

7.

Missionary Mobilization in an Age of Catholic Globalization

The pontificate of Benedict XV renewed, through his missionary strategy, the universal perspective developed under Leo XIII and implemented in 1887 with the help of Rampolla, under whose authority Pietro Gasparri and several of his collaborators served their apprenticeship in ecclesiastical affairs. From the beginning of the pontificate, a series of Roman initiatives began to reaffirm the importance attributed to the missions despite the world war. These were effected over a period of about

30 Dalle missioni alle chiese locali (1846–1965), ed. by Josef Metzler (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), pp. 403–09. 31 ACPF, Acta (1919), vol. 290, f. 385v, ‘Relazione circa un progetto di riorganizzazione della Pia Opera della propaganda delle fede’.

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fifteen years by an impressive series of directives, of calls to order, of para-diplomatic decisions (nominations of apostolic delegates to Japan, China and Indochina; the progressive removal of the protectorate claimed by France for the missions) and carefully staged decisions (consecration of indigenous bishops). These testify to the papacy’s determination to assert its independence after the war, to signal its difference from the great powers and to circumvent its powerlessness to influence the course of the war or the peace conference in Paris. They stimulated ‘the missiological movement’, to use the phrase that appears in the classification in the archives of Propaganda Fide in the interwar years. Cohesion and unity of action were made possible by the fact that Gasparri remained at the helm of the Secretariat of State after the death of Benedict XV, and Cardinal van Rossum, who was Dutch and thus neutral during the war, as Prefect of Propaganda Fide. The implementation of this ambitious policy rested with a small number of ecclesiastics of the same generation.32 Among these emerged Bonaventura Cerretti in 1919, employed by the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs from 1902 to 1906, Apostolic Delegate to Australia from 1914 to 1917, Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs from 1917 to 1921, before being named Nuncio to Paris, besides Pietro Fumasoni Biondi, at first minutante at Propaganda Fide and professor at the Urbaniana, then Apostolic Delegate to the Indies and Japan.33 One must also include, in 1919, Bartolomeo Cattaneo, Apostolic Delegate to Australia, Pietro Pisani, Apostolic Delegate to the East Indies and Costantino Aiuti, future Delegate for Indochina in 1925. They were all educated in the same Roman institutes;34 during their studies in Rome, they resided at the Capranica College (Cattaneo, Petrelli) and at the Roman seminary (Aiuti, Fumasoni Biondi); they attended the Lateran or the Gregorian Universities for theology, the Apollinare seminary for law (Cerretti), and taught at the Urbaniana University (Fumasoni Biondi, Aiuti) and lived in the same area, which facilitated meetings.35 This small nucleus of collaborators had in common the will to connect diplomatic action and activity in the missions, to affirm the universal influence of the Church, to accelerate the plantatio Ecclesiae in all parts of the world and to affirm the supranational or extra-national character of Catholicism, in accordance with the pontificate’s plan. It is not possible to study here this core group of decision makers who acted in the service of the Secretariat of State and Propaganda Fide. The preponderance of the former in the definition and implementation of missionary activity is visible. It is reflected in the weight of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, of

32 Biographies in Harris M. Lentz III, Popes and Cardinals of the 20th Century: A Biographical Dictionary ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002); Annuaire pontifical catholique, XXIII. 33 He would be named Secretary of Propaganda Fide in June 1921. 34 Celso Costantini, first Apostolic Delegate to China in 1922, also obtained a PhD in philosophy in Rome, but gained most of his formation in Venice. 35 Even though Benedict XV came from there, the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics did not furnish any apostolic delegates in this period, which came from the networks of Gasparri and Propaganda Fide (Aiuti, Cattaneo and Fumasoni Biondi).

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which Pietro Gasparri had been the Secretary during the period 1901–07, while Della Chiesa was sostituto of the Secretariat of State. The inventory of the archives shows that this congregation solved the urgent issues in the aftermath of the war. Curiously, unlike his predecessors (and his successor), the Dutch Prefect of Propaganda Fide was not a member of this congregation. However, this did not prevent Cardinal van Rossum, a former expert on the Commission for the Codification of Canon Law chaired by Gasparri, from participating in certain decisions thanks to the mixed commissions which brought together some cardinals from Ecclesiastical Affairs and Propaganda Fide. This leads us to hypothesize a division of roles between the Secretariat of State and Propaganda Fide, according to the model followed under Leo XIII. The Prefect of Propaganda Fide was intransigent in the defence of the rights of his congregation36 and the independence of the missions, while the Secretary of State adopted a more conciliatory line in his relations with the countries and reserved for himself issues of a political-diplomatic nature.37 It was he who in the end, and under the authority of the Pope, decided whether or not to compromise.

8. Was Roma locuta a causa finita? The Church’s missionary strategy after World War I owes much to the role played by Maximum illud in setting a course with two non-negotiable priorities: the indigenization of the clergy and the independence of the missions in regard to national interests. These were nothing original, let alone progressive, but they were imposed as non-negotiable principles. The arguments advanced to slow down the promotion of indigenous clergy were openly challenged by the Pope, who organized the consecration of indigenous bishops in Rome, accelerated the foundation of seminaries and demanded rapid results. The independence of the missions was more difficult to implement, even though van Rossum made it a fundamental characteristic upon which the success of the missions depended. ‘The organization of the missions has always been

36 This division is illustrated by an exchange between Gasparri and van Rossum on 7 November 1925 regarding a protest by the French government which complained of not having been informed of the nomination of Aiuti as Propaganda Fide’s Apostolic Delegate to Indochina. Van Rossum’s reply was transmitted orally and conserved in a written note that affirmed an uncompromising position: ‘It seems totally contrary to the theological-legal concept of the Apostolic Delegate, who is a representative of the Pope in puris spiritualibus; he is the longa manus of the Vicar of Jesus Christ; he is the Pope himself in remote regions. It seems contrary to the dignity of the Pope to have to submit his choice in advance to a secular government’ (‘pare totalmente contrario al concetto teologicogiuridico del Delegato Apostolico il quale è il rappresentante del Papa in puris spiritualibus; è la longa manus del Vicariato di Gesù Cristo; è il Papa stesso nelle lontane regioni. Sembra contrario alla dignità del Papa di dover sommettere previamente la scelta a un governo secolare’); ACPF, Nova Series, 1923–25, vol. 800, rubr. 17/2, f. 421. 37 Notably the fate of the German missions after the war, the administration of the territories under Spanish and Portuguese patronage, or relations with China and Japan.

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characterized by complete freedom […] and it would be highly deplorable if limitations on freedom, tolerated by the Church in certain nations, were to be extended to the missions’.38 Its application in the field faced two obstacles. The first came from missionaries who invoked the need for protection to guarantee religious freedom in the countries where it was not guaranteed by law or reality, as in China. The politics of concordats of the Holy See provided them with arguments by confirming previous agreements with the Independent Nation of Congo in 1906, then with Belgium in 1908. The ambiguity was heightened in 1926 by the preferential status that Portugal gave to the Catholic missions for motives that were hardly in conformity with the missionary doctrine set out in the pontifical texts (‘as national instruments of civilization and influence’).39 The assurance of protection and material and financial benefits seemed to prevail over principles. The second difficulty was the delimitation of the political field. The distinction of interests seemed to be self-evident in the missions in a colonial context as long as colonization was the object of a large consensus. The Superior General of the White Fathers, Léon Livinhac, reiterated the directives of the apostolic letter in his January 1920 instructions: ‘Nothing is more deplorable and more capable of diminishing their prestige and inspiring the mistrust in the peoples by making them believe they are agents of the government and not men of God’.40 The abstention required of missionary clergy became more difficult when conflicts increased in the 1930s, placing the foreign missionaries in a delicate situation and rendering neutrality either badly compromised or impossible. In China, the partisans of fidelity to the Chinese authorities and of support of the government, for example Lebbe, were opposed to those who were conciliatory towards Japan after their conquest of Manchuria or the Sino-Japanese War. In Indochina, the overwhelming majority of French missionaries were attached to colonization, but several Vietnamese priests were favourable to the nationalist movement from the time of its birth. In India, nationalism found its support among the Indian clergy of the so-called Oriental Churches. The prohibition extended to missionaries of putting themselves at the service of their nations, first in Asia, then in Africa, did not therefore solve the question of the role of politics in the churches that arose from the missions: it transferred the problem to the indigenous clergy. The growth in the movement in favour of the emancipation of colonized peoples confirmed the limitations of

38 ‘Il regime delle missioni è stato sempre caratterizzato da una piena libertà […] e sarebbe altamente deplorevole se le limitazioni de libertà, tollerate dalla Chiesa presso alcune nazioni, si dovessero estendere al campo delle missioni’; ACPF, Nova Series, 1923–25, vol. 800, rubr. 17/2, f. 421. 39 ‘Comme instruments nationaux de civilisation et d’influence’; Guide des missions catholique (Paris: Œuvre pontificale de la Propagation de la Foi, 1937). 40 ‘Rien de plus déplorable et de plus capable de diminuer leur prestige et d’inspirer la méfiance aux populations en leur faisant croire qu’ils sont les agents de leur gouvernement et non des hommes de Dieu’; Léon Livinhac, Instructions de Monseigneur Livinhac aux missionaires d’Afrique (Pères blancs) (Algiers: Imprimerie des Pères blancs, 1932), p. 242.

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a nationalist critique that would thus allow the missions to begin to disassociate themselves from colonization. 1914–22: Benedict XV, Gasparri, van Rossum (from the end of November 1918) 1914 1916 1918 1919 1920 1921

15 April: establishment of the Apostolic Delegation for Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. Approval of the Unio Cleri Pro Missionibus. First volume of Father Streit’s Bibliotheca missionum. 12 March: van Rossum appointed Prefect of Propaganda Fide. 26 November: establishment of the Apostolic Delegation to Japan (Father Fumasoni Biondi). 30 November: Maximum illud apostolic letter. 12 January: examination of a project for the reorganization of the Opere Pie per la Propagazione della Fede.41 Status of the places of mission. The reorganization would be implemented by Pius XI in 1922. 15 October: instruction to the Apostolic Delegate Pietro Pisani that legitimized the desire of Indian Catholics to be guided by indigenous bishops, but reminded them that only Rome can establish when the appropriate time to fulfil this desire would be.42

1922–30: Pius XI, Gasparri, van Rossum 1922

3 May: motu proprio Romanorum Pontificum.43 The document brought together and centralized in Rome the three most active and effective missionary agencies, all of French origin, in particular the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, founded in Lyon a hundred years earlier. It was a bitter centenary for a part of the French leaders of the association, especially those in Lyon, who worked at length to obstruct the operation.44 4 June: Pius XI, on the occasion of the solemn Pentecost Mass, delivered a now-famous homily, later widely quoted, in honour of the third centenary of Propaganda Fide.45 He launched a vibrant appeal for the mobilization of Catholics in favour of the missions. 9 August: establishment of the Apostolic Delegation to China (Celso Costantini).

41 ACPF, Acta (1919), vol. 290, Progetto di riorganizzazione della Pia opera della Propaganda Fide, ponenza del card. Merry del Val, ff. 376–546. Meeting of 12 January 1920, the congregation responded negatively ‘at least for now’ (‘almeno per ora’), while introducing a series of reforms; ACPF, Acta (1919) vol. 290, f. 411. 42 Benedict XV, Ad R. P. D. Petrum Pisani, archiepiscopum tit. Constantibus delegatum apostolicum in Indiis orientalibus nunnulla paterne admones in Ecclesiae utilitatem, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 14, 1 (1922), pp. 7–10. 43 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 14, 10 (1922), pp. 321–30. 44 Claude Prudhomme, ‘L’argent des missions et les enjeux du pouvoir’, in Entre idéal et réalité: actes du colloque international ‘Finances et religion du Moyen âge à l’époque contemporaine’ (Clermont-Ferrand, janvier 1993), ed. by Michel Aubrun and others (Clermont-Ferrand: Institut d’Études du Massif Central, 1994), pp. 367–87. 45 Pius XI, Accipietis Virtutem, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 14, 10 (1922), pp. 344–48.

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1923 1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

23 September: the Jesuit Francis Tiburtius Roche was ordained the first Indian bishop in the contemporary age. The Holy Year was marked by a great missionary exposition held in the Vatican Gardens. It was inaugurated at Christmas 192446 and lasted until the Epiphany 1926. 20 May: erection of the Apostolic Delegation to Indochina. 7 December: establishment of the Apostolic Delegation to the Antilles dependent on the Consistorial Congregation. 28 February: encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae, only seven years after Maximum illud.47 15 June: Ab ipsis letter to the apostolic vicars in China.48 The penultimate Sunday of October became the World Missions Day. 28 October: the Pope consecrated in Rome six Chinese bishops on the first Feast of Christ the King. 5 June: creation of a missionary agency called Agenzia Fides. 27 September: St Thérèse of Lisieux became co-patron of the missions.49 29 October: the Pope ordained the first Japanese bishop on the occasion of the celebration of the second Feast of Christ the King. 1 August: letter of Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, in the name of the Pope, to the Chinese nation.50 He praised Chinese culture, declared his support of the new Kuomintang regime and asked Catholics to organize and develop Catholic Action in China. 6 December: Pius XI gathered in audience the procurators of the missionary congregations, asking them to transmit his warnings against the danger of promoting nationalism, inviting them not to interfere in secular affairs and urging them to be united. These directives were the subject of a circular from the Roman congregation.51 11 January: establishment of an Apostolic Delegation to Africa with the exception of the independent countries of Southern Africa. 19 January: establishment of an Apostolic Delegation to the Belgian Congo.

46 The speech for the inauguration of the missionary exposition can be found in Annuaire pontifical catholique, XXIX (1926), pp. 621–23. 47 The text of the encyclical can be found in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 18, 3 (1926), pp. 65–83. 48 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 18, 8 (1926), pp. 303–07. 49 A file entitled ‘224 bishops ask for St Thérèse of the Child Jesus to be named special patron of missionaries and of missions’ appears in the inventory of the archives of Propaganda Fide, but it is empty; ACPF, 1927, vol. 947, 70/2, ff. 484–97. 50 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 20, 8 (1928), pp. 245–46. 51 ‘Trois recommandations du pape à tous les missionaires’, La Documentation catholique, 12, 23 (1930), col. 259.

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Bibliography Brou, Alexandre, ‘L’encyclique sur les missions: le clergé indigène, sa formation, détails rétrospectifs’, Études, 57, 162 (1920), pp. 592–612 Butturini, Giuseppe, and Gianni Colzani, Illuminata passione: il beato Paolo Manna nella storia della missione contemporanea (Bologna: EMI, 2001) Coulon, Paul, ‘Un mémoire secret de Libermann à la Propagande en 1846?’, Mémoires spiritaines, 3 (1996), pp. 19–50 Gabet, Joseph, Coup d’œil sur l’état des missions de Chine présenté au Saint-Père le pape Pie IX (Poissy: G. Olivier, 1848; reprint edition, Paris: Valmonde, 1999) Giovagnoli, Agostino, ed., Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV (Rome: Studium, 1999) Lentz, Harris M. III, Popes and Cardinals of the 20th Century: A Biographical Dictionary ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002) Livinhac, Léon, Instructions de Monseigneur Livinhac aux missionaires d’Afrique (Pères blancs) (Algiers: Imprimerie des Pères blancs, 1932) Marcocchi, Massimo, Colonialismo, cristianesimo e culture extraeuropee: l’Istruzione di Propaganda Fide ai vicari apostolici dell’Asia orientale (1659) (Milan: Jaca Book, 1981) Metzler, Josef, ed., Dalle missioni alle chiese locali (1846–1965) (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990) Prudhomme, Claude, ‘L’argent des missions et les enjeux du pouvoir’, in Entre idéal et réalité: actes du colloque international ‘Finances et religion du Moyen âge à l’époque contemporaine’ (Clermont-Ferrand, janvier 1993), ed. by Michel Aubrun and others (Clermont-Ferrand: Institut d’Études du Massif Central, 1994), pp. 367–87 Prudhomme, Claude, ‘Résistances à l’évangélisation et stratégies missionnaires romaines: l’exemple de la Chine (XIXe–XXe s.)’, in Résistances à l’évangélisation: interprétations historiques et enjeux théologiques, ed. by Jean Pirotte (Paris: Karthala, 2004), pp. 209–32 Prudhomme, Claude, Stratégie missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878–1903) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994) Sibre, Olivier, ‘Le Saint-Siège et les recompositions stratégiques politico-missionnaires dans le Pacifique (1914–1919)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 65, 4 (2014), pp. 119–29 Soetens, Claude, ed., Pour l’Église chinoise: recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe, 3 vols (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de la Faculté de Théologie, 1982–83), III: L’encyclique Maximum illud (1983) Tran Thi Liên, Claire, ‘Religion et pouvoir colonial dans les pays de l’Indochine’, in Religion et colonisation: Afrique-Asie-Océanie-Amériques (XVIe–XXe siècles), ed. by Dominique Borne and Benoît Falaize (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 2009), pp. 185–201

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The ‘Chinese’ Missionary Policy of the Holy See before Costantini

The appointment and presence of Celso Costantini as the Apostolic Delegate to Beijing from 1922 to 1933 marked the beginning of a turning point in the history of relations between the Holy See and China. It was a problematic, painful shift, and its limitations and developments lasted beyond that decade. It had a before and an after, a before in which China and the Holy See tried, unsuccessfully, to establish reciprocal official relations, and an after in which the Holy See alone took the initiative, appointing an Apostolic Delegate with religious duties, aware of the political repercussions of the gesture. Costantini laid claim to this, presenting himself ‘on his own’ to the Chinese authorities both in Canton and in Beijing without the accompaniment of a French diplomat. It was a significant but also a fragile gesture, which could not easily heal decades of misunderstanding and indecision in the relations among the Holy See, the various governments and the missionary world itself.1 The difficulty for the Holy See was clear: making sure that the missions were not dependent on France or that the costs of religious freedom — granted from the Unequal Treaty of 1844 — were not so burdensome that the Church and Christianity would be tied to Europe, consequently cutting them off from China. It was a turning point



1 Celso Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1922–1933: memorie di fatti e di idee, 2 vols (Rome: Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1946–47), I (1947), p. 33: ‘I presented myself on my own, deeming it appropriate to not, in any way, give credit to the suspicion that the Catholic religion appeared to be under the protection of, or even worse, a political tool at the service of the European powers’ (‘Mi presentai da solo credendo opportuno di non accreditare in alcun modo il sospetto che la religione cattolica apparisse come messa sotto tutela e, peggio, ancora, come strumento politico a servizio delle potenze europee’). According to the French government, Costantini should have been ‘under the protection of the French Legation’ (‘sotto la protezione della Legazione francese’). On his arrival, China was divided between the North, with its capital in Beijing, and the South, with its capital in Canton. In Canton, the French representative welcomed him without referring to the protectorate and wished him success. In Beijing, Costantini refused to reside with the ‘legations’ (‘legazioni’), living instead in the house of the Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Italiani (ANSMI; Association for Assisting Italian Missionaries). On this, see Vincenza Cinzia Capristo, ‘Celso Costantini in Cina tra diplomazia e religione’, in Il cardinale Celso Costantini e la Cina: un protagonista nella Chiesa e nel mondo del secolo XX, ed. by Paolo Goi (Pordenone: Risma, 2008), pp. 119–40.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 629–647 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118795

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that could not stop at the political level but had to concern the Church’s leadership and manner of proclaiming the Gospel. In this context, in the decades between the Unequal Treaty and Costantini’s appointment to Beijing, the Holy See’s initiatives aimed at missionaries and relations between China and the Holy See were so numerous and complex that it is difficult to find a harmony among, or an easy interpretation of, them.2

1.

The Missions in China in the Early Twentieth Century

There was nothing novel in Costantini’s presenting himself ‘on his own’. He did what was recommended by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, and the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum. The gesture was made in order to establish a break with prior tendencies so that Christianity and the Church might begin to be seen as belonging to China and not imposed from without, to then proceed to the celebration of a plenary council and the creation of an indigenous episcopacy.3 Above all, it was a strategy sought by Benedict XV in his apostolic letter Maximum illud of November of 1919, in which nationalism was stigmatized as a pestis teterrima, an evil that involved more than a few missionaries who were unable to accept a Church under Chinese guidance.4



2 Even after the Great War, Catholicism was considered a French religion, and 60 per cent of the missionaries were French. See Costantini, Con i missionari, I, pp. 139 and 318; and Jean-Baptiste Piolet, ‘Missions’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1903–72), X/1 (1928), cols 1935–36. With the Unequal Treaties, France had imposed itself upon the Chinese authorities as the missions’ protector without any prior agreement — at least in the beginning — with the Holy See or the French government. The protectorate was extended to every missionary and, until the early twentieth century, a French passport sufficed to enter and reside in China. Missionaries and regular Christians could make use of the rights established by the protectorate. On the history of the Unequal Treaties, in addition to the classics Louis Wei Tsing-Sing, La politique missionnaire de la France en Chine 1842–1856 et l’ouverture des cinq ports chinois au commerce étranger et la liberté religieuse (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1960) and Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Russell, 1929), pp. 306–16, I shall limit myself here to mentioning the most recent work, which is rich in archival documentation: Luciano Trincia, ‘La Santa Sede tra attività missionaria e interessi coloniali delle potenze europee in Estremo Oriente’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 24 (1998), pp. 257–86; Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV, ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Studium, 1999); and Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese: tra colonialismo ed evangelizzazione (1840–1911), ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli and Elisa Giunipero (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2005), pp. 21–80. For a complete introduction, see Claude Prudhomme, Missioni cristiane e colonialismo (Milan: Jaca Book, 2007). 3 Costantini, Con i missionari, I. On Costantini’s meetings in Rome with Gasparri and van Rossum, see Ruggero Simonato, Celso Costantini tra rinnovamento cattolico in Italia e le nuove missioni in Cina (Pordenone: Concordia Sette, 1985), pp. 73–74, 78, 83, 90. On these two figures, see Josef Metzler, ‘Präfekten und Sekretäre der Kongregation in der neuesten Missionsära (1918–1972)’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum: 350 anni a servizio delle missioni: 1622–1972, ed. by Josef Metzler, 3 vols (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1971–76), III/2 (1976), pp. 303–53. 4 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 2, 13 (1919), pp. 440–44 [accessed 10 January 2019]. On its impact, see Josef Metzler, La Santa Sede e le missioni: la

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Maximum illud was born in China, and its proposals were shared by more than a few important missionaries who were represented in the reports of Father Antoine Cotta and Father Vincent Lebbe, which they sent to Propaganda Fide more than once during the first two decades of the twentieth century.5 A precise analysis of the situation that was already harsh can be read in the letters from Canon Joly, in which the failure of the missions in China was attributed to political support. Costantini read these pages, together with the report that Bishop Jean-Baptiste Marie Budes de Guébriant, the Apostolic Vicar in Canton, wrote in June of 1920, after his visit to the missions in China and during his stay in Rome. De Guébriant’s text was also clear on the need for an indigenous episcopate and a better coordinated pastoral care.6 The considerations and proposals, however, were not shared by the whole missionary world in China, which was undecided and divided on the times and ways of achieving them, not to mention their very feasibility. Even for de Guébriant himself the possibility of Chinese bishops, besides the abandonment of the protectorate, required a long period preceded by the need for the formation of a Chinese clergy on a par with the missionary one with a preparation that was less nationalistic and more Catholic. The same line was followed by two French congregations, which were better prepared and organized, the Vincentian Fathers and the Paris Foreign Missions Society. The standpoint held by one of the most learned missionaries, Louis Kervyn — for whom China suffered under the burden of a kind of ‘second original sin’7 — even came close to being paradoxical. The situation within the Chinese nation itself was complex and delicate, divided at the time among ‘warlords’, among whom emerged the one who commanded







politica missionaria della Chiesa nei secoli XIX e XX (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1992); Claude Soetens, ‘La svolta della Maximum illud’, in Roma e Pechino, ed. by Giovagnoli, pp. 69–90; and Claude Soetens, Pour l’Église chinoise: recueil des archives Vincent Lebbe, 3 vols (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de la Faculté de théologie, 1982–83), III: L’encyclique ‘Maximum illud’. 5 On the history of the Maximum illud and for the memoirs of the missionaries Father Antoine Cotta and Father Vincent Lebbe, Soetens’s work, Recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe, is fundamental. On Lebbe, in particular, see Albert Sohier, Recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe: un an d’activité du père Lebbe: 1926 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de la Faculté de théologie, 1984). Also, on the writings of Lebbe and Cotta, see Bibliotheca missionum, ed. by Robert Streit, 32 vols (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1916–74), XIV/2: Chinesische Missionsliteratur, 1910–1950 (1960), pp. 102–07. 6 A point of reference for the curia and Propaganda Fide was Léon Joly, Le christianisme et l’ExtrêmeOrient, 2 vols (Paris: Lethielleux, 1907), I. On its influence on Lebbe and Costantini, see Ruggero Simonato, ‘Come un vino generoso e nuovo in botti vecchie’, in Da Castions di Zoppola alla Cina: opere e giorni del cardinale Celso Costantini, ed. by Fabio Metz (Zoppola: Comune, 2008), pp. 257–93. On Bishop de Guébriant’s apostolic visit and report, see Soetens, Recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe, I. 7 On the problems and issues mentioned, see Simonato, ‘Come un vino generoso’, pp. 268–69. On the positions of the most widely represented congregations, see Jean-Marie Planchet, Les missions de Chine et du Japon (Beijing: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1929). On the missionaries’ real experience of the Maximum illud and the delegate, see Simonato, ‘Come un vino generoso’, pp. 283–86. Emblematic of the issue remains Jean-Baptiste-Henry Garnier, Le Christ en Chine: morituri te salutant! (Paris: R. Picart, 1927). On missionary failure, see Jean-Baptiste Aubry, Les Chinois chez eux (Lille: Desclée de Brouwer, 1889) and, in particular, Louis Kervyn, Méthode de l’apostolat moderne en Chine (Hong Kong: Société des Missions-Étrangères, 1911), p. 366.

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from Beijing, the heir to the ancient Empire, and the one who commanded from Canton, heir to the young republic founded in 1911. China was unable to recover from the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century or from the strong intervention of European powers. It has a long history, which during the nineteenth century had become entangled with the Unequal Treaties: from the one stipulated at Whampoa on 24 October 1844 between the French Plenipotentiary, Théodore de Lagrené, and the imperial commissioner, Qiying, to the intervention of the Daoguang Emperor in 1846, in which the latter declared that the Christian religion had positive ethical purposes. These were two factors that coincided with the end to persecutions and the beginning of greater freedom, with the entry of new male and female missionary congregations and the beginning of the so-called third evangelization of China.8 At the same time that this was occurring, however, interference on the part of the European powers was becoming greater and more widespread. It was almost as if China was starting to be administrated by foreign commissioners, which had the effect of creating ‘states within the state’. The situation exploded at the end of the 1910s, with a nation in an increasing state of chaos due to the continual clashes among the ‘warlords’ and the increasing risk of a China being split up among some European states, Russia and nearby Japan. This was all occurring within the permanent confrontation with Western modernity, which excluded Christianity, along the lines of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, which the young Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong9 embraced, at least in theory. It was a complex reality, within which it was difficult for the missionaries and the Chinese to distinguish the religious aspect from the political one but from which it was necessary to extricate themselves in order to prevent the Church and Christianity from being seen by the common people and by the intellectuals as external to China’s history. The Prefect of Propaganda Fide, agreeing with the Secretary of State, pressed the issue. It was necessary to take the initiative without expecting assistance from nations. Versailles had taught this lesson, and Mgr Bonaventura Cerretti, the Holy See’s representative at the Peace Treaties in Paris, confirmed it. China was not to be

8 On the ‘third evangelization’, besides the classics — such as Joseph Schmidlin, Manuale di storia delle missioni cattoliche, 3 vols (Milan: Pontificio Istituto Missioni Estere, 1927–29), III: Le missioni nell’età contemporanea (1929), pp. 48–65, and Histoire universelle des missions catholiques, ed. by Simon Delacroix, 4 vols (Paris: Grund, 1956–59), III: Les missions contemporaines: 1800–1957 (1958) — see also Giorgio Melis, ‘La Chiesa in Cina’, in Dalle missioni alle chiese locali, ed. by Josef Metzler (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), pp. 313–48 and Fortunato Margiotti, ‘La Cina cattolica al traguardo della maturità’, in Sacrae Congregationis, ed. by Metzler, III/1, pp. 508–41. 9 The ius commissionis concerned evangelization in the missions. In fact, it was the basis for the congregations considering the territories in which they worked as their respective monopolies. On the history of the law, see Des missions aux églises, naissance et passation des pouvoirs: XVIIe–XXe siècles, ed. by Marc Spidler (Lyon: Université Catholique, 1990), pp. 271–74. On the cultural movements in China, see André Chih, L’Occidente ‘cristiano’ visto dai cinesi verso la fine del XIX secolo (Milan: Jaca Book, 1979), pp. 117–18 and 161. In particular, see Tang Yi, ‘Gli intellettuali del “Quattro maggio” e il cristianesimo’, in Roma e Pechino, ed. by Giovagnoli, pp. 227–41.

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lost. It had become ‘the’ mission par excellence as well as ‘the most formidable bloc of unbelief that exists’.10 It is difficult to identify who took the initiative. Gasparri was acquainted with the state of the missions in China and the importance of the protectorate. He was the author of the 1887 letter, Aspera rerum conditio, which was written after the failure of negotiations to open diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Holy See. He also knew Costantini and was not unaware of his appointment first as Apostolic Administrator of Fiume and then as bishop, having appreciated his gifts in untangling the confusion that had been created in that city following Gabriele D’Annunzio’s endeavour there. It was a very small matter in comparison to the Chinese situation, but of much the same nature. These were the grounds for his nomination as Apostolic Delegate to Beijing, of which he was informed by the Prefect of Propaganda Fide.11

2. Celso Costantini Costantini was unknown in the missionary world and even less in the Chinese world, while he was better known in places that had little or nothing to do with the missions, much less Chinese ones. A socialite among the clergy at the beginning of the century, he founded the magazine Arte Cristiana in 1912 and, on behalf of the arts, was parish priest in Aquileia. From the beginning of the war, he served as a military chaplain and, in that role, he liaised with the Duke of Aosta and the writer and journalist Ugo Ojetti. From 30 April 1920, he became Apostolic Administrator and then Bishop of the city of Fiume, playing a significant role during the events related to Gabriele D’Annunzio’s endeavour.12 It was a mixture of situations that he had been capable of untangling, understanding which way the winds of history were blowing. He was able, for example, to distinguish what was part of Church doctrine from what was transitory, as in the pages of his 10 ‘Le bloc d’infidelité le plus formidable qui existe’; for Gasparri and van Rossum, everything was rooted in the situation of the missions, which was a failure on the one hand but a unique opportunity on the other. On this, see Claude Soetens, L’église catholique en Chine au XXe siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1997); Soetens, Recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe; Simonato, ‘Come un vino generoso’, pp. 266–70. On de Guébriant’s role, see Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, I, pp. 48 and 143; Celso Costantini, ‘Monseigneur J. Budes de Guébriant’, Collectanea Commissionis Synodalis, 8 (1935), pp. 329–31. 11 On Gasparri’s role in the missions in China, see Armand Olichon, Les missions: histoire de l’expansion du catholicisme dans le monde (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1936), pp. 336–37 and Stanislaus Lokuang, ‘Il card. P. Gasparri fautore delle relazioni diplomatiche fra la S. Sede e la Cina’, in Miscellanea in memoriam Petri card. Gasparri (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Lateranensis, 1960), pp. 349–60 (pp. 355–58). On the part played by Gasparri and Ojetti (whose brother worked in the Secretariat of State) in Costantini’s appointment, see Simonato, Celso Costantini, pp. 64–65 and 73–74; and Celso Costantini, Foglie secche: esperienze e memorie di un vecchio prete (Rome: Tipografia Artistica, 1947), pp. 344–46. 12 Sparked by the research and studies that culminated in Simonato’s essay, Celso Costantini, interest in Costantini has grown. Signs of this interest include Il cardinale Celso Costantini, ed. by Goi and Da Castions di Zoppola, ed. by Metz, which are compilations not only of his work in China, but also include his formative years, his interest in art and liturgy and his role in the Great War and the Fiume endeavour.

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Doveri del clero al principio del secolo XX (The Clergy’s Duties at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century) or in risking his own life to free one of his bishops, who had been beaten up by a group of self-styled patriots that had accused him of having favoured the Austrians. During the negotiations between Italy and Croatia that were concluded in Rapallo, he also insisted on emphasizing that the significance of a peace treaty did not come from its having been stipulated on the strength of the defeat or victory of one over another but from the peace to be established, as had not been the case of that of Versailles. These actions were almost consecrated by the words that Constantini spoke on opening the Istituto San Filippo Neri (Institute of San Filippo Neri) in 1919, an orphanage where ‘the children of Italians and the children of the enemy [were welcomed] in one loving embrace, thinking that life — at its root — is neither Italian nor Austrian, but simply human’. For him, these were ‘children of the war’ (‘figli della guerra’), born of the violence perpetrated on women by passing soldiers, both Italian and Austrian.13 One fact is unquestionable. From his arrival in China, Costantini resolutely moved to clarify the meaning of his presence, refusing to reside within the ‘Legations’ because the missions did not belong to a state but to a church, which was capable of holding within a single embrace the fidelity of the Chinese both to their homeland and to the Church, trusting in a state’s just laws rather than in privileges.

3. A Long Journey to Overcoming Foreignness The problem of Christianity’s foreign nature did not date back to the Unequal Treaties alone but was also linked to the negative outcomes of two events occurring from the end of the sixteenth to the first half of the seventeenth centuries. These events had been designed and chosen to render Christianity Chinese and to liberate the missions from their different forms of ‘patronages’. Matteo Ricci’s strategy of acculturation degenerated into the ‘rites controversy’, and the creation of Propaganda Fide, in turn, operationally degenerated into a ‘congregationalism’, in the fact that the missionary congregations, in the name of the ius commissionis, had transformed the territories with which they had been entrusted into their own fiefdoms, creating divisions and shunning collaboration. It is a fact that the modern missions, at least until Vatican II, were part of the task that the Holy See saw as its sole responsibility. That was the situation that the Council of Trent had wanted, which had become Bellarmine’s ecclesiology.14 13 ‘Solo amplesso di carità i figli degli italiani e i figli del nemico, pensando che la vita, nelle sue fonti, non è né italiana né austriaca, ma semplicemente umana’; Laura Calò, ‘L’Istituto San Filippo Neri per la prima infanzia “Figli della guerra”: storia di un’istituzione unica in Europa’, in Il cardinale Celso Costantini, ed. by Goi, pp. 93–102 (pp. 94, 100). 14 This is the heart of the problem, in which Ricci’s experience, Propaganda Fide with its Instruction of 1659 and the ius commissionis intersect with colonialism. For an introduction, see Massimo Marcocchi, Colonialismo, cristianesimo e culture extra europee: l’istruzione di Propaganda Fide ai vicari apostolici

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It is equally true, however, that, while the Unequal Treaties favoured new missionary congregations, they also increased the missions’ dependence on the protectorate. This fact emerged during the course of Vatican I, when the majority of French apostolic vicars spoke out against attenuating forms of the protectorate, while the other apostolic vicars favoured the Holy See’s having direct relations with China. For the latter, the policy of dependence on France was a ‘cancer’ in the missions for the additional reason that the risk of a Chinese national church could not be excluded. This was a temptation that French missionaries might fall into, urged on by the fringe of the local clergy. Gallicanism was not yet over.15 In this context, from the 1880s the Holy See sought to solve a series of problems: French interference, the lack of collaboration among congregations, the search for a direct relationship with China and the formation of a local clergy who were equal to the task, while the cultural issue remained in the shadows. Even the text of the Neminem profecto of 1845 — the first magna carta of contemporary missions —, while referring to the Propaganda Fide Instruction of 1659, did not speak of it directly, limiting the discussion to the need to know Chinese for pastoral outreach, that is to say, the need for missionaries to be able to make themselves understood when preaching and administering the sacraments. This exhortation returned in the Propaganda Fide instructions after Vatican I.16 In point of fact, by the end of the 1840s and particularly at the beginning of the 1860s, with the mission entrusted to the Franciscan Luigi Spelta, the Holy See had already sought both to promote a greater collaboration among the congregations with a celebration of synods and to bring about the possible presence of a pontifical legate to Beijing. This was also the approach taken by Spelta’s successor, Mgr Eustachio

dell’Asia Orientale (1659) (Milan: Jaca Book, 1981), which includes the 1659 Instruction in an appendix. Also, Prudhomme, Missioni cristiane; Pierre Charles, Les dossiers de l’Action Missionaire 1926–1929 (Louvain: Éditions de l’Aucam), notebooks 82, 83, 84, and 85 of which deal, respectively, with ‘Le père Mathieu Ricci’, ‘La Chine, et les rites chinois’ and ‘Le p. de Rhodes’. Regarding Propaganda Fide, besides the aforementioned works edited by Metzler, see Massimo Marcocchi, ‘Propaganda fide’, in Storia della Chiesa dalle origini ai giorni nostri, 24 vols (Turin: S. A. I. E., 1957–94), XVIII/2: La Chiesa nell’età dell’assolutismo confessionale: dal Concilio di Trento alla pace di Westfalia (1563–1648), ed. by Luigi Mezzadri (1966), pp. 363–78. More specifically, see Luigi Mezzadri, Storia della Chiesa: tra Medioevo ed epoca moderna, 6 vols (Rome: CLV, 1999–2007), III: Il grande disciplinamento (1563–1648) (2001), pp. 321–46; Jacques Gernet, ‘Cina e cristianesimo’, in Atti del convegno internazionale di studi ricciani (Macerata–Roma, 22–25 ottobre 1982), ed. by Maria Cigliano (Macerata: Centro Studi Ricciani, 1984), pp. 101–20; and Gianni Criveller, Matteo Ricci: missione e ragione (Milan: Pimedit, 2010). 15 On the new missionary forces, see Margiotti, La Cina Cattolica, pp. 517–37; Luciano Trincia, ‘Francia, Cina e S. Sede: la “querelle” intorno alla nunziatura di Pechino del 1886’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 51, 1 (1997), pp. 1–34 (pp. 4–6). In particular, see Josef Metzler, ‘La S. Sede e le missioni nel XIX secolo’, in Dalle missioni alle giovani chiese, ed. by Josef Metzler (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), pp. 37–75. On the risk of a national church, see Elisa Giunipero, ‘Propaganda Fide tra missionari europei e clero cinese’, in Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese, ed. by Giovagnoli and Giunipero, pp. 67–80 (p. 74). 16 Claude Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII, 1878–1903: centralisation romaine et défis culturels (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994), pp. 201–19 and 499; and Marcocchi, Colonialismo, cristianesimo, p. 48.

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Zanoli, particularly during Vatican I, but with the sole result of aggravating the situation because, during the Council, the opposition of the French apostolic vicars meant that the Propaganda Fide Prefect’s two proposals were rejected: establishing an ecclesiastic hierarchy in China and sending an apostolic delegate.17 Everything began to move in that direction again with Leo XIII, continuing with Pius X and concluding during Benedict XV’s years with Costantini’s appointment. Under Leo XIII, however, everything recommenced in innovative terms. He did not restrict himself to sending an apostolic delegate but preferred to send a nuncio, opening diplomatic relations. In the decades between Leo XIII and Benedict XV, moreover, at least three series of negotiations between the Holy See and China stand out: those from 1884 to 1886 following the Sino-French War in Tonkin, in which some French missionaries had collaborated with the French military command; those between 1904 and 1907 when, following Russia’s defeat by Japan, the political balance in the Far East was changing, France being an ally of Russia; and finally, those carried out in 1918 in the face of a new, moral presence of the Church in China, which had been shaken by the end of the Empire and the birth of the Republic, when the state was at risk of collapsing. The latter’s treaty made even more sense because the constitution of 1912 recognized religious freedom. The attempt failed once again due to opposition on the part of French missionaries, who accused Benedict XV of a pro-German bias, forcing him to cancel Mgr Petrelli’s appointment as Nuncio to Beijing.18 Of these three series of negotiations, those carried out during the three-year period of 1884–86 remain emblematic. Everything began at the request of an apostolic vicar from Honan, Mgr Simeone Volonteri, and seemed to continue in the letter in which the Pope asked the Emperor to protect the missionaries. These produced no particular results, however, until, thanks to the initiative of the Chinese Viceroy himself, Li Hongzhang, the doors were opened. The Viceroy held that diplomatic relations between China and the Holy See were necessary in order to prevent the Church from continuing to be seen as a foreign reality instead of a moral force that was capable of giving life to society. Although it is difficult to be precise about the significance of the letter, it went beyond all expectations on the papal side, even harmonizing with Leo XIII’s vision of society. It was a request that could not be ignored, directly involving the Pope’s mission. In this context, Leo XIII undertook to continue negotiations despite the objections of a commission of cardinals. These cardinals were united in the desire not to reject China’s offer and to find a combination capable of holding together the Chinese request and French rights, but they were divided on the means of effecting this. It was a stalemate that, after a lengthy exchange of mediations and warnings by France, led the Pope to decide in favour of accepting China’s request and appointing a nuncio

17 On Spelta’s role, see Metzler, ‘La S. Sede e le missioni nel XIX secolo’, pp. 58–59, and Giunipero, ‘Propaganda Fide tra missionari europei’, pp. 70–71. 18 On the negotiations, see Agostino Giovagnoli, ‘Rapporti diplomatici fra S. Sede e Cina’, in Roma e Pechino, ed. by Giovagnoli, pp. 39–69; Trincia, ‘La S. Sede tra attività missionaria’, pp. 256–86; and Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese, ed. by Giovagnoli and Giunipero, pp. 21–81.

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in the person of Mgr Antonio Agliardi, former Apostolic Delegate to the East Indies, where he had solved the issue of Portughese padroado (‘patronage’). For Leo XIII, it was unacceptable that the pope should depend on others in his choices or that the Chinese Question could be solved by means of the appointment of an apostolic delegate whose function was solely religious and who was under French protection. On the other hand, the French government had no doubts and was ready, in the event of the Nuncio’s departure, to break off diplomatic relations and to eliminate subsidies to the Church. The situation became increasingly difficult for the Pope, partly because it could not be ruled out that the French Church, while not aligning with the government’s position, would suffer in silence without protesting. It was a risk that forced the Pope to suspend the project of establishing a nunciature. This had been suggested by Cardinal Lavigerie, a man loved and esteemed by Leo XIII, who thought that the line that had been assumed by the Holy See irritated not only the government, but the nation that boasted China’s most flourishing and organized missions. If Leo XIII was not insensitive to the restoration of temporal power and the search for the Church to have a new role on the international stage, he could not afford to alienate France’s support or, above all, open a path to division at the heart of the Church. France always remained ‘the Church’s eldest daughter’ (‘la fille aînée de l’Église’). It was a painful but necessary decision: ‘The greatest sorrow of my pontificate’ (‘il più grande dolore del mio pontificato’), Leo XIII was to say.19 It was a situation complicated by the intersection of many problems — political, ecclesiastic, religious and human — such as those of Chinese Christians, for many of whom the end of the protectorate held many disadvantages, in particular for the poorest who constituted the majority. It is true that the initiative began from China, but it remains difficult to indicate which and how much consensus it had within the entirety of Chinese powers or how far it was conditioned by the interventions of the European states, as happened in 1884–86 and in 1918. This is not to forget that a Catholic foreign minister, Lou Tseng-Tsiang, who later became a Benedictine monk, was a protagonist of the 1918 initiative. Something similar can be said about the relations between the Holy See and France. While it remains true that France opposed any attempt to reduce the rights of the protectorate — many times and in many confirmed ways — it is equally true that the questions and uncertainties with which the Holy See was dealing — having to marry requests from Propaganda Fide, the Secretary of State and the Pope himself — were no less pressing or weighty. Beyond the different reasons and strategies within both

19 On the negotiations between Leo XIII and China, see Louis Wei Tsing-Sing, ‘Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine sous le pontificat de Léon XIII: le problème de l’établissement d’une nonciature à Pékin et l’affaire du Pei-Tang’, Neue Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft, 21 (1965), pp. 18–36, 81–101, 184–212 and 252–71; and Albert Sohier, ‘La nonciature pour Pékin en 1986’, Neue Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft, 24 (1968), pp. 1–13. With continual, specific archival references, see Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, pp. 449–511. See also Trincia, ‘Francia, Cina e S. Sede’; Agostino Giovagnoli, ‘Leone XIII’, in Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese, ed. by Giovagnoli and Giunipero, pp. 33–47. On Lavigerie’s role, see Le cardinal Lavigerie: la mission universelle de l’Église, ed. by Xavier de Montclos (Paris: Cerf, 1968).

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the Chinese world and the Holy See, in the end, the uncertainties and difficulties in finding a positive conclusion to the negotiations won the upper hand. During Pius X’s pontificate, moreover, the end to papal diplomacy could not be dismissed. Particularly during the decades of Leo XIII, beyond the differences in strategy within the curia, the Holy See could hardly renounce the protectorate’s guarantees of religious freedom, which were also reaffirmed by the Congress of Berlin. Furthermore, in play were the doubt that the Chinese government could guarantee freedom throughout the whole country and the risk that the Holy See might become an instrument against France, from which almost two-thirds of the missionary forces, in personnel and economic aid, came, at least until the mid-1910s. This is not to forget that a nuncio in Beijing, without French support, might fall into the arms of other European powers or find himself isolated and impotent.20

4. Another Path to a Chinese Church: Indigenous Clergy Parallel to political initiatives, the Church also sought to overcome its foreignness and political dependence, particularly by other means, beginning with the formation of an indigenous clergy. It was an approach dating back to the Propaganda Fide Instruction of 1659, which had been reformulated in an ‘episcopal sense’ in 1787 by the Vice Prefect of Propaganda Fide, Stefano Borgia. It was then taken up again by Gregory XVI in Neminem profecto and reaffirmed at Vatican I, but with a significant difference, later confirmed in the Propaganda Fide Instruction Quae a presulibus of 1883: instead of promoting a Chinese clergy, it was necessary to look at its formation, pursuing in practice not the birth of a Chinese Church, but one incorporated into the ordinary regime of the ecclesiastic organization. This would be a ‘Romanized’ Church, focussing on the coordination between the different missionary forces, with its freedom ensured by the protectorate and its development of religious and charitable works. On the one hand, therefore, the reason why Propaganda Fide and the Instruction of 1659 were born took shape but, on the other, it grew distant. The guiding rationale took shape both because the leadership of the missions was shifted to Propaganda Fide, thus being detached first from the patronages, then from the protectorate, and

20 For an overview, see Jean Bruls, ‘Dalle missioni alle giovani chiese’, in Nuova storia della Chiesa, 5 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1976–79), V/2: La Chiesa nel mondo moderno, ed. by Roger Aubert, Jean Bruls and Joseph Hajjar (1979), pp. 266–85. Other than the authors and essays indicated in the previous note, on the various aspects, see Lou Tseng-Tsiang (Pierre-Célestin), Souvenirs et pensées: suivi d’une lettre à mes amis de Grande-Bretagne et d’Amerique (Paris: Dominique Martin Morin Éditions, 1948), pp. 39–66. On the political strategies in the Roman curia, see Luciano Trincia, Il nucleo tedesco in Vaticano e Triplice alleanza nei dispacci del nunzio a Vienna Luigi Galimberti (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2001); and Louis Wei Tsing-Sing, Le Saint-Siège et la Chine de Pie IX à nos jours (Sotteville-lès-Rouen: Éditions A. Allais, 1971). On the role of Propaganda Fide, see Jean Beckmann, ‘La congrégation de la Propagation de la foi face à la politique internationale’, Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, 19 (1963), pp. 241–71.

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because the Instruction of 1883 requested the bishops, in exercising their ministry, to be subject to Rome, not to their respective religious superiors. However, it was also made more distant because at the heart of the Instruction was not the creation of a Chinese Church but of a church that, according to Tridentine ecclesiology, was to be obedient to the pope. Historically, the theological policy carried out in the second half of the seventeenth century by the Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes prevailed. He saw the purpose of the missions as a plantatio ecclesiae, a church that acted from the bottom up instead of top down, as was what motivated Matteo Ricci in China and Roberto De Nobili in India, following the medieval tradition. For de Rhodes, it was within Christian communities that vocations were born and formed from catechists to priests and bishops. It was by remaining within these communities that, almost spontaneously, one remained faithful to the Church’s tradition and, at the same time, obedient to the pope. However, here too, de Rhodes’s inspiration was translated as a function of Roman ecclesiology because, at the heart of the Instruction of 1883, there was no prospect for a Chinese Church, since the bishops’ direct relationship with Propaganda Fide was emphasized, not that with their own religious institutes. They distanced themselves from ‘nationalisms’ and from the institutes’ ‘congregationalisms’, without, however, recognizing local cultures and traditions, which for de Rhodes was a necessary reference for the birth of a local church.21 Uniformity, rather than unity, was pursued. The same was also true of the formation of the local clergy, especially from the late 1870s, in harmony with the missionary world, the great majority of which came from Catholic intransigentism. In fact, from Leo XIII to Pius XII, rather than an indigenous church, the aim was the formation of a Christian society. With Leo XIII, in particular, the missionary question was not addressed from the starting point of theology but from the need to insert the missionary enterprise into a new Christian order to be established in society. It was a project that also had to be carried out by including the Church in the colonial process, so that it might constitute a public and social presence, even outside Europe.

21 A general overview is given in Marcocchi, Colonialismo, cristianesimo, pp. 15–50. A fundamental resource is Claude Soetens, ‘La S. Sede e la promozione del clero indigeno da Leone XIII a Pio XII’, in Chiese locali e cattolicità: atti del colloquio internazionale di Salamanca (2–7 aprile 1991), ed. by Hervé Legrand, Julio Manzanares Marijuan and Antonio García y García (Bologna: EDB, 1994). See also Liu Guopeng, ‘I caratteri del nuovo metodo missionario promosso da Costantini’, in Da Castions di Zoppola, ed. by Metz, pp. 295–320 (pp. 305–09). Again, Pierre Charles, ‘La formation du clergé indigène’, in Dossiers, in notebooks 121, 122, 123, on ‘necessity’, ‘difficulty’ and ‘realization’. On Propaganda Fide, see Josef Glazik, ‘The Springtime of the Missions in the Early Modern Period’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), V: Reformation and Counter Reformation (1980), pp. 575–614. On Quae praesulibus, see Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, pp. 201–08 and Giunipero, ‘Propaganda Fide fra missionari europei’, pp. 68–69 and 76–77. On Propaganda Fide’s instructions, in general, see Metzler, ‘La S. Sede e le missioni nel XIX secolo’. On the role played by de Rhodes, see Henri Chappoulie, Aux origines d’une église: Rome et les missions d’Indochine au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1943), I; Pierre Charles, ‘Le P. de Rhodes et l’ancienne mission indo-chinoise’, Dossiers, 83 (1928); and Henri Bernard-Maitre, ‘Le p. De Rhodes et les missions d’Indochine (1615–1645)’, in Histoire universelle, ed. by Delacroix, III, pp. 53–69.

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Combining, therefore, the proclamation of the Gospel with works of charity, missionary activity aimed at the birth of a Christian society in China, too. It was to be a society that breathed with two lungs: first, there could be no civilization without faith nor faith without civilization, and second, it was clear that there was only one civilization, that originating in the West, which was now close to being spread throughout the world.22 Missionary strategy was not supposed to have a cultural dimension. It was a chapter that would once again begin to be written with Costantini who, while coming from an intransigent background, was sensitive to the requests for Catholic renewal at the beginning of the century. This openness became even more decisive with him because Rosmini’s thought had influenced his formation through the work of Don Antonio Cicuto, his great-uncle and teacher.23

5. A Turning Point: Some of Its Aspects The decade of Costantini’s appointment to Beijing, therefore, marked a turning point in the Church’s strategy. It was a turning point that needs to be broadly outlined: its context, the role played by the protagonists, the lines they followed and its limitations. It was an onerous and decisive context, within the missions, internationally and within China, where at least three series of events converged. The French government made attempts to reassert its rights pertaining to the protectorate in a series of escalating episodes that culminated in the three years from 1926 to 1929 and corresponded to the delegate’s commitment to eventual diplomatic relations between China and the Holy See.24 On a national level, the 1920s were devastating, with China in the grips of the last battle among the ‘warlords’ within the broader struggle between Beijing and

22 See Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, pp. 375–410 and 441–64; Sciences de la mission et formation missionnaire au XXe siècle, ed. by Jacques Gadille and Marc Spindler (Lyon: Éditions Lyonnaises d’Art et d’Histoire, 1992), pp. 319–59; and Jacques Gadille, ‘L’ultramontanisme français au XIXe siècle’, in Les ultramontains canadiens-français, ed. by Jean Hamelin and Nive Voisine (Montréal: Boréal Express, 1985), pp. 27–66; Maurilio Guasco, Seminari e clero nel Novecento (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), pp. 82–96; Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese, ed. by Giovagnoli and Giunipero, pp. 81–311 with essays on the missionary activity of religious congregations in China. Starting from 1908, Father Lebbe’s social outreach was significant both for promoting Chinese Catholic Action as well as in the field of the media. In Tianjin (Tientsin) in 1915, he founded the daily newspaper Yishibao (The Common Good); see Simonato, ‘Come un vino generoso’, pp. 266–67. 23 Jacques Gadille, ‘Mission chrétienne et cultures’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 85, 3–4 (1990), pp. 705– 19; Jacques Gadille, La mutation des modèles missionnaires au XXe siècle: expériences d’inculturation chrétienne (Lyon: Associations des Facultés Catholiques de Lyon, 1983). On Costantini’s formation and Rosmini’s influence, see Simonato, Celso Costantini, pp. 25–32 and Simonato, ‘Come un vino generoso’, pp. 259–61. A broader key to understanding can be found in L’appel de la mission: forme et evolution, XIXe-XXe siècles: actes de la IXe session du CREDIC à Nimègue en 1988, ed. by Jean-François Zorn (Lyon: Université JeanMoulin, 1989), pp. 254–57. 24 On the trials of Costantini’s decade in China, especially at the hands of the French government, see Elisa Giunipero, Il contributo di mons. Celso Costantini alle relazioni tra governo cinese e S. Sede (1922–1933) (Milan: EDUCatt, 2012); Capristo, ‘Celso Costantini in Cina’, pp. 119–38.

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Canton. Finally, with an outcome that held great uncertainty for the future, Chiang Kai-shek’s victory veiled a new Chinese people, the communist one. Even more painful and burdensome were the growing divisions among the missionaries. The alliance established among the Coadjutor of Beijing, Fu Cheng Gong, the Dominicans and the Parisian government to set up a school under French direction, in opposition to the Catholic university protected by the delegate, was emblematic of the situation. In 1930, Costantini, confiding in Father Manna, said: ‘So many times, when I meet our missionaries, I find myself at a crossroads: either with them against Maximum illud or with Maximum illud against the missionaries’.25 The roles of the protagonists, at least on the part of the Holy See, were equally clear: from Pope Benedict XV to Secretary of State Gasparri, from the Prefect of Propaganda Fide, van Rossum, to Costantini. First of all, the Pope published Maximum illud before knowing the results of the apostolic visit to China that he himself had requested. Certainly, what was already known in the curia could suffice, also because Gasparri brought with him the experience of Leo XIII’s failed attempt and, above all, he had been the one to write the Aspera rerum conditio letter, in which the recognized rights of the protectorate could only be exercised in agreement with the Holy See. Van Rossum, furthermore, was someone who made decisions quickly once the problem was clear to him.26 Above all, however, it was necessary to change the approach of the Holy See’s action: it should not coincide with political factors or negotiations with the states, but with the Catholicity of the Church and the concrete ways in which the missionaries lived it. It was, therefore, an approach with a religious, not a political, bent. Here Pius X offered a better example than Leo. It was not by chance that Maximum illud stressed that the Church could not feel ‘foreign’ to any people and that the missionaries had let themselves become more involved in their love of country than in their love for the kingdom of God.27 It was therefore necessary to send someone unrelated to the game of political alliances to China so that he would not end up like Agliardi in 1886 or Petrelli in 1918,

25 ‘Quante volte, incontrandomi con i nostri missionari mi trovo ad un bivio: o con loro contro la Maximum illud o con la Maximum illud contro i missionari’; Cheng Fang Chong, ‘Il cardinale Celso Costantini nella vita della Chiesa cinese’, in Il cardinale Celso Costantini, ed. by Goi, pp. 103–18; Giunipero, Il contributo di mons. Celso Costantini. 26 The letter Aspera rerum conditio can be found in Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, p. 499. In 1904, Gasparri had written an unsigned letter to La Civiltà Cattolica on ‘Il protettorato cattolico della Francia nell’Oriente e nell’Estremo Oriente: studio storicogiuridico di un prelato romano’ (La Civiltà Cattolica, 4, 1305 (1904), pp. 257–76), which was then published separately. See also Olichon, Les missions, pp. 333–38. An analysis of Costantini’s Chinese name is also helpful: Gang (resoluteness), Heng (constancy) and Yi (staunchness). See Giunipero, Il contributo di mons. Celso Costantini. On cardinals Gasparri and van Rossum, see Lokuang, ‘Il card. P. Gasparri fautore delle relazioni diplomatiche’, pp. 355–57; and Metzler, Präfekten und Sekretäre, pp. 303–12. 27 Soetens, ‘La svolta della Maximum illud’. But it is the very structure and dynamic of the encyclical that goes in a religious direction. Costantini also wrote to Gasparri: ‘For China and for France, the protectorate is a political problem. For us, instead, it is an exquisitely religious problem’ (‘per la Cina e per la Francia il protettorato è un problema politico; per noi invece è un problema squisitamente religioso’); Giunipero, Il contributo di mons. Celso Costantini.

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that is to say, accused of being pro-German. It had to be a person capable of combining love of country with that for the Church. Pius XI replied dryly to his friend, Lorenzo Balconi — Apostolic Vicar of Hanzhong from 1928, who was worried about the fierce criticism of Costantini — that the latter, who had also been chosen for his actions in Fiume, was the right person and would continue the mission in China, which was indeed what happened.28 It was a strategic turning point, but not so in the directives. There was little or nothing new in them; they seemed to be a copy of the Instruction of 1659, even if the Pope did not cite it in Maximum illud. It repeated the need to form Chinese priests who were not auxiliaries of the European missionaries but capable of leading the Church. It also repeated the assertion that the missionaries should not fall into the spirals of nationalism or export their own traditions to China. The reference to traditions was particularly significant because it contained the cultural issue, the basis of which lay in the Church’s catholicity and not in the desire to find a new international role. Maximum illud also copied the Instruction in the precautions to be taken in preparing for the trip, in its completion and in communications with the public. It was necessary to keep each phase secret. Only upon arriving and having been presented to the civil and religious authorities could the delegate reveal the purpose of his mission.29 This was the context within which Maximum illud was to be applied: Propaganda Fide had the mandate — or rather the order — to facilitate its implementation in every way. The delegate had the task of bringing it to completion, beginning with the celebration of a ‘Chinese council’ to achieve the consecration of Chinese bishops, as occurred by the Pope’s hand in St Peter’s in 1926. There were not one or two bishops, as the apostolic vicars in China had requested and to which Propaganda Fide did not object, but six of them, as Costantini and Father Lebbe wanted. The objective was to establish the freedom of the missions based on the common law established by the Chinese constitution and not the favours of the protectorate, precisely as Pius XI reaffirmed in 1926 in the letter Ab ipsis, which was addressed to the apostolic vicars of China. Altogether, the initiatives found confirmation in two other facts: on 1 August 1928, Pius XI surprised European nations by recognizing Chian Kai-shek’s government that, starting from Canton, had reunified China and declared the Unequal Treaties null and void.30 The second was historic: the three low bows 28 Cheng Fang Chong, ‘Il cardinale Celso Costantini’, pp. 108–13. Archivio del Pontificio Istituto Missioni Estere (PIME), Roma, Fondo Tragella, corrispondenza, Balconi–Tragella, XI–1928. Father Angelo Bubani, an archivist of the PIME, recalled that Mgr Balconi (1878–1969), a childhood friend of Pius XI, had confirmed Pius XI’s judgement of Costantini. 29 A detailed comparison between the Maximum illud and the 1659 Instruction is sufficient to come to this conclusion; see Marcocchi, Colonialismo, cristianesimo, pp. 51–59 and 63–88; and Prudhomme, Missioni cristiane e colonialismo, 36–43. 30 On the Chinese councils, patriotic love and consecration of six bishops, besides Josef Metzler, Die Synoden in China, Japan und Korea, 1570–1931 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1980), see Simonato, ‘Come un vino generoso’, pp. 272–79 and Sohier, Recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe, pp. 19, 40 and 125. For a comparison in Costantini, in particular concerning the bishops and on the nuntium, see Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, I, pp. 348–49 and 375–79; II, pp. 29–33.

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with which the apostolic delegates honoured the coffin of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic, at his national funeral. Canonically, this was not permitted. It was a kind of anticipation of the end to the rites controversy. Pope Pius XI approved the gesture in order to silence any criticism of his delegate.31 In Costantini’s person and deeds, what had been discussed during the negotiations between the Holy See and China, both in 1886 and 1918, was being accomplished. Is it perhaps because the Holy See has no cannons that it could never fight against France? That is hard to answer, but it is clear that the modern pontifical magisterium on missions, and consequently the new mission, were born in China, just as it cannot be denied that the Church’s lack of cannons and its alliances with nations afforded the Holy See a new international role: a bearer of peace among nations, doing everything possible to avoid useless slaughter. That is what Costantini had sought in Fiume, and it was no coincidence that the attempt to establish direct relations with the Holy See had always initiated in China, including those that were at that time in progress.

Bibliography Aubry, Jean-Baptiste, Les Chinois chez eux (Lille: Desclée de Brouwer, 1889) Beckmann, Jean, ‘La congrégation de la Propagation de la foi face à la politique internationale’, Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, 19 (1963), pp. 241–71 Bernard-Maitre, Henri, ‘Le p. De Rhodes et les missions d’Indochine (1615–1645)’, Histoire universelle des missions catholiques, ed. by Simon Delacroix, 4 vols (Paris: Grund, 1956–59), III: Les missions contemporaines: 1800–1957 (1958), pp. 53–69 Bruls, Jean, ‘Dalle missioni alle giovani chiese’, in Nuova storia della Chiesa, 5 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1976–79), V/2: La Chiesa nel mondo moderno, ed. by Roger Aubert, Jean Bruls and Joseph Hajjar (1979), pp. 266–85 Calò, Laura, ‘L’Istituto San Filippo Neri per la prima infanzia “Figli della guerra”: storia di un’istituzione unica in Europa’, in Il cardinale Celso Costantini e la Cina: un protagonista nella Chiesa e nel mondo del secolo XX, ed. by Paolo Goi (Pordenone: Risma, 2008), pp. 93–102 Capristo, Vincenza Cinzia, ‘Celso Costantini in Cina tra diplomazia e religione’, in Il cardinale Celso Costantini e la Cina: un protagonista nella Chiesa e nel mondo del secolo XX, ed. by Paolo Goi (Pordenone: Risma, 2008), pp. 119–40 Chappoulie, Henri, Aux origines d’une église: Rome et les missions d’Indochine au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1943), I Charles, Pierre, Les dossiers de l’Action Missionaire 1926–1929 (Louvain: Éditions de l’Aucam) Charles, Pierre, ‘Le P. de Rhodes et l’ancienne mission indo-chinoise’, Dossiers, 83 (1928)

31 Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, II, pp. 105–09, where, concerning the ‘three bows’, the delegate noted his determination to carry them out, motivating the action. For a comparison, see Orioldo Marson, ‘Celso Costantini e la lingua cinese nella liturgia e la questione dei riti cinesi’, in Da Castions di Zoppola, ed. by Metz, pp. 217–55 (p. 244).

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Cheng Fang Chong, ‘Il cardinale Celso Costantini nella vita della Chiesa cinese’, in Il cardinale Celso Costantini e la Cina: un protagonista nella Chiesa e nel mondo del secolo XX, ed. by Paolo Goi (Pordenone: Risma, 2008), pp. 103–18 Chih, André, L’Occidente ‘cristiano’ visto dai cinesi verso la fine del XIX secolo (Milan: Jaca Book, 1979) Costantini, Celso, Con i missionari in Cina, 1922–1933: memorie di fatti e di idee, 2 vols (Rome: Unione Missionaria del Clero, 1946–47), I (1947) Costantini, Celso, Foglie secche: esperienze e memorie di un vecchio prete (Rome: Tipografia Artistica, 1947) Costantini, Celso, ‘Monseigneur J. Budes de Guébriant’, Collectanea Commissionis Synodalis, 8 (1935), pp. 329–31 Criveller, Gianni, Matteo Ricci: missione e ragione (Milan: Pimedit, 2010) Delacroix, Simon, ed., Histoire universelle des missions catholiques, 4 vols (Paris: Grund, 1956–59), III: Les missions contemporaines: 1800–1957 (1958) Gadille, Jacques, ‘Mission chrétienne et cultures’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 85, 3–4 (1990), pp. 705–19 Gadille, Jacques, La mutation des modèles missionnaires au XXe siècle: expériences d’inculturation chrétienne (Lyon: Associations des Facultés Catholiques de Lyon, 1983) Gadille, Jacques, and Marc Spindler, eds, Sciences de la mission et formation missionnaire au XXe siècle (Lyon: Éditions Lyonnaises d’Art et d’Histoire, 1992) Gadille, Jacques, ‘L’ultramontanisme français au XIXe siècle’, in Les ultramontains canadiens-français, ed. by Jean Hamelin and Nive Voisine (Montréal: Boréal Express, 1985), pp. 27–66 Garnier, Jean-Baptiste-Henry, Le Christ en Chine: morituri te salutant! (Paris: R. Picart, 1927) [Gasparri, Pietro,] ‘Il protettorato cattolico della Francia nell’Oriente e nell’Estremo Oriente: studio storicogiuridico di un prelato romano’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 4, 1305 (1904), pp. 257–76 Gernet, Jacques, ‘Cina e cristianesimo’, in Atti del convegno internazionale di studi ricciani (Macerata–Roma, 22–25 ottobre 1982), ed. by Maria Cigliano (Macerata: Centro Studi Ricciani, 1984), pp. 101–20 Giovagnoli, Agostino, and Elisa Giunipero, eds, Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese: tra colonialismo ed evangelizzazione (1840–1911) (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2005) Giovagnoli, Agostino, ‘Leone XIII’, in Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese: tra colonialismo ed evangelizzazione (1840–1911), ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli and Elisa Giunipero (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2005), pp. 33–47 Giovagnoli, Agostino, ‘Rapporti diplomatici fra S. Sede e Cina’, in Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV, ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Studium, 1999), pp. 39–69 Giovagnoli, Agostino, ed., Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV (Rome: Studium, 1999) Giunipero, Elisa, Il contributo di mons. Celso Costantini alle relazioni tra governo cinese e S. Sede (1922–1933) (Milan: EDUCatt, 2012) Giunipero, Elisa, ‘Propaganda Fide tra missionari europei e clero cinese’, in Chiesa cattolica e mondo cinese: tra colonialismo ed evangelizzazione (1840–1911), ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli and Elisa Giunipero (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2005), pp. 67–80

the ‘c hin e s e ’ m i s s i o n ary p o l i cy o f t h e h o ly se e b e fo re co stant i ni

Glazik, Josef, ‘The Springtime of the Missions in the Early Modern Period’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), V: Reformation and Counter Reformation (1980), pp. 575–614 Guasco, Maurilio, Seminari e clero nel Novecento (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990) Guopeng, Liu, ‘I caratteri del nuovo metodo missionario promosso da Costantini’, in Da Castions di Zoppola alla Cina: opere e giorni del cardinale Celso Costantini, ed. by Fabio Metz (Zoppola: Comune, 2008), pp. 295–320 Joly, Léon, Le christianisme et l’Extrême-Orient, 2 vols (Paris: Lethielleux, 1907), I Kervyn, Louis, Méthode de l’apostolat moderne en Chine (Hong Kong: Société des MissionsÉtrangères, 1911) Latourette, Kenneth Scott, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Russell, 1929) Lokuang, Stanislaus, ‘Il card. P. Gasparri fautore delle relazioni diplomatiche fra la S. Sede e la Cina’, in Miscellanea in memoriam Petri card. Gasparri (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Lateranensis, 1960), pp. 349–60 Marcocchi, Massimo, Colonialismo, cristianesimo e culture extra europee: l’istruzione di Propaganda Fide ai vicari apostolici dell’Asia Orientale (1659) (Milan: Jaca Book, 1981) Marcocchi, Massimo, ‘Propaganda fide’, in Storia della Chiesa dalle origini ai giorni nostri, 24 vols (Turin: S. A. I. E., 1957–94), XVIII/2: La Chiesa nell’età dell’assolutismo confessionale: dal Concilio di Trento alla pace di Westfalia (1563–1648), ed. by Luigi Mezzadri (1966), pp. 363–78 Margiotti, Fortunato, ‘La Cina cattolica al traguardo della maturità’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum: 350 anni a servizio delle missioni: 1622–1972, ed. by Josef Metzler, 3 vols (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1971–76), III/1 (1976), pp. 508–41 Marson, Orioldo, ‘Celso Costantini e la lingua cinese nella liturgia e la questione dei riti cinesi’, in Da Castions di Zoppola alla Cina: opere e giorni del cardinale Celso Costantini, ed. by Fabio Metz (Zoppola: Comune, 2008), pp. 217–55 Melis, Giorgio, ‘La Chiesa in Cina’, in Dalle missioni alle chiese locali, ed. by Joseph Metzler (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), pp. 313–48 Metzler, Josef, ‘Präfekten und Sekretäre der Kongregation in der neuesten Missionsära (1918–1972)’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum: 350 anni a servizio delle missioni: 1622–1972, ed. by Josef Metzler, 3 vols (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1971–76), III/2 (1976), pp. 303–53 Metzler, Josef, ‘La S. Sede e le missioni nel XIX secolo’, in Dalle missioni alle giovani chiese, ed. by Josef Metzler (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), pp. 37–75 Metzler, Josef, La Santa Sede e le missioni: la politica missionaria della Chiesa nei secoli XIX e XX (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1992) Metzler, Josef, Die Synoden in China, Japan und Korea, 1570–1931 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1980) Mezzadri, Luigi, Storia della Chiesa: tra Medioevo ed epoca moderna, 6 vols (Rome: CLV, 1999–2007), III: Il grande disciplinamento (1563–1648) (2001) Montclos, Xavier de, ed., Le cardinal Lavigerie: la mission universelle de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1968) Olichon, Armand, Les missions: histoire de l’expansion du catholicisme dans le monde (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1936) Piolet, Jean-Baptiste, ‘Missions’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1903–72), X/1 (1928), cols 1935–36

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Planchet, Jean-Marie, Les missions de Chine et du Japon (Beijing: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1929) Prudhomme, Claude, Missioni cristiane e colonialismo (Milan: Jaca Book, 2007) Prudhomme, Claude, Stratégie missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII, 1878–1903: centralisation romaine et défis culturels (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994) Schmidlin, Joseph, Manuale di storia delle missioni cattoliche, 3 vols (Milan: Pontificio Istituto Missioni Estere, 1927–29), III: Le missioni nell’età contemporanea (1929) Simonato, Ruggero, Celso Costantini tra rinnovamento cattolico in Italia e le nuove missioni in Cina (Pordenone: Concordia Sette, 1985) Simonato, Ruggero, ‘Come un vino generoso e nuovo in botti vecchie’, in Da Castions di Zoppola alla Cina: opere e giorni del cardinale Celso Costantini, ed. by Fabio Metz (Zoppola: Comune, 2008), pp. 257–93 Soetens, Claude, L’église catholique en Chine au XXe siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1997) Soetens, Claude, Pour l’Église chinoise: recueil des archives Vincent Lebbe, 3 vols (Louvain-laNeuve: Publications de la Faculté de théologie, 1982–83), III: L’encyclique ‘Maximum illud’ Soetens, Claude, ‘La S. Sede e la promozione del clero indigeno da Leone XIII a Pio XII’, in Chiese locali e cattolicità: atti del colloquio internazionale di Salamanca (2–7 aprile 1991), ed. by Hervé Legrand, Julio Manzanares Marijuan and Antonio García y García (Bologna: EDB, 1994) Soetens, Claude, ‘La svolta della Maximum illud’, in Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV, ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Studium, 1999), pp. 69–90 Sohier, Albert, ‘La nonciature pour Pékin en 1986’, Neue Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft, 24 (1968), pp. 1–13 Sohier, Albert, Recueil des Archives Vincent Lebbe: un an d’activité du père Lebbe: 1926 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de la Faculté de théologie, 1984) Spidler, Marc, ed., Des missions aux églises, naissance et passation des pouvoirs: XVIIe–XXe siècles (Lyon: Université Catholique, 1990) Streit, Robert, ed., Bibliotheca missionum, 32 vols (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1916–74), XIV/2: Chinesische Missionsliteratur, 1910–1950 (1960) Trincia, Luciano, ‘Francia, Cina e S. Sede: la “querelle” intorno alla nunziatura di Pechino del 1886’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 51, 1 (1997), pp. 1–34 Trincia, Luciano, Il nucleo tedesco in Vaticano e Triplice alleanza nei dispacci del nunzio a Vienna Luigi Galimberti (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2001) Trincia, Luciano, ‘La Santa Sede tra attività missionaria e interessi coloniali delle potenze europee in Estremo Oriente’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 24 (1998), pp. 257–86 Tseng-Tsiang, Lou (Pierre-Célestin), Souvenirs et pensées: suivi d’une lettre à mes amis de Grande-Bretagne et d’Amerique (Paris: Dominique Martin Morin Éditions, 1948) Tsing-Sing, Louis Wei, La politique missionnaire de la France en Chine 1842–1856 et l’ouverture des cinq ports chinois au commerce étranger et la liberté religieuse (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1960) Tsing-Sing, Louis Wei, Le Saint-Siège et la Chine de Pie IX à nos jours (Sotteville-lès-Rouen: Éditions A. Allais, 1971)

the ‘c hin e s e ’ m i s s i o n ary p o l i cy o f t h e h o ly se e b e fo re co stant i ni

Tsing-Sing, Louis Wei, ‘Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine sous le pontificat de Léon XIII: le problème de l’établissement d’une nonciature à Pékin et l’affaire du PeiTang’, Neue Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft, 21 (1965), pp. 18–36, 81–101, 184–212 and 252–71 Yi, Tang, ‘Gli intellettuali del “Quattro maggio” e il cristianesimo’, in Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV, ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Studium, 1999), pp. 227–41 Zorn, Jean-François, ed., L’appel de la mission: forme et evolution, XIXe-XXe siècles: actes de la IXe session du CREDIC à Nimègue en 1988 (Lyon: Université Jean-Moulin, 1989)

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The Re-Dimensioning of Anti-Modernism

Alejandro Mario Dieguez

‘A Kind of Freemasonry in the Church’: The Dissolution of the Sodalitium Pianum

As often happens when dealing with the enigmatic character of Mgr Umberto Benigni,1 an analysis of what should have been the definitive dissolution of his first and major creation, the Sodalitium Pianum (or La Sapinière), also escapes attempts at a precise reconstruction. Although the correspondence between the Congregation of the Council and the ‘General Director’ of the secret organization is widely known, thanks to its immediate disclosure effected by the person directly concerned and its subsequent publications, the original archival file cannot be found today. There is one sole piece of direct documentation, file no. 5101 of 10 November 1921, ‘Circa associazione e sac. Benigni’ (‘On Association and Father Benigni’), the object of many reassessments over the years, that may definitively clarify how much Benigni was able to know at the time, or we today might learn but can only deduce: who the ‘instigator’ of the inquiry and of the subsequent injunction to dissolve the unique association was.2 It seems noteworthy that, several years later, a few days before appearing before the Ordinary Roman Tribunal for the beatification of Pius X, Cardinal Gasparri felt the need to put hands on this case file. In his deposition of 28 March 1928, the



1 For a general overview of the character of Benigni, a prelate from Perugia, journalist and publicist, Undersecretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs from 1906 to 1911, founder of the Sodalitium Pianum and the Urbs agency, see Pietro Scoppola, ‘Benigni, Umberto’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), VIII (1966), pp. 504–08. Still foundational are the works by Sergio Pagano, ‘Il Fondo di mons. Umberto Benigni dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano’ and ‘Documenti sul modernismo romano dal Fondo Benigni’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 8 (1990), pp. 223–300 and pp. 347–402. See also the descriptive work carried out on the Farnesina papers by Claudio Maria Mancini, Il Fondo Benigni dell’Archivio storico del Ministero degli Affari esteri (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 2011). 2 Among the provisions recorded in the file are: ‘20 March 1928, requested by Card. Gasparri’, ‘5 May 1928, sent to the Secretary of State, also the abstract of 5 May’, ‘8 May 1928, returned by the Secretary of State, etc. (located in the archive)’. However, on 25 June 1953, with file 2979/53 A. S. there was another resumption (see ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Protocollo generale 86, n. 5101/21). The directors of the Archives of the Congregation for the Clergy and of the Section for Relations with States of the Secretariat of State, whom I thank here, assure me that they have found no trace of this file.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 653–670 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118796

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Secretary of State listed the issue of the Sodalitium Pianum among the ‘Dark Points’ that could have harmed the cause.3 His opinion in this regard was as categorical as ever: ‘An occult association of espionage outside and above the hierarchy, indeed spying on the very members of the hierarchy’, Gasparri sustained, with ostentatious disdain for the society that had been approved, blessed and encouraged by Pius X, ‘a kind of Freemasonry in the Church, something unheard of in ecclesiastical history’.4 The present contribution will be limited to reiterating the salient points in the story, which is already substantially known, attempting to deduce from external testimonials of the missing file the motivations behind this act of the Holy See that, coming at the end of the Benedictine pontificate, appeared as a reckoning, or rather, as a ‘clarification tardive’ according to the definition of Nina Valbousquet, author of a recent and careful study on Benigni and intransigent Catholics.5 As it is not possible to dissolve what has not been formally bound, it seems appropriate, first of all, to clarify the issue of the Sodalitium Pianum’s legal status, particularly at the time of the papal election of Cardinal Giacomo Della Chiesa.

1.

Attempts to Obtain Canonical Approval from the Holy See during Pius X’s Pontificate

On Easter Sunday, 16 April 1911, two years after the Sodalitium Pianum was established, the Betharramite Father Jules Saubat,6 as consultor to the Congregation for Religious, ‘on his own behalf and on that of some other ecclesiastics’, addressed a plea

3 See Romana beatificationis et canonizationis servi Dei Pii Papae X: disquisitio circa quasdam obiectiones modum agendi servi Dei respicientes in modernismi debellatione una cum summario additionali ex officio compilato, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1950), p. 6. I thank my colleagues at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints for this kind verification. 4 ‘Una associazione occulta di spionaggio al di fuori e al di sopra della gerarchia, anzi che spionava gli stessi membri della gerarchia’; ‘una specie di massoneria nella Chiesa, cosa inaudita nella storia ecclesiastica’; Romana beatificationis, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio, p. 10. According to an indiscretion handed down in the diaries of Mgr Alfred Baudrillart on 14 July 1920, due to the staffing insufficiency of the Secretariat of State, ‘Even Gasparri is still consulting Benigni! And he asks for submissions that are not requested by the official consultors’ (‘Même Gasparri consulte encore Benigni! Et lui demande des mémoires qu’on ne demande pas aux consulteurs officiels’); Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), II (2000), p. 524. 5 ‘The legal dissolution of the Sodalitium Pianum (in the sense that it was no longer authorized) did not occur until December 1921, in the form of a belated clarification. […] The official date, 1921, remains too late a date, reflecting poorly on the state of affairs with Benigni and his relations with the Vatican’ (‘La dissolution juridique du Sodalitium Pianum (au sens où ce dernier n’est désormais plus autorisé) n’advient ainsi qu’en décembre 1921, dans une forme de clarification tardive. […] Date officielle, 1921, n’en reste pas moins une date trop tardive reflétant mal l’état de fait des activités de Benigni et de ses relations avec le Vatican’); Nina Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux de l’antisémitisme catholique: France, Italie (1914–1934): Umberto Benigni et les catholiques intransigeants’ (doctoral thesis, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, 2016), p. 153. 6 See Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, pp. 113–14 for a biographical profile of this priest, who was considered Benigni’s alter ego and who subsequently became the association’s secretary.

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to Pius X for an apostolic blessing in favour of a ‘pious union’. The purpose of this association — which took its name from Pius V, ‘the staunch defender of the Church from its internal and external enemies’ — was ‘to pray and to work together […] for the triumph of the Holy See and the Apostolic Roman Catholic Church’ (Art. 1), or rather, ‘to collaborate in faithful Catholic organization and action, under pontifical guidance, in combatting those who would oppose it’ (Art. 5).7 The response from Secretary of State Merry del Val, as can be read in red pencil on the request, was negative. The reason why will never be known because it was answered orally.8 On 21 January 1913, Benigni again took charge of obtaining the ‘longed-for approval’ necessary for ‘encouraging the fellows [who were] disheartened by so many… incidents and for organizing the work’9 from the Consistorial Congregation and its Secretary, Cardinal De Lai, who in the meantime had become a great supporter and protector of the association.10 The first encouraging written response signed by the Pope, ‘you may well need to take the initiative to continue fighting the good fight of faith against the various forms of the errors and cunningness of modernism’ was received in 1911.11 The following year, that message was extended to an exhortation to fight the same battle ‘against internal and external enemies’.12

7 ‘In nome proprio e di alcuni altri ecclesiastici’; ‘pia unione’; ‘lo strenuo difensore della Chiesa dai suoi nemici interni ed esterni’; ‘di pregare e di collaborare […] per la difesa e per il trionfo della S. Sede e della Chiesa cattolica apostolica romana’; ‘collaborare all’organizzazione e azione cattolica fedele alle direzioni pontificie e per combattere quanto ad esse si oppone’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1911, rubr. 12, fasc. 12, ff. 100–01. 8 On Saubat’s attempt, see the reflections of Giovanni Vian, ‘Convergenze e divergenze nella Curia romana di Pio X’, in Pio X e il suo tempo, ed. by Gianni La Bella (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 481–519 (pp. 499–503). 9 ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, prot. 398/13, f. 2. 10 See ASV, Fondo Benigni, 51, f. 539, calling card from De Lai to Benigni, 4 March 1912: ‘With your relationships and communications You truly render a precious service, not only to the Holy See, but to the very religion of Jesus Christ, watching over the evil tendencies and spirit of heresy, which is sadly spreading’ (‘Veramente colle sue relazioni e comunicazioni Ella rende un servizio prezioso non solo alla S. Sede, ma alla stessa religione di G. C., vigilando contro le male tendenze e lo spirito di eresia che tristamente si diffonde’). 11 ‘Ut bene inceptum opus pergant, certantes bonum certamen fidei praesertim contra multiformis modernismi errores et versutias’. Paradoxically, the original copy of this response written on 5 July 1911 is found in the case files of the Fondo Benigni in ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52, fasc. 938, ff. n.n. In a work of 1928, Benigni supplied this version in Italian: ‘Dearest Sons, members of the Sodalitium Pianum, we beg of the Lord that they may continue their work, which has begun well, guiding the good conduct of the faith, especially against the errors and cunningness of the many forms of modernism; and to these, wishing them every good of the Lord, we most lovingly impart the apostolic blessing’ (‘I diletti figli, soci del Sodalizio piano esortiamo nel Signore, affinché proseguano l’opera bene incominciata, menando la buona condotta della fede specialmente contro gli errori e le astuzie del moltiforme modernismo; e ad essi augurando ogni bene dal Signore, amorevolissimamente impartiamo l’apostolica benedizione’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1928, rubr. 13, fasc. 1, ff. 168–72, Di fronte alla calunnia, p. 1. 12 ‘Contra internos externosque hostes’. The original copy of this written response of 8 July 1912 is also found in the aforementioned case file of the ASMAE. Benigni’s Italian version reads: ‘Dearest sons, members of the Sodalitium Pianum, well-deserving of the Catholic cause, we beg of the Lord that they may continue the good fight for the Church of God and for the Holy See against internal

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The Pope’s written notes in response to requests for recognition, however, while praiseworthy, were insufficient. That is why, at the beginning of 1913, Benigni sought ‘a legal basis’ for his association, ‘even just a simple authorization (if not approval, for the time being)’. It was clear to him that the association’s characteristics of secrecy and autonomy, which he considered indispensable, could not be reconciled with formal canonical approval, but he hoped that, following the explanations provided by De Lai, Pius X would, with a simple letter, authorize the association to continue its activity and place it directly under the Consistorial Congregation, thus removing it from the jurisdiction and control of local ordinaries. On 19 January, De Lai confided to Benigni in a confidential letter that he had delivered a copy of the ‘known statues’ to Pius X and asked him for his impression over fifteen days earlier. The pontiff had replied, ‘good’, adding however that, in order to approve it, ‘it was necessary to study the matter better, there being some questionable aspects’.13 Again, in a confidential letter to De Lai on 29 January, confident of obtaining supreme approval ‘as soon as possible’, Benigni sought to define his project more clearly and to praise its hypothetical advantages for the Holy See, faced with the ‘very sad times in which Rome finds itself, mainly because of the incomprehension of some and the betrayal of others’. Such advantages were to be found in having a lay organization that was ‘easily manageable because of its simplicity and adaptability’ as an advantageous ‘instrument for information and the faithful diffusion of directives from Rome as well as for any extraordinary service needed in times of serious difficulty’.14 Finally, in a letter dated 25 February 1913, filed as no. 398/13,15 De Lai informed Benigni that he had presented to the pontiff the plan with which the esteemed members of this ‘Management of the Sodalitium Pianum’ aim to unite various groups of Catholics with a Roman committee in mutual agreement that, sharing a common sense of the Catholic faith in its entirety, and unconditionally, according to the directives of the Holy See, are here and

and external enemies; wishing them and their institution every good of the Lord, we most lovingly impart the apostolic blessing’ (‘I diletti figli soci del Sodalizio piano, benemeritissimi della causa cattolica, esortiamo nel Signore che continuino la buona battaglia per la Chiesa di Dio e per la S. Sede contro i nemici interni ed esterni; a loro come alla loro istituzione augurando da Dio ogni bene, amorevolissimamente impartiamo l’apostolica benedizione’); Di fronte alla calunnia, p. 2. 13 ‘Buona’; ‘conveniva meglio studiare la cosa, essendovi qualche lato discutibile’; ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, 2, ff. n.n., document signed by Benigni 1.W (104). 14 ‘Tristissimi tempi in cui Roma si trova soprattutto a causa dell’incomprensione degli uni e del tradimento degli altri’; ‘facilmente maneggevole per la sua semplicità e adattabilità’; ‘strumento opportuno per l’informazione come per la diffusione fedele della parola d’ordine romana, come altresì per qualunque servizio straordinario in momenti di grave difficoltà’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, prot. 398/13, f. 16. 15 In the registry, the file is simply described as Dell’Associazione Piana (‘On the Association of Pius’) and there are notations of transmissions to Benigni dated 15 July and 5 August 1915; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Protocolli, 5, n. 398/13; in some press reports, even Benigni’s own, it is erroneously given as prot. 390/13.

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there — in Italy or abroad — gathered in familiar and friendly congregations, or committees, or other organizations for the works of Catholic affairs. Since ‘the idea of this federation pleased the Holy See’, De Lai concluded, the pontiff ‘approves and blesses this initiative and avows that it will be implemented for the greater glory of God and for the good of souls, reserving the right, at his leisure, to examine the statues and approve them in due form through this Sacred Consistorial Congregation’.16 However, a subsequent handwritten note by De Lai on the ‘files presented by Mgr Benigni and Father Saubat for approval’ explains the reasons for the underlying mistrust: ‘I warned them, however, that the Holy See cannot approve either of a secret society or of a secret inquisitorial body concerning the bishops, etc. They agreed, but…’.17 The ‘but’ could refer to Benigni’s resistance to acting ‘publicly and officially, given the unbelievable hostility of prelates and other influential persons towards everything that is openly and actively papal’.18 Benigni well understood that, despite the Pope’s appreciation, the substance of the latter’s response was dismissive and continued to press the matter in the following months, attempting to obtain a real approval,19 until he finally surrendered on 25 March 1914: With filial sorrow we bow before the supersedendum, hoping that the circumstance, but even more the great goodness of Your Very Reverend Eminence and of the Holy Father, will not choose to delay sending our good confreres a

16 ‘Il programma col quale gli egregi componenti cotesta “Direzione del Sodalizio piano” mirano di collegare in una comune intesa con un comitato romano vari gruppi di cattolici che, condividendo un uguale sentire di fede cattolica intera ed incondizionata, secondo le direttive della S. Sede, si sono qua e là, in Italia od all’estero riuniti in famigliari ed amichevoli convegni, o comitati, od altre organizzazioni per opere di azione cattolica’; ‘l’idea di questa federazione è piaciuta a S. S.’; ‘approva e benedice questa iniziativa e fa voti ch’essa possa attuarsi per la maggior gloria di Dio e per il bene delle anime, riservandosi a suo tempo di esaminarne gli Statuti e di approvarli nelle debite forme pel tramite di questa S. Congregazione Concistoriale’; ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52, fasc. 938, ff. n.n. 17 ‘Fascicoli esibiti da mons. Benigni e dal p. Saubat per l’approvazione’; ‘io li ò avvertiti però che la S. Sede non può approvare né una società secreta, né un corpo inquisitoriale segreto sopra i vescovi ecc. Ne ànno convenuto, ma…’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, prot. 398/13, f. 35. The file (ff. 35–41) contains a typed copy of the Sodalitium’s statutes, of the norms of the Conferences of St Peter, and of the text Per il Cattolicismo Romano Integrale: il nostro programma (‘For an Integral Roman Catholicism: Our Plan’). 18 ‘Pubblicamente e ufficialmente, vista l’incredibile ostilità di prelati ed altri influenti contro tutto ciò che è schiettamente ed attivamente papale’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, prot. 398/13, ff. 15–16. 19 Thus, on 22 November 1913: ‘And I once again add: I do not ask Your very reverend Eminence (given that you have told me it would be good to wait) for a new act of approval, etc., but only, due to the modified draft of our texts, of the nulla osta sicut et in quantum nulla ostava of the preceding draft’ (‘Ed aggiungo ancora una volta: non chiedo a Vostra Eminenza reverendissima (dacché ella mi disse essere bene aspettare) un nuovo atto di approvazione ecc., ma soltanto, per la modificata redazione dei nostri testi, il nulla osta sicut et in quantum nulla ostava per la redazione precedenze’); ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, prot. 398/13, f. 60.

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word of encouragement, which they do everything to merit and which will be communicated to them in a highly discreet manner.20 During the few remaining months of Pius’s pontificate, on 23 June, Benigni instead obtained another regular annual grant of 1.000 liras through the Personal Secretary, Mgr Giovanni Bressan,21 and a third, this time rather generic and uncommitted, handwritten, signed message on 6 July.22

2. The Dissolution and Reconstitution of 1914 Two days after the death of Pope Pius X, on behalf of the Diet of the Sodalitium Pianum, Benigni wrote to De Lai of the decision the Diet has just made to dissolve our modest organization. The circumstances demand it, and Your Very Reverend Eminence will have no difficulty in agreeing to it. Not having received definitive approval, our Association lived a precarious life that ends today of its own accord. The General Director — as Benigni called himself — declared that he still remained available to De Lai: ‘But if, hypothetically speaking, You were to desire, whenever

20 ‘Ci inchiniamo con filiale dolore davanti al supersedendum sperando che le circostanze, ma più la grande bontà di V. E. Rev.ma e del S. Padre, vorranno non ritardare ai nostri buoni confratelli una parola d’incoraggiamento che essi fanno del tutto per meritare, e che sarà discretissimamente comunicata’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, prot. 398/13, f. 63. 21 See ASMAE, Fondo Benigni 2, ff. n.n., document signed by Benigni 1.C (23). Beginning in 1912, in the Sussidi section of Pius X’s private archive, detailed traces of the ‘usual’ contribution extended by Pope Pius X to the Sodalitium Pianum can be found. According to a note of his Personal Secretary, Mgr Giuseppe Pescini from 1 November 1912, ‘Mgr Benigni requests the usual annual 1000 liras for expenses’ (‘Mons. Benigni chiede le solite annue lire mille per le spese’). Pius X, in a signed note, ordered: ‘Deliver the entire 1000 liras’ (‘Si consegnino le unite lire 1000’); ASV, Archivio particolare Pio X, 250, f. 312. On 10 July 1913, Benigni requested that the annual subsidy of 1000 liras for their ‘modest organization’ be increased by the pontiff and Pius X again had the ‘entire 1000 liras’ delivered (‘modesta organizzazione’; ‘le unite lire mille’); ASV, Archivio particolare Pio X, 253, ff. 153–58. On 22 June 1914, Benigni asked Mgr Bressan for ‘the thousand liras that [the Pope] bestows to be increased in assistance to our modest work’ that was dedicated to ‘humbly but willingly serving the good Cause’ (‘le mille lire che si degna elargire in sussidio della nostra modesta opera’; ‘servire debolmente ma volonterosamente la buona Causa’), and Pius X had the ‘enclosed 1000 liras’ (‘le unite lire mille’) delivered; ASV, Archivio particolare Pio X, 256, ff. 1057–58. 22 ‘To our Dearest sons, cordially congratulating them, wishing them every good and salutary favour as compensation from the Lord, as witness of our distinct benevolence we most lovingly impart the apostolic blessing’ (‘Ai diletti figli, cordialmente congratulandoci con loro, ogni bene ed ogni cosa salutare come compenso augurando dal Signore, come testimonianza della nostra spiccata benevolenza impartiamo amorevolissimamente l’apostolica benedizione’); Di fronte alla calunnia, p. 3. The original, as always, in ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52, fasc. 938, ff. n.n.

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it may be, our reconstitution on the basis of a definitive approval, we shall be ready to begin again’.23 He enclosed the confidential newsletter that he used to communicate to the ‘fellows’ (‘sodales’) that, ‘after having reflected on all the circumstances that interest us, the Diet united this morning unanimously decided to dissolve the S+P’ and declared the cessation of their commitments ‘except, of course, that of the absolute confidentiality concerning the affairs of our family, which is now dissolved’.24 On 26 August 1914, Cardinal De Lai, on official stationery headed ‘Vescovato Suburbicario di Sabina’, since he was no longer Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation owing to the sede vacante, took note of ‘the society’s dissolution of which you are informing me. Before the whirlwind and massacre threatening Europe, and at the Church’s very sorrowful loss with the death of the Holy Father, what was done was wise and prudent’. He concluded with the assurance that Benigni and his companions, ‘for the good done for the Church with their work in various contingencies, will have great praise from heaven’.25 In a letter of 8 October 1914, marked ‘most confidential, to be burned’, however, Benigni, using the alias ‘Carlo’, changed his mind and communicated to his main Italian fellows that after the dissolution of our association and the subsequent ascertainment that, at least for now, we cannot provide for the organization, all our Friends have agreed to continue our relationship on the simple basis of a friendly agreement. Now, in order for this understanding to be clear and precise, five fundamental points have been established, as set out in the attached sheet, and the practical criteria of our correspondence is given in the general letter you find it with. If you agree, you may keep these two attached documents with you, but destroy them as soon as prudence makes it advisable.26

23 ‘La decisione presa in questo momento da essa [la Dieta], dello scioglimento della nostra modesta organizzazione. Le circostanze lo impongono e V. E. Rev.ma non stenterà a convenirne. Non avendo ricevuto la definitiva approvazione, il nostro Sodalizio viveva una vita precaria che oggi cessa da sé’; ‘ma se, per ipotesi, Ella desiderasse, quando che sia, la nostra ricostituzione in base ad una definitiva approvazione, noi saremmo pronti a ricominciare’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 1. 24 ‘Dopo aver riflettuto a tutte le circostanze che c’interessano, la Dieta riunita stamane, ha deciso all’unanimità lo scioglimento del S+P’; ‘eccetto naturalmente, quello dell’assoluta riserva sugli affari della nostra famiglia ora sciolta’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 3. 25 ‘[…] della dissoluzione della società che Ella mi annuncia. Dinnanzi al turbinio ed all’eccidio che minaccia l’Europa ed alla perdita dolorosissima fatta dalla Chiesa colla morte del S. Padre era saggio e prudente fare quanto si è fatto’; ‘pel bene fatto in varie contingenze alla Chiesa coll’opera loro ne avranno larga mercede dal cielo’; ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, 2, ff. n.n., documento segnato da Benigni 1.W (115). 26 ‘Dopo lo scioglimento del nostro sodalizio e la conseguente costatazione che, almeno per ora, non si può provvedere a un’organizzazione, tutti gli Amici si sono trovati d’accordo di continuare la nostra relazione sulla semplice base di un’amichevole intesa. Ora, perché tale intesa fosse chiara e precisa, si sono fissati cinque punti fondamentali, esposti nel foglio annesso, e i criteri pratici della nostra

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Under the formula of a ‘commitment of friendship’, therefore, the Sodalitium Pianum, which had been dramatically dissolved, was secretly reconstituted, aimed at exercising a ‘muffled influence’ opposed to Benedict XV.27 On 26 June 1915, Benigni again took charge of obtaining approval for the reamended statute, ‘so that the S+P may continue its most humble work’.28 The Sodalitium Pianum, or St Pius V League, was defined this time in its first article as ‘a Roman endeavour of Catholics fully faithful to the Church and its leader, the Pope, in order to defend these against the Sect in any of its manifestations and against any of its accomplices’.29 A note from 3 July, in the handwriting of Mgr Giovanni Battista Rosa, Assessor of the Consistorial Congregation, reveals the impression that the new text had aroused: As it is now presented and proposed, there seems to be no reason to disapprove of it. It still remains to see clearly what the words of the first article might mean: ‘In order to defend the Pope against the Sect in any of its manifestations and against any of its accomplices’. It also seems that its regulations should be known, of which the fifth article states that ‘the Diet fixes the internal regulations for the functioning of the S+P according to the spirit and terms of the present statute’. What is not reduced to minimal terms in the statute, could be mentioned in the regulations. Before an explicit and formal approval, therefore, it seems prudent to have a good knowledge of everything.30 On 14 July, therefore, Mgr Benigni was asked to communicate a copy of the regulations, ‘which being more specific will allow the work proposed by the Sodalitium to be better known’.31 Three days later, Benigni sent ‘the two existing internal regulations:

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31

corrispondenza nella lettera generale qui unita. Se Ella aderisce, potrà ritenere presso di lei questi due documenti annessi, salvo distruggerli appena la prudenza lo consigliasse’; ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, 2, ff. n.n., documento segnato da Benigni 1.Z. ‘Impegno d’amicizia’; ‘sorda influenza’; see Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I (1994), p. 433 (30 September 1916): ‘Mgr Glorieux speaks to me of the muffled influence that Benigni still wields; he is the one who is setting Jean Carrère, the Temps correspondent, against the Pope’ (‘Mgr Glorieux me parle de la sourde influence qu’exerce encore Benigni; c’est lui qui monte Jean Carrère, le correspondant du Temps contre le pape’). ‘Onde il S+P possa continuare la sua modestissima opera’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 5. ‘Un’Intesa romana di cattolici pienamente fedeli alla Chiesa ed al suo capo il papa, allo scopo di difendere questi contro la Setta in qualunque sua manifestazione e contro qualunque suo complice’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 7. ‘Come viene presentata e proposta ora, la cosa non sembra da disapprovarsi. Resterebbe sempre da veder chiaro che cosa significhino le parole dell’articolo 1 “Allo scopo di difendere il papa contro la Setta in qualunque sua manifestazione e contro qualunque suo complice”. Come pure sembra che bisognerebbe conoscere quei regolamenti, dei quali all’art. 5 si dice che “La dieta fissa i regolamenti interni per il funzionamento del S+P secondo lo spirito e i termini del presente statuto”. Quello che non sta nello statuto ridotto ai minimi termini, può contenersi nel regolamento. Prima dunque di un’esplicita e formale approvazione, sembra prudente conoscere bene tutto’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 8. ‘I quali per essere più determinati fanno meglio conoscere l’opera che il Sodalizio si propone’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 9, draft by Mgr Rosa.

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the general one and that of the Diet’, which however were not preserved in the file of the Consistorial Congregation.32 After having examined the two normative texts, and after a few days’ reflection, on 3 August, Mgr Rosa drafted a rather vague and indirect response: ‘It does not seem to me that Your Reverence should be obstructed in a work that, if it preserves the good spirit of devotion and subjection to the Holy See, will only do good’ (‘non mi sembra che la S. V. Rev.ma abbia da essere ostacolata in un’opera, che se conserverà lo spirito buono di devozione e soggezione alla S. Sede non potrà che fare del bene’). However, De Lai perhaps found even this formulation too explicit and, after having struck it out, indicated next to it: ‘I would say: “I have taken note of the restoration of the Sodalitium Pianum under the new regulation, which does not substantially differ from what pleased Pius X of holy memory, and I am confident that this association, thus restored”’, and here the draft prepared by the substitute returned to, ‘will not fail in receiving the Lord’s blessing since its aim is His glory’.33 Taking these vague words of appreciation as a ‘favourable note’ and ‘paternal encouragement’, Benigni sent his ‘good colleagues present in Rome’ the ‘precious document’.34 All this was carried out without referring in any way to the new pontiff, Benedict XV, who retained the prefecture, that is to say, the higher management of the Consistorial Congregation.

3. The Dissolution of 1921 After these precedents and a fierce opposition to the directives of Benedict’s pontificate, which is analysed in Valbouquet’s essay,35 we come to the crucial moment of the ‘definitive’ dissolution of the Sodalitium Pianum on 8 December 1921. The correspondence between Cardinal Donato Sbarretti Tazza, Prefect of the Congregation of the Council, and Mgr Benigni in this regard is already known from a variety of sources. Divulged and made known in a confidential way immediately by Benigni himself,36 he later published its central ideas in the hand-written leaflet

32 ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 10. 33 ‘Io direi: “ho preso nota del ripristinamento del Sodalizio piano secondo il nuovo regolamento che non differisce sostanzialmente da quello che fu di gradimento di Pio X di santa memoria e nutro fiducia che codesta associazione così ripristinata”’; ‘non mancherà della benedizione del Signore avendo per oggetto la sua gloria’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 13. 34 ‘Presa nota favorevole’; ‘paterno incoraggiamento’; ‘buoni colleghi presenti in Roma’; ‘prezioso documento’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1915, f. 14. 35 See Nina Valbousquet, ‘Transformations of Integral Catholicism under Benedict XV: The Benigni Network after the Dissolution of La Sapinière’, the next chapter in the current work. 36 In addition to immediately providing a copy to De Lai ‘in the interest of truth and justice’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, f. 31; Benigni also sent the correspondence to Abbot Boulin who, on 27 December communicated it to Mgr Baudrillart: ‘Abbot Boulin sent me some interesting documents: responses to the Mourret account, correspondence of

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Di fronte alla calunnia in 1928. Benigni declared that he was willing to show or send photographs of the originals to anyone interested.37 The press affiliated with him also later reproduced these documents.38 In 1950, the Franciscan Ferdinando Antonelli, General Rapporteur for the Congregation of Rites, published the complete correspondence, taken from the copy kept by the Consistorial Congregation, in the Disquisitio. It was a careful and scrupulous edition in terms of documentation, but it was not immune from the intent to justify the work of ‘the intrepid Monsignor’, ‘the poor man who, after all and with all his intemperance, had sincerely tried to serve the Church’.39 Finally, to mention the major publications, in 1969 the French historian Émile Poulat edited the same texts, translating them into French in his foundational study on La Sapinière.40 The subject can therefore be considered to be well-known, and we can focus on rapidly retracing the various steps in this epistolary exchange, based on the copy Benigni sent to the Consistorial Congregation ‘to complete the known paperwork’, which had already been elaborated by Antonelli and was only recently sent to the Vatican Archive.41 On 10 November 1921, with file 5101/21, Cardinal Sbarretti Tazza wrote to Benigni saying he was ‘fully aware’ of the existence ‘of a secret association — so secret that its correspondence has its own vocabulary — bearing the name Sodalitium Pianum, whose centre is in Rome and which some say is approved of by the Holy See’.

Cardinal Sbarretti with Mgr Benigni and the suppression of the Sodalitium Pianum on 8 December 1921. It is proven that the Sodalitium was fully approved and closely followed by Pius X’ (‘L’abbé Boulin me communique d’intéressants documents: réponses au mémoire Mourret, correspondence du cardinal Sbarretti avec Mgr Benigni et suppression du Sodalitium Pianum le 8 décembre 1921. Il est avéré que ce Sodalitium était pleinement approuvé et suivi de près par Pie X’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 974. 37 See Di fronte alla calunnia, pp. 4–7. In fact, in the postscript he added: ‘everyone can see the originals of the reproduced documents or have a photograph of them. Send me a direct request to my address: Via Arno 97 L, Rome, 34. I will attempt, on a case by case basis, to satisfy the applicant, who, naturally, will be responsible for handling any expenses. U. B.’ (‘ciascuno può vedere gli originali dei documenti riprodotti o averne la fotografia. Farmene domanda diretta al mio indirizzo: via Arno 97 L, Roma 34. Provvederò, caso per caso, a soddisfare il richiedente a cui carico saranno, come è naturale, le spese eventuali. U. B.’); Di fronte alla calunnia, pp. 6–7. 38 See Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, p. 156. 39 ‘L’intrepido monsignore’; ‘povero uomo, il quale dopo tutto e con tutte le sue intemperanze, aveva cercato sinceramente di servire la Chiesa’; see Romana beatificationis, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio, pp. 276–77, the correspondence is on pp. 279–97. 40 Émile Poulat, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969), pp. 576–604. 41 See Alejandro Mario Dieguez, ‘Gli archivi delle Congregazioni Romane: nuove acquisizioni e ordinamenti’, in Religiosa Archivorum Custodia: IV Centenario della Fondazione dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (1612–2012), atti del convegno di studi (Città del Vaticano, 17–18 aprile 2012) (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2015), pp. 305–34 (p. 313).

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Given that the Congregation of the Council oversaw issues concerning the observance of canon 684 of the Code of Canon Law on secret societies,42 he invited the group’s founder and Director to answer some questions: 1. whether this association be truly authorized or approved of by the Holy See; if the answer is affirmative, may it please Your Lord to transmit the relative authentic document to this Sacred Congregation; 2. who the president is and who the other directors of this association are; 3. whether the association has statues; if it is established that it does have them, a copy is to be sent to this Congregation; 4. what the purpose of this association is; 5. who its members are in the different areas of the world: who the employees of the central office are; 6. what its means of diffusion are and where they come from; 7. why there is this absolute secrecy — even with regard to the ecclesiastical authorities — in carrying out the activities of this association: and all this not only for the periodical Fede e Ragione, but also for every type of its correspondence, both written and printed.43 On 16 November, Benigni responded to the seven queries in a long essay expressed in a full sixteen points, which are not reproduced here for reasons of space, not without first deploring how ‘disreputable intrigues, which have descended into anonymous defamatory libel [Mourret’s account], have distorted the pure and honest truth’.44

42 See Codex iuris canonici (1917), can. 684: ‘Those faithful are worthy of praise if they give their name to associations erected or commended by the Church; but they should be cautious about joining secret, damned, seditious, or suspect associations or those that seek to distance themselves from the legitimate vigilance of the Church’ (‘fideles laude digni sunt, si sua dent nomina associationibus ab Ecclesia erectis vel saltem commendatis; caveant autem ab associationibus secretis, damnatis, seditiosis, suspectis aut quae studeant sese a legitima Ecclesiae vigilantia subducere’); The 1917 or Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law: In English Translation with Extensive Scholarly Apparatus, ed. by Edward N. Peters (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001). 43 ‘1. se questa associazione sia veramente autorizzata o approvata dalla S. Sede: in caso affermativo, la S. V. si compiaccia trasmettere a questa S. Congregazione il relativo documento autentico; 2. chi è il presidente e quali gli altri dirigenti di tale associazione; 3. se l’associazione abbia statuti: e posto che li abbia, ne invii una copia a questa Congregazione; 4. qual è lo scopo di tale associazione; 5. quali i suoi aderenti nelle diverse parti del mondo: e quali gli impiegati nella sede centrale; 6. quali i mezzi di propaganda e donde provengono; 7. perché questo segreto assoluto — anche nei riguardi delle autorità ecclesiastiche — nello svolgimento dell’attività di quest’associazione: e tutto ciò non solo per il periodico Fede e Ragione, ma anche per ogni genere di corrispondenza sia scritta che a stampa’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, f. 2. 44 ‘Loschi intrighi, scesi fino in anonimi libelli diffamatori, abbiano snaturato la pura e onesta verità’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, f. 3. The disclosure, however, is available in Romana beatificationis, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio, pp. 281–91, and in Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 578–86.

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Despite the verbosity and substantial truthfulness of his response, Benigni — who according to Poulat ‘was not a man to speak more than necessary, not even at the request of a congregation’45 — as will be seen, was later accused of reticence. However, after having provided the information requested, even with the appropriate mental reservations, that Benigni declared himself disposed to ‘suppress’ his creation, simply on the wish of the dicastery: Your very reverend Eminence, if it be deemed opportune, would you be so kind as to communicate to me, I do not call it an order, but the simple wish of this Sacred Congregation, that the moribund SP be definitively considered deceased; I will hasten to communicate its dissolution to the four friends who remain active. Born to serve the Holy See, the SP will thus, by putting an end to itself, give the ultimate proof of its sentiment and its character. God will then be the judge.46 In the same solemn tone, ‘in the interest of truth and justice’, he also declared that he reserved the right to proceed legally against his slanderers, under the same canonical right invoked to ‘flush out’ his association, ‘since there are all the juridical grounds: specific slander against specific persons. Evidently, every member of the SP has the right, on his own, to such action. We are woefully sorry to inconvenience various illustrious figures as witnesses: but the responsibility for such an inconvenience will not be ours’.47 Benigni added a personal letter to the defensive remonstrance and to its final hidden threat in which he reported to Sbarretti Tazza the ‘unscrupulous rancour and unscrupulous interests’ that had surrounded him with the intention of ‘doing him in’. Faced with other malicious insinuations, he reiterated the austerity of his lifestyle and attributed the ‘real background to so much phantasmagoria’ to a projection of the rancour that had built up against Pius X: ‘The Sodalitium Pianum was nothing other than a work born in his hands, for him, to serve him in risk and danger: and today, against Pius X’s dog, all the old wolves of the dead Shepherd and of the surviving dog shout out: throw it to the wolves!’.48

45 ‘N’était pas homme à parler plus qu’il ne fallait, même à la demande d’une congrégation’; Poulat, Intégrisme, p. 588. 46 ‘V. E. Rev.ma, qualora lo giudicasse opportuno, voglia comunicarmi, non dico un ordine, ma un semplice desiderio di codesta S. Congregazione, che l’agonizzante SP sia definitivamente morto; ed io mi affretterò a comunicarne lo scioglimento ai quattro amici rimasti attivi. Nato per servire la S. Sede, il SP darà così con la sua stessa fine un’ultima prova del suo sentimento e del suo carattere. Poi Dio giudicherà’, ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, f. 13. 47 ‘Nell’interesse della verità e della giustizia’; ‘visto che vi sono tutti gli estremi legali: precise calunnie contro precise persone. Evidentemente ogni socio del SP ha diritto, per conto suo, a tale azione. Ben dispiacenti d’incomodare come testimoni vari illustri personaggi: ma la responsabilità di tanto incomodo non sarà nostra’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, f. 14. 48 ‘Loschi rancori e loschi interessi’; ‘fargli la festa’; ‘fondo reale di tanta fantasmagoria’; ‘il Sodalizio piano non fu che un’opera nata nelle sue mani, per lui, per servirlo nel rischio e nel pericolo: ed oggi contro il cane di Pio X tutti i lupi vecchi del Pastore morto e del cane superstite, urlano: dàlli al lupo!’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, ff. 29–30.

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Leaving aside Begnini’s colourful expressions, on 25 November the Prefect, Sbarretti Tazza, after having given a report to the Pope in an audience, was inspired by Benigni’s ‘so obsequious and respectful’ statement to inform them of ‘the suitability’, ‘under the current changed circumstances’, of the dissolution of the Sodalitium Pianum: ‘If Your Lord would please make the provisions that will judge the case, so that the decision of this Sacred Congregation may be communicated to the members and carried out’.49 Cardinal Gasparri, first in his testimony to the ordinary process for the beatification of Pius X, then in his memoirs, would clearly reveal the role he had played in drafting this letter and, therefore, in the management of the entire affair, affirming that the words ‘under the current changed circumstances’ were included to take into consideration Pius X’s previous endorsements, but in reality, the dissolution was desired because such an association of espionage was not permitted.50 That is to say, it was effected for the very reason that, in reality, the Sodalitium Pianum had never obtained formal approval. On receiving the request of the Congregation of the Council on 29 November, Mgr Benigni informed Cardinal Sbarretti Tazza on 1 December 1921 of the Sodalitium Pianum’s dissolution,51 attaching a copy of the document by which — symbolically setting the date of the suppression as 8 December — he gave the same notice to his ‘Dearest fellows’, reproduced here from the version provided by Benigni in the leaflet Di fronte alla calunnia: The Sacred Congregation of the Council, having received my answer to their preceding request, sent me the letter of 25 November, a copy of which is enclosed here. Therefore, obeying the order of the same Sacred Congregation, our Diet, which I have convened, set the end of the Sodalitium Pianum for this coming 8 December. The day of the feast of the Immaculate Conception will be the last of the Sodalitium Pianum, after which date there will remain nothing between us other than the shared love for the Holy Church and our personal friendship. Our Diet has, therefore, set this forth by all effects of law and fact, and I communicate it to each and every one of you. If, as is very natural, we feel regret at the end of our association’s plan, we rejoice in the Lord to see the reason given by the Sacred Congregation for its decision as the ‘current changed circumstances’ and not for

49 ‘L’opportunità’; ‘nelle mutate circostanze attuali’; ‘voglia dunque la S. V. prendere quelle disposizioni che giudicherà del caso, perché la decisione di questa S. C. sia comunicata agli aderenti, ed eseguita’; ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, f. 32. 50 ‘Le parole “nelle mutate circostanze attuali” furono messe per un riguardo alle precedenti approvazioni di Pio X, ma in realtà lo scioglimento fu voluto perché non si ammetteva una simile associazione di spionaggio’; Romana beatificationis, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio, p. 9. Subsequently, in his memoirs, Gasparri affirmed that he knew ‘with certainty’ (‘di scienza certa’) the meaning of that expression from having collaborated in the drafting of the letter: see Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite), ed. by Giovanni Spadolini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972), p. 115. 51 ASV, Congregazione Concistoriale, Positiones, Roma Orbis 17, fasc. 1921, f. 33.

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any fault of our own. Thus the calumnies that the enemy has accumulated against our institution crumble with this. Christ conquers. Let us pray for one another. On behalf of the Diet of the Sodalitium Pianum, our former association, I remain for ever your friend, Umberto Benigni.52

4. Motivations for and Veracity of the Dissolution In the absence of the Congregation of the Council’s original file, it is not possible, as has already been stated, to ascertain with certainty the motivations or, at least, the direct ‘instigator’ behind the inquiry and the subsequent injunction of the Sodalitium Pianum’s dissolution. Nonetheless, some contributing factors to be considered have already been identified and reviewed in detail by Nina Valbousquet. 1. First of all, the outcry caused by the disclosure of the association’s secret documents belonging to the Belgian member, Alphonse Jonckx, sequestered in Ghent in 1915 but rediscovered in the seminary at Roermond and exploited for all their ‘potentiel explosif ’ in the anonymous account Une Société secrète (the work of the liberal Sulpician Fernand Mourret).53 2. The redistribution of decision-making positions in the Roman curia that occurred during the Benedictine papacy also seems to have played a role. On the one hand, there is a diminution in the importance of the previously omnipresent Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation, De Lai, who ‘under Pius X was very reactionary in the anti-modernist struggle’ and subsequently became ‘conciliatory in order to maintain his place’, as Benigni himself noted with a touch of resentment at the conclave of 1922.54 On the other, the importance of Cardinal Sbarretti Tazza, ‘who was of a less intransigent inclination’,55 grew after his arrival in 1919 at the Prefecture 52 ‘La S. Congregazione del Concilio, avuta la mia risposta ad una sua precedente richiesta, mi ha inviato la lettera del 25 novembre di cui qui s’acclude copia. Pertanto obbedendo all’ordine della stessa S. Congregazione, la nostra Dieta da me convocata fissò la fine del Sodalizio Piano per l’8 corrente. Il giorno della festa dell’Immacolata Concezione sarà l’ultimo del Sodalizio piano, dopo il quale giorno non resterà fra noi altro vincolo fuori del comune amore verso la santa Chiesa e la nostra personale amicizia. Così la nostra Dieta ha stabilito per tutti gli effetti di diritto e di fatto, e lo comunica a voi, a tutti ed a ciascuno. Se com’è ben naturale, noi sentiamo un rammarico per la fine del nostro Sodalizio piano, lieti nel Signore constatiamo che la ragione data dalla S. Congregazione alla sua decisione è nelle “mutate circostanze attuali” e non per nostra colpa. Onde le calunnie accumulate dall’Uomo nemico contro la nostra istituzione, cadono con ciò stesso. Cristo vince. Preghiamo vicendevolmente. Per la Dieta del Sodalizio piano, il vostro sinora sodale, sempre vostro amico, Umberto Benigni’; Di fronte alla calunnia, p. 6. 53 See Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, 153–54. On the Ghent papiers, see also Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 11–45. 54 ASV, Fondo Benigni, 59, f. 71. On the downsizing of his role after 20 August 1914, see Giovanni Vian, ‘Gaetano De Lai, zelante collaboratore di Pio X nella repressione modernista’, in ‘In wilder, zügelloser Jagd nach Neuem’: 100 Jahre Modernismus und Antimodernismus in der katholischen Kirche, ed. by Hubert Wolf and Juditz Schepers (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009), pp. 464–71. 55 ‘De tendance moins intransigeante’; Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, p. 153.

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of the Congregation of the Council. He was already the target of the association’s morbid ‘attentions’, which in 1916 had depicted him as ‘avaricious like no one else’, a lover of luxury, arrogant and not very sociable.56 3. Furthermore, the Pio-Benedictine Code of 1917, in canon 684, formally offered legal support for demanding an account for an association which, if during Pius X’s pontificate could be considered a ‘secret service’ at the command of the supreme authority,57 under the new authority could hardly avoid the suspicion of acting as a real ‘secret society’, unknown to the pontiff and often contrary to his directives. 4. In fact, despite the ‘de facto cessation’ of the association’s activities, opportunely identified by Valbousquet starting from the years 1914–15,58 an important factor in the decision to deal the coup de grace to the organization may in fact have been connected to the continual attacks by Benigni’s group against Benedict XV and his Secretary of State, Gasparri, who were held guilty of the Church’s ‘foundering’59 and who could primarily be credited with the origins of the counterattack.

56 ‘Avaro di non trovarsi l’uguale’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, 46, f. 137. 57 This distinction, made by Poulat and certainly valid for Pius X’s pontificate, is revisited by Valbousquet: ‘Although the Sodalitium Pianum is often accused of being a “type of international secret society”, as Gasparri described it in his memoirs, Émile Poulat points out that it corresponded to a “secret service” under the authority and orders of a “confidential department of Pius X and his government”, and not to a secret society’ (‘Si le Sodalitium Pianum est souvent accusé d’être une “espèce de société secrète internationale” tel que l’a décrit Gasparri dans ses mémoires, Émile Poulat précise qu’elle correspond à un “service secret” sous l’autorité et de l’ordre du “domaine réservé de Pie X et de son gouvernement”, et non pas à une société secrète’); Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, p. 106. 58 Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, p. 158. 59 Having received Benigni, who was returning from Vichy in the company of Abbot Boulin, on 1 July 1921, Baudrillart noted: ‘He is the disgraced and disgruntled type; he remains half-hidden. He thinks that Gasparri and Benedict XV are leading the Church into the abyss; all this scandalizes and irritates him’ (‘Il est le type du disgrâcié et du mécontent; il se cache à demi. Il considère que Gasparri et Benoît XV mènent l’Église aux abîmes; tout le scandalise et l’irrite’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 841. It should also be noted that, as early as in 1917, the fellow Giovanni Boccardo, believing Benigni to be the inspiration of an article by Guido Aureli in La Tribuna, disagreed with the idea of an ‘integralism in opposition to the Holy See’ (‘integralismo oppositore di S. S.’) and being tempted to create, ‘on behalf of the holy Pope Pius X, a sect against his successor’ (‘in nome di un santo papa, Pio X, una chiesuola contro il di lui successore’); ASV, Fondo Benigni, 51, f. 439. However, the reconstruction supplied by Gasparri at the process for Pius X should not be taken literally, according to which ‘as soon as Benedict XV found out about this Sodalitium Pianum he hastened to dissolve it by means of the Sacred Congregation of the Council, as I have said, since the charges made by Mgr Benigni were no longer fashionable with the Holy Father’ (‘appena Benedetto XV ebbe notizia di questo Sodalitium Pianum si affrettò a discioglierlo per mezzo della S. Congregazione del Concilio, come ho detto, benché allora le denunzie che venivano da mons. Benigni non fossero più di moda presso il S. Padre’); Romana beatificationis, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio, p. 10. Giacomo Della Chiesa could not have helped but already have noticed the integralist group from the years of his service in the Secretariat of State or, at least, from the beginning of his pontificate, as Gasparri himself led Baudrillart to understand on 1 December 1914: ‘Then the Cardinal spoke to me of the “integralists” with a certain passion. “That Benigni! It was I who brought him into the Secretariat of State. Would that I had repented for my sins as much as for that mistake! […] He has a code and communicates by that code with his affiliates. It is a secret society”. “And then: it’s over, we will no longer attack the

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However, other close collaborators of the Pope were also the target of the intransigents’ attacks. Chief among these was the Nuncio to France, Bonaventura Cerretti, who was threatened on 7 September 1921 — that is, shortly before Sbarretti Tazza’s intervention — ‘with revelations that would lose him the support of the French government’.60 In point of fact, Cerretti’s was the decisive factor in generating the repressive measures taken against Benigni and his group. In a report to Secretary of State Gasparri dated 4 November, he referred to ‘Father Ricard, better known by the name of Father Salvien, an Assumptionist, former collaborator of La Croix and now Director of La Documentation catholique’, who figured among the collaborators ‘in Mgr Benigni’s now famous codebook’ and whom various members of the clergy and the episcopate believe ‘is not wholly foreign to certain intrigues hatched even recently for an integralist recovery’. ‘With profound repugnance’, he reported the following fact so that the Secretary of State might know Benigni’s ‘way of acting and thinking even better’: During his recent stay in Paris, which lasted from June to September, he paid a visit to Mgr Baudrillart and pronounced this speech to him: ‘The Holy See is subservient to the French government; the Cardinal Secretary of State, with his liberalism, sacrifices the Church of France but, fortunately, this situation will not last long. The Holy Father’s health is not good. Then there will be a healthy change in the politics of the Holy See. The Cardinal Secretary of State wants to appoint Mgr Boudinhon as a curial cardinal, which would be a real disaster. That position is for you; your friends should help you, I will certainly help you!!’ This story, which I have recounted with profound repugnance, I have had from the mouth of Mgr Baudrillart himself.61

bishops in the press. The Pope will be intractable on this. If one believes, in good conscience, to have something to reproach them with, they should write here and be informed by authority! No more insinuations in the press!”’ (‘Puis le cardinal me parle des “intégraux” avec une certaine vivacité. “Ce Benigni! C’est moi qui l’ai fait entrer à la secrétairerie d’État. Si je m’étais repenti de mes péchés, autant que de cette faute-là! […] Il a un chiffre, correspond par ce chiffre avec des affidés. C’est une société secrète”. “Et puis: c’est fini, on n’attaquera plus les évêques dans la presse. Le pape sera intraitable là-dessus. Si on croit, en conscience, avoir quelque chose à leur reprocher, on écrira ici et l’autorité informera! Mais plus d’insinuation dans les journaux!’”); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, pp. 106–07. 60 Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 893 (7 September 1921). Abbot Boulin, in a letter addressed to Baudrillart, wrote: ‘He threatens Bishop Cerretti, at least indirectly, with revelations that will lose him the support of the French government if he persists with his hostile attitude toward the Boulin– Benigni group’ (‘Menace au moins indirectement Mgr Cerretti de révélations qui le perdraient dans l’esprit du gouvernement français, s’il persiste dans son attitude hostile au groupe Boulin-Benigni’). On the other hand, Benigni’s ability to seek out presumed secrets in the private lives of his superiors in order to keep them then ‘on a leash’ (‘liés à la chaîne’) was known. See Giuseppe M. Croce, ‘Regards sur la Curie romaine de 1895 à 1932’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 59–65 (p. 63). 61 ‘P. Ricard, conosciuto meglio sotto il nome di p. Salvien, assunzionista, già collaboratore della Croix e ora direttore della Documentation catholique’; ‘nell’ormai famoso cifrario di mons. Benigni’; ‘non sia del tutto estraneo a certi intrighi orditi anche recentemente per una ripresa integralista’;‘Con profonda ripugnanza’; ‘Durante la sua recente permanenza a Parigi, protrattasi dal giugno a settembre, fece una visita a mons. Baudrillart e gli tenne questo discorso: “la S. Sede è asservita al Governo

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It was a continual, audacious doggedness that could not go unpunished,62 since Benigni had been warned in a notification of 20 April 1921, in which, among the confidential indiscretions ‘to the professor alone’, there was this: ‘Take care that the Pope does not relax his vigilation against Benigni’.63 A final reflection concerns the true extent of the dissolution that was solemnly proclaimed by Benigni in his letter on 1 December 1921 to Sbarretti Tazza. Rumours immediately began to surface about a new integralist recovery, also since, as Valbousquet noted, the Vatican had not made a complete or proper assessment of the development of Benigni’s network with its new targets and strategies, still confusing its new post-war activities with those of La Sapinière.64 In a disclosure, the undated and unsigned typewritten copy of which has been preserved, a person who begged to remain unknown for fear of reprisals65 presented this complaint to Pius XI: The Holy See has forbidden Mgr Benigni to keep his secret organization and the journal that served to sustain it. From what may be known of such a mysterious man, it seems that he has kept his secretaries, and he certainly makes trips to

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Francese; il cardinale segretario di Stato con il suo liberalismo sacrifica la Chiesa di Francia, ma questo stato di cose fortunatamente non durerà a lungo. La salute del S. Padre non è buona; allora si avrà un cambiamento salutare nella politica della S. Sede. Il cardinale segretario di Stato vuol far nominare mons. Boudinhon cardinale di curia, ciò sarebbe un vero disastro. Quel posto è per voi; i vostri amici dovrebbero aiutarvi, io certo vi aiuterò!!”. Questo racconto, che ho riferito con profonda ripugnanza, l’ho avuto dalla bocca dello stesso mons. Baudrillart’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393, fasc. 279, ff. 3–4. Strangely enough, this episode is not directly recounted in the diary, but only when Gasparri refers to it to Baudrillart on 30 April 1922, see Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, III (2001), p. 166; Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, p. 251. It is not by chance that, on 10 December 1921, Cerretti said to Baudrillart: ‘Benigni acts like a madman; he still wants to start up again with his agents in Paris; he’s working hard against the Secretary of State and the Pope himself ’ (‘Benigni agit comme un fou; il veut encore recommencer avec ses agents à Paris; il s’acharné contre le secrétaire d’État et le pape lui-même’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 961. ‘Attenti che il papa non disarma affatto contro Benigni’; ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, 13, n. 985. See the next chapter in the current work by Nina Valbousquet, ‘Transformations of Integral Catholicism’. ‘If Your Lord finds it useful to act, I beg that you not use my letter but only the attached documents, to which could be added those sent to the Secretariat of State by others than myself because — if the secret is not kept, as has happened often enough — they would fight me with the means already used against other persons worthy of the highest esteem, to whom they did the greatest wrong. They are even more dangerous than two of the most active members: Father Maignen and Father Saubat, one a member of the Holy Office and the other of the Religious, who are Prosecutors of their congregations’ (‘Si V. S. croyait utile d’agir, je La supplie de ne pas se servir de ma lettre, mais seulement des documents ci-joints, auxquels on pourrait joindre ceux qui ont déjà été remis à la Secrétairerie d’État par d’autres que par moi, car si le secret n’était pas gardé comme c’est arrivé assez souvent, ils me combattraient par les moyens déjà employés contre d’autres personnes dignes de la plus grande estime et à qui ils ont fait le plus grand tort. Ils sont d’autant plus dangereux que deux des membres les plus actifs: le p. Maignen e le p. Saubat, font partie l’un du St Office et l’autre des Religieux, et sont procureurs de leur congrégation’); AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393, fasc. 279, f. 25. The author of the complaint might be Father Maurice Barret, a Jesuit from Amiens, who in November 1921 had already informed Cerretti of the activities of the integralists who were connected to Benigni.

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see his friends again. Thus his work can continue. His organization consisted of a Roman committee, its Diet and correspondents in Italy and abroad. He says that he destroyed his committee, but it is easy for him to have meetings with the same friends, which would be the same thing. This would be all the easier for him because, according to his answer to the Congregation of the Council, he only destroyed the Roman Correspondence (Nelly), letting it be believed that it was the only one. Actually, it was the only one known to cardinals De Lai and Merry del Val, who must have been ignorant of the others, as he himself says, but, according to his own correspondence, he had others: Airelle, Pius, Paulus, Borromaeus, who were all the more secret, and he himself recommended that it not be made known that he himself was in charge of them. If these various, more secret correspondences continued to exist, one could say that his work has not ceased. The Sacred Congregation asked him for the names of the members of his organization. He named a few living persons, who were already well known, and some dead persons. However, he himself says that, after receiving the dissolution order, he convened his Rome committee and wrote to his correspondents, which indicates a larger number of active members.66 He therefore proposed to order Benigni once more not to maintain any relationship with his old correspondents and to do so by means of ‘a very precise order, for he readily said that he knew perfectly well his fifth gospel, which for him is Machiavelli’.67 On 31 August 1924, the Belgian Benedictine Henri Laurent Janssens also sent a report to Gasparri about a letter in which the Sulpician theologian Adolphe Tanquerey avowed that: La Sapinière has been reconstituted under the name of ‘Bureau Veritas de Documentations religieuses’ or of ‘Société nec spe nec metu’, still headed by the very same Benigni and, in France at least, the same agents, under other different names. Its main activity is sending newsletters to its affiliates, which 66 ‘Le Saint-Siège a défendu à Mgr Benigni de conserver son organisation secrète et la revue qui servait à l’alimenter. Pour ce qu’on peut savoir d’un homme aussi mystérieux, il semble qu’il a conservé ses secrétaires et il fait certainement des voyages pour revoir ses amis. Ainsi son œuvre peut se continuer. Son organisation se composait d’un comité romain, la Diète et de correspondants en Italie et à l’étranger. Il dit avoir détruit son comité, mais il lui est facile d’avoir des réunions des mêmes amis, ce qui serait la même chose. Ce lui serait d’autant plus facile que d’après sa réponse à la Congrégation du Concile il n’a détruit que la Correspondance Romaine (Nelly) en laissant croire qu’elle était la seule. C’était en réalité la seule connue des cardinaux De Lai et Merry del Val qui devaient ignorer les autres comme il le dit lui-même, mais d’après sa propre correspondance il en avait d’autres: Airelle, Pius, Paulus, Borromaeus, toutes plus secrètes et il recommandait même d’éviter de faire connaître que lui-même s’en occupait. Si ces diverses correspondances plus secrètes continuaient à exister, on pourrait dire que son œuvre n’a pas cessé. La S. Congrégation lui avait demandé les noms des membres de son organisation. Il a nommé peu de vivants, qui d’ailleurs étaient assez connus et des morts. Or, il dit lui-même qu’après avoir reçu l’ordre de dissolution, il a réuni son comité de Rome et a écrit à ses correspondants, ce qui indique un nombre de membres actifs plus considérable’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393, fasc. 279, f. 24. 67 ‘Un ordre assez précis, car, il disait volontiers qu’il connaissait parfaitement son cinquième évangile qui pour lui est Machiavel’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393, fasc. 279, f. 25.

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here in France are handled by Rocafort. […] Its goal is to influence the affiliates, encouraging them to denounce suspect authors or non-integralists; they hope to lead the Pope on.68 As can be seen, even if in another guise, the operating method remained that of the Sodalitium Pianum primo modo. It was not by chance that Gasparri wrote and then deleted from this letter the sentence: ‘To the Holy Father. Remember that Mgr Benigni replied to the Sacred Congregation of the Council that the Sodalitium Pianum or La Sapinière was suppressed’.69 The conviction grew, and was even expressed during the process for the beatification of Pius X, that Benigni, privately, had continued his activities, still along the lines of the Sodalitium Pianum, even after its dissolution.70 It was, moreover, a conviction shared by observers outside the curia, such as Louis Canet and Alfred Loisy, who considered its suppression of 1921 an operation that occurred in a ‘manner that was neither effective nor complete’.71 Thus the game recommenced… The spectre of the Sodalitium Pianum was to be seen again ‘in all sorts of intrigues’ and the hunt for proof in order ‘to strike Benigni’ would begin anew.72

Bibliography Canet, Louis [Nicolas Fontaine], Saint-Siège, Action française et catholiques intégraux (Paris: Gamber, 1928) Christophe, Paul, ed., Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), II (2000)

68 ‘La Sapinière s’est reconstituée sous le nom de “Bureau Veritas de Documentations religieuses”, ou de “Société nec spe nec metu”, ayant toujours à sa tête le même Mgr Benigni, et, en France du moins, les mêmes agents, sous des noms de plus différents. Le principal mode d’action consiste à envoyer aux affiliés des circulaires, qui, en France, sont portées par Rocafort. […] Le but est d’agir sur les affiliés, pour les inciter à dénoncer à Roma les auteurs suspects, ou les personnages non-intégristes; on espère ainsi faire marcher le pape’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393, fasc. 279, f. 44. 69 ‘Al S. Padre. Si ricordi che mons. Benigni rispose alla S. C. del Concilio che il Sodalitium Pianum ossia la Sapinière era soppressa’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393, fasc. 279, f. 44. 70 See Romana beatificationis, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio, p. 9, which unfortunately does not report the Cardinal’s exact words, chronologically extrapolating them from the issue being addressed. 71 ‘Non d’une manière effective ni complète’; see Louis Canet [Nicolas Fontaine], Saint-Siège, Action française et catholiques intégraux (Paris: Gamber, 1928), p. 57, revisited by Alfred Loisy, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps, 3 vols (Paris: E. Nourry, 1930–31), III (1931), p. 454; see again Valbousquet, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux’, p. 663. 72 ‘Dans toutes sortes d’intrigues’; ‘frappera Benigni’; on 28 October 1924, Cerretti confided to Baudrillart that ‘Mgr Benigni is again into all sorts of intrigues; proof has been found in correspondence of his intervention in the affairs of Argentina against the Cardinal Nuncio and against García Mansilla. When we have the documents in hand, the Holy See will strike Benigni’ (‘Mgr Benigni est de nouveau dans toutes sortes d’intrigues; on a trouvé la preuve dans des correspondances de son intervention dans les affaires d’Argentine contre le nonce Cardinale et contre García-Mansilla. Quand on aura en main les documents, le Saint-Siège frappera Benigni’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, III, p. 900.

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Croce, Giuseppe M., ‘Regards sur la Curie romaine de 1895 à 1932’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 59–65 Dieguez, Alejandro Mario, ‘Gli archivi delle Congregazioni Romane: nuove acquisizioni e ordinamenti’, in Religiosa Archivorum Custodia: IV Centenario della Fondazione dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (1612–2012), atti del convegno di studi (Città del Vaticano, 17–18 aprile 2012) (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2015), pp. 305–34 Loisy, Alfred, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps, 3 vols (Paris: E. Nourry, 1930–31), III (1931) Mancini, Claudio Maria, Il Fondo Benigni dell’Archivio storico del Ministero degli Affari esteri (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 2011) Pagano, Sergio, ‘Documenti sul modernismo romano dal Fondo Benigni’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 8 (1990), pp. 347–402 Pagano, Sergio, ‘Il Fondo di mons. Umberto Benigni dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano’ Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 8 (1990), pp. 223–300 Peters, Edward N., ed., The 1917 or Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law: In English Translation with Extensive Scholarly Apparatus (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001) Poulat, Émile, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969) Sacra Rituum Congregatio, ed., Romana beatificationis et canonizationis servi Dei Pii Papae X: disquisitio circa quasdam obiectiones modum agendi servi Dei respicientes in modernismi debellatione una cum summario additionali ex officio compilato (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1950) Scoppola, Pietro, ‘Benigni, Umberto’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), VIII (1966), pp. 504–08 Spadolini, Giovanni, ed., Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972) Valbousquet, Nina, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux de l’antisémitisme catholique: France, Italie (1914–1934): Umberto Benigni et les catholiques intransigeants’ (doctoral thesis, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, 2016) Vian, Giovanni, ‘Convergenze e divergenze nella Curia romana di Pio X’, in Pio X e il suo tempo, ed. by Gianni La Bella (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 481–519 Vian, Giovanni, ‘Gaetano De Lai, zelante collaboratore di Pio X nella repressione modernista’, in ‘In wilder, zügelloser Jagd nach Neuem’: 100 Jahre Modernismus und Antimodernismus in der katholischen Kirche, ed. by Hubert Wolf and Juditz Schepers (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009), pp. 464–71

Nina Valbousquet

Transformations of Integralist Catholicism under Benedict XV: Benigni’s Network after the Dissolution of La Sapinière

Referring to the dissolution of La Sapinière during the pontificate of Benedict XV, in his memoirs Cardinal Gasparri described a mutual personal disagreement between Umberto Benigni and Giacomo Della Chiesa: ‘Benedict XV did not see any hint of sanctity in Mgr Benigni, and neither did the latter in Benedict XV’.1 While Gasparri did not expand on the causes of the conflict, this reciprocal hostility reflected a deeper antagonism between integralism and moderation, which had begun in the pontificate of Pius X. The highly controversial figure of Benigni, representing the most intransigent Catholicism, points to the controversial issue of Pius X’s legacy.2 Re-evoking here the role of the integralists during Benedict XV’s pontificate helps to measure more clearly the weight of this anti-modernist legacy and the problems it raised. Integralist Catholicism — often called ‘integrism’ by its detractors — was a radical current within a broader intransigent constellation, with which it shared the same rejection of modernity and secularization in the name of the rights of the Church and the Holy See. During Pius X’s pontificate, the integralist tendency distinguished itself most clearly by its stigmatization of an assumed infiltration of modernist and liberal elements into the very heart of the Church.3 Not hesitating to resort to denunciations (through ecclesiastic channels but also publicly in its press), it called for a purge in the ranks of the Church.

1 ‘Né mons. Benigni era in odore di santità presso Benedetto XV, né questi presso mons. Benigni’; Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite), ed. by Giovanni Spadolini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972), p. 114. 2 Émile Poulat, Catholicisme, démocratie et socialisme: le mouvement catholique et Mgr Benigni de la naissance du socialisme à la victoire du fascisme (Tournai: Casterman, 1977). 3 On intransigentism and integral Catholicism, see Émile Poulat, Église contre bourgeoisie: introduction au devenir du catholicisme actuel (Tournai: Casterman, 1977); Giovanni Miccoli, Fra mito della cristianità e secolarizzazione: studi sul rapporto chiesa-società nell’età contemporanea (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1985); Daniele Menozzi, La Chiesa cattolica e la secolarizzazione (Turin: Einaudi, 1993). I would like to thank Daniele Menozzi for his valuable indications on the subject.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 673–689 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118797

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The Sodalitium Pianum, known in French as La Sapinière, was a secret organization founded in 1909 by Benigni at the personal service of Pius X; it was the very incarnation of the most relentless anti-modernist struggle.4 After Pius X’s death, the pontificate of Benedict XV placed this integralist tendency in a more delicate position: one of a tension between the expression of a severe criticism of a pontifical line that was judged to be too liberal and the claim of absolute fidelity to the Holy See. On the death of Pius X, Benigni suspended La Sapinière; it was then prohibited de facto in 1915, due to the lack of pontifical approval, and finally dissolved de jure by the Congregation of the Council in December 1921.5 The official date of the Holy See’s legal dissolution of La Sapinière is December 1921, a date also often used conventionally by historians, but which nevertheless remains a delayed ending and only partly reflects the state of Benigni’s activities and his position vis-à-vis the ruling circles in the Vatican. I propose here a chronological revision, moving the date back to the de facto closure of La Sapinière and presenting Benedict XV’s pontificate as a period of redefinition for Benigni’s integralist operations. My hypothesis is that during this period of transition, Benigni refocussed his activities on a core group of loyal collaborators, before extending his network beyond Catholic circles in the post-war period. His marginalization from the Vatican led him to rethink the framework within which he directed his struggle against all forms of modernism.6

1.

Umberto Benigni and Giacomo Della Chiesa: A Personal or an Ideological Conflict?

Benigni interacted with Della Chiesa in Pius X’s curia as Undersecretary to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, while the future Pope was the Substitute at Ordinary Affairs (until his nomination as Archbishop of Bologna on 16 December 1907). Benigni’s position, on the fifth rung of the Secretariat of State





4 Lorenzo Bedeschi, La Curia romana durante la crisi modernista: episodi e metodi di governo (Parma: Guanda, 1968); Émile Poulat, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969); Le carte del ‘sacro tavolo’: aspetti del pontificato di Pio X dai documenti del suo archivio privato, ed. by Alejandro Mario Dieguez and Sergio Pagano (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006); Guido Verucci, L’eresia del Novecento: la Chiesa e la repressione del modernismo in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 2010). 5 On the steps in this dissolution, see the previous chapter in the current work, Alejandro Mario Dieguez, ‘“A Kind of Freemasonry in the Church”: The Dissolution of the Sodalitium Pianum’. I should like to thank him heartily for our fruitful exchange of ideas. 6 On the collaborators and the transnational network of Benigni after La Sapinière, see my ‘Les réseaux transnationaux de l’antisémitisme catholique: France, Italie (1914–1934): Umberto Benigni et les catholiques intransigeants’ (doctoral thesis, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, 2016). The study derives from the consultation of two Benigni sources found in ASV and ASMAE. On these two sources, see Sergio Pagano, ‘Documenti sul modernismo romano dal Fondo Benigni’, and ‘Il fondo di Mons. Umberto Benigni dell’Archivio Segreto vaticano: inventario e indici’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 8 (1990), pp. 223–300 and pp. 347–402; Margherita Bettini Prosperi, ‘Le carte di Umberto Benigni’, Clio, 2 (1992), pp. 289–300.

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after the reforms of Sapienti consilio of 29 June 1908, resulted in a rapid ascension for the priest, who was originally from Perugia. Noticed for his talents as an erudite polyglot and a combative journalist, first in Genoa and then in Rome, he was the editor of the Roman newspaper La Voce della Verità from 1900 to 1903 under the auspices of an aging Leo XIII. Benigni was a member of the Historico-Liturgical Commission from its creation in 1902 and a Professor of Church History at the Urbaniana and at the prestigious Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici until 1923. Thanks to these connections, he acquired new supporters in the Holy See, especially Cardinals Vives y Tutó and Gotti. His appointment as Undersecretary to Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs on 24 May 1906, thus Gasparri’s assistant for over a year, reflected a typical course for influential officials thanks to a combination of curial activities and teaching.7 Within the Secretariat of State, practical Church governance further widened the gap between the integralist position, represented by Benigni and Merry del Val, and the more moderate one of Gasparri and Della Chiesa. The latter deplored Benigni’s intransigent rigidity and lack of diplomatic tact, which caused a rupture in the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Bolivia from August 1907 to January 1908. The opposition between these two tendencies was fuelled by power struggles within the curia. In being influential under Pius X, Benigni did not hesitate to spread malicious rumours against Della Chiesa and Gasparri, according to the latter’s retrospective testimony.8 Benigni’s vehemence, however, made him lose Merry del Val’s support and obliged him to resign from his position as undersecretary on 7 March 1911, when he was replaced by Eugenio Pacelli. As compensation, Benigni was named protonotary apostolic de numero participantium, certainly a prestigious title, in the highest ranks of the protonotaries, but a purely honorary one. With the election of Benedict XV, Benigni’s role became ambivalent: although his career within the Roman curia was over, Benigni continued to enjoy a certain aura of prestige thanks to his teaching and erudite publications.9 It is certain, however, that the new pontiff took a negative view of the presence of La Sapinière’s leader within the college of protonotaries.







7 Claude Prudhomme, ‘Les hommes de la Secrétairerie d’État: carrières, réseaux, culture’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 475–93 (pp. 485–86). On the Secretariat of State, see François Jankowiak, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X: le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846–1914) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007), pp. 584–85. 8 See his deposition of March 1928, repeated in the canonization process for Pius X, among the depositions and documents collected by the historical section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites: Romana beatificationis et canonizationis servi Dei Pii Papae X: disquisitio circa quasdam obiectiones modum agendi servi Dei respicientes in modernismi debellatione una cum summario additionali ex officio compilato, ed. by Sacra Rituum Congregatio (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1950). On the relations between Gasparri and Benigni, see my ‘Gasparri, Benigni et les catholiques intégraux: autorité du Saint-Siège et opposition intégrale, de Pie X à Pius XI’, in Cardinale Pietro Gasparri, ed. by Laura Pettinaroli and Massimiliano Valente (forthcoming). 9 See in particular Umberto Benigni, Storia sociale della Chiesa, 7 vols (Milan: Vallardi, 1907–33) and Umberto Benigni, Manuale di stile diplomatico (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1920).

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2. The Pontificate of Benedict XV and the Marginalization of Benigni Even though the factors of dissent between Benigni and Della Chiesa had already existed before 1914, the end of Pius X’s pontificate on 20 August 1914 marked a turning point in Benigni’s marginalization. There is an obvious synchrony between La Sapinière’s de facto closure, the beginning of a phase of easing of tensions with Benedict XV’s election on 3 September, and the appointment of Gasparri as Secretary of State on 13 October. Although he reiterated his predecessor’s condemnation of modernism, Benedict XV, beginning with his first encyclical Ad beatissimi on 1 November 1914, called for the appeasement of dissent by avoiding the use of terms that divide Catholics: ‘It is, moreover, Our will that Catholics should abstain from certain appellations which have recently been brought to use to distinguish one group of Catholics from another’.10 This was a very clear allusion to integralist Catholics. Moreover, the intransigent combative press, that of the Church’s ‘unfurled flag’, no longer received the same pontifical support. Indeed, as early as 6 November 1914, Benedict and his Secretary of State mitigated the effects of Pius X’s Avvertenza of December 1912, in which the moderate Catholic press, of penetration, as it was called, was solemnly condemned (Giovanni Grosoli’s publishing conglomerate was much disparaged by Benigni).11 Complaining about Benigni’s influence, in an audience accorded to Alfred Baudrillart, Rector of the Institut catholique de Paris, on 1 December 1914, Gasparri confirmed that Benedict XV would not tolerate any defamation in the integralist press that bypassed the hierarchy: ‘It is over. We will no longer attack bishops in the press. The Pope will be intractable on this’.12 On leaving this audience, Baudrillart did not fail to note the reversal in the balance of power, which was now disadvantageous for the integralists: ‘The bust of Pius X continues to preside over the office where the Cardinal receives guests: yet what a reversal!’.13 The new climate, therefore, was unfavourable to the anti-modernist zeal previously demonstrated by Benigni. He announced the suspension of La Sapinière on 22 August 1914 to Cardinal De Lai, at the time Secretary to the Consistorial Congregation. Shortly before the death of Pius X on 20 August, Giovanni Boccardo, a member of La Sapinière and the Director of La Liguria del Popolo, told Benigni of a discussion he had had with a certain Don Arazzo in Genoa concerning the post-Pius X situation:

10 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 (§ 24) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 11 Francesco Malgeri, ‘La Stampa quotidiana e periodica e l’editoria’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), II (1982), pp. 280–90 (p. 283). 12 ‘C’est fini. On n’attaquera plus les évêques dans la presse. Le pape sera intraitable là-dessus’; Gasparri’s statement reported in Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), II (2000), pp. 106–07 (1 December 1914). 13 ‘Le buste de Pie X continue à présider dans le cabinet de travail où reçoit le cardinal: et pourtant quel revirement!’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, pp. 106–07 (1 December 1914).

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‘He told me that as long as the Old Man lasts, our matters can continue, but that after his death, the SP would be dissolved. Therefore, it would have to operate without its Grandfather, which cannot be approved’.14 The members of La Sapinière were aware that without Pius X (here nicknamed ‘the Old Man’ in the irreverent jargon of the Sodalitium) the organization would lose all institutional legitimacy. As the world conflict continued, Benigni submitted new statutes to De Lai, taking Ad beatissimi into account and, therefore, suppressing the expression ‘integral Catholics’.15 Although the Consistorial Congregation took note of the Sodalitium’s re-establishment on 5 August 1915, it did not grant the canonical approval that Benigni so desired.16 In his opinion, the restraints applied to his initiative were the result of Benedict XV’s more moderate orientation.17 The lack of canonical approval, the difficulties of communicating during the war, but also the nationalist disagreements among the members, explain why reinstituting La Sapinière remained a dead issue.18 Disavowed by the Holy See, two years later, in a long letter to De Lai dated 1 January 1917, Benigni complained of a true ‘ostracism’, of which he was allegedly the victim: ‘I am a condemned man, but above all a man condemned to being misunderstood. Under the current pontificate, no head or assistant head has ever spoken a word to me’.19 A notable characteristic of this letter is Benigni’s change in tone when writing to his former protector. He had become fundamentally pessimistic, if not paranoid: The current campaign against me in the Vatican is nothing other than an obvious episode of the war that has been declared against me by the ‘Sect Within’, the sister and accomplice of the ‘Sect Without’, from the day that I openly began the struggle against the liberal-democrat-modernist coalition, which is the saboteur of Catholicism and open enemy or false friend of the Holy See. […] This is how

14 ‘Mi disse che finché dura il Vecchio le nostre cose potranno passare, ma che dopo la morte di esso il SP sarà sciolto. E che allora si dovrà operare senza il Nonno, il che non è approvabile’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 52, Boccardo to Benigni, 20 August 1914. On the magazine, see Danilo Veneruso, ‘La Liguria del Popolo e i cattolici integralisti genovesi dalla fine della prima guerra mondiale all’apogeo del regime fascista (1918–1936)’, in Saggi di storia del giornalismo in memoria di Leonida Balestrieri (Genoa: Istituto Mazziniano, 1982), pp. 229–310. 15 Modified statutes, Italian version in ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52. See the letter in which Benigni thanked De Lai for having agreed to examine the new statutes (ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 52, Benigni to De Lai, 30 June 1915). In April of 1928, a part of the official documents was reproduced in a booklet in Italian and French, ‘Face à la calomnie, Di fronte alla calunnia’, published in the magazines of Benigni’s network: La Liguria del Popolo on 2 June 1928, Fede e Ragione on 3 June 1928, Les Cahiers des Éditions Urbs in June of 1928, and Revue internationale des Sociétés Secrètes on 1 November 1932. 16 See the original letter in ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52. 17 ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52, Benigni’s response to Sbarretti Tazza, 16 November 1921: ‘This offer was no longer accepted with the new orientation’ (‘col nuovo indirizzo non si gradiva più tale offerta’). 18 On the war’s impact, see Nina Valbousquet, ‘Anti-Modernism and Catholic Nationalism: The Impact of WWI on Msgr Umberto Benigni’s Catholic Integralist Network’, Modernism, 3 (2017), pp. 212–46. 19 ‘Io sono un condannato, ma soprattutto un condannato a non essere inteso. Sotto l’attuale pontificato nessun capo né sottocapo mi ha rivolto mai una parola’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 52, Benigni to De Lai, 2 January 1917.

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they have hitherto succeeded in continuing their implacable execution of the moral death sentence to which I have been condemned by the Sect at the Vatican.20 Thus emerges the characteristic theme of the integral movement embodied by Benigni in the post-Pius X era: the conviction that there was a modernist and liberal infiltration into the leading offices of the Church. Under Benedict XV, Benigni’s ‘betrayal anxiety’,21 already experienced with regard to Merry del Val after 1911, deteriorated, as his bitter comment about De Lai during the 1922 conclave reveals: De Lai Gaetano: under Pius X, very reactionary in the anti-modernist struggle, then given to keeping his place. Shallow, impressionable, violent, changeable. Very hardworking, very ambitious, to the point of scheming. Not eligible as pope.22 During Benedict XV’s pontificate, Benigni’s rancour crystallized, as expressed in a denunciation of the duplicity of his ‘enemies’ who, according to him, were to be found both within and outside the Church.

3. Attacks of the Integralists against Benedict XV in the Post-War Period Benigni was not alone in his opposition to the Holy See’s more moderate leanings. His close collaborators shared a similar sentiment, beginning with Abbot Paul Boulin, formerly the Secretary of La Sapinière and co-editor of one of Benigni’s new bulletins. After a meeting with Boulin in Paris, Baudrillart noted in his diary, on 12 April 1921: ‘Abbot Boulin, who does not like Benedict XV or his ministers, accuses Tedeschini, Cerretti, Gasparri and others of revealing Vatican secrets for money’.23 Certainly, the integralist trend no longer dominated the Church’s governance, but the resilience of ‘Pius X’s party’ was steadfast during Benedict XV’s pontificate. Although far from being organized, the current constituted an internal traditionalist opposition that was very active within the spheres of ecclesiastic leadership. In this sense, the support given to Benigni by Cardinal Tommaso Pio Boggiani was emblematic. The Cardinal, already known as a zealous anti-modernist apostolic

20 ‘La campagna attuale fatta contro di me in Vaticano non è che un episodio saliente della guerra dichiaratami dalla “Setta di dentro” sorella e complice della “Setta di fuori”, dal giorno che mi misi a viso aperto a lottare contro la coalizione liberale-democrista-modernista, sabotatrice del cattolicismo e nemica aperta o falsa amica della S. Sede. […] è così che costoro sono sinora riusciti a continuare dentro il Vaticano l’esecuzione implacabile della sentenza di morte morale elargitami dalla Setta’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 52, Benigni to De Lai, 2 January 1917. 21 ‘Complexe de trahison’; Poulat, Catholicisme, démocratie et socialisme, p. 358. 22 ‘De Lai Gaetano: sous Pie X très réactionnaire dans la lutte antimoderniste, puis cédant pour conserver sa place. Peu de fond, impressionnable, violent, changeable. Peu estimé comme homme de gouvernement. Très travailleur, très ambitieux jusqu’à l’intrigue. Pas papable’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 59, list of the papables written by Benigni in French, probably for his French friends, February 1922. 23 ‘L’abbé Boulin, qui n’aime point Benoît XV ni ses ministres, accuse Tedeschini, Cerretti, Gasparri et autres de livrer pour de l’argent les secrets du Vatican’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 772 (12 April 1921).

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visitor under Pius X, stood out in the later years of Benedict XV’s pontificate for his fierce opposition to the Italian People’s Party (PPI).24 Archbishop of Genoa from 30 January 1919, Boggiani accused the party of betraying the Catholic cause, thus becoming ‘spiritual enemies’ of the Church.25 Faced with the national scandal caused by the Archbishop’s intransigence, the Holy See recalled him to Rome in July 1921.26 The Archbishop was then forced to resign from his episcopal office, but remained influential in Church affairs as a member of various congregations and as an exponent of the most integralist faction during the conclave of 1922. While in Genoa, Boggiani proved to be crucial in support for Benigni. Receiving regular documentation from the latter, he offered his services to the integralist group and sent subscriptions ‘for delivery of bulletins. I have always read them willingly’.27 Moreover, the Cardinal protected the journal of his close friend Count Filippo Sassoli de Bianchi, Fede e Ragione. He did not hesitate to put pressure on the Bishop of Acquapendente to grant an imprimatur to the magazine published in the same diocese by the Lemurio press.28 In the last years of Benedict XV’s pontificate, Benigni’s invectives against the Pope and his entourage increased, fuelled by the turbulent post-war context, particularly as far as topical issues, such as the PPI, Christian unions and the politics of reconciliation with the French Republic (the so-called second ralliement) were concerned. The integralist opposition to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with France was fierce. The negotiations regarding the cultuelles (diocesan associations) implied a recognition of the Loi de séparation of 1905, which, in the eyes of the integralists, contradicted the prohibitions pronounced by Pius X in 1906 and 1907.29 According to the Archpriest of the Cathedral of Perpignan, Fernand Izart, a sympathizer of Action française and regular correspondent with Benigni, this thorny question reinforced the gap between the local flock and Benedict XV’s governance: ‘What a mea culpa the Vatican should offer! This discrepancy between the leaders

24 On Boggiani’s role in the modernist crisis, see Lorenzo Bedeschi, Il modernismo e Romolo Murri in Emilia e Romagna (Parma: Guanda, 1967), pp. 193–97 and Giovanni Vian, La riforma della Chiesa per la restaurazione cristiana della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1914) (Rome: Herder, 1998). 25 ‘Nemici spirituali’; Tommaso Pio Boggiani, ‘L’azione cattolica e il Partito popolare italiano: lettera al clero e al popolo dell’arcidiocesi’, in I due anni di episcopato genovese dell’E.mo Signor Cardinale T. P. Boggiani: Atti Pastorali (Acquapendente: Tipografia Lemurio, 1922), pp. 126–54. 26 See ‘Genova e il cardinale Boggiani e L’addio del card. Boggiani ai Genovesi’, Fede e Ragione, 14 August 1921, pp. 3–4. 27 ‘Per la trasmissione dei bollettini. Li ho sempre letti volentieri’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 52, Boggiani to Benigni, 1 January 1921. 28 ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, b. 3, Boggiani to Mgr Tranquillo Guarnieri, 20 February 1921. 29 François Jankowiak, ‘“Droit ecclésiastique” et régime de séparation: la question des associations diocésaines sous le pontificat de Pie XI’, in Pie XI et la France: l’apport des archives du pontificat de Pie XI à la connaissance des rapports entre le Saint-Siège et la France, ed. by Jacques Prévotat (Rome: École française de Rome, 2010), pp. 33–52.

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and what the interested crowd thinks remains incomprehensible’.30 On the Italian side, the integralists reproached Benedict XV for revoking the non expedit and for the Holy See’s initially benevolent attitude toward the PPI, which they saw as a harmful compromise by Catholics in Italian liberal and parliamentary politics. Although, relations between the PPI and the Holy See were more ambivalent and complex, Benigni was convinced that Sturzo’s party was a deception aimed at the ecclesiastic hierarchy. The implication was that the PPI was nothing other than a branch of the ‘Sect’ that had infiltrated the Catholic world: ‘the great mafia of which the PPI is the most audacious, but not the sole, perhaps the most treacherous, manifestation’.31 Benigni did not hide his concern at seeing the Church distance itself from its own traditions and give way in the face of non-confessionalism and inter-confessionalism. He confided all his bitterness about the Pope to Baudrillart on a trip to Paris in the summer of 1921. With regard to Benigni, the Rector noted in his diary: ‘He believes that Gasparri and Benedict XV are leading the Church to an abyss’.32 Benigni presumably would have even rejoiced at the fact that Benedict XV’s precarious health might be a good omen for an imminent return to the integralist line. In the fall of 1921, Baudrillart reported these concerns in an audience with Gasparri: Mgr Benigni feels a wholly particular hatred for Pope Benedict XV and for Your Eminence. He says that the Pope and the Cardinal are ruining the Church. But this will not go very far because, fortunately, the Pope’s health is not good and there is no doubt that the successor will change all that.33 This testimony was corroborated by a note from the Nuncio to Paris, Bonaventura Cerretti, sent to Gasparri on 4 November 1921. While the Holy See and French government were seeking common ground, the Nuncio emphasized Benigni’s nefarious influence upon French integralists. Cerretti reported the same conversation with

30 ‘Quel mea culpa on devrait faire au Vatican! Cette discordance des chefs avec la pensée de la foule intéressée demeure incompréhensible’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 57, Izart to Benigni, 17 November 1920. See Baudrillart’s consultation (September 1920) on the diocesan associations in Émile Poulat, Les diocésaines: République française, Église catholique: Loi de 1905 et associations cultuelles: le dossier d’un litige et de sa solution (1903–2003) (Paris: La Documentation française, 2007), pp. 161–63. 31 ‘La grande camorra di cui il PPI è la più audace ma non la sola e forse la più perfida manifestazione’; ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, b. 3, Benigni to Sassoli de Bianchi, 20 April 1921. On the relations between the Holy See and the PPI, see Alberto Guasco, Cattolici e fascisti: la Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del regime (1919–1925) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013). 32 ‘Il considère que Gasparri et Benoît XV mènent l’Église aux abîmes’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 841 (1 July 1921). 33 ‘Mgr Benigni a une haine toute particulière contre le pape Benoît XV et contre V. E. Le Pape et le Cardinal, dit-il, ruinent l’Église. Mais ceci n’ira pas très loin, car heureusement la santé du pape n’est pas bonne et il n’y a pas de doute que le successeur changera tout ça’; Il cardinale Gasparri, ed. by Spadolini, p. 114. Conversation reported by Baudrillart after Gasparri’s comment: ‘Wouldn’t it be possible to be kinder, more respectful and reverent towards the person of the Holy Father!?!’ (‘Non si potrebbe esser più gentili, più rispettosi e ossequienti verso la persona del S. Padre!?!’).

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Benigni, that is to say, that he was impatiently awaiting Benedict XV’s death, hoping that it would inaugurate a ‘healthy change in the Holy See’s politics’.34 These statements probably aggravated the review of La Sapinière’s dossier, which was at that very moment being examined by the Prefect of the Congregation of the Council, Donato Sbarretti Tazza. After consulting Benedict XV, the Cardinal decreed the definitive and official dissolution of La Sapinière in a letter dated 25 November 1921.35 Benigni implemented the suppression on 1 December 1921, announcing it to the former members and, at the same time, expressing to Sbarretti Tazza his indignation in the face of the conspiracy of which he was supposedly the victim. He denounced the ‘unsavoury grudges and unsavoury interests’ that were being plotted against him in the very top offices of the Vatican.36 The delayed dissolution of La Sapinière can be explained, in part, by the dissemination in France, from the spring of 1921, of the Sulpician Fernand Mourret’s memorandum entitled Une Société secrète, which denounced La Sapinière’s activities under Pius X. Based on the correspondence seized in Ghent by the lawyer Jonckx, the document had, despite some factual errors, a considerable impact.37 Although, according to Baudrillart, the publication only confirmed what was already known, the controversies that arose concerned Benedict XV.38 According to the Redemptorist Alphonse George, a long-time member of La Sapinière, the pontiff (‘Grégoire’) was supposedly ‘exasperated’: ‘It was presented to him as a highly secret society against the current Grégoire’.39 In this same letter to Boulin of 3 October 1921, Father George summarized the situation: ‘The Sodalitium was dissolved with the change in regime: individuals remain, but the society has been dissolved’. These recommendations well reflected the compartmentalized strategy by which Benigni divided his various activities, testifying to La Sapinière’s true situation: contacts between certain individuals remained, but the organization, as such, was left an empty shell after its canonical approval was rejected in August of 1915. 34 ‘Un cambiamento salutare nella politica della S. Sede’; Cerretti to Gasparri, 4 November 1921, present in two files: ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, fasc. 950, Intrigue Salvian [sic] Benigni, and AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393 PO, Agenzia Urbs 1926, fasc. 279. 35 ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52 for the original Italian version. Most likely little informed by De Lai, Sbarretti Tazza addressed a first letter to Benigni on 10 November 1921, asking him for explanations about the Mourret memorandum. Benigni replied with a long letter addressed to the Congregation of the Council on 16 November (accompanied by a private letter addressed directly to Sbarretti Tazza). On the omissions in that letter, see Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 578–96. 36 ‘Loschi rancori e loschi interessi’; ASMAE, Serie D, b. 52, Benigni to Sbarretti Tazza, 16 November 1921 (‘personal’). 37 On the inaccuracies in that report, see Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 55–54. It was recalled in the pamphlet by Louis Canet [Nicolas Fontaine], Saint-Siège, Action française et catholiques intégraux (Paris: Gamber, 1928). 38 Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, pp. 795–96 (10 May 1921): ‘Many of these things were known’ (‘beaucoup de ces choses étaient connues’). 39 ‘Cela lui a été présenté comme une société très secrète contre Grégoire actuel’; ‘Au changement de régime, le Sodalitium a été dissous: les individus restent, mais la société est dissoute’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 58, Alphonse George to Boulin, 3 October 1921. Alphonse George, Rector of the house in Paris from 1901 to 1920, was among the four Redemptorist priests who were members of the Sodalitium, along with Désiré Castelain, Édouard Herbaux, and Émile Dupuis.

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4. The Ghost of La Sapinière: L’Actualité catholique and the Condemnation of Father Salvien During the post-war period, the conflation of La Sapinière with Benigni’s new activities resulted in part from the concerns, expressed in circles close to Benedict XV, of an ‘integralist revival’ around the old-time members of the Sodalitium.40 Returning to Paris in 1920, after the death of Cardinal Archbishop Amette, Boulin strove to reunite a Parisian branch of Benigni’s activities with the help of Jacques Rocafort and Henri Merlier, his former collaborators at the intransigent journal La Vigie. In October 1920, Baudrillart noted an integralist resurgence no longer restricted to the field of religion but rather politicized: ‘Abbe B. [Boulin] still seems to entertain correspondence on political and religious issues, where there seem to be some rather curious things’.41 The Holy See closely followed a new integralist journal that launched in Paris under Benigni’s leadership: L’Actualité catholique, a weekly founded in 1921 by Boulin and Mgr Daniel Lepercq with Rocafort’s collaboration.42 A niche publication aimed at a limited audience with a circulation of 2000 copies, L’Actualité catholique spread Benigni’s propaganda directly, using the prelate’s bulletins. Based upon an exchange of documents within Benigni’s network (with Fede e Ragione in particular), the journal reflected a more political slant in matters pertaining to anti-communism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and opposition to the Wilsonian post-1919 order. Baudrillart, however, likened the journal to a rebirth of the Sodalitium: ‘L’Actualité catholique, directed by Mgr Lepercq and Roger Duguet himself [a pseudonym of Boulin] aims at reviving this agency, as is indicated by the notice included on the back cover claiming to be confidential information’.43 While not a simple replica of La Sapinière, initiatives like L’Actualité catholique reflected to a greater extent Benigni’s new attempts to form a broader counter-revolutionary organization for ‘social defence’.44

40 ‘Ripresa integralista’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, fasc. 950, Intrigue Salvian Benigni, Cerretti to Gasparri, 4 November 1921. 41 ‘L’abbé B. paraît entretenir encore une correspondance sur les questions politiques et religieuses, où il y aurait d’assez curieuses choses’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 628 (30 October 1921). 42 See ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 57, ‘L’Actualité catholique, état de nos services au 2 juin 1921’, accounts statement kept by Boulin. 43 ‘L’Actualité catholique, dirigée par Mgr Lepercq et le même Roger Duguet, aurait pour but de ressusciter cette agence, comme l’indique l’Avis inséré au verso de la couverture, réclamant des renseignements confidentiels’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 797 (10 May 1921). 44 ‘Difesa sociale’. The ‘notice’ to which Baudrillart was referring is in the issue of 24 March 1921: ‘We urgently ask for the collaboration of all our readers. That you send us, not articles, but frequent information suitable, if not to be published, at least to inform and guide us. In this way, such active and detailed correspondence, even if destined to remain unpublished and confidential, will be a daily link between the management and our friends, and make our work a true intellectual cooperation’ (‘Nous sollicitons instamment la collaboration de tous nos lecteurs. Qu’ils nous envoient, non des articles, mais de fréquentes informations, propres, sinon à être publiées, du moins à nous renseigner et à nous guider: de telle sorte que cette correspondance active et détaillée, même destinée à demeurer inédite et confidentielle, soit entre la direction et nos amis un lien journalier et fasse de notre œuvre une véritable coopérative intellectuelle’).

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The magazine ceased publication in June 1921, as the weekly’s last issue noted: ‘At the formal wishes of Holy See, L’Actualité catholique will cease publication’.45 Although it is not possible to trace the exact causes of this interruption in the archives, it is likely that the Holy See ordered Lepercq not to pursue the publication, according to a report sent by Cerretti to Gasparri three years later: Having at his disposal significant economic resources, [Lepercq] joined the integralist group headed by Mgr Benigni and founded a periodical entitled Les Actualités catholiques, with which the well-known Rocafort and other eiusdem furfuris individuals began to collaborate. Moreover, it was immediately made known to him, in a note from the Holy See, that he must certainly cease such a publication. Mgr Lepercq promised he would do so and that, abandoning all ties with the clandestine organization headed by Mgr Benigni, he would retire to private life.46 In spite of the interruption imposed by the Vatican, Benigni’s bulletins continued throughout 1921. In a letter of 4 November that year, Cerretti again mentioned ‘the attempt to establish an integralist newspaper under the inspiration of Mgr Benigni’.47 The Nuncio in Paris once more referred in confidence to Abbot Emmanuel Barbier about a ‘new integralist offensive’ that supposedly had a budget of 1.7 million francs at its disposal for publications. ‘Barbier himself let the confession slip that Mgr Benigni (still in Paris) would remain behind the scenes to inspire and support the newspaper’.48 While Benigni was not investigated directly by the hierarchy, his true or supposed collaborators were subjected to disciplinary measures. Such was the case of the Assumptionist Salvien who, under the pseudonym ‘Father Ricard’, directed La Documentation catholique, a Bonne Presse weekly that published official Roman texts, from 1919 to 1923.49 Suspected of having participated in the Parisian integralists’ editorial work, that is, in L’Actualité catholique, Salvien was threatened by the Holy See (at the request of Cerretti and the Vicar General of the Assumptionists, Joseph Maubon) with being transferred outside Europe.50 The 45 ‘Sur le désir formel du Saint-Siège, L’Actualité catholique cesse de paraître’; on the magazine’s suppression, see L’Actualité catholique, 2 June 1921 (last issue). 46 ‘Disponendo di risorse economiche rilevanti, si unì con il gruppo integralista che fa capo a mons. Benigni, e fondò un periodico dal titolo Les Actualités catholiques, ove cominciasse a collaborare il notissimo Rocafort e altri individui eiusdem furfuris. Gli fu, per altro, fatto subito sapere, a nota della S. Sede, che avesse a cessare senz’altro tale pubblicazione. Mons. Lepercq promise che lo avrebbe fatto e che, abbandonando ogni legame con l’organizzazione clandestina che mette capo a mons. Benigni, si sarebbe ritirato a vita privata’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, Cerretti to Gasparri, 1 December 1924. 47 ‘Il tentativo per fondare un giornale integralista, sotto l’ispirazione di mons. Benigni’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, Cerretti to Gasparri, 4 November 1921. 48 ‘Nouvelle offensive intégriste’; ‘Barbier s’est même laissé arracher l’aveu que Mgr Benigni (encore à Paris) se tiendrait dans la coulisse pour inspirer et appuyer le journal’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 393 PO, typewritten note, 1 October 1921 (words reported by the Jesuit Barret). 49 The first issue appeared on 15 February 1919. Salvien (the religious name of Charles Miglietti) signed his articles with the pseudonyms of Ricard, Ch.p. and Rod. 50 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, fasc. 950, Intrigue Salvian Benigni, Maubon to the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon Louis-Joseph Maurin, 23 November 1922, in which he informs him of the Pope’s decision relayed by the Nuncio Cerretti on 14 November 1922.

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enforcement of this grave disciplinary measure was suspended after an audience that Benedict XV granted Salvien on 17 November 1923. Pius XI turned more severe in the face of the priest’s refusal to obey, and in 1923, put La Documentation catholique in the hands of Father Léon Merklen, transferring Salvien to Sanremo and then to Locarno.51 The appearance of Salvien’s name among the supposed members of La Sapinière in Mourret’s memorandum certainly influenced the Holy See’s decision, as demonstrated by Cerretti’s letter to Gasparri in November 1921 regarding the integralist reprisal: In Mgr Benigni’s now famous cipher book, the name of Father Ricard is also included among his collaborators. Ricard clearly denies having had any dealing with him during Pius X’s pontificate, […] but clergymen and even some bishops believe that he is not entirely foreign to some recent conspiracy schemes for an integralist resumption. […] The fact is that Father Ricard’s secret activity has aroused sentiments that are anything but benevolent toward the Assumptionists in governmental spheres and in part of the clergy.52 Salvien was neither a member of La Sapinière nor one of Benigni’s closest collaborators, but his relations with Benigni and Boulin since 1910 and his collaboration at La Vigie definitely put him ‘in the immediate vicinity of the Sodalitium Pianum’, as Émile Poulat explained.53 The post-war period witnessed further coincidences between Benigni’s activities and the slant that Salvien lent to La Documentation catholique, particularly with regard to the anti-Semitic articles on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.54 Furthermore, Salvien, like Benigni, received information from Ferdinand Rüegg in the Swiss KIPA agency.55 Close to George, the Assumptionist priest even conveyed his own opinion regarding the response to be voiced to Mourret’s report to the former members of La Sapinière in the autumn of 1921.56 Salvien’s connections with the integralist group in the post-war period explain why Cerretti strongly insisted that the Holy See ‘order him to refrain from any interference

51 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, fasc. 950, Maubon to Cerretti, 28 December 1922 and 22 February 1923. 52 ‘Nell’ormai famoso cifrario di mons. Benigni, figura tra i suoi collaboratori anche il nome del p. Ricard. Questo nega recisamente di aver avuto qualsiasi rapporto con lui durante il pontificato di Pio X […] ma persone del clero ed anche alcuni vescovi ritengono che egli non sia del tutto estraneo a certi intrighi orditi anche recentemente per una ripresa integralista. […] Il fatto è che l’attività occulta del p. Ricard ha ridestato contro gli assunzionisti nelle sfere governative e anche in una parte del clero sentimenti tutt’altro che benevoli’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, fasc. 950, Cerretti to Gasparri, 4 November 1921. 53 ‘Nelle immediate vicinanze del S. P.’; see Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 75, 286–87 and pp. 574–76. In his response to Sbarretti on 16 November 1921, Benigni asserted that Salvien was not affiliated with La Sapinière. 54 ‘Les Juifs sont les principaux fauteurs du bolchevisme universel: note établie par les Services officiels américains’; La Documentation catholique, 6 March 1920, pp. 326–28. This was a quote from the report entitled Jewish-Bolshevism and disseminated by Boris Brasol, a White Russian exiled to the United States. In May 1920, Benigni published excerpts of that report in Fede e Ragione. 55 AES, Svizzera, pos. 515, fasc. 285, Ricard to Ferdinand Rüegg, 15 March 1919. 56 ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 59, George to Boulin, 3 October 1921; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 59, Ricard to Boulin, 2 October 1921.

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in political matters’.57 Collateral participation in Benigni’s activities, therefore, was interpreted by the Vatican hierarchy as political ‘interference’ and probably as an attack on the credibility of both the French government and the Holy See within the context of the second ralliement.

5. Benigni’s Network after La Sapinière While Benigni had always demonstrated his integralist fervour, the Holy See understood neither the nature nor the scope of the reorganization of his network. The confusion between La Sapinière and Benigni’s new post-war activities was clarified by the letter of 10 November 1921 in which Sbarretti Tazza asked Benigni to account for Fede e Ragione, suggesting a direct involvement in the Sodalitium’s affairs. Benigni was careful not to do so, and rightly so, because his involvement in Fede e Ragione was independent of any past connection with La Sapinière. Undoubtedly, Fede e Ragione’s director, Paolo de Töth, was already known for his role as the head of the Florentine L’Unità Cattolica during the anti-modernist press campaign under Pius X from 1908 to 1909, although he had not participated in the Sodalitium.58 Fede e Ragione was instead part of a redeployment strategy of Benigni’s post-war activism. The journal was founded in Florence in December 1919 by de Töth and Sassoli de Bianchi. At that time, Sassoli de Bianchi was head of the right-wing clerical branch of the PPI before pressure from Benigni and Boggiani led him to renounce the venture in March 1921.59 The journal moved to Fiesole in February 1922, where Bishop Fossà gave his full support and imprimatur.60 Benigni intervened directly in developing the journal’s editorial leaning. He directed a Roman office that dealt with international correspondence and circulation of Fede e Ragione between 1921 and 1924. Although the Rome branch was formally 57 ‘Gli si ingiungesse di astenersi da qualsiasi ingerenza in cose di politica’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Parigi, b. 487, fasc. 950, Cerretti to Gasparri, 5 December 1922. 58 On the Florentine newspaper, L’Unità Cattolica (put in the hands of the Holy See in 1907), see Maurizio Tagliaferri, L’Unità Cattolica: studio di una mentalità (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993). In 1909, de Töth was incardinated into the Diocese of Fiesole and taught at the diocesan seminary. After 1929, thanks to Fossà’s support, he was appointed to a parish in the Diocese of Fiesole, San Martino a Maiano (Fiesole Diocesan Archive, Beneficiaries, b. 155, fasc. 32, Fossà to the Cardinal calendar keeper, 9 January 1930). 59 A former member of the FUCI in Bologna, Filippo Sassoli de Bianchi was a member of the Third Order Dominicans and joined the National Centre in 1924, before being appointed podestà of Scarperia, a town in the province of Florence. See Silvio Tramontin, ‘Sassoli de Bianchi (Filippo)’, in Dizionario, ed. by Campanini and Traniello, III, pp. 778–79 and Paolo de Töth, F. Sassoli de Bianchi: gran signore e perfetto cristiano, filosofo, sociologo, modello di cattolica attività (Florence: n. pub., 1958). On his abandoning the right wing of the PPI, see ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 50, typewritten report, 1 December 1920. On the right wing, see Silvio Tramontin, ‘La formazione dell’ala destra nel PPI’, in Modernismo, fascismo e comunismo: aspetti e figure della cultura e della politica dei cattolici nel ’900, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972), pp. 453–78. 60 Gianni Vannoni, ‘Integralismo cattolico e fascismo: Fede e Ragione’, in La Chiesa del Concordato: anatomia di una diocesi: Firenze 1919–1939, ed. by Francesco Margiotta Broglio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977), pp. 441–78.

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dissolved in 1924, Benigni continued to send bulletins and articles in French or Italian, frequently published under the pseudonym ‘H. Brand’. It is worth noting that the prelate played a prominent role in the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Fede e Ragione (17 March–26 June 1921), working from an Italian translation of the French version by Mgr Jouin.61 The Holy See’s new orientation in the post-war period soon made Benigni aware of the impossibility of continuing the anti-modernist battle that had been waged under Pius X. From then on, Benigni no longer sought official support from the Holy See but tried to keep his activities hidden from ecclesiastic leaders. The initial intra-ecclesial struggle of La Sapinière turned into a broader, extra-ecclesial conflict. Despite the continuity of actors and methods between La Sapinière and Benigni’s network after 1918, the objectives and strategies of this new and nebulous integralism had, for the most part, changed. In the post-war context, described in apocalyptic terms as an unprecedented crisis in the Christian world, Benigni’s so-called ‘social defence’ network (transformed into a Roman entente for social defence from 1923) aimed at a total, political, social, and cultural counter-revolutionary struggle and not only the denunciation of religious modernism within the Church.62 Benigni’s network again mobilized its Catholic members who did not have direct ties with the old Sapinière ( Jouin, for example) but also collaborated with non-Catholic political activists, for instance, German and British nationalists and White Russian émigrés. Benigni’s change in post-Sapinière strategy also explains his convergence, starting in 1923, with Mussolini’s regime. An informant for the Fascist police until his death in 1934, Benigni turned into an exponent of clerical Fascism and a defender of the Romanitas.

6. Epilogue: The Memory of Benedict XV in Integralist Polemics The integralist attacks against Benedict XV did not end with the death of the pontiff. During the 1922 conclave, the integralists did not have a good opinion of the stronghold of ‘Gasparrism’, which was seen to be in direct continuity with Benedict XV’s line. They hoped that the heirs of ‘Pius X’s party’ would exert their pressure: ‘The parties of Benedict XV will attempt to save their situation with a pope of their own (Ratti, Maffi, Gasparri), but the right-wing opposition counts for at least a good third’.63

61 ‘I Documenti della conquista ebraica del mondo, 1. I Protocolli dei saggi anziani di Sion’, Fede e Ragione, supplement to no. 13, 27 March 1921. 62 ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, b. 17, Studi: per la difesa sociale: semplici constatazioni, December 1920. On the Entente, see ASMAE, Fondo Benigni, b. 17, ‘Note du Comité de Documentation Sociale (CDDS)’, Veritas, 31 May 1923. 63 ‘Le parti de Benoît XV tentera de sauver sa situation par un sien papa (Ratti, Maffi, Gasparri), mais l’opposition de droite compte un bon tiers tout au moins’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 59, note typewritten in French, February 1922.

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An additional note presented a ‘plan for the Catholic defence of the conclave’, the hopes for which rested on the most reactionary cardinals, such as Billot, Merry del Val and Boggiani.64 After the election of Pius XI, Benigni complained to the Substitute for the Secretary of State, Giuseppe Pizzardo, of Gasparri’s persistent hostility and did not hesitate to refer to Ad beatissimi, emphasizing, however, only those aspects that concerned the condemnation of modernism: ‘It is necessary to fight not only modernism, but also the modernist spirit’.65 In the fight against Gasparri, the integralists selectively reinterpreted the sum and substance of Benedict XV’s pontificate, accepting only those elements that could support their denunciation of the modernist influence within the Holy See. Benigni continued the fight against the Holy See’s ‘liberals’ in his new bulletin Veritas, launched in April 1922, and in the magazines Agenzia Urbs and Romana produced by the Urbs press agency, which he directed with his nephew, the Fascist journalist Pietro Mataloni. Fede e Ragione was equally as virulent toward Benedict XV’s legacy. The journal was constantly called to order by Gasparri until its definitive cessation in December 1929, after an ultimatum from the Secretary of State.66 On 6 March 1922, the Cardinal addressed a letter for general circulation to the Italian bishops warning them against Fede e Ragione’s ‘irreverent’ affirmations concerning the memory of Benedict XV.67 Gasparri denounced an article by de Töth that presented, on the occasion of Pius XI’s election, the norms to which an ideal pope should conform. The Secretary of State also accurately denounced the strategy of Fede e Ragione and of the integralists, which consisted in distinguishing the papacy (a century-old, venerable institution) from the pope (a mortal, transitory person). The magazine used this pretext to criticize Benedict XV’s and Pius XI’s personalities, while at the same time claiming obedience to the cause of the Holy See. Gasparri reproached Biagioli, the ecclesiastic censor who had granted the journal’s imprimatur: It is not enough to declare oneself obedient, etc., to the Church, or the papacy, or the Holy See, but it is also necessary to extend those sentiments to the reigning pontiff, whether he be called Leo XIII, Pius X, Ben[edict] XV, or Pius XI. A true Catholic must be reverent toward the pope, whomsoever he be, and if his directives do not coincide with that person’s own beliefs, he must bow his head, convinced that the pope is right and he is wrong. The distinction between the papacy in the 64 ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 59, note typewritten in Italian, February 1922: ‘read and destroy’ (‘leggere e distruggere’). 65 ‘Bisogna combattere non solo il modernismo ma anche lo spirito modernista’; ASV, Fondo Benigni, b. 59, Benigni to Pizzardo, 30 March 1922. 66 After the magazine’s attacks against the lay association Volontaires du Pape and against Francisque Gay; AES, Italia, pos. 608 PO, fasc. 44, René Fontenelle to Gasparri, 2 December 1929 and Gasparri to Sassoli de Bianchi, 4 December 1929. 67 AES, Italia, pos. 631 A. PO, fasc. 65, Paolo de Töth, 1922–25, letter for general circulation from the Secretariat of State, 6 March 1922: ‘Publications that are inopportune and irreverent to the holy memory of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XV’.

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abstract and the pope in the concrete, or that between one pope and another, is not to a Catholic’s advantage.68 In fact, at the militant meetings organized by his aristocratic or religious friends in Venice and Tuscany, de Töth did not hesitate to openly insult the ecclesial hierarchy. As witnessed in the depositions of an ‘extrajudicial’ investigation opened against him in 1924–25 by the Bishop of Treviso, the Director of Fede e Ragione allegedly described Benedict XV as a true ‘biscaro’ (‘idiot’ in Tuscan dialect), during a meeting in the Dominican abbey in Fiesole.69 Another of Benigni’s close collaborators, Guido Aureli, was likewise rather harsh in his judgement of the pontificate. The Vatican specialist of La Tribuna was likely the author of an article entitled ‘Benedetto XV, il papa della Realpolitik’ published in La Ronda, a Roman literary magazine founded by Emilio Cecchi to which Benigni also contributed, shortly after the end of Benedict XV’s pontificate.70 A few years after Benigni’s death, at the time of Pius XII’s election, Aureli published a eulogy of Eugenio Pacelli in La Vita Italiana, Giovanni Preziosi’s Fascist, anti-Semitic magazine. Aureli hailed the name chosen by the new Pope as a tie to the legacy of Pius X (for his anti-modernist campaign) and of Pius XI (for his conciliation with Fascist Italy). Between the two popes, Aureli’s omission of Benedict XV was obvious, referring to him in these terms: ‘The Benedict parenthesis of adjustment and attempts at failed initiatives in favour of audacious laity, and the continual disobedience of priests just as under Pius X’.71 Although taking care to deflect the responsibility for these failures onto the alleged modernist elements that had infiltrated the Church, Aureli well reflected the integralist strategy and its ambiguous relationship with modern pontifical history, reducing the eight years of Benedict XV’s pontificate to a simple ‘parenthesis’, as if such a treatment could erase its legacy and developments.

68 ‘Non basta dichiararsi devoto, obbediente ecc. alla Chiesa, al papato, alla S. Sede, ma è necessario estendere questi sentimenti al pontefice regnante, si chiami esso Leone XIII, Pio X, Ben[edetto] XV, Pio XI. Un vero cattolico deve essere ossequente al papa, chiunque esso sia e se le sue direttive non collimano con le sue idee, deve chinar la testa, persuaso che il papa ha ragione ed egli torto. La distinzione tra papato in astratto e papa in concreto, ovvero tra papa e papa, non conviene a un cattolico’; AES, Italia, pos. 608 PO, fasc. 44, Gasparri to Biagioli, 29 October 1922. 69 AES, Italia, pos. 631 A. PO, fasc. 65, Longhin to Carlo Agostini, 12 June 1924 (‘out of court’, ‘in via extragiudiziale’). Deposition of Luigi Redazzore, tutor of Sassoli de Bianchi’s son, 16 July 1925, through the mediation of Cardinal Pietro La Fontaine, Patriarch of Venice: ‘In the monastery of the Dominican Fathers of Fiesole he called his holiness Benedict XV by an obscene Tuscan word, un biscaro’ (‘nel convento dei Padri Domenicani di Fiesole chiamò con parola sconcia toscana “un biscaro” la santità di Benedetto XV’). 70 ‘Benedetto XV, il papa della Realpolitik’, La Ronda, 2, February 1922, pp. 89–96; see [Enrico Rosa,] ‘Due anniversari’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 74, 1 (1923), pp. 193–200. On Emilio Cecchi’s ties to the integralist group, see Gabriele Rigano, ‘Note sull’antisemitismo in Italia prima del 1938’, Storiografia, 12 (2008), pp. 215–67. 71 ‘La parentesi benedettiana di assestamento e di tentativi di orientamenti falliti per audacia di laici e disobbedienze continuate di preti come sotto Pio X’; Guido Aureli, ‘Pio XII’, La Vita Italiana, March 1939, pp. 279–98. Nephew of Cardinal Luigi Galimberti and friend of the Marquis Crispolto Crispolti, Guido Aureli was an editor specialized in Vatican matters for La Tribuna from 1899 to 1938.

T r a n s fo r m ati o n s o f I n t eg r al i s t C at h o li ci sm u nd e r Be ne d i ct  XV

Bibliography Aureli, Guido, ‘Pio XII’, La Vita Italiana, March 1939, pp. 279–98 Bedeschi, Lorenzo, La Curia romana durante la crisi modernista: episodi e metodi di governo (Parma: Guanda, 1968) Bedeschi, Lorenzo, Il modernismo e Romolo Murri in Emilia e Romagna (Parma: Guanda, 1967) Benigni, Umberto, Manuale di stile diplomatico (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1920) Benigni, Umberto, Storia sociale della Chiesa, 7 vols (Milan: Vallardi, 1907–33) Bettini Prosperi, Margherita, ‘Le carte di Umberto Benigni’, Clio, 2 (1992), pp. 289–300 Boggiani, Tommaso Pio, ‘L’azione cattolica e il Partito popolare italiano: lettera al clero e al popolo dell’arcidiocesi’, in I due anni di episcopato genovese dell’E.mo Signor Cardinale T. P. Boggiani: Atti Pastorali (Acquapendente: Tipografia Lemurio, 1922), pp. 126–54 Canet, Louis [Nicolas Fontaine], Saint-Siège, Action française et catholiques intégraux (Paris: Gamber, 1928) Christophe, Paul, ed., Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), II (2000) de Töth, Paolo, F. Sassoli de Bianchi: gran signore e perfetto cristiano, filosofo, sociologo, modello di cattolica attività (Florence: n. pub., 1958) Dieguez, Alejandro Mario, and Sergio Pagano, eds, Le carte del ‘sacro tavolo’: aspetti del pontificato di Pio X dai documenti del suo archivio privato (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006) Guasco, Alberto, Cattolici e fascisti: la Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del regime (1919–1925) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013) Jankowiak, François, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X: le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846–1914) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007) Jankowiak, François, ‘“Droit ecclésiastique” et régime de séparation: la question des associations diocésaines sous le pontificat de Pie XI’, in Pie XI et la France: l’apport des archives du pontificat de Pie XI à la connaissance des rapports entre le Saint-Siège et la France, ed. by Jacques Prévotat (Rome: École française de Rome, 2010), pp. 33–52 Malgeri, Francesco, ‘La Stampa quotidiana e periodica e l’editoria’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Einaudi, 1993) Miccoli, Giovanni, Fra mito della cristianità e secolarizzazione: studi sul rapporto chiesasocietà nell’età contemporanea (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1985) Pagano, Sergio, ‘Documenti sul modernismo romano dal Fondo Benigni’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 8 (1990), pp. 223–300 Pagano, Sergio, ‘Il fondo di Mons. Umberto Benigni dell’Archivio Segreto vaticano: inventario e indici’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 8 (1990), pp. 347–402 Poulat, Émile, Catholicisme, démocratie et socialisme: le mouvement catholique et Mgr Benigni de la naissance du socialisme à la victoire du fascisme (Tournai: Casterman, 1977) Poulat, Émile, Les diocésaines: République française, Église catholique: Loi de 1905 et associations cultuelles: le dossier d’un litige et de sa solution (1903–2003) (Paris: La Documentation française, 2007)

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Poulat, Émile, Église contre bourgeoisie: introduction au devenir du catholicisme actuel (Tournai: Casterman, 1977) Poulat, Émile, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969) Prudhomme, Claude, ‘Les hommes de la Secrétairerie d’État: carrières, réseaux, culture’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 110, 2 (1998), pp. 475–93 Rigano, Gabriele, ‘Note sull’antisemitismo in Italia prima del 1938’, Storiografia, 12 (2008), pp. 215–67 Sacra Rituum Congregatio, ed., Romana beatificationis et canonizationis servi Dei Pii Papae X: disquisitio circa quasdam obiectiones modum agendi servi Dei respicientes in modernismi debellatione una cum summario additionali ex officio compilato (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1950) Spadolini, Giovanni, ed., Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972) Tagliaferri, Maurizio, L’Unità Cattolica: studio di una mentalità (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993) Tramontin, Silvio, ‘La formazione dell’ala destra nel PPI’, in Modernismo, fascismo e comunismo: aspetti e figure della cultura e della politica dei cattolici nel ’900, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972), pp. 453–78 Tramontin, Silvio, ‘Sassoli de Bianchi (Filippo)’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III (1984), pp. 778–79 Valbousquet, Nina, ‘Anti-Modernism and Catholic Nationalism: The Impact of WWI on Msgr Umberto Benigni’s Catholic Integralist Network’, Modernism, 3 (2017), pp. 212–46 Valbousquet, Nina, ‘Gasparri, Benigni et les catholiques intégraux: autorité du Saint-Siège et opposition intégrale, de Pie X à Pius XI’, in Cardinale Pietro Gasparri, ed. by Laura Pettinaroli and Massimiliano Valente (forthcoming) Valbousquet, Nina, ‘Les réseaux transnationaux de l’antisémitisme catholique: France, Italie (1914–1934): Umberto Benigni et les catholiques intransigeants’ (doctoral thesis, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, 2016) Vannoni, Gianni, ‘Integralismo cattolico e fascismo: Fede e Ragione’, in La Chiesa del Concordato: anatomia di una diocesi: Firenze 1919–1939, ed. by Francesco Margiotta Broglio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977), pp. 441–78 Veneruso, Danilo, ‘La Liguria del Popolo e i cattolici integralisti genovesi dalla fine della prima guerra mondiale all’apogeo del regime fascista (1918–1936)’, in Saggi di storia del giornalismo in memoria di Leonida Balestrieri (Genoa: Istituto Mazziniano, 1982), pp. 229–310 Verucci, Guido, L’eresia del Novecento: la Chiesa e la repressione del modernismo in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 2010) Vian, Giovanni, La riforma della Chiesa per la restaurazione cristiana della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1914) (Rome: Herder, 1998)

Giovanni Vian

Modernism during the Pontificate of Benedict XV: Between Rehabilitation and Condemnation

1.

Initial Theological Orientations of the New Pontificate

The conclave held after Pius X’s death was divided between those supporting a complete continuity with his pontificate in Church governance and in relations with societies and nations (identified with the figures of ex-Secretary of State Merry del Val and ex-Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation De Lai) and the proponents of a return to the direction of Leo XIII and his Secretary of State Rampolla (albeit adapted to a notably different context), who voted for cardinals Ferrata and Maffi. At the end of the conclave, on 3 September 1914, the election of Giacomo Della Chiesa by the majority of the cardinals expressed a reference to the approach of Leo XIII and Rampolla, but in a way that was less marked by the relative ‘openness’ of Domenico Ferrata, Antonio Agliardi, or Pietro Maffi.1 In regard to the struggle against religious reformism, Della Chiesa followed the stance of his mentor Rampolla, who had shown that he was fully convinced of the need for a doctrinal condemnation of the system denounced as ‘modernism’ in the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis.2 At the same time, he was reluctant to adopt in the suppressive activity the broad anti-modernist criterion of Pius X and his ideologically more aligned collaborators. The problem of the world war — but at that time it was in reality still a European conflict — in its enormous gravity had imposed itself extensively upon the attention of the public in many areas worldwide. After having dealt with the worst problem, Benedict XV turned to the questions that more directly concerned the life of the Catholic Church. In his programmatic encyclical Ad

1 The conclave’s progress was documented, among others, by the notes of one of its participants, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Friedrich Gustav Piffle, published in Maximilian Liebmann, ‘Les conclaves de Benoît XV et de Pie XI: notes du cardinal Piffl’, La revue nouvelle, 38, 7–8 (1963), pp. 34–52. 2 Pius X, Pascendi Dominici gregis, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 40 (1907), pp. 593–650 [accessed 10 January 2019].

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 691–705 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118798

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beatissimi, dated 1 November 1914, he noted ‘certain important points’ that he intended to make the object of his ‘particular attention’.3 He first mentioned the harmony and unity among Catholics both on the theological-cultural level and on the practical one. He recalled in particular that some pluralism of opinion was possible in regard to questions with which the Roman magisterium had not dealt, provided that faith and ecclesiastical discipline were preserved and that progress was made courteously, without anyone’s considering himself — the encyclical specified — ‘entitled to apply to those who merely do not agree with [one’s] ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith or to discipline’.4 These were rather eloquent statements for those who knew how much suspicion and how many accusations against alleged modernists had pervaded the Catholic Church during Pius X’s pontificate, suspicions echoed by the Pope himself.5 Several aspects made Benedict XV’s words even more transparent. First was the clarification concerning the inappropriateness of qualifying the term ‘Catholic’ — it was clear that he was alluding to the ‘integral Catholics’, or ‘integrists’, as more than a few of the most active anti-modernists, starting with the founder of the Sodalitium Pianum, Umberto Benigni,6 were wont to call themselves. Next was how that allusion was interpreted by authoritative commentators, such as Genocchi, in a letter to Paul Sabatier on 28 December 1914,7 and Yves de La Brière a few months later in Études.8 Further, this transparency was also evident in the next step that Della Chiesa made, vigorously reaffirming, without any specific attenuations or limitations, Pius X’s condemnation of modernism. Hence arose the monstrous errors of ‘Modernism’, which Our Predecessor rightly declared to be ‘the synthesis of all heresies’, and solemnly condemned. We hereby renew that condemnation in all its fullness […] and as the plague is not yet entirely stamped out, but lurks here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully on their guard against any contagion of the evil […]. Nor do We merely desire that Catholics should shrink from the errors of Modernism, but also from the tendencies or what is called the spirit of Modernism. Those who are infected by that spirit develop a keen dislike for all that savours of antiquity

3 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 (§ 21) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 4 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 23. 5 Giovanni Miccoli, ‘Sui punti forti della crisi modernista’, Laurentianum, 46 (2005), pp. 3–25 (pp. 16–18). 6 In his memoirs, Gasparri recalled that ‘neither Mgr Benigni gave off the odour of sanctity for Benedict XV, nor he for Mgr Benigni’ (‘né mons. Benigni era in odore di santità presso Benedetto XV, né questi presso mons. Benigni’); see Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite), ed. by Giovanni Spadolini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972), p. 114. 7 Cited in Émile Poulat, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969), p. 601, n. 2. 8 Pierre Colin, L’audace et le soupçon: la crise moderniste dans le catholicisme français (1893–1914) (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1997), p. 496.

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and become eager searchers after novelties in everything: in the way in which they carry out religious functions, in the ruling of Catholic institutions and even in private exercises of piety.9 At the time, the statements concerning modernism and the allusions to integral Catholics contained in Ad beatissimi were taken as a change in climate on the issue, with conflicting judgements depending on the orientations and sensibilities of those who spoke of it: favourable in the case of those who did not share Pius X’s broad anti-modernist criteria, and, on the contrary, negative for those who recognized themselves as such.10 Be that as it may, the integrists had suffered a blow, and in order to circumvent Benedict XV’s provisions, in December 1914, Benigni considered it opportune to publish a re-elaboration of the Sodalitium Pianum’s plan, substituting the definition ‘we are integral Roman Catholics’ with ‘we are purely and integrally Catholic’.11 In its turn, historical studies have seen in Ad beatissimi mainly the end to the climate of suspicion and lacerating conflict that had characterized Catholicism during the years of Pius X12 and the dissolution, by papal initiative, of a series of controversies centred around the accusation of modernism, besides the rehabilitation of figures formerly cast as proponents of the detested perspective.13 Some scholars have moreover noted that the mitigation of conflicts did not, however, put an end to the era of accusations, as has been pointed out with reference to various national cases.14 9 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 25. 10 Various reactions and testimonies in this regard are cited in Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 600–02, n. 2. In Benigni’s entourage, within a few months, they became convinced that Benedict XV’s was a ‘disaster of a pontificate’ (‘un Pontificat de malheur’); Marquis Francesco Antinori to Benigni, cited in Giovanni Vian, La riforma della Chiesa per la restaurazione cristiana della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1914) (Rome: Herder, 1998), p. 183. 11 ‘Noi siamo dei Cattolici-Romani integrali’; ‘Noi siamo puramente e integralmente cattolici’; cited in Émile Poulat, ‘Modernisme et intégrisme: documents nouveaux’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 76, 2 (1981), pp. 337–55 (p. 351). 12 For example, Gabriele De Rosa, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), III, pp. 608–17 (pp. 615–17). Claus Arnold has emphasized how Benedict XV distanced himself from Benigni’s integralism, confirming anti-modernism on a theological level: Claus Arnold, Kleine Geschichte des Modernismus (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2007), p. 137, n. 2. 13 Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 600–02, n. 2. 14 In reference to the sphere of the social commitment of Catholics in Spain and of Christian Democracy, see, for example, Feliciano Montero, ‘El eco de la crisis modernista en el catolicismo social español: las denuncias de “modernismo social”’, and regarding the theological tendencies in Catholicism in the United States, see Gerald P. Fogarty, ‘Modernism in the United States’, in Il modernismo tra cristianità e secolarizzazione: atti del Convegno internazionale di Urbino, 1–4 ottobre 1997, ed. by Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2000), pp. 411–42 and pp. 463–85 (in particular, p. 430 and p. 473). As for the situation in France, it should be recalled that the Brassac affair began toward the end of Benedict XV’s pontificate, even if curial interventions only began later, at the beginning of Pius XI’s pontificate. See Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Un regain d’antimodernisme?’, in Intellectuels chrétiens et esprit des années 20: actes du colloque, Institut catholique de Paris, 23–24 septembre 1993, ed. by Pierre Colin (Paris: Cerf, 1997), pp. 83–114, and François Laplanche, La crise de l’origine: la science catholique des Évangiles et l’histoire au XXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2006), pp. 138–43.

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Shortly below I shall briefly reflect on some of the new accusations of modernism that developed during Benedict’s papacy. As far as Benedict XV’s theological leanings are concerned, it should be added that during his pontificate he reproposed Thomism as the best way to refute modernism on a philosophical level. In this he maintained the same trend developed by Pius X, beginning with Pascendi, which would later also be taken up by Pius XI.15 The context in which Benedict’s papacy developed saw the survival of institutions and environments in the Catholic Church that were dedicated to a radical, wide-ranging anti-modernism. The authoritative Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica itself, on occasion, did not fail to express criticisms and accusations against Fracassini,16 Buonaiuti17 or Father Lagrange’s École Biblique and its modernist historical-critical leanings in the exegetical field.18 With regard to the guidelines and methods of research in the exegetical field that were adopted at the École Biblique, it seems that the criticisms formulated two years later by Benedict XV himself in the encyclical Spiritus paraclitus of 15 September 1920 were addressed to such innovators while, on the whole, he advocated the study of the sacred scriptures.19

15 See Giovanni Vian, ‘La Santa Sede e l’insegnamento delle discipline teologiche sotto Pio XI’, in La religione istruita: nella scuola e nella cultura nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. by Luciano Caimi and Giovanni Vian (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2013), pp. 143–66 (pp. 148–49). 16 See [Enrico Rosa,] ‘“L’impero e il cristianesimo” di Umberto Fracassini’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 65, 4 (1914), pp. 605–14. 17 See [Enrico Rosa,] ‘Nuovi sintomi di errore in alcune recenti pubblicazioni’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 65, 2 (1914), pp. 452–66 (pp. 465–66 contain critical references to L’isola di smeraldo); [Lino Murillo,] ‘Errori vecchi nella “Storia del cristianesimo” del prof. E. Buonaiuti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 1 (1918), pp. 520–34; 69, 2 (1918), pp. 48–58, 140–49, 232–40; [Enrico Rosa,], ‘Un saggio critico su due scritti del prof. Ernesto Buonaiuti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 1 (1919), pp. 408–13; [Alberto Vaccari,] ‘Per l’onestà e la sincerità della critica: tre risposte a due scritti del prof. E. Buonaiuti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 1 (1920), pp. 438–47; [Alberto Vaccari,] ‘S. Girolamo a Roma’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 1 (1920), pp. 481–98 (p. 483 offers a critical reference to Ernesto Buonaiuti, San Girolamo, Rome: A. F. Formiggini, 1919); ‘Intorno a un recente congresso italiano di filosofia’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 4 (1920), pp. 193–207 (pp. 195–98 are on Buonaiuti); [Enrico Rosa,] ‘“Escursioni spirituali” e divagazioni modernistiche di due giornalisti’ and [Enrico Rosa,] ‘“Religio irreligiosa”: a proposito della scomunica contro Ernesto Buonaiuti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 1 (1921), pp. 61–71, 221–38. On Father Rosa’s attitude concerning Buonaiuti, see Annibale Zambarbieri, Il cattolicesimo tra crisi e rinnovamento: Ernesto Buonaiuti ed Enrico Rosa nella prima fase della polemica modernista (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1979) and Giovanni Sale, ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’ nella crisi modernista (1900–1907) fra intransigentismo politico e integralismo dottrinale (Milan: Jaca Book, 2001), pp. 349–75. 18 The unsigned author of the article was the Jesuit Alberto Vaccari, member of the Biblical Commission: see ‘Venticinque anni dopo l’enciclica “Providentissimus”’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 4 (1918), pp. 361–74; 70, 1 (1919), pp. 278–90, 364–72. 19 See Francesco Beretta, ‘La doctrine romaine de l’inspiration de Léon XIII à Benoît XV (1893–1920): la production d’une nouvelle orthodoxie’, in Autour d’un petit livre: Alfred Loisy cent ans après, ed. by François Laplanche, Ilaria Biagioli and Claude Langlois (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 56–58.

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2. Reorganization of the Curial Offices: A Reflection on the Differences Concerning Modernism? It should be noted that even among the Pope’s close collaborators in key positions in the Roman curia were some of the greatest promoters of the struggle against the modernists, despite the fact that the beginning of the new pontificate had led to a partial redistribution of duties. His choice of Cardinal Ferrata as Secretary of State on 4 September 1914 was a significant change.20 On the occasion of his nomination, the brief profile provided by La Civiltà Cattolica concluded with the declaration that it was enough ‘to show how the new Cardinal Secretary of State is a person of great intelligence and vast culture and possesses the most illustrious qualities for the very important office now appointed to him with the confidence of the new Pontiff ’.21 This was very different from the tone of the notes collected by Jonckx the previous year, on the occasion of a confrontation with Benigni in August 1913, on the cardinals who might have participated in a future conclave, which they imagined would be not too far in the future. They described Ferrata as a ‘fine diplomat, vacillating, and a moderate liberal’.22 It was precisely the new Secretary of State who began to show how the climate, with regard to modernism, was changing. On 3 October 1914, a letter from Ferrata placed the combative newspaper La Riscossa, published by the Scotton brothers, under the strict control of the Bishop of Vicenza, Rodolfi.23 The Bishop of Albi, Mignot, who on another occasion, during Pius X’s pontificate, had already turned to him to dismiss accusations by Cardinal De Lai’s Consistorial Congregation,24 initially thought to send Ferrata his report on the manoeuvres of integral Catholics at the beginning of October 1914. It was a text that Ferrata never actually read, given that he died on the tenth of that month,25 and was hence addressed to the new Secretary of

20 Pius X appointed him Secretary of the Holy Office on 2 January 1914, see ‘Nomine’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 1 (1914), p. 22. This replicated a move that had already been made with the previous appointment of Rampolla to the same position: to force figures who were little inclined to the antimodernist rigours recommended and implemented by the Pope to operate in a clearly controlled role of orthodoxy. 21 ‘A mostrare come il nuovo cardinale segretario di Stato sia persona di alta intelligenza e di vasta cultura e possieda le più insigni qualità per l’importantissimo ufficio ora commessogli dalla fiducia del nuovo Pontefice’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 65, 4 (1914), p. 106. 22 ‘Fin diplomate, louvoie, libéral modéré’; Poulat, Intégrisme, p. 329. 23 Ferrata’s letter is widely cited in Giovanni Azzolin, Gli Scotton: prediche, battaglie, imboscate: tre fratelli monsignori, papi, cardinali e vescovi tra liberalismo e modernismo dall’Unità d’Italia al primo Novecento (Vicenza: La Serenissima, 1998), p. 287. On the new situation created in Vicenza regarding La Riscossa following the beginning of the Benedictine papacy, see Azzolin, Gli Scotton, pp. 283–305. See also Raffaella Perin, ‘Reazioni curiali antimoderniste: il caso vicentino’, in La condanna del modernismo: documenti, interpretazioni, conseguenze, ed. by Claus Arnold and Giovanni Vian (Rome: Viella, 2010), pp. 207–49. 24 See Louis-Pierre Sardella, Mgr Eudoxe Irénée Mignot (1842–1918): un évêque français au temps du modernisme (Paris: Cerf, 2004), pp. 238, 454, 476. 25 For the report of the sudden worsening of Ferrata’s health and his death at midday on the tenth, see ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 65, 4 (1914), p. 355.

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State, Gasparri, who acknowledged receiving it in January 1915.26 However, the fact that the French Bishop, who entertained good relations with Alfred Loisy, thought to turn to the old Nuncio to Paris was indicative of the sensibilities and leanings that Ferrata was known to endorse. In his replacement by Pietro Gasparri,27 the sphere of Leonine influence increased once again, but the new Secretary of State had managed to move cautiously during the years of Pius X. Although the whole story is still not sufficiently clear, he had also been in contact with Mgr Benigni, a relationship that subsequently became, to say the least, embarrassing. Gasparri, in his memoirs, despite regretting having facilitated the Umbrian priest’s entry into the curia, justified it with a certain nonchalance.28 On 14 October 1914, Benedict XV appointed Merry del Val as Secretary of the Holy Office.29 With this decision, the new Pope seemed to replicate a move made by his predecessor when, in 1908, he had assigned the same office to Cardinal Rampolla, who was the former Secretary of State for Leo XIII and again, in January of 1914, when he chose Ferrata to succeed Rampolla in that office. Della Chiesa, however, made his choice according to a theological orientation that was different from that of Pius X. The latter, in fact, placing first Rampolla and then Ferrata in the key role of the Holy Office, by the very competencies of that institution, had perhaps intended to induce them to engage in the fight against the modernists, towards whom the former close collaborator of Leo XIII, and even more the former Nuncio in Paris, had revealed themselves to be relatively lukewarm, even if more on the operative side than on an ideological one. On the contrary, Benedict XV’s similar decision for Merry del Val relegated a leading figure of the most pointedly anti-modernist group to a position that institutionally provided for the exercise of a high level of control over the doctrinal guidelines within the Church. The new Secretary essentially operated according to those guidelines. Claus Arnold observed: ‘Under him, the Holy Office assumed the rank of the curial centre of anti-modernist repression’.30 According to the testimony of the Rector of the Institut catholique de Paris, Alfred Baudrillart, entrusted with his carnets on 4 December 1914, that is, shortly after the appointment of new Secretary of the Holy Office, Merry del Val had to make a great effort to catch up on the affairs

26 For a refinement of the entire affair related to Mignot’s memorandum, see Sardella, Mgr Eudoxe Irénée Mignot, pp. 494–509. Mignot’s memorandum was re-edited by Poulat in Intégrisme, pp. 511–27, with an introduction on pp. 505–10 (for a more precise contextualization of the document, however, see Sardella’s study cited in this note). 27 The news of the appointment of the new Secretary of State appeared in L’Osservatore Romano of 14 October 1914. See ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 65, 4 (1914), pp. 357–58. 28 See Il cardinale Gasparri, ed. by Spadolini, pp. 109–15. 29 See Giovanni Vian, ‘Merry del Val, Rafael’, in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi, 4 vols (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), II, pp. 1026–27; Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘Merry del Val, Rafael’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXIII (2009), pp. 740–44. 30 ‘Sotto di lui, il Sant’Uffizio assurse al rango di centro curiale della repressione antimodernista’; Claus Arnold, ‘Antimodernismo e magistero romano: la redazione della Pascendi’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 5, 2 (2008), pp. 345–64 (p. 363).

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of the ‘supreme’ congregation.31 Baudrillart had been informed immediately, and accidentally, of the concern about the spread of modernism because Merry del Val had proven himself to be very severe towards Lutheran Germany and towards most of the German Catholic clergy, whom he called modernist and rationalist, lacking serious theology. He recalled the trouble they had caused Pius X with the affair of the encyclical on Saint Charles Borromeo and with a younger First Communion.32 Merry del Val’s zeal against the dreaded ‘synthesis of all heresies’ was also made manifest in the anti-modernist oath, which I shall restrict myself to mentioning briefly here. It revealed a conflict between the Holy Office and the Secretariat of State. The Apostolic Signatura fought vigorously to maintain the anti-modernist oath and the supervisory councils established by law in the Pascendi encyclical, after the Secretary of State had obtained the exclusion of the anti-modernist professio fidei from the Code of Canon Law. At that point, Gasparri, probably with Benedict XV’s consent, proposed a compromise solution which then became a decree of the Holy Office on 22 March 1918 and was approved by the Pope. It justified the failure to mention the oath in the Code of Canon Law on the basis of the temporal character of the modernist heresy but, given that modernism had not entirely vanished, it prolonged the use of the supervisory councils and the anti-modernist oath.33

31 See Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), I (1994), pp. 113–14. The references were to the encyclical Editae saepe of 26 May 1910 and the decree Quam singulari of 8 August 1910. The encyclical attacked false reformers. Pius X expressly meant to target modernists, comparing them to the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century against whom Charles Borromeo had fought victoriously. However, also owing to a mistake in the translation into German of a quote from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, Editae saepe aroused a decisive reaction from the German government, which had forbidden publication of the papal document in Germany with the intent to respond to what appeared an offence to the majority of the country that was of the Protestant confession. A detailed analysis can be found in Raffaella Perin, ‘L’atteggiamento della Chiesa cattolica verso ebrei e protestanti da Pio X a Pio XI’ (doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Padova, 2010), pp. 45–59. See also Poulat, Intégrisme, pp. 201–04, n. 1. With the decree Quam singulari, Pius X had permitted children to have access to the Eucharist from the age of seven. In some areas, however, particularly in Germany, adjustments had to be made, given the habit of conferring First Communion at a later age and the resistance to adapt to the new regulations. See Nel cinquantenario del Decreto ‘Quam singulari’ circa l’età della prima comunione dei fanciulli emanato dalla S. Congregazione dei sacramenti per incarico del papa S. Pio X l’8 agosto 1910: studio su le fonti e la genesi dello storico decreto con commento della parte dispositiva, ed. by Cesare Zerba (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1961), pp. 6–20. 32 ‘Très sévère pour la luthérienne Allemagne et pour la plus grande partie du clergé catholique allemand, qu’il qualifie de moderniste et de rationaliste, sans théologie sérieuse. Il rappelle la peine qu’ils ont faite à Pie X, l’affaire de l’encyclique sur saint Charles Borromée et la première communion précoce’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 114. 33 See ‘Decretum circa consilia a vigilantia et iuramentum antimodernisticum’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 10, 4 (1918), p. 136. See also, ‘Dichiarazione della Sacra Congregazione del S. Offizio circa il Modernismo’ La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 2 (1918), pp. 174–75. On the issue of the anti-modernist oath, see Judith Schepers, Streitbare Brüder: ein parallelbiographischer Zugriff auf Modernismuskontroverse und Antimodernisteneid am Beispiel von Franz und Konstantin Wieland (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016), pp. 153–202.

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It can therefore be considered that, at least an interpretive conflict between the top ecclesiastical offices had opened up concerning the extent of the modernist crisis during the years of Benedict XV’s pontificate. This divergence of position concerned more the analysis of the actual spread of modernism than a doctrinal judgement regarding the complex of theological-philosophical conceptions that had been reproached in Pascendi. This divergence explains why, in regard to the modernist affair, Benedict XV’s pontificate did not make too much effort to effect more general interventions aimed at putting an end to the Church’s internal conflicts through, on the one hand, a confirmation of Pius X’s condemnation or, on the other, an appeal to moderation directed at the most radical reactionary exponents. In fact, this careful position was reflected, from a practical point of view as well, in the attitude of the Pope and the top curial offices in dealing with particular episodes when the modernist problem resurfaced — at least in the eyes of some of the Roman authorities — in the reflections, speeches, publications and attitudes of some individuals.

3. Benedict XV and the ‘Modernists’, Between Rehabilitation and Condemnation: Continuing Conflicts in the Highest Offices of the Catholic Church On 19 August 1915, Benedict XV postponed the examination of fifteen modernist propositions, which, in July of the previous year, Pius X had submitted to the scrutiny of the Holy Office in view of a specific condemnation.34 Furthermore, a series of specific episodes shows the difference in standpoint between Benedict XV and the Holy Office concerning the effective presence of modernists within the Church besides the manner in which they were treated. In point of fact, the new pontiff was the catalyst in overcoming the formal reservations held against some prelates who, to various degrees, had been suspected of modernism during Pius X’s pontificate. This was the case of the canon from Faenza, Francesco Lanzoni, Rector and teacher at the diocesan seminary,35 who had repeatedly been accused of modernism during Pius X’s pontificate, to the point that the Pope himself had ordered his exclusion from the list of apostolic visitors to the Italian seminaries due to his studies that had clarified the legendary nature of some texts related to early historical developments in dioceses in Italy.36 Lanzoni was appointed His Holiness’s domestic prelate in 1914, 34 See Guido Verucci, L’eresia del Novecento: la Chiesa e la repressione del modernismo in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 2010), pp. 63–64. 35 For his biographical profile, see Marco Ferrini, Cultura, verità e storia: Francesco Lanzoni (1862–1929) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009). 36 See Vian, La riforma, pp. 764–70. The minutes of the report of Lanzoni’s visit to the Tuscan seminaries was published by Lorenzo Bedeschi, Lineamenti dell’antimodernismo: il caso Lanzoni (Parma: Guanda, 1970), pp. 174–96.

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at the beginning of Benedict’s papacy, against the opinion of the ministry headed by Merry del Val.37 An episode that was, in some ways, analogous to this concerned Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli at the beginning of the 1920s. The tormented state of affairs that, within the context of the modernist crisis and social tensions of the first decade of that century, had characterized the Diocese of Bergamo and the episcopate of Bishop Radini Tedeschi during Pius X’s pontificate38 had also involved the young Bishop’s secretary and teacher at the diocesan seminary.39 Within the Consistorial Congregation, Roncalli had begun to be considered inclined toward modernistic suggestions. An exchange of letters with De Lai in June 1914, however, left the priest from Bergamo with the opinion that he had succeeded in demonstrating his doctrinal integrity. In reality, it was a matter of mere appearance, as is revealed by an event that occurred in 1921, when the proposal to appoint him as His Holiness’s personal prelate was examined. De Lai interposed his own negative opinion and recalled: From the records of this Sacred Congregation, it appears that the aforementioned priest, when he was professor of apologetics and ecclesiastical history more than ten years ago, openly favoured the dissemination and ideas of Duchesne in his Church history and received serious criticisms.40 On that occasion, however, Benedict XV was not influenced by the Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation’s harsh judgement and, on 7 May 1921, he conferred the honour on Roncalli. Even in the context of the case concerning Giovanni Semeria, Benedict XV assumed a position not entirely consistent with that of the most radical anti-modernists; the outcome of the story, however, was particularly negative for the Barnabite priest. In fact, Benedict XV repeatedly delayed the publication on the Index of the condemnation of his volume Scienza e fede e il loro preteso conflitto (Science and Faith 37 Cited in Francesco Lanzoni, Le memorie (Faenza: F. Lega, 1930), p. 96. For further episodes related to Benedict XV’s confrontations with other curial dicasteries concerning ecclesiastics suspected of modernism, see Giovanni Vian, Il modernismo: la Chiesa cattolica in conflitto con la modernità (Rome: Carocci, 2012), pp. 127–29. Also, as regards Ernesto Buonaiuti and Nicola Turchi, the Holy Office’s attempt to obtain a condemnation was foiled by Benedict XV, with the support of his two secretaries of state, first Ferrata, then Gasparri; Verucci, L’eresia, pp. 67–68. 38 See Giuseppe Battelli, Un pastore tra fede e ideologia: Giacomo M. Radini Tedeschi (1857–1914) (Genoa: Marietti, 1988), pp. 298–442. 39 On his teaching of ecclesiastical history, suspected of modernist orientations by the Consistorial Congregation, I would direct you to Giovanni Vian, ‘Roncalli e gli studi di storia’, in L’ora che il mondo sta attraversando: Giovanni XXIII di fronte alla storia: atti del Convegno, Bergamo, 20–21 novembre 2008, ed. by Grado Giovanni Merlo and Francesco Mores (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 103–64. See also Francesco Mores, ‘Nota al testo’, in Ernesto Buonaiuti, Lezioni di storia ecclesiastica: il medioevo, ed. by Francesco Mores (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), pp. 33–62. 40 ‘Dagli atti di questa S. Congregazione consta che il detto sacerdote, quando era professore d’apologetica e di storia ecclesiastica, or son più di dieci anni, favoriva apertamente la divulgazione e le idee del Duchesne nella sua storia della Chiesa ed ebbe dei gravi rimarchi’; Letter to Nicolao Sebastiani, 26 April 1921, quoted in Nelle mani di Dio a servizio dell’uomo: i diari di don Roncalli (1905–1925), ed. by Lucia Butturini (Bologna: Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, 2008), p. 521, note 24.

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and their Purported Conflict, Rome, 1903) decreed by the Holy Office on 28 April 1915: the consultors were divided between those in favour of the censorship and supporters of the correctness of the points submitted for judgement. Acknowledging requests from the top ranks of the Barnabite congregation, Benedict XV advocated the search for a solution that would avoid Semeria’s public condemnation, but he limited himself to suspending, not repealing, the decree. In this case, perhaps, he believed that aspects of a doctrinal nature were at stake, and it has already been seen how, in this regard, Pius X’s successor, from his very first encyclical, had clearly maintained the condemnation of modernism. In this instance, a strict compromise was struck: Semeria had to pronounce again the anti-modernist oath before the Holy Office, to sign the decree of condemnation secretly and, finally, to publish a text in which he revised the affirmations in the volume that had been the object of the Roman censors, offering a rereading that was in line with the Holy Office’s provisions.41 That Benedict XV’s interventions generally contributed to mitigating the anti-modernist rigour, albeit at times not in a very significant way, can also be seen by the events concerning Ernesto Buonaiuti, who, in the summer of 1915, obtained an appointment as teacher of History of Christianity at the University of Rome despite curial attempts to interfere with the outcome of the competitive examination. While rejecting the Holy Office’s recommendations that contemplated forbidding the winner to accept the position, Benedict XV nevertheless sought to influence his teaching.42 After Buonaiuti published, together with Nicola Turchi, the volume L’isola di smeraldo: impressioni e note di un viaggio in Irlanda43 in 1914, he was subjected to a procedure undertaken by the Holy Office. The consultor Lottini had, in fact, judged the book to be ‘modernistic and extremely dangerous’. With the support of Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri, Benedict XV intervened, taking action to have the publication withdrawn from scrutiny and prohibiting the two authors from releasing a new edition, but also actually imposing the suspension of the condemnation of the two priests under investigation.44 After this, on 5 June 1916, the Congregation of the Index — which the following year, with the motu proprio Alloquentes, would be incorporated into Benedict XV’s Holy Office45 — decided to include the Rivista di scienza delle religioni on its list of forbidden books.46 Established in January, by 12 April it had already earned 41 On the events relating to the accusations against Semeria during Benedict XV’s pontificate, see Antonio M. Gentili, ‘Il processo al p. Semeria nella documentazione inedita dell’ex Sant’Officio (1909–1919)’, Barnabiti Studi, 27 (2010), pp. 196–205. 42 See ‘Il processo del Sant’Uffizio contro i modernisti romani’, ed. by Lorenzo Bedeschi, Fonti e documenti, 7 (1978), pp. 51–55 and 58–60; Verucci, L’eresia, pp. 70–71. 43 The book was published in Turin by Fratelli Bocca in 1914. The title translates to The Emerald Isle: Impressions and Notes on a Trip to Ireland. 44 ‘Modernistico e sommamente pericoloso’; see ‘Il processo’, ed. by Bedeschi, pp. 55–58; Verucci, L’eresia, pp. 66–68. See also Lorenzo Bedeschi, Buonaiuti, il Concordato e la Chiesa: con un’appendice di lettere inedite (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1970), pp. 51–52. 45 See Verucci, L’eresia, p. 66. Benedict XV, Alloquentes proxime, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 4 (1917), p. 167. 46 See ‘Decretum Feria V’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 8, 5 (1916), p. 178.

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the condemnation of the Holy Office as an organ of modernist propaganda (‘uti organum propagandae modernisticae’).47 The decision was accompanied by the suspension from their priestly office of the ecclesiastics who were part of its editorial board: Ernesto Buonaiuti, who already after the first issue sought a meeting with Father Rosa to try to gauge reactions, Nicola Turchi, Primo Vannutelli and Bacchisio Raimondo Motzo.48 Among the reasons that led the Holy Office to the condemnation was the fact that the journal was published without prior ecclesiastic review.49 The provision was revoked in July after the four priests swore the anti-modernist oath,50 and also thanks to an intervention on the part of Gasparri: he allowed them to adhere to the formula introduced at the time of Pius X with the motu proprio Sacrorum antistitum ‘as a simple disciplinary assent to the authority of the Church’,51 and, as an act of kindness of Benedict XV, he had the four take the oath in his chapel.52 In December 1920, an article dedicated to ‘Le esperienze fondamentali di Paolo’ (‘Paul’s Foundational Experiences’) was published in Religio, a journal that had first appeared in January 1919 and which included Nicola Turchi among its collaborators. In the article, Buonaiuti seemed to deny the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which forced the Holy Office to issue, on 14 January 1921, 47 ‘Decretum de quadam recensione periodica’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 8, 5 (1916), p. 176. See Verucci, L’eresia, p. 72. Among others collaborating on the journal were also Raffaele Pettazzoni and Luigi Salvatorelli, see ‘Bacchisio Raimondo Motzo tra i modernisti italiani’, ed. by Fausto Parente, Fonti e documenti, 7 (1978), pp. 254–378 (p. 259; pp. 259–71 are dedicated to the affair of the condemnation of the Rivista di scienze delle religioni, with special attention paid to Motzo’s particular case). 48 See Verucci, L’eresia, p. 72. See also Fausto Parente, Ernesto Buonaiuti (Rome: Treccani, 1971), pp. 46–47; Bedeschi, Buonaiuti, pp. 52–54. Umberto Fracassini was removed from the provision, having promptly denied belonging to the editorial office. A note to this effect accompanied the publication of the decree of condemnation of the Rivista di scienze delle religioni in the Holy See’s official journal: ‘Note: Father Umberto Fracassini has declared that his name has been placed unjustly among the ranks of the aforementioned journal’s editors since he has not approved the publication of the new journal and has denied collaborating with it’ (‘Nota: Il R. D. Umberto Fracassini ha dichiarato che il suo nome è stato messo abusivamente nel novero dei redattori del citato periodico, non avendo egli approvata la pubblicazione della nuova rivista ed avendo negata la sua collaborazione’); Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 8, 5 (1916), p. 176. The case concerning Fracassini seems to have concluded in 1916; Verucci, L’eresia, pp. 84–85. 49 See ‘Bacchisio Raimondo Motzo’, ed. by Parente, p. 260. 50 See Fausto Parente, ‘Buonaiuti, Ernesto’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XV (1972), pp. 112–22 (p. 115). On Motzo’s elaborate journey, aimed at ‘facing the situation without a rebellious spirit but with absolute firmness’ (‘affrontare la situazione senza spirito di ribellione, ma con assoluta fermezza’), despite the difficulty of ‘persuading the Holy Office of the […] too obvious an error’ (‘persuadere il Sant’Uffizio del torto […] troppo evidente’), and, at the same time resisting suggestions of those who, like Duchesne ‘advised him to cause a scandal’ (‘consigliava di fare uno scandalo’), see ‘Bacchisio Raimondo Motzo’, ed. by Parente, pp. 260–61. 51 ‘Come semplice assenso disciplinare all’autorità della Chiesa’; on the basis of Motzo’s account of the conversation he had with Gasparri at the time. According to the Sardinian scholar, to his assertion that ‘the formula of the oath was not dogmatic’ (‘la formula del giuramento non era dommatica’), the Secretary of State made no observation. See ‘Bacchisio Raimondo Motzo’, ed. by Parente, p. 269. On Gasparri’s intervention in the matter, see also Bedeschi, Buonaiuti, pp. 77–79. 52 See Verucci, L’eresia, p. 73.

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his excommunication.53 This was withdrawn in June, thanks to Gasparri’s effective mediation.54 The Buonaiuti case would tend to confirm that, faced with doctrinal statements considered to be gravely erroneous, Benedict XV was not willing to look the other way. However, even with regard to the ‘Roman priest’, the pontificate concluded with a relatively mitigated application of the disciplinary provisions, which was anything but expected, given the anti-modernist tendencies that continued to characterize the Holy Office.

4. A Provisional Appraisal To conclude, here are some observations. Benedict XV fully shared the condemnation of modernist doctrines that Pius X had formulated: the demanding passage quoted at the beginning of Ad beatissimi seems to me proof of this beyond any attempt to explain its content as an expression of the desire not to discredit his predecessor.55 Moreover, as the question concerning the temporary preservation of the anti-modernist oath confirms, it seems that Della Chiesa was persuaded that modernism would continue to constitute a problem for the Church through the years and that, therefore, it was necessary to maintain the articulated and widespread apparatus provided for by Pascendi. However, once we have emphasized his convictions on the levels of doctrine and the organization of discipline, in the specific cases of alleged modernism that Benedict XV faced, whether they were of an individual or institutional matter, it should be noted that there was a clear discontinuity between his attitude and that of Pius X. On the one hand, concerning the manner of action and the instruments of control, it can be seen that Benedict XV had a preference for preventive supervisory steps. On the other hand, his interventions that nullified, attenuated or delayed the censures proposed by the Holy Office were many and meaningful. His attitude assumes an even greater significance if one bears in mind that, in order to translate his decisions into concrete action in this area, he had to face a part of the curia — mainly the Congregation of the Holy Office — that continued to be controlled by prominent figures of the previous pontificate who did not share Della Chiesa’s choices and who tried to counteract them in various ways, continuing, as far as possible, to keep the mechanism of anti-modernist repression, which was initiated under Pius X, in operation.

53 The decree can be found in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 13, 2 (1921), p. 42. As already mentioned, the Holy Office’s documentation on the basis of which Buonaiuti was excommunicated was published in ‘Il processo’, ed. by Bedeschi. See also [Rosa,] ‘“Religio irreligiosa”’, pp. 221–38. See also Verucci, L’eresia, pp. 78–81. 54 See Il cardinale Gasparri, ed. by Spadolini, pp. 195–211; and Parente, ‘Buonaiuti’, pp. 51–56. See Buonaiuti’s declaration in ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 2 (1921), pp. 562–63. 55 See also Colin, L’audace, pp. 496–97.

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Montero, Feliciano, ‘El eco de la crisis modernista en el catolicismo social español: las denuncias de “modernismo social”’, in Il modernismo tra cristianità e secolarizzazione: atti del Convegno internazionale di Urbino, 1–4 ottobre 1997, ed. by Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2000), pp. 411–42 Mores, Francesco, ‘Nota al testo’, in Ernesto Buonaiuti, Lezioni di storia ecclesiastica: il medioevo, ed. by Francesco Mores (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), pp. 33–62 Parente, Fausto, ed., ‘Bacchisio Raimondo Motzo tra i modernisti italiani’, Fonti e documenti, 7 (1978), pp. 254–378 Parente, Fausto, ‘Buonaiuti, Ernesto’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XV (1972), pp. 112–22 Parente, Fausto, Ernesto Buonaiuti (Rome: Treccani, 1971) Perin, Raffaella, ‘L’atteggiamento della Chiesa cattolica verso ebrei e protestanti da Pio X a Pio XI’ (doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Padova, 2010) Perin, Raffaella, ‘Reazioni curiali antimoderniste: il caso vicentino’, in La condanna del modernismo: documenti, interpretazioni, conseguenze, ed. by Claus Arnold and Giovanni Vian (Rome: Viella, 2010), pp. 207–49 Poulat, Émile, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La ‘Sapinière’, 1909–1921 (Tournai: Casterman, 1969) Poulat, Émile, ‘Modernisme et intégrisme: documents nouveaux’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 76, 2 (1981), pp. 337–55 Sale, Giovanni, ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’ nella crisi modernista (1900–1907) fra intransigentismo politico e integralismo dottrinale (Milan: Jaca Book, 2001) Sardella, Louis-Pierre, Mgr Eudoxe Irénée Mignot (1842–1918): un évêque français au temps du modernisme (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Schepers, Judith, Streitbare Brüder: ein parallelbiographischer Zugriff auf Modernismuskontroverse und Antimodernisteneid am Beispiel von Franz und Konstantin Wieland (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016) Spadolini, Giovanni, ed., Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972) Verucci, Guido, L’eresia del Novecento: la Chiesa e la repressione del modernismo in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 2010) Vian, Giovanni, ‘Merry del Val, Rafael’, in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi, 4 vols (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), II, pp. 1026–27 Vian, Giovanni, Il modernismo: la Chiesa cattolica in conflitto con la modernità (Rome: Carocci, 2012) Vian, Giovanni, ‘La Santa Sede e l’insegnamento delle discipline teologiche sotto Pio XI’, in La religione istruita: nella scuola e nella cultura nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. by Luciano Caimi and Giovanni Vian (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2013), pp. 143–66 Vian, Giovanni, La riforma della Chiesa per la restaurazione cristiana della società: le visite apostoliche delle diocesi e dei seminari d’Italia promosse durante il pontificato di Pio X (1903–1914) (Rome: Herder, 1998) Vian, Giovanni, ‘Roncalli e gli studi di storia’, in L’ora che il mondo sta attraversando: Giovanni XXIII di fronte alla storia: atti del Convegno, Bergamo, 20–21 novembre 2008, ed. by Grado Giovanni Merlo and Francesco Mores (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 103–64

M o d e r n i s m d u r i n g t h e P o nt i f i cat e o f B e ne d i ct  XV

Zambarbieri, Annibale, Il cattolicesimo tra crisi e rinnovamento: Ernesto Buonaiuti ed Enrico Rosa nella prima fase della polemica modernista (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1979) Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘Merry del Val, Rafael’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXXIII (2009), pp. 740–44 Zerba, Cesare, ed., Nel cinquantenario del Decreto ‘Quam singulari’ circa l’età della prima comunione dei fanciulli emanato dalla S. Congregazione dei sacramenti per incarico del papa S. Pio X l’8 agosto 1910: studio su le fonti e la genesi dello storico decreto con commento della parte dispositiva (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1961)

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Klaus Unterburger

Benedict XV and Modernism in Germany

To this day, scholarly research on the relationship between Pope Benedict XV and theological modernism has remained strangely vague.1 On the death of Pope Pius X, those suspected of modernism had pinned their hopes on seeing an end to persecution. Yet in his inaugural encyclical Benedict XV praised his predecessor for his heroic deeds of unmasking and condemning the ‘monstrous errors of “Modernism”’,2 while simultaneously warning against making a distinction between true and false Catholics.3 If one does not take this to be a contradiction, one will obviously have to distinguish various meanings of the term ‘modernism’ as well as the methods of anti-modernism. When assessing Benedict XV’s anti-modernism, one generally has to note that it was still well alive in the curia after 1914, particularly in the Holy Office, which was overseen by Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val and was responsible for upholding the

1 Maurilio Guasco, ‘Fine dell’Antimodernismo?’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo di crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 229–38. 2 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 (§ 25) [accessed 10 January 2019]. The official Latin reads, ‘Itaque exstiterunt monstruos errores Modernismi, quem recte Decessor Noster “omnium haereseon collectum” edixit esse et sollemniter condemnavit. Eam Nos igitur condemnationem, venerabiles Fratres, quantacumque est, hic iteramus; et quoniam non usquequaque oppressa est tam pestifera, lues, sed etiamnum hac illae, quamvis latenter, serpit, caveant omnes diligentissime, hortamur, a quavis huius contagione mali; de quo quidem apte affirmaveris quod Iob alia de re dixerat: Ignis est usque ad perditionem devorans, et omnia eradicans genimina’. 3 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § 23–24: ‘Sed ab his disputationibus omnis intemperante sermonis absit, quae graves afferre potest offensiones caritati; suam quisque tueatur libere quidem, sed modeste sententiam; nec sibi putet fas esse, qui contrariam teneant, eos, hac ipsa tantum causa, vel suspectae fidei arguere vel non bonae disciplinae. Abstineant se etiam nostri, volumus, iis appellationibus, quae recens usurpari coeptae sunt ad catholicos a catholicis distinguendos: easque non modo devitent uti profanas vocum novitates, quae nec veritati congruunt nec aequitati; sed etiam quia inde magna inter catholicos perturbatio sequitur, magnaque confusio. Vis et natura catholicae fidei est eiusmodi, ut nihil ei possit addi, nihil demi: aut omnis tenetur, aut omnis abiicitur’.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 707–716 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118799

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purity of Catholic teaching.4 Nothing indicates that Benedict XV really progressed from his predecessor’s anti-modernist stance. It is true that when Munich Archbishop Franziskus Bettinger spoke to him after the 1914 conclave, the newly elected Pope distanced himself immediately from Umberto Benigni.5 The significance of this disavowal was twofold: the Pope did not approve of Benigni’s methods using denunciation, suspicion and espionage, and he also distanced himself from Benigni’s integrist extension of the term modernism to cover the political and social, together with the literary and cultural, spheres, a view advocated by the Sodalitium Pianum. The case of Alfred Loisy seems to have already made a deep impression on Benedict XV during his tenure as Substitute in the Secretariat of State. He certainly was not one of those hostile to Loisy6 and also appreciated the exegete Giovanni Genocchi.7 The concrete policies that followed such premises will be outlined by looking at the papal policy for Germany. During the modernist crisis, German university theology was deemed to be the true breeding ground for modernist ideas, although only very few condemnations were pronounced in Germany, unlike in France.8 Measures such as the oath against modernism, which sought to unmask any clandestine modernism, did not achieve their purpose. In the controversy over social and literary modernism, integrists’ suspicions were also levelled at the moderates’ majority



4 Klaus Unterburger, ‘Erneuerung aus katholischer Tradition oder Neumodernismus? Die exegetischen, ökumenischen und liturgischen Neuaufbrüche in Deutschland in den Augen Roms’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, 32 (2013), pp. 27–41. 5 Ludwig Litzenburger, ‘Anekdotisches zum Konklave 1914: Konrad Graf Preysings Erinnerungen an die Ronreise mit Kardinal Bettinger’, Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 38 (1987), pp. 182–90. 6 Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), pp. 69–74. 7 Yves Chiron, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014), p. 68: ‘In Italy, Mgr Della Chiesa was in contact with various personalities who had a precise knowledge of the stakes of the modernist crisis and who themselves would at times be suspected of modernism. He was very close notably to Father Giovanni Genocchi […] and he was attentive to his writings […] Mgr Della Chiesa wrote the requested text. But at the same time Father Genocchi had sent him two very critical reviews that he had written on Mazzella’s Compendium. Father Genocchi regretted that the “new studies on the history of religions, on apologetics and on the psychology of faith were competely ignored” and he pointed out, one by one, the erroneous or questionable statements that were scattered around in Mazzella’s Compendium. When Mgr Della Chiesa presented to Leo XIII the draft brief he had prepared, he suggested that the Pope should also read the two articles by Genocchi that he had brought. The Pope read the two reviews and then cancelled the publication of the planned brief ’ (‘en Italie, Mgr Della Chiesa était en relation avec différentes personnalités qui avaient une connaissance précise des enjeux de la crise moderniste et qui eux-mêmes vont parfois être suspectes de modernisme. Il était très lié notamment au P. Giovanni Genocchi […] et il était attentif à ses écrits. […] Mgr Della Chiesa rédigea le texte demandé. Mais en même temps le p. Genocchi lui avait transmis deux recensions très critiques qu’il avait faites du Compendium de Mazzella. Le p. Genocchi regrettait que les “nouvelles études sur l’histoire des religions, sur l’apologie et sur la psychologie de la foi soient tout à fait ignorées” et il pointait, une à une, les affirmations erronées ou contestables qui émaillaient le Compendium. Lorsque Mgr Della Chiesa présenta à Léon XIII le projet de bref qu’il avait préparé, il suggéra au pape de lire aussi les deux articles de Genocchi qu’il apportait. Le pape lira les deux recensions puis renoncera à publier le bref prévu’). 8 Otto Weiss, Der Modernismus in Deutschland: ein Beitrag zur Theologiegeschichte (Regensburg: Pustet, 1995), pp. 23–27.

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within the German episcopate. This paper will approach the question in two steps: (1) how the phenomenon of German modernism was reflected in the instructions to the nuncios Aversa and Pacelli, and (2) which concrete policy of Pacelli’s was a direct result thereof and which anti-modernistic measures were decided for Germany during the papacy of Benedict XV.

1.

Modernism in the Instructions to the Nuncios Aversa and Pacelli

The instructions written for Pacelli were drafted in 1916 by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri for Pacelli’s predecessor, Giuseppe Aversa, who unexpectedly died just a few weeks into taking office. Addressing the question of modernism, the instructions called for a distinction to be made between dogmatic-theological modernism and the apparent social modernism, which the fundamentalists were fighting in their battle with the trade unions and the German Zentrum political party. Rome was thereby distancing itself from integrism and approved the right for trade unions to be inter-denominational in order to act as an effective antidote to socialism. The view was that both sides had erred and exaggerated, but through their denunciations and aggressive articles in the press, the integrists had sowed discord and confusion.9 On the question of theological modernism, however, the



9 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Monaco, 257, fasc. 10, Istruzioni per mons. Giuseppe Aversa nunzio apostolico di Baviera, November 1916, p. 84: ‘While on the one hand the liberal press with its violent and unfair attacks put the Holy See in a very difficult situation in Germany, on the other hand, the exaggerations of some so-called “integrals” publications exacerbated the divergences between Catholics and brought great confusion and mistrust among them, all the more so because their liberalizing adversaries did not let such excesses pass unnoticed but fought them with vigour. The serious disputes that went by the name of “Contesa” on the character of the centre and on Christian unions are only two sides of the general question regarding the two tendencies between German Catholics said to be of Cologne and Berlin’ (‘mentre da una parte la stampa liberale coi suoi violenti e sleali attacchi faceva alla S. Sede una situazione difficilissima nella Germania, dall’altro lato le esagerazioni di alcuni organi così detti “integrali” acuivano le divergenze tra i cattolici e portavano tra essi grande confusione e sfiducia, tanto più perché i loro avversari liberaleggianti non lasciavano passare inosservate tali intemperanze ma la combattevano con vigore. Le gravi vertenze che vanno sotto il nome di “Contesa” circa il carattere del centro e circa i sindacati cristiani non sono che due lati della questione generale riferentesi alle due tendenze tra i cattolici tedeschi dette di Colonia e di Berlino’). Istruzioni per mons. Giuseppe Aversa, p. 93: ‘although the encyclical also gave wise advice on how to stop the disagreements among Catholics, calm did not return to the people. However, after the death of the Most-Eminent Cardinal Kopp, who was the most respectable supporter of the religious trade unions and did not tolerate the introduction of mixed organizations in his vast diocese, a large part of his clergy in Wrocław declared themselves opposed to the methods of the Berlin leadership, especially in the struggle against the Zentrum’ (‘quantunque l’enciclica dia altresì saggie disposizioni per far cessare il dissidio tra i cattolici, la calma non ritornò negli animi. Però, dopo la morte dell’e.mo card. Kopp, il quale era il più valido sostenitore dei sindacati confessionali e non tollerava che nella sua vasta diocesi si introducessero le organizzazioni miste, una notevole parte dello stesso clero di Breslavia si dichiarò contraria ai metodi della direzione berlinese, specialmente nella lotta contro il Centro’).

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instructions took a different stance, so that Gasparri considered suspect the Würzburg theologians Franz Xaver Kiefl and Sebastian Merkle, whom the preceding Nuncio had also criticized.10 The mistrust felt towards the theological faculties at the German state universities continued under Benedict XV. The feeling in Rome was that too much emphasis was placed on science at the expense of piety and that the focus of systematic theology and philosophy neglected studies of a historical bent. This provided an insufficient philosophical-scholastic basis, so Rome thought, which gave rise not only to the corrupting influences of modern Kantian philosophy and Protestant theology, but also resulted in the inadequate interpretation and appraisal of the development of Church dogmas and the Bible. Modernism, which labelled itself reformed Catholicism, was therefore an impending danger for German theology and necessitated a corresponding vigilance.11 By the same token, one was not to believe the pessimists, for whom all German theology was pure modernism, but vigilance was required all the same.12 The nuncios received an additional instruction from the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities complaining that future priests were being trained at universities and not in the seminary.13 The nuncio was to deliberate with the bishops on how to improve the situation and he was to monitor and control the state

10 Istruzioni per mons. Giuseppe Aversa, p. 26: ‘The Holy See encountered other difficulties with the removal of these two professors. After lengthy negotiations, it managed to give Kiefl the position of canon at the Cathedral of Regensberg. Merkle continued to teach, but became rather more moderate and cautious’ (‘altre difficoltà incontrò la S. Sede per la rimozione di due professori delle Facoltà Teologiche di Würzburg, il Kiefl e il Merkle. Dopo lunghe trattative si riuscì a far conferire al primo un canonicato alla cattedrale di Regensburg. Il Merkle continua a insegnare; però si mostra alquanto più moderato e cauto’). 11 Istruzioni per mons. Giuseppe Aversa, p. 23: ‘And therefore they dedicate themselves with ardour to historical critical studies, without having sufficient preparation, since their philosophical and theological instruction, which was provided by the chair of the theology faculties of universities or in royal high schools and did not go beyond that which was offered in a mediocre Italian seminary. Such a scholastic basis could not thus be sufficient for those who will ardently enter into the vast and difficult field of biblical studies and the history of dogma and who must make ample use of the work of Protestant scholars, imbued with Kantian philosophy and defenders of the most audacious and arbitrary theories’ (‘e quindi [ci] si dedica con ardore agli studi storici e critici, senz’avere una sufficiente preparazione, giacché l’istruzione filosofica e teologica, che si dà nelle cattedre delle Facoltà Teologiche Universitarie o nei R. Licei non supera quella che s’impartisce in un mediocre seminario italiano. Tale base scolastica non può quindi essere sufficiente a chi s’inoltrerà con ardore nel vasto e difficile campo degli studi biblici e della storia dei dogmi e dovrà largamente servirsi dei lavori di scienziati protestanti, imbevuti di filosofia kantiana e difensori delle teorie più audaci ed arbitrarie’). 12 Istruzioni per mons. Giuseppe Aversa, pp. 23 ff.: ‘It should not therefore be surprising if in the works of truly zealous ecclesiastics we find risky and erroneous statements. However, it cannot be deduced from this that the German clergy are infected with modernism, as some pessimists affirm’ (‘non deve quindi far meraviglia se in opere di ecclesiastici anche di retto zelo si trovino affermazioni arrischiate ed erronee. Da ciò non può dedursi tuttavia che il clero tedesco sia infetto di modernismo, come alcuni pessimisti vanno affermando’). 13 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Monaco, 69, fasc. 1, ff. 3r–4r, S. Congregatio de seminariis et de studiorum universitatibus, Istruzioni riservate per rev.mo mons. nunzio di Baviera, 17 January 1917.

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faculties and the orthodoxy of their teaching. To this end, he was to demonstrate to the bishops and professors the great benefits that followed from adherence to the doctrine of St Thomas. The motu proprio Doctoris angelici14 was also to be enforced in Germany, with Thomism taught uniformly, both in philosophy and theology.15 The Congregation for Seminaries and Universities, whose teaching Benedict XV had greatly extended at the expense above all of the Consistorial Congregation, sought to assess all seminaries by means of a detailed questionnaire before standardizing and centralizing them.16 As far as German theology was concerned, the question of modernism was incorporated primarily into two central topics addressed by the encyclical Pascendi (1907): the historical-critical exegesis of the Bible and the significance of Thomism, on the one hand, and the primacy of systematic theology, on the other.

2. The Controversy over Historical Criticism and Thomism Roman anti-modernism on the question of biblical interpretation had its intellectual stronghold in the biblical institute founded by Pius X. Even after 1914, the key representative of this school was the German Jesuit Leopold Fonck, who also acted as Director of the institute. He denounced German exegesis as working against the encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893), claiming that it undermined the inspiration taught therein since it was assumed to undermine the absolute infallibility of Holy Scripture.17 The attempt to detract from the concept of infallibility was spreading throughout Germany, he argued. According to Fonck, infallibility was a dogma and had to be the premise of every Catholic interpretation of the Bible. Prompted by Fonck’s harsh accusations, Pacelli investigated the situation of exegesis in Germany.18 He commissioned an expert opinion to be drawn up by authorities he deemed reliable and who worked together with conservative exegetes19 and Cologne’s Cardinal Felix 14 Pius X, Doctoris Angelici, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 10 (1914), pp. 336–41. 15 Istruzioni riservate per rev.mo mons. nunzio di Baviera, f. 4r: ‘and just as any abuse committed to the harm of Catholic doctrine will not fail to be promptly reported to this Sacred Congregation, so will the attempt be made to insinuate very tactfully and prudently the great advantages that are to be gained in following the doctrines of St Thomas into the minds of bishops and professors’ (‘e come non mancherà di segnalare sollecitamente a questa S. Congregazione qualsiasi abuso commesso in danno della sana dottrina cattolica, così cercherà di insinuare con fine tatto e prudenza nell’animo dei vescovi e dei professori i grandi vantaggi che si ricavano nel seguire le dottrine di S. Tommaso’). 16 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 69, fasc. 1, ff. 9r–12r, S. Congregatio de seminariis et de studiorum universitatibus, Quaestiones de seminariis, 16 July 1916. 17 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 1, ff. 51r–52v and 54r–56v, Leopold Fonck, Le Condizioni degli studi biblici specialmente nella Germania, n.d. [before March 1919]; Klaus Unterburger, Vom Lehramt der Theologen zum Lehramt der Päpste? Papst Pius XI., die Apostolische Konstitution ‘Deus scientiarum Dominus’ und die Reform der Universitätstheologie (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2010), pp. 250–56. 18 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 1, ff. 134r–135r, Eugenio Pacelli, Conspectus memorialis de statu biblicorum in Germania studiorum, n.d. 19 Unterburger, Vom Lehramt, pp. 257–62.

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von Hartmann.20 They did not confirm Fonck’s accusations, noting that for the vast majority of German exegetes they were completely unfounded. They established that exponents of modern protestant Pentateuch criticism and the synoptic two-source-hypothesis were rare and did not constitute a cohesive group. Moreover, Rome had already condemned these few, and they were no longer teaching. Otto Bardenhewer thus noted that there was little danger that theological biblical interpretation would fall too far behind philological and historical biblical interpretation.21 Pacelli’s report on German biblical exegesis, dated 25 March 1919, repeated verbatim much of this report.22 Needless to say, he did not want to reject Fonck’s criticism as a whole, either, and therefore suggested a response. He noted that the current situation with the impending stricter separation between Church and state finally enabled bishops to exercise their office more resolutely, free of state controls. It also permitted them to intervene in the theological faculties and to structure priestly training and the study of theology more in line with hierarchical stipulations.23 However, not everyone in the curia agreed with Pacelli’s view, which was supported by Gasparri. Cardinal Willem van Rossum went further and requested that every

20 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 1, f. 53rv, Hartmann to Pacelli, 17 October 1918. 21 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 1, ff. 75r–76r, [Otto Bardenhewer,] Gutachten über die Lage der biblischen Studien in Deutschland, n.d.: ‘When the author says that almost all the professors at theological faculties accept the far-reaching views of Lagrange and Hummelauer, and that scholars of biblical studies and oriental studies, who are still conservative, constitute a true exception, this is a generalization that he cannot prove. There are probably a dozen Catholic exegetes whose publications do not provide any proof of the charge or who directly defend the opposite. Even the journals mentioned do not represent the newer theories in principle; they leave both possibilities open, even if it is correct to say that the newer direction comes to the fore more often in these journals than the old one does’ (‘wenn der Verfasser sagt, dass fast alle Professoren der theologischen Fakultäten die weitgehenden Anschauungen von Lagrange und Hummelauer annehmen und gelehrte Bibelforscher und Orientalisten, die noch konservativ seien, eine wahre Ausnahme bilden, so ist dies eine Verallgemeinerung, die er nicht beweisen kann. Es lassen sich wohl ein Dutzend katholischer Exegeten namhaft machen, aus deren Veröffentlichungen kein Beweis für diese Anklage erbracht werden kann oder die direkt das Gegenteil verteidigen. Auch die angeführten Zeitschriften vertreten nicht prinzipiell die neueren Theorien; sie lassen beiden Richtungen das Wort, wenn es auch richtig ist, dass die neuere Richtung in diesen Zeitschriften öfter als die alte zu Wort kommt’). 22 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 1, ff. 117r–126r, Pacelli to van Rossum and Bisleti, 25 March 1919; Unterburger, Vom Lehramt, pp. 263–65. 23 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 1, f. 123v, Pacelli to van Rossum and Bisleti, 25 March 1919: ‘Finally, it should be remembered that, according to the present ordinances, the bishops, even in regard to professors of theology, are not completely free to remove them, since, according to the concordats and its regulations, the state exercises a notable influence in the conferment of theological chairs. It is to be hoped that also on this very important point that the current politicalsocial upheavals will at least gain for the Church greater freedom, which will permit it to provide an effective remedy to the difficulties lamented’ (‘occorre infine ricordare che, secondo i presenti ordinamenti, i vescovi anche per ciò che riguarda i professori di teologia non sono del tutto liberi nella scelta e nella rimozione di essi, giacché a norma dei concordati e dei regolamenti lo Stato esercita una notevole influenza nel conferimento delle cattedre teologiche. È da augurarsi che anche in questo punto così importante gli attuali rivolgimenti politico-sociali conducano almeno a far conquistare alla Chiesa quella maggior libertà, che le permetta di apprestare efficace rimedio ai lamentati inconvenienti’).

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future professor teaching exegesis in Germany should be obliged to receive special training at the Roman biblical institute.24 As outlined above, Pacelli had been ordered to conduct an in-depth and detailed survey of the situation of German theology for the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities, from which he was subsequently to outline a far-reaching restructuring. On 14 November 1919 he therefore submitted a draft instruction.25 In preparing it, he had been assisted by Martin Grabmann, the Munich professor of dogma, who was also a historian of theology and an expert on scholasticism.26 Alongside stricter control and supervisory rights, Pacelli called for the lengthening of theological degree courses by one year, reinstituting Latin as the language of instruction (on Grabmann’s insistence, he allowed for a transitional period), reforming philosophical training, which was to teach Thomism instead of recent German philosophies, reappraising speculative vis-à-vis historical-positive theology (the relative value of which Grabmann had tried to explain to him), instituting scholastic disputations in the place of historical-critical seminar exercises and increasing the hours of instruction of dogmatic theology. In response to this draft, the Congregation asked the Jesuit scholar of scholasticism, Cardinal Franz Ehrle,27 and Archbishop Karl Joseph Schulte of Cologne,28 to submit their opinions. Finally, the plenary Congregation discussed the matter on 21 February 1921. The Congregation was rather sceptical in its assessment of Pacelli’s desire to make accommodations to the German situation by granting a moderate deviation from the Codex iuris canonici of 1917.29 Meanwhile the German bishops’ conference in Fulda decided to turn to the Pope and submitted a memorandum, in which they asked him to intervene in the theological faculties at German state universities.30 They wrote that, for the clergy,

24 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 1, ff. 130r–131r, van Rossum to Pacelli, 20 May 1919. 25 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 67, fasc. 3, ff. 1r–24v, Pacelli to Bisleti, 14 November 1919; Unterburger, Vom Lehramt, pp. 267–77. 26 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 69, fasc. 1, ff. 84r–91v, Martin Grabmann, Über das Verhältnis der positiven und spekulativen Studien, September–October 1919. 27 ACEC, 334/19, pp. 127 ff., Ehrle to Bisleti, no date. 28 ACEC, 334/19, pp. 129 ff., Schulte to Bisleti, 4 November 1920; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 69, fasc. 1, ff. 172r–174v, Schulte to Pacelli, 20 November 1920. 29 ACEC, 384/19, p. 4, Relatio Germania. Seminari e facoltà, 22 February 1921: ‘From the appreciations [of Pacelli], one must conclude that such a system should be preferred and imposed on the seminaries of other nations, so much so that its advantages are underlined, while in reality it is contrary to the letter and the spirit of the wisest and most ancient canonical prescriptions, to the august words of many popes, and the Church suffers it, tolerates it by force majeure’ (‘dai quali apprezzamenti si dovrebbe concludere che tale sistema dovrebbe essere preferito, imposto ai seminari delle altre nazioni, tanto se ne accentuano i vantaggi, mentre poi in realtà esso è contrario alla lettera, allo spirito delle sapientissime ed antichissime prescrizioni canoniche, alla augusta parola dei tanti pontefici, e la Chiesa lo subisce, lo tollera per forza maggiore’). 30 ‘Protokoll der Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz (17–20 August 1920)’, in Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche (1918–1933), ed. by Heinz Hürten, 2 vols (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), I, pp. 235–50: ‘With regard to the right of bishops to veto instructors and professors of theology at universities, the conference approves the position adopted by the president in the previous negotiations with the Nuncio, and has decided to submit to the Holy Father a memorandum on the importance of the

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university training meant an enormous gain in prestige among the educated classes, endowing them with a reputation similar to that of the Protestant clergy, which was not to be compromised. Moreover, in their current condition the dioceses could neither organize nor finance any well-founded theological training. Finally, the bishops’ conference chairman, Cardinal Adolf Bertram of Breslau, noted that Catholic theology students benefitted from contact with other subjects and fellow students as well as from the exposure to the intellectual horizon of the universities.31 When Pacelli received this memorandum, he had it reviewed by Grabmann32 and the canonical scholar Ludwig Kaas33 from Trier, who agreed with the bishops. Bertram’s memorandum had, however, irritated the Prefect of the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities, Cardinal Gaetano Bisleti. He felt that Bertram was idealizing the German theological faculties, which in reality stood in contradiction to canon law. As Bisleti informed Pacelli, it was decided to retain the German faculties for the time being, but they were to be reformed in line with the stipulations of the Congregation.34 Consequently, on 9 October 1921, a sub secreto pontificio order was issued35 decreeing the prolongation of studies by one year, Latin as the language of lectures and a strict orientation towards Thomism, besides significant importance

31

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theological faculties in the structure of the university’ (‘Betreffs des Vetorechtes der Bischöfe gegen Dozenten und Professoren der Theologie an Universitäten billigt die Konferenz den in den bisherigen Verhandlungen mit dem Nuntius vom Vorsitzenden eingenommenen Standpunkt, beschließt ferner, eine Denkschrift über die Bedeutung der theologischen Fakultäten im Organismus der Universitäten an den Heiligen Vater einzureichen’). ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 69, fasc. 1, ff. 168r–170r, Memoriale episcoporum Germaniae de facultatibus theologicis, 17 November 1920: ‘Hinc instanter petunt Episcopi, ut ratio habeatur specialis hujus conditionis, quae regnat in vita academica Germaniae. Aliter judicandae sunt res Germaniae, aliter Galiae vel Hispaniae. Nec dubium quin, ubi primum in Germania ratio instituendi clericos ex universitatis quasi luce in umbracula, ita ut dicamus, recesserit seminarii clausi, auctoritas cum theologorum tum sacerdotum revera graviter laedatur hique eruditione inferiores existimentur atque habeantur’. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 69, fasc. 2, ff. 187r–189r, Grabmann to Pacelli, January 1921. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 69, fasc. 1, ff. 185r–186v, Kaas to Pacelli, 26 December 1920. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Baviera, 69, fasc. 1, ff. 196r–201r, Bisleti to Pacelli, 18 March 1921: ‘This undue interference by the state has given rise to so many evils that the Church has deplored and continues to deplore. From the appreciations, which the Most Eminent Cardinal Bertram has of the current system of formation of aspirants to the priesthood in Germany, it seems to be possible to conclude that such a system should be preferred and imposed on the seminaries of other nations, while in reality it is contrary to the letter and the spirit of the prescriptions of the Holy See, which it tolerates by force majeure’ (‘da tale indebita intromissione dello Stato sono scaturiti tanti mali, che la Chiesa ha deplorato e deplora. Dagli apprezzamenti, che l’em.mo. card. Bertram fa circa l’attuale sistema della formazione degli aspiranti al Sacerdozio in Germania, sembra potersi concludere che tale sistema dovrebbe essere preferito e imposto ai seminari delle altre nazioni, mentre in realtà esso è contrario alla lettera e allo spirito delle prescrizioni della S. Sede, la quale lo tollera per forza maggiore’). EAM, Nachlass Faulhaber, Nr. 5850, Congregatio de Seminariis et de studiorum Universitatibus ad Germaniae Archiepiscopos et Episcopos, De Clericis instituendis, 9 October 1921.

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being added to speculative theology compared to historical theology.36 Dogmatic theology was ordered to fall in line with Thomism, moral teaching had to follow Thomas Aquinas and Alfonsus Liguori,37 canon law the Codex,38 exegesis Providentissmus Deus,39 and church history was to stress the supernatural character of the Church and to avoid ‘hyper criticism’.40

3. Conclusions The above may be summarized in the following five theses: (1) During the pontificate of Benedict XV, Rome clearly progressed from integrism and persecuting ‘social modernism’ but continued its struggle against ‘theological modernism’. (2) Consequently, theology had to be monitored hierarchically. In keeping with the spiritualization of canon law taught at the Apollinare seminary, it was important for the state not to interfere in these matters and for the Church to be able to create a centralized structure for these aspects. (3) Based on the assumption of the Pascendi encyclical, Rome considered German theology to be endangered by modernism, since it was too historically-critically

36 De Clericis instituendis: ‘In Universitatibus, magnis Lyceis, Collegiis, Seminariis, Institutis, quae habent vel habiturae sunt ex Apostolico Indulto potestatem gradus academicos et Lauream in S. Theologia conferendi, Summa Theologica S. Thomae habenda est uti textus praelectionum in parte scholastica quaestionum; ita scilicet ut, una cum aliquo textu, qui ordinem logicum quaestionum indicet et partem positivam contineat, habeatur prae manibus et explicetur Summa Theologica quoad partem scholasticam (Pii X Motu proprio Doctoris Angelici, 29 iunii 1914; huius S. C. Decretum, 7 martii 1916). In aliis vero Seminariis seu Institutis, textus praelectionum confectus sit ad mentem ipsius Angelici Doctoris (Motu proprio Doctoris Angelici, Can. 1366, § 2)’. 37 De Clericis instituendis: ‘Inter implexas Theologorum, sive laxiores sive rigidiores, sententias, media magistri utantur via, S. Thomae Aquinatis et S. Alphonsi M. de Ligorio vestigia sectantes. Iidem ne tempus frustra ferant obsoletas opiniones revocando, verum quae solidae sunt et temporibus nostris magis conveniunt, dilucide proponant et validis fulciant argumentis’. 38 De Clericis instituendis. 39 De Clericis instituendis: ‘Solemne vero sanctumque habebit nunquam a communi doctrina ac traditione Ecclesiae vel minimum discedere, Decisiones Pontificiae Commissionis Biblicae plurimi faciat, easque explanet diligentissime. Utique vera scientiae huius incrementa, quaecumque recentiorum sollertia peperit, in rem suam convertet, sed temeraria novatorum commenta negliget, omnemque interpretationem ut ineptam et falsam reiiciet quae, vel inspiratos auctores inter se quodammodo pugnantes faciat, vel doctrinae Ecclesiae adversetur’. 40 De Clericis instituendis: ‘Diligenter admoneat discipulos magister Ecclesiam, quae inter homines vitam et opus Verbi incarnati continuat, duplici etiam constare elemento — divino et humano. Divinum est ipse Spiritus Christi, quo totum corpus Ecclesiae sanctificatur et regitur; humanum autem ex ipsis conflatur hominibus, qui Christo Capiti coargumentantur. Curandum est igitur, ut ea quae de elemento divino manant, ut doctrinae sanctitas, ut virtutum excellentia, ut charismatum dona, ut miraculorum gloria, luce sua supernaturali appareant circumfusa […] Vitanda denique est hypercritica quae dicitur. Quare quae pie creduntur a maioribus tradita ne contemptui habeantur, neve tam facile carpantur acta Sanctorum. Etenim danda est doctrinae studiis opera in aedificationem, non in destructionem’.

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focussed, especially in its exegesis of the Bible, and was therefore not properly attuned to Thomist philosophy and theology. (4) With the exception of the integrist hardliners, the Church did not want to break with German theology but gradually adapt and restructure it according to the scope afforded under canon law and the new leeway offered by the laws regulating the relationship between Church and state. (5) This was initially the policy of the papal curia for Germany, in line with Benedict XV’s viewpoint and orientation. However, its numerous congregations still had representatives of the anti-modernism of the Pope’s predecessor among their ranks, most notably Merry del Val. Given the continuity of personnel, the orientation established by the preceding pontiff remained well alive. Consequently, any study of the matter must avoid concentrating too much on the figure of the pontiff, even though this may be of interest to historians.

Bibliography Chiron, Yves, Benoît XV: le pape de la paix (Paris: Perrin, 2014) Fonck, Leopold, Le Condizioni degli studi biblici specialmente nella Germania, n.d. [before March 1919] Guasco, Maurilio, ‘Fine dell’Antimodernismo?’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo di crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 229–38 Litzenburger, Ludwig, ‘Anekdotisches zum Konklave 1914: Konrad Graf Preysings Erinnerungen an die Ronreise mit Kardinal Bettinger’, Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 38 (1987), pp. 182–90 ‘Protokoll der Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz (17–20 August 1920)’, in Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche (1918–1933), ed. by Heinz Hürten, 2 vols (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), I, pp. 235–50 Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Unterburger, Klaus, ‘Erneuerung aus katholischer Tradition oder Neumodernismus? Die exegetischen, ökumenischen und liturgischen Neuaufbrüche in Deutschland in den Augen Roms’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, 32 (2013), pp. 27–41 Unterburger, Klaus, Vom Lehramt der Theologen zum Lehramt der Päpste? Papst Pius XI., die Apostolische Konstitution ‘Deus scientiarum Dominus’ und die Reform der Universitätstheologie (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2010) Weiss, Otto, Der Modernismus in Deutschland: ein Beitrag zur Theologiegeschichte (Regensburg: Pustet, 1995)

Liviana Gazzetta

Votes for Women and ‘Catholic Feminism’ during the Pontificate of Benedict XV

In the history of Catholicism in the contemporary age, the delay in embracing the political citizenship of women represents the result of a complex tapestry of factors as deeply rooted in the ecclesial mentality and in theological development as it was tied to the Church’s intervention strategies connected to the processes of secularization.1 In barring women from the political dimension, there is no doubt that Catholics shared profound symbolic prohibitions and psycho-anthropological mechanisms that were rendered more persistent by a belated recognition of the social, economic and political workings in the age of revolutions.2 An effective key to understanding the history of women’s citizenship, particularly in the Mediterranean countries, is precisely the set of reactions provoked by the political-cultural movement that advocated the universality of rights for women, who have always been considered quintessentially ‘different’.3 Moreover, it must be said that the history of the idea of citizenship in the contemporary era is the history of contractual-egalitarian claims asserted in contrast to naturalistic claims that had long been developed and maintained by the Catholic world even in opposition to the individualism of modern society. Within this context, the movement to restore Thomism, which had begun during the last decades of the nineteenth century, offered a series of conceptual tools in line with that cultural background. In a basically





1 On this matter, see Paola Gaiotti de Biase, ‘Da una cittadinanza all’altra: il duplice protagonismo delle donne cattoliche’, in Il dilemma della cittadinanza, ed. by Gabriella Bonacchi and Angela Groppi (Rome: Laterza, 1993), pp. 128–65; I cattolici e il voto alle donne, ed. by Paola Gaiotti de Biase (Turin: Società editrice internazionale, 1996); Paola Gaiotti de Biase, Vissuto religioso e secolarizzazione: le donne nella ‘rivoluzione più lunga’ (Rome: Studium, 2006), pp. 97–116; and Liviana Gazzetta, ‘Votate all’obbedienza: parabole esemplari di dirigenti cattoliche’, Genesis, 5, 2 (2006), pp. 79–98. 2 Here I am referring to the concept in the sense given to it by Scipione Guarracino, Peppino Ortoleva and Marco Revelli, L’età delle rivoluzioni e l’Ottocento: dall’antico regime alla società industriale (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1998). 3 On these issues, see Anna Rossi Doria, ‘Antisemitismo e antifemminismo nella cultura positivistica’, in Nel nome della razza: il razzismo nella storia d’Italia (1870–1945), ed. by Alberto Burgio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), pp. 445–73.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 717–735 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118800

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nostalgic vision of pre-industrial society, Rerum novarum reaffirmed the position on the family as a small society governed according to a monarchical principle and based on paternal authority held solely by the father figure, reducing women’s work outside the home to being the source of social disintegration. Although not considered by the magisterium, the issue of women’s political citizenship was nevertheless becoming an unavoidable battlefield, as the outcome of both the general scope of liberal political culture and the crucial claim of women’s movements that arose throughout the Western world, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century.4 The issue of the vote constituted a feminist flag, not only, or not so much, on the basis of contractual logic, as on the profound connection between the recognition of full citizenship and the individual autonomy that it expressed. For millions of women in the Western world, being able to vote was, in fact, the first concrete experience of integration into the modern processes of self-identification that they were allowed to practise.5 On the whole, the Catholic world responded to feminism by likening it to other attempts at de-Christianization that it saw cropping up in the modern world, while, however, safeguarding the more general process of feminization that had been conditioning it from the nineteenth to twentieth century.6 Thus, while, on the one hand, minority groups were emerging that sought to unite fidelity to religious tradition with a confrontation of feminism, on the other, the Church catalysed its energies in a plan for Christian restoration that hinged upon women’s involvement as the ‘strategic point of the defence of the faith and of the Church’s rights in the face of male secularization’.7 Maintaining a firm hold on doctrine, the clergy and male leadership groups channelled female activism into the religious and social spheres, which contributed to the establishment of structurally strong and active, albeit hierarchically subordinate, models of femininity. In particular, the women’s Catholic movement represented a clear break with the past, both due to the public commitment that it implied and in the new formulas of militancy that were expected of leadership groups, which more







4 On feminisms between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I restrict myself to mentioning: Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, ed. by Melanie Nolan and Caroline Daley (New York: New York University Press, 1994) and Karen Offen, European Feminisms (1700–1950): A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 5 See Giulia Galeotti, Storia del voto alle donne in Italia: alle radici del difficile rapporto tra donne e politica (Rome: Biblink, 2006); Anna Rossi Doria, Dare forma al silenzio: scritti di storia politica delle donne (Rome: Viella, 2007). 6 For an overview of the situation in Italy, see the essays by Marina Caffiero, ‘Dall’esplosione mistica tardo-barocca all’apostolato sociale (1650–1850)’ and Lucetta Scaraffia, ‘“Il cristianesimo l’ha fatta libera, collocandola nella famiglia accanto all’uomo”: dal 1850 alla Mulieris dignitatem’, in Donne e fede: santità e vita religiosa in Italia, ed. by Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 327–74 and pp. 441–93; regarding France instead, see Femmes, genre et catholicisme: nouvelles recherches, nouveaux objets (France, XIXe–XXe siècles), ed. by Anne Cova and Bruno Dumons (Lyon: RESEA/LARHRA, 2012). In general terms, see Michela De Giorgio, ‘Il modello cattolico’, in Storia delle donne in Occidente, ed. by Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, 5 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1991), IV, pp. 155–91. 7 Gaiotti de Biase, ‘Da una cittadinanza’, p. 133.

Vot e s fo r Wo m e n and ‘Cat ho li c Fe mi ni sm’

or less openly wound up feeding on the same elements of modernity to which they were opposed. In its strategic and symbolic value, the topic of women’s political citizenship remained symptomatic of this interlocking of preservation and modernization until after World War II, when the Catholic outlook came to embrace the idea of voting as a duty rather than a right, also in order to combat the dreaded absenteeism of women. However, the Great War already represented a first stage in this tortuous course, even if it was temporary and not very incisive. Based mainly on an analysis of internal sources, this essay aims to investigate the protagonists of the debate concerning suffrage among the ranks of the Unione femminile cattolica italiana (UFCI; Italian Catholic Women’s Union) during the war and post-war periods. They are characters who, in our opinion, reveal a substantial ambivalence in positions and attitudes, as they wavered between doctrinal antagonism and actual adherence, between hostility towards suffragist organizations and the need to play a role on the public stage.

1.

Catholic Women’s Movements and Suffrage

In March 1916, Elisa Salerno,8 a journalist and writer from Vicenza, sent the letter ‘Per la riabilitazione della donna’ (‘For the Rehabilitation of Women’) to Benedict XV, in which she stated: It is not God’s will that women limit their activity to the household, because men do not have an adjutorium simile sibi. Only those who deny women any responsibility or authority within the family or any participation in its guidance, who want women to stay at home out of Islamism, could state that women should be excluded from political life.9 Moreover, she went on to assert, in particular, that ‘in the countries where women have received the right to vote politically and locally, there have been beneficial effects’. In point of fact, her letter dealt only marginally with women’s political citizenship





8 On Elisa Salerno, see Il femminismo cristiano di Elisa Salerno e le sue prospettive, ed. by Maria Luisa Bertuzzo (Vicenza: Centro Documentazione e Studi ‘Presenza Donna’, 1988); Elisa Vicentini, ‘Una Chiesa per le donne: Elisa Salerno e il femminismo cristiano’ (doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Napoli, 1995); Liviana Gazzetta, ‘“Fede e fortezza”: il movimento cattolico femminile tra ortodossia ed eterodossia’, in Donne sulla scena pubblica: società e politica in Veneto tra Sette e Ottocento, ed. by Nadia Maria Filippini (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2006), pp. 218–65; and Michela Vaccari, Lavoratrice del pensiero: Elisa Salerno, una teologa ante litteram (Turin: Effatà, 2010). 9 ‘Non è volontà di Dio che la donna limiti la sua azione nella casa, perché l’uomo non avrebbe un adjutorium simile sibi. Soltanto coloro che negano ogni responsabilità e autorità della donna nella famiglia, ogni partecipazione nella direzione di essa, che vogliono che la donna stia a casa per musulmanesimo, possono affermare ch’ella debba essere esclusa dalla vita pubblica’; Elisa Salerno, Per la riabilitazione della donna: al Sommo Pontefice Benedetto XV (Vicenza: Tip. Editrice Ditta Fratelli Pastorio, 1917), p. 79; a new edition has been published in Vicenza by Centro Documentazione e Studi ‘Presenza Donna’ in 2006.

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because its main objective was to demonstrate the errors within the Thomist and neo-Thomist tradition in relation to defining the nature and role of women. It was no accident that the conclusion was a heartfelt plea to the Pope for him to intervene in this sense. When, in 1917, she decided to publish the pamphlet — having received no reply from the Holy See — it was repudiated and she was suspended from participation in the sacraments by the Bishop of Vicenza, Ferdinando Rodolfi. For years, Elisa Salerno had supported the development of the Catholic women’s movement that was open to dialogue with supporters of emancipation in her newspaper, La Donna e il Lavoro. It was an area comprising a variety of positions — Antonietta Giacomelli, Luisa Anzoletti, Adelaide Coari and the Federazione cattolica milanese (Milanese Catholic Federation), Sabina di Parravicino Revel —, which could be linked to the activities of the Unione per il bene (Union for the Good), to the spheres of religious reformism, and to the Murrian brand of Christian democracy that historians define as Christian feminism, using a category derived from the Giolitti-era sources.10 Although involved in a harsh internal rift with the intransigent L’Azione Muliebre,11 in the spring of 1907, the Milanese Catholic Federation promoted an open conference, during the course of which the well-known ‘Programma minimo femminista’ (‘Minimal Feminist Plan’) was approved as a point of contact with the democratic and socialist feminism that already considered women’s suffrage, at an administrative level, as a minimum common denominator. On the variety and effectiveness of Christian feminism, with respect to the Catholic feminism of the time, adequate research has yet to be compiled. The complex movement of opinions and initiatives that had an impact on some sectors of Western Catholicism — beginning at the end of the 1890s as a non-oppositional reaction to the political movement of liberal, democratic and socialist women who had already held a place in public debate for decades — has currently been studied in only a few contributions, and the latter are limited to exclusively national perspectives.12 For example, in France, Marie Maugeret with the Societé des féministes chrétiennes (1896) supported the vote for women;13 in Belgium, Louise van den Plas ran the monthly magazine Féminisme chrétien de Belgique (1902) and then the Ligue catholique du suffrage féminin;14 and in London, the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society (1911)

10 On Christian feminism and the reformism of women religious, see Francesco M. Cecchini, Il femminismo Cristiano: la questione femminile nella prima democrazia cristiana (1898–1912) (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979); Italo De Curtis, ‘La questione femminile agli inizi del secolo: l’approccio di Romolo Murri’, Civitas, 28, 5 (1977), pp. 21–31; and Roberta Fossati, Élites femminili e nuovi modelli religiosi nell’Italia fra Otto e Novecento (Urbino: Fondazione Romolo Murri, 1997). 11 For a comprehensive reconstruction of these issues, see Liviana Gazzetta, Elena da Persico (Verona: Cierre, 2005). 12 Even the recent contribution by Isabella Pera, ‘Camminare col proprio tempo’: il femminismo cristiano di primo Novecento (Rome: Viella, 2016) does not treat, except marginally, the issue of the relationships with foreign movements beyond its sole focus on the experience in Milan. 13 See Anne Cova, Au service de l’Église, de la patrie et de la famille: femmes catholiques et maternité sous la IIIe République (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), and Femmes, ed. by Cova and Dumons. 14 Paul Gérin, ‘Louise van den Plas et les débuts du “Féminisme chrétien de Belgique”’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis, 1, 2 (1969), pp. 254–75.

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was born, a small group of English Catholic suffragists that was the initial nucleus of today’s Saint Joan’s International Alliance.15 A complete comparative study could restore the cultural matrices, the process of affiliation and the reciprocal influences and repercussions among these experiences. It is, however, certain that they were always experiences of a minority and often marginalized by official counterpart female movements of Catholic action, born shortly after them and in radical dissonance with respect to the attitude they assumed toward corresponding feminist groups of the time.16 In Italy, the Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (UDCI; Italian Catholic Women’s Union) was born precisely as an outcome of the first Conference of Italian Women, which was organized in 1908 by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane (CNDI; Italian National Women’s Council) — in response to a congressional pronouncement against religious teaching in primary schools. At the conference, supporters of Christian feminism were prohibited from any form of collaboration, and the development of an overall strategy to deny the demand for women’s citizenship radically was imposed.17 Under the banner of an opposition to feminist claims, the UDCI became part of the broader conflict between the Catholic Church and modernization, of which the processes of women’s emancipation were seen as emblematic. Not even the Union internationale des ligues féminines catholiques seemed to recognize the centrality of the issue of voting, although it had emerged in order to tackle the contemporary realities of international suffrage: the International Council of Women (1888) and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (1904). Founded in 1910, the Union internationale des ligues féminines catholiques — which had grown out of the structures of the Association internationale catholique de la protection de la jeune fille following the proposal of the Viscountess Marthe de Vélard, President of the French Catholic Women’s Union — discussed the trafficking of white women, the dissemination of the Catholic press, women’s role in schools and education and laws for the industrial sector until the end of 1914.18 The example of countries such as Belgium, Austria and Germany was relatively important, where, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Catholics had already supported universal suffrage, but the influence exercised by tradition, by neo-Thomistic doctrines and by the position of the pontiffs still weighed heavily. On more than one 15 Giancarla Codrignani, ‘L’Alleanza Internazionale Giovanna d’Arco’, in Donna e teologia: bilancio di un secolo, ed. by Cettina Militello (Bologna: EDB, 2004), pp. 215–24. 16 On this issue, see Liviana Gazzetta, Cattoliche durante il fascismo: ordine sociale e organizzazioni femminili nelle Venezie (Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 21–52, and Magali Della Sudda, ‘La politique malgré elles: mobilisations féminines catholiques en France et Italie 1900–1914’, Revue française de science politique, 60, 1 (2010), pp. 37–60. 17 On the congress that led to the birth of the UDCI, see Claudia Frattini, Il primo congresso delle donne italiane, Roma 1908: opinione pubblica e femminismo (Rome: Biblink, 2008). On the origins of the UDCI, see Cecilia Dau Novelli, Società, Chiesa e associazionismo femminile: l’Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (1902–1919) (Rome: AVE, 1988). For a study on a regional basis, see Gazzetta, ‘Fede e fortezza’. 18 ‘In settimana: Federazione internazionale delle leghe cattoliche femminili’, La Donna e il Lavoro, 24 July 1914.

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occasion, Pius X had made it known that ‘women should not vote but should devote themselves to the high ideal of human good’.19 Authoritative prelates in countries where Catholicism was the religion of a minority expressed favourable opinions. In 1914 in England, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Francis Bourne, had a Mass celebrated in favour of the intentions of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society. The Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, Patrick Francis Moran, openly supported the cause of the vote for women in Australia.20 However, in the absence of a revision of the conception of the nature and role of women, even among those who did not express any opposition, an instrumental notion of women’s suffrage tended to prevail. In April 1912, at the height of the discussion on universal suffrage in Italy, the position expressed by the women’s magazine La Madre Cattolica was emblematic: We openly declare that we have never been inclined to this innovation of women’s suffrage, but how many opinions one is forced to modify because of changing times and the force of things! We also thought that, in regard to the large family and social problems, women should restrict their activity to that of inspiring angels. But we now find ourselves faced with this undeniable fact: we are the majority and therefore the strength. And it is this force that we must guide, direct and place at the service of the great causes, the great issues.21

2. War and ‘Catastrophe’ During the Great War, programmatic opposition to feminism was tempered by a drastic change in the material and cultural conditions of action. On the one hand, the spirit of opposition and the proud diversity of Catholic women’s action had to deal with exceptionally grave conditions, the call for and gathering of all national efforts on behalf of public opinion and, more generally speaking, with the need for the entire Catholic movement to demonstrate its patriotism. On the other hand, the formation of Catholic women’s associations was quickly able to gain visibility and prestige and lose its original impetus with respect to the lay women’s organizations because, following the war, even the women’s movement saw its political features

19 ‘Le donne non devono votare, ma votarsi a un’alta idealità di bene umano’; Pius X stated this in a private audience with Camilla Teimer in May 1906; see Paola Gaiotti de Biase, Le origini del movimento cattolico femminile (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2002), p. 100. 20 For all the articles (clearly reported in support of the issue), see Enrico Molteni, ‘Donna e voto’, La Donna e il Lavoro, 24 July 1914. 21 ‘Noi, lo dichiariamo francamente, non siamo mai state propense a questa innovazione del suffragio femminile; ma quante opinioni si è costretti a modificare, per mutare di tempi e per forza di cose! Anche noi pensavamo che la donna, riguardo ai grandi problemi famigliari e sociali, dovesse limitare la propria azione a quella degli angeli ispiratori; ma ora ci troviamo di fronte a questo fatto innegabile: noi siamo il numero e quindi la forza; ed è questa forza che bisogna dirigere, indirizzare, mettere al servizio delle grandi cause, delle grandi questioni’; [Elisa Salerno,] ‘Il diritto di voto alle donne: parole de “La madre cattolica”’, La Donna e il Lavoro, 10 May 1912.

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progressively weaken. Furthermore, it was precisely the war that allowed Catholic women’s organization to effect a great leap forward, making it possible to expand the organization and its influence (with about 300 committees spread throughout the national territory, after the war, the UDCI was the most consistent and best organized of the Italian women’s associations, ready to make its numbers count every time that it was a matter of comparing itself to other associations) besides decisively adapting the nature and form of its presence with structures in the youth sectors, of which there had been none until then. In the context of the mobilization for war, the goals of Catholic or Christian feminism, which had previously aroused such hostility and doubts,22 came to be partly assumed by the official agencies of Catholic women’s organization, even as far as their initiatives were concerned: What remains incomprehensible is the opposition to feminism in general and to Catholic feminism in particular, opposition to the new way of acting, without realizing that each era always develops new explications and that the battle must be waged with equal weapons.23 An emblematic example of this temporary adoption of terms can be found in the lectures held by the professors of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in February 1923 on ‘The Female Problem according to Catholic Thought at the Present Time’ (‘Il problema femminile secondo la mente cattolica nel momento attuale’). At this educational event, which was specifically geared to the leaders of the UFCI — now divided into Unione donne (Women’s Union), Gioventù femminile (Female Catholic Youth) and Universitarie cattoliche (Catholic Women’s University Students) —, ‘it was said that the term “feminism” has an acceptable sense but is often used to indicate a tendency that is contradictory to the Christian conception of the family’. In any case it was recognized that ‘feminism is a visible reality and feminist aspirations and accomplishments exist. How can this movement be explained? Can it legitimize itself?’. Having this goal, three types of feminism were identified: liberal, socialist and the ‘so-called Christian’ feminism that, compared to the first two, should have ‘differences in its foundations and in its conceptions of life’ and should aim at ‘safeguarding the

22 Responding in 1905 to an investigation instigated by Murri’s magazine, even Fogazzaro used this formula to define feminism: ‘Unpleasant name for a complex of unpleasant exaggerations of a substantially just concept’ (‘nome antipatico di un complesso di antipatiche esagerazioni di un concetto sostanzialmente giusto’); Antonio Fogazzaro, ‘Intervento al dibattito’, Cultura Sociale, 1 April 1905, cited in Cecchini, Il femminismo cristiano, p. 162. Salerno’s newspaper also said: ‘Even we do not have much sympathy for the word “feminism”, but seeing — as we have stated — that no other can conveniently replace it, we find it desirable that everyone should agree to it once and for all’ (‘Neppur noi abbiamo soverchie simpatie per la parola “femminismo”, ma visto — come dicemmo — che nessuna altra può sostituirla convenientemente, troviamo desiderabile che tutti si mettano, una buona volta, d’accordo su di essa’); ‘“Femminismo” e natura del femminismo’, La Donna e il Lavoro, 2 August 1912. 23 ‘Ciò che riesce incomprensibile è l’opposizione al femminismo in genere e al femminismo cattolico in ispecie, opposizione alla formula nuova di azione, senza pensare che i tempi maturano sempre nuove esplicazioni e che la battaglia bisogna combatterla con armi pari’; ‘Indirizzo che deve seguire l’Unione nell’attuale momento’, Unione Donne Cattoliche d’Italia, January–February 1916, pp. 47–48.

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integrity and unity of the family unit […]; conform to the female personality […]; and adapt to a cultural and moral preparation. Making concessions, even ones that were, in themselves, just, could be dangerous if not effected at the right time’.24 The use of the term here was an indication of a recognition both of the historical moment against which it was necessary to measure itself (that is, the great mobilization of women and the transformation of customs that had been triggered by the war), and of the proliferation of initiatives among the movement’s own ranks. In any case, ‘Christian women’s action’ was not to be confused with any others in order to avoid ‘a de-Christianization’ of it. In effect, the change in course with regard to the separatist and oppositional line that was taken up after the Women’s Conference of 1908 had already occurred with the participation in the conference promoted by the Associazione per la donna (Association for Women) in 1917. From 7 to 9 October 1917, a large national conference was held in Rome at the Teatro Argentina which was attended by all the major Italian feminist groups. Male politicians of all leanings also participated along, for the first time after the split in 1908, with three members of the official Catholic world: the President of UDCI, Princess Cristina Giustiniani Bandini, the delegate for the Unioni professionali femminili (Professional Women’s Union), Giuseppina Novi Scanni, and the Secretary of the Opera nazionale buona stampa, Egilberto Martire. Representing the Associazione nazionale dei Comuni (National Association of Municipalities), its President Don Luigi Sturzo was also present. The conference did not fail to arouse controversy in the Catholic press. ‘Can Catholic women participate in conferences that are called by women in ranks outside our area?’ Elisa Salerno’s newspaper actually asked, concluding in favour of their participation.25 The vote for women was not the only issue discussed at the conference. In line with the previous national meetings, the discussion was wide-ranging: from research into establishing paternity to the protection of female workers, from women’s participation in public works of assistance to marital authorization. While the two female Catholic representatives (perhaps in compliance with Merry del Val’s directive)26 did not express themselves personally, Martire and Sturzo took the floor during deliberations. The former spoke on seeking to establish paternity, declaring himself against entrusting the state with the task. The latter dealt with the abolition of marital authorization and suffrage, expressing the National Association 24 ‘Il nome: femminismo ha un senso accettabile, ma è usato spesso a indicare una tendenza contrastante con la concezione cristiana della famiglia’; ‘il femminismo è una realtà che noi constatiamo: aspirazione e realizzazioni femministe esistono. Come spiegare il movimento? Può legittimarsi?’; ‘così detto cristiano’; ‘differenze di base e di concezione di vita’; ‘salvaguardare la incolumità e l’unità del gruppo famigliare […]; conformarsi alla personalità femminile […]; adattarsi alla preparazione culturale e morale. Pericoli delle concessioni, anche giuste in sé, fatte fuori tempo’; Il Problema Femminile secondo la mente cattolica nel momento attuale: schemi delle lezioni tenute a Roma il febbraio 1923 dai Professori dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore alle dirigenti di Unione Femminile Cattolica Italiana (Milan: n. pub., 1923), pp. 3–4. 25 [Elisa Salerno,] ‘A proposito del convegno femminile nazionale’, La donna e il lavoro, 26 October 1917. 26 Rafael Merry del Val, ‘Lettera circolare dell’E.mo Cardinale Segretario di Stato di S. S. ai Rev.mi Ordinari d’Italia’, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 37 (1904–05), p. 21.

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of Municipalities’s opinion, which was entirely favourable to women’s presence in pious works in general. Sturzo then reiterated that women having the political and local vote would simply be the ‘logical consequence of participation in social life and collective interests outside the family’,27 anticipating what would become a point in the Italian People’s Party platform of January 1919. Shortly thereafter, the national presidency of the UDCI itself changed hands. At the end of 1917, Giustiniani Bandini was replaced by Marchioness Maddalena Patrizi Gondi, who from 1919 also directed the UFCI, the new coordinating body for all the branches of Catholic women’s organization. It is worth emphasizing that, during the Giolitti era and until 1920, the Marchioness was a member of the Roman Federation of CNDI, the feminist organization that had promoted the, yet well-known conference of 1908 but which, due to its moderate positions by virtue of a statute that made it a large repository without any political or religious connections of its own, could evidently also gather pledges on the part of the Catholics. Called to take part in the post-war governmental commission, during the summer of 1918, Patrizi Gondi proposed important innovations with respect to the pre-war situation, such as gradual steps in dismissing women workers who had been employed in war production, equal pay for men and women based on equal yield, the use of workers’ delegates in the Ispettorato nazionale del lavoro (National Labour Inspectorate) and married women’s direct management of their own salary. Moreover, the proposals were preceded by the statement that, in order to bring about a general reform in the laws protecting women, it was necessary to grant them ‘all the administrative and political rights that directly contribute to defending their interests’ (‘tutti i diritti amministrativi e politici che le concorrano direttamente a difendere i propri interessi’). Considering the reality that the war had created, Patrizi Gondi spoke of a ‘new woman’, a concept that was highly successful in feminism at the turn of the century,28 and which found within itself the coexistence of both an ideal and a historical element. The former was based on immutable, natural law that is summed up in a woman’s aspiration to establish a family of her own, an aspiration that the new woman feels as strongly as did her most distant foremothers, while revealing herself to be fully aware of her new duties and her new rights.29

27 ‘Conseguenza logica di una partecipazione extrafamiliare alla vita sociale e agl’interessi collettivi’; Luigi Sturzo, ‘Attorno al suffragio delle donne’, Corriere d’Italia, 14 October 1917. 28 See Anna Scattigno, ‘La figura materna tra emancipazionismo e femminismo’, in Storia della maternità, ed. by Marina D’Amelia (Rome: Laterza, 1997), pp. 273–99, and Una ‘donna nuova’: il femminismo scientifico di Maria Montessori, ed. by Valeria Paola Babini and Luisa Lama (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000). 29 ‘Fondato su di una legge naturale, immutabile, quella che si riassume nell’aspirazione della donna a fondare una famiglia propria, aspirazione che la donna nuova sente quanto le sue più lontane antenate, pure mostrandosi pienamente cosciente dei suoi nuovi doveri e dei suoi nuovi diritti’; Maddalena Patrizi Gondi, ‘Problemi del dopoguerra: per la smobilitazione femminile’, Corriere d’Italia, 20 August 1918.

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The latter, on the contrary, was ‘provided by an assessment of factual circumstances that we find as our starting point, an assessment that allows us to glimpse gradual improvements in our labour’ (‘dato dalla valutazione delle circostanze di fatto che troviamo al nostro punto di partenza, valutazione che ci permette di intravedere nel nostro lavoro dei perfezionamenti graduali’), evidently with respect to the final objective to be achieved. This dualism between the ideal level — which remained unchanged and harmoniously coincided with the traditional neo-Thomistic expressions of the nature and roles of the two sexes that excluded women’s political citizenship — and the historical level — which admitted a flexible and revocable adjustment to the demands of the moment — remained the prevailing formula for action used by the UDCI and then the UFCI during the early post-war period. The ambivalence, however, was not without paradoxes. Indeed, in these proposals we can already see an initial contradiction, since the request for women to manage their wages directly went hand in hand with the confirmation of the husband’s authority as head of the family.30 It was a principle, reflected throughout the nineteenth century in the institution of marital authorization sanctioned by unified civil code, that implied the recognition of women’s minor legal rights that lay at the root of the general conditions of inequality permitted by the liberal state. Even Benedict XV’s address on 22 October 1919 to the leaders of the UFCI ‘on the possibility of women carrying out an apostolate of their own, even outside the home’ expressed the same dualism, although it marked a change in attitude with respect to Pius X. The address focussed on the issues that seemed most urgent for Catholics — the struggle against ‘indecent fashion’ and women’s commitment to religious education in schools. There was a recognition that the changed conditions of the times have permitted women functions and rights that the previous age did not […] and that an apostolate for women out in the world has succeeded the more intimate and restricted labour that was previously performed within the domestic setting.31 30 ‘We Catholics must therefore reaffirm “not only” that wages and their availability belong to those who, individually, have earned them, “but also” a return to the theoretical and practical, rational and Christian concept of authority, and therefore of the unity of the family itself in the Head of the household if we want to bring the family back to being a Christian one’ (‘Noi cattolici dobbiamo quindi riaffermare “non soltanto” che spetta il salario e la sua disponibilità a chi l’ha guadagnato individualmente, “ma anche” il ritorno ad un concetto teorico e pratico, razionale e cristiano del principio di autorità e quindi di unità, della famiglia stessa nel Capo di casa, se si vuole ricondurre la famiglia al tipo cristiano’); ‘Il prof. Toniolo e alcuni problemi femminili d’attualità’, Bollettino dell’Unione donne cattoliche d’Italia, January–February 1919. 31 ‘Sulla possibilità per le donne di svolgere il proprio apostolato, anche al di fuori delle mura domestiche’; ‘le mutate condizioni dei tempi hanno potuto attribuire alla donna funzioni e diritti che la precedente età non le consentiva’; ‘e che un apostolato in mezzo al mondo è succeduto per la donna a quell’azione più intima e più ristretta che essa prima svolgeva fra le pareti domestiche’; Benedict XV, Allocuzione alle dirigenti dell’Unione Femminile Cattolica Italiana sulla possibilità per le donne di svolgere il proprio apostolato anche fuori delle mura domestiche [accessed 10 January 2019].

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It was, therefore, an opening to new forms of a public presence of ‘Catholic feminism’ and also to new rights, while still asserting that neither a change in human action nor any novelty may ever distance a woman, aware of her mission in life, from that natural centre that is for her, the family. She is queen of the domestic hearth. Even when far from the hearth of the home, not only must her maternal care but also the concerns of a wise ruler be directed thereat, in the same way that a sovereign, when away from the lands of his own country, does not neglect its good, but always keeps it at the forefront of his thoughts, as his main concern.32 This was as if to say that the vote was to be understood and used in defence of the family and the Catholic social order. Thanks to Giovanni Sale’s research,33 today we know that, in relation to the debate raised by La Civiltà Cattolica concerning the People’s Party platform, Benedict XV had made his own interpretation known, in which he expressed his opinion of women’s suffrage: As for votes for women, I would have liked it to have been said, as they say, that it is against women’s true mission, but on the whole it was made clear that the totality of our age’s social conditions make it, in some countries, a social necessity (for the supposedly conservative votes from women to oppose the generally subversive votes of socialists).34

3. Towards Suffrage As an outcome of the war, women’s political citizenship was becoming a de facto reality throughout the West. From 1918 to 1921, nearly all the European countries recognized women’s right to vote. English, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Swedish, Dutch and Polish women joined those — Finnish, Danish and Norwegians — who had already achieved active and passive suffrage. In Russia, women’s suffrage, which 32 ‘Niun mutamento nell’azione degli uomini e nessuna novità di cose o di eventi potranno mai allontanare la donna, conscia della sua missione, da quel centro naturale che è per lei la famiglia. Nel domestico focolare essa è regina; epperò, anche quando si trova lontana dal focolare domestico, deve a questo indirizzare non solo l’affetto di madre, ma anche le cure di savia reggitrice, in quella guisa medesima che un sovrano, il quale si trovi fuori del territorio del proprio Stato, non trascura il bene di questo, ma lo tiene sempre in cima ai propri pensieri, in cima alle proprie cure’; Benedict XV, Allocuzione alle dirigenti. 33 Giovanni Sale, Popolari, chierici e camerati, 2 vols (Milan: Jaca Book, 2006–07), I: Popolari e destra cattolica al tempo di Benedetto XV (2006). 34 ‘Quanto al voto alle donne, mi sarebbe piaciuto che si fosse detto, come si dice, essere contro la vera missione della donna, ma insieme si fosse fatto comprendere che l’insieme delle condizioni sociali dell’epoca nostra lo rendono, in alcuni paesi, una necessità sociale (per opporre i voti supposti conservatori delle donne ai voti generalmente sovversivi dei socialisti)’; document signed by Benedict XV, cited in Sale, Popolari, chierici e camerati, I, pp. 38–39. The note referred to in the Pope’s comment was by Enrico Rosa, ‘A proposito del nuovo Partito Popolare Italiano’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 1 (1919), pp. 265–77, which expressed reservations on the vote for women, establishing paternity, universal suffrage and religious freedom.

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had already been obtained in 1917, was sanctioned in the Soviet Constitution of 1918. In the United States, both branches of parliament recognized the 19th Amendment, introducing women’s suffrage, in 1920. Since March 1917, the Bollettino dell’Unione donne cattoliche had raised the question of women’s suffrage, responding to the revolution underway in public opinion, which could have led to the concession of that right, at least at an administrative level: In the current state of affairs, the vote is the logical consequence of the important progress women have made, particularly in awakening the female conscience, which has led women — seeing the disorder in their own families — to raise their eyes beyond their garden walls and see whence the disruptive winds are blowing. This is nothing new. In other centuries it has taken other forms and, in our days, following the trend, it has mostly aimed at a concrete acknowledgement by governments, in laws and in society.35 It is clear that the analysis was conducted without noticing any contradiction in regard to pre-war positions. According to a recurrent methodology, faced with inevitable changes in directions and interruptions within Catholic women’s organization, they proceeded by looking for or ‘rediscovering’ emancipatory elements within their own tradition. Women’s suffrage was thus equated to other forms of adaptation to reality that had already been experienced in the Church’s history while still maintaining ideals intact. That is to say, it was not a matter of admitting that doctrinal development lagged behind or of recognizing relevant transformations in the female identity. Along with reforms being introduced, however, deeper reflection was bound to occur, even in post-war Italy. In July 1919, the Sacchi Law definitively abolished marital authorization, and therefore women’s minor juridical right as established by civil code, allowing women access to many professions and to public office. That same month saw the initiation of discussion regarding the Nitti law plan, which included the Martini–Gasparotto proposal for women’s suffrage. It was also a question of intervening quickly on behalf of the women in the irredentist lands who, until then, had exercised the local vote. The debate reached particularly heated tones concerning two emblematic issues: the proposals to exclude prostitutes and to postpone the political vote. The People’s Party member of parliament, Giuseppe Micheli, said he was convinced that ‘it was appropriate to deny the right to vote to those who had, in any case, lost their feminine personality’.36 Moreover, the Catholic representatives, like the socialists,

35 ‘Allo stato presente delle cose il voto è una conseguenza logica della cresciuta importanza femminile, soprattutto del risveglio della coscienza femminile che ha portato le donne, vedendo il disordine delle proprie famiglie, a spingere lo sguardo fuori delle mura dell’orto per vedere di dove venisse il vento perturbatore. Cosa non nuova, che in altri secoli ha assunto altre forme e che ai giorni nostri, seguendo la corrente, ha mirato soprattutto ai riconoscimenti concreti dei governi, delle leggi, della società’; ‘Il voto alle donne?’, Bollettino dell’Unione donne cattoliche d’Italia, March 1917. 36 ‘Opportunamente fu esclusa dal diritto al suffragio colei che ha perduto comunque la personalità muliebre’; cited in Mariapia Bigaran, ‘Il voto alle donne in Italia dal 1912 al fascismo’, Rivista di storia contemporanea, 16, 1 (1987), pp. 240–55 (p. 258).

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were against postponing the vote for women that — mainly due to the technical problems of preparing electoral lists — was envisaged in the text approved in the Chamber of Deputies in September 1919. Before the early dissolution of parliament, arising from the Fiume endeavour, might cause the project to run out of time, Patrizi Gondi spoke thus on the matter: The law is therefore passed creating around eleven million voters in our Italy. It is passed, we all know how: as a ship laden with unknown goods approaches an almost deserted black beach where the sleepy or tired customs officers do not bother to check either its weight or its value. […] Willing or not (and I immediately declare myself to be among the former), we have taken a leap forward but we do not want it to be, for Catholic women, a leap in the dark.37 As can be seen, in addition to criticizing the way in which the new law was approved, the head of the UFCI reiterated her position on a controversial issue and, in the end, also revealed her fears concerning the effects of such an innovation for Catholicism, a definitive trait of which had been, up until then, women’s distance from politics. The need for appropriate preparation became, in the following months, the true grounds for the UFCI’s initiative, thus revealing that it did not share the positive and dynamic vision expressed, from 1917, by Don Sturzo, for whom the vote was the logical consequence of women’s participation in the social and civil life that was already occurring. Female Catholic Youth — the entity that in all respects represented the greatest innovation within Italian Catholic organization and which, in fact, was not to be found within the Union internationale des ligues féminines catholiques until 1926 — supported the reform as a possible formative engagement without, however, making any particular move towards adopting it. In 1922, in an initial break with respect to the unifying organizational procedures, the Female Catholic Youth began to organize its own regional congresses, the plan of action provided for in points six and seven: From a patriotic point of view: Well-understood love of homeland: neither nationalist, nor socialist, nor fascist, merely Italian Catholic women. From a political point of view: Civic and political culture: Christian exercise of the vote, if it is given.38

37 ‘È dunque passata la legge che crea circa 11 milioni di elettrici nella nostra Italia. È passata, sappiamo tutti come: come approda a nera spiaggia quasi deserta un bastimento carico di merce ignota di cui i doganieri insonnoliti o stanchi non si curano di verificare né il peso né il valore. […] Nolenti o volenti (e dico subito che sono fra queste ultime) abbiamo fatto un salto innanzi, ma non vogliamo che sia, per le donne cattoliche, un salto nel buio’; Maddalena Patrizi Gondi, ‘L’elettorato femminile’, Bollettino dell’Unione donne cattoliche d’Italia, 1 October 1919. 38 ‘Dal punto di vista patriottico: ben inteso amor di Patria: né nazionaliste, né socialiste, né fasciste, ma solo: cattoliche italiane. Dal punto di vista politico: Cultura civica e politica: esercizio cristiano del voto, se ci sarà dato’; cited in Armida Barelli, La sorella maggiore racconta…: storia della gioventù femminile di azione cattolica italiana dal 1918 al 1948, ed. by Simona Ferrantin and Paolo Trionfini (Rome: AVE, 2015), p. 138.

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On the other hand, in terms of relations with the rich forms of associations that in Italy promoted suffragist mobilization, the UFCI’s national leadership showed signs of adhering to the claim, albeit (as Patrizi Gondi said to a Swiss correspondent) ‘a rather Platonic adherence’39 to the movement, while remaining fundamentally suspicious of the other associations and above all of the feminist vision of the norm. Urged by the National Pro-Suffrage Committee from January 1919 to adhere to the mobilization undertaken forcefully at the end to the war, Patrizi Gondi issued a note explaining the limits and character of Catholic adhesion, which she reaffirmed with greater clarity in 1921: Neither the feminist ideal of equality between the sexes moved us nor were our actions for the vote motivated by the materialistic concept that that ideal subscribes to, as a new right, for the woman who contributes to, and is the most direct factor in, production in today’s society. Other considerations moved us. In our society, men’s authority, as head of the family and its representative to the external world, is weakened by two extremely serious factors: the lack of a moral and religious unity within the family and the atomistic, individualist idea of liberalism, according to which man is not the family’s representative and advocate in public matters, but only represents himself as a citizen. In such a society, it falls within a woman’s maternal mission — as a supreme duty imposed by religious conscience — to employ her strongest energies in being a solid barrier against the rising tide.40 By this time, constantly linked to the other associations of the women’s movement and officially in favour of reform, the UFCI was organizing its own activities and propaganda concerning the matter, explicitly forbidding its members from participating in conferences or initiatives that they did not directly organize.41 This occurred several times, in particular at the International Conference for Suffrage in Geneva in 1920 and at the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Rome in 1923, which was embraced by the small Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society, but not by the UFCI or by the Ligue patriotique des françaises.

39 ‘Une adhésion assez platonique’; ACACI, Fondo Miscellaneo, Unione Popolare, b. 45, fasc. 5, Marchioness Patrizi Gondi’s letter to Mme Bachman, 30 April 1920. 40 ‘Né l’ideale femminista di una equiparazione di sesso ci mosse, né fu spinta alla nostra azione pro voto il materialistico concetto che esso aderisse, come diritto nuovo, alla donna contribuente e fattore più diretto della produzione nella società odierna. Altre considerazioni ci mossero. Nella nostra società l’autorità dell’uomo come capo della famiglia e rappresentante di essa all’esterno viene infirmata da due fattori di gravità immensa: la mancanza di unità morale e religiosa in seno alla famiglia; il concetto atomistico ed individualistico del liberalismo per cui l’uomo non è nella cosa pubblica il rappresentante e l’esponente della famiglia ma solo il rappresentante di se stesso come cittadino. In tale società, come un supremo dovere imposto dalla coscienza religiosa, rientra nella missione materna della donna concorrere con le sue energie più sane ad essere valido argine contro la marea che monta’; Maddalena Patrizi Gondi, ‘La nostra cultura politica: il voto alla donna’, Bollettino dell’Unione femminile cattolica italiana, 15 April 1921, cited in Gaiotti de Biase, I cattolici e il voto alle donne, pp. 137–38. 41 ACACI, Fondo Miscellaneo, Unione Popolare, b. 45, fasc. 5, Maddalena Patrizi Gondi to the Pro Suffragio presidency, 13 January 1919.

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It should be noted that the Roman conference had offered Patrizi Gondi and Countess Spalletti Rasponi (CNDI’s national president) the presidency of its honorary committee.42 The situation that emerged with the presentation of the plan for the Marangoni–Lazzari Law introducing divorce, which had literally released a storm of reactions on the part of the Catholic women’s movement, served to increase the mistrust of the suffragist movement and a purely tactical adherence to the fight for the vote. In November 1920, after the end to mobilization, Marchioness Fina de Buzzaccarini of Vicenza, on behalf of the National UFCI, delivered no less than fifty-two volumes of women’s signatures (a total of 2.75 million) against the proposal to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.43

4. Conclusions Presenting suffrage as ‘an indispensable instrument for restoring the nation to Christianity’,44 as a ‘shield for defence’ and as ‘the sacred duty of Christian social reconstruction’,45 the UFCI made it known that, however non-essential to Catholic women’s plan of action, suffrage still had a historical usefulness. The prevailing theory among Catholic women, therefore, concentrated along this line: the female vote would be important for achieving laws for the family, schools and society better at a time of dangerous social disintegration. Meanwhile, the International Union of Catholic Women’s Leagues meeting in Rome in 1922 also expressed a favourable opinion on women’s active suffrage, while maintaining a general preference for family voting and emphasizing the need for specific ad hoc training: ‘Only preparing women properly can ensure that their sudden entry into the political sphere can be of benefit and not the cause of new dangers’.46 Nevertheless, although the disruptive experience of war and the political development after the war had driven UFCI to accept women’s suffrage, the scarcity of any willingness to accept reform was still evident in its inner fabric. It did not appear within its historical scope and UFCI fell back on a pragmatic approach that seemed not to require any theoretical modernization; this can be assumed from its clear differentiation from, and underlying mistrust of, the suffragist movement. On the whole, it can be said that the entities of Catholic women’s organization in Italy at that time expressed implicit, but mainly ambivalent attitudes towards women’s

42 ACACI, Fondo Miscellaneo, Unione Popolare, b. 45, fasc. 5, Alice Schiavoni Bosio to Maddalena Patrizi Gondi, 23 January 1923. 43 See Francesco Magri, L’Azione Cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Milan: La Fiaccola, 1953), I, p. 379. 44 ‘Istrumento indispensabile per ritornare cristiana la nazione’; ‘Il primo Congresso Ufci’, Bollettino dell’Unione donne cattoliche d’Italia, 15 November 1919. 45 ‘Uno scudo per la difesa’; ‘un dovere sacro di ricostruzione sociale cristiana’; Patrizi Gondi, ‘La nostra cultura politica’. 46 ‘L’adeguata preparazione della donna soltanto potrà far sì che sia benefica, e non cagione di nuovi pericoli, questa sua improvvisa entrata nell’arringo politico’; ‘Il Congresso dell’Unione Internazionale delle Leghe Femminili Cattoliche’, La Nostra Via, 14 May 1922.

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political citizenship, which they both denied and accepted with regard to women’s tasks in the proper social order. As Elena da Persico said, it was a matter of bearing in mind that, in the Christian concept of women in general, they are not called to a public life. Their mission is one of love in the family and in works of love. Nevertheless, it can also be an act of love to participate in public life when it is a matter of making Jesus Christ triumph.47 With the constant concern of ‘enlightening’ its members as to their political duty, the UFCI leadership did not seem to share any further in the popular ideals concerning women’s suffrage that — without embracing an individualistic view of voting — were inspired by the idea that historical reality itself was already preparing the female masses for the new lifestyle. On the other hand, while distancing itself from the feminist movement and being characterized by its ethical-religious commitment, Catholic women’s organization was not foreign to undertaking a broadly political role, both in the specific ideological vision according to which it operated and in its recourse to the means of influence and propaganda that modern society made available: Propaganda! It’s the magic word on everyone’s lips these days and has established itself as a power of the first order for every conquest! […] Propaganda! It’s the motto of the Female Catholic Youth, which wants to Christianize Italy beginning with the family circle in order then to conquer schools, factories, offices, fields, palaces, parliament and the realm for Jesus until the entire beloved country is conquered.48 A structural ambivalence towards women’s political citizenship, suspicion of the feminist movement, the pre-eminence of issues connected to a Christian restoration of society and fears tied to the lack of preparation in their own area were the factors framing the structure of positions expressed by the Catholic women’s movement until the norms of a limited local vote were introduced. As is known, in 1925, when the suffragist movement was progressively hegemonized by pro-fascist exponents and the actual assumption of universal suffrage rejected, the norms regarding a limited local vote — restricted to some categories of women — were introduced: the so-called reward suffrage or ‘vote by mandate of a deceased male’,49 as it was rightly defined. Belgium had set the example, distinguishing a 47 ‘Tenere presente che nel concetto del cristianesimo la donna in generale non è chiamata alla vita pubblica: la sua missione è di amore nella famiglia e nelle opere di amore. Tuttavia può divenire opera di amore anche partecipare alla vita pubblica, quando si tratta di far trionfare Gesù Cristo’; Antonietta Rossetti, Una vita apostolica: profilo della contessa Elena da Persico di Verona (Verona: Scuola Tip. Nigrizia, 1954), p. 88. 48 ‘Propaganda! È la magica parola che corre oggi per tutte le bocche e che si è affermata potenza di primo ordine per ogni conquista! […] Propaganda! È il motto della Gioventù Femminile che vuole ricristianizzare l’Italia cominciando dalla cerchia famigliare, per conquistare poi a Gesù la scuola, la fabbrica, l’ufficio, i campi, i palazzi, il parlamento, la reggia, fino a conquistare tutta la patria diletta’; Armida Barelli, ‘Santa Rosa da Viterbo: alla Gfci’, La Nostra Via, 3 September 1922. 49 ‘Voto per mandato di un morto’; Emma Schiavon, ‘La campagna per il suffragio del 1919: la parabola di “Voce nuova”’, Genesis, 5, 2 (2006), pp. 57–78 (p. 64).

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local level (of universal suffrage) and a political level (a right reserved for mothers, widows and mothers-in-law of soldiers fallen in battle). The nationalist right’s forte, particularly evident in France, was also introduced in Italy and then thwarted by the fascist authority’s reform.50 Catholic women’s organization mainly agreed, seeing it as proof of women’s ability not to place their own mission under fire, while still accepting the new field of action: One fervently fights for freedom but, deep within the female soul, there remains unchanged the religion of that submission that is less a slavery than a delicate grace, less blind obedience to paternal, marital, or fraternal authority than trusting abandonment to a virile force that should suffice to protect women. Only due to the fear that life’s new difficulties might weaken the head of the family’s energy are we working for the ability to help and, if needed, replace him.51

Bibliography Babini, Valeria Paola, and Luisa Lama, eds, Una ‘donna nuova’: il femminismo scientifico di Maria Montessori (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000) Bard, Christine, Les filles de Marianne: histoire des féminismes, 1914–1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995) Barelli, Armida, La sorella maggiore racconta…: storia della gioventù femminile di azione cattolica italiana dal 1918 al 1948, ed. by Simona Ferrantin and Paolo Trionfini (Rome: AVE, 2015) Bertuzzo, Maria Luisa, ed., Il femminismo cristiano di Elisa Salerno e le sue prospettive (Vicenza: Centro Documentazione e Studi ‘Presenza Donna’, 1988) Bigaran, Mariapia, ‘Il voto alle donne in Italia dal 1912 al fascismo’, Rivista di storia contemporanea, 16, 1 (1987), pp. 240–55 Caffiero, Marina, ‘Dall’esplosione mistica tardo-barocca all’apostolato sociale (1650–1850)’, in Donne e fede: santità e vita religiosa in Italia, ed. by Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 327–74 Cecchini, Francesco M., Il femminismo Cristiano: la questione femminile nella prima democrazia cristiana (1898–1912) (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979) Codrignani, Giancarla, ‘L’Alleanza Internazionale Giovanna d’Arco’, in Donna e teologia: bilancio di un secolo, ed. by Cettina Militello (Bologna: EDB, 2004), pp. 215–24 Cova, Anne, Au service de l’Église, de la patrie et de la famille: femmes catholiques et maternité sous la IIIe République (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000)

50 As to the French situation, see Christine Bard, Les filles de Marianne: histoire des féminismes, 1914–1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 83–84. 51 ‘Si combatte ardentemente per la libertà ma resta inalterata nel profondo dell’anima femminile la religione di quella sottomissione che è meno schiavitù che grazia delicata, meno cieca ubbidienza all’autorità paterna, maritale o fraterna, quanto abbandono fidente in una forza virile che dovrebbe essere sufficiente a proteggere la donna. Solo nella tema che le difficoltà nuove della vita possano fiaccare l’energia del capo famiglia si lavora ad ottenere la capacità di aiutarlo e all’occorrenza sostituirlo’; M. Marthe, ‘La donna elettrice’, La Nostra Via, 12 July 1925.

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Cova, Anne, and Bruno Dumons, eds, Femmes, genre et catholicisme: nouvelles recherches, nouveaux objets (France, XIXe–XXe siècles) (Lyon: RESEA/LARHRA, 2012) Dau Novelli, Cecilia, Società, Chiesa e associazionismo femminile: l’Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (1902–1919) (Rome: AVE, 1988) De Curtis, Italo, ‘La questione femminile agli inizi del secolo: l’approccio di Romolo Murri’, Civitas, 28, 5 (1977), pp. 21–31 De Giorgio, Michela, ‘Il modello cattolico’, in Storia delle donne in Occidente, ed. by Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, 5 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1991), IV, pp. 155–91 Della Sudda, Magali, ‘La politique malgré elles: mobilisations féminines catholiques en France et Italie 1900–1914’, Revue française de science politique, 60, 1 (2010), pp. 37–60 Fossati, Roberta, Élites femminili e nuovi modelli religiosi nell’Italia fra Otto e Novecento (Urbino: Fondazione Romolo Murri, 1997) Frattini, Claudia, Il primo congresso delle donne italiane, Roma 1908: opinione pubblica e femminismo (Rome: Biblink, 2008) Gaiotti de Biase, Paola, ed., I cattolici e il voto alle donne (Turin: Società editrice internazionale, 1996) Gaiotti de Biase, Paola, ‘Da una cittadinanza all’altra: il duplice protagonismo delle donne cattoliche’, in Il dilemma della cittadinanza, ed. by Gabriella Bonacchi and Angela Groppi (Rome: Laterza, 1993), pp. 128–65 Gaiotti de Biase, Paola, Le origini del movimento cattolico femminile (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2002) Gaiotti de Biase, Paola, Vissuto religioso e secolarizzazione: le donne nella ‘rivoluzione più lunga’ (Rome: Studium, 2006) Galeotti, Giulia, Storia del voto alle donne in Italia: alle radici del difficile rapporto tra donne e politica (Rome: Biblink, 2006) Gazzetta, Liviana, Cattoliche durante il fascismo: ordine sociale e organizzazioni femminili nelle Venezie (Rome: Viella, 2011) Gazzetta, Liviana, Elena da Persico (Verona: Cierre, 2005) Gazzetta, Liviana, ‘“Fede e fortezza”: il movimento cattolico femminile tra ortodossia ed eterodossia’, in Donne sulla scena pubblica: società e politica in Veneto tra Sette e Ottocento, ed. by Nadia Maria Filippini (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2006), pp. 218–65 Gazzetta, Liviana, ‘Votate all’obbedienza: parabole esemplari di dirigenti cattoliche’, Genesis, 5, 2 (2006), pp. 79–98 Gérin, Paul, ‘Louise van den Plas et les débuts du “Féminisme chrétien de Belgique”’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis, 1, 2 (1969), pp. 254–75 Guarracino, Scipione, Peppino Ortoleva and Marco Revelli, L’età delle rivoluzioni e l’Ottocento: dall’antico regime alla società industriale (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1998) Magri, Francesco, L’Azione Cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Milan: La Fiaccola, 1953), I Merry del Val, Rafael, ‘Lettera circolare dell’E.mo Cardinale Segretario di Stato di S. S. ai Rev.mi Ordinari d’Italia’, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 37 (1904–05), p. 21 Nolan, Melanie, and Caroline Daley, eds, Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 1994) Offen, Karen, European Feminisms (1700–1950): A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000) Pera, Isabella, ‘Camminare col proprio tempo’: il femminismo cristiano di primo Novecento (Rome: Viella, 2016)

Vot e s fo r Wo m e n and ‘Cat ho li c Fe mi ni sm’

Il Problema Femminile secondo la mente cattolica nel momento attuale: schemi delle lezioni tenute a Roma il febbraio 1923 dai Professori dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore alle dirigenti di Unione Femminile Cattolica Italiana (Milan: n. pub., 1923) Rossetti, Antonietta, Una vita apostolica: profilo della contessa Elena da Persico di Verona (Verona: Scuola Tip. Nigrizia, 1954) Rossi Doria, Anna, ‘Antisemitismo e antifemminismo nella cultura positivistica’, in Nel nome della razza: il razzismo nella storia d’Italia (1870–1945), ed. by Alberto Burgio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), pp. 445–73 Rossi Doria, Anna, Dare forma al silenzio: scritti di storia politica delle donne (Rome: Viella, 2007) Sale, Giovanni, Popolari, chierici e camerati, 2 vols (Milan: Jaca Book, 2006–07), I: Popolari e destra cattolica al tempo di Benedetto XV (2006) Salerno, Elisa, Per la riabilitazione della donna: al Sommo Pontefice Benedetto XV (Vicenza: Tip. Editrice Ditta Fratelli Pastorio, 1917) Scaraffia, Lucetta, ‘“Il cristianesimo l’ha fatta libera, collocandola nella famiglia accanto all’uomo”: dal 1850 alla Mulieris dignitatem’, in Donne e fede: santità e vita religiosa in Italia, ed. by Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 441–93 Scattigno, Anna, ‘La figura materna tra emancipazionismo e femminismo’, in Storia della maternità, ed. by Marina D’Amelia (Rome: Laterza, 1997), pp. 273–99 Schiavon, Emma, ‘La campagna per il suffragio del 1919: la parabola di “Voce nuova”’, Genesis, 5, 2 (2006), pp. 57–78 Vaccari, Michela, Lavoratrice del pensiero: Elisa Salerno, una teologa ante litteram (Turin: Effatà, 2010) Vicentini, Elisa, ‘Una Chiesa per le donne: Elisa Salerno e il femminismo cristiano’ (doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Napoli, 1995)

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The View of the People of Israel

Raffaella Perin

Benedict XV: The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’

On 31 October 2016, Pope Francis and Bishop Munib Younan, President of the Lutheran World Federation, signed a Joint Declaration on the Unity of the Christian Churches during their common ecumenical prayer in Lund Cathedral. The Pope’s visit to Sweden inaugurated the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, preparations for which had begun in 2013 with a document drafted by the Lutheran-Catholic Commission on Unity entitled ‘From Conflict to Communion’. In a passage from the 2016 Declaration we read: ‘While the past cannot be changed, what is remembered and how it is remembered can be transformed. We pray for the healing of our wounds and of the memories that cloud our view of each other’.1 The memory of the Reformation was a controversial aspect in twentieth-century Catholicism. It was a complicated issue that played a significant role in the pontificates of Pius X (when interwoven with the repression of modernism, which was considered a form of Protestantism), Benedict XV (who rejected invitations to participate in the first ecumenical conferences) and Pius XI (who not only officially condemned ecumenism in an encyclical but also promoted a veritable anti-Protestant campaign in Italy).2 The Catholic Church’s memory of its relationship with Judaism is the other major issue that it has been called upon to re-examine. Therefore, this contribution will analyse episodes and documents concerning the Holy See’s relations with Protestants and Jews during World War I and the immediate post-war period.



1 Pope Francis, Joint Statement on the occasion of the Joint Catholic-Lutheran Commemoration of the Reformation, 31 October 2016 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 2 See Lutero in Italia: studi storici nel V centenario della nascita, ed. by Lorenzo Perrone (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 739–762 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118801

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1.

Benedict XV and the Jews during the War

As John F. Pollard wrote, the humanitarian assistance provided by the Holy See during World War I was comparable to that supplied by the International Committee of the Red Cross.3 In the spring of 1915, the Secretariat of State organized an information office that, in conjunction with dioceses, parishes, military chaplains and priest-soldiers, had the task of retrieving news concerning soldiers at the front and passing it on to their families. It took care of requests for the missing, for locating prisoners and for repatriating the sick.4 According to a letter of the Secretary of State Gasparri to the archbishops of the belligerent nations of 22 January 1915, the Pope made no distinction of religion, language or nationality in assisting prisoners.5 On the basis of that principle, between 1915 and 1919 a group of Swiss Evangelical and Catholic ecclesiastic visitors travelled throughout the war zones, providing relief and organizing religious services.6 When, during the war, both sides of the contenders demanded that the Holy See condemn the atrocities committed by the enemy, the response of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs was that taking a public stance would damage peace efforts and endanger the Church’s humanitarian work.7 Benedict XV had already openly condemned every injustice, whichever side had committed it,8 but the ‘Pope’s role as universal father’ imposed impartiality towards the warring factions.9 A particular case that can be included among the Holy See’s humanitarian interventions was the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) request for Benedict XV’s assistance to the Jews persecuted in Eastern Europe. The reply of the Holy See was published in the form of a letter written by Gasparri in February of 1916.10

3 John F. Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 54. 4 John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 112–16, and Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 97–113. 5 See Francis Latour, ‘L’action humanitaire du Saint-Siège durant la Grande Guerre’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 48, 187 (1997), pp. 87–101 (p. 89). 6 On this group’s work, which enjoyed the cooperation between ecclesiastics belonging to the two Christian confessions, see Alberto Monticone, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella Grande Guerra 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013). 7 Pollard, The Papacy, pp. 42–43. 8 Benedict XV, Convocare vos, 22 January 1915 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 151–54. 9 Memorandum of Gasparri cited in Pollard, The Papacy, p. 37. On the reasons for the Holy See’s impartiality, see Giovanni Vian, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, in Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 736–43. 10 I have dealt with this matter more extensively in Raffaella Perin, ‘La petizione dell’American Jewish Committee a Benedetto XV e il progetto di enciclica a favore degli ebrei’, Annali di scienze religiose, 8 (2015), pp. 45–67.

The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’

Among the minorities affected by the Russian Empire’s politics during the war, the Jewish component was its main target. The reason for the mass persecution and deportation to which the Jewish population in the Eastern European regions was subjected between 1914 and 1915 was the widespread belief that the Jews constituted an occult force secretly plotting against the tsarist government and were, therefore, traitors siding with the Germans. The fear that they constituted a potential fifth column led Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich and the High Command, headed by General Yanushkevich, to deport the Jews. By the end of 1915, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been left homeless, crammed in poverty, on the one hand, in Kraków, Budapest and Vienna and, on the other, in Vilnius, Moscow and many other urban centres.11 On 30 December 1915, the executive committee of the AJC, an association founded in 1905 and based in New York with the aim of defending the civil and religious rights of Jews in every part of the world, signed a petition addressed to Benedict XV begging him to condemn the persecution of Jews and asking him to invite the Catholic clergy, particularly the Polish clergy, to discourage any kind of discrimination or harassment of them. On 12 December 1915, the committee had approved the motion of its president, Louis Marshall, to address a request to the Pope to use ‘his good offices to bring about an amelioration of the situation of the Jews in various countries’, asking him to intervene in ‘the situation of the Jews in Poland’ and sending him a book of the collected evidence of the persecution of the Jews entitled Jews in the Eastern War Zone, edited by the AJC’s Bureau of Information.12 In the minutes from the committee assembly it was also specified that the petition, before being sent to the Vatican, would be presented to the President of the United States, or his Secretary of State, for approval by the government. The United States, which remained neutral until April 1917, was, in fact, one of the countries receiving the greatest number of requests for help from European Jews. In the petition, after the description of the violence inflicted to the Jews, the Holy See was asked to exercise ‘the profound moral, ethical and religious influence’ on the Catholic faithful who ‘have unfortunately participated in this persecution’, requesting the Pope to provide assistance to Jews in the name of that ‘exemplary humanity for

11 On the persecution of Eastern Jews during the war, see, among others, Mordechai Altshuler, ‘Russia and her Jews: The Impact of the 1914 War’, The Wiener Library Bulletin, 27, 30–31 (1973), pp. 12–16; the essays of Jonathan Frankel, ‘The Paradoxical Politics of Marginality: Thoughts on the Jewish Situation During the Years 1914–1921’ and Steven Jeffrey Zipperstein, ‘The Politics of Relief: The Transformation of Russian Jewish Communal Life during World War I’, in Studies in Contemporary Jewry Volume IV: The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914–1921, ed. by Jonathan Frankel, Peter Y. Medding and Ezra Mendelsohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 3–21 and pp. 22–40, and Eric Lohr, ‘The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportation, Hostages, and Violence during World War I’, Russian Review, 60, 3 (2001), pp. 404–19. 12 ‘The American Jewish Committee meeting of the Executive Committee held on December 12, 1915’, in AJC Minutes, Executive Committee, July-December 1915 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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which Your Holiness is rightly distinguished’.13 The AJC wanted the pontiff to urge the ecclesiastical hierarchy to convince the faithful to oppose persecutory acts against Jews. The book written by the AJC that was attached to the petition described in detail the violence of Polish Catholics who, despite being ‘fellow victims of the Russian oppressor’, had permitted ‘religious and racial differences’ to prevent them from joining with Jews to face a common enemy.14 With the outbreak of war, many Poles had begun to denounce Jews to the Russians as traitors and spies, with the result that men, women and children were executed without proof or a regular trial. The signatories of the letter dated 30 December 1915 — recalling that, in the past, some pontiffs under similar conditions had extended their protection to Jews — expressed the hope that the sufferings under which millions of brethren in faith are now weighed down may be terminated by ‘an act of that humanity to which Your Holiness is so passionately devoted’. The AJC’s document was part of a project conceived by François Deloncle and Lucien Perquel in the spring of 1915, which included an interest in the Jewish communities in France and England in order to encourage the participation of a papal representative in the future peace conference. In exchange, the pontiff would publicly condemn the persecution of Eastern European Jews.15 Presented to Benedict XV in May 1915, the plan was followed and supported in Rome by Gasparri and Pacelli with the help of the Countess of Montebello, the widow of the former French Ambassador to Saint Petersburg, with whom the prelates were in close correspondence for suggestions on the steps to be taken.16 While Perquel had obtained the attention of the Alliance israélite universelle on the matter, Deloncle had received a brusque refusal to collaborate from the Jewish Conjoint Foreign Committee in London. However, the Director of the Jewish Chronicle, Leopold Greenberg, offered to help him come into contact with American Jews.17 After arriving to the United States, Deloncle reached an agreement with Marshall, which gave rise to the document signed on 30 December by the AJC’s executive committee. On 5 January 1916, the document was given to Deloncle to deliver to Benedict XV.18 In the letter accompanying it, Marshall clarified that, although it had been approved by the United States Secretary of State, the petition did not constitute a political act on the part of the government concerning the question of the Jews.

13 The text of the 30 December 1915 petition and the Vatican’s reply on 9 February 1916 were published as ‘In the Midst of War All Men Are Brothers’, The Jewish Veteran, August 1940, p. 21; collected in The Jewish Veteran, vols 7–9, p. 164 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also Perin, ‘La petizione’, pp. 64–66. 14 The Jews of the Eastern War Zone, ed. by American Jewish Committee (New York: n. pub., 1916), pp. 10–11 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 15 On the documents of the Alliance israélite universelle that reconstruct the matter, see Pavel Korzec, ‘Les relations entre le Vatican et les organisations juives (1915–1916)’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 20, 2 (1973), pp. 301–33. 16 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1323–26, fasc. 482; pos. 1335, fasc. 486. 17 Korzec, ‘Les relations’, p. 316 (doc. 3). 18 AES, America, pos. 195–98, fasc. 109, ff. 5r–6r.

The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’

Perhaps it is for this reason, combined with the English Jewish community’s refusal to collaborate, that the encyclical against Jewish persecution that Benedict XV had proposed in his first conversation with Deloncle and Perquel was not issued, while the Holy See’s reply to the AJC took the form of a letter from the Secretary of State written on the Pope’s behalf.19 On 18 February 1916, Deloncle explained to Marshall how the document had been drawn up.20 He recounted that he had been received, together with Perquel, by Gasparri and, two days later, by Benedict XV, to whom they presented with the AJC’s petition. Deloncle described the Pope’s reaction to the document of the American Jews: ‘Reading the letter, the Holy Father was visibly impressed and expressed his intention to respond immediately in order to recognize the common rights of the Jews’. The long discussion that followed, Deloncle explained, led to the presentation to the Congregation of the Holy Office of a draft letter, which, according to what had been reported to him, was profoundly altered by the Congregation.21 The letter said that the Pope, ‘as the head of the Catholic Church, which, faithful to its divine doctrine and to its most glorious traditions considers all men to be brethren’ who should ‘love one another’, will not cease ‘to inculcate the observance among individuals’ the observance of ‘the principles of natural law and to reprove every violation of it’. It continued, recalling that this law should be observed and respected in relation to the Children of Israel as it should be to all men, for it would not conform to justice and religion itself to derogate therefrom solely because of a difference of religious faith.22 In the letter to Marshall dated 18 February, Deloncle had written: The words common law have been replaced with the words natural law because the Congregation judged the expression common law as too ‘civil’ while natural law was ‘broader and more within the purview of the Church’.23

19 AES, America, pos. 195–98, fasc. 109, ff. 8. 20 Korzec, ‘Les relations’, pp. 322–25 (doc. 10). 21 I consulted the Decreta Sancti Officii, the Rerum Variarum indices and the Acta Congregationis Particularis at the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith without finding any trace of the discussion concerning the document. The sleeve of a folder of the Secretariat of State reads: ‘9 February Executive Committee of the “American Jewish Committee” Pres. Marshall. New York. Answer of the Holy Father to the address sent to him so that, with his authority, he might stop the suffering of the Jews in various nations. Votes’ (‘9 febbraio Comitato esecutivo del “American Jewish Commitee” Pres. Marshall. New York. Risp. del S. Padre per l’indirizzo mandatogli affinché con la sua autorità faccia cessare le sofferenze degli ebrei nelle varie nazioni. Voti’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1916, rubr. 12, fasc. 2, prot. 13726. The folder is empty, containing only a sheet with the heading ‘Archive of the Secretariat of State’ that reads: ‘Record r. 12 was delivered to Pizzardo on 18.4.16’ (‘Ricordo. r. 12 il giorno 18.4.16 fu consegnata a Pizzardo’). The registry number does not refer to any other archival signature, therefore the documents are not currently traceable. 22 See Perin, ‘La petizione’, pp. 64–66. 23 ‘Le parole diritto comune sono state sostituite con le parole diritto naturale, perché la Congregazione aveva stimato che l’espressione diritto comune era troppo “civile”, mentre il diritto naturale “essendo più ampio è molto più di competenza della Chiesa”’; Korzec, ‘Les relations’, p. 323 (doc. 10).

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In the only draft of Gasparri’s document preserved in the archive, there is, in fact, a reference to ‘civil life’ in a sentence that was deleted from the final version. In the sentence saying that the Catholic Church had taught persons to love one another fraternally, the phrase ‘in a true spirit of justice and freedom’ was removed. Where the pontiff was mentioned as the Head of the Church, the following sentence was deleted: ‘In this role [as Pope], he has not refused, even in the present circumstances, to inculcate the practical observation [of that precept] in civil life’.24 According to Deloncle, however, Benedict XV ‘has simultaneously ordered that secret instructions be sent to the entire Catholic clergy to end the persecutions, and I have confirmed with the Secretariat of State that his orders have been followed’.25 It is not clear who wrote the letter. Not having found any documentation of it at the Holy Office, it can only be assumed that it was Gasparri himself, perhaps with Pacelli’s help and the final consent of the Pope, who may have intervened with corrections or suggestions. As a result, we are unable to know with any certainty who initially wanted common law to be the foundation of a declaration in favour of the Jews. Deloncle leads us to believe that the pontiff, or whoever wrote the first draft of the letter, used the expression ‘common law’ but that the consultors of the Holy Office subsequently suggested that the term was inadequate. From a letter that Lucien Perquel sent to the Secretary of the Alliance israélite universelle on 29 February 1916, it seems, on the contrary, that he and Deloncle were the ones to insist on common law: We have reclaimed the words ‘common law’. They replied that the term was too ‘civil’ for an ecclesiastical author but that, in the spirit of the Vatican, natural law represents common law. We shall write it, if you wish, in a letter that is not intended to be released to the public.26 The document signed by Gasparri, therefore, recalled the natural law for regulating relations between Christians and Jews. In Thomistic doctrine, natural law is the foundation of any other law, civil or religious juridical norm since it is a reflection of the eternal divine law impressed by God in creation. Gasparri’s letter reiterated two characteristics of natural law: first, that the Pope had the authority to interpret it and that such a prerogative had a universal scope; second, that there was no religious or civil norm that could derogate from the principles of natural law. In this sense, the rights of Jews, men equal to the others, were guaranteed and should not be victimized by

24 ‘A questo titolo non si rifiutava di inculcare anche nel caso presente l’osservazione pratica nella vita civile’; AES, America, pos. 195–98, fasc. 109, ff. 2rv–3v. 25 ‘Ha parallelamente dato ordine che istruzioni segrete siano inviate a tutto il clero cattolico affinché metta fine alle persecuzioni e ho potuto assicurarmi alla segreteria di Stato che i suoi ordini sono stati eseguiti’; Korzec, ‘Les relations’, p. 323 (doc. 10). 26 ‘Abbiamo reclamato le parole “diritto comune”. Ci hanno risposto che il termine era troppo “civile” sotto la penna di una Chiesa, ma che nello spirito del Vaticano il diritto naturale rappresentava il diritto comune. Lo scriveremo, se lo desidererete, in una lettera destinata a non essere resa pubblica’; Korzec, ‘Les relations’, p. 325 (doc. 11).

The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’

violence.27 This precise, juridical-political usage of natural law leads us to believe that Gasparri was the author of the document. In fact, he had been working for some time on systematizing the Code of Canon Law, which was published the following year.28 The reference to natural law in defence of the Jews had some precedents. Similar usage can be found in Abbé Henri Grégoire’s 1807 pamphlet ‘Observations nouvelles sur les juifs’ (‘New Observations on the Jews’),29 and again, in the nineteenth century, in a sentence of the Rota passed on the basis of fundamental law (Grundrechte), according to which, since the Jews pray to the same God as the Christians, they could not be arrested during their religious observances.30 During the diocesan synod announced in 1898 by the Patriarch of Venice at the time, Giuseppe Sarto, it was declared that no ‘enmity or injury to justice or charity’ towards Jews should be ‘nourished or permitted’.31 Chronologically nearer to Gasparri’s letter, and in an identical situation, Pius X’s intervention in defence of Polish Jews, who were victims of the pogrom of 1905, should be noted. On that occasion, Pius X had denounced ‘the public massacres of Jews that the law of the Gospels — which requests that we love all without distinction — detests and condemns’.32 In the concluding paragraph to Gasparri’s letter, the United States was praised for the ‘peaceful prosperity’ that the shared civic life among those belonging to diverse faiths strongly encouraged: His Holiness rejoices in the unity which in civil matters exists in the United States of America among the members of different faiths and which contributes so powerfully to the peaceful prosperity of your great country. The weight of that sentence was significant considering the Church’s general opposition to the ecumenical dialogue and Leo XIII’s condemnation of Americanism

27 On the Church, natural law and human rights, see Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa e diritti umani: legge naturale e modernità politica dalla Rivoluzione francese ai nostri giorni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012). 28 On the formation of the Code of Canon Law, see Carlo Fantappiè, Storia del diritto canonico e delle istituzioni della Chiesa (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011), pp. 264 ff., and Carlo Fantappiè, Chiesa romana e modernità giuridica, 2 vols (Milan: Giuffrè, 2008). 29 Henri Grégoire, ‘Observations nouvelles sur les juifs, et spécialement sur ceux d’Amsterdam et de Francfort’, La Revue philosophique, littéraire et politique, 16 (1 June 1807), pp. 391–94 (Italian version, Milan, 1807, pp. 18–19). See Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, Il prezzo dell’eguaglianza: il dibattito sull’emancipazione degli ebrei in Italia: 1781–1848 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1997), p. 61. 30 Example cited by Thomas Brechenmacher, Der Vatikan und die Juden: Geschichte einer unheiligen Beziehung vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 2005), p. 31. 31 ‘Alimentata o concessa’; ‘alcuna inimicizia o ferita alla giustizia e alla carità’; see Stefania Astrid Torre, ‘Il patriarca di Venezia, Giuseppe Sarto, gli ebrei e gli appartenenti alle altre confessioni cristiane’, in Storia della vita religiosa di Venezia: ricerche e documenti sull’età contemporanea, ed. by Gadi Luzzatto Voghera and Giovanni Vian (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008), pp. 49–109 (p. 88). Other points in Chapter 4 of the Synodal Constitution, however, recalled all the prohibitions concerning relationships between Christians and Jews. 32 ‘Qualia, nuper, ut aliquid indicemus, publicae fuerunt iudaeorum caedes, quas equidem Evangelii lex, quae omnes promiscue diligendos iubet, detestatur ac reprobat’; Pius X, Poloniae populum, 3 December 1905 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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in 1899.33 Despite the clarification of the areas in which harmony was appreciated, and those concerned — there was talk of strictly ‘civil’ relations between people belonging to different religions, not among religions tout court —, the tribute paid to the United States is remarkable. It was taken as an example, a reality in which prosperity and common good were achieved precisely through a legal equality between Catholics and those of other religions. The climate of war certainly influenced the choice of Gasparri and Benedict XV to recognize the happy harmony between Christians and Jews. The Holy See looked to the United States in the hope of finding an ally in its attempts to work for peace, and it had reason to believe that Jewish public opinion would support such efforts.34 The sentence thus needs to be read within a political-diplomatic context that could have led to accentuating some aspects that went beyond traditional Catholic doctrine or the writer’s convictions. The recourse to natural law, or natural rights, in condemning anti-Semitic persecution was used by Pacelli a year later when he was Nuncio in Munich. On 4 September 1917, he submitted a question to Gasparri concerning German Jews. The Jewish communities in the German Empire had turned to him to ask for the Pope’s intercession with the Italian government, which had unexpectedly forbidden the exportation of palm trees. The community used them for Sukkot, the Festival of Tabernacles, and they were normally imported from Italy. Time was running out — Pacelli explained to Gasparri — the later the exportation the more likely that the palms would not be distributed in Germany in time. The Nuncio’s opinion was that: It seemed to me that it was not here a matter of aid to be given to the Jewish community for a purely civil purpose or for the protection of the natural rights common to all persons (there would have been nothing wrong with that), but of a material and remote cooperation, which was at the same time positive and direct, for the practice of Jewish worship. Therefore, I answered […] that, although I could not send a telegraph concerning such a matter (since it was so out of the ordinary that it would have required too much explanation), I would, however, immediately send an urgent report to the Holy See on the matter. In his reply, Gasparri agreed with Pacelli and left the drafting of the response to his ‘well-known finesse’ (‘you may insist upon the fact that the Holy See does not entertain diplomatic relations with the Italian government’).35

33 Gerald P. Fogarty, ‘Modernism in the United States’, in Il modernismo tra cristianità e secolarizzazione: atti del Convegno internazionale di Urbino, 1–4 ottobre 1997, ed. by Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2000), pp. 463–85. 34 Pollard, The Papacy, p. 62. 35 ‘Mi è sembrato che si trattava qui non già di un aiuto da prestarsi alle comunità israelitiche per uno scopo puramente civile o per la tutela dei diritti naturali comuni a tutti gli uomini (nel che non vi sarebbe stato alcun inconveniente), sibbene di una cooperazione, materiale e remota, ma positiva e diretta per l’esercizio del culto giudaico. Ho risposto quindi […] che, pur non essendomi possibile telegrafare per un simile affare (il quale, perché del tutto straordinario, richiedeva molte spiegazioni),

The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’

In short, on this matter we find the Holy See’s position toward the Jews clearly explained in Gasparri’s letter of 1916, which was later reiterated by Pacelli. The Church could intervene in defence of the Jews with regard to the natural law guaranteed to all individuals regardless of religion. It could also, the future Pius XII added, consider assistance of a ‘purely civil scope’, that is to say, in the ‘practical observance in civil life’ of natural law, which had been erased in the document responding to the AJC. It could not, however, in any way, facilitate the practice of the worship of the Jewish faith because infidelity (to the real religion) was not to be supported.

2. Benedict XV and the Protestant World On 21 November 1915, Benedict XV received in audience some representatives of the Opera della preservazione della fede in Roma (Institute for the Preservation of the Faith in Rome), which had been founded in 1899 by the Jesuit Pio De Mandato at the request of Leo XIII in order to contrast Protestant propaganda in the papal city.36 After an address by Cardinal Basilio Pompilj, in which the Institute’s progress was communicated to the Pope, Benedict XV addressed those present with some words of support and encouragement and, at the same time, a condemnation of Protestant proselytizing in Rome. Those who steal the faith must call themselves thieves. But what are these emissaries of Satan doing, who set up temples where God is denied true worship in the heart of the holy city, who erect pestilential cathedrals to spread error among the people, who generously spread their lies and slander against the Catholic religion and its ministers? These diabolical arts are assaults on the faith of the children of Rome and are all the more dangerous as they are more frequent and too often accompanied by the granting of temporal advantages!37

avrei tuttavia inviato subito un rapporto urgente alla S. Sede in proposito’; ‘ben nota destrezza’; ‘ella potrà insistere sul fatto che la S. Sede non intrattiene con governo italiano relazioni diplomatiche’; AES, Germania, Monaco 1917, pos. 1619, fasc. 852, ff. 2–4. 36 On the Institute’s origins and subsequent developments, see Maria Paiano, ‘Contro “l’invadente eresia protestante”: l’Opera della Preservazione della Fede in Roma (1899–1930)’, in Chiesa cattolica e minoranze in Italia nella prima metà del Novecento: il caso veneto a confronto, ed. by Raffaella Perin (Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 27–103. 37 ‘A chi ruba la fede deve darsi il nome di ladro. Ma che cosa fanno cotesti emissari di Satana che in mezzo alla città santa innalzano templi ove a Dio si nega il vero culto, che erigono cattedre pestilenziali per diffondere errori in mezzo al popolo, che spargono a piene mani la menzogna e la calunnia contro la religione cattolica e i suoi ministri? Queste arti diaboliche sono altrettanti assalti alla fede dei figli di Roma, e sono assalti tanto più pericolosi quanto più frequenti, e quanto più insidiosi perché accompagnati troppo spesso dall’allettamento di vantaggi temporali’; Benedict XV, A lei, Signor Cardinale, 21 November 1915 [accessed 10 January 2019]. The next quotation in the original is: ‘è d’uopo impedire che ai loro danni si compia l’esecrabile furto. Non Ci sembra, o figliuoli carissimi, che il Nostro linguaggio possa essere tacciato di esagerazione, se “opera

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Protestants were called ‘thieves’ and ‘emissaries of Satan’. Their churches were centres of a faith that was not only considered erroneous but was likened to a dangerous disease for Catholics, all the more ‘insidious’ because it was propagated through flattery ‘diabolical arts’, offering material advantages. The ‘assault’ was all the more unfair because it ‘was aimed against the core of the Catholic religion’. Although it was not to be feared that the ‘gates of hell’ would win, Benedict XV warned against the risk faced by the ‘holy city’ of the ‘scandal that would strike the Catholic world if Luther and Calvin were to come to pitch their tents in the city of the popes permanently’. He continued: It is necessary to prevent this execrable theft from being carried out leading to their ruin. It does not seem to Us, dear children, that Our language can be accused of exaggeration if we call the entirety of assaults launched against the faith of the children of Rome the ‘work of true thieves’. But the conspiracy of these thieves must be destroyed by a strong organization of defenders of the faith, and this you have in the Institute for the Preservation of the Faith in Rome. A few days later, on 24 November, Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, at the time a priest, wrote from Bern to the Secretary of State to inform him that the Pope’s address was ‘not appreciated much by the Protestants, particularly by the Germans’.38 This had been pointed out by Schmidt, a Bavarian correspondent for some Catholic newspapers who had gone to Marchetti Selvaggiani for clarification on the issue. The latter told him: His Holiness has the right and the duty to speak clearly, warning, particularly in Rome, against the activity of Protestant proselytizing, proselytizing that in Italy only works in favour of Freemasonry (an institution that now, sadly, is starting to become known to the Germans). If the presence of Protestants in the Freemasonic lodges could not be denied, the connection between Protestantism and Freemasonry was, and continued to be, one of the themes most exploited by the supporters of the existence of an anti-Catholic conspiracy in modern society.39 Marchetti Selvaggiani then added that it was legitimate for the Pope to use evangelical terms40 in ‘calling thieves those who attack souls, subtracting their faith’, because the ‘evangelical league’ in Germany continued ‘its work against Catholicism’, and every Sunday Protestant ministers called the Pope the ‘anti-Christ’.

di veri ladri” chiamiamo l’insieme degli assalti mossi contro la fede dei figli di Roma. Ma la congiura di questi ladri dev’essere distrutta da una forte organizzazione di difensori della fede, e questa voi l’avete nell’“opera della preservazione della fede in Roma”’. 38 ‘Riuscito poco gradito ai protestanti, specialmente ai tedeschi’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 66, fasc. 1, ff. 179–80. 39 See Giovanni Vian, ‘La Santa Sede e la massoneria durante il pontificato di Pio XI’, in Chiesa cattolica e minoranze, ed. by Perin, pp. 105–32 and that essay’s bibliography. 40 Perhaps the reference is to John 10. 1: ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber’.

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The German correspondent pointed out that the German censors might have prevented publication of the summary of the address given by the Stefani agency, and Marchetti Selvaggiani replied that, in his opinion, ‘it was not a very auspicious moment in Germany to start a campaign against the Pope or to have a second edition of the clamour aroused at the time of the Borromeo encyclical’. The encyclical Editae saepe of 26 May 1910 had been written for the 300th anniversary of the canonization of Charles Borromeo, and its publication provoked strong reactions from German and Dutch Protestants, who considered Pius X’s statements on the Reformation outrageous. Marchetti Selvaggiani returned to the concern of a new clash between the Holy See and the German government at the end of his letter to Gasparri, suggesting that the address not be published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. The Archbishop of Cologne, Felix von Hartmann, conceded an interview to the Kölnische Volkszeitung to clarify the meaning of Benedict XV’s words: he did not intend a reference to German Protestants but ‘to Methodists who have been trying for years to alienate the Romans from the Church by the most disturbing means’.41 He explained that, in fact, participants in their liturgical celebrations were given from ten to twenty cents, and the families were offered free education for their children. The German Protestants were not the object of the Pope’s address, but the ‘Methodist Freemasons in Rome’. Both branches of Methodism, the Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, had been present in Rome since the work of proselytizing in Italy by missionaries from London and the United States had begun, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century.42 In 1915, in Italy, the Wesleyan Methodist Church numbered 2300 registered members and the Methodist Episcopal Church nearly 3200,43 a small number but enough to rekindle the controversy against those, according to the Institute for the Preservation of the Faith, who, in having strong foreign financial support, approached first the young and then their families, distancing them from the Catholic faith. Two days after the interview with Cardinal Hartmann was published, the Nuncio in Bavaria wrote to Gasparri, attaching the translation of a note from the government of Saxony dated 28 December, which complained that the Pope’s statements on Luther and Calvin ‘might offend the feelings of Saxon citizens of the evangelical Lutheran and evangelical Reformed confessions. He asked for a declaration from the Roman curia to clarify the Pope’s words.44 Benedict XV’s address was not published

41 ‘Eine missdeutete Ansprache des Heiligen Vaters’, Kölnische Volkszeitung, 27 December 1915. 42 See Giorgio Spini, ‘Introduzione: profilo storico della presenza metodista in Italia’, in Il metodismo italiano (1861–1991), ed. by Franco Chiarini (Turin: Claudiana, 1997), pp. 7–28, and Franco Chiarini, Storia delle chiese metodiste in Italia (1859–1915) (Turin: Claudiana, 1999). 43 The data comes from Chiarini, Storia delle chiese metodiste, p. 133. 44 ‘Potrebbero ledere i sentimenti dei cittadini Sassoni appartenenti alle Confessioni evangelico-luterane ed evangelico-riformata’; AES, Germania, 1915, pos. 1586, fasc. 839, ff. 2.

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in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis and, according to the documentation found, it seems that the controversy died down without any further consequences.45 It is interesting, however, to point out an episode that occurred in the summer of 1915, a few months prior to Benedict XV’s address to the Institute. On 5 July, Il Travaso della domenica published an article mocking the pontiff that provoked protests from the Holy See.46 In response to the newspaper’s rhymes, the Secretary General of the Unione popolare fra i cattolici d’Italia (People’s Union among Italian Catholics), Dario Flori,47 using the pseudonym Sbarra, wrote a piece in verse defending the Pope that was published in La Chitarra, a bimonthly Paduan magazine of popular songs.48 Once a copy of the magazine reached the Holy See, however, the Substitute in the Secretariat of State wrote to Flori that — although the Pope appreciated the noble intention of ‘turning vile insults against the insulting sacrilege’ — it was not appropriate for the Union’s public writings to let slip expressions that were offensive to followers of the Reformation in Germany. He added, ‘You will well recall, on this matter, the unpleasant incidents that happened not too long ago’,49 referring to the incident following the publication of the Editae saepe. The lines that the Substitute asked him to change were ‘but the pig recalls your Luther | old dogsbody of all bestiality | cry, impotent for your lost empire | and ask the weak for charity’. Certainly, Sbarra’s words were far more offensive than those which the pontiff used shortly thereafter, but it is interesting that the sensitivity shown to the German Protestant world and the recollection of the circumstances of Pius’s encyclical in July 1915 did not affect the drafting of the Pope’s address to the Institute for the Preservation of the Faith.

3. Protestant Proselytism in the Army and the Condemnation of the YMCA The religious and recreational activities at the front can be considered a significant example of the Catholic Church traditional suspiciousness towards Protestants. There are testimonies of requests to bishops by the occupying military authorities, especially

45 Jean-Pierre Viallet reports only two commentary articles in the Waldensian press, L’Echo and Il Pellice, that noted how the harsh expressions used by the Pope were not suited to his role as propagator of peace. See Jean-Pierre Viallet, La Chiesa valdese di fronte allo stato fascista (1922–1945) (Turin: Claudiana, 1985), p. 71. 46 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, r. 66, fasc. 2, ff. 6–9. Il Travaso delle idee was founded in Rome in 1900 as a humorous weekly. The article in question was signed by Lorenzo Stecchetti, a pseudonym of Olindo Guerrini, a poet from Romagna and head librarian at the University of Bologna, who was also known for his anti-clerical criticism. 47 On Flori, see Alessandra Covizzoli, Dallo sciopero delle trecciaiole al canto del Biancofiore (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1983). 48 Sbarra [Dario Flori], ‘Ecco il rovescio: turpissimo (per le rime)’, La Chitarra, 7 July 1915. 49 ‘Ritorcere contro il sacrilego insultatore le vilissime ingiurie’; ‘Ella ben ricorderà, a questo proposito, gli spiacevoli incidenti occorsi in tempi non troppo lontani’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 66, fasc. 1, ff. 101–02. The verses that follow are ‘ma il porco rievocando tuo Lutero | vecchio lenon d’ogni bestialità | piangi, impotente, il tuo perduto impero | e chiedi ai rammolliti carità’.

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German, asking the availability to celebrate Protestant religious rites for the soldiers in the Catholic churches. The Archbishop of Strasbourg had, of his own initiative, responded favourably to one of these requests. The Bishop of Metz, pointing out that canon law prohibited Protestants from using Catholic churches, had given his clergy the order to ‘tolerate, holding their peace’, ‘because of the difficult times and the lack of other appropriate establishments’.50 However, when the Archbishop of Warsaw was asked to do the same, he addressed to the Secretariat of State to know the most appropriate reply. Gasparri wrote two letters to the Extraordinary Envoy and Plenipotentiary Minister of Prussia to the Holy See, Otto von Mühlberg, pointing out the scandal that would ensue in a population that was so attached to the Catholic confession, with serious repercussions for public order. Permission, therefore, was not granted, and Gasparri specified that if that provision was not respected in some cases, it was only because the practice had long been in use in certain territories but not in the Diocese of Warsaw.51 The following year, the Bishop of Namur also made the same request of the Holy See. The Secretary of State wrote to the Archbishop of Cologne so that he would inform the Emperor of ‘how grateful the Supreme Pontiff would be if any measure capable of offending the religious sentiments of the faithful in the occupied regions could be avoided’.52 Roberto Morozzo della Rocca has shown how the concerns expressed by the military chaplaincy’s newsletter Il Prete al campo, concerning the propaganda of ‘that fatal hydra with 100 […] Protestant tentacles’, did not correspond to actual reports of Protestant proselytizing from the chaplains at the front, but reflected a more general and consolidated attitude towards Protestantism.53 In point of fact, in the reports of military chaplains to Italy’s Military Ordinate, there is no trace of friction or mistrust arising from the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) or its female counterpart (YWCA). On the contrary, in some there is mention that, not having noticed any confessional propaganda, soldiers were allowed to regularly attend the association, as attested in a letter by Don Primo Mazzolari to the military vicariate in 1918.54

50 ‘Tollerare, tenendosi passivi’ ‘in ragione dei tempi difficili e dell’assenza di altri locali appropriati’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1338, fasc. 488, f. 25, Mgr Willibord Bonzel to the Imperial Minister of Strasbourg, 17 April 1915. 51 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1338, fasc. 488, ff. 19–20, Gasparri to Mühlberg, 5 September 1916 (draft); AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1338, fasc. 488, ff. 27–28, Gasparri to Mühlberg, 19 October 1916 (draft). 52 ‘Quanto riuscirebbe grato al Sommo Pontefice se si evitasse qualsiasi misura atta a ferire i sentimenti religiosi dei fedeli delle regioni occupate’; AES, Germania, pos. 1614, fasc. 848, f. 19, Gasparri to Hartmann, 11 April 1917 (draft). 53 ‘Idra funesta dai cento tentacoli […] protestanti’; Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980), p. 18. 54 ‘For the first time I have some companies near a YMCA foyer. Recalling your recommendations, I visited the establishment myself, cordially chatting with the director, and I think it appropriate that my soldiers visit it, or rather, I will advise them to attend in order to distract them from dangerous situations’ (‘Per la prima volta ho alcune compagnie vicino a un foyer della YMCA. Ricordando le sue raccomandazioni ho visitato io stesso la casa intrattenendomi cordialmente col direttore, e credo conveniente che i miei soldati la frequentino, anzi ve li consigliai per distoglierli da occasioni pericolosissime’); Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 19.

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Yet the American organization established for purposes of assistance was the object of concerns that reached the Secretariat of State through a memorandum from the military chaplain, Giovanni Minozzi,55 in July 191856 regarding the soldiers’ centres. These centres appeared thanks to his initiative in June 1915 in the area of Cadore, and towards the end of 1916 the High Command wanted them extended to the entire war zone, according Minozzi full freedom in raising funds and in managing them. Thousands of soldiers found the centres a place of relaxation, where they were given paper for writing, books, games and musical instruments. Visits by ‘meritorious’ people, such as Father Semeria, Father Bertacchi and Father Gemelli, were organized. At the end of the summer of 1917, an Anglo-American commission of the YMCA — as Minozzi reported — came to visit the centres. Amazed by, and enthusiastic about, the efficient organization, the YMCA signed an agreement committing itself to prohibit any confessional propaganda and to accept Minozzi’s directorship. As long as he could count on the exclusive control of the centres, he showed that he gave priority to assisting soldiers, setting aside concerns about proselytizing.57 Problems arose when, in a pamphlet dated 14 June 1918, the general commissariat decided to entrust a major in the Carabinieri with the directorship of the centres, downgrading Minozzi to vice director. At that point, the priest notified the Holy See that the superior means to which the Americans had access would give them an inevitably greater influence over the soldiers: It is undoubtedly the YMCA’s desire to remain in Italy after the war and to organize our youth. Taking hold of them today, they want to keep them tomorrow and educate them as they please. […] Religiously speaking, with regard to the Catholic Church, given the means they have, it is even more dangerous and serious. Due to insipid political weakness and for only a little money, we risk compromising our entire religious future. It is tremendous! It would be the most sorrowful epilogue to this immense war fought so heroically by the flower of Christian youth, above all for the spiritual elevation of our people. It is not unlikely that his personal resentment at the loss of exclusive control over the soldiers’ centres influenced Minozzi’s report. However, we cannot fail to note the fear that soldiers would come into contact with non-Catholics and read books that

55 For a biography of Father Minozzi (in Italian), see the Opera Nazionale per il Mezzogiorno d’Italia’s website [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘Le “case del soldato al fronte”: note sull’iniziativa di don Giovanni Minozzi’, in Chiese e popoli delle Venezie nella Grande Guerra: atti dei convegni di studio (Trento, 8–9 aprile 2016 e Vicenza–Asiago, 27–28 maggio 2016), ed. by Francesco Bianchi and Giorgio Vecchio (Rome: Viella, 2016), pp. 235–66. 56 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 98, ff. 203–13. 57 This aspect was also noted by Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la guerra, p. 20. See also Piero Melograni, ‘Il clero e i cattolici nella prima guerra mondiale’, in Introduzione alla storia del movimento cattolico in Italia, ed. by Bartolo Gariglio and Ettore Passerin d’Entrèves (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979), pp. 351–64.

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had been prohibited by ecclesiastic authorities, among which one can note Romolo Murri’s 1915 work La croce e la spada, which affirmed a radical condemnation of violence and war in a long examination of Jesus’ sermons.58 The Secretariat of State prepared a memorandum relating Minozzi’s report for the Director General of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, along with a letter of response to Minozzi himself, which however was not sent.59 Nevertheless, the YMCA wound up in the crosshairs of the Holy Office, whose Secretary Merry del Val wrote, two years later, to the diocesan ordinaries urging them to watch over the faithful and keep them from becoming involved in the new activities of non-Catholics, particularly of the ‘mother of associations’ that attacked the Catholic faith, that is, the YMCA.60 The association’s intention to ‘purify’ the faith of young people ‘above any Church and beyond any religious confession’ — as a pamphlet published by the YMCA’s central office read — was a drive towards religious indifferentism in the eyes of the Catholic Church. In the name of the Holy Office, Merry del Val addressed the bishops asking them to keep the youth from the contagion of that association, and to support Catholic organizations instead by asking for economic aid from the wealthiest. He exhorted them to tell their parish priests to carry out their duty selflessly and, above all, to repress the errors that were spreading through the distribution of books and pamphlets. Given the gravity of the situation, he asked them to deal with the matter in the bishops’ regional conferences and to institute the most appropriate remedies. Finally, the Congregation asked the bishops to declare in public, in their individual nations, that the periodicals, magazines and other writings of those associations were explicitly prohibited.61 The letter to the diocesan ordinaries was the result of a procedure initiated by the Holy Office in the spring of 1920, when the padre primo compagno was given the task of preparing a document on ‘Protestant Propaganda among Catholics with Particular Mention of the YMCA and Related Societies’ and to condemn Fede e Vita, the ‘little journal’ of the Italian Federation among Catholic Students for Religious Culture. Moreover, the father consultors had instructed Enrico Rosa to state his opinion on the appropriateness of condemning other ‘notoriously Protestant and modernist’

58 See Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato, ‘Gli esiti del murrismo’, in Romolo Murri e i murrismi in Italia e in Europa cent’anni dopo, ed. by Ilaria Biagioli, Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2004), pp. 627–60 (pp. 646–48). 59 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 98, ff. 215–18. 60 ‘Madre delle associazioni’; ‘Epistola ad locorum ordinarios, qua eorum vigilantia excitatur circa nova quaedam acatholicotum molimina contra fidem’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 12, 14 (1920), pp. 595–97. The condemnation bears the date of 5 November 1920. The following quotations are, in the original, ‘purificare’; ‘al di sopra di ogni Chiesa e al di là di qualsivoglia confessione religiosa’. 61 The note reported the following reference from the Code of Canon Law: CIC, can. 1384 § 2 and 1399 § 4, and specified that, in Italy, such periodicals included ‘Fede e vita, a monthly cultural religious magazine, the publication of the Italian Federation of Students for Religious Culture, published in Sanremo’, ‘Bilychns, a monthly religious studies magazine, published in Rome’, and ‘Il testimonio, the monthly magazine of Italian Baptist churches, published in Rome’.

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magazines.62 For that reason, the Jesuit proceeded to list, together with his votum, a copious series of Italian magazines from some of the Evangelical denominations. The letter drafted by Father Ludovico Ferretti underwent several changes in the following months until it was published in November in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, signed by Merry del Val.

4. Benedict XV and the Ecumenical Movement From the outset, the attempts at ecumenical dialogue that had arisen in Anglican and Protestant communities were not supported by the Catholic Church. The war had slowed down the process of a rapprochement among the Christian confessions, which resumed, however, immediately after the conclusion to the conflict. On 4 July 1919, the Holy Office reaffirmed the prohibition for Catholics to participate in activities supporting the union of Christians,63 while the Faith and Order world conference aimed at initiating a new dialogue among Christian churches. Benedict XV received in audience a delegation from the movement but, despite the cordiality with which they were welcomed, the pontiff ’s response was a written declaration upholding that not only would the Catholic Church not participate in the conference, but that he hoped instead that the conference’s participants would see the ‘light’ and return to ‘the visible Head of the Church’.64 During the same years, the Italian episcopate was also invited to participate in some of these initiatives. In February of 1919, the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Pietro La Fontaine, had written to the Holy See to ask whether it was appropriate to accept the request to receive in audience a group of ‘Protestants of various confessions’ and to preside over a meeting to agree upon a prayer for the ‘unity of the various Christian confessions’.65 Rome’s response was to reject ‘any invitation to the assembly’ and to receive its representatives privately. Gasparri then sent the case to the Holy Office, since it fell within their competence. The Catholic Church, convinced that it preserved the true doctrine and original unity sought by Christ, did not support any of the ecumenical initiatives promoted by the other Christian Churches. In the encyclical Mortalium animos of 1928, Pius XI

62 ‘Propaganda protestantica tra i cattolici con speciale menzione dell’YMCA e società affini’; ‘periodichetto’; ‘notoriamente protestantiche e moderniste’; ACDF, S. O., Rerum Variarum, 1920, 7 Feria IV, 9 June 1920. 63 Suprema Congregatio S. Officii, ‘Decretum de partecipatione catholicorum societati “ad procurandam christianitatis unitatem”’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7, 11 (1915), p. 309. 64 ‘Al Capo visibile della Chiesa’; see Tissington Tatlow, ‘The World Conference on Faith and Order’, in A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948, ed. by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (London: SPCK, 1967), pp. 420–44. 65 ‘Protestanti di varie confessioni’; ‘unione delle varie Chiese cristiane’; AES, Italia, pos. 960, fasc. 351, ff. 14–16, La Fontaine to Gasparri, 11 February 1919. The following phrase in the original is ‘qualsiasi invito all’assemblea’.

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officially forbade Catholics to participate in organizations of movements that had inter-confessional dialogue as their aim.66

5. Jews, Protestants, and the Question of the Holy Land After its harsh attacks in 1914 concerning ritual murders,67 La Civiltà Cattolica did not publish anti-Semitic articles for the duration of the world war, resuming them only in 1919, when it blamed the Jews for propagating communism. On the one hand, the Soviet Revolution and the fear of the spread of communism in Europe, and on the other hand the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, revived some of the most entrenched anti-Semitic stereotypes in the Catholic press. Deferring to Paolo Zanini’s article for an analysis of the Holy See’s policies concerning the holy sites, it must be recalled here is the difference in dealing with the question between the Pope, and La Civiltà Cattolica, together with the different reactions towards the Zionist movement to the extent that they reflected different attitudes towards the Jews. The theological nature of Catholic anti-Zionism was the background to the struggle to protect the Catholic minority in Palestine, which was threatened by the possible encroachment of the political ambitions of the Yishuv or those of other Christian confessions.68 Concerning the question of Zionism, however, it is also possible to trace a shift in La Civiltà Cattolica from a theological anti-Judaism to a social anti-Semitism. Moreover, since the danger was not only constituted by Jews but also by Protestants and the Orthodox — who, like the Catholics, claimed control over the holy sites — the Eastern Question becomes a litmus test for some considerations concerning the Church in the early post-war period. Benedict XV’s address to the secret consistory of 10 March 1919 showed how he understood these issues. On that occasion, he dealt with the situation of the Christian East, touching on the problem of the holy sites. And now that, amidst the great exultation of all good persons, they have finally returned into the hands of Christians, We have a deep anxiety about what will soon be decided regarding them in Paris at the Peace Conference, since it would certainly be a grave sorrow for Us and for all faithful Christians if the non-faithful

66 On the encyclical’s preparatory stages, see Manuela Barbolla, ‘Genesi della Mortalium Animos’, in Pius XI: Keywords, International Conference Milan 2009, ed. by Alberto Guasco and Raffaella Perin (Münster: LIT, 2010), pp. 313–22; Johan Ickx, ‘L’enciclica Mortalium animos (1928): sfide storiografiche in base al nuovo materiale archivistico della Santa Sede’, in La sollecitudine ecclesiale di Pio XI alla luce delle nuove fonti archivistiche, ed. by Cosimo Semeraro (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010), pp. 313–31. 67 See, for example, Paolo Silva, ‘Raggiri ebraici e documenti papali: a proposito di un recente processo’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 65, 2 (1914), pp. 330–44. 68 For a summary of the traditional anti-Jewish aspects of Christianity, with an additional look at Protestantism and the Orthodox Church, see Henri Stellman, ‘Christian Anti-Zionism’, The Wiener Library Bulletin, 53–54 (1981), pp. 30–35.

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were to find themselves in a position of privilege and dominance, and far more so if those most holy sanctuaries of the Christian religion were entrusted to non-Christians. We also know that non-Catholic foreigners, abundantly supplied, profiting from the great misery and ruin racked up by the war in Palestine, are spreading their errors.69 According to Benedict XV, infidels (Muslims), non-Christians (Jews) and non-Catholics (Protestants) were threatening the custody of the holy sites. La Civiltà Cattolica, however, followed the text of the papal address with a comment that added concerns of a different nature to the religious ones that the Pope had mentioned.70 The author, who remains anonymous, outlined the existence of a conspiracy between ‘modern politics’ and ‘Jewish finance’ with the consent of Protestants, serving to the detriment of Catholics. There was, therefore, a double danger: ‘Protestant interference was aimed at overthrowing Catholicism; Jewish [interference] at destroying […] Christianity’. Continuing, the article argued that the French Revolution had had a negative influence on modern nations: Jews, who supported the rights that were proclaimed in France and then spread throughout Europe, were the greatest beneficiaries thanks to their participation in Freemasonry, which guaranteed them the possibility of high-level positions in business and finance. Thus, to the religious claims in support of the possession of the holy places that the Pope had put forward, La Civiltà Cattolica added anti-Semitic accusations ultimately aimed at criticizing a model of society that was disagreeable to the Church, of which Jews were the bearers and disseminators in Palestine, as elsewhere. In his address on 13 June 1921, Benedict XV mentioned the address he had pronounced in March of 1919. He recalled that he had already denounced ‘the nefarious work carried out in Palestine by the non-Catholic sects that dared to glory in calling themselves Christian’ and reiterated the fear that the ‘Israelites would find themselves in a position of predominance and privilege’.71 The situation of Christians, the pontiff

69 ‘Ed ora che, tra la grande esultanza di tutti i buoni, son ritornati finalmente in mano ai cristiani, vivissima è l’ansia Nostra per quello che di essi deciderà tra poco a Parigi il Congresso della Pace: poiché sarebbe certo un grave dolore per Noi e per tutti i fedeli cristiani, se i non fedeli venissero a trovarsi in Palestina in una posizione di privilegio e di preponderanza; molto più poi se quei santuari santissimi della religione cristiana si affidassero ai non cristiani. Sappiamo pure che stranieri acattolici, forniti abbondantemente di mezzi, profittando delle grandi miserie e rovine accumulate dalla guerra in Palestina, vi stanno disseminando i loro errori’; ‘Allocuzione di S. S. Benedetto XV pronunciata nel concistoro segreto del 10 marzo 1919’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 2 (1919), pp. 8–9. 70 ‘La voce del papa a difesa dell’oriente cristiano’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 2 (1919), pp. 10–16. The quotations from the article that follow are, in the original, ‘politica moderna’; ‘finanza giudaica’; ‘l’ingerenza protestantica sarebbe ordinata ad abbattere il cattolicesimo; la giudaica a distruggere […] il cristianesimo’. For a commentary, see Rita Campus, ‘Il confronto tra sionisti e cattolici nelle pagine di “Israel” durante gli anni Venti’, in Giorgio La Pira e la vocazione di Israele, ed. by Luciano Martini (Florence: Giunti, 2005), pp. 3–49. 71 ‘L’opera nefasta svolta in Palestina dalle sette acattoliche che pur sogliono gloriarsi del nome di cristiane’; ‘gli israeliti venissero a trovarsi in Palestina in una posizione di preponderanza e di privilegio’; ‘Allocuzione di S. S. Benedetto XV pronunciata nel concistoro del 13 giugno 1921’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 3 (1921), pp. 3–8. The quotations from the text that follow are, in the original, ‘nuovi ordinamenti civili colà stabiliti, i quali mirano […] a scacciare la cristianità dalle posizioni

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continued, had deteriorated due to ‘new civil arrangements established there that aimed at […] expelling Christianity from the position it had occupied until then, and setting the Jews in its place’. He, therefore, hoped that when a definitive order was decided for Palestine, the Catholic Church’s inalienable rights would be protected. However, he clarified: ‘We certainly do not want the rights of the Jewish element to be impaired; but we mean that they should not, in any way, be placed above the just rights of Christians’. In an unsigned article (written by Enrico Rosa, however), La Civiltà Cattolica commented on the Pope’s words, also adding a more markedly negative judgement regarding the Jews.72 Among the issues that the Jesuit saw dealt with in the pontifical address were ‘the miserable conditions of the Holy Land, which was the symptom of a more serious evil because it was more universal, the consequence of the predominance of the Jews and the Jewish spirit in the world’. The cause of modern society’s apostasy was to be found not only in ‘English or American Protestantism’, but mainly in ‘the triumph of profiteering, that is, of Judaism, which in that country [Palestine] tries to reclaim its stake from which to start implementing the perennial dream of dispersed Israel, world domination’. The case of the Holy Land, however, was only one example among others of the social dangers of the Jews, instigators of the Russian Revolution and promoters of the negative influence of high finance allied to Freemasonry in America. The opinions expressed by the journal buttressed the Church’s position against Jewish emigration to Palestine with anti-Semitic stereotypes that not only did not appear in the Pope’s speeches but which crossed the boundaries of a traditional doctrinal opposition to the return of Jews to Palestine. The distinction that Rosa hastened to make is interesting. He states that ‘we must be strangers to all violence and all hatred, even against the Jews […]. In this sense, we have no part in anti-Semitism, which is not Christian’. Violence, hatred and persecution were not allowed, but neither could it be accepted that the rights of Catholics might be questioned by Jews. They were depicted, at the same time, in negative tones. The commentator on the address went well beyond the meaning of the Pope’s words, changing some terms depending on the interpretation he wanted to impart. che ha finora occupate, per sostituirvi gli ebrei’; ‘Noi non vogliamo certamente che siano menomati i diritti dell’elemento ebraico; intendiamo però che essi non si debbano in alcun modo sovrapporre ai giusti diritti dei cristiani’. 72 [Enrico Rosa,] ‘La parola del papa e le questioni correnti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 3 (1921), pp. 9–21. The quotations from the article that follow in this and the next three paragraphs are, in the original, ‘le condizioni miserande della Terra Santa, sintomo di un male anche più grave, perché più universale, il conseguente predominio dei giudei e dello spirito giudaico nel mondo’; ‘protestantesimo inglese o americano’; ‘trionfo dell’affarismo, del giudaismo cioè, che in quel paese tenta rimettere il suo seggio, da cui avviare l’attuazione del sogno perenne d’Israele disperso, la dominazione mondiale’; ‘dobbiamo essere alieni da ogni violenza, da ogni odio, anche contro gli ebrei […]. In questo senso ci teniamo lontani dall’antisemitismo, che non è cristiano’; ‘elemento ebraico’; ‘schiatta giudaica’; ‘la scaltrezza finissima e l’operosità instancabile che tutti riconoscono agli ebrei, congiunta a una totale assenza di scrupoli o di principii morali […] a profitto dell’alta finanza d’Israele’.

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In quoting a sentence by Benedict XV concerning the rights of Jews, he substituted ‘Jewish element’ with ‘Jewish breed’, a term that was not without a negative connotation. The rights of Christians, he continued, were to be defended through the strenuous fight against ‘the fine cunning and tireless work that everyone imparts to the Jews, along with their total lack of scruples and moral principles […] to the benefit of Israeli high finance’. The news that was arriving from Palestine through the reports of the Apostolic Visitor, the Irish Franciscan Paschal Charles Robinson, however, spoke of a region that was marked by the problems tied to the difficult coexistence among Jews, Muslims and Christians, but that the Zionist movement was not the source of greatest concern. From 1919 to 1930, Robinson sent the Holy See periodic reports on Palestine, commenting on the developments in the political and religious situation. They show a certain moderation towards the Jews and a trust that the region could become ‘the most peaceful and most prosperous part of the former Ottoman Empire’.73 In his opinion, it was the activity of the American Protestants that most seriously threatened Catholics. In fact, in his report from 1 January 1920, Robinson wrote that ‘the current danger for Catholic interests in Palestine does not come from Zionists as much as from Protestants in the form of the American missionary societies that are now so active’.74 The report of 23 April in the same year explained that such activity, carried out by the Inter-Church World Movement of America and the YMCA in Jerusalem, was mainly aimed at youth. ‘It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that we run the risk of losing young people unless timely measures are taken to keep them in Catholic schools’.75 In February 1921,76 a new report described a fairly peaceful situation under the administration of the British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, who, Robinson wrote, guaranteed the protection of Christian and Muslim interests despite being a Jew. He also reported figures concerning the percentage of Jews in representative positions and noted that it was quite low in relation to the Jewish population. In the same report, he returned to Protestant proselytism, noting it to be the true danger for Catholicism in Palestine and attempting to downplay the danger constituted by the Zionist movement: ‘There is reason to believe that the danger of Zionism has been somewhat exaggerated in certain circles’.

73 ‘La più pacifica e la più prospera parte dell’ex impero ottomano’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Spogli Curia, Card. Robinson, b. 3, fasc. 241, p. 1. 74 ‘Il pericolo attuale per gli interessi cattolici in Palestina non deriva tanto dagli zionisti quanto dai protestanti sotto forma di società missionarie americane che sono ora così attive’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Spogli Curia, Card. Robinson, b. 3, fasc. 239, pp. 4–7. 75 ‘Non è dunque esagerato dire che corriamo il pericolo di perdere i giovani a meno di non prendere misure tempestive per tenerli nelle scuole cattoliche’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Spogli Curia, Card. Robinson, b. 3, fasc. 240. 76 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Spogli Curia, Card. Robinson, b. 3, fasc. 241, p. 1. The quotation that follows, in the original, is ‘vi è ragione di credere che il pericolo del sionismo sia stato alquanto esagerato in certi circoli’.

The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’

Robinson’s position did not improve Vatican opposition to the Zionist movement which had become more serious after the Balfour Declaration, but it mitigated other correspondents’ opinions concerning, such as that of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Luigi Barlassina. The question of the Holy Places reproduced the previously described dynamics of relations among the Holy See, the Jews and the Protestants, which were characterized by openness and concessions but also, and above all, by an unyielding struggle in favour of prerogatives for Catholics.

6. Conclusions At the beginning of this essay, I mentioned the 2016 meeting between Pope Francis and the Lutheran Bishop Younan and the anniversary of the Reformation that was celebrated in 2017. One hundred years earlier, Catholics had promised that they would not interfere with celebrations for the 400th anniversary of Luther, and Pacelli described the day dedicated to the festivities as poorly attended since, due to the war, people had other concerns.77 As far as Benedict XV’s attitude towards Protestants is concerned, we find ourselves faced with standpoints that are in line with those of earlier pontificates from a doctrinal and political point of view: there were few exceptions to principles, and there was a struggle to preserve the position and the role of the Catholic Church in society. If, in some respects, relations with Jews also had a certain basic continuity, it seems appropriate to highlight two elements that appear contradictory: the Holy See’s incontrovertible condemnation of the persecution of Jews and, after the war, the Catholic press’s resumption of anti-Semitic rhetoric. It seems that Gasparri’s letter to the AJC and the one of Pacelli to Gasparri clearly delineate the sphere within which the Holy See wanted to move with regard to Jews during the war, that is, a humanitarian-charitable one that did not involve the question of civil rights. Significantly, the defence of the Jews was not based on the traditional principle of their protection by the Holy See as they were witnesses of the Christological prophecies, but rather, on a more unquestionable precept, that is to say, the natural law.

Bibliography Altshuler, Mordechai, ‘Russia and her Jews: The Impact of the 1914 War’, The Wiener Library Bulletin, 27, 30–31 (1973), pp. 12–16 American Jewish Committee, ed., The Jews of the Eastern War Zone (New York: n. pub., 1916)

77 AES, Germania, pos. 1622, fasc. 852, f. 30, Pacelli to Gasparri, 2 November 1917.

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Barbolla, Manuela, ‘Genesi della Mortalium Animos’, in Pius XI: Keywords, International Conference Milan 2009, ed. by Alberto Guasco and Raffaella Perin (Münster: LIT, 2010), pp. 313–22 Botti, Alfonso, and Rocco Cerrato, ‘Gli esiti del murrismo’, in Romolo Murri e i murrismi in Italia e in Europa cent’anni dopo, ed. by Ilaria Biagioli, Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2004), pp. 627–60 Brechenmacher, Thomas, Der Vatikan und die Juden: Geschichte einer unheiligen Beziehung vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 2005) Campus, Rita, ‘Il confronto tra sionisti e cattolici nelle pagine di “Israel” durante gli anni Venti’, in Giorgio La Pira e la vocazione di Israele, ed. by Luciano Martini (Florence: Giunti, 2005), pp. 3–49 Chiarini, Franco, Storia delle chiese metodiste in Italia (1859–1915) (Turin: Claudiana, 1999) Covizzoli, Alessandra, Dallo sciopero delle trecciaiole al canto del Biancofiore (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1983) Fantappiè, Carlo, Chiesa romana e modernità giuridica, 2 vols (Milan: Giuffrè, 2008) Fantappiè, Carlo, Storia del diritto canonico e delle istituzioni della Chiesa (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011) Fogarty, Gerald P., ‘Modernism in the United States’, in Il modernismo tra cristianità e secolarizzazione: atti del Convegno internazionale di Urbino, 1–4 ottobre 1997, ed. by Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2000), pp. 463–85 Frankel, Jonathan, ‘The Paradoxical Politics of Marginality: Thoughts on the Jewish Situation During the Years 1914–1921’, in Studies in Contemporary Jewry Volume IV: The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914–1921, ed. by Jonathan Frankel, Peter Y. Medding and Ezra Mendelsohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 3–21 Grégoire, Henri, ‘Observations nouvelles sur les juifs, et spécialement sur ceux d’Amsterdam et de Francfort’, La Revue philosophique, littéraire et politique, 16 (1 June 1807), pp. 391–94 (Italian version, Milan, 1807, pp. 18–19) Ickx, Johan, ‘L’enciclica Mortalium animos (1928): sfide storiografiche in base al nuovo materiale archivistico della Santa Sede’, in La sollecitudine ecclesiale di Pio XI alla luce delle nuove fonti archivistiche, ed. by Cosimo Semeraro (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010), pp. 313–31 Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Korzec, Pavel, ‘Les relations entre le Vatican et les organisations juives (1915–1916)’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 20, 2 (1973), pp. 301–33 Latour, Francis, ‘L’action humanitaire du Saint-Siège durant la Grande Guerre’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 48, 187 (1997), pp. 87–101 Lohr, Eric, ‘The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportation, Hostages, and Violence during World War I’, Russian Review, 60, 3 (2001), pp. 404–19 Luzzatto Voghera, Gadi, Il prezzo dell’eguaglianza: il dibattito sull’emancipazione degli ebrei in Italia: 1781–1848 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1997) Melograni, Piero, ‘Il clero e i cattolici nella prima guerra mondiale’, in Introduzione alla storia del movimento cattolico in Italia, ed. by Bartolo Gariglio and Ettore Passerin d’Entrèves (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979), pp. 351–64 Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa e diritti umani: legge naturale e modernità politica dalla Rivoluzione francese ai nostri giorni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012)

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Monticone, Alberto, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella Grande Guerra 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, La fede e la guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome: Studium, 1980) Paiano, Maria, ‘Contro “l’invadente eresia protestante”: l’Opera della Preservazione della Fede in Roma (1899–1930)’, in Chiesa cattolica e minoranze in Italia nella prima metà del Novecento: il caso veneto a confronto, ed. by Raffaella Perin (Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 27–103 Perin, Raffaella, ‘La petizione dell’American Jewish Committee a Benedetto XV e il progetto di enciclica a favore degli ebrei’, Annali di scienze religiose, 8 (2015), pp. 45–67 Perrone, Lorenzo, ed., Lutero in Italia: studi storici nel V centenario della nascita (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983) Pollard, John F., The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Spini, Giorgio, ‘Introduzione: profilo storico della presenza metodista in Italia’, in Il metodismo italiano (1861–1991), ed. by Franco Chiarini (Turin: Claudiana, 1997), pp. 7–28 Stellman, Henri, ‘Christian Anti-Zionism’, The Wiener Library Bulletin, 53–54 (1981), pp. 30–35 Tatlow, Tissington, ‘The World Conference on Faith and Order’, in A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948, ed. by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (London: SPCK, 1967), pp. 420–44 Torre, Stefania Astrid, ‘Il patriarca di Venezia, Giuseppe Sarto, gli ebrei e gli appartenenti alle altre confessioni cristiane’, in Storia della vita religiosa di Venezia: ricerche e documenti sull’età contemporanea, ed. by Gadi Luzzatto Voghera and Giovanni Vian (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008), pp. 49–109 Viallet, Jean-Pierre, La Chiesa valdese di fronte allo stato fascista (1922–1945) (Turin: Claudiana, 1985) Vian, Giovanni, ‘Benedetto XV e la denuncia dell’“inutile strage”’, in Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, ed. by Mario Isnenghi, 7 vols (Turin: UTET, 2008–09), III: La Grande Guerra: dall’intervento alla ‘vittoria mutilata’, ed. by Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin (2008), pp. 736–43 Vian, Giovanni, ‘La Santa Sede e la massoneria durante il pontificato di Pio XI’, in Chiesa cattolica e minoranze in Italia nella prima metà del Novecento: il caso veneto a confronto, ed. by Raffaella Perin (Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 105–32 Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘Le “case del soldato al fronte”: note sull’iniziativa di don Giovanni Minozzi’, in Chiese e popoli delle Venezie nella Grande Guerra: atti dei convegni di studio (Trento, 8–9 aprile 2016 e Vicenza–Asiago, 27–28 maggio 2016), ed. by Francesco Bianchi and Giorgio Vecchio (Rome: Viella, 2016), pp. 235–66 Zipperstein, Steven Jeffrey, ‘The Politics of Relief: The Transformation of Russian Jewish Communal Life during World War I’, in Studies in Contemporary Jewry Volume IV: The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914–1921, ed. by Jonathan Frankel, Peter Y. Medding and Ezra Mendelsohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 22–40

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The Birth of Vatican Policy on Palestine and the Holy Sites

The first question requiring an answer when addressing this issue is whether it is possible to speak of a true and proper birth of the Holy See’s policy towards Palestine and the holy places during Benedict XV’s pontificate. Indeed, it appears evident that the Apostolic See has always had a policy on the highest sanctuaries of Christianity and the Holy Land, which once again became central in the nineteenth century when urgent, new challenges arose in that area. Nevertheless, it is possible to speak of a Vatican policy in the area that was so new that it suggests a true rebirth, or at least a substantial refoundation of relations, beginning with Della Chiesa’s pontificate and the radical geopolitical upheavals in those years. In an attempt to justify this judgement, changes in Vatican policy will be analysed with respect to four closely related issues: the situation of the Holy Land seen from an international point of view; the structures and organization of the Catholic Church there and its ancient controversies with other Christian confessions for possession of the sanctuaries; the attitude towards Zionism; finally, the assessment that Rome and its local representatives made of the first manifestations of Arab nationalism in Palestine.

1.

The Nineteenth Century

Before addressing these four aspects, however, it is necessary to reconstruct briefly the changes in the Holy See’s attitude towards the region in the previous century. The nineteenth century had seen a true rebirth of European attention to Palestine and the redefinition of the very paradigm of the Holy Land itself. This phenomenon was determined by numerous cultural and political motivations. Needless to say, the phenomenon began in the early years of the century, marked by the Napoleonic expedition, and it drew particular strength from the subsequent increase in pilgrimages. Neither the ‘liberal’ Egyptian government in the region nor the more general romantic fascination for the East were excluded from this. During the course of the century, however, the settlement of the Holy Land and the question of the legal-religious status of the holy sites became the central elements

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 763–776 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118802

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in the more complex Eastern Question, reinforced by the progressive disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and by the desire of the European powers to increase their influence in the eastern Mediterranean. In the Levant, particularly in Palestine, they found reasons for intervention and claims in the continuing connections among religious, national and political issues. It could thus happen that British politics in the region drew strength from the Protestant revival and from the proto-Zionist sympathies of certain Evangelical circles, while Russian aims were closely connected to the role claimed by the tsarist government as protector of the Christian Orthodox communities in the sultan’s domains. Nor should the similar role exercised by France over the Catholic communities, of both Latin and Eastern rites, be forgotten, which boasted rights of patronage and protection dating back to the sixteenth century.1 During the nineteenth century, alongside the political-religious activism of the European powers, the Holy See took the initiative several times in an attempt to shore up a Catholic presence in Palestine that appeared undermined by the growing influx of Russian pilgrims and Protestant activity. The most significant decision in this regard was the restoration (in point of fact, a new foundation) of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (1847).2 Equally significant were the archaeological campaigns in search of the Evangelical sites that were conducted in the region by the Franciscans and Dominicans, places which were then used to build chapels and basilicas, thereby strengthening the Catholic presence in the area.3 Leo XIII’s ‘oriental’ policy, aimed at enhancing the Eastern Catholic rites in order to counteract the successes of orthodoxy in the territories of the Empire, was also part of this perspective, although it operated in a more comprehensive approach and with a more marked historical-religious sensibility.4 If these were the main initiatives implemented by Catholicism during the nineteenth century, the basic ambition remained that of a revision of the status quo of 1757, which would restore the ancient Latin rights over the holy sites that were considered to have been usurped by the Orthodox, strengthened by tsarist power and its threatening influence on the Ottoman government.5 The outbreak of World War I shortly before Benedict XV’s election and the Empire’s entry into the war made unpredictable developments possible, which forced the Holy See and its diplomacy to tackle totally new dramatic events and perspectives.



1 On these aspects, see Giorgio Del Zanna, I Cristiani e il Medio Oriente (1798–1924) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011), pp. 109–42. On the English attitude, see Lorenzo Kamel, Dalle profezie all’impero: l’espansione britannica nel Mediterraneo orientale (1798–1878) (Rome: Carocci, 2015), pp. 47–103. 2 On the Holy See’s decision and its motivations, see Paolo Pieraccini, Il ristabilimento del Patriarcato latino di Gerusalemme e la Custodia di Terra Santa: la dialettica istituzionale al tempo del primo patriarca mons. Giuseppe Valerga (1847–1872) (Cairo: The Franciscan Centre of Christian Oriental Studies, 2006), pp. 151–208. 3 See Masha Halevi, ‘Between Faith and Science: Franciscan Archaeology in the Service of the Holy Places’, Middle Eastern Studies, 48, 2 (2012), pp. 249–67. 4 On Leo XIII’s Eastern policy, see Giorgio Del Zanna, Roma e l’Oriente: Leone XIII e l’Impero ottomano (1878–1903) (Milan: Guerini, 2003). 5 On the legal-diplomatic question of the holy places, I recommend the extensive work of Bernardin Collin, particularly his Le problème juridique des lieux-saints (Cairo: Centre d’études orientales, 1956).

the bi rth o f vat i c an p o l i cy o n pal e st i ne and t he  ho ly si t e s

2. The Situation of the Holy Land This is not the place to recall either the Vatican’s overall attitude towards the Ottoman Empire during the war or its important humanitarian work extended in favour of Middle Eastern Christians, starting with the Armenians, in those years. Here it will suffice to recall that the conflict profoundly afflicted the Holy Land’s Catholic community, which was without effective leadership and subjected to the severe measures of the Turkish authorities, mainly striking the numerous French and Italian members of the clergy who had become enemy citizens. The Latin Patriarch, Filippo Camassei, was interned in Nazareth while the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, left without guidance and the object of drastic military measures, lost much of its capacity for action. In this situation, the sole protection for Catholic institutions came from the consuls of the Christian nations that were neutral or allies of the Empire, first and foremost Austria-Hungary and Germany.6 Given these premises, it is easy to understand how the Catholic community in Jerusalem joyfully welcomed the arrival of General Allenby’s troops in December 1917 and the end to the ‘barbaric and cruel yoke of the Crescent’,7 which, however, had proven to be quite tolerant for a long time. In the same way, it is fully comprehensible that the news of the city’s conquest/liberation reverberated in public opinion and among the episcopates of the Entente countries, at times coloured by tones of crusades and ambiguous historical-religious meanings.8 More interesting, from our point of view, is to show how these expressions of enthusiasm were largely shared in the Vatican,9 where it was decided to not diverge from the complete neutrality towards the belligerents that had been followed until then. In this regard, the Cardinal Vicar’s decision not to ring the bells of St Peter’s on the occasion of







6 On the Christian institutions in Jerusalem during the war, see Roberto Mazza, Jerusalem from the Ottomans to the British (London: Tauris, 2009), pp. 58–68. More specifically on the situation of the Custody and Patriarchate, see Daniela Fabrizio, La questione dei luoghi santi e l’assetto della Palestina (1914–1922) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000), pp. 158–59; Paolo Pieraccini, ‘Il custodiato di Ferdinando Diotallevi (1918–1924) e la nascita della rivista La Terra Santa (15 gennaio 1921)’, in Una voce per la Terra Santa: atti del Convegno ‘Dalla Notizia alle notizie: informazione, archeologia, dialogo tra le fedi: i 90 anni della rivista Terrasanta (1921–2011)’: Pontificia Università Antonianum, Roma, 21 ottobre 2011, ed. by Giovanni Claudio Bottini (Milan: Terra Santa, 2012), pp. 25–84 (p. 34). 7 ‘Giogo barbaro e crudele della Mezzaluna’; see ACTS, Curia custodiale, Cronache, Cronache generali, 35, Cronaca di Terra Santa 1906–1931, pp. 277–79. 8 On the Italian episcopacy’s attitude in the face of the city’s liberation, see Luigi Bruti Liberati, Il clero italiano nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1982), pp. 106–09. For that of the French, see Agathe Mayeres-Rebernik, Le Saint-Siège face à la ‘Question de Palestine’: de la Déclaration Balfour à la création de l’État d’Israël (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015), pp. 100–01. Concerning the use of such interpretations in England, see Eitan Bar-Yosef, ‘The Last Crusade? British Propaganda and the Palestine Campaign 1917–1918’, Journal of Contemporary History, 36, 1 (2001), pp. 87–109. 9 On the significant attitude expressed by L’Osservatore Romano, see Sergio Minerbi, Il Vaticano, la Terra Santa e il sionismo (Milan: Bompiani, 1988), p. 37.

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the liberation of the holy city, unlike the peals heard from all the other churches in Rome, is well known.10 Despite this ostentatious equidistance, the reasons for the Vatican’s cautious satisfaction seem quite comprehensible. After centuries, Jerusalem returned to Christian hands, while the collapse of the tsarist regime in February, and the further revolutionary turn of Russian events in October, seemed to have definitively eliminated the most dangerous adversary of Catholic interests in the region.11 The Sykes–Picot Agreement of May 1916, which was formally still in effect, also envisaged an internationalization of the central part of Palestine that was geographically extensive enough to include all the Christian holy places.12 It was a solution that, despite its vagueness, seemed to conform to the wishes of the Holy See, both because it would permit various Catholic states to intervene in the administration of Palestine (it is known that the Vatican wanted small Belgium be entrusted with a significant role) and because internationalization would openly emphasize the exceptional nature of the Holy Land and its universal religious significance.13 It was a desire, it is important to note, that has survived for a long time, resurfacing in the Vatican’s requests for internationalization in Jerusalem and international guarantees for the holy places that have been advanced on several occasions, even in very recent years. Alongside the satisfaction, however, there was also a certain scepticism in the Vatican. First, none of the Entente’s three main powers offered great guarantees, from a Catholic point of view. Great Britain, which was appreciated for its cautious liberalism and the religious neutrality shown in the government of its empire, was in fact, at least nominally, a Protestant power. France and Italy, which at the time more openly demanded the defence of Middle Eastern Catholics for a variety of reasons, did not have any official diplomatic contact with the Vatican and were governed by secular parliamentary majorities. To this must be added that, just a month before Allenby’s troops entered Jerusalem, the Balfour Declaration had sanctioned Zionist projects for the first time, rekindling Catholic concerns about the issue.14 What is certain is that, when the prospect of the internationalization of the central area of Palestine began to decline and the possibility that the British military occupation would become a mandate, the Holy See’s growing disappointment was publicly known. This was essentially for two reasons: the aforementioned English commitment, undertaken with the Balfour Declaration, to support the birth of a Jewish National Home, and the concerns tied to the Protestant nature of England that led to

10 On this episode, see Andrea Riccardi, ‘Benedetto XV e la crisi della convivenza multireligiosa nell’impero ottomano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 83–128 (pp. 113–14). 11 Regarding the latter, see Agnes De Dreuzy, The Holy See and the Emergence of the Modern Middle East: Benedict XV’s Diplomacy in Greater Syria (1914–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), p. 224. 12 Minerbi, Il Vaticano, p. 33. 13 See Silvio Ferrari, Vaticano e Israele dal secondo conflitto mondiale alla guerra del Golfo (Florence: Sansoni, 1991), pp. 12–13. 14 Minerbi, Il Vaticano, pp. 193–97.

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the fear of an increase in Evangelical proselytism while facing the apprehension that the Greek Orthodox Church, left without Russian protection, might turn to England and receive help and protection in exchange for concessions to the Anglicans in the management of the sanctuaries.15 In this situation, the second half of Benedict XV’s pontificate saw a growing Vatican opposition to the conferral of the mandate for Palestine to Great Britain, while the themes of the region’s internationalization and a substantial revision of the rights over the sanctuaries favouring the Latins were strongly reiterated.

3. The Church in the Holy Land between Continuity and Changes These dynamics were a consequence of the evolution in international politics, but also in the particular situation of the Church in Palestine and the change in its relations with Rome. The Catholic presence in the Middle East, divided between Latin and Eastern rites, has always been particularly complex. The Holy Land was a faithful reflection of this situation, with a strong Latin presence in the Jerusalem area, flanked by a structured Melkite community in Galilee. Less numerous were the other Eastern rites present: there were around 2500 Maronites and extremely small Catholic Coptic, Syrian and Armenian communities.16 The heterogeneity of the Catholic presence in Palestine had always represented a difficulty for the Holy See, which was often unable to promote an effective coordination, and an opportunity for European diplomacies, attempting to exploit differences and suspicions among the various rites for their own benefit, to intervene. As is well known, Benedict XV’s pontificate marked an important turning point for the missions and Eastern rites. In fact, it promoted the formation and growth of a native clergy in mission territories in an attempt to limit the competitiveness among European missionaries that often resulted in open nationalism.17 Consistent with this perspective, and again returning to an initiative from the time of Leo XIII, Benedict XV relaunched the Eastern rites by establishing a congregation specifically for them. 15 On the possible rapprochement between the Greek Orthodox and Anglicans that caused such concern in the Vatican, see the article from a few years later, ‘Gli anglicani e i Greco-Scismatici’, L’Osservatore Romano, 20 November 1924. 16 A British statistic from 1925 indicated slightly over 28,000 Catholics in Palestine, among whom the Latins comprised about half, followed by the Melkites, or Greek Catholics, with more than 11,000 members, and then the Maronites. The remaining numbers were made up of the Coptic and Syriac communities, while the Armenian Catholic presence grew during the 1920s due to the arrival in Jerusalem of many refugees who had survived the genocide. However, all the figures on this subject appear to be highly arbitrary, so much so that a Turkish pre-war statistic put Palestinian Catholics at around 35,000 (very probably an excessive number). On the Eastern Catholic Churches in the Near East, see Joseph Hajjar, Chrétiens Uniates du Proche-Orient (Paris: Seuil, 1962). 17 On this, among others, see Claude Soetens, ‘La svolta della Maximum illud’, in Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV, ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Studium, 1999), pp. 69–90.

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In the concrete context of the Holy Land, these initiatives had profound consequences. In the long run, they determined making all the Catholics in Palestine depend on the Congregation for the Oriental Churches instead of Propaganda Fide (1938), strengthening the Melkite influence and promoting an increasing number of Arabs in the clergy.18 In the short term, on the other hand, they translated into a new centrality for the Latin Patriarchate with respect to the various religious orders, especially the Italian and French ones that were very strong in the region and closely linked to their nations of origin. This evolution was determined by the desire to establish a strong native clergy in the Holy Land, which would be submitted to a diocesan ordinary. It is likely, however, that this decision, alongside pastoral concerns, was linked to the desire to manage the operations that the Catholic powers (particularly France and Italy) carried out in the region, playing upon the patriotic sentiments of the churchmen. It was a situation that created more than a few inconveniences, making the Salesians and Franciscans appear to be representatives of Italian policy in the Palestinian context while the Assumptionists, White Fathers, Dominicans and the Christian Brothers were an extension of the reach of the Quai d’Orsay.19 What is certain is that, in 1920, thanks to Propaganda Fide and its powerful Prefect, Cardinal van Rossum, the relations between the Custody of the Holy Land and the Latin Patriarchate were modified to the latter’s advantage, which officially became responsible for the sanctuaries and the main Vatican representative in the region. In fact, after Syria’s passage to French mandate, the Apostolic Delegation of Beirut, which was formerly responsible for the entire region, lost much of its influence in Palestine.20

18 Regarding these developments during Pius XI’s pontificate, see Ferrari, Vaticano e Israele, pp. 23–24; Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Comment la Congrégation orientale a-t-elle acquis un territoire? Le décret de 1938’, in Le gouvernement pontifical sous Pie XI: pratiques romaines et gestion de l’universel, ed. by Laura Pettinaroli (Rome: École française de Rome, 2013), pp. 343–57. 19 On the French and Italian diplomatic initiatives immediately after the war and the involvement of people of the Church in many of these, see Frank E. Manuel, ‘The Palestine Question in Italian Diplomacy (1917–1920)’, The Journal of Modern History, 27, 3 (1955), pp. 263–80; Sergio Minerbi, L’Italie et la Palestine (1914–1920) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1970); Lucia Rostagno, Terrasanta o Palestina? La diplomazia italiana e il nazionalismo palestinese 1861–1939 (Rome: Bardi, 1996); Henry Laurens, La question de Palestine, 5 vols (Paris: Fayard, 1999–2015), I: 1799–1922: l’invention de la terre sainte (1999); Andrea Gabellini, L’Italia e l’assetto della Palestina (1916–1924) (Florence: SeSaMo, 2000); Dominique Trimbur, ‘Les acteurs de la politique palestinienne de la France (1901–1948)’, in France and the Middle East, ed. by Michel Abitbol ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2004), pp. 55–97; and Daniela Fabrizio, Fascino d’Oriente: religione e politica in Medio Oriente da Giolitti a Mussolini (Genoa: Marietti, 2006). Helpful in understanding the close relations between the Italian Foreign Ministry and the Franciscan institutions in the Holy Land in 1919 and 1920 is the diary of Father Girolamo Golubovich, which was recently published in Paolo Pieraccini, Padre Girolamo Golubovich (1865–1941): l’attività scientifica, il Diario e altri documenti inediti tratti dal carteggio personale (1898–1941) (Milan: Terra Santa, 2016), pp. 315–470. 20 On these complex evolutions of relations among the Catholic institutions in the Holy Land, see Andrea Giovannelli, La Santa Sede e la Palestina: la Custodia di Terra Santa tra la fine dell’impero ottomano e la guerra dei sei giorni (Rome: Studium, 2000), pp. 89–94; Daniela Fabrizio, Identità nazionali e identità religiose: diplomazia internazionale, istituzioni ecclesiastiche e comunità cristiane

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The focus has been on these changes within the ecclesiastical structure of Palestine because they appear paradigmatic of the Vatican’s desire to loosen relations with the European powers and with the tradition that required the Catholic nations to defend the Church’s interests in the Holy Land. In the new situation, which was still legally uncertain but marked by complete English control, it soon became clear how operating through the usual consular channels had become not only useless but even counterproductive, obtaining the sole result of irritating the British administration.21 Nor should it be forgotten that the new centrality attributed to the Latin Patriarchate contributed significantly to the exacerbation of relations between Catholic and British institutions, besides determining a strongly negative judgement of Zionist projects on the part of Catholics. During 1919, the elderly and exhausted Patriarch, Camassei, elevated to the cardinalate, left the region and was replaced by his auxiliary, Luigi Barlassina. The new Patriarch, whose election had been favoured by the powerful French orders, immediately revealed great energy in attempting to improve the situation of the Patriarchate’s institutions and of the entire Church in the Holy Land, which had been badly affected by the war. These efforts, often conducted with a febrile and inconclusive activism, however, contributed to reinforcing the mistrust towards the Patriarch and to deepening the historical distinction between Latin and Melkite and, in the Latin camp, between Custody and Patriarchate. Meanwhile, relations between the prelate and the British administration, which he accused of not respecting the secular ‘rights and privileges’ of the Catholics, very soon became tense.22 From our point of view, however, it is necessary to emphasize Barlassina’s central role in presenting Zionism to Rome as a danger to the very survival of Catholicism in Palestine. In this regard, it is as well to remember that almost all the Catholic representatives in the Middle East, with the partial exception of some Maronite circles,23 were

di Terra Santa tra Otto e Novecento (Rome: Studium, 2004), pp. 156–65, and Paolo Zanini, ‘The Establishment of the Apostolic Delegation to Palestine, Cyprus, and Transjordan (1929): Cause or Effect of Changes in Vatican Middle East Policy?’, Church History, 87, 3 (2018), pp. 797–822. 21 On this, see the assessments in this sense that are present in the Archive of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, b. S. Congregazione de Propaganda Fide 1921–29, Barlassina to van Rossum, 3 March 1920, and ACTS, Curia custodiale, Copialettere 1, Segreteria di Stato Vaticana, pp. 401–05, Diotallevi to Gasparri, 21 November 1923. 22 On Barlassina’s patriarchal governance, see Paolo Pieraccini, ‘Il patriarcato latino di Gerusalemme (1918– 1940): ritratto di un patriarca scomodo: Mons. Luigi Barlassina’, Il Politico, 63, 2 and 4 (1998), pp. 207–56 and 591–639. Comparing it to the Custody, see Pieraccini, Il custodiato di Ferdinando Diotallevi. On British discontent with Barlassina’s operations in the early 1920s, see Anglo-Vatican Relations (1914–1939): Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See, ed. by Theodore E. Hachey (Boston: Hall, 1972), p. 44. For a merciless but careful analysis of Barlassina’s actions and of his inability to unite the efforts of the various Catholic institutions, the reports written a few years later, in 1928, by the Franciscan Paschal Robinson at the end of his thorough apostolic visits are very useful: ASV, Archivio della Delegazione apostolica di Gerusalemme e Palestina, Archivio Testa, b. 3, fasc. 13, ff. 1r–30r, Relazione della Visita Apostolica sulla situazione dei Latini del Patriarcato di Gerusalemme. 23 On relations between Zionist and Maronite representatives at the beginning of the 1920s, see Laura Zittrain Eisenberg, My Enemy’s Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination 1900–1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), pp. 38–60.

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concerned about the achievements of the Jewish national movement. Barlassina, however, succeeded in lending a particularly dramatic accent to the events, sending Propaganda Fide and Secretary of State, Gasparri, a series of reports that painted a grim picture of the dangers to which Catholic institutions were subjected by the British and the Zionists.24

4. The Holy See’s Response to Zionism This reference to Barlassina’s anti-Zionist positions and their influence on the Secretariat of State leads to the question of relations between the Vatican and the Zionist movement, which was a key in determining the Holy See’s positions in the Holy Land, at least from the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. It is known that, since it first appeared on the international stage at the First Zionist Congress held in Basel in 1897, political Zionism had aroused confusion and fear in Catholic circles.25 Equally well-known is the fact that Herzl’s attempts to engage in a dialogue with the Vatican, initially through the Nuncio in Vienna, then directly, had completely failed primarily due to theological rather than the political objections put forward by Pius X and his Secretary of State, Merry del Val.26 Nevertheless, it must be remembered that, until World War I, the main Catholic concerns regarding the situation in Palestine focussed on Russian activism, Orthodox competition or, secondarily, the more recent Protestant activism, while Zionism and the Jewish presence in Palestine were seen as only a potential danger.27 That situation changed during the course of the conflict. During the war there were many contacts between Catholics and Zionists, often mediated by minor figures in European politics, in an attempt to identify possibilities for cooperating in humanitarian and relief activities for Jews in Eastern Europe and for Christians in the Ottoman Empire.28 They were only, as now appears clearly, contacts at intermediate levels that indicated neither any precise change of course in the upper levels of the Vatican nor any clear political decision made by the Zionist leaders. The mission to Rome in the spring of 1917 by Nahum Sokolow, one of the main leaders of the Zionist cause, was on an entirely different level. After meeting the Italian authorities, Sokolow was received in the Vatican where he had lengthy, cordial talks with Gasparri and Benedict XV. The outcome of the conversations, which were apparently positive, and the relaxed context in which they

24 On this, see Paolo Pieraccini, ‘La Custodia di Terra Santa, il sionismo e lo Stato d’Israele (1897–1951)’, Studi francescani, 110, 3–4 (2013), pp. 367–429 (pp. 380–81). 25 On this, see [Raffaele Ballerini,] ‘La dispersione d’Israello pel mondo moderno’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 48, 2 (1897), pp. 257–71, published as the First Zionist Congress was approaching. On reactions to the assembly, also see Annalisa Di Fant, L’affaire Dreyfus nella stampa cattolica italiana (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2002), pp. 69–74. 26 Minerbi, Il Vaticano, pp. 145–53. 27 On this, see Pieraccini, ‘La Custodia’, pp. 371–72. 28 Minerbi, Il Vaticano, pp. 153–57. See also the contribution by Raffaella Perin in this work.

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occurred deceived Sokolow and many of the Zionist leaders into thinking that the Vatican was not hostile to the objectives of the Jewish national movement. In reality, however, as is shown by very careful analyses, such hopes were based on a fundamental misunderstanding, which had been determined by the fact that, in the spring of 1917, Palestine’s future appeared, from the Vatican’s point of view, quite favourable. While the Ottoman Empire showed increasing signs of implosion, the Sykes–Picot Agreement ensured the internationalization of central Palestine, from Lake Tiberias to Hebron. The collapse of the tsarist regime in February had also deprived the Greek Orthodox of their main support on the very eve of a possible rediscussion of the status quo of the sanctuaries. In this situation, it was likely that Zionism continued to represent a predominantly humanitarian and somewhat utopian movement in the Vatican’s eyes, with which it would have been easy to maintain proper relations as good neighbours, within a framework dominated by internationalization.29 The last months of 1917, however, saw important changes that upset that perspective. The Balfour Declaration that assured the British government’s support for the establishment of a Jewish National Home and the progressive abandonment of internationalization in the face of England’s increasingly hegemonic role in the region were further disappointments for Catholic circles. To these diplomatic considerations can be added two other important elements: the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution in Russia and subsequent spread of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the West, with the presumed role that was played by Jews in the revolutions that tormented Europe between 1918 and 1920, relaunching ancient conspiracy theories that explained historical events as the unfolding of a Jewish plot.30 In this atmosphere, the diplomatic successes of Zionism and the beginning of Jewish penetration into Palestine appeared as the fulfilment of an obscure project. In outlining the reasons for the growing Catholic opposition to Zionist projects it is necessary to consider one last element capable of profoundly affecting the Christian imagination: the idea that the agricultural and industrial modernization of Palestine promoted by the Zionists since 1919–20 would alter the Evangelical landscape, depriving the Holy Land of its function as an eternal monument to Jesus’s preaching and contributing to introducing materialist, collectivist and anti-Christian lifestyles into the region. Complaints along these lines were made several times by the Catholic representatives that were present in, or passing through, Palestine, above all by Barlassina, who emphasized the decline in the Palestine’s moral tone of life because of the customs introduced by the Zionists, who were favoured by the English administration.31 The result of these converging fears and the definitive failure of internationalization was that, from 1919 to 1920, the Holy See wound up being perceived, and often acted, 29 Regarding this interpretation, see Minerbi, Il Vaticano, pp. 166–68. 30 On these aspects, see Andrej Kreutz, Vatican Policy on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The Struggle for the Holy Land (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 37–38, and Renato Moro, ‘Le premesse dell’atteggiamento cattolico di fronte alla legislazione razziale fascista: cattolici ed ebrei nell’Italia degli anni venti (1919–1932)’, Storia contemporanea, 19, 6 (1988), pp. 1013–1119 (pp. 1044–45, 1055). 31 See Pieraccini, ‘La Custodia’, pp. 385–86.

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as one of the main adversaries of the British mandate, particularly of Zionism. It was an opposition that, despite having Gasparri as its main representative, actively involved Benedict XV. Twice, on 10 March 1919 and 13 June 1921, the Pope, in fact, expressed concern that the new balances that had been established in Palestine would jeopardize Christian and Catholic rights and, more generally, those of the indigenous population.32 It also should not be thought that, when the Pope died in January 1922, the Vatican policy changed. Zionist hopes of seeing Gasparri replaced by Cerretti, who was considered less hostile, were soon dissipated, and the Roman policy on the question of Palestine remained unaltered. Indeed, in 1922, the clash between the Catholic and Zionist standpoints reached its peak during the Geneva discussion on the ratification of the mandates.33

5. Arab-Palestinian Nationalism The hostility to Zionism, the desire to defend the rights of the indigenous populations of Palestine, which were impaired by Jewish immigration, the suspicions of British politics and the need for the Church to be rooted in the local reality help to explain the initial support that Catholic institutions gave to Islamic-Christian associations. Appearing in November 1918 on an openly anti-Zionist platform, these political circles, where Christians, especially Catholics, were initially over-represented, they played a very important role in shaping the Arab-Palestinian national movement. Initially at least, they were fully supported by some of the main Catholic authorities in the Holy Land, starting with Barlassina and the Bishop of Akka Grégoire Haggiar, the leader of the Greek Melkite community in Galilee, while the attitude of the regular orders, particularly the Franciscans of the Custody, was more cautious.34 The favour with which the authoritative Catholic representatives and the Roman Congregations themselves initially looked upon Islamic-Christian associations

32 On these papal addresses, see Minerbi, Il Vaticano, pp. 188–90, 212–17. 33 On the continuity between the two pontiff ’s Middle Eastern policy, see De Dreuzy, The Holy See, p. 249. More in general, on Pius XI’s Palestinian policy, see Silvio Ferrari, ‘Pio XI, la Palestina e i Luoghi santi’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 909–24, and Paolo Zanini, ‘La questione della Palestina: la difficile difesa degli interessi cattolici di fronte all’affermarsi dei nazionalismi’, in Il pontificato di Pio XI nella crisi europea: atti del Colloquio di Villa Vigoni, 4–6 maggio 2015, ed. by Raffaella Perin (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2016), pp. 57–73. 34 On these political formations and the support received from the Vatican leadership of the Holy Land, see Minerbi, Il Vaticano, pp. 182–85; Kreutz, Vatican Policy, p. 39. Regarding the Custody’s doubts about the extensive involvement of Catholics in the Arab national movement, see ACTS, Curia custodiale, Copialettere 1, Segreteria di Stato Vaticana, pp. 384–94, the long report ‘Appunti sull’articolo del Correspondant France et Palestine’, sent by Diotallevi to Gasparri on 19 August 1923, where it was emphasized that, as in Franciscan circles, ‘the too evident Pan-Arabic love that were still too obviously shown by someone in our field is dangerous’, clearly referring to the attitude of Barlassina and Haggiar.

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appears significant. Through these new forms of political participation, and thanks to the important role of the urban bourgeoisie (which included many Christians), it was hoped that not only would Zionist aspirations be countered, but also that the Catholic community would be firmly placed within the regional political life, on a par with the Muslim majority.35 It was an evolution that, besides heading in the direction desired by Propaganda Fide and Benedict XV himself, was determined to root the churches and local Catholic communities in the various national contexts and, would have, in the medium term, the goal of limiting the claims and interference of the Catholic powers that, in the Palestinian context, could count on the consensus of many members of the regular orders, which were closely linked to their respective motherlands. From this point of view, it does not appear to be merely by chance that Barlassina in particular was in favour of Islamic-Christian collaboration and even went so far as to state, in August 1922, that Catholic interests and the Arab cause were substantially identical. He was probably the ecclesiastic who, at the beginning of the 1920s, was most committed to limiting national interference and the excessive power of the Italian and French religious orders.36 Neither is Haggiar’s involvement surprising, since, as the Greek-Catholic Bishop of Galilee, he was the leader of the main Arabic-speaking Catholic community in Palestine.37 The risks for Catholic interests inherent in the exponential growth of ArabPalestinian nationalism would only emerge slowly, becoming manifest at the end of the 1920s, particularly after the bloody massacres of 1929.38 In the first phase, in fact, the essentially political and non-military nature of the nationalist demonstrations, a certain moderation in the demands and a leadership that was firmly in the hands of the urban bourgeoisie gave rise to the hope that it would be possible to oppose Zionism and the mandate administration with an inter-confessional national movement that did not involve any Muslim characteristic and which, on the contrary, could cement the cohesion of the Arab-Palestinian nation beyond traditional religious barriers. In the light of the subsequent events, it is easy to see how this was an illusory perspective. However, it was not without a certain logic, and it perfectly suited the more general needs of a Church that was beginning to disengage from the traditional Eurocentric approach. What is certain is that these suggestions played a significant role in determining the attitude of the Catholic institutions in the Holy Land and of the Holy See itself from the second half of Benedict XV’s pontificate and the first period of that of Pius XI.

35 Very important in this respect are the indications for the following period (but which can be extended to the early 1920s) by Wilhelm de Vries, Cattolicesimo e problemi religiosi nel prossimo oriente (Rome: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1944), pp. 48–49. 36 Archive of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, b. S. Congregazione de Propaganda Fide 1921–29, Barlassina to Gasparri, 27 August 1922. 37 On the Arab prelate’s flaunted nationalistic sympathies, see Giulio Brunella, ‘Sulla posizione nazionalistica del vescovo melchita Grigurius al-Hajjâr (1875–1940)’, Alifbâ, 6–7 (1986), pp. 57–78. 38 On these developments, see Paolo Zanini, ‘Italia e Santa Sede di fronte ai disordini del 1929 in Palestina’, Italia contemporanea, 63, 264 (2011), pp. 406–24.

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6. Conclusions From what has been said, it is clear that Benedict XV’s pontificate represented a decisive juncture in redefining Vatican policy towards the Holy Land. It could even be said, as the most acute observers of the day noted, that the changes caused by World War I and the division of the Arab Levant into the Anglo-French mandates transformed the ancient question of the holy places into the modern question of Palestine. It was a political event marked by the growing opposition between Zionism and the Arab-Palestinian national movement and, after 1948, between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In this situation, the Catholic world’s primary attention to the sanctuaries and their status quo was destined to decline, albeit slowly and with several flare-ups, while the centrality of the Middle Eastern Catholic communities and the Holy Land for Vatican policy was affirmed. Although these changes were still in their infancy during Benedict XV’s pontificate, it is clear that the beginning of a precise policy towards the Palestinian Catholic communities, both Latin and Eastern, must be sought in that period. Alongside this first element of discontinuity with the preceding period and of anticipation of the following developments, the time of Benedict XV saw the emergence of a further Vatican movement in the region, which was destined to last: the request, explicit or implicit, of forms of internationalization for the areas of Palestine where the holy places and Catholic presence, particularly of the Latin Rite, were concentrated. It was a political proposal that, despite witnessing the progressive loss in the extension of the areas to be internationalized, presented an extraordinary continuity that would characterize Vatican policy well beyond World War II and the birth of the State of Israel, and which, as the continuing requests for an internationally guaranteed statute for the old city of Jerusalem reveal, still lasts until the present day. These few examples suffice to recall the centrality of the first post-war period and of Benedict XV’s and Gasparri’s endeavours to define a Vatican policy for the Middle East whose main objectives were the establishment of an international zone and the defence of Christian presence and the holy places. It was an attempt that also reflected the widespread fears of the Zionist, and later Israeli, projects, and a benevolent consideration for Palestinian national petitions.

Bibliography Bar-Yosef, Eitan, ‘The Last Crusade? British Propaganda and the Palestine Campaign 1917–1918’, Journal of Contemporary History, 36, 1 (2001), pp. 87–109 Brunella, Giulio, ‘Sulla posizione nazionalistica del vescovo melchita Grigurius al-Hajjâr (1875–1940)’, Alifbâ, 6–7 (1986), pp. 57–78 Bruti Liberati, Luigi, Il clero italiano nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1982) Collin, Bernardin, Le problème juridique des lieux-saints (Cairo: Centre d’études orientales, 1956) Del Zanna, Giorgio, I Cristiani e il Medio Oriente (1798–1924) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011)

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Del Zanna, Giorgio, Roma e l’Oriente: Leone XIII e l’Impero ottomano (1878–1903) (Milan: Guerini, 2003) Di Fant, Annalisa, L’affaire Dreyfus nella stampa cattolica italiana (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2002) Dreuzy, Agnes de, The Holy See and the Emergence of the Modern Middle East: Benedict XV’s Diplomacy in Greater Syria (1914–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016) Fabrizio, Daniela, Fascino d’Oriente: religione e politica in Medio Oriente da Giolitti a Mussolini (Genoa: Marietti, 2006) Fabrizio, Daniela, Identità nazionali e identità religiose: diplomazia internazionale, istituzioni ecclesiastiche e comunità cristiane di Terra Santa tra Otto e Novecento (Rome: Studium, 2004) Fabrizio, Daniela, La questione dei luoghi santi e l’assetto della Palestina (1914–1922) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000) Ferrari, Silvio, ‘Pio XI, la Palestina e i Luoghi santi’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 909–24 Ferrari, Silvio, Vaticano e Israele dal secondo conflitto mondiale alla guerra del Golfo (Florence: Sansoni, 1991) Fouilloux, Étienne, ‘Comment la Congrégation orientale a-t-elle acquis un territoire? Le décret de 1938’, in Le gouvernement pontifical sous Pie XI: pratiques romaines et gestion de l’universel, ed. by Laura Pettinaroli (Rome: École française de Rome, 2013), pp. 343–57 Gabellini, Andrea, L’Italia e l’assetto della Palestina (1916–1924) (Florence: SeSaMo, 2000) Giovannelli, Andrea, La Santa Sede e la Palestina: la Custodia di Terra Santa tra la fine dell’impero ottomano e la guerra dei sei giorni (Rome: Studium, 2000) Hachey, Theodore E., ed., Anglo-Vatican Relations (1914–1939): Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See (Boston: Hall, 1972) Hajjar, Joseph, Chrétiens Uniates du Proche-Orient (Paris: Seuil, 1962) Halevi, Masha, ‘Between Faith and Science: Franciscan Archaeology in the Service of the Holy Places’, Middle Eastern Studies, 48, 2 (2012), pp. 249–67 Kamel, Lorenzo, Dalle profezie all’impero: l’espansione britannica nel Mediterraneo orientale (1798–1878) (Rome: Carocci, 2015) Kreutz, Andrej, Vatican Policy on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The Struggle for the Holy Land (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990) Laurens, Henry, La question de Palestine, 5 vols (Paris: Fayard, 1999–2015), I: 1799–1922: l’invention de la terre sainte (1999) Manuel, Frank E., ‘The Palestine Question in Italian Diplomacy (1917–1920)’, The Journal of Modern History, 27, 3 (1955), pp. 263–80 Mayeres-Rebernik, Agathe, Le Saint-Siège face à la ‘Question de Palestine’: de la Déclaration Balfour à la création de l’État d’Israël (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015) Mazza, Roberto, Jerusalem from the Ottomans to the British (London: Tauris, 2009) Minerbi, Sergio, L’Italie et la Palestine (1914–1920) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1970) Minerbi, Sergio, Il Vaticano, la Terra Santa e il sionismo (Milan: Bompiani, 1988) Moro, Renato, ‘Le premesse dell’atteggiamento cattolico di fronte alla legislazione razziale fascista: cattolici ed ebrei nell’Italia degli anni venti (1919–1932)’, Storia contemporanea, 19, 6 (1988), pp. 1013–119

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Pieraccini, Paolo, ‘La Custodia di Terra Santa, il sionismo e lo Stato d’Israele (1897–1951)’, Studi francescani, 110, 3–4 (2013), pp. 367–429 Pieraccini, Paolo, ‘Il custodiato di Ferdinando Diotallevi (1918–1924) e la nascita della rivista La Terra Santa (15 gennaio 1921)’, in Una voce per la Terra Santa: atti del Convegno ‘Dalla Notizia alle notizie: informazione, archeologia, dialogo tra le fedi: i 90 anni della rivista Terrasanta (1921–2011)’: Pontificia Università Antonianum, Roma, 21 ottobre 2011, ed. by Giovanni Claudio Bottini (Milan: Terra Santa, 2012), pp. 25–84 Pieraccini, Paolo, Padre Girolamo Golubovich (1865–1941): l’attività scientifica, il Diario e altri documenti inediti tratti dal carteggio personale (1898–1941) (Milan: Terra Santa, 2016) Pieraccini, Paolo, ‘Il patriarcato latino di Gerusalemme (1918–1940): ritratto di un patriarca scomodo: Mons. Luigi Barlassina’, Il Politico, 63, 2 and 4 (1998), pp. 207–56 and 591–639 Pieraccini, Paolo, Il ristabilimento del Patriarcato latino di Gerusalemme e la Custodia di Terra Santa: la dialettica istituzionale al tempo del primo patriarca mons. Giuseppe Valerga (1847–1872) (Cairo: The Franciscan Centre of Christian Oriental Studies, 2006) Riccardi, Andrea, ‘Benedetto XV e la crisi della convivenza multireligiosa nell’impero ottomano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 83–128 Rostagno, Lucia, Terrasanta o Palestina? La diplomazia italiana e il nazionalismo palestinese 1861–1939 (Rome: Bardi, 1996) Soetens, Claude, ‘La svolta della Maximum illud’, in Roma e Pechino: la svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV, ed. by Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Studium, 1999), pp. 69–90 Trimbur, Dominique, ‘Les acteurs de la politique palestinienne de la France (1901–1948)’, in France and the Middle East, ed. by Michel Abitbol ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2004), pp. 55–97 Vries, Wilhelm de, Cattolicesimo e problemi religiosi nel prossimo oriente (Rome: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1944) Zanini, Paolo, ‘The Establishment of the Apostolic Delegation to Palestine, Cyprus, and Transjordan (1929): Cause or Effect of Changes in Vatican Middle East Policy?’, Church History, 87, 3 (2018), pp. 797–822 Zanini, Paolo, ‘Italia e Santa Sede di fronte ai disordini del 1929 in Palestina’, Italia contemporanea, 63, 264 (2011), pp. 406–24 Zanini, Paolo, ‘La questione della Palestina: la difficile difesa degli interessi cattolici di fronte all’affermarsi dei nazionalismi’, in Il pontificato di Pio XI nella crisi europea: atti del Colloquio di Villa Vigoni, 4–6 maggio 2015, ed. by Raffaella Perin (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2016), pp. 57–73 Zittrain Eisenberg, Laura, My Enemy’s Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination 1900–1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994)

Between Unionism and Ecumenism

Étienne Fouilloux

An Indecisive Inter-Confessional Situation (1914–22)

It is a curious feeling to revisit a construction site that one helped to inaugurate forty years ago…1 For a lack of work on the archives then closed but now accessible, the progress made seems meagre. I would like to suggest here that the question be taken up again,2 not starting from the different Christian confessions, as was the case in the past, but starting from the major event that World War I constituted. On the eve of the war, inter-confessional relations had come to a standstill. Two great attempts to bring about a rapprochement between Rome and the rest of Christianity had failed. In 1895, the encyclical of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Anthimus VII, in terms that were deliberately harsh and hurtful, rejected the hand extended to the Easterners by Pope Leo XIII.3 The following year, the Apostolicae curae bull confirmed that, for Rome, Anglican ordinations were ‘completely null and void’, putting an end to the first Anglican-Roman campaign of the French Vincentian Fernand Portal and his friend Lord Halifax.4 Pius X thus had not taken up the unionist efforts of his predecessor, quite the contrary: assimilated more or less to modernism, they had led to the marginalization of Portal for a second time in 19085 and of Prince Maximilian of Saxony in 1910.6 Although its properly religious effects have not attracted much attention from historians until now, the war also disrupted the field of inter-confessional relations 1 Étienne Fouilloux, Les catholiques et l’unité chrétienne du XIXe au XXe siècle: itinéraires européens d’expression française (Paris: Le Centurion, 1982); its biography dispenses with the need to cite prior publications. 2 Making use of the Vatican archives and the archives of the World Council of Churches, principally. 3 However, the conciliatory encyclical of his successor Joachim III corrected the situation in 1902; the response of the Holy Synod of Russia declined any opening on the part of Rome; translations in Istina 1, 1 (1955), pp. 78–83 and 83–91. 4 Anglican Orders: Essays on the Centenary of Apostolicae Curae (1896–1996), ed. by R. William Franklin (London: Morehouse, 1996); Alejandro Cifres, La condena de las ordenaciones anglicanas: los documentos del Santo Oficio y la bula ‘Apostolica curae’ (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2011). 5 Régis Ladous, Monsieur Portal et les siens (1855–1926) (Paris: Cerf, 1985). 6 The recent article by Nicolas Egender, ‘Le prince Max de Saxe précurseur de l’œcuménisme et “fou pour le Christ”’, Irénikon, 3 (2015), pp. 323–45, refers to the decisive works of Iso Baumer and Giuseppe Maria Croce.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 779–788 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118803

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and gave rise to two principal religious movements of opposing tendencies, whose results are not easy to define. The war was first of all a challenge for the different Christian confessions, but also for the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam. Without completely subverting them, it moved the confessional boundaries to the point of raising conflicting hopes within the various Churches.

1.

War Divides

The war was first and foremost a challenge for believers because it set nations and empires against one another, each claiming to be Christian in its own way. Far from being of assistance in settling differences peacefully, this Christianity, whether Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, was enrolled, more or less actively, in the service of patriotic mobilization, with each of the belligerents being persuaded to have God on its side, in conflict with the others in the war. A symbol of such impotence was the congress held in Constance on 1 August 1914 to express the Christian desire for peace; it had to disband on 3 August when the war was declared.7 The challenge was considerable: Christians, whose fundamental texts preach love of one’s neighbour, massacred each other in the name of their supposed rightfulness and a frequently claimed Christian identity. The potential for conversion that included identification with the national cause has been well explored, but the certain risks of abandoning the faith in a fratricidal war have yet to be measured.8 Similarly, among all the belligerents, there were slight traces of an inter-confessional rapprochement,9 such as among chaplains in the trenches, which was not negligible. Yet did this micro-history stand up to the devastating effects on the relationships among Christian confessions of the more or less advanced identification of one or the other with a national cause? The religious diversity in the two alliances undoubtedly prevented the conflict from turning into a war of religion. In all the belligerent countries, however, the Churches and their faithful proclaimed loudly and clearly the kind of Christianity that they professed and stigmatized the kind that they claimed their adversary held. Was France the eldest daughter of the Church or the home of Freemasonry and anti-clericalism? Was Germany the land of the





7 This congress gave birth to the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches: see John S. Conway, ‘Peace and the Churches between the Wars’, Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 8 vols (Brussels: Nauwelaerts, 1961–87), VII: Congrès de Bucarest, août 1980 (1985), pp. 247–72. 8 Frédéric Gugelot, La conversion des intellectuels au catholicisme en France (1885–1935), 2nd edn (Paris: CNRS, 2010); and Frédéric Gugelot, ‘La preuve de l’inexistence de Dieu: le premier des conflits mondiaux et l’abandon de la foi’, in La politique et la guerre: pour comprendre le XXe siècle européen: hommage à Jean-Jacques Becker, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and others (Paris: Angès Viénot, 2002), pp. 216–25. 9 Michel Lagrée, ‘Ces chers protestants’, in Chrétiens dans la première guerre mondiale: actes des journées tenues à Amiens et Péronne, le 16 mai et 22 juillet 1993, ed. by Nadine-Josette Chaline (Paris: Cerf, 1993), pp. 133–52; Xavier Boniface, ‘“Nos pasteurs au feu”: les aumôniers protestants aux armées (1914–1918)’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français, 160, 1 (2014), pp. 105–22 (pp. 117–21).

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choice of resistance to Rome or the origin of the heresy of Luther? The effects of these attempts at labelling (secular France, Anglican England, Lutheran Germany, Orthodox Russia), which ignored the confessional heterogeneity of the principal belligerents, have been studied better in terms of politics than in regard to religion. Yet they contributed to widening the gaps among the Christian confessions and even among people of the same confession in the belligerent countries. Until the end of the 1920s, French Protestants excluded German Protestants from ecumenical concert because they refused to admit their country’s responsibility in the outbreak of the war. One would be tempted to conclude, at the macro-historical level, that the Great War significantly increased the divisions in Christianity: among Churches of the nations at war but also among confessional stereotypes that were imposed on them by nationalist propaganda.

2. The Birth of the Ecumenical Movement When one considers the matter, all the histories of the Ecumenical Movement (in capital letters) open with the evocation of two contemporary initiatives in the second decade of the twentieth century that led to the creation of the World Council of Churches in 1948.10 The first of these was taken before the war and is not directly connected to it. However, it responds to another challenge, which was equally pressing. The eighth commission of the World Council of Missionary Societies, which met in Edinburgh in June 1910, was entitled ‘Cooperation and Promotion of Unity’. It could not but deplore a competitivity that hindered the expansion of Christianity. Instead of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, missionaries were too often preaching the gospel according to Luther, Calvin or Wesley. They thus transplanted Western religious quarrels into pagan soil and constructed rival chapels instead of one single Church.11 Following the proposal of Bishop Charles H. Brent, one of the attendees at the congress in Edinburgh, the Episcopal Convention of Cincinnati created a committee in charge of organizing a Commission on Faith and Order in the Church in October 1910, to which representatives from all Christian confessions would be invited. After having taken shape in the Anglican-Protestant world, the project was to be submitted to the European Churches by the very active Secretary of the Commission, the American lawyer Robert H. Gardiner. The outbreak of the war cut short his tour of Europe in the summer of 1914, but it did not prevent him from making promising contacts in the Orthodox world and even in the Catholic one:

10 Like Conway, I am critical of such a teleological vision, promoted notably by the informal work edited by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill in the context of the World Council of Churches, A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517–1948, ed. by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill, 2nd edn (London: SPCK, 1967); and I call for scholarly work that would remove this history from the common understanding of Geneva origin. 11 ‘Bibliographie sur la Conférence d’Édimbourg 1910’, Histoire et Missions Chrétiennes, 13, 1 (2010), pp. 173–75, to which may be added Ian M. Ellis, A Century of Mission and Unity: A Centenary Perspective on the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference (Dublin: Columba Press, 2010).

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Pope Benedict XV expressed his interest on 18 December 1914, through Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri. Moreover, he asked the faithful, in a brief of 25 February 1916, to participate in the week of prayer for Christian unity from 18 to 25 January, although the connection between such encouragement and the American initiative remained problematic. The other founding initiative was directly linked to the challenge of the war. The Lutheran Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, Primate of Sweden, was profoundly convinced of the damage that the conflict caused to Christian credibility. In December 1917, therefore, he summoned the leaders of Churches in neutral countries to Stockholm in order to alert solemnly the Christian world of the mortal danger that the war was posing. Like the earlier international socialist meetings or Benedict’s Note, the call from Stockholm to restore peace among Christians could not be heard amid the noise of battle. However, Söderblom did not abandon the project of convening a conference where representatives of the different Christian confessions would discuss their role in restoring harmony among warring nations. First scheduled for April 1918, this conference was postponed until September 1918, before being indefinitely suspended until the end of the hostilities. The extension of the two approaches to the Eastern Churches and to the Anglican Communion was received positively, on the one hand, by the encyclical of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which had been vacant since 1917, emanated to all of the Churches in the world in January 1920,12 and, on the other hand, by an ‘Appeal to All Christian People’ on the part of the Lambeth Conference in July of the same year. Both of these, however, met with a fin de non-recevoir from Rome. Twice, on 19 June 1918 and on 20 February 1920, Cardinal Gasparri politely declined, in the name of the Pope, the invitation to a conference on Life and Work in the Church, transmitted by the perillustres viri (‘most illustrious gentlemen’), who were for Rome the three Lutheran Primates of Scandinavia. The American Episcopal delegation arrived in Europe in the spring of 1919 and was well received by Benedict XV, but emerged from their audience with him on 16 May with the same refusal, accompanied by a copy of the decisions of 1864 and 1865 condemning the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom that arose from the Oxford Movement in which English Catholics collaborated with Anglicans.13 For good measure, a decree of the Holy Office of 4 July 1919 repeated and updated these condemnations. The twin meetings in August 1920, which prepared in Geneva the future commissions for Life and Work and Faith and Order, were thus held without any Catholics being present.14

12 Translation in Istina, 1, 1 (1955), pp. 93–96. 13 Mark D. Chapman, ‘The Fantasy of Reunion: The Rise and Fall of the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58, 1 (2007), pp. 49–74; and Mark D. Chapman, The Fantasy of Reunion: Anglicans, Catholics and Ecumenism, 1833–1882 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 14 A Jesuit on the journal Stimmen der Zeit, Heinrich Sierp, however, participated discretely in Faith and Order.

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3. The Roman Refusal These refusals disappointed the Anglican-Protestant circles, which had been deluded as far as the significance of the initial welcome by the Vatican of ecumenical projects was concerned. However, they come as no surprise. As long as it was only a matter of information about these projects, the Holy See could show a certain interest. However, when it came to formal invitations to inter-confessional conferences, the problem was of a different nature. The Roman Church had not ceased to consider itself the sole Church of Jesus Christ on earth, to which the ‘dissidents’, heretics, or schismatics had no other recourse than to join. Hence it did not see itself on an equal footing with the organizations that represented them, to which it denied the status of Churches, whether in terms of activities or, particularly, in terms of faith. For the Roman Church, unity is not to be found since it already exists within it. In addition to this intangible fundamental position, there was also an appreciation of the change in the religious situation between the beginning and the end of the war. This difference is due to the second major effect of the war on the Christian world: the upheavals that it brought about. These upheavals are of at least two kinds. In the first place, mention must be made of the unprecedented influence of the American Protestant world on the ranks of Christians. Just as the war saw the emergence of the United States of America as a great power and an arbiter of peace, it confirmed the growing importance of America’s various Churches and denominations in a Christian universe dominated until then by the European ones. The missionary conference in Edinburgh already revealed this tendency that prolonged the Faith and Order initiative. Both drew on a basic move in Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, of liberal origin, that consists in relativizing the differences among the various branches of the Reform to the benefit of their common ‘Christian’ identity, without further specification. This is the movement that first gave birth, in the nineteenth century, to the Young Men’s Christian Associations, then at the end of the century, and in the same spirit, to the Student Christian Movement, which formed the principal leaders of the nascent ecumenical movement from John Mott to Willem Adolf Visser’t Hooft, via Charles Brent or Joseph Oldham, and finally to Baden-Powell’s scouts at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the Catholic Church was very wary of such a tendency to minimize the ecclesiastical particularities in favour of a consensual ‘Christian’ adherence. Even before the war, it had held a negative view of the activity of the Christian Student Associations and the scouts in recruiting youth from Orthodox or Catholic communities in Eastern or Southern Europe. It was then alarmed to see the YMCA establish itself in France and in Italy, under the guise of soldiers’ homes, after the entry into war by the United States on the side of the Entente in April 1917 and the arrival of its troops on the Western front. The invitations to participate in Life and Work and Faith and Order that arrived in the Vatican in 1918–19 seemed vitiated by the same impasse as that concerning the content of the faith. The Holy See thus rejected them, as it would then reject any inter-confessional collaboration whose neutrality in reality masked this idea of ‘Christian’ that was judged to be dubious, even when it had causes close

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to its heart, such as the promotion of births or the defence of morality.15 Its refusal to accept these invitations to participate in the emerging ecumenical movement should, therefore, not be treated independently of such concern, which could be found both in Rome and in the Catholic public at large.

4. Unionism against Ecumenism The second cause of the Holy See’s concern was the disruption of the political-religious map of Europe. The war had led to the fall of four empires with which it had ambiguous relationships. It did not mourn the fall of the German Empire, organically linked to Protestantism, since the memory of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf remained vivid in Rome,16 and the Weimar Republic permitted Catholicism an unexpected freedom in a context in which, after the loss of Posen, Silesia and Alsace, it had less influence than under the empire. On the other hand, the end of the Habsburgs deprived the Holy See of significant support in Central Europe, which it tried to replace with an endless series of negotiations of concordats with the new independent states. The main concerns were further east, however. The fate of the Ottoman Empire, responsible for the genocide of Armenian and Assyrian-Syrian Christians, soon preoccupied the Vatican. The fear of Russian control over the straits of the Black Sea, and thus over Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, brought it close to renouncing its stance of impartiality in 1916.17 The outcome of the war decided otherwise, and Rome acknowledged the fall of the Ottoman Empire, over the ruins of which it did not renounce its right to extend a Catholic influence,18 although its claim on Hagia Sophia was short-lived. Now free from French mediation, the Holy See was able to deal directly with the Eastern Catholic Churches it wished to reinforce. The empire whose death aroused the least regret in Rome was undoubtedly that of the tsar, the papacy’s inconvenient interlocutor. Its fall accelerated a renewal of the attempt to bring Orthodox communities into a union with Rome. This began before the fall itself but was strongly stimulated by it. In the absence of an encyclical that

15 Raffaella Perin, ‘Pregiudizio antiebraico e antiprotestante: alcuni riflessi sull’atteggiamento della chiesa verso il fascismo’, in Pius XI: Keywords: International Conference Milan 2009, ed. by Alberto Guasco and Raffaella Perin (Münster: LIT, 2010), pp. 147–62; Lucia Pozzi, ‘The Problem of Birth Control in the United States under the Papacy of Pius XI’, in Pius XI and America: Proceedings of the Brown University Conference (Providence, October 2010), ed. by Charles R. Gallagher, David I. Kertzer and Alberto Melloni (Münster: LIT, 2012), pp. 209–29. 16 Despite the conciliatory tendencies highlighted by Stan M. Landry, Ecumenism, Memory and German Nationalism (1817–1917) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013). 17 Roberto Morozzo della Rocca once found traces of an appeal to Berlin to counter this threat: ‘Benedetto XV, Costantinopoli, la guerra: fu vera neutralità?’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 14, 2 (1993), pp. 373–82, with the corrective of Giuseppe M. Croce, ‘Le Saint-Siège, l’Église orthodoxe et la Russie soviétique’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 105, 1 (1993), pp. 267–97 (p. 268, n. 5). 18 Andrea Riccardi, ‘Benedetto XV e la crisi della convivenza multireligiosa nell’Impero ottomano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 83–128.

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would have formalized its revival, which remained at the draft stage,19 the creation of a Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches and of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, between the February Liberal Revolution in 1917 and the Communist Revolution in October of that year, marked such a renewal. With these, the Christian East assumed a decisive presence on the Vatican’s organizational chart. In Russia, as the Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky bluntly explained, the fall of caesaropapism and the advent of religious freedom offered Catholicism the prospect of unprecedented conquests. The anti-clerical and anti-religious measures of the Bolshevik regime did not discourage the Holy See, as is evidenced by the sending of a mission to help the hungry in Russia in 1921 and the draft concordat talks on the side-lines of the international conference in Genoa the following year.20 However, this attempt at a union with Rome, as has not been stressed enough, is foreign to the emerging ecumenism of the Gardiner or Söderblom type. It is based on a vision of a desired unity that excludes Protestants and those like them in favour of the ‘orthodox’ whose differences with Rome are reduced to the sole question of ‘rite’, restricted to the liturgical domain. It would be sufficient to restore the Eastern rites to the Catholic Church and empower the communities that practice them in order to obtain the union with Rome of ‘dissidents’ who have always kept the faith; it is only their bad shepherds, whether lay or ecclesiastical, who prevent them from returning to the maternal fold. It is at least in this perspective that the Roman Eastern network was operating, boosted by the creations of 1917. The initial Anglican-Protestant appeals to the Easterners, both in ‘Christian’ organizations and at the level of the Churches themselves, were thus seen in a very bad light. Rome was particularly troubled by the rapprochement between the Greek Church and the Anglican Communion at the time of the Reformer Patriarch and Anglophile Meletios Metaxakis.21 Nascent ecumenism was not yet solemnly stigmatized as a competitor with Roman attempts at union, but the process had begun.

5. Reticence or Lack of Interest? The Holy See therefore had at least two reasons for refusing the invitations to engage in the inter-confessional activities that it received after the war. On the one hand, it suspected them of veiling dogmatic and structural differences with an ambiguous 19 Giuseppe M. Croce, ‘Benedetto XV e l’enciclica archiviata: alle origini della Congregazione Orientale e del Pontificio Istituto Orientale’, in Da Benedetto XV a Benedetto XVI: atti del simposio nel novantennio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali e del Pontificio Istituto Orientale (Roma, 9 novembre 2007), ed. by Edward G. Farrugia (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2009), pp. 59–107. 20 Taken from Roberto Morozzo Della Rocca, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), see also the summary in Laura Pettinaroli, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015). 21 Voisinages fragiles: les relations interconfessionnelles dans le Sud-Est européen et la Méditerranée orientale 1854–1923: contraintes locales et enjeux internationaux, ed. by Anastassios Anastassiadis (Athens: École française d’Athènes, 2013); Pandora Dimanopoulou, Rendez à César ce qui est à César et à Dieu ce qui est à Dieu? Le rapprochement entre les Églises anglicane et orthodoxe grecque (1903–1930) (Paris: Cerf, 2016).

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‘Christian’ cloak, extended in Catholic circles by organizations like the YMCA. On the other hand, it created an obstacle to its project of union by trying to reach out to the Easterners, its principal addressees. These various factors, both political-religious and strictly religious, must be taken into account in order to understand the Holy See’s reticence in the face of attempts to rebuild Christianity after the upheaval of the Great War. Was this a reticence or a simple lack of interest? It is difficult to assess the significance of considerations of a policy of union within the broader ‘politics’ of the Holy See, to use Laura Pettinaroli’s inclusive term. However, one can certainly formulate the hypothesis that it had many other things about which to be preoccupied: the peace conference, from which it was excluded, when the new map of Europe was decided, the fate of Catholics in the countries ravaged by war and the urgency of a solution to the Roman Question… Are these various concerns not more important to the Holy See than projects of Christian unity, at the time very uncertain? The fact that these projects later gave birth to one of the most important religious movements in the twentieth century, that is to say, ecumenism, should not lead us to overestimate its initial influence, particularly on the evolution of a Church that was above all concerned with its own existence. Only research in the archives of the pontificates of Benedict XV and Pius XI would permit one to deny or confirm this hypothesis. It is in this overall picture that the beginning of the Malines Conversations should be seen. Fresh from a successful trip to the United States,22 the popular Cardinal Mercier believed that the time for rapprochement had arrived. He therefore proposed to Benedict XV to offer his services at hastening its arrival… without obtaining an answer. At the same time, Portal took advantage of an appeal from Lambeth to ask Mercier to help relaunch his Anglican-Roman campaign. Struck by this coincidence, Mercier agreed to meet him in Malines in December 1921, together with one of his vicars general, van Roey and Lord Halifax accompanied by two of his men. At the time of the death of Benedict XV in January 1922, there existed only a well-defined path.23 The reserve adopted by Rome in regard to meetings of the same type in which it did not take the initiative only suggests that the Belgian Primate would need a lot of credit in order to be able to continue in the same direction. In the aftermath of the war, the inter-confessional landscape was far less stable than it was in 1914, both due to the transformation of the politico-religious borders and because of important attempts at a recomposition. Two opposing models of Christian reunification, whose urgency was proven by the disaster of the war, began to emerge. On the one hand, there was a ‘Christian’ model, which was not yet called ecumenical, open to all confessions and denominations on the basis of their common denominator; on the other hand, Rome’s project of bringing communities into its own union, directed only at Eastern ‘dissidents’, with a clearly stated priority for 22 Roger Aubert, ‘Cardinal Mercier’s Visit to America in the Autumn 1919’ in Le cardinal Mercier (1851– 1926): un prélat d’avant-garde: publications du professeur Roger Aubert rassemblées à l’occasion de ses 80 ans, ed. by Luc Courtois, Jean-Pierre Hendrickx and Jean Pirotte (Louvain: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1994), pp. 329–62; his speech at the Episcopal Convention in Detroit, ‘Brothers in Christian Faith’, however, met with disapproval from the Holy Office and from the Pope himself. 23 John A. Dick, The Malines Conversations Revisited (Leuven: Peeters, 1989).

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Russia. Their exclusive character would become clear when the former took shape, starting from 1925, and would provoke the formal condemnation of ‘pan-Christians’ in the Mortalium animos encyclical of 6 January 1928.24

Bibliography Anastassiadis, Anastassios, ed., Voisinages fragiles: les relations interconfessionnelles dans le Sud-Est européen et la Méditerranée orientale 1854–1923: contraintes locales et enjeux internationaux (Athens: École française d’Athènes, 2013) Aubert, Roger, ‘Cardinal Mercier’s Visit to America in the Autumn 1919’, in Le cardinal Mercier (1851–1926): un prélat d’avant-garde: publications du professeur Roger Aubert rassemblées à l’occasion de ses 80 ans, ed. by Luc Courtois, Jean-Pierre Hendrickx and Jean Pirotte (Louvain: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1994), pp. 329–62 Barbolla, Manuela, ‘La genesi della Mortalium animos attraverso lo spoglio degli archivi vaticani’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 66, 2 (2012), pp. 495–538 ‘Bibliographie sur la Conférence d’Édimbourg 1910’, Histoire et Missions Chrétiennes, 13, 1 (2010), pp. 173–75 Boniface, Xavier, ‘“Nos pasteurs au feu”: les aumôniers protestants aux armées (1914–1918)’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français, 160, 1 (2014), pp. 105–22 Chapman, Mark D., The Fantasy of Reunion: Anglicans, Catholics and Ecumenism, 1833–1882 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Chapman, Mark D., ‘The Fantasy of Reunion: The Rise and Fall of the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58, 1 (2007), pp. 49–74 Cifres, Alejandro, La condena de las ordenaciones anglicanas: los documentos del Santo Oficio y la bula ‘Apostolica curae’ (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2011) Conway, John S., ‘Peace and the Churches between the Wars’, Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 8 vols (Brussels: Nauwelaerts, 1961–87), VII: Congrès de Bucarest, août 1980 (1985), pp. 247–72 Croce, Giuseppe M., ‘Benedetto XV e l’enciclica archiviata: alle origini della Congregazione Orientale e del Pontificio Istituto Orientale’, in Da Benedetto XV a Benedetto XVI: atti del simposio nel novantennio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali e del Pontificio Istituto Orientale (Roma, 9 novembre 2007), ed. by Edward G. Farrugia (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2009), pp. 59–107 Croce, Giuseppe M., ‘Le Saint-Siège, l’Église orthodoxe et la Russie soviétique’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 105, 1 (1993), pp. 267–97 Dick, John A., The Malines Conversations Revisited (Leuven: Peeters, 1989) 24 Johan Ickx, ‘Mortalium animos (1928): sfide storiografiche in base al nuovo materiale archivistico della Santa Sede’, in La sollecitudine ecclesiale di Pio XI alla luce delle nuove fonti archivistiche, ed. by Cosimo Semeraro (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010), pp. 313–31; Manuela Barbolla, ‘La genesi della Mortalium animos attraverso lo spoglio degli archivi vaticani’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 66, 2 (2012), pp. 495–538. These two contributions, which do not seem to exhaust the available material, should be adopted with caution, particularly the former.

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Dimanopoulou, Pandora, Rendez à César ce qui est à César et à Dieu ce qui est à Dieu? Le rapprochement entre les Églises anglicane et orthodoxe grecque (1903–1930) (Paris: Cerf, 2016) Egender, Nicolas, ‘Le prince Max de Saxe précurseur de l’œcuménisme et “fou pour le Christ”’, Irénikon, 3 (2015), pp. 323–45 Ellis, Ian M., A Century of Mission and Unity: A Centenary Perspective on the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference (Dublin: Columba Press, 2010) Fouilloux, Étienne, Les catholiques et l’unité chrétienne du XIXe au XXe siècle: itinéraires européens d’expression française (Paris: Le Centurion, 1982) Franklin, R. William, ed., Anglican Orders: Essays on the Centenary of Apostolicae Curae (1896–1996) (London: Morehouse, 1996) Gugelot, Frédéric, La conversion des intellectuels au catholicisme en France (1885–1935), 2nd edn (Paris: CNRS, 2010) Gugelot, Frédéric, ‘La preuve de l’inexistence de Dieu: le premier des conflits mondiaux et l’abandon de la foi’, in La politique et la guerre: pour comprendre le XXe siècle européen: hommage à Jean-Jacques Becker, ed. by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and others (Paris: Angès Viénot, 2002), pp. 216–25 Ickx, Johan, ‘Mortalium animos (1928): sfide storiografiche in base al nuovo materiale archivistico della Santa Sede’, in La sollecitudine ecclesiale di Pio XI alla luce delle nuove fonti archivistiche, ed. by Cosimo Semeraro (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010), pp. 313–31 Ladous, Régis, Monsieur Portal et les siens (1855–1926) (Paris: Cerf, 1985) Lagrée, Michel, ‘Ces chers protestants’, in Chrétiens dans la première guerre mondiale: actes des journées tenues à Amiens et Péronne, le 16 mai et 22 juillet 1993, ed. by Nadine-Josette Chaline (Paris: Cerf, 1993), pp. 133–52 Landry, Stan M., Ecumenism, Memory and German Nationalism (1817–1917) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV, Costantinopoli, la guerra: fu vera neutralità?’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 14, 2 (1993), pp. 373–82 Morozzo Della Rocca, Roberto, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Perin, Raffaella, ‘Pregiudizio antiebraico e antiprotestante: alcuni riflessi sull’atteggiamento della chiesa verso il fascismo’, in Pius XI: Keywords: International Conference Milan 2009, ed. by Alberto Guasco and Raffaella Perin (Münster: LIT, 2010), pp. 147–62 Pettinaroli, Laura, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Pozzi, Lucia, ‘The Problem of Birth Control in the United States under the Papacy of Pius XI’, in Pius XI and America: Proceedings of the Brown University Conference (Providence, October 2010), ed. by Charles R. Gallagher, David I. Kertzer and Alberto Melloni (Münster: LIT, 2012), pp. 209–29 Riccardi, Andrea, ‘Benedetto XV e la crisi della convivenza multireligiosa nell’Impero ottomano’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 83–128 Rouse, Routh, and Stephen Charles Neill, eds, A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517–1948, 2nd edn (London: SPCK, 1967)

Clémence de Rouvray

A Parallel Diplomacy? Vladimir Ghika and Catholic-Orthodox Relations in Romania during World War I1

1. Introduction Vladimir Ghika, both grandson and grandnephew of the last reigning princes of Moldavia and Wallachia,2 was one of the numerous descendants of the Phanariot family3 that reigned over the two Romanian principalities. He was born in 1873 in Constantinople, where his family settled after the appointment of his father, Ioan G. Ghika, as a diplomat. After a brief stay in Romania, he arrived in France at a very young age, where he pursued all his studies, and he would never lose his attachment to his new homeland. After obtaining a degree in law in 1893 from the Faculty of Toulouse,4 with his younger brother, Dimitrie, he





1 My most sincere gratitude goes to Mgr Giuseppe M. Croce, who introduced me to the votum of Vladimir Ghika; to the family that opened its archives to me with a rare generosity and desires to remain anonymous; to Thierry and Anne de Briey, who gave me access to the unpublished memoires of their grandfather Dimitrie Ghika; to Iulia Cojocariu and Luc Verly for their valuable help in the Ghika Archives in Bucharest; to Jean-Marc Ticchi who kindly gave me a copy of his article, ‘Le conclave de 1903 d’après le journal d’un diplomate français’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 116 (2002), pp. 297–330. 2 Grigore Alexandru Ghika, the last prince of Moldavia, was his paternal grandfather, while Alexandru II Ghika, the last reigning Prince of Wallachia, was his maternal granduncle: Vladimir Ghika, Spicuiri istorice (Iaşi: Presa Buna, 1935), pp. 162–63. 3 After the fall of Byzantium, some illustrious Greek families gathered around the patriarchate in the Phanar district, from which the name ‘Phanariot’ derives. In time, other Orthodox families of different nationalities, Wallachian, Italian, Albanian (like the Ghika family) joined this group. Little by little, the Ghika family assumed important responsibilities in the Ottoman Empire and, from the middle of the seventeenth century in particular, they were selected as the reigning princes of Moldavia and Wallachia. See Eugène Rizo Rangabé, Livre d’or de la noblesse phanariote en Grèce, en Roumanie, en Russie et en Turquie (Paris: Hachette BNF, 2013), originally published in 1892, and Mihail-Dimitri Sturdza, Le dictionnaire historique et généalogique des grandes familles de Grèce, d’Albanie et de Constantinople (Paris: Strudza, 1983). 4 Archives of the Départements of Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, Faculty of Law of Toulouse, Procèsverbaux des examens de licence 3807 W 144.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 789–806 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118804

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enrolled at the École des sciences politiques in Paris.5 He very soon abandoned a diplomatic career, a tradition in the Ghika family,6 but his younger brother cadet accomplished it brilliantly.7 Baptized in the Orthodox Church, but educated more as a Protestant,8 in his youth, Vladimir was nevertheless very attracted to Catholicism; this strong inclination led him to support a union among the Churches. This goal, which he set for himself as a substitution to conversion at the time when he could not yet join the Catholic Church,9 after his profession of faith in 1902,10 strengthened by his first trip to Rome, remained one of the main guiding principles of his later activities. It was in 1914 that Vladimir, free of any military obligation,11 returned to Rome, following his brother Dimitrie who had been named Romanian Ambassador to Italy.12 He initially considered serving as a stretcher-bearer in France,13 but, convinced that he would be more useful in Rome,14 in the end he chose to apply himself to the task that he had set himself some time before, that is, to consolidate Catholicism15 in Romania, which was still treated as a missionary country.16 Catholicism, seen as a power to be opposed or as a path permitting a return to one’s roots, maintained with Orthodoxy, which signed the birth certificate of the two principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, a complex and ambiguous balance of power, due to the political vicissitudes of the two nations.17



5 Mission Archives de Sciences Po, Paris, Registre des inscriptions 1893–94. 6 Dimitrie Ghika, De la diplomatie à la voyoucratie: souvenirs de 45 ans de carrière diplomatique, 1894–1940 (unpublished memoires), p. 1. 7 Dimitrie Ghika was awarded the Grand Prix d’Honneur when he graduated in 1895 (Mission Archives de Sciences Po, Paris, Registres des diplômés 1895); Ghika, De la diplomatie, the author’s curriculum vitae. 8 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Autobiographie 1901, p. 3. Since the Ghika Archive, conserved by the archdiocese, is in the process of organization, it was not possible to obtain the exact location information for all of the documents consulted; thus, the citations include only the nature of the document, the place and the date. 9 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Autobiographie 1901, pp. 6–7, 9. 10 ACDF, Fondo Sant’Uffizio, Sponte comparentes, 1902, 30. 11 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Ghika’s application to the French Embassy in Rome to carry out the work of stretcher-bearer, n.d. 12 Ghika, De la diplomatie, p. 147. 13 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Autobiographie 1901, p. 9. 14 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Dossier Deploige–Thiéry–Mercier: Mgr Deploige to V. Ghika, 4 September 1916. Deploige urged Ghika to remain in Rome to work on the concordat between the Holy See and Romania. 15 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Autobiographie 1901, p. 9; AES, Romania, 1917, pos. 14, fasc. 8. 16 Ion Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie moderne (1850–1866) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1982), p. 175. It was necessary to wait until the birth of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches in 1917 before the missions in majority orthodox countries would receive a different treatment from that of countries in which Propaganda Fide operated. 17 Catherine Durandin, Histoire des Roumains (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 68–69. It should be also noted that the Congress of Berlin included religious freedom for all peoples as a condition for the recognition of Romania’s independence. See also Petru Tocănel, Storia della Chiesa cattolica in Romania, 3 vols (Padua: Messaggero, 1960–65), I (1960), p. 621 and François Thual, Géopolitique de l’orthodoxie: religion et sociétés (Paris: Dunod, 1994), p. 72.

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However, on the eve of World War I, the Orthodox and Catholic Churches underwent a parallel evolution; each was trying to establish, according to its own way of functioning and not without difficulty, its own hierarchy. This phenomenon, which was a delicate issue and was particularly acute from the mid-nineteenth century, was linked to Romania’s gradual political emancipation.18 The first unilateral declaration of autocephaly in 1865 on the part of the Romanian Orthodox Church took place a few years after the union of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, led by Prince Alexandru Cuza,19 which had obtained from the Ottoman Empire the recognition of their autonomy the previous year.20 The year 1885 marks another important turning point, with Carol I of Romania finally obtaining from the Patriarchate of Constantinople the tomos that marked the official recognition of the autocephaly of the Romanian Church.21 This second step in religious emancipation came a few years after the recognition of Romania first as an independent country, then as a kingdom.22 The Catholic Church also experienced an analogous evolution, particularly in regard to the foundation of the dioceses of Iaşi and Bucharest sought by the Romanian government,23 which will be discussed below. It should also be noted that Carol, and later his nephew and heir, Prince Ferdinand, found themselves for identical reasons divided between the two Churches. Chosen to rule over the very young Kingdom of Romania, sons of the Catholic branch of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen,24 they both married Protestant princesses to the great displeasure of the Holy See. They also promised, as foreseen in the Romanian constitution, to raise their children in the Orthodox faith; this, according to Carol I, could promote unity between the two Churches.25 It is in this delicate political and religious context that Vladimir Ghika tried to exercise once more his influence on the spread of Catholicism. The difficulties encountered during the war, the Catholic dioceses of Iaşi and Bucharest, the opportunity to relaunch the project of a concordat between Romania and the Holy See in 1918 and, finally, the votum that Vladimir Ghika drafted in 1919 at the request of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches are all occasions on which one can

18 Raymond Janin, Les Églises orientales et les rites orientaux (Paris: Letouzey & Ane, 1997), p. 238; Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, pp. 27, 40. 19 In 1859 Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected reigning prince by the two principalities. 20 Constantin Giurescu, Histoire chronologique de la Roumanie (Bucharest: ştiințifică şi enciclopedică, 1976), p. 179. 21 Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, p. 40 and Ion Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie moderne (1866–1914) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1989), p. 87. 22 Germany, England and France recognized the independence of Romania in 1880. In 1881, the Romanian Parliament approved the transformation of the country into a kingdom: Giurescu, Histoire chronologique, pp. 195–96. 23 Tocănel, Storia della Chiesa, I, p. 633. In 1878, the Romanian government expressed its wish that the dioceses of Bucharest and Iaşi be created. 24 Durandin, Histoire des Roumains, p. 511. 25 Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, pp. 239–41.

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examine more closely the part played by Ghika in the complex relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

2. The Diocese of Iaşi During World War I, the bishops of Iaşi, in Moldovia, and Bucharest, in what was formerly called the Romanian Country,26 were once again the object of envy. In Iaşi, there was the problem of the vacant episcopal see, and in Bucharest, the current Archbishop, Raymund Netzhammer,27 of German origin, met with growing hostility, which increased as the war progressed. On 30 December 1915, Nicola Camilli, Bishop of Iaşi, died. However, there had been fierce, longstanding, competition within the regular clergy in charge of the missions since the foundation of the diocese in 1884.28 On the other hand, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France and Italy still wanted to extend their political influence there, which the King and government wanted to limit at all costs.29 These two principal factors made the naming of candidates delicate and the exercise of their office dangerous. The first two bishops who succeeded each other on the episcopal seat of Iaşi were conventual Franciscans. The first was Nicola Camilli, an Italian who was the target of hostility from his clergy and particularly from those of his own order.30 He resigned in 1894. The second was Dominique Jaquet, a francophone Swiss, who was obliged by Rome to resign in 1903.31 He was then replaced, not without difficulty,32 by Camilli, who died at the end of 1915. The question of succession thus arose again, but this time even more acutely due to the war.

26 This was the name given to Wallachia in order to distinguish it from Hungary. 27 Albin (religious name: Raymund) Netzhammer, born on 19 January 1862, was originally from the Grand Duchy of Baden. In 1880, he entered the Benedictine monastery of Einsielden and had to renounce his German nationality in exchange for a Swiss one. He took his vows in 1884 and was ordained priest in 1886. In 1905 he was appointed Archbishop of Bucharest, and in 1924 he was forced to resign. He died in 1945. See Raymund Netzhammer, Episcop în România: într-o epocă a conflictelor naţionale şi religioase, ed. by Nikolaus Netzhammer and Krista Zach, 2 vols (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2005), I, pp. 11, 17, 63; II, p. 1601. 28 Fabian Doboş, La diocesi di Jassi (Romania) durante l’episcopato del vescovo Domenico Jaquet, o.f. m. Conv. (1895–1903) (Iaşi: Editura Sapientia, 2008), pp. 70–73. The Conventual Franciscans saw entrusting the Jesuits with the direction of the diocesan seminary as a betrayal. See also Lucian D. Periş, ‘Presenze cattoliche in Transilvania, Moldavia e Valacchia (1601–1698)’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1998), p. 67, and Emil Dumea, ‘Il cattolicesimo nella MoldaviaRomania nel XVIII secolo’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1987), pp. 122–23. 29 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1916, pos. 1096, fasc. 469, f. 19, Jaquet to Gasparri, 12 May 1916; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, b. 726, ff. 437–38, Granito di Belmonte to Merry del Val, 17 September 1904. 30 Doboş, La diocesi di Jassi, p. 75; Anton Despinescu, ‘L’activité pastorale de Nicola Giuseppe Camilli (1840–1915), premier évêque de Jassy-Roumanie (1884–1894 et 1904–1915)’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Urbaniana, 1980), pp. 18, 43. 31 Despinescu, ‘L’activité pastorale’, p. 41; Doboş, La diocesi di Jassi, pp. 322–23. 32 Doboş, La diocesi di Jassi, pp. 325–26; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, b. 726, ff. 437–38, 441–42.

VLADIMIR GHIKA AND CATHOLIC-ORTHODOX RELATIONS IN ROMANIa

Two phases must be distinguished. The first was in 1916, when Romania, which had remained neutral until that date, was finally preparing to enter the war on the side of the Entente. In the spring of that year, Nelidov,33 the Russian legate to the Holy See, and the Catholic community of Iaşi represented by him,34 together with Italy, represented by Carlo Monti,35 informed the Secretariat of State that no German candidate would be acceptable.36 At the same time, Ghika addressed Propaganda Fide to prevent the nomination ‘d’un boche’ (‘of a Kraut’).37 His interest in the Diocese of Iaşi is neither surprising38 nor new. About ten years before, in 1904, at the time of Jacquet’s forced resignation, he had already addressed the Congregation.39 At the time, he had been thinking very seriously of Prince Maximilian of Saxony as a possible candidate; in that period, the German nationality of the candidate had not been an obstacle for him.40 The year 1918 marks the second phase of this struggle between political and religious influences. Romania, a defeated nation, found itself, through the Treaty of Bucharest, under the rules of the Central Powers.41 It was then that Hungary, through Count Moritz Pálffy von Erdöd,42 turned to Luigi Maglione, who was then Nuncio to Berne.43 Pálffy pressed the Holy See to nominate a Hungarian bishop, and (as 33 Dmitri Nelidov was in service at Rome from 1912 to 1916: see Laura Pettinaroli, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015), p. 100. It is to be noted that Nelidov received Ghika with Cardinal Mercier on Saturday 29 January 1916: see ARCB, Ghika Archive, Dossier Deploige–Thiéry–Mercier, Nelidov to Ghika, 12 January 1916, and Roger Aubert, Les deux premiers grands conflits du cardinal Mercier avec les autorités allemandes d’occupation (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), p. 273. 34 Mgr Jaquet, former Bishop of Iaşi, in a report that he sent to the Secretariat of State in 1916, claimed that ‘Russia could not find any support from the Catholics in the Diocese of Iaşi, because no one there is Russian either in terms of language or in terms of origin’. See AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1916, pos. 1096, fasc. 469, f. 19, Jaquet to Gasparri, 12 May 1916. 35 Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti, ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, p. 319. 36 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1916, pos. 1096, fasc. 469, ff. 15r–17v. The problem of German interference is a recurring one in the history of Romanian Catholicism, both in the Diocese of Iaşi and in the Archdiocese of Bucharest. See Tocănel, Storia della Chiesa, I, p. 636. 37 ACGA, HP 58: V. Ghika to Father Ernest Bicquemard, 1 May 1918. 38 It was in Moldavia that the Ghika family had its property. 39 ACPF, rubr. 109 (1904), n. s., vol. 325, ff. 188r–191r. V. Ghika noted, albeit with regret, the complaints of the different rival religious congregations and warned Rome about Father Pal, the designated candidate. 40 Private collection. 41 At the beginning of 1918, Romania asked the Central Powers for an armistice, which led to the Treaty of Bucharest. 42 Count Pálffy von Erdöd (1869–1948) was named Extraordinary Envoy and Plenipotentiary Minister of Austria-Hungary to Rome. See Almanach de Gotha: annuaire généalogique, diplomatique et statistique (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1918), p. 575. 43 In 1918, Luigi Maglione was sent to Bern as representative of the Holy See, and in 1920, after the restoration of relations with the Swiss Confederation, he was named nuncio. See Francesco Malgeri, ‘Maglione, Luigi’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXVII (2006), pp. 433–36.

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he emphasized in his letter to Gasparri) he naively imagined, as did the Hungarian authorities, that such a bishop would easily be accepted by the Romanians.44 For his part, in May 1918 Ghika wrote to Father Ernest Bicquemard45 of the Assumptionists, with whom he had a special relationship, particularly after joining the Catholic Church.46 He suggested that his order propose Father Gervais Quenard47 as a candidate. Quenard was a Frenchman known and appreciated in Romania. Besides thinking that the presence of Mgr Petit,48 named in November 1917 a consultor of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, could facilitate the realization of the project, he believed that Propaganda Fide was leaning toward the idea of an episcopate that was at least French-speaking while awaiting ‘an indigenous episcopate’.49 In addition to the political fact, the nationality of the candidate, it must also be said that Ghika hoped to be able to support the bishop’s activity in the diocese after the war.50 The suggestion seemed impractical to the Assumptionists, due also to the nationality of the candidate; however, Ghika persisted. If he could not count on his friend to promote the candidate, he decided to sound out opinions in that direction. Furthermore, he argued that at least Father Gervais and another of his French colleagues should be retained in the diocese in one function or another. For him, the priority was to bring in ‘a good French Catholicism’.51

44 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 16, fasc. 9, ff. 15–17. 45 In 1918, Bicquemard (1863–1950), after six months in Lyons, was sent to Locarno to run a residence set up by the Assumptionists in 1909 which closed in 1919. After that, from 1923 to 1929, he served as first provincial of Lyons and then, from 1929 to 1946, was the second assistant general. He died in 1950. We do not know precisely what his relationship with Ghika was, nor why he submitted his opinion to him; it was perhaps because he was in charge of a residence of Assumptionists in Bulgaria. 46 Ghika thought of Father Emmanuel Bailly (1842–1917), third superior general of the Assumptionists, as his ‘godfather’; in fact, he was present at his profession of faith in 1902. On Bailly, see ‘Le T. R. P. Emmanuel Bailly, troisième supérieur général des Augustins de l’Assomption (1842–1917)’, Échos d’Orient, 18, 114 (1918), pp. 233–35. 47 Father Gervais Quenard (1875–1961) was appointed professor at the seminary in Plovdiv in Bulgaria in 1908, from which, however, the Assumptionists were banished in 1915; he then took refuge in Romania. In 1920, he was appointed Superior of the Missions in the East and in 1923 elected Superior General. See Gervais Quenard, Hier, souvenirs d’un octogénaire (Paris: Lethielleux, 1955). It is possible that Ghika got this idea already in 1917: see Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), I (1994), pp. 522, 548. 48 Louis Petit (1868–1927), Assumptionist, was ordained priest in 1891; he was editor of Échos d’Orient from 1899 at its headquarters in Kadi-Keuï. He was named Bishop of Athens in 1912; in 1926 he resigned from this post. He was named consultor of the new Congregation for the Oriental Churches at the end of 1917. See Giuseppe M. Croce, ‘Alle origini della Congregazione Orientale e del Pontificio Istituto Orientale: il contributo di Mons. Louis Petit’, in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 53, 2 (1987), pp. 257–333 (p. 316) and Vincenzo Poggi, ‘Exposé des raisons qui désignent S. E. Mgr. Louis Petit, archevêque d’Athènes, pour la charge de recteur de l’Institut Pontifical Oriental’, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 266 (2002), pp. 175–202. 49 Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 548. 50 ACGA, HP 58, Ghika to Bicquemard, 1 May 1918. The Ghika brothers had property near Iaşi. 51 ACGA, HP 59, Ghika to Bicquemard, 14 May 1918.

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The King of Romania, for his part, was determined, from the very outset of the affair, to deal with it personally and not to tolerate the interference of the Romanian legation in Rome or that of Ghika.52 In fact, just as in 1904–05,53 the Romanian King and government did not want any interference, whether it be from the Germans, the Hungarians or particularly the French — who were seen to combine politics with proselytism. Only Italian candidates were acceptable because they had no political ambitions.54 Faced with these difficulties, the Holy See decided to postpone the appointment of a bishop until the end of the world war.55 In the meantime, it named an apostolic administrator, the Conventual Franciscan Ulderico Cipolloni, who was favoured by the Romanian authorities thanks to his Italian nationality and his attitude at the time of Romania’s entry into the war.56 It was only in 1920 that the Holy See chose a candidate who was different from the one proposed by the different protagonists, thus earning the agreement of the claimants. Alexandru Cisar,57 a Czech from Bucharest, was nominated Bishop of Iaşi.

3. The Archdiocese of Bucharest The Archdiocese of Bucharest, instituted in 1883, experienced vicissitudes much like those of Iaşi in the nomination of its titulars.58 Furthermore, the Latin-Rite Catholic population was mainly of German or Hungarian origin, which made the situation even more delicate. In 1905, Raymund Netzhammer, a Benedictine originally from the Grand Duchy of Baden,59 was named Bishop of Bucharest with the support of Ghika,60 who at the time supported two candidates.61 He succeeded Mgr Hornstein,

52 Netzhammer, Episcop în România, I, p. 608. 53 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, b. 726, ff. 437–38. 54 AES, Romania, 1920, pos. 19, fasc. 9, ff. 31–34. 55 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 16, fasc. 9, f. 18. 56 ACPF, rubr. 109 (1916), n. s., vol. 576, f. 353r, Cipolloni to Laurenti, 15/28 October 1916. 57 AES, Romania, 1924, pos. 56, fasc. 55, ff. 13–14 (Rapporto Korolevskij). Alexandru Cisar was born in Bucharest on 21 October 1880 to Czech parents. He was ordained priest on 6 June 1903 and appointed Bishop of Iaşi in 1920. It should be said that at the time he did not yet have Romanian citizenship, which he obtained only in 1924, the year in which he became Bishop of Bucharest. 58 The two first bishops of Bucharest were Italian Passionists: Mgr Paoli (1883) and Mgr Palma (1885). At the head of the Archdiocese from 1892 to 1894 were two Passionists who were apostolic administrators; these were succeeded by two Benedictines, Mgr Zardetti (1884–95) and Mgr Hornstein (1896–1905). Between 1895 and 1896, the apostolic administrator was the Bishop of Iaşi Mgr Jaquet. See Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, pp. 124–25, 136–37. 59 In this period, Ghika proposed German candidates for Iaşi and Bucharest, even though he thought that ‘no one was so poorly esteemed by the Romanians and so little capable of understanding them than the Germans’. See ACPF, rubr. 109 (1902), n. s., vol. 299, f. 460r. 60 Archive of the Primatial Abbey of Sant’Anselmo, Rome, Abbot Primate 2197, Netzhammer to the Abbot Primate, 28 September 1904, and ARCB, Ghika Archive, P. Mac Swiney to Ghika, 13 August, 25 August, and 14 September 1905. 61 The two candidates were, in order, Canon Baud and Netzhammer, see ARCB, Ghika Archive, P. Mac Swiney to Ghika, 26 August 1905.

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who had died a few months earlier and whose resignation the Romanian government had requested because it considered his politics too favourable to Hungary.62 In 1916, Ghika, convinced that the presence of French Catholicism was necessary in Romania, again turned to Propaganda Fide, asking it to intervene with Netzhammer. He had good reason to do so. In order to deal with the scarcity of priests, many of whom had fled or been imprisoned because they belonged to enemy nations, the Romanian government wanted, in accord with its allies, to ensure the services of a trustworthy clergy.63 Ghika thus turned to Cardinal Domenico Serafini,64 asking him to send a letter to the Archbishop of Bucharest, who, since September 1914,65 had in fact reported to the Holy See on the expulsion or imprisonment of certain members of his clergy through the Ambassador of the Netherlands to the King of Romania. Propaganda Fide acted prudently; it wished to suggest rather than propose, even less impose, the idea of using, as Ghika wanted, French or Belgian priests from the French Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians),66 to fill the posts that had been created.67 The request had to be presented as an aid to the Archbishop. In October 1916, Netzhammer replied with a firm refusal, specifying that he had provided for all the spiritual needs of his diocese;68 Cardinal Serafini took note of this, not without recommending prudence for the protection of Catholic activity.69 The matter did not end there because, between 1916 and 1917, the Holy See again contacted Ghika. At the end of 1916, in fact, Cipolloni sent a request to the Holy See, hoping that it would approach the King of Romania in regard to the imprisoned clergy of the dioceses of Iaşi and Bucharest. In order to receive more detailed information, the Secretariat of State requested Ghika’s opinion; having taken stock of the situation on the basis of information available to him, he was particularly concerned about the Archdiocese of Bucharest. The flight and internment of the clergy seemed natural to him, given that they were recruited from predominantly German areas with a clergy whose religious politics was aligned with the Central Powers.70

62 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, b. 726, ff. 437–38. 63 AES, Romania, 1917, pos. 14, fasc. 8. 64 Domenico Serafini (1852–1918), a Benedictine, was ordained priest in 1877, bishop in 1912 and made a cardinal in 1914. He became Prefect of Propaganda Fide in 1916 at the death of Cardinal Gotti. See Mario De Camillis, ‘Serafini, Domenico’, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols (Vatican City: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il libro cattolico, 1948–54), XI (1953), col. 374; ‘Serafini, Domenico’, in Annuaire pontifical catholique, ed. by Albert Battandier (Paris: Bonne Presse, 1917), p. 126, and Luigi Berra, ‘Serafini, Domenico’, in Dizionario ecclesiastico, ed. by Angelo Mercati and Augusto Pelzer, 3 vols (Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1953–58), III (1958), p. 813. 65 In September 1914 Romania had not yet entered into the war. 66 AES, Romania, 1917, pos. 14, fasc. 8. 67 ACPF, rubr. 109 (1916), n. s., vol. 576, f. 355r, Serafini to Mgr Camillo Laurenti, 22 September 1916. 68 ACPF, rubr. 109 (1916), n. s., vol. 576, f. 359r, Netzhammer to Serafini, 8 October 1916. 69 ACPF, rubr. 109 (1917), n. s., vol. 576, f. 360. 70 AES, Romania, 1917, pos. 14, fasc. 8.

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At this point, the relationship between the French Embassy and the Romanian legation must be clarified. Dimitrie Ghika did not hide the fact that he wanted to see his country siding with the Allies; neither did he make a secret of his ties with France, his adopted homeland.71 In Rome, the two Ghika brothers maintained excellent relations72 and were appreciated for the prestige that France had in the Eternal City.73 To the numerous and frequent exchanges between the Romanian legation and the French Embassy,74 personal friendships that already existed and new bonds, fostered by common perspectives, were added.75 Vladimir, who had no official function (or precisely because he had none), proved, as did others,76 to be invaluable to Palazzo Farnese, all the more so in an age in which France could not count on a diplomatic representation to the Holy See. Louis Canet77 and Henri Gonse (an old acquaintance of the Ghika brothers) both worked in the Embassy’s press office78 and were interested in the news that Vladimir

71 Ghika, De la diplomatie, p. 165 and François Charles-Roux, Souvenirs diplomatiques: Rome-Quirinal février 1916–février 1919 (Paris: Fayard, 1958), p. 56. See also the commendation of Dimitrie Ghika by Robert de Flers, ‘Un diplomate: le prince Démètre Ghika’, Le Gaulois, 6 April 1922, for having worked in support of France during the war. 72 Ghika, De la diplomatie, p. 148. 73 Charles-Roux, Souvenirs diplomatiques, p. 56. See the letter of Mgr Duchesne to Mme Bulteau (1 January 1919 and 27 August 1920) in Louis Duchesne, Correspondance avec Madame Bulteau (1902–1922), ed. by Florence Callu (Rome: École française de Rome, 2009), pp. 575–76, 605; Albert Besnard, Sous le ciel de Rome: souvenirs (Paris: Éditions de France, 1925), pp. 171–73, 253. 74 From the beginning of the war, Dimitrie Ghika sent Barrère information on the diplomatic activity of the Austrians and the Greco-Turkish War. See Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914): troisième série: 1911–1914, ed. by Ministère des Affaires étrangères, 11 vols (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1936), X, letters n. 228 and 402. 75 AMAE, Papiers d’agents, Archives privées (hereafter PAAP), R. de Billy, 39, ff. 59r–60v, Dimitrie Ghika to Robert de Billy, n.d. [between 1913 and 1917]; see also Charles-Roux, Souvenirs diplomatiques, p. 56; Duchesne, Correspondance, p. 535; Philippe Besnard, Souvenances (Ottawa: Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1975), pp. 76–77. 76 This was the case of Charles Loiseau, among others: Charles Loiseau, ‘Ma mission auprès du Vatican (1914–1918)’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 74, 2 (1960), pp. 100–15, for Mgr Boudinhon: Bruno Neveu, ‘Louis Canet et le service du conseiller technique pour les Affaires religieuses au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 82, 2 (1968), pp. 134–80 and for Mgr Duchesne: Brigitte Waché, Monseigneur Louis Duchesne (1843–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992), pp. 629–41 and Brigitte Waché, ‘Aspects des relations France–Saint-Siège durant le premier conflit mondial’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 112, 4 (1998), pp. 305–26. Italy had an analogous situation in Carlo Monti. 77 Louis Canet (1883–1958) was a member of the École française de Rome from October 1912 to October 1916, after which he was part of the press office of the Embassy; see Neveu, ‘Louis Canet’, pp. 5–14 and Waché, Monseigneur Louis Duchesne, p. 418. 78 The Ghika brothers and Henri Gonse studied together at the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris in the years 1893–94 (Mission Archives de Sciences Po, Paris, Registre des inscriptions 1893–94; Ghika, De la diplomatie, p. 2). They met again in Rome during the first stay of Dimitrie and Vladimir; JeanMarc Ticchi, ‘Le conclave de 1903’, p. 325.

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could report from the Vatican,79 which, if necessary, they reported to the Foreign Ministry, where the name of Vladimir Ghika was not unknown.80 On the other hand, Ghika’s opposition to Netzhammer had become increasingly evident, particularly from 1918.81 This was in line with France’s desire to remove him from the Archdiocese of Bucharest. It seems that this removal was one of the conditions imposed by France for the resumption of its relations with the Holy See,82 to which Vladimir had contributed in 1916. At the time, in fact, he had promoted a meeting of Cardinal Mercier and Aristide Briand with his old and dear friend Albert Besnard, Director of the Villa Medici.83 Italy, however, was concerned about France’s intention, and, at the end of 1918, it expressed this concern to the Secretariat of State, asking for an Italian bishop of Bucharest (as it had done for Iaşi in 1916).84 Sometime later, Italy expressed its support for King Ferdinand, who was always firmly opposed to the appointment of French bishops but supportive of Italian ones. Although he was aware of the delicate position of Netzhammer,85 the King nevertheless seemed determined to support him.86 The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Francis A. Bourne, also spoke on the matter. After a trip to the East, in his report to the Secretariat of State, he considered France’s opposition to the Archbishop of Bucharest exaggerated and unfounded, recognizing however the need to send English or Italian priests.87 For its part, Hungary succeeded in re-entering the discussion and expressly renewed its request for Hungarian bishops for Romania. Furthermore, in 1918, Vladimir Ghika, taking into account the peace treaty signed between Romania and the Central Powers, was persuaded that the Catholic Church in his country was subject to harmful foreign influence, which negated any possibility of a rapprochement with the Romanian Orthodox, who were convinced that the Catholic Church was a foreign one.88 Furthermore, he considered that Netzhammer

79 Duchesne to Mme Bulteau, 6 May 1916, in Duchesne, Correspondance, pp. 535–36. 80 AMAE, Cabinet du Ministre Origines 1939, Correspondance 37, mission of Gonse in Roma, f. 3. In general, Ghika sought to transmit information that he collected in the Vatican to the diplomats of the Entente, something that Pacelli bitterly complained about to Gasparri when the war was over: see Pacelli to Gasparri, 17 October 1919, in Philippe Chenaux, Pie XII diplomate et pasteur (Paris: Cerf, 2003), pp. 106–07. 81 ACGA, HP 58, Ghika to Bicquemard, 14 May 1918. 82 AMAE, PAAP, Louis Canet 30, note of Canet to Prime Minister Georges Leygues, 22 January 1921, p. 83. 83 Besnard, Sous le ciel, pp. 263–64. Barrère and Mercier had already met one time, which was also through the mediation of Besnard and Ghika: see Besnard, Sous le ciel, pp. 256–57, Waché, ‘Aspects des relations’, Aubert, Les deux premiers, pp. 129 and 281. 84 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 6, fasc. 9, f. 20. 85 AES, Romania, 1920, pos. 16, fasc. 9, ff. 31r–34v. 86 Jean-Noël Grandhomme, La Roumanie de la Triplice à l’Entente, 1914–1919 (Paris: Soteca, 2009), p. 174. 87 AES, Romania, 1919, pos. 32–33, fasc. 13, f. 41r. 88 ACGA, HP 58, Ghika to Bicquemard, 1 May 1918; ACMP, dossier 131 c, Roumanie–Ghika, Ghika to Father Lobry, 1 (or 7?) March and 7 April 1918.

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‘represented a kind of death trap for French personnel and for the French works established by us’.89 The case became complex. Ghika did not give up and in 1921 published an article in the Revue des jeunes denouncing once again the German influence on the Archdiocese of Bucharest90 and calling into question Netzhammer’s conduct during the war.91 Informed by Father Bruno,92 a Franciscan from Constantinople passing through Bucharest,93 the Archbishop turned to Benedict XV to refute the accusations.94 The matter was only closed in 1924,95 when Netzhammer was forced to resign and was replaced by Alexandru Cisar, until then Bishop of Iaşi. In this power struggle in which Italy and Hungary were engaged, as in the case of Iaşi, the role of Ghika in the complicated relationship between France, Romania and the Holy See was not very clear. Did his intention to support the spread of Catholicism in Romania coincide with the political interests of France? Was he appointed by France to carry out some mission?96 And what exactly did he do to earn his nomination as an officer of the Legion of Honour on 4 October 1921?97 These are all questions that have yet to be answered. The fact remains that, in Iaşi and in Bucharest, Ghika was working to promote France. The proposal of a Frenchman for the seat of Iaşi in 1918 must also be read in the light of what was happening in Romania, particularly since Paris, in the desire to extend its influence in Romania, had an interest in the Diocese of Iaşi.98

4. The Plan for a Concordat While working for the dioceses of Iaşi and Bucharest, Ghika was asked by the Holy See to pursue a project that had been close to his heart for a long time: that of a concordat.

89 ‘A signifié une sorte d’arrêt de mort du personnel français et des œuvres françaises par nous fondées’; ACGA, HP 58, Ghika to Bicquemard, 1 May 1918. 90 This is a continual complaint in the Romanian Catholic context, which concerned both German and Hungarian interference; Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, pp. 152–53; Tocănel, Storia della Chiesa, I, pp. 635–36. 91 Vladimir Ghika, ‘L’Église et la nouvelle Roumanie’, Revue des jeunes, 6, 1 (1921), pp. 646–65. 92 Father Bruno, a Capuchin from Paris, was Rector of the Séminaire Saint-Louis in Constantinople: see Cyrille Korolevskij, Kniga Bytija Moego (Le livre de ma vie): mémoires autobiographiques, ed. by Giuseppe M. Croce, 5 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2007), III, pp. 995–96. 93 Netzhammer, Episcop în România, II, p. 1031. 94 AES, Romania, 1921, pos. 26, fasc. 11. 95 Netzhammer, Episcop în România, I, p. 63. 96 Duchesne, Correspondance, p. 535. 97 Grand Chancellery of the Legion of Honour, decree of 4 October 1921. Ghika was decorated as a foreigner, a category that did not require a dossier. See also Charles Molette, Mgr Vladimir Ghika: prince, prêtre et martyr (Paris: AED, 2007), pp. 22–23. 98 Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, pp. 521–22.

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In June 1918, Nuncio Pacelli informed Gasparri that Count Georg von Hertling99 had advised the Holy See to resume diplomatic relations with the Balkan states, in particular with Romania.100 The idea of a concordat was not new. It marked, like previous attempts, an important stage in Romanian political life. The first attempt dates back to 1860, under the aegis of Alexandru Cuza, Prince of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia; the second dates to 1881, after the coronation of Carol, first King of Romania.101 Benedict XV, having been informed of the situation, gave his approval; Gasparri then submitted the idea to Ghika, who thanked him warmly102 because the project was similar to the one he had submitted in 1916.103 He suggested that Gasparri should notify the King; Gasparri then sent a letter to Pacelli, asking him to send it to Ferdinand of Romania.104 In the same period, other figures of Romanian Catholicism also wanted to relaunch the process leading to a concordat.105 In the meantime, in the autumn of 1918, the creation of the Romanian National Council,106 which rejected the peace of Bucharest and was recognized by the Allies, lent extra weight to Ghika’s role,107 since the Council appointed him as the sole representative authorized to deal with the Holy See.108 Ghika then initiated a correspondence with Gasparri in order for the Holy See to consider the Council as cordially as the Allies did. To this end, he did not hesitate, after being received by Gasparri, to submit to him the draft of a letter that the Holy See could send to the Council. It emphasized Romania’s Latin origins, the interest that the Holy See had always shown in it, Romania’s considerable assistance to the Allies and its legitimate desire to see the country’s national aspirations satisfied.109

99 Georg Friedrich von Hertling (1843–1919) was a Bavarian Catholic, Chancellor of the German Empire from November 1917 to September 1918; Ernst Deuerlein, ‘Hertling, Georg Friedrich’, in Neue Deutsche Biographie, 25 vols (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1953–2013), VIII (1969), pp. 702–03. 100 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 32–33, fasc. 13, f. 21. 101 Mariuca Vadan, Le relazioni diplomatiche tra la Santa Sede e la Romania 1920–1948 (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 2003), p. 19; Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, pp. 81, 90–91; Tocănel, Storia della Chiesa, II, pp. 506–07. 102 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 32–33, fasc. 13, f. 21r. 103 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Spogli Curia, Gasparri, b. 1, fasc. 32, 1916. 104 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 32–33, fasc. 13, ff. 21r–22r. 105 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1916, pos. 1125, fasc. 476, ff. 34r–35v. See also Vadan, Le relazioni diplomatiche, p. 19. 106 In the autumn of 1918, the leaders of the National Romanian Party and the Central Committee of the Romanian section of the Hungarian Social-Democratic Party decided to unite their forces for the self-determination of Transylvania, at the time under Hungarian domination, and for its unification with Romania, founding the Romanian National Council; Ioan-Aurel Pop and Ioan Bolovan, Istoria Transilvaniei (Cluj-Napoca: Școala Ardeleană, 2013), pp. 328–29. 107 Grandhomme, La Roumanie, pp. 191–92. 108 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 32–33, fasc. 13, f. 29r. 109 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 32–33, fasc. 13, f. 37.

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Ghika had to work both to consolidate Catholicism in Romania in a way that would last and to obtain from the Holy See a kind of diplomatic guarantee that would strengthen Romanian irredentist aspirations and the position of Romania on the international stage, an objective that had recurred in previous attempts.110 In his opinion, these were the necessary preconditions for the public to look favourably on the Holy See, thereby laying the foundations for a concordat.111 The project, however, was postponed due to the armistice and the peace negotiations.112 In order for it to be signed, it was necessary to wait until 1927;113 nevertheless, in 1920, the Holy See and Romania established diplomatic relations.114 The temporary abandonment of the project did not reduce Ghika’s role because it was to him that the Holy See turned in order to transmit unofficially the idea to the King of Romania, and it was he who was appointed by the Council as representative to the Holy See.115 It must be said that the desire to see the Romanian irredentist aspirations effected was part of a pre-existing movement within which some Orthodox persons who had become Catholic embraced the cause of Romania.116 In regard to the concordat project, Ghika was asked to take it up not only by the Secretary of State but also by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. If one leaves aside the purely political sphere in favour of a more religious one, the scope remains the same: to facilitate a rapprochement with the ‘dissident’ East.

5. A votum by Ghika In 1919, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches wanted to seek the opinion of about twenty people, all — with the exception of Ghika — ecclesiastics of the

110 Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, p. 95. 111 AES, Romania, 1918, pos. 32–33, fasc. 13, f. 32r. 112 Vadan, Le relazioni diplomatiche, p. 19. 113 The concordat was signed in 1927 but was ratified by parliament only in 1929. Transylvania was the object of a particular agreement, signed in 1932: Damian Cornel, ‘Il concordato tra Santa Sede e Romania: studio storico-giuridico’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2010). The concordat with Romania was considered one of the most arduous to establish: see Yves-Henri Le Berre, ‘Le concordat entre le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie en 1927: un concordat typique de la période dite des Nationalités’ (doctoral thesis, Institut catholique de Paris, 1986), p. 9; Vadan, Le relazioni diplomatiche, p. 5. 114 Dimitrie C. Pennescu was the first Plenipotentiary Minister to the Holy See, while the Nuncio, appointed in Romania, was Mgr Francesco Marmaggi: see Romania e Santa Sede: venticinque anni di rapporti diplomatici (1990–2015), ed. by Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban and Mihail-Constantin Banciu (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015), p. 26. 115 Romania e Santa Sede, ed. by Tătaru-Cazaban and Banciu, pp. 13, 23. 116 Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, p. 41. Mme Swetchine was one of them; the case is even more interesting in that it concerns one of the rare converts to which Ghika alluded when he mentioned his own profession of faith: ACMP, dossier 131 c, Roumanie–Ghika, draft of a response to the journal Epocă, 18–21 May 1902.

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Latin and Eastern Rite. These were simple priests, bishops from Eastern countries, members and non-members of congregations particularly dedicated to the East.117 There was the need to consider a possible union with Georgia;118 however, there were also on the table three problems concerning relations with the ‘dissident’ East, which completely circumvented the project. Two regarded what was negotiable or not in matters of doctrine, hierarchy and worship; the third concerned the possibility of facilitating a rapprochement with the Easterners.119 In order to understand the votum drafted by Ghika completely, it is necessary to read it in the light of his work during World War I, among other things. He completely rejected the first two questions, believing that there was nothing to be changed.120 On the other hand, he considered prejudicial the risk to which the union was exposed due to ‘the Western controversialists […] who sometimes dogmatize too much in their own way’.121 More generally, he advocated a wider representation of those who, as he said, ‘count on and have a future in the East’,122 that is, Russians, Ruthenians and Romanians. The fact that representation was delayed compromised the relevance and efficacy of what was being organized in Rome.123 In this context, three of the proposals put forward to facilitate rapprochement with the East seem particularly interesting: what Ghika planned parallel to the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, what he later proposed for the Pontifical Oriental Institute, and what he had in mind for the missions in the East. To support the Oriental Congregation, Ghika envisaged a private council for the Holy Father, composed of clergy and laity of different rites, conceived as a kind of driving force that would be useful, for example, for the drafting of texts on the East or the preparation of concordats. This was basically the role that Ghika had played for some twenty years, whether of his own initiative or in response to requests of the Catholic Church or the Romanian State,124 which the war only served to reinforce, as we have seen. He saw the need for a residence next to the Pontifical Oriental Institute that would welcome ‘dissidents’ well disposed toward the Catholic Church, hosted as

117 Those approached included: the Latin Archbishop of Athens Petit, the superior of the White Fathers, Delpuch, the Abbot of Grottaferrata Pellegrini, Father Cyrille Korolevskij, the Assumptionist Jugie and the Dominican Hugon. See Korolevskij, Kniga, II, p. 582; ACO, Oriente-dissidenti. 118 Korolevskij, Kniga, II, p. 581. 119 Korolevskij, Kniga, II, pp. 581–582; ACO, Oriente-dissidenti e ritorno alla Unità, 783/28. 120 Another three consultors did not respond to this request, thus it was considered that ‘the responses are not very clear in that regard’, ACO, Oriente-dissidenti. 121 ACO, Oriente-dissidenti, votum Ghika, appendix A. 122 ACO, Oriente-dissidenti, votum Ghika. 123 For him the criterion of choice was numerical, moral or political. 124 Moreover, in 1904, he submitted a votum for the Koutsovlachs, reproduced in full in Molette, Mgr Vladimir Ghika, pp. 15–20 and in ACO, Romeni Varie, 688/48. In the years 1904–05, the Holy See asked him for his opinion on the Archdiocese of Bucharest and on Mgr Hornstein: see ACPF, rubr. 109 (1902), n. s., vol. 299, f. 460r. In 1912, the Romanian government also sought his intervention with the Holy See for the creation of the new Diocese of Hajdúdorogh in Transylvania; Dumitriu-Snagov, Le Saint-Siège, pp. 867–75.

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‘corresponding members’. The danger that he thereby wanted to avoid was the growing influence of Protestantism on the Eastern clergy, who, not being able to be admitted into Catholic universities, turned, amongst others, to German universities.125 Ghika thought that the scholarly world, less compromising than the religious one, would make it possible to build a bridge between East and West, an opinion that he had already expressed126 a little over ten years previously in the preparations for the ninth centenary of the Abbey of Grottaferrata.127 Finally, he proposed the reorganization of the Latin dioceses and the missions in the East, focussing particularly on the nationality of the missionaries. In his opinion, it was necessary to avoid all political influence, in particular that of the Central Powers and Italy, too compromised in the eyes of the Easterners due not only to its policies during and after the war but also because the influence was ‘too Latin, despite itself ’ (‘trop latin malgré lui’).128 The only ones that he saw able to exercise a fruitful ministry and attract the separated Easterners were the French and the Belgians.129 They knew the language of diplomacy, French, and were not, in his words ‘politically suspect’ (‘suspects politiquement’). Moreover, France had a ‘providential vocation’ (‘vocation providentielle’) to deal with the missions in the East.130 It was enough to recall its work for the dioceses of Iaşi and Bucharest. But this votum was not accepted by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches: it was thought that it did not answer the questions that had been posed. However, it has two merits: to make us aware, in part, of Ghika’s thoughts in regard to the union of the Churches in general and to show us how he tried, through this means, to influence Eastern politics in a very precise manner. It is like a watermark summarizing his activities during the war.

6. Conclusions In the light of what has been said, there is no doubt that Ghika wanted to play a role in the propagation of Catholicism in Romania. His intervention in the particular cases of Iaşi and Bucharest, the opportunity offered to him to act within the wider framework of a project for a concordat, or that which concerned the policy of the union of the Churches, is in line with his long-standing intention to support ACO, Oriente-dissidenti, votum Ghika, appendix B. In a prudent manner, certainly, but in any case expressed. ABGG, Archivio Storico, 1904 — IX Centenario dalla Fondazione, b. 4, fasc. 28, pp. 50, 53–54. ACO, Oriente-dissidenti, votum Ghika, appendix D. See also Korolevskij, Kniga, II, p. 583. Ghika, very close to Cardinal Mercier and to Mgr Deploige, worked hard on the project of the reconstruction of the University of Louvain. In regard to the foundation of the Pontifical Oriental Institute and of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Canet suggested choosing Frenchmen as professors at the Institute and members of the Congregation. In fact, France took an interest in the foundation of the two institutions, which it thought was under the influence of the Central Powers. See Dominique Trimbur, ‘Une lecture politique de la mission pour l’Union’, in La mission en textes et en images, ed. by Chantal Paisant (Paris: Karthala, 2004), pp. 451–70 (p. 463). 130 ACO, Oriente-dissidenti, votum Ghika.

125 126 127 128 129

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Catholicism in his country, as well as in the activity that he carried out to this end, as a protagonist, for about ten years.131 Moreover, Romania, the Holy See and France also profited from Ghika’s action (to which measure remains to be seen).132 The picture is of certain interest and is at times paradoxical; it is one of a state no longer, or not yet, represented at the Holy See, which requested the good offices of an ‘ambassador’ who had abandoned his diplomatic career immediately after he had set out on it. However, Ghika’s numerous relationships, his brother’s diplomatic function, the particular bond with France, besides his position, which was after all very comfortable as ‘a free and useful lay auxiliary’133 (to use his brother’s words) allowed him to exercise a kind of diplomacy parallel to his service to Catholicism. This at times defied the laws of logic, but perhaps not the laws of diplomacy, and often involved political interests. The field still to be investigated is vast. Other aspects of his work should be examined in greater depth, either in relation to Romania alone or within the broader framework of international relations. The contribution that he made to the formation of the Romanian Legion in Transylvania, his presence at the blessing of the Allied flags in 1917 at Paray-le-Monial, the relevant part that he played in the movement for the reconstruction of the University of Louvain,134 not to mention his role as mediator between Princes Xavier and Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma and Benedict XV,135 are all elements that, despite appearances, would help us to understand Ghika’s role in the complex, and sometimes ambiguous, relations between Catholics and Orthodox Christians during the war.

Bibliography Aubert, Roger, Les deux premiers grands conflits du cardinal Mercier avec les autorités allemandes d’occupation (Leuven: Peeters, 1998) Berra, Luigi, ‘Serafini, Domenico’, in Dizionario ecclesiastico, ed. by Angelo Mercati and Augusto Pelzer, 3 vols (Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1953–58), III (1958), p. 813 Besnard, Albert, Sous le ciel de Rome: souvenirs (Paris: Éditions de France, 1925) Besnard, Philippe, Souvenances (Ottawa: Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1975) 131 We can affirm that his first stay in Rome (1899–1904), the contacts established at the time, and the part that he had in the preparations for the ninth centenary of the Abbey of Grottaferrata and for the Marian Congress of 1904 marked the beginning of his official activity in support of Catholicism. 132 Italy also benefitted from information that Ghika collected from the Holy See: see Fasciotti to Sonnino, 20 April 1915, in I documenti diplomatici italiani: quinta serie, 1914–1918, ed. by Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 11 vols (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1954–86), III (1985), p. 318, about the attitude of the Vatican regarding Italy’s possible entrance into the war. 133 ‘D’auxiliaire laïque libre et utile’; ARCB, Ghika Archive, Correspondance familiale, p. 125, Dimitrie Ghika to Vladimir Ghika, 4 September 1923. 134 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Mercier to Ghika, 30 January 1920 (copy); Archives de l’Archevêché de Malines, Malines, Archive card. Mercier, II 113. 135 ARCB, Ghika Archive, Correspondance Travers–Ghika and Bourbon-Parma–Ghika.

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Charles-Roux, François, Souvenirs diplomatiques: Rome-Quirinal février 1916–février 1919 (Paris: Fayard, 1958) Chenaux, Philippe, Pie XII diplomate et pasteur (Paris: Cerf, 2003) Christophe, Paul, ed., Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), I (1994) Cornel, Damian, ‘Il concordato tra Santa Sede e Romania: studio storico-giuridico’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2010) Croce, Giuseppe M., ‘Alle origini della Congregazione Orientale e del Pontificio Istituto Orientale: il contributo di Mons. Louis Petit’, in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 53, 2 (1987), pp. 257–333 De Camillis, Mario, ‘Serafini, Domenico’, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols (Vatican City: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il libro cattolico, 1948–54), XI (1953), col. 374 Despinescu, Anton, ‘L’activité pastorale de Nicola Giuseppe Camilli (1840–1915), premier évêque de Jassy-Roumanie (1884–1894 et 1904–1915)’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Urbaniana, 1980) Deuerlein, Ernst, ‘Hertling, Georg Friedrich’, in Neue Deutsche Biographie, 25 vols (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1953–2013), VIII (1969), pp. 702–03 Doboş, Fabian, La diocesi di Jassi (Romania) durante l’episcopato del vescovo Domenico Jaquet, o.f. m. Conv. (1895–1903) (Iaşi: Editura Sapientia, 2008) Duchesne, Louis, Correspondance avec Madame Bulteau (1902–1922), ed. by Florence Callu (Rome: École française de Rome, 2009) Dumea, Emil, ‘Il cattolicesimo nella Moldavia-Romania nel XVIII secolo’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1987) Dumitriu-Snagov, Ion, Le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie moderne (1850–1866) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1982) Dumitriu-Snagov, Ion, Le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie moderne (1866–1914) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1989) Durandin, Catherine, Histoire des Roumains (Paris: Fayard, 1995) Ghika, Dimitrie, De la diplomatie à la voyoucratie: souvenirs de 45 ans de carrière diplomatique, 1894–1940 (unpublished memoires) Ghika, Vladimir, ‘L’Église et la nouvelle Roumanie’, Revue des jeunes, 6, 1 (1921), pp. 646–65 Ghika, Vladimir, Spicuiri istorice (Iaşi: Presa Buna, 1935) Giurescu, Constantin, Histoire chronologique de la Roumanie (Bucharest: Editura ştiințifică şi enciclopedică, 1976) Grandhomme, Jean-Noël, La Roumanie de la Triplice à l’Entente, 1914–1919 (Paris: Soteca, 2009) Janin, Raymond, Les Églises orientales et les rites orientaux (Paris: Letouzey & Ane, 1997) Korolevskij, Cyrille, Kniga Bytija Moego (Le livre de ma vie): mémoires autobiographiques, ed. by Giuseppe M. Croce, 5 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2007), III Le Berre, Yves-Henri, ‘Le concordat entre le Saint-Siège et la Roumanie en 1927: un concordat typique de la période dite des Nationalités’ (doctoral thesis, Institut catholique de Paris, 1986) Loiseau, Charles, ‘Ma mission auprès du Vatican (1914–1918)’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 74, 2 (1960), pp. 100–15 Malgeri, Francesco, ‘Maglione, Luigi’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LXVII (2006), pp. 433–36

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Molette, Charles, Mgr Vladimir Ghika: prince, prêtre et martyr (Paris: AED, 2007) Netzhammer, Raymund, Episcop în România: într-o epocă a conflictelor naţionale şi religioase, ed. by Nikolaus Netzhammer and Krista Zach, 2 vols (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2005) Neveu, Bruno, ‘Louis Canet et le service du conseiller technique pour les Affaires religieuses au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 82, 2 (1968), pp. 134–80 Periş, Lucian D., ‘Presenze cattoliche in Transilvania, Moldavia e Valacchia (1601–1698)’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1998) Pettinaroli, Laura, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Poggi, Vincenzo, ‘Exposé des raisons qui désignent S. E. Mgr. Louis Petit, archevêque d’Athènes, pour la charge de recteur de l’Institut Pontifical Oriental’, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 266 (2002), pp. 175–202 Pop, Ioan-Aurel, and Ioan Bolovan, Istoria Transilvaniei (Cluj-Napoca: Școala Ardeleană, 2013) Quenard, Gervais, Hier, souvenirs d’un octogénaire (Paris: Lethielleux, 1955) Rangabé, Eugène Rizo, Livre d’or de la noblesse phanariote en Grèce, en Roumanie, en Russie et en Turquie (Paris: Hachette BNF, 2013) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti, ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) ‘Serafini, Domenico’, in Annuaire pontifical catholique, ed. by Albert Battandier (Paris: Bonne Presse, 1917), p. 126 Sturdza, Mihail-Dimitri, Le dictionnaire historique et généalogique des grandes familles de Grèce, d’Albanie et de Constantinople (Paris: Strudza, 1983) Tătaru-Cazaban, Bogdan, and Mihail-Constantin Banciu, ed., Romania e Santa Sede: venticinque anni di rapporti diplomatici (1990–2015) (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015) Thual, François, Géopolitique de l’orthodoxie: religion et sociétés (Paris: Dunod, 1994) Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘Le conclave de 1903 d’après le journal d’un diplomate français’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 116 (2002), pp. 297–330 Tocănel, Petru, Storia della Chiesa cattolica in Romania, 3 vols (Padua: Messaggero, 1960–65), I (1960) Trimbur, Dominique, ‘Une lecture politique de la mission pour l’Union’, in La mission en textes et en images, ed. by Chantal Paisant (Paris: Karthala, 2004), pp. 451–70 Vadan, Mariuca, Le relazioni diplomatiche tra la Santa Sede e la Romania 1920–1948 (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 2003) Waché, Brigitte, ‘Aspects des relations France–Saint-Siège durant le premier conflit mondial’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique, 112, 4 (1998), pp. 305–26 Waché, Brigitte, Monseigneur Louis Duchesne (1843–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992)

Theological Questions and Devotional Practices

Maria Paiano

Religious Interpretations of War as Reflected in Prayers during World War I

Historical scholarship in the last decade has shown the consistency of a ‘religious dimension’ in the Great War that extends far beyond the position and role assumed by the Churches during the conflict.1 The widespread religious legitimization of the war by both traditional confessions and the ‘religion of nationalism’ formed during the previous century (also arising from secular cultural patterns) is now a widely accepted given fact.2 Less obvious is the awareness that religious interpretations of World War I, besides elements of analogy, presented significant differences even within the same religious confession in the same country.3



1 ‘Dimensione religiosa’; a summary of the known findings is given in Xavier Boniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014). 2 This conclusion, however, is not unanimous in the historical scholarship on the Great War: see Xavier Boniface, ‘Bulletin critique: l’histoire religieuse de la première guerre mondiale’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 101, 246 (2015), pp. 157–70 (pp. 157–58). 3 Notable are the opening words of Nicolao Merker’s La guerra di Dio: religione e nazionalismo nella Grande guerra (Rome: Carocci, 2015), p. 12: ‘Was the Great War of 1914–18 a war of religion? Obviously not. Each of the nations at war said, however, that they had God on their side. In each one, it was affirmed with the voice of both nationalism as well as of the Churches of whichever religious confession. Everywhere the assistance of a nationalist God was believed in, was taken for granted […]. This should not be surprising. The genesis of the national states and of the ideologies of modern nationalism that accompanied it had its greatest support in the so-called religion of the nation, an absolute sacredness attributed to that genesis. Doctrinal patrimony and the rites of the institutional Churches were at the disposition of the sacred. Words and ideas were borrowed from them. The Churches supported the process: going along with it would have been advantageous’ (‘La Grande Guerra del 1914–18 fu una guerra di religione? Ovviamente no. Ognuna delle nazioni in guerra diceva però di avere Dio dalla propria parte. In ognuna lo affermavano le voci sia del nazionalismo, sia delle Chiese di qualunque confessione religiosa. Si credeva ovunque nell’aiuto di un Dio nazionalista, lo si dava per scontato […]. Non deve stupire. La genesi degli Stati nazionali e delle ideologie del nazionalismo moderno che la accompagnava ebbe a suo massimo sostegno la cosiddetta religione della nazione, l’assoluta sacralità attribuita a quella genesi. Di sacrale c’erano a disposizione i patrimoni dottrinali e i riti delle Chiese istituzionali. Ne vennero mutuate parole e idee. Le Chiese appoggiavano il processo; accompagnarlo sarebbe stato vantaggioso’).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 809–826 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118805

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In fact, several studies on religious groups and institutions of various Christian denominations and on their cults have highlighted the existence of a plurality of expressions in the relationship between a religion and a nation. There seem to have been at least three models of this relationship: a complete overlap; the subordination of the religion to the nation; the subordination of the nation to the religion. The first two cases were normally resolved in an autonomous sacralization of the nation and in the characterization of the war as ‘holy’. In the last case, however, there was an oscillation between attempts at compromise and more radical attitudes that went to the extreme limit of conscientious objection (as for some English Quakers).4 This more complex picture shows that the undeniable support from the various countries’ cultures of religious origin for their respective national causes was neither uniform nor obvious. Roman Catholicism was particularly complex in this regard. Its appeal to God for the victory of one’s own forces against the adversary, which also included other Catholics, had to come to terms with the strongly hierarchical and centralized structure of the institution, which had been solemnly reiterated just half a century before by Vatican I with the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility and the pontiff ’s primacy of jurisdiction. Starting with Leo XIII, the papal magisterium’s position with particular reference to the relationship between Church and state was clearly that of the admission of the legitimacy of love for the latter, subordinate to recognition of the superiority of the former, from which the primacy of the state’s duty of obedience to the Church was derived.5 The difficulty that Catholics from different countries encountered with aligning themselves to this perspective already created in the nineteenth century a clash with the pontiff, which arose again during the war that broke out in 1914. The field of worship was particularly sensitive to this tension and to the different nuances of the relationship between Church and state.6





4 For an overview summarizing these various points, see Boniface, Histoire religieuse, pp. 217–63. On English Quakers, see Rémi Fabre and Michel Rapoport, ‘Un pacifisme chrétien radical: les Quackers et l’objection de conscience au Royaume-Uni pendant la Grande Guerre’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 123–36. For more on the aspects mentioned, the reader is also referred to the other contributions in this volume that present the proceedings from a conference held in Verdun in 2012. In the specific case of Italy, a plurality of articulations in the relationship between religion and nation can be seen, especially in studies on individual dioceses or episcopates: see Matteo Caponi, ‘Una diocesi in guerra: Firenze (1914–1918)’, Studi storici, 50, 1 (2009), pp. 231–55; Marcello Malpensa, ‘Religione, nazione e guerra nella diocesi di Bologna (1914–1918): arcivescovo, laicato, sacerdoti e chierici’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 383–408; and Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Per una più grande Italia’: il cardinale Pietro Maffi e la prima guerra mondiale (Pisa: Pacini, 2015). 5 Maria Paiano, ‘Chiesa cattolica e Unità d’Italia tra secolarizzazione della società e sacralizzazione della politica’, in I cattolici e l’Unità d’Italia: tappe, esperienze, problemi di un discusso percorso, ed. by Maria Paiano (Assisi: Cittadella, 2012), pp. 45–50. 6 Matteo Caponi, ‘Il culto dei caduti nella Chiesa cattolica fiorentina (1914–1926)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 63–90; Matteo Caponi, ‘Liturgie funebri e sacrificio patriottico: i riti di suffragio per i caduti nella guerra di Libia (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 10, 2 (2013), pp. 437–60; Maria Paiano, ‘Religione e patria negli opuscoli cattolici per l’esercito italiano: il cristianesimo come scuola di sacrificio per i soldati’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011),

Religious Interpretations of War in Prayers during World War I

Aware of this sensitivity, Benedict XV resorted to prayer, not only to invoke and beseech God for peace, but also as a pedagogical tool for obtaining Catholics’ greater adherence to their own positions.7 The importance assumed by prayer in the pontiff ’s plans during the ongoing conflict and, more generally, for the overall profile of Catholic identity, which risked being harmed by that conflict, did not escape some contemporary observers who offered specific reflections on it. I should like here to focus on two of those reflections, by two Italian Jesuits, which seem particularly relevant to me. Both were extremely attentive to the pontiff ’s magisterium and made attempts to define the criteria of the orthodoxy of Catholic worship that the war had rendered controversial. One dates to the beginning of 1915 and the other to the period of Italy’s entry in the war. Together they allow us to identify some changes in Benedict XV’s approach to this specific issue.

1.

Antonio Oldrà and Benedict XV’s Prayer for Peace

The Jesuit Antonio Oldrà, author of works on moral theology, was one of Turin’s most famous preachers.8 During World War I, he tried to outline and disseminate a vision of the conflict that conformed to Catholic tradition and the pontiff ’s pronouncements.9 Early in 1915, he published, with the imprimatur of the Turin curia on 22 February 1915, a dense pamphlet entitled La preghiera per la pace (Prayer for Peace), in which he attempted to respond to the controversy raised by some Italian newspapers on the contradiction in Catholics’ prayers between opposing sides in the war calling upon the same God for the victory of their own country. The Jesuit supported the legitimacy, in certain conditions, of such prayer and even its





pp. 7–27; Maria Paiano, ‘“Amate la religione e la patria con uno stesso amore”: declinazioni del patriottismo cattolico nei manuali religiosi per i soldati italiani tra Otto e Novecento’, in Écrire l’histoire du christianisme contemporain: autour de l’œuvre d’Étienne Fouilloux, ed. by Annette Becker and others (Paris: Karthala, 2013), pp. 103–13; Maria Paiano, ‘Pregare in guerra: gli opuscoli cattolici per i soldati’, in Un paese in guerra: la mobilitazione civile in Italia (1914–1918), ed. by Daniele Menozzi, Giovanna Procacci and Simonetta Soldani (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 275–94. 7 Maria Paiano, ‘La Santa Sede e la preghiera in Italia durante la Grande Guerra’, Annali di Scienze religiose, 8 (2015), pp. 69–102. 8 Born in Turin, Antonio Oldrà (1871–1943) entered the Society of Jesus in 1886. After completing his studies, he taught sciences, Hebrew and philosophy in Jesuit colleges and in seminaries. From 1908, he carried out his apostolic work in Turin where, in 1916, he was also assigned the prestigious task as Sunday preacher at the Church of the Most Holy Martyrs, which had been entrusted to the Jesuits from the sixteenth century. See ‘La morte di p. Antonio Oldrà’, L’Italia, 28 April 1943; Brevi cenni storici sulla Chiesa dei santi Martiri in Torino nel quarto centenario della nascita del duca Emanuele Filiberto (1528–1928) (Turin: R. Berruti, 1928), p. 50. On the Oldrà’s renown during the war, see also ‘Il culto di Maria Ausiliatrice’, Bollettino Salesiano, 39, 6 (1915), p. 176 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 9 Among others, see Antonio Oldrà, La guerra nella morale cristiana (Turin: Marietti, 1915), which saw various reprints in the following years; Antonio Oldrà, Perché tanti flagelli? (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1915); Antonio Oldrà, Il papa e la guerra (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1916); and Antonio Oldrà, Le rivelazioni della guerra (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1916).

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coherence with respect to recent pontifical pronouncements on prayer concerning the conflict.10 From the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, Benedict XV redefined the objectives of such prayer as the expectations regarding developments in the war deteriorated. Previously, within a concept of war as divine punishment for society’s abandonment of the Church (which was widespread in Catholic culture), he had expressed confidence that invoking forgiveness and the commitment of heads of state to finding peaceful solutions to the controversies that divided them would turn God from his anger and restore peace.11 As the conflict wore on and his appeals for pacification fell on deaf ears, Benedict was led to lower his expectations that the belligerent countries’ political authorities would either acknowledge at least one authority (one of the conditions he posed for the return of peace) or appreciate the areas within which he might intervene autonomously or directly, such as the area of worship. As far as the latter was concerned, the Pope emphasized in particular the importance of calling upon divine mercy alongside the expiatory goals upon which he had already insisted. A privileged recipient of such invocations became the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was an object of devotion laden with patriotic meaning for both fronts.12 The Pope, however, essentially saw in it the principal source of that charity which the encyclical Ad beatissimi had characterized as the indispensable foundation for peaceful human relations at all levels.13 This approach had already emerged during his address to the College of Cardinals on 24 December 1914, in which, after lamenting the failure of his proposal for a truce on Christmas Day, he applauded those who promoted prayers to move Christ’s heart to mercy and to end the ‘terrible scourge’.14 A prayer for peace composed by the Pope himself and published in a decree by the Secretariat of State on 10 January 1915 was devoted precisely to the Sacred Heart. It was recommended that it be prayed within a series of religious services for peace. Although such services did not lack the usual expiatory acts, the prayer to the Sacred Heart insisted above all on the charity flowing from it, which was pointed to as the key to resolving the war at the different

10 Antonio Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace: accuse e obiezioni: la preghiera del papa (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1915). 11 Benedict XV, Ubi primum, 8 September 1914 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 128–29. 12 Sante Lesti, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015). 13 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 14 ‘Terribile flagello’; Benedict XV, Discorso del santo padre Benedetto XV in occasione del primo incontro con il Collegio Cardinalizio svoltosi alla vigilia della Solennità del Natale, 24 December 1914 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 145–46.

Religious Interpretations of War in Prayers during World War I

levels to which its causes were traced: the relationship between God and humans, relationships among individuals and the relationships among the heads of state of the belligerent powers. In appealing to charity, the prayer therefore asked God to desist in his anger as an act of piety towards people. Moreover, underlining how the Divine Heart radiated charity in the world ‘so that, removing all discord, only love would reign among people’ it asked the Heart to inspire ‘the counsel of meekness in the hearts of rulers and their people’, reconciling divisions and favouring the re-establishment of fraternal relations among them.15 A week later, in an address to the consistory that expressed an awareness that the war would not end soon, he reiterated his impartiality with respect to the belligerents, emphasizing the need to ‘address insistent and humble prayers to the Lord Who is the Master and Sovereign Arbiter of human affairs and who alone can, as He thinks best, direct the wills of man’. He therefore exhorted people to pray privately and, above all, publicly, entrusting this in particular to ‘all men of good will’, and announced two solemn expiatory services on 7 February and 21 March for, respectively, all Catholics in Europe and those throughout the world. At the end of this speech he indicated a further objective of prayer, which requested Mary’s intercession in opening minds and hearts to that truth and justice (of which he clearly considered the Church the authentic interpreter) upon which the foundations for peace are laid.16 In the background to this clarification on the part of the pontiff, Oldrà sought to respond to the arguments raised the previous November by some Italian newspapers (La Gazzetta del Popolo della Domenica and the Corriere della Sera) that held that Catholic prayer asking God, from opposing sides, for ‘the slaughter of their enemy and their own triumph’ was contradictory, immoral and illusory. While acknowledging that there were abuses in how the Catholics in the belligerent countries were making use of prayer, the Jesuit contested those judgements and above all the appeal to ‘pray no more’ that some of them derived from it.17 In an attempt to reconcile the invocations for victory with the pontiff’s interventions, he affirmed, on the one hand, the absolute superiority and preferability of invoking a universal peace that stood above interests of any side and, on the other, the legitimacy of prayer in support of one’s own country’s cause if it was motivated by a patriotism enlightened by faith and associated with Christian charity. After having defined the former as a ‘true prayer for peace’ and hoping that, ‘entirely moulded by the spirit of

15 ‘Cuore Divino […] perché, tolta ogni discordia, regnasse fra gli uomini soltanto l’amore’; ‘ai reggitori e ai popoli consigli di mitezza’; Pietro Gasparri, ‘Decreto Preces pro pace certis diebus dicendae praescribuntur’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7, 1 (1914), p. 9. 16 ‘Rivolgere insistenti ed umili preci al Signore, che, com’è padrone ed arbitro sovrano degli eventi umani, così può ai suoi infallibili disegni indirizzare Egli solo, per quelle vie che meglio Gli piacciano, i voleri degli uomini’; ‘tutti i buoni’; Benedict XV, Convocare vos, 22 January 1915 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace, ed. by Koenig, pp. 153–54. 17 ‘La strage del nemico per il trionfo proprio’; ‘non pregare più’; Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, pp. 7–8.

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Jesus Christ and the most sincere feelings of good and universal fraternity’, it would be offered by the Catholics in the neutral countries (also including, at the time, Italians), he recognized the difficulty that those who were involved in the war might adopt it. This was owing both to the love for one’s nation (which shortly afterwards he defined as a ‘praiseworthy virtue’) and to the obedience due to the established authorities, justified, in accordance with the principles of the traditional Christian doctrine of the just war, by their divine institution and the principle of presumption.18 Echoing Ad beatissimi, he argued in this regard that religion ordered persons to withdraw from the duty of supporting their own nation in war only when ‘it had been ascertained with all certainty that one’s nation was truly unjust in the war being fought’. However, with the normal presumption that could be made that it was just, each citizen was obliged to make a personal contribution to the victory with material weapons or with ‘the highly effective weapon of prayer’.19 The Jesuit admitted that there could be an ‘excess of patriotism’ characterized by the same elements used by traditional Christian doctrine (and its nineteenth-century revisitation) to call the justice of a war into question: ‘hatred of one’s enemy’; ‘an extreme national pride that claims that one’s own country is always and without question the first nation in the world and that it should triumph at all costs’; ‘desire for one’s own liberty and greatness […] mixed with bad feelings of anger, revenge, jealousy and contempt for the enemy’. However, he believed that, when free from such sentiments, a Christian patriot could pray ‘to have God bless from above one’s soldiers and to crown their heroic efforts with success’. In these terms, for the Jesuit, prayer during wartime could be ‘legitimate. Not only’, he clarified, ‘the prayer said in general for peace, as especially we Italians, as neutrals, pray but also that prayer offered directly to obtain the victory of one’s own country’.20 Immediately afterwards, however, he placed another limitation on the legitimacy of prayer for victory, in conformity with what Leo XIII and Pius X had clearly affirmed on the relationship between religion and state, to which Benedict XV had returned with greater discretion in the difficult war context.21 He emphasized the need that ‘the patriotism that inspires it not blind one to the views of reason and the highest inspirations of faith to the point of preferring nation to religion and to sacrificing

18 ‘Vera preghiera per la pace’; ‘tutta informata allo spirito di Gesù Cristo e ai più schietti sentimenti di buona e universale fraternità’; ‘virtù lodevole’; Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, pp. 15–16. 19 ‘Constasse con ogni certezza, che la guerra che si combatte, per parte della propria nazione è veramente ingiusta’; ‘l’arma efficacissima della preghiera’; Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, pp. 17–18. See Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi. 20 ‘Eccesso di patriottismo’; ‘odio verso il nemico’; ‘uno smisurato orgoglio nazionale, che pretende che la propria patria sia sempre indiscutibilmente la prima nazione del mondo, e trionfi ad ogni costo’; ‘desiderio della propria libertà e grandezza […] frammisto a cattivi sentimenti di rabbia, di vendetta, di gelosia, di disprezzo per il nemico’; ‘per ottenere che Dio benedica di lassù le armi dei suoi e coroni di esito fortunato i loro sforzi eroici’; ‘legittimata la preghiera in tempo di guerra, non soltanto quella fatta in genere per ottenere la pace, come la facciamo specialmente noi italiani, come neutrali, ma anche quella fatta direttamente per ottenere la vittoria del proprio paese’; Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, pp. 18–19. 21 Paiano, ‘Chiesa cattolica e Unità d’Italia’, pp. 45–50; Paiano, ‘La Santa Sede e la preghiera’, pp. 72–74.

Religious Interpretations of War in Prayers during World War I

the interests of truth and the Church to those of one’s own country’. He therefore considered it admissible only if the invocation for victory were included within the broader one of peace, of the freedom of the Church, of the affirmation of truth over error and of the moral reform of one’s own country.22 Within this discourse, he also outlined a structure for the act of praying from which he drew a fundamental objection to the criticism of the uselessness of prayer raised to the same God for an object contested by opposing sides. He argued that although God already knew humanity’s needs, He had arranged that we ask Him to satisfy them as an act of recognizing our dependence upon him. In this perspective, the correspondence between the believers’ prayer intentions and those that, in God’s eyes, constituted their true needs was secondary because God would, in any case, respond to their act of humility, meeting them half-way. He therefore solicited a prayer concerning war whose intentions were articulated according to a specific scale of priorities: for peace, for Catholicism and the Church and for a victory for the homeland that was requested with moderation.23 The last part of his pamphlet was dedicated to the Pope’s prayer for peace read in light of his more comprehensive view of the war as a divine punishment for society’s apostasy. Oldrà thus associated the text with the idea that the condition for true peace was the redefinition of the relations of peoples and nations with God marked by respect for the primacy of the latter’s rights.24 In a final invocation of peace for all nations, he adapted that interpretation of the prayer to the situation of the relationships of the various countries involved in the conflict to the Church, asking for Great Britain and Germany to return to Roman Catholicism, for France to renounce atheism and for the liberation of Belgium from masonic and socialist influences. For Italy, which he called ‘our dear fatherland’, on the contrary, he asked it to maintain its neutrality.25 In spite of the distance from interventionist positions at which he stood, the Jesuit also effectively provided Catholics, not only Italian Catholics, with cultural categories by which to legitimize (albeit within certain limits) a support for the war on a cultural level. The Pope’s judgement of the text is not known. It is certain that he acted within the categories of its interpretation of war, reflecting the fluctuation between, on the one hand, reference to the primacy of Christianity’s universal principles (in adhering to which Catholics on the two fronts were called to fight without hatred and to seek points of agreement) and, on the other, a reaffirmation of the obedience due to political authority and the recognition of the legitimacy of love for one’s country, albeit subordinate to that primacy.

22 ‘Il patriottismo che la ispira, non accechi le viste della ragione e le più alte ispirazioni della fede, fino a preferire la patria alla religione, e a sacrificare gl’interessi della verità e della Chiesa a quelli del proprio paese’; Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, p. 20. 23 Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, pp. 24–26. 24 Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, pp. 33–34. 25 ‘Nostra cara patria’; Oldrà, La preghiera per la pace, pp. 36–41.

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The pamphlet was reviewed positively by authoritative Italian Catholic periodicals, together with other writings on war published by Oldrà in the same months.26 Immediately after Italy’s entry into the war, a series of articles about wartime prayer began to emerge in the Italian Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica that presented analogous elements, but also had some significant variations with respect to Oldrà’s reflection.

2. Angelo De Santi and Prayer in the Liturgical Tradition During Wartime Such articles had a historical-scholarly type of structure in line with the formation and competence of their sole author: Angelo De Santi. President of the Associazione nazionale italiana di Santa Cecilia (National Italian Association of St Cecilia), the elderly Jesuit was a prominent exponent of the ‘Cecilian Movement’, engaged in restoring Gregorian chant in sacred music. Giuseppe Sarto often requested his consultancy in historical and liturgical matters from the time of his episcopate in Mantua and, on becoming pope, supported him in reforming sacred music, which was perfectly consistent with his own project of the Christian restoration of society.27 From July 1915, La Civiltà Cattolica began to publish his extensive historical reconstructions on the recourse to prayer taken by Christians from the first centuries in periods of particular difficulty such as wars, persecutions and public calamities. De Santi turned his attention to the formulas of prayer gathered in liturgical texts in the Christian tradition, from sacramentaries from late antiquity and the Middle Ages to ‘Tridentine’ liturgical books and also other books of prayers composed by authoritative figures such as bishops and popes in later centuries. He attributed to these prayer formulas the statute of having codified the authentic doctrine of the

26 See especially Lector, ‘Ciò che si deve leggere. 2. Per seguire la guerra’, Vita e Pensiero, 1, 7 (1915), pp. 423–24, which stated that ‘the publications of Father Oldrà, who explains the teaching of Catholic theology regarding war, are very interesting. They will serve quite well to dispel some prejudices that have found space in large newspapers’ (‘assai interessanti sono le pubblicazioni del p. Oldrà, il quale espone l’insegnamento della teologia cattolica sulla guerra. Essi serviranno assai bene a sfatare alcuni pregiudizi che hanno trovato ospitalità nei grandi giornali’). In the same vein, see the notice in Rivista internazionale di scienze sociali, 67, 268 (1915), p. 510. 27 Born in Trieste, Angelo De Santi (1847–1922) entered the Society of Jesus in 1863. After his literary and musical studies in Trieste, he studied in France and graduated in the humanities from the University of Innsbruck. After having taught music in the episcopal seminary of Zara, he was ordained a priest in 1887 and, shortly thereafter, was called to Rome to dedicate himself, at the request of Leo XIII, to the reform of sacred music. Both as bishop and pontiff, Sarto turned to him to edit documents on sacred music and the liturgy. From 1909 he became President of the Italian Association for Sacred Music and Director of its journal, the Bollettino Ceciliano. He authored the motu proprio on the reform of sacred music, Tra le sollecitudini (1903), and the encyclicals Iucunda sane (1904) and Il fermo proposito (1905). In 1911, with the support of Pius X, he founded the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. On him, see Aldo Bartocci, ‘De Santi, Angelo’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XXXIX (1991), pp. 327–29. On his relationship with Sarto, see Maria Paiano, ‘Liturgia e società nel pontificato di Pio X’, in Pio X e il suo tempo, ed. by Gianni La Bella (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 430–51.

Religious Interpretations of War in Prayers during World War I

Church, updating them with the obvious purpose of disseminating in the contemporary wartime context the interpretation of war provided by the Christian tradition.28 He considered of particular importance Gregory the Great’s pontificate, in which he noted (with clear, updated references) a period of adjustment in the foundations of Christianity despite the threat of the Lombards and the scarce attention paid to it by political authorities. As part of this procedure, he attributed an important role to the liturgy as an instrument in appealing for divine assistance and in transmitting to future generations the principles upon which the Church and society were to be founded.29 For the priest, the continued validity of those principles and their translation into Christian institutions established in the Middle Ages was beyond doubt. Thus, while there was an increase in prayers and celebrations of patriotic significance in Italy during the Great War, De Santi devoted long pages to the formation of sacramentaries of the Roman Church in late antiquity (Leonine, Gelasian and Gregorian) that gathered together prayers for the return of peace, for the defeat of enemies and for the protection of the faithful and their rulers. Contextualizing the origin of these prayers did not imply relativizing their meaning for him. He affirmed that their formulas constituted ‘a very faithful echo of the thought and expression of those times and of those ancient rites, which is the thought and expression of all times and of our times today, since the Church, I repeat, prays even today, as it has always prayed’.30 He thus reproposed such formulas as a source from which to draw the true key to understanding the war of the time and the remedies with which to tackle it. From the exegesis of ancient liturgical prayers De Santi brought forth an image of war as divine punishment for the sins of mankind, which, in order for peace to return, required the reconciliation of individuals with God, whose wrath would be ‘placated’ through expiatory practices, and the recognition of princes and emperors that their own

28 ‘The Church, therefore, with maternal solicitude, has always tried to educate and instruct the faithful in these principles of the faith and of genuine Christian asceticism, which they must hold firm in even the harshest moments of trial, continually inculcating them in every way with the living word of pastoral instruction, with the writings of Gospel, of the Apostles, of the Church Fathers, and particularly with liturgical prayer, which at the same time is both a recourse to the Lord to obtain the necessary graces for Christian life and an authentic teaching of the purest doctrine’ (‘La Chiesa quindi con materna sollecitudine ha cercato sempre di educare e istruire i fedeli in que’ principii di fede e di genuina ascetica cristiana, che devono mantenerli fermi nel momento delle prove, anche più dure, loro inculcandoli di continuo per ogni modo con la viva parola dell’istruzione pastorale, con gli scritti del Vangelo, degli Apostoli e dei Padri, ed in particolare con la preghiera liturgica, che allo stesso tempo è un ricorso al Signore per ottenere le grazie necessarie alla vita cristiana e un insegnamento autentico della più pura dottrina’); [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica tra il fremito delle armi’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 4 (1916), p. 5. 29 See below the articles taken into consideration. 30 ‘Un’eco assai fedele del pensiero e dell’espressione di quei tempi e di quei riti antichi, che poi è il pensiero e l’espressione di tutti i tempi e dei nostri d’oggi, dacché la Chiesa, ripetiamo, prega ancor oggi, come ha pregato allora, come ha pregato sempre’; [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica in tempo di guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 2 (1916), p. 155.

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authority derived from the authority of the Christian God himself.31 This was precisely the interpretation of war underlying Benedict XV’s discourses and Oldrà’s reflection. De Santi depicted it more explicitly, connecting it to a distant, yet still authoritative, tradition. Even the historical reconstructions of the origin of these formulas recalled contemporary scenarios, confirming the ancient orations’ validity and relevance for the present. In his very first article, referring to the barbarian invasions in the fifth and sixth centuries, De Santi already attributed to Leo and Gregory the Great the attempt to play a pacifying role, to which the political authorities, oblivious to their advice, had set up obstacles, thus preventing their complete success. He thus attributed the impossibility of preventing foreign invasions to political power’s resistance to recognizing the Church’s superior authority. This led to the emergence of ceremonies and prayers of an expiatory nature, aimed at averting war, restraining its tragic consequences and softening believers’ hardness of heart so that they might recognize their sins and therefore allow God to desist from his intentions to punish them.32 The similarities between this historical reconstruction and the Pope’s interpretation of the war and his speeches on worship are evident. Significantly, in a continuation in a later article, De Santi exhorted readers not to lose heart and to ‘keep praying’ in order to make yourselves propitious to God with works of penance and the sanctity of life and to hope against all hope with certain surety that, when everything seems directed to our harm, the Lord will know how to draw the good for our sanctification and health from it.33 In some cases, reading between the lines, one has the impression that the Jesuit meant to return to, and repropose, some of the pontiff ’s specific speeches, commenting on their reception. In August 1915, again referring to the Lombard invasion, he attributed the criticism of political and military authorities of the time to some Roman citizens who wanted ‘war at all costs’ and were against the pontiff ‘who, so distressed by the inevitable force of events, appears and is Italy and Rome’s sole well-being’.34 The

31 The need for these two conditions to be achieved in order for peace to be restored was also emphasized by De Santi in some articles written beginning in April 1917, which dealt with prayers and rites in times of calamity from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and from the Forty Hours’ Devotion of the sixteenth century; see [Angelo De Santi,] ‘Preghiere e riti in tempo di guerra (secoli posteriori)’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 2 (1917), pp. 50–69; [Angelo De Santi,] ‘L’orazione delle quarant’ore e i tempi di calamità e di guerra nel secolo XVI’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 3 (1917), pp. 34–44 and pp. 222–37; and [Angelo De Santi,] ‘L’orazione delle quarant’ore e i tempi di calamità e di guerra nel secolo XVI’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 4 (1917), pp. 40–51. 32 [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica nelle pubbliche calamità’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 2 (1915), pp. 18–34. 33 ‘Rendersi propizio Iddio con le opere della penitenza e con la santità della vita e sperare contro ogni speranza nella sicura certezza, che quando pure ogni cosa sembri volgere in nostro danno, il Signore saprà trarne il bene a nostra santificazione e salute’; [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica nelle pubbliche calamità’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 3 (1915), p. 280. 34 ‘Ad ogni costo la guerra’; ‘che in tante distrette, per forza ineluttabile degli eventi, appare ed è la sola salute d’Italia e di Roma’; [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica nelle pubbliche calamità’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 3 (1915), pp. 420–21.

Religious Interpretations of War in Prayers during World War I

affinity between these ‘voices’ concerning the Lombard war and Benedict XV’s disappointment at the deafening silence received by his appeal of the preceding 28 July to the belligerent countries to end the ‘horrible slaughter’35 does not escape us. De Santi partly repeated the expression, together with the heartfelt tones of the pontifical discourse.36 The relations of Christians and the Pope to political power clearly constituted the axis of De Santi’s argument throughout the entire war. In an article in October 1915, inspired by a prayer for the emperors taken from the Didache and attributed to Clement of Rome,37 the Jesuit pointed out that Christians, starting from the Pauline assumption that every authority comes from God, prayed for the emperors even when they persecuted them, asking for their conversion with the request ‘that their government would become pleasing to God and, in all things, perform according to correct counsel and justice’.38 This took a step back from the veiled polemics of a few months earlier when addressing the belligerent powers and offered historical-liturgical support to the concept that, from the outset of the conflict, Italian Catholics had repeated in order to counteract anti-clerical propaganda, which was that Christians

35 Benedict XV, Allorché fummo chiamati, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7 (1915), pp. 375–77 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 36 ‘They want war at any cost […]. But, may God save them; Where is the money? Where are the armies? Where is the authoritative word that infuses vigour in dejected and oppressed souls? Only our Most Holy Father could pronounce this word and I assure you that shortly the people of the Lombards would have no more king or dukes or counts and that everything would be scrambled into utter confusion. But he represents God, the author of peace, and abhors bloodshed and that which, with those heartless barbarians, has become this war of extermination, carnage on both sides, with no saving grace, just the rendering of Italy first a cemetery and then a desert’ (‘Vogliono ad ogni costo la guerra […]. Ma, che Dio li salvi; dove sono i quattrini? Dove gli eserciti? Dove la parola autorevole che infonda vigore negli animi avviliti ed oppressi? Solo il santissimo Padre nostro potrebbe dirla questa parola, e vi assicuro io che in brev’ora, la gente dei Longobardi non avrebbe più né re, né duci, né conti, ed andrebbe scompigliata nella massima confusione. Ma egli rappresenta il Dio, autore della pace, ed abborre dal sangue, e per giunta con quei barbari senza cuore, questa sarebbe guerra di sterminio, una carneficina da una parte e dall’altra, senza alcun pro, salvo il rendere l’Italia prima un cimitero, poi un deserto’); [De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica nelle pubbliche calamità’, pp. 420–21. 37 ‘O Lord, you gave them [the rulers] the power of the empire by your magnificent and extraordinary power so that we, knowing the glory and honour you have bestowed, might submit to them without diminishing your will. Grant them, O Lord, health, peace, harmony, and steadfastness so that they might administer the empire you have granted them without offence […]. Therefore direct, O Lord, their counsel according to what is good and pleasing in your sight, so that by piously administering the power granted by you in peace and meekness, they might find your favour’ (‘Tu, o Signore, desti loro la podestà dell’impero per la potenza tua magnifica ed inenarrabile, affinché noi, conoscendo la gloria e l’onore da te largito, a loro ci sommettiamo senza venir meno alla tua volontà. Concedi loro, o Signore, la sanità, la pace, la concordia, la saldezza, perché senza offesa amministrino l’impero da te loro concesso […]. Tu dunque, o Signore, dirigi il loro consiglio secondo ciò che è buono e gradito al tuo cospetto, affinché amministrando piamente nella pace e nella mansuetudine il potere da te concesso, ti trovino propizio’); [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica durante le persecuzioni de’ primi tre secoli’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 4 (1915), p. 10. 38 ‘Che il loro governo tornasse gradito a Dio ed in ogni cosa operassero secondo il retto consiglio e la giustizia’; [De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica durante le persecuzioni’, pp. 10–11.

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were good citizens and good soldiers from whom the political power could expect only loyalty.39 In this same perspective, in an article in April 1916, he went so far as to relativize the importance of the position of some Christian authors from the first centuries (in particular, Origen, Lactantius and Tertullian) who had circumscribed, or denied, the compatibility of the Christian profession with military life. In fact, he did not consider them representative of the Church’s position, to which he attributed, on the contrary, ‘a certain benign tolerance’ towards Christian soldiers.40 In some of his articles he seemed to want to respond to the weariness arising from the war’s protraction, soliciting resistance through prayer that would arrive at true peace with the triumph of Christianity. At the end of 1915, still intertwining the anxieties of the present with the unfolding of the past, he wrote an article that indicated the Church’s achievement of peace under Constantine as proof of the effectiveness of the prayers of those who believed in Christ. They had obtained what they asked for, namely, that emperors recognize the Church’s supreme authority. In the Jesuit’s argument, in that case it was precisely prayer that was the principal factor in the ultimate triumph.41 The analogy he established immediately afterwards between the pagans of the first centuries and the modern atheists, both sceptical about the efficiency of Christians’ prayers, seemed to hint at the possibility that the wearisome, painful path that led Christianity from persecution to recognition in the fourth century might also serve as a model for developments in the present. This interpretation of the past grew out of the trust that God always listens to prayer when its object conforms to His will. However, drawing all his consequences from this conviction, De Santi made it clear that if the prayer for political power might result in the fortune or collapse of that power, prayer for the triumph of Christianity, particularly when offered up by martyrs, had an absolutely certain outcome, even if this took a long time: Today, our prayer is derided by those who do not believe, just as, and even more so, were those of the Christians in the first centuries. With a mocking gesture, the Roman emperors read, in the appeals sent to them, that they were being prayed for, so that their lives might prosper, and their government might be wise and mild, pleasing and precious to God, to the God that they wanted to exterminate and destroy. But they did not know, or did not reflect upon, what it means to pray, that is, to ask God for something conforming to his holy will, to truth and to justice. That prayer had to be heard by God, had to bring them life or death. The tyrants did not reflect on the strength that the cry of an oppressed heart, the

39 See ‘I nostri doveri’, L’Aurora nel secolo del Sacramento, 20, 8 (1915), p. 226 and Paolo Giovannini, Cattolici nazionali e impresa giornalistica: il ‘trust’ della stampa cattolica (1907–1918) (Milan: Unicopli, 2001), pp. 232–34, 273–74. 40 ‘Una certa tolleranza benigna’; [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica in tempo di guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 2 (1916), p. 147. 41 [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica durante le persecuzioni de’ primi tre secoli’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 4 (1915), p. 536.

Religious Interpretations of War in Prayers during World War I

tears of tribulation, or the blood of the martyrs had before God […]. The peace granted to the Church after the period of persecutions went far beyond what could be humanly foreseen and was the full triumph of the cross over paganism, to the point of seeing this sign that was so abhorred not only on the standards and shields of the Roman legions, but set amongst pearls and gems on the foreheads of the emperors themselves, who had converted to Christ.42 De Santi, therefore, separated the prayer for political power from a perspective of the latter’s victory in combat. Instead, he believed that properly formulated prayer (such as liturgical prayer), sooner or later would also become an affirmation of Christianity on the social level. For De Santi, as for Oldrà, the hypothesis of a country’s victory not conforming to God’s will did not call into question the duty of obeying one’s authorities, of fighting and even dying for one’s country. With respect to his fellow Jesuit, however, De Santi was more explicit regarding the fact that the same prayer offered by Christians could not (indeed, should not) have the success of one’s national cause as its object. Furthermore, within his strongly ecclesiocentric argument, the very occurrences of the words ‘nation’ and ‘homeland’ were rather rare. This perspective was further clarified in an article in the following summer in which De Santi noted in the transition of the Christians described above from the time of martyrdom to that of triumph, the implementation of a providential design which, in spite of initial difficulties, had at last allowed the formation of an empire that had taken Christianity as its foundation and had also been an instrument of expansion. The result was a substantial consonance of interests between the Church and the empire that preceded the peace of Constantine and provided further justification for prayer for the former to the latter despite the latter’s momentary disavowal of the Christian religion.43 In the specific context of the Great War, this speech could present itself as a legitimization of Italian Catholics’ support for their country during wartime, even though the state was not (yet) Catholic. However, in De Santi’s discourse, this support was firmly anchored in the recognition of God’s sway over history and the superiority

42 ‘Come oggi la nostra preghiera è derisa da chi non crede, così e più ancora era derisa quella dei cristiani dei primi secoli. Con gesto beffardo leggevano gli Imperatori romani, nelle apologie loro inviate, che si pregava per loro, perché prospera fosse la loro vita, saggio e mite il governo, gradito e caro a Dio, al Dio, ch’essi volevano sterminato e distrutto. Ma non sapevano o non riflettevano che vuol dire pregare, cioè chiedere a Dio cosa conforme al suo santo volere, alla verità, alla giustizia. Quella preghiera doveva essere ascoltata da Dio, doveva recar loro o la vita o la morte. Non riflettevano i tiranni qual forza ha innanzi a Dio il gemito del cuore oppresso, le lagrime della tribolazione, il sangue dei martiri […]. La pace, concessa alla Chiesa, dopo il periodo delle persecuzioni, andò ben oltre a quanto potevasi umanamente prevedere, e fu il pieno trionfo della croce sul paganesimo, fino a vedersi questo segno già tanto aborrito, non pure sul labaro e sullo scudo delle legioni romane, ma incastonato fra le perle e le gemme sulla fronte degli stessi imperatori, convertiti a Cristo’; [De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica durante le persecuzioni’, p. 534. 43 [Angelo De Santi,] ‘Le preghiere liturgiche per il romano impero e per i principi con particolare riguardo ai tempi di guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 3 (1916), pp. 37–53.

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of the Church over society. The lesson was taken directly from the liturgical prayers for emperors in the ancient sacramentaries: Do not forget that the most authoritative source of the Church’s doctrine, after Holy Scripture, is liturgical prayer. Therein we see affirmed the fundamental principles of ecclesiastic law, of the relations between Church and state, and of the duties of Christian princes toward God and their peoples, therefore towards the Church, which directly represents divine authority on earth since it is the repository of the divine relationship and invested with a divine mission in the world to the end of leading all, princes and peoples, to God and to eternal health. Therein are also hinted the conditions for the prince’s proper government: the wisdom that comes to him from God, the counsel he must draw from God and the most noble goal of his undertakings, which is God’s peace in the world and, with peace, the widest and freest profession of the Christian faith. Finally, therein we presuppose those manly virtues that truly make a prince God’s minister, Dei enim minister est, as St Paul said: humility, subjection and confidence and trust in God who gave him power and the knowledge to promote virtue in himself and in others, ultimately making it the most noble of his triumphs. Liturgical prayer, which the Church has offered for centuries for the sacred person of the king and is repeated even today, comprehensively sums up an idea of the king that is truly Christian and in accord with God’s heart.44 Until the end of the conflict, De Santi continued to repropose these concepts in different ways, remaining evasive on prayers for victory and limiting himself to extrapolating invocations for defence from one’s enemies or the conversion of pagan authorities by the liturgical formulas. The only explicit reference to the publications that conveyed them was an article in May 1916. Here, remarking in a note that Benedict XV, with a decree of the Holy Office on 5 August 1915, had granted an indulgence to a Gregorian prayer invoking peace in the canon of the Mass, he argued against ‘certain prayers in favour of the war were often composed in a spirit that did not comply very much to that of liturgical prayer’ and complained ‘that greater dissemination was not given

44 ‘Non si dimentichi che fonte quanto mai autorevole della dottrina della Chiesa, dopo la S. Scrittura, sono le preghiere liturgiche. Or qui noi vediamo affermati i principi fondamentali del diritto ecclesiastico, delle relazioni tra Chiesa e Stato, de’ doveri dei principi cristiani verso Dio e verso i popoli, e quindi verso la Chiesa, che direttamente rappresenta l’autorità divina sulla terra, perché depositaria della divina relazione ed investita di missione divina nel mondo, a fine di condurre tutti, principi e popoli, a Dio e all’eterna salute. Qui pure s’adombrano le condizioni pel retto governo del principe: la sapienza che gli viene da Dio, il consiglio che deve attingere da Dio, il fine nobilissimo delle sue imprese che è la pace di Dio nel mondo e con la pace la più ampia e più libera professione della fede cristiana. Qui infine si presuppongono quelle maschie virtù che veramente fanno del principe il ministro di Dio, Dei enim minister est, come disse san Paolo: l’umiltà, la soggezione, la confidenza e fiducia in Dio che gli die’ il potere, la scienza del promuovere la virtù in se stesso e negli altri, fino a mettere in questo il più nobile de’ suoi trionfi. La preghiera liturgica, che per la sacra persona del re s’innalza da secoli nella Chiesa e si ripete ancor oggi, riassume in modo compiuto l’idea del re, veramente cristiano e secondo il cuore di Dio’; [De Santi,] ‘Le preghiere liturgiche per il romano impero’, pp. 52–53.

Religious Interpretations of War in Prayers during World War I

to this prayer, composed by a Holy Pope, in times of other very serious wars, which the Church every day repeats in the holy sacrifice of the Mass’.45 To tell the truth, we have the more general impression that, during the entire conflict, De Santi’s articles intended to draw readers’ attention to the Pope’s interventions, emphasizing their importance or explaining their significance. They seem to recognize the pontiff ’s increasing commitment towards reorienting Catholics’ prayers after Italy joined the war, nourishing it with the support of the liturgical tradition. Moreover, among the instruments that Benedict XV used precisely for that reorientation was reinstituting liturgical services, which easily risked slipping into nationalistic tendencies, in a universalistic tone.46 Between De Santi and Benedict XV, there seems to be a profound convergence concerning the importance of enhancing liturgical prayer in the wartime context according to the meanings attributed to it by tradition. In this regard, during Lent in 1918, the Cardinal Vicar’s invitation to the Roman faithful to participate in the Lenten season Masses in the diocesan churches according to ancient liturgical tradition was meaningful. The Pope intended to confer particular solemnity to that tradition that year. The invitation’s text read: The sad conditions of society and nations, the effects of the mortal war that upsets and afflicts so much of the world, our country included, […] must persuade us to resort more fervently, more diligently and with greater trust in prayer, particularly collective and public prayer. The objective of the prescribed religious services was then located within the restoration of peace among peoples, for our brother combatants, for all those suffering the consequences of war, for the souls of those fallen on the bloody field or who have otherwise been victims of the terrible scourge.47

45 ‘Certe orazioni per la guerra, composte non di rado con uno spirito ben poco conforme a quello delle preghiere liturgiche’; ‘che non siasi data maggior diffusione a questa prece, composta da un Santo Papa, in tempo di altre guerre gravissime, e che la Chiesa ripete ogni giorno al santo sacrificio della messa’; [Angelo De Santi,] ‘La preghiera liturgica in tempo di guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 2 (1916), p. 304. The prayer, in the version offered by De Santi, reads: ‘Deliver us we beseech you, O Lord, from all past, present and future evils and through the intercession of the blessed and ever glorious Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and the Apostles Peter, Paul, Andrew, and all the saints, grant us peace in our days so that we may, assisted by your mercy, be free from our sins and safe from all turmoil’ (‘Liberaci, te ne supplichiamo, o Signore, da tutti i mali passati, presenti e futuri, e per l’intercessione della beata e gloriosa sempre Vergine Maria Madre di Dio, e de’ beati Apostoli Pietro e Paolo e di Andrea e di tutti i santi, concedi propizio la pace ne’ nostri giorni, affinché aiutati dalla tua misericordia, e dai peccati siamo liberi e da ogni perturbazione sicuri’); to obtain the indulgence it was necessary to recite it together with the invocations for peace that immediately followed it up to the Agnus Dei. The indulgence was for thirty days if recited once and plenary if recited daily for a month. 46 Paiano, ‘La Santa Sede e la preghiera’. 47 ‘Le condizioni tristissime della società e delle nazioni, gli effetti della guerra micidiale che sconvolge e affligge, con il nostro paese, tanta parte del mondo […] debbono persuadere a ricorrere con più fervore, con più assiduità e con maggiore fiducia alla preghiera e specialmente alla preghiera collettiva e pubblica’; ‘ristabilimento della pace tra i popoli, per i nostri fratelli combattenti, per tutti quelli che

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The pontiff ’s repeated invitation, on liturgical occasions, to prayer in line with his intentions emphasized the hope that the international community would return to recognizing his authority. From 1915, Benedict XV had openly avoided claiming such authority. De Santi’s articles, however, consistent with the more general stance taken by La Civiltà Cattolica,48 continually recalled the significance of this condition, underlining its foundation in the most ancient and authentic tradition of the Church as represented by the liturgy. In the relationship between Benedict XV and De Santi, therefore, it seems possible to catch a glimpse of a role-play that merits further study.

3. Conclusions Oldrà’s and De Santi’s reflections were grafted onto Benedict XV’s interpretation, according to which war was a divine punishment for the sins, also collective sins, of humanity, and that lasting peace required society and states to return to a subordination to the Church and the pontiff. They also shared the assumption — from the most ancient Christian tradition — that, even if such subordination was lacking, Catholics were obliged to obey the established authority and to pray for it. At this point, however, the perspectives of the two diverged. Oldrà believed that, in the situation of war, bending the prayer for authority into prayer for victory was inevitable, even by Catholics, and that it should not be discouraged. Regardless of whether or not the victory of one’s country was in God’s plan, calling upon him was, in any case, the sign of humanity’s dependence upon him, which implicitly drew them closer to the Lord’s will. Prayers for victory, however, had to be corrected to include more explicitly among their objects those that undoubtedly conformed to God’s will, assigning absolute primacy to them. The request for victory, had to be preceded by that for peace (while the opposite was normally the case) and for the Church. Writing the day after the publication of the Pope’s prayer for peace, Oldrà solicited the correction of the prayers referring to war by including them within the scope defined by the Pope’s prayer. De Santi, on the other hand, restricted himself to reproposing prayers for authority from the oldest liturgical tradition, extrapolating from them meanings that circumscribed the ultimate goals, in all times, of fulfilling the will of God. In this context, the convergence of God’s will with the motivations and objectives of the political powers’ engagement in war appeared as something contingent, while it was admitted that their divergence might reach the point of implying the political power’s self-destruction. In his view, such prayer alone constituted an affirmation

soffrono le conseguenze della guerra, per le anime di coloro che sono caduti sui campi insanguinati o sono stati altrimenti vittime del terribile flagello’; ‘Per le SS. stazioni quaresimali’, L’Osservatore Romano, 22 February 1917, p. 3. 48 Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 22–24.

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of God’s sway over history and of the Church in history. It was therefore an exercise of superiority (not of dependence) compared to political power. Writing immediately after Italy’s entry into the war, he thus seemed to want to contrast, in harmony with the pontiff, the nationalization of Catholic worship, rooting the dimension of prayer attributed to war in the common Catholic liturgical tradition, moulded at the time when medieval Christianitas was established. This then associated that dimension to a clearly characterized universalism in a hierocratic sense. To the myth of nation, its claim of absoluteness being judged as contingent, he contrasted that of the Christian empire, which he considered eternal. In either case, both priests, without legitimizing or totally delegitimizing Catholics’ prayer for their nation’s victory in war, elaborated a specific discourse on worship that sought, with different means and accents, to lead the patriotism of the faithful, in the trenches or on the internal front, back within the limits set by the papal magisterium, whose recognition as a supreme authority indicated the main condition for the return of peace. In this way, they offered Catholics theoretical support for developing texts of prayers concerning the war that did not diminish support for the national cause. Nevertheless, they also indicated some possible ways of preventing such support from slipping into an overlap between religion and nation, relativizing the cause to the extreme limit (in De Santi’s proposal) to which it could reasonably be marginalized.

Bibliography Bartocci, Aldo, ‘De Santi, Angelo’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XXXIX (1991), pp. 327–29 Boniface, Xavier, ‘Bulletin critique: l’histoire religieuse de la première guerre mondiale’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 101, 246 (2015), pp. 157–70 Boniface, Xavier, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014) Brevi cenni storici sulla Chiesa dei santi Martiri in Torino nel quarto centenario della nascita del duca Emanuele Filiberto (1528–1928) (Turin: R. Berruti, 1928) Caponi, Matteo, ‘Il culto dei caduti nella Chiesa cattolica fiorentina (1914–1926)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 63–90 Caponi, Matteo, ‘Una diocesi in guerra: Firenze (1914–1918)’, Studi storici, 50, 1 (2009), pp. 231–55 Caponi, Matteo, ‘Liturgie funebri e sacrificio patriottico: i riti di suffragio per i caduti nella guerra di Libia (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 10, 2 (2013), pp. 437–60 Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Per una più grande Italia’: il cardinale Pietro Maffi e la prima guerra mondiale (Pisa: Pacini, 2015) Fabre, Rémi, and Michel Rapoport, ‘Un pacifisme chrétien radical: les Quackers et l’objection de conscience au Royaume-Uni pendant la Grande Guerre’, in Foi, religions et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. by Xavier Boniface and François Cochet (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2014), pp. 123–36 Giovannini, Paolo, Cattolici nazionali e impresa giornalistica: il ‘trust’ della stampa cattolica (1907–1918) (Milan: Unicopli, 2001)

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Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Lesti, Sante, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015) Malpensa, Marcello, ‘Religione, nazione e guerra nella diocesi di Bologna (1914–1918): arcivescovo, laicato, sacerdoti e chierici’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 3, 2 (2006), pp. 383–408 Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Merker, Nicolao, La guerra di Dio: religione e nazionalismo nella Grande guerra (Rome: Carocci, 2015) Oldrà, Antonio, La guerra nella morale cristiana (Turin: Marietti, 1915) Oldrà, Antonio, Il papa e la guerra (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1916) Oldrà, Antonio, Perché tanti flagelli? (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1915) Oldrà, Antonio, La preghiera per la pace: accuse e obiezioni: la preghiera del papa (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1915) Oldrà, Antonio, Le rivelazioni della guerra (Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale, 1916) Paiano, Maria, ‘“Amate la religione e la patria con uno stesso amore”: declinazioni del patriottismo cattolico nei manuali religiosi per i soldati italiani tra Otto e Novecento’, in Écrire l’histoire du christianisme contemporain: autour de l’œuvre d’Étienne Fouilloux, ed. by Annette Becker and others (Paris: Karthala, 2013), pp. 103–13 Paiano, Maria, ‘Chiesa cattolica e Unità d’Italia tra secolarizzazione della società e sacralizzazione della politica’, in I cattolici e l’Unità d’Italia: tappe, esperienze, problemi di un discusso percorso, ed. by Maria Paiano (Assisi: Cittadella, 2012), pp. 45–50 Paiano, Maria, ‘Liturgia e società nel pontificato di Pio X’, in Pio X e il suo tempo, ed. by Gianni La Bella (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 430–51 Paiano, Maria, ‘Pregare in guerra: gli opuscoli cattolici per i soldati’, in Un paese in guerra: la mobilitazione civile in Italia (1914–1918), ed. by Daniele Menozzi, Giovanna Procacci and Simonetta Soldani (Milan: Unicopli, 2010), pp. 275–94 Paiano, Maria, ‘Religione e patria negli opuscoli cattolici per l’esercito italiano: il cristianesimo come scuola di sacrificio per i soldati’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 7–27 Paiano, Maria, ‘La Santa Sede e la preghiera in Italia durante la Grande Guerra’, Annali di Scienze religiose, 8 (2015), pp. 69–102

Claudia Schlager

Benedict XV and the Nationalization of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in France and Germany (1914–18)

The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus enjoyed an international diffusion and began with the visions by the French Visitation Sister Marguerite-Marie Alacoque in the last decades of the seventeenth century. During World War I, the devotion acquired a strongly nationalistic character in certain countries. This research, which takes an anthropological approach, was born in a university research group dedicated to ‘The Experiences of War: War and Society in the Modern Age’ (‘Kriegserfahrungen: Krieg und Gesellschaft in der Neuzeit’) at the University of Tübingen. The research permits us to explore the nationalization and politicization of the devotion,1 shedding light not only on the relations between Rome and the national Churches but also those between the devotional forms proposed by the latter and those preferred and practised by lay people. The present contribution analyses first the central importance and functions of the devotion to the Sacred Heart in France and Germany during World War I, using some individual examples to illustrate the attitude of Rome to the nationalization of religion, and how this differed from the position both of the ecclesiastic protagonists at the local, regional and national level and of the laity. Using sources such as ecclesiastic bulletins, military correspondence, soldier’s diaries, sermon collections and magazines, such as Le Messager du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus, the intention is not to analyse Benedict XV’s personal relationship with this or other devotions but rather to study the attitude of the Head of the Catholic Church towards those tendencies that tinged devotion to the Sacred Heart with nationalistic elements. The subject of the research is the interaction between the Pope’s peace efforts and the nationalistic attitudes of the Churches in the belligerent countries that found their expression in this devotion.



1 Claudia Schlager, Kult und Krieg: Herz Jesu, Sacré Cœur, Christus Rex im deutsch-französischen Vergleich (1914–1925) (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 2011).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 827–835 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118806

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1.

The Sacred Heart during World War I

During the war, devotion to the Sacred Heart played a prominent role in wartime theology in Germany and France.2 Instituted and institutionalized mainly by bishops, it was the principal devotion both at the front and at home: ceremonies of consecration indeed took place in Germany ( January 1915) and in France ( June 1915), when they had a resounding effect among the soldiers and the Catholic population.3 A formal and substantial model of these large-scale public collective consecrations had been the successful worldwide consecration to the Sacred Heart by Leo XIII in 1899.4 The success and acceptance on the part of the clergy and laity of a devotion that promised consolation and atonement were based, on the one hand, on its consolidation and diffusion in the second half of the nineteenth century, especially thanks to the Jesuits, within the extensive Catholic political and devotional offensive. On the other hand, its success and acceptance were also due to the fact that the suffering, sacrifice, atonement and death of Christ were its central features, thereby the very aspects that made its use in the course of the war appear plausible and effective, not least in the sense of the imitatio Christi. The German and French bishops interpreted the outbreak of the war as the due divine punishment for the secularization of state and society and as an unequivocal divine call to penance and conversion for each person.5 At the beginning of the war, it was therefore natural, from the theological and pastoral point of view, to focus attention on the Sacred Heart, which expressed the ideal of Catholic atonement. Prayers to the Sacred Heart were organized, drafted in a particular way around war themes and the needs both of the soldiers at the front and of the civilian population.6 Besides collections of sermons, the clergy had at hand informative writings for the

2 This aspect is treated exhaustively in Norbert Busch, Katholische Frömmigkeit und Moderne: die Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte des Herz-Jesu-Kultes in Deutschland zwischen Kulturkampf und Erstem Weltkrieg (Gütersloh: Kaiser, 1997), pp. 94–104. For France, see Jean-Marie Mayeur, ‘Le catholicisme français et la première guerre mondiale’, Francia, 2 (1974), pp. 377–97. The devotion was also important in Austria and Italy, areas that fall outside the present research: see Claudia Schlager, ‘Waffenbrüderschaft im heiligsten Herzen Jesu: die deutsche und österreichische Herz-JesuVerehrung im Ersten Weltkrieg und die Propagierung des Tiroler Vorbildes’, in Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung, ed. by Hermann J. W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (Innsbruck: Wagner, 2006), pp. 165–79. 3 After having examined the ecclesial and secular sources, Norbert Busch concluded that the atonement campaign of January 1915, connected to the consecration to the Sacred Heart, represented the central religious event of the early years of the war in Germany (Busch, Katholische Frömmigkeit, p. 100). 4 Busch, Katholische Frömmigkeit, p. 96; Alain Denizot, Le Sacré-Cœur et la Grande Guerre (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1994), p. 73. 5 See Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg: die Mitglieder der Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz und ihre Ordinariate 1914–1918 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991), p. 61 and Jacques Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 1990), p. 57. 6 On the importance of the devotion to the Sacred Heart in pastoral care during the war, see Busch, Katholische Frömmigkeit, p. 102; Denizot, Le Sacré-Cœur, pp. 210 ff.; Jean-Jacques Becker, La France en guerre (1914–1918): la grande mutation (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1988), p. 47.

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care of souls with distinctly nationalistic overtones. These often construed, very superficially, a relationship between the devotion and the war, for example in the work edited by the Jesuit Michael Gatterer in 1915 in the series Weckruf der Zeit (Wake-up Call of the Time) entitled Mit Jesu Herz durch Krieg zum Sieg (With the Heart of Jesus through War to Victory).7 In France and Germany there were numerous similar publications. Thus, in 1915, the Frenchman Joseph Aubert wanted to show ‘how much the devotion to the Sacred Heart is a wartime devotion par excellence. The Sacred Heart wanted to reveal itself as the salvation of our homeland, and many French men and women find comfort in it in their anguish’.8 The introduction to this little book was penned by the Bishop of Meaux, Emmanuel Marbeau. His reflections on the meaning of the devotion for France at war were not unlike — albeit under another national flag — those of the German bishops. His words were typical of the pastoral approach of French bishops at the beginning of the war and present all the aspects that seem to make the devotion to the Sacred Heart the predestined national devotion: Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the great Catholic and French devotion […]. It is on our land that Jesus deigned to appear to Blessed Margaret Mary. He asked of our country not only the worship of individual Christian souls but a social and national devotion. It seems that He wanted to make France the homeland of His heart. He requested the homage of its rulers and the building of a basilica; He desired to gain from the king the placing of the image of His heart on his arms and standards. What an honour for us to hear the heart of Christ beat in unison with French hearts!9 Prayers to the Sacred Heart in France were addressed to the glorious national victory under the sign of the Heart of Jesus; the motto, ‘Heart of Jesus, Save France!’ (‘Cœur de Jésus, sauvez la France!’), became a repeated battle cry. In September 1914, but even more so by May 1915, the popular monthly Le Messager du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus, published since 1861 by the Jesuits in France, already called for a campaign for ‘the little flag’ (‘le petit drapeau’), the French tricolour flag with the Heart of Jesus on it, which was meant to become the new national flag. With the motto in hoc signo vinces (‘in this sign you will conquer’), it would guarantee victory over Germany. Whoever



7 Michael Gatterer, Mit Jesu Herz durch Krieg zum Sieg!: die Herz-Jesu-Weihe und das Rundschreiben Benedikt XV. (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1915). 8 ‘Combien le culte du Sacré-Cœur est, par excellence, un culte du temps de guerre. Le Sacré-Cœur a voulu se révéler comme le salut de notre Patrie, et beaucoup de Français et de Françaises trouvent en Lui, dans leurs angoisses, le reconfort’; Joseph Aubert, Mois du Sacré-Cœur pour le temps de la guerre: à l’usage des fidèles et des soldats (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1915), pp. 5 ff. 9 ‘La dévotion au Sacré-Cœur de Jésus est la grande dévotion catholique et française […]. C’est sur notre terre que Jésus a daigné apparaître à la Bienheureuse Marguerite-Marie. Il a réclamé de notre pays, non seulement l’adoration individuelle des âmes chrétiennes, mais un culte social et national. On dirait qu’Il a voulu faire de la France comme la patrie de son Cœur. Il a demandé l’hommage de ses souverains, l’érection d’une Basilique, il désirait obtenir du roi la reproduction de l’image de son Cœur sur les armes et sur les étendards. Quel honneur pour nous que de sentir le Cœur du Christ battre à l’unisson des cœurs français!’; Aubert, Mois du Sacré-Cœur, p. 7.

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bore the flag with the Heart of Jesus on his uniform would receive protection. The May issue of Le Messager was dedicated to propagating the flag with the Heart of Jesus and to promoting public and national celebrations of the Heart of Jesus on 11 June 1915.

2. The Preference for Church Proposals Having Nationalistic Overtones The fusion of national themes and popular devotion corresponded, in France as in Germany, to the needs of clergy and laity. In the summer of 1916, the Kirchliches Handbuch für das Katholische Deutschland (Church Handbook for Catholic Germany) saw the consecration retrospectively as ‘a splendid day of commemoration for the Catholic people, who have responded everywhere to the call of the bishops and have demonstrated a profound religious sense, a high moral honesty and an unshakable faith in the Church and in the country’.10 The Kirchliches Handbuch described the active, massive participation of the faithful in the triduum of the Sacred Heart as a ‘worthy spectacle before God and the world’, adding that ‘[it was repeated] on 7 February, the day in which the Pope had called for a world day of prayer’.11 Other sources, however, cast doubt on this statement: in fact, German and French Catholics identified themselves far more with the national consecrations of January and June 1915 and with the prayers for victory than with that called by Benedict XV for ‘the whole Catholic world’ which aimed ‘at obtaining the longed-for peace’.12 The manifestly smaller turnout for the world day of prayer in February, which however the bishops had already feared before the prayers for peace, suggests where people’s preferences lay. A few days after the consecration, in his instructions for the day of prayer, the Bishop of Rottenburg Paul Wilhelm von Keppler explicitly urged his diocesan clergy ‘to announce and recommend the papal desire to the people […], inviting them to a diligent participation’.13 As an anticipatory apology for the expected low participation, Keppler cited the over saturation of the faithful

10 ‘Glänzende[n] Ehrentag des katholischen Volkes, das allenthalben in Masse dem Rufe der Bischöfe entsprach und tiefen religiösen Sinn, hohen sittlichen Ernst und unerschütterliche kirchliche wie vaterländische Treue bekundete’; Kirchliches Handbuch für das Katholische Deutschland, 5 (1916–18), p. 110. 11 ‘Würdige[s] Schauspiel vor Gott und der Welt’; ‘am 7. Februar [wiederholte], für welchen der Papst einen Weltgebetstag angeordnet hatte’; Kirchliches Handbuch für das Katholische Deutschland, 5 (1916–18), p. 110. 12 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 [accessed 10 January 2019]. On the episcopal instructions regarding the papal call for a day of prayer for Europe and the whole world during the war, see Katholisches Amtsblatt der Diözese Rottenburg, 22, 4 (1915), pp. 113–14. 13 ‘Dem Volke die Anordnung des Papstes bekannt zu geben und ans Herz zu legen […] und zu eifriger Teilnahme einzuladen’; Katholisches Amtsblatt der Diözese Rottenburg, 22, 4 (1915), p. 114.

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with official Church events. He made explicit reference to the fact that ‘the faithful have so recently celebrated the war triduum called by the bishops with a very praiseworthy zeal’. For this reason, however, it might be too much for the faithful ‘to participate also, in all eagerness, in the day of world prayer set by the highest pastor of the Church’.14 With this, Keppler gave the impression that the willingness of the faithful to participate in this demonstration of the whole Church should be solicited by every means available, because, in the context of the war, even fidelity to Rome by German Catholics would be put to the test. Certainly, the widespread fatigue among the faithful had an influence on the number of participants. However, it can be assumed that at that time the majority of German Catholics had difficulty in identifying themselves with the contents of the Pope’s peace initiative and the international orientation of the day of prayer. In the parish news of the community of Zimmern unter der Burg, in the deanery of Balingen in Baden-Württemberg, there is an account of the two great ecclesial events held at the beginning of 1915. ‘On 10 January, by episcopal decree, a day of prayer with the consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was held. The hours of prayer for the war were followed with zeal and 110 communions were administered’. It is possible to see the immense attractiveness and mobilizing force of the national consecration by the number of communions, because on the occasion of the world day of prayer for peace, held on 7 February in Zimmern at the behest of Benedict XV, only forty-two faithful received communion,15 and this despite the plenary indulgence that would be granted to those who received the sacrament that day.16

3. Benedict XV and the Sacred Heart: The Question of the National Flag and the Consecration of the Family The aforementioned attempts in France to place the emblem of the Sacred Heart on the tricolour flag, a gesture by which many hoped for victory, almost led to a split in the French episcopate, the majority of which voted in favour of the practice. Benedict XV was eventually forced to appeal to the bishops for moderation. Similarly, in order not to make the already tense relationship with the French State even more difficult, he declared himself against the promotion of the drapeau national, giving as a reason for this the defence of legitimate devotion as opposed to superstitious

14 ‘Die Gläubigen […] zwar erst vor Kurzem das von den Bischöfen angeordnete Kriegstriduum mit rühmlichstem Eifer begangen’; ‘sich auch an dem vom obersten Hirten der Kirche angesetzten Weltbettag mit allem Eifer zu beteiligen’; Katholisches Amtsblatt der Diözese Rottenburg, 22, 4 (1915), pp. 113–14. 15 Diözesanarchiv Rottenburg, M 160, Büschel 24. Pfarrchronik Zimmern unter der Burg, Dekanat Balingen, 1896–1928. 16 See the papal call for a day of prayer for Europe and the whole world during the war, in Katholisches Amtsblatt der Diözese Rottenburg, 22, 4 (1915), pp. 113 ff.

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interpretations.17 When asked about this by the Archbishop of Rouen, Louis-Ernest Dubois, the Pope responded that the Sacred Heart belonged to all Catholics, whereas the national flag was an exclusive matter of the state, and he firmly discouraged any to drive to add the emblem to the flag.18 The promotion by Benedict XV of the consecration of the family to the Heart of Jesus beginning in 1915, also called ‘the enthronement of the Sacred Heart in families’,19 can probably be interpreted as a reaction to the nationalization of the devotion. In 1889, the organizers of the prayer apostolate had already urged Christian families throughout the world to consecrate themselves to the Heart of Jesus. However, it was only in 1907, thanks to the eager promotion by Mateo Crawley-Boevey of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, that the consecration of the family, aimed at the recognition of the primacy of religion in the state and in the family, experienced a slow institutionalization.20 This consecration was to be a sign that Christ reigned in the family and that the principles of Catholic doctrine were recognized and practised in the daily life of the home. It was accompanied in 1913 and 1915 by attractive indulgences, and its annual renewal was provided with additional indulgences.21 World War I, with its social and individual upheavals, seemed to prove the ecclesial interpretations that saw in the war a divine punishment for the sins of modernity, such as the rejection of religious marriages (condemned by the clergy on several occasions) and the increase in extramarital births. The spread of the consecration of the family bore fruit in particular during the war: in 1915 alone more than three million families were consecrated throughout the world to the Heart of Jesus.22 The practice, like other forms of devotion that were demanded by the Church, was therefore nothing new, but it was accentuated by the political, social and religious conditions created by the conflict.23

17 See Denizot, Le Sacré-Cœur, p. 119, which refers to an article published on 16 June 1917 in Le Gaulois (a conservative daily that merged with Le Figaro in 1929). 18 Denizot, Le Sacré-Cœur, p. 127. 19 See Michael Gatterer, Die Weihe ans heiligste Herz Jesu, second edition of Mit Jesu Herz durch Krieg zum Sieg! (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1917), p. vi. See also Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7, 8 (1915), pp. 203–05. 20 See Friedrich Schwendimann, Herz-Jesu-Verehrung und Seelsorge (Luzern: Stocker, 1942), pp. 175 ff.; and Eric Steinhauer, ‘Crawley-Boevey, Mateo’, in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 34 vols (Hamm: Bautz, 1975–2013), XVIII (2001), cols 324–27. On the occasion of a pilgrimage to Paray-leMonial in 1907, Crawley-Boevey was healed of an incurable disease and decided to dedicate himself to the promotion of the consecration of the family to the Sacred Heart, receiving the support and encouragement of Pius X and Benedict XV. 21 See Familienweihe an das heiligste Herz Jesu nebst liturgisch geformter Hausandacht, ed. by Sebastian von Oer, 2nd edn (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1919), p. 23. 22 Familienweihe an das heiligste Herz Jesu, ed. by Oer, p. 23. 23 In the fifth edition of his classic work on the devotion to the Sacred Heart (the preface is from May 1919 even though the book was published only in 1921), Bainvel added a chapter on the ‘Tendances actuelles de la dévotion en France’, pp. 565–98. In this chapter, he described the specifics of the development of the devotion and its success during World War I. For Bainvel, the national consecration, the consecration of the family and of the soldiers, as well as the national flag were part of the traditional forms of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, which during the war received ‘a

the Nationalization of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart

Later, the promotion of the consecration of the family in France was given ample room in every issue of Le Messager. However, as far as the content was concerned, the ‘enthronement’ was connected to the introduction of the national flag of the Sacred Heart and to the official national consecration of France; with this it introduced an obstacle to the intentions of Benedict XV. The more families that consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart, the more attainable the request for a consecration of political France seemed.24 As the image of the Sacred Heart to be worshipped in the context of the enthronement, Le Messager also suggested, among other things, the national flag. According to the magazine, ideally the consecration of a family satisfied the four principal requests of the Sacred Heart to France: ‘The creation of a temple (i.e. the family house), the consecration of those in authority, the inscription of the Sacred Heart on the flag, and the celebration of a reparatory feast, the first Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament’.25 For the promoters of the devotion, the consecration of the family represented a devotional form that, in addition to the ideal of the Christian family, always carried with it a national-religious programme: the reign of Christ, thus of the Church, in the family and the state. During the war, the practice was promoted very vehemently by the French clergy in order to create a link between consecrated families and the institution of the Church that would last even after the war and ensure continuity in pastoral care. For the clergy, it was clear that an increase in religiosity was strictly connected to the threats of war. It was also very likely that the need for consolation and hence the demand for pastoral care would diminish with peace. An institutionalization of the devotion, as had been attempted with the consecration of the family, would counter this erosion. In war-torn Germany, too, the promoters of the devotion increasingly relied on this practice. While in the first year of the war, in the context of the consecration of the nation, the main point was the fact that the devotion did not clash with the belligerence, as the war stretched on forms of the cult that were also considered suitable for the post-war period acquired importance. As in France, the consecration of the family was the privileged means by which the faithful ensured for themselves the blessing and protection of family members, while the papal indulgences of 1915 made the Sacred Heart current and attractive. For the clergy, it offered the possibility to continue along the path already followed with devotion to it in harmony with the

new face’ (‘un nouveau relief ’). He observed that these cultural forms were not completely new but also that the war had produced developments that gave new impulses to the devotion: patriotic and religious aspects thus forged a successful alliance. See Jean-Vincent Bainvel, La dévotion au SacréCœur: doctrine, histoire, 5th edn (Paris: Beauchesne, 1921). 24 See ‘Règne du Cœur de Jésus: les familles du Sacré-Cœur’, Le Messager du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus, June 1916, pp. 359–65. 25 ‘Création d’un temple (c’est la maison familiale), consécration par celui qui détient l’autorité, inscription du Cœur divin sur le drapeau, et célébration d’une fête réparatrice, le 1er vendredi après l’octave du T. S. Sacrement’; ‘Règne du Cœur de Jésus: les familles du Sacré-Cœur’, Le Messager du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus, September 1918, pp. 546 ff.

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war, with the additional chance, however, of adapting it to changed conditions in peacetime. The changes in the propaganda in favour of the cult with the new accentuations became evident in the case of the aforementioned series by Gatterer, Mit Jesu Herz durch Krieg zum Sieg from 1915.26 The second edition gives an account of the new priorities: the idea of consecration took precedence over the promises of victory, and the title therefore renounced the connection between the war and victory, becoming Die Weihe ans heiligste Herz Jesu (The Consecration to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus).27 In the introduction to the new edition, the author explained the motives for the change: the idea of the consecration had to be kept alive and translated back into practice. Through the consecration of the family promoted by the Pope, drawing close to the Heart of Jesus should become a daily family practice. Gatterer had adapted his writing ‘to the particular purpose of the consecration of the family’,28 fully eliminating the military terminology and without returning to the pastoral letters on the consecration of the nation.

4. Conclusions Through the diffusion of the consecration of the family, Benedict XV seems to have had a strong desire to propose an alternative to the nationalistic appropriation of the devotion by proposing a form of devotion to Christ directed at all people, regardless of the nation to which they belonged.29 In 1920, he canonized Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, whose visions (which she had had from 1673 to 1675 at Paray-le-Monial in Burgundy) were the origins of the popularizing of the devotion. To conclude briefly, this step shows the high esteem that Benedict attributed to the devotion but also how important it seemed to him to emphasize the role of France in this context. The national appropriation of the devotion continued even after the end of the war: in 1919, the two-volume work by the German Jesuit Karl Richstätter on Die Herz-Jesu-Verehrung des deutschen Mittelalters (The Devotion to the Sacred Heart in Medieval Germany) was published and highly considered in German-speaking countries.30 In this work, the roots of the devotion were found only in the Middle Ages in Germany, while Alacoque was given a subordinate function as a tool ‘for making an old Germanic devotion the common heritage of the Catholic world’.31 The canonization was a clear sign of opposition on the part of the Holy See to the marginalization of the French visionary.

26 Gatterer, Mit Jesu Herz. 27 Gatterer, Die Weihe. 28 ‘Diesem besondern Zwecke der Familienweihe angepasst’; Gatterer, Die Weihe, p. vi. 29 See Sendbote, 55, March 1919, p. 39. 30 Karl Richstätter, Die Herz-Jesu-Verehrung des deutschen Mittelalters (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1919). 31 ‘Eine altdeutsche Andacht zum Gemeingut der katholischen Welt zu machen’; Karl Richstätter, ‘Ein niedersächsischer Apostel der altdeutschen Herz-Jesu-Verehrung’, Stimmen der Zeit, 55, 97 (1919), pp. 53–80 (p. 53).

the Nationalization of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart

Bibliography Aubert, Joseph, Mois du Sacré-Cœur pour le temps de la guerre: à l’usage des fidèles et des soldats (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1915) Bainvel, Jean-Vincent, La dévotion au Sacré-Cœur: doctrine, histoire, 5th edn (Paris: Beauchesne, 1921) Becker, Jean-Jacques, La France en guerre (1914–1918): la grande mutation (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1988) Busch, Norbert, Katholische Frömmigkeit und Moderne: die Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte des Herz-Jesu-Kultes in Deutschland zwischen Kulturkampf und Erstem Weltkrieg (Gütersloh: Kaiser, 1997) Denizot, Alain, Le Sacré-Cœur et la Grande Guerre (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1994) Fontana, Jacques, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 1990) Gatterer, Michael, Mit Jesu Herz durch Krieg zum Sieg!: die Herz-Jesu-Weihe und das Rundschreiben Benedikt XV. (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1915) Gatterer, Michael, Die Weihe ans heiligste Herz Jesu, second edition of Mit Jesu Herz durch Krieg zum Sieg! (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1917) Mayeur, Jean-Marie, ‘Le catholicisme français et la première guerre mondiale’, Francia, 2 (1974), pp. 377–97 Oer, Sebastian von, ed., Familienweihe an das heiligste Herz Jesu nebst liturgisch geformter Hausandacht, 2nd edn (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1919) Richstätter, Karl, Die Herz-Jesu-Verehrung des deutschen Mittelalters (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1919) Richstätter, Karl, ‘Ein niedersächsischer Apostel der altdeutschen Herz-Jesu-Verehrung’, Stimmen der Zeit, 55, 97 (1919), pp. 53–80 Scheidgen, Hermann-Josef, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg: die Mitglieder der Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz und ihre Ordinariate 1914–1918 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991) Schlager, Claudia, Kult und Krieg: Herz Jesu, Sacré Cœur, Christus Rex im deutsch-französischen Vergleich (1914–1925) (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 2011) Schlager, Claudia, ‘Waffenbrüderschaft im heiligsten Herzen Jesu: die deutsche und österreichische Herz-Jesu-Verehrung im Ersten Weltkrieg und die Propagierung des Tiroler Vorbildes’, in Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung, ed. by Hermann J. W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (Innsbruck: Wagner, 2006), pp. 165–79 Schwendimann, Friedrich, Herz-Jesu-Verehrung und Seelsorge (Luzern: Stocker, 1942) Steinhauer, Eric, ‘Crawley-Boevey, Mateo’, in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 34 vols (Hamm: Bautz, 1975–2013), XVIII (2001), cols 324–27

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Gianmaria Zamagni

‘…and yet does not touch us’: A Survey of European Theology during the Pontificate of Benedict XV

Therefore, be still a while from thy own thoughts, searching, seeking, desires, and imaginations, and be stayed in the principle of God in thee, to stay thy mind upon God, up to God; and thou wilt find strength from him and find him to be a present help in time of trouble, in need, and to be a God at hand.1

1.

Premise: A Take on a History of the Church and of Theology

A contribution to the work on Pope Benedict XV in the context of World War I offers the historian of Church and theology several different possibilities. One can consider both the Church and theology as objects of study — in the given period —, as much as the interaction between the two. Indeed, this interaction is often interesting. This means to consider that important decisions in the history of the Church are connected sometimes very closely with century-old traditions, models and theological doctrines, which are sometimes so glaring that they are seemingly invisible to the — either naive or ideological — ‘profane’ historian. Overlooking, or worse, denigrating this profound history not only leads to a historiographical imprecision, but also to a lack of attention to entire theological premises, which can also make even the most pragmatic or political decisions and stances assumed by the ecclesiastic protagonists sometimes largely incomprehensible.



1 George Fox, ‘Letter to Lady Elizabeth Claypole, 1658’, in Journal of George Fox, ed. by John L. Nickalls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), pp. 346–47.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 837–852 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118807

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However, it is also possible to compare critically Church history with the history of theology. Theological speculation raises at times issues of great theoretical significance, of urgent importance and — especially for believers and for the Church — of an almost prophetic sensitivity. Were these issues always considered, their prophetic cry always heard? I am here posing this question along two fundamental methodological axes — a European dimension (to be seen both as a limitation and as a resource) and an ecumenical openness — in the following manner: what were the great theological concerns that stirred the most sensitive spirits in Europe during Giacomo Della Chiesa’s pontificate and had the most extensive repercussion in the following years? I will focus here on three classic works by different authors that changed the fate of theology for decades, to the point that their reach extended far beyond the confines of their respective disciplines. Here we shall try briefly to identify their originality and, if possible, the common features they share, after which I will discuss how and when they were received in Italy. Our aim, without claiming to be exhaustive, is to outline a European theological triptych which can be useful as a background for those in these volumes who describe the character, deeds and theology of Pope Benedict XV.

2. Wrocław–Marburg, 1917: The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto The first of the works to be dealt with, to illustrate some major tendencies in European theology in the years of Benedict XV’s pontificate, is the classic work by Rudolf Otto. Otto in 1917 held the chair of Systematic Theology at the University of Breslau (today Wrocław, in Poland), and in the course of the same year was called to the University of Marburg. The title of his magnum opus in English is The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Although it is a fundamental text in the study of comparative religions still today, in his preface Otto said that he would be honoured if it were to be ‘regarded as a piece of serious German theology’.2 For this reason (besides the importance of the chair he held) the text is justifiably included in the present review. It is already possible to see the aim of the work in the very opening words: It is essential to every theistic conception of God, and most of all to the Christian, that it designates and precisely characterizes Deity by the attributes Spirit, Reason, Purpose, Good Will, Supreme Power, Unity, Selfhood. The nature of God is thus thought of by analogy with our human nature of reason and personality; only, whereas in ourselves we are aware of this as qualified by restriction and limitation,



2 ‘If [the book] may be regarded as a piece of serious German theology, the reward would be enough for him’ (‘Darf es als ein Stück ernster deutscher Theologenarbeit gelten, so wäre ihm das Lohnes genug’); Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige: über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, 17th edn (Gotha: Leopold Klotz, 1929), p. vii. The emphasis is my own.

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as applied to God the attributes we use are ‘completed’, i.e. thought as absolute and unqualified.3 Contrary to a conception of the divine fundamentally marked by an absolutization of human goodness (or of the other virtues), which as such is an easy target for criticism à la Feuerbach, Otto’s masterpiece gradually led to considering the properly irrational aspects of the divine. For example, we see this in his invitation to remove moral connotations from the experience of the religious: The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no further; […] Next, in the probing and analysis of such states of the soul as that of solemn worship, it will be well if regard be paid to what is unique in them rather than to what they have in common with other similar states. To be rapt in worship is one thing; to be morally uplifted by the contemplation of a good deed is another; and it is not to their common features but to those elements of emotional content peculiar to the first that we would have attention directed as precisely as possible.4 Of the book’s many aspects that could be isolated and highlighted, it seems important to me to underline Otto’s move of subtracting anything identified with (or likened to) ethics from his conception of the divine. This was not a naive operation and, indeed, is returned to again and again throughout the work when the author deals with the terrifying aspect of the divine. It will be again at once apparent that in the use of this word we are not concerned with a genuine intellectual ‘concept’, but only with a sort of illustrative substitute for a concept. ‘Wrath’ here is the ‘ideogram’ of a unique emotional moment in religious experience, a moment whose singularly daunting and awe-inspiring character must be gravely disturbing to those persons who will recognize nothing

3 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 1 = Otto, Das Heilige, p. 1: ‘Für jede theistische Gottesidee überhaupt, ausnehmend und überragend aber für die christliche, ist es wesentlich, daß durch sie die Gottheit in klarer Bestimmtheit gefaßt und bezeichnet werde mit Prädikate wie Geist, Vernunft, Wille, zwecksetzender Wille, guter Wille, Allmacht, Wesenseinheit, Bewußtsein und ähnlichen, und daß sie somit zugleich gedacht werde in Entsprechung zu dem Persönlich-Vernünftigen, wie es der Mensch in beschränkter und gehemmter Form in sich selber gewahr wird. (Zugleich werden alle diese Prädikate am Göttlichen als “absolute” das heißt als “vollendete” gedacht)’. 4 Otto, The Idea of the Holy, p. 8 = Otto, Das Heilige, p. 8: ‘Wir fordern auf, sich auf einen Moment starker und möglichst einseitiger religiöser Erregtheit zu besinnen. Wer das nicht kann oder solche Momente überhaupt nicht hat, ist gebeten, nicht weiter zu lesen; […] Wir fordern weiter auf, bei Prüfung und Zerlegung solcher Momente und Seelen-zustände feiernder Andacht und Ergriffenheit, möglichst genau auf das zu achten, was sie mit Zuständen etwa nur sittlicher Erhobenheit bei Beschauung einer guten Tat nicht gemein, sondern was sie an Gefühlsinhalten vor ihnen voraus und für sich besonders haben’.

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in the divine nature but goodness, gentleness, love, and a sort of confidential intimacy, in a word, only those aspects of God which turn towards the world of men.5 In Otto’s reconstruction, therefore, the divine was more originally conceived of as ‘numinous’, ‘tremendous’, ‘fascinans’ (all original adjectives from the 1917 work),6 while ethical aspects, of goodness and a sense of moral completeness, were considered a rationalization in that they occurred after the religious experience and were, so to speak, fake.7 As is well known, the initial reception of Otto’s work in Italy is to be attributed to Ernesto Buonaiuti and dates to the mid-1920s (we therefore exceed the chronological framework set by the years of Benedict XV’s pontificate). After having commissioned a student to review it for the Bollettino di studi storico-religiosi8 at the end of 1926, his translation of Das Heilige (Il sacro) was published in Bologna by Nicola Zanichelli’s publishing house.9 In the preface, Buonaiuti observed that the terminology and the ‘schematic representation’ of Il sacro could ‘offer a valid aid in unifying the apologetic positions in all positive religious forms’.10 The meaning of these words, however, needs to be clarified by those that follow, which were written in an apology of modernism. The latter, as described by the Roman priest, in fact sought a renewal in Catholic culture and a defence of it, postulating the pre-dialectical nature of the religious experience and the continuity between the preaching of the

5 Otto, The Idea of the Holy, p. 19 = Otto, Das Heilige, p. 22: ‘Dabei ist wieder sogleich einleuchtend, daß wir es bei diesem Wort nicht mit einem eigentlichen, verständigen “Begriffe” zu tun haben, sondern nur mit einem Begriffs-Ähnlichen, mit einem Ideogramm oder reinen Deute-Zeichen eines eigentümlichen Gefühlsmomente im religiösen Erleben, eines solchen aber, das seltsam abdrängenden, mit Scheu erfüllenden Charakters ist und durchaus die Kreise derer stört, die nur Güte, Milde, Liebe, Vertraubarkeit und im allgemeinen nur Momente der Welt-Zugekehrtheit im Göttlichen anerkennen wollen’. 6 See now Michael Stausberg, ‘The Sacred, the Holy, the Numinous — and Religion: On the Emergence and Early History of a Terminological Constellation’, Religion, 47, 4 (2017), pp. 557–90. 7 See also Stefano Bancalari, ‘Rudolf Otto, filosofo della religione’, in Rudolf Otto, Opere, ed. by Stefano Bancalari (Pisa: Serra, 2010), pp. 9–51 (p. 31): ‘From the very first lines of the work, Otto insists on the properly “irrational” characteristic of religion, whose numinous character must be brought out in contrast to the “tendency towards rationalization [that] still predominates today, and not only in theology, but also in religious research in general”’ (‘Sin dalle primissime battute dell’opera, Otto insiste energicamente sul tratto propriamente “irrazionale” della religione, il cui carattere numinoso deve esser fatto emergere per contrasto rispetto alla “tendenza alla razionalizzazione [che] predomina ancor oggi, e non soltanto nella teologia, ma anche nelle ricerche religiose in generale”’). 8 Isabella Grassi, ‘Otto, Das Heilige’, Bollettino di studi storico-religiosi, 1 (1921), pp. 110–19. 9 Rudolf Otto, Il sacro: l’irrazionale nell’idea del divino e la sua relazione al razionale (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926). See Barbara Faes, ‘Marcella Ravà, Ernesto Buonaiuti e un’inedita revisione de Il sacro di Rudolf Otto’, Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni, 79, 1 (2013), pp. 215–38. For the history of how it was received in Italy, see Giovanni Rota, ‘Su Rudolf Otto e sulla diffusione del suo pensiero in Italia’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 67, 2 (2012), pp. 317–39. 10 ‘Raffigurazione schematica’; ‘offrire un soccorso valido alla unificazione delle posizioni apologetiche in tutte le forme religiose positive’; Ernesto Buonaiuti, ‘Prefazione’, in Otto, Il sacro, pp. 11–12.

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Gospel and the constitution of the Church.11 As the historian of religions Fausto Parente observed, Buonaiuti’s text was rejected by Otto as a preface to the Italian translation of his work.12 Buonaiuti then referred to another contribution he had made on the subject, which was published in the journal that he edited. Beyond an admiration for the German historian of religions, he did not seem to adopt Otto’s fundamental methodological approach that I have just examined: Indeed, from its roughest and most rudimentary manifestations, laden with magical elements and saturated with hedonistic concerns, human religiosity betrays its solid interdependence with crepuscular forms of morality, which is a responsibility recognized in acts in which the relationships of the individual with the group play out, acts in which the germ of conscious life unfolds. […] But Otto probably proceeds rather arbitrarily, isolating this θεῖα [sic] ὀργή in his typical expressions from any correlation to morality.13

11 Buonaiuti, ‘Prefazione’, p. 12: ‘When modernism, in its attempts at Catholic cultural renewal, placed the cornerstones of its defence of religiosity and Catholicism in the postulates of the pre-dialectical nature of the experience of the divine, and of the absolute historical continuity between the Gospel message and the constitution of the Church, some Italian philosopher, who had the spirit of the Inquisition at heart, set himself, God knows with what generosity, to strengthening the opponents of the new religious orientations, labelling modernists with the term of latecomers’ (‘Quando il modernismo, nei suoi tentativi di rinnovamento culturale cattolico, pose i capisaldi della sua difesa della religiosità e del cattolicesimo nei postulati della predialetticità dell’esperienza del divino, e della assoluta continuità storica fra il messaggio evangelico e la costituzione della chiesa, qualche filosofo italiano, che aveva in cuore lo spirito dell’Inquisizione, si diede, Dio sa con quale generosità, a dar man forte agli oppugnatori dei nuovi orientamenti religiosi, affibbiando ai modernisti la qualifica di ritardatari’); see Benedetto Croce, Pagine sparse, ed. by Giovanni Castellano, 5 vols (Naples: Ricciardi, 1919–27), I/1 (1919), pp. 282 ff. See now Alessandro Aprile, ‘Ernesto Buonaiuti–Giovanni Gentile: una corrispondenza inedita’, Modernism: rivista annuale di storia del riformismo religioso in età contemporanea, 2 (2016), pp. 264–77 (p. 272); see also, Francesca Ferrara, Alle origini del ‘Sacro’: l’esperienza religiosa in Rudolf Otto (Milan: Mimesis, 2017). 12 Fausto Parente, ‘Buonaiuti e gli altri storici del cristianesimo e della Chiesa antica’, in Ernesto Buonaiuti storico del cristianesimo: a trent’anni dalla morte, ed. by Raffaello Morghen (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1978), pp. 181–85. See now also Gianmaria Zamagni, Das ‘Ende des konstantinischen Zeitalters’ und die Modelle aus der Geschichte für eine ‘neue Christenheit’: eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2018), pp. 109–37. 13 ‘Fin dalle manifestazioni, infatti, più rozze e rudimentali, cariche di elementi magici e sature di preoccupazioni edonistiche, la religiosità umana tradisce la propria salda interdipendenza con le forme crepuscolari della morale, che è responsabilità riconosciuta degli atti in cui si esplicano i rapporti del singolo con il gruppo, nel cui grembo si svolge la sua vita cosciente. […] Ma, probabilmente, l’Otto procede un po’ arbitrariamente isolando questa θεῖα [sic] ὀργή, nelle sue manifestazioni tipiche, da ogni correlazione con la moralità’; Ernesto Buonaiuti, ‘La religione nella vita dello spirito’, Ricerche religiose, 2, 3 (1926), pp. 193–217 (pp. 200, 206). Otto’s centrality in the last phase of Buonaiuti’s life is well known; see, for example, Domenico Grasso, Il cristianesimo di Ernesto Buonaiuti (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1953); Lorenzo Bedeschi, Buonaiuti, il Concordato e la Chiesa: con un’appendice di lettere inedite (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1970), pp. 55 ff.; Francesco Margiotta Broglio, ‘Buonaiuti fra Dio e Cesare’, Nuova Antologia, 116, 2139 (1981), pp. 115–23; and Maurilio Guasco, Modernismo: i fatti, le idee, i personaggi (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1995), pp. 110–16.

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If this article, even partly, reflects the content of the first preface to the Italian translation of Das Heilige, then Otto’s rejection of it is not surprising. Nevertheless, Buonaiuti seems to acknowledge the meaning of Otto’s work in the history of theology. ‘Contemporary religious speculation […] seeks a philosophy of religiosity, in which the representation of good and evil — pale and evanescent in critical idealism — is driven to that dramatic exasperation that it needs in order to assume the character of sacred mystery’.14 Karl Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans, a couple of years later than The Idea of the Holy, expresses a similar ‘dramatic’ necessity.

3. Safenwil (Aargau Canton), 1919: The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth A second work of great impact which must be at the centre in this attempt to investigate the major trends in continental European theology (ignoring confessional barriers) between 1914 and 1922 is Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, first published in Bern in 1919.15 This is the work that inaugurated the so-called ‘dialectical theology’ and is a classic that marked a watershed with the theology that preceded it. In fact, with respect to the worldview of the previous years, dialectical theology assumed a critical attitude and highlighted the radical discontinuity that exists between human history — with its religious expressions, institutions and ethics — and divine revelation that asks to be recognized in its unsurpassable transcendence and its character of being ‘other’ in regard to every worldly reality.16

14 ‘[La] speculazione religiosa contemporanea […] cerca una filosofia della religiosità, in cui la raffigurazione del bene e del male, pallida ed evanescente nell’idealismo critico, sia sospinta a quella esasperazione drammatica di cui ha bisogno, per assumere i caratteri del mistero sacro’; Buonaiuti, La religione, pp. 203 ff.; this can be compared to the review of Otto’s work by Mario Niccoli, Ricerche religiose, 2, 6 (1926), pp. 566–70. 15 Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Bern: Bäschlin, 1919). The second edition, even more marked by dialectical theology, was published in Zurich in 1922. Incidentally, the Römerbrief is not exempt from a debt to Otto’s work that we have just examined here. In fact, according to Rosino Gibellini, Barth ultimately owed the concept of Deus absconditus precisely to Otto: Rosino Gibellini, La teologia del XX secolo (Brescia: Queriniana, 1992), p. 18. 16 ‘La teologia dialettica assume un atteggiamento critico e sottolinea la radicale discontinuità esistente tra la storia umana — con le sue espressioni religiose, le istituzioni, l’etica — e la rivelazione divina che chiede di essere riconosciuta nella sua insuperabile trascendenza e nel suo carattere “altro” rispetto a ogni realtà mondana’; Angelo Maffeis, ‘Ecumenismo e teologia’, in La teologia del XX secolo: un bilancio, ed. by Giacomo Canobbio and Piero Coda, 3 vols (Rome: Città Nuova, 2003), III, p. 23. See also Gibellini, La teologia, pp. 16–19.

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As Barth himself wrote, a break with the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher was necessary in preaching, in the pastoral aspect and also in the teaching of theology.17 Beginning with the preface to its first edition in 1919, Barth emphasized the methodological discontinuity that he impressed upon his own work: The historical-critical method of biblical investigation has its rightful place: it is concerned with the preparation of the intelligence — and this can never be superfluous. But, were I driven to choose between it and the venerable doctrine of Inspiration, I should without hesitation adopt the latter, which has a broader, deeper, more important justification. The doctrine of Inspiration is concerned with the labour of apprehending, without which no technical equipment, however complete, is of any use whatever.18

17 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Schleiermacher-Auswahl, afterword by Karl Barth, 2nd edn (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1980), pp. 294 ff.: ‘It was Thurneysen who once whispered the phrase to me in private: what we needed for preaching, teaching and pastoral care was a “completely different” theological foundation. For Schleiermacher, obviously, it did not go any further […]. But on what else would we base it on? […] In factual and practical terms, something much more obvious then became apparent to us: namely, the attempt, in a renewed learning of the theological ABCs, to engage in reading and interpreting of the Old and New Testaments once again and more contemplatively than before. Lo and behold, they began to speak to us very differently from what we had heard in the school of the then “modern” theology. On the morning after the day Thurneysen had whispered to me, I turned to the Letter to the Romans, under an apple tree, with all the armaments available to me at the time. It was the text that I had already in Confirmation class (in 1901–02) heard to be pivotal. I began reading it as if I had never read it before: deliberately writing down, point by point, what I found […] I read and read and wrote and wrote’ (‘Thurneysen war es, der mir einmal unter vier Augen das Stichwort halblaut zuflüsterte: Was wir für Predigt, Unterricht und Seelsorge brauchten, sei eine “ganz andere” theologische Grundlegung. Von Schleiermacher aus ging es offenbar nicht weiter […]. Aber wo sollten wir sonst einsetzen? […] Faktisch-praktisch drängte sich uns dann bekanntlich etwas viel Naheliegenderes auf: nämlich der Versuch, bei einem erneuten Erlernen des theologischen ABC noch einmal und besinnlicher als zuvor mit der Lektüre und Auslegung der Schriften des Alten und Neuen Testaments einzusetzen. Und siehe da: sie begannen zu uns zu reden — sehr anders, als wir sie in der Schule der damals “modernen” Theologie reden hören zu müssen gemeint haben. Am Morgen nach dem Tag, an dem Thurneysen mir jenes allgemein gehaltene Flüsterwort gesagt hatte, begann ich mich, immerhin mit allem mir damals zugänglichen Rüstzeug, unter einem Apfelbaum dem Römerbrief zuzuwenden. Es war der Text, von dem ich schon im Konfirmanden-Unterricht (1901/2) gehört hatte, daß es sich in ihm um Zentrales handle. Ich begann ihn zu lesen, als hätte ich ihn noch nie gelesen: nicht ohne das Gefundene Punkt für Punkt bedächtig aufzuschreiben […] ich las und las und schrieb und schrieb’). 18 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 1 = Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1947), p. v: ‘Die historisch-kritische Methode der Bibelforschung hat ihr Recht: sie weist hin auf eine Vorbereitung des Verständnisses, die nirgends überflüssig ist. Aber wenn ich wählen müßte zwischen ihr und der alten Inspirationslehre, ich würde entschlossen zu der letztern greifen: sie hat das größere, tiefere, wichtigere Recht, weil sie auf die Arbeit des Verstehens selbst hinweist, ohne die alle Zurüstung wertlos is’. See now Wim A. Dreyer, ‘Karl Barth’s Römerbrief: A Turning Point in Protestant Theology’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 43, 3 (2017), pp. 1–18 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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In 1922, that discontinuity would then be expressed in its most meaningful theological significance in the following terms: In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it. And, precisely because it does not touch it, it touches it as its frontier — as the new world. […] What [Christ] was, He is. But what He is underlies what He was. There is here no merging or fusion of God and man, no exaltation of humanity to divinity, no overflowing of God into human nature. What touches us — and yet does not touch us — in Jesus the Christ is the Kingdom of God who is both Creator and Redeemer.19 Barth’s counterpoint was aimed at the image conveyed by liberal Protestant theology that (as Adolf von Harnack, for example, recalls) emphasized Jesus’s moral aspect, making him above all (or, if you prefer, reducing him to) an ethics master.20 In the case of The Epistle to the Romans, its first reception in Italy also came several years after the work’s publication (so well outside of the chronological period considered here), in 1941 to be precise. In that year, the philosopher Piero Martinetti published his article ‘Il commento di Karl Barth sull’epistola ai Romani’.21 After an extensive, careful analysis of its major themes and sub-currents, Martinetti’s criticism is, briefly, that: Karl Barth’s theology is a vigorous reaction to all forms of materializing religious life, but also, and even more, a vigorous reaction to doctrinarianism and theological historicism. To contest the latter he rightly emphasizes that historical information in history and religious literature are not an end in themselves. They must only be a point of departure for a speculative reflection that, starting from a higher point of view, should penetrate and appropriate the living nucleus of the doctrinal or 19 Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 30 = Barth, Der Römerbrief, p. 6: ‘In der Auferstehung berührt die neue Welt des Heiligen Geistes die alte Welt des Fleisches. Aber sie berührt sie wie die Tangente einen Kreis, ohne sie zu berühren, und gerade indem sie sie nicht berührt, berührt sie sie als ihre Begrenzung, als neue Welt. […] Indem er war, ist er; aber indem er ist, liegt was er war, dahinten. Keine Vermählung und Verschmelzung zwischen Gott und Mensch findet hier statt, kein Aufschwung des Menschen ins göttliche und keine Ergießung Gottes ins menschliche Wesen, sondern was uns in Jesus dem Christus berührt, indem es uns nicht berührt, das ist das Reich Gottes, des Schöpfers und Erlösers’ (this part is not present in the first edition in 1919). 20 See Adolf von Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1899–1900); ET: What is Christianity?, trans. by Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901). 21 Piero Martinetti, ‘Il commento di Karl Barth sull’epistola ai Romani’, Rivista di filosofia, 1–2 (1941), pp. 1–28, reissued as an excerpt (Lodi: Tipografia Editrice G. Biancardi, 1941). Republished in Piero Martinetti, Ragione e fede: saggi religiosi (Turin: Einaudi, 1942), pp. 453–84, then in Piero Martinetti, Ragione e fede: saggi religiosi (Naples: Guida, 1972), pp. 423–51. For the history of how Römerbrief was received in Italy, see Giampiero Bof, ‘La ricezione di Barth in Italia’, in Barth contemporaneo, ed. by Sergio Rostagno (Turin: Claudiana, 1990), pp. 161–96 (on Martinetti see pp. 169–71) and on its reception elsewhere: Benjamin Dahlke, Die katholische Rezeption Karl Barths: Theologische Erneuerung im Vorfeld des zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), p. 2. Here it may also be interesting to note how it was precisely Martinetti who, as early as in 1934, categorized Otto and Barth under the common label of ‘mystical irrationalism’: Piero Martinetti, Gesù Cristo e il Cristianesimo (Milan: Edizioni della Rivista di filosofia, 1934), pp. 104 and 107.

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historical document. Thus, historical criticism is welcome, but it is not enough. In this, Barth is right.22 With his precise definitions, Martinetti captures Barth’s intention not to confuse the divine, eternal sphere with the finite, human one. Nevertheless, he also reveals a fundamental paradox (regarding the place of the redeemed humanity in the world, to put it briefly) and emphasizes how problematic the survival of a moral sphere might be in Barth’s design. All that is culture, intellectual activity or morality is vanity. True life begins only with death, with the complete cessation of all human being, having or acting. But such a rigidly understood dualism would devalue all religious, moral and social values. How then would you explain morality, which to a large extent is an interweaving of purely human relationships?23 These paradoxes and problems also reflect on the value of Jesus’s life as an object of research even before its being a model of moral conduct. This focus on the problem leads us to the third part of this article which exposes a further, particular aspect of the same criticism that Otto and Barth levelled at nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal theology: the criticism concerning the meaning of Jesus’s life and the very possibility of a purely historical inquiry.24

4. Marburg, 1921: The History of the Synoptic Tradition by Rudolf Bultmann The third book dealt with here is Rudolf Bultmann’s The History of the Synoptic Tradition, originally published in 1921. This first great work of the Marburg theologian, working in dialectical theology at the time, was also extremely influential, as has been observed, on his later works.25 From the beginning of The History of the Synoptic Tradition, his critical intention is clear, although expressed with great elegance and finesse:

22 ‘La teologia di Karl Barth è un’energica reazione contro ogni forma di materializzazione della vita religiosa, ma anche e più un’energica reazione contro il dottrinarismo e lo storicismo teologico. Contro quest’ultimo giustamente egli accentua che i dati storici nella storia e nella letteratura religiosa non sono fine a sé; essi debbono essere solo il punto di partenza d’una riflessione speculativa, che, partendo da un punto di vista più alto, deve penetrare ed appropriarsi il nucleo vivente del documento dottrinale o storico. Perciò ben venga la critica storica; ma essa non basta; in ciò il Barth ha ragione’; Martinetti, ‘Il commento di Karl Barth’, p. 23. 23 ‘Tutto ciò che è cultura, attività intellettuale o morale è vanità; la vita vera comincia solo con la morte, con la cessazione completa di ogni essere, avere e agire umano. Ma un dualismo così rigidamente inteso svaluterebbe tutti i valori religiosi, morali e sociali. Come spiegherebbe allora la morale, che è in grandissima parte un intreccio di rapporti puramente umani?’; Martinetti, ‘Il commento di Karl Barth’, p. 26. 24 Exemplary in this sense, of course, is the homonymous work by Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1863). 25 See Carmine Benincasa, ‘Introduzione all’edizione italiana’, in Rudolf Bultmann, Storia dei vangeli sinottici (Bologna: EDB, 1969), pp. 7–22.

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When Synoptic criticism reached the conclusion that Mark was the oldest Gospel and that it also lay behind the structure of Matthew and Luke, the critics, happy about their conclusion, quickly and readily jumped to another, and found in Mark’s presentation of the life of Jesus — ‘perhaps with some adjustment in detail’ — the actual course of historical events.26 After having reconstructed the formation of the synoptic tradition (that is, of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke) according to a method marked by the history of literary forms (the so-called formgeschichtliche Methode, or form criticism), which highlights the — highly communitarian and cultic — context in and scope with which the Gospels were written, the particular theme of the life of Jesus explicitly re-emerges in the conclusions of the work: Their own specific characteristic, a creation of Mark, can be understood only from the character of the Christian kerygma […]. The Christ who is preached is not the historic Jesus, but the Christ of the faith and the cult. Hence in the foreground of the preaching of Christ stands the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the saving acts which are known by faith and become effective for the believer in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.27 The polemical antithesis here is to be found in the research on the historical Jesus, which already had a long history.28 What the Gospels speak of, Bultmann writes, is not the historical Jesus as much as the Christ of faith.29

26 Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), p. 1 = Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), p. 1: ‘Als die Arbeit am synoptischen Problem zu dem Ergebnis gelangt war, daß Mk das älteste unserer Evangelien sei, das auch dem Aufriß des Mt und Lk zugrunde liege, ging man, froh über das Ergebnis, vorschnell einen großen Schritt weiter und fand in der Darstellung des Mk vom Leben Jesu — “vielleicht unter Abstrichen im einzelnen” — den geschichtlichen Verlauf wieder’. On Jesus in the History of the Synoptic Tradition, see Ernst Baasland, ‘Consistent Jesus Research? Bultmann’s Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (1921) and Jesus (1926) Revisited’, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 91, 3 (2015), pp. 415–60. 27 Bultmann, The History, p. 370 = Bultmann, Die Geschichte, p. 396: ‘Ihr bestimmter, durch Mk geschaffener Charakter aber läßt sich nur verstehen aus dem Charakter des christlichen Kerygmas […] Der Christus, der verkündigt wird, ist nicht der historische Jesus, sondern der Christus des Glaubens und des Kultes. Im Vordergrund der Christusverkündigung stehen deshalb der Tod und die Auferstehung Jesu Christi als die Heilstatsachen, die im Glauben bekannt und in Taufe und Herrenmahl für den Glaubenden wirksam werden’. 28 As is known, the so-called Quest is divided into three phases: the first, from the eighteenth century (with Hermann Samuel Reimarus) up to, precisely, Bultmann; the second Quest was launched in 1954 by Ernst Käsemann; and the third in 1985 by E. P. Sanders. See, at least, the classic by Albert Schweitzer, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1913), which was the second, expanded version of the work published as Albert Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der Leben, Jesu forschung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1906). See also Giancarlo Gaeta, Il Gesù moderno (Turin: Einaudi, 2010). 29 Remember that Martin Kähler’s Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus (Leipzig: A. Deichert) was published in 1892.

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As mentioned above, the History of the Synoptic Tradition constitutes only the first great work of this prolific and complex author. The goal here is not to condense a lifetime of research into just a few lines but to present this work alongside The Idea of the Holy and The Epistle to the Romans to draw, from all three, a direction and meaning of theological mainlines almost a century later. Before reaching that point, however, we must speak of the reception of Bultmann’s work, not just in Italy: obviously since it was a work that was published only in 1921 and its reception did not occur before World War II,30 it exceeds once again, and by far, the chronological framework considered here. Just taking into consideration the first Italian monograph dedicated to Bultmann, L’Evangelo e il mito nel pensiero di Rudolf Bultmann by Giovanni Miegge, it should, first, be noted how Miegge summarized the aim of the History of the Synoptic Tradition, dealing with the theme of the ‘lives of Jesus’ from the very beginning: If the documents are, in all their breadth, an expression of the faith of the Church that has handed them down, it is obvious that whoever seeks to understand them must place themselves upon the grounds of the Church’s faith. The search for the ‘historical Jesus’, which has so occupied liberal criticism, is frivolous. Only the ‘historical Christ’, the only one we can still perceive through the documents of the New Testament, is the Christ of faith.31

30 See Giovanni Miegge, L’Evangelo e il mito nel pensiero di Rudolf Bultmann (Milan: Comunità, 1956); Franco Bianco, Distruzione e riconquista del mito: il problema della storia come orizzonte e fondamento della demitizzazione (Rome: Silva, 1961); Il problema della demitizzazione, ed. by Enrico Castelli (Padua: CEDAM, 1961); Mario Miegge, ‘A proposito del saggio di R. Bultmann: storia ed escatologia’, in Il protestante nella storia, ed. by Mario Miegge (Turin: Claudiana, 1970), pp. 155–71; Italo Mancini, ‘Sulla cristologia di Bultmann’, in Rudolf Bultmann, Gesù (Brescia: Queriniana, 1972), pp. 9–93. On the history of his reception in Italy, see Lino Randellini, ‘Bultmann in Italia’, Teologia, 2, 4 (1977), pp. 303–31 and 3, 1 (1978), pp. 56–92; Mauro Pesce, ‘L’odierna ricezione cattolica dell’ermeneutica di Bultmann’, Filosofia e teologia, 5, 1 (1991), pp. 117–20; and Aldo Moda, ‘La ricezione della teologia di Rudolf Bultmann in Italia’, in Per una critica della ragione teologica, ed. by Aldo Moda (Padua: Messaggero, 1993). 31 ‘Se i documenti sono, in tutta la loro estensione, l’espressione della fede della Chiesa che li ha tramandati, è evidente che chi vuole intenderli deve porsi sul terreno della fede della Chiesa. È vana la ricerca di un “Gesù storico” che aveva tanto occupato la critica liberale. Il solo “Cristo storico”, il solo che possiamo ancora percepire attraverso i documenti neotestamentari, è il Cristo della fede’; Miegge, L’Evangelo e il mito, p. 24. See also what Miegge writes in his conclusions: ‘Jesus’s historical importance for us does not depend so much on his person as on the interpretation that his disciples gave him when they recognized, in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, the beginning of that kingdom, the explosive or immanent eschatological fact itself in the urgent eschatological message’ (‘L’importanza storica di Gesù non dipende tanto per noi dalla sua persona, quanto dalla interpretazione che ne hanno dato i suoi discepoli, quando hanno riconosciuto nel suo annuncio del Regno di Dio l’inizio di quel regno, nell’urgente messaggio escatologico il fatto stesso escatologico irrompente o immanente’); Miegge, L’Evangelo e il mito, p. 147. The second Quest for the historical Jesus began with Ernst Käsemann’s work two years earlier in 1954. On G. Miegge see Ermanno Genre and Sergio Rostagno, Una visione della vita e della teologia: Giovanni Miegge (1900–1961) (Turin: Claudiana, 2002).

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Miegge himself reads this ‘reduction of the historical Christ to the Christ of faith’ therefore corresponding to the previous, opposite reduction of the liberal theology and considers it to have become a shared sentiment toward the middle of the 1920s: This constitutes, so to say, a common climate around 1925, among the proponents of ‘dialectical theology’, to which Bultmann, at the time, also belonged. It is a reaction against the moralizing simplification of the ‘historical Jesus’, so common in theological liberalism, which in the first quarter of the century was made unsustainable on the exegetical plane by Schweitzer’s eschatological theory and by studies on the history of religions, which rediscovered the mystical and soteriological aspects of primitive Christianity.32 It is, to a large degree, the interpretation shared here. Miegge, a Waldensian by confession, however, did not fail to point out explicitly, and directly also, the criticisms of the second, contrary reduction. A general criticism was that, highlighting existential aspects against the properly historical ones, risked transforming revelation itself into a ‘myth’.33 A critical point that Miegge makes can be found where he objects to Bultmann: It is necessary to affirm the truth and the objective reality of the historical and supra-historical event that is summed up in the name of Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected far more firmly than he happens to say: the Christian faith stands and falls with this objective truth.34

5. Conclusions The attempt is here to identify — in three works from between 1914 and 1922, which are independent but not lacking in close and explicit connections — an idea of the direction taken by European continental theology during the years of Giacomo Della Chiesa’s pontificate. In addition to communicating some of the essential content of these masterpieces, I have also considered their initial reception in Italy. Before the

32 ‘Essa costituisce, per così dire, un clima comune verso il 1925, tra i fautori della “teologia dialettica” a cui anche Bultmann, in quel tempo, appartiene; ed è una reazione contro la semplificazione moraleggiante del “Gesù storico”, propria del liberalismo teologico nel primo quarto di secolo, resa del resto insostenibile sul piano esegetico dall’emergere della teoria escatologica dello Schweitzer, e dagli studi di storia delle religioni, che riponevano in luce gli aspetti mistici e soteriologici del cristianesimo primitivo’; Miegge, L’Evangelo e il mito, p. 150. 33 ‘The great affirmations of the faith run the risk of settling into a series of pure meanings that, however, by the fact of being pure meanings, wind up being the meaning of nothing’ (‘Le grandi affermazioni della fede corrono il rischio di risolversi in una serie di puri significati, che però per il fatto di essere puri significati, finiscono per essere il significato di nulla’); Miegge, L’Evangelo e il mito, p. 154. 34 ‘È necessario affermare molto più fermamente di quanto gli accada la verità e la realtà oggettiva dell’avvenimento storico e sovrastorico che si riassume nel nome di Gesù Cristo crocifisso e risorto: la fede cristiana sta e cade con questa verità oggettiva’; Miegge, L’Evangelo e il mito, p. 160.

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more technical aspect of a work’s reception, however, it is necessary to reconsider briefly the nature of the problems treated. The Idea of the Holy (1917) showed its deepest meaning in its attempt to strip the conception of the divine at the time (therefore, mainly the conception of liberal theology) of formulas related to the sphere of human morality — in that they were materializations that were subsequently grafted onto the properly tremendum et fascinans experience of the divine. Despite Buonaiuti’s admiration of Otto and his work, as we have seen, in 1926 he came to believe that subtracting properly moral elements from the experience of the divine was a ‘somewhat arbitrary’ process.35 In its day, the significance of Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans of 1919 was that it rejected and avoided the ‘alliances’ and ‘confusions’36 between the sphere of the divine and the sphere of human action and that it established a purely algebraic — of infinitesimal (and therefore infinite in Barth’s sense) dimension — point of contact between these two spheres. Also in this occasion, the first Italian reception by Piero Martinetti in 1941 found reason for objection: the sphere of human morality, which in the best cases arises precisely as a result of the difference between the earthly and celestial spheres, would be prohibited if their distance were — by postulate and absolutely — unbridgeable. The third work reviewed here, Bultmann’s 1921 History of the Synoptic Tradition also has an anti-liberal slant in common with its contemporary works discussed here briefly. In this case, it was the issue of the historical Jesus to be denied by its hermeneutical presuppositions. This field of research facilitated the nineteenth-century reduction of the Christological faith of the first communities to a liberal and ‘moralizing’ Jesus. In 1956, however, an Evangelical scholar, Giovanni Miegge, inaugurated its reception in Italy objecting that Bultmann may possibly have been excessive in his subjective (and communitarian) reading of the mystery of Jesus Christ, which risked obscuring the objective, properly historical dimension of Christian salvation. Albeit in the various fields of the history of religion, dogmatic theology, and exegesis, these classics all show the need — typical of the end of the 1920s in Central Europe — to perceive anew the distance between the divine and human spheres (and of morality), in order to bring the era of liberal theology to a close. The authors who first made these works known to the Italian public, however, all objected to this very point or, to express this better, to the excesses in defining a line of separation between the two spheres of that dualism. An aspect that is essential here is that these three great works saw a lack of, or at least a tardy and minority (in the best sense of the term) reception in the Italian peninsula. Theological concerns during Benedict XV’s pontificate focussed there in the meantime on other issues. Buonaiuti, Martinetti and Miegge had, albeit separated by some years, the merit of a critical reading of high theological profile. Although these authors comprehended, and even accepted the distinction between the divine and the earthly spheres, and exorcized thus all ‘Constantinian’ instrumental temptations

35 Buonaiuti, ‘La religione’, p. 206. 36 Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 1 = Barth, Der Römerbrief, p. v.

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(in fact, they share an explicit anti-Fascist attitude: Buonaiuti and Martinetti were e.g. among the only 12 university professors who did not take an oath of allegiance to Mussolini’s regime in 1931), their theological stance does not fail to defend the dimension of a God who can always also ‘be a God at hand’.

Bibliography Aprile, Alessandro, ‘Ernesto Buonaiuti–Giovanni Gentile: una corrispondenza inedita’, Modernism: rivista annuale di storia del riformismo religioso in età contemporanea, 2 (2016), pp. 264–77 Baasland, Ernst, ‘Consistent Jesus Research? Bultmann’s Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (1921) and Jesus (1926) Revisited’, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 91, 3 (2015), pp. 415–60 Bancalari, Stefano, ‘Rudolf Otto, filosofo della religione’, in Rudolf Otto, Opere, ed. by Stefano Bancalari (Pisa: Serra, 2010), pp. 9–51 Barth, Karl, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1954) Barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief (Bern: Bäschlin, 1919) Barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1947) Bedeschi, Lorenzo, Buonaiuti, il Concordato e la Chiesa: con un’appendice di lettere inedite (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1970) Benincasa, Carmine, ‘Introduzione all’edizione italiana’, in Rudolf Bultmann, Storia dei vangeli sinottici (Bologna: EDB, 1969), pp. 7–22 Bianco, Franco, Distruzione e riconquista del mito: il problema della storia come orizzonte e fondamento della demitizzazione (Rome: Silva, 1961) Bof, Giampiero, ‘La ricezione di Barth in Italia’, in Barth contemporaneo, ed. by Sergio Rostagno (Turin: Claudiana, 1990), pp. 161–96 Bultmann, Rudolf, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957) Bultmann, Rudolf, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972) Buonaiuti, Ernesto, ‘Prefazione’, in Rudolf Otto, Il sacro: l’irrazionale nell’idea del divino e la sua relazione al razionale (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926), pp. 11–12 Buonaiuti, Ernesto, ‘La religione nella vita dello spirito’, Ricerche religiose, 2, 3 (1926), pp. 193–217 Castelli, Enrico, ed., Il problema della demitizzazione (Padua: CEDAM, 1961) Croce, Benedetto, Pagine sparse, ed. by Giovanni Castellano, 5 vols (Naples: Ricciardi, 1919–27), I/1 (1919) Dahlke, Benjamin, Die katholische Rezeption Karl Barths: Theologische Erneuerung im Vorfeld des zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) Dreyer, Wim A., ‘Karl Barth’s Römerbrief: A Turning Point in Protestant Theology’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 43, 3 (2017), pp. 1–18 Faes, Barbara, ‘Marcella Ravà, Ernesto Buonaiuti e un’inedita revisione de Il sacro di Rudolf Otto’, Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni, 79, 1 (2013), pp. 215–38 Ferrara, Francesca, Alle origini del ‘Sacro’: l’esperienza religiosa in Rudolf Otto (Milan: Mimesis, 2017)

EUROPEAN THEOLOGY DURING THE PONTIFICATE OF BENEDICT XV

Gaeta, Giancarlo, Il Gesù moderno (Turin: Einaudi, 2010) Genre, Ermanno, and Sergio Rostagno, Una visione della vita e della teologia: Giovanni Miegge (1900–1961) (Turin: Claudiana, 2002) Gibellini, Rosino, La teologia del XX secolo (Brescia: Queriniana, 1992) Grassi, Isabella, ‘Otto, Das Heilige’, Bollettino di studi storico-religiosi, 1 (1921), pp. 110–19 Grasso, Domenico, Il cristianesimo di Ernesto Buonaiuti (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1953) Guasco, Maurilio, Modernismo: i fatti, le idee, i personaggi (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1995) Harnack, Adolf von, Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1899–1900); ET: What is Christianity?, trans. by Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901) Kähler, Martin, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus (Leipzig: A. Deichert) Maffeis, Angelo, ‘Ecumenismo e teologia’, in La teologia del XX secolo: un bilancio, ed. by Giacomo Canobbio and Piero Coda, 3 vols (Rome: Città Nuova, 2003), III, p. 23 Mancini, Italo, ‘Sulla cristologia di Bultmann’, in Rudolf Bultmann, Gesù (Brescia: Queriniana, 1972), pp. 9–93 Margiotta Broglio, Francesco, ‘Buonaiuti fra Dio e Cesare’, Nuova Antologia, 116, 2139 (1981), pp. 115–23 Martinetti, Piero, ‘Il commento di Karl Barth sull’epistola ai Romani’, Rivista di filosofia, 1–2 (1941), pp. 1–28 Martinetti, Piero, Gesù Cristo e il Cristianesimo (Milan: Edizioni della Rivista di filosofia, 1934) Martinetti, Piero, Ragione e fede: saggi religiosi (Turin: Einaudi, 1942) Martinetti, Piero, Ragione e fede: saggi religiosi (Naples: Guida, 1972) Miegge, Giovanni, L’Evangelo e il mito nel pensiero di Rudolf Bultmann (Milan: Comunità, 1956) Miegge, Mario, ‘A proposito del saggio di R. Bultmann: storia ed escatologia’, in Il protestante nella storia, ed. by Mario Miegge (Turin: Claudiana, 1970), pp. 155–71 Moda, Aldo, ‘La ricezione della teologia di Rudolf Bultmann in Italia’, in Per una critica della ragione teologica, ed. by Aldo Moda (Padua: Messaggero, 1993) Otto, Rudolf, Das Heilige: über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, 17th edn (Gotha: Leopold Klotz, 1929) Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1924) Otto, Rudolf, Il sacro: l’irrazionale nell’idea del divino e la sua relazione al razionale (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926) Parente, Fausto, ‘Buonaiuti e gli altri storici del cristianesimo e della Chiesa antica’, in Ernesto Buonaiuti storico del cristianesimo: a trent’anni dalla morte, ed. by Raffaello Morghen (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1978), pp. 181–85 Pesce, Mauro, ‘L’odierna ricezione cattolica dell’ermeneutica di Bultmann’, Filosofia e teologia, 5, 1 (1991), pp. 117–20 Randellini, Lino, ‘Bultmann in Italia’, Teologia, 2, 4 (1977), pp. 303–31 Randellini, Lino, ‘Bultmann in Italia’, Teologia, 3, 1 (1978), pp. 56–92 Renan, Ernest, Vie de Jésus (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1863) Rota, Giovanni, ‘Su Rudolf Otto e sulla diffusione del suo pensiero in Italia’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 67, 2 (2012), pp. 317–39

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Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Schleiermacher-Auswahl, afterword by Karl Barth, 2nd edn (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1980) Schweitzer, Albert, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1913) Schweitzer, Albert, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der Leben, Jesu forschung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1906) Stausberg, Michael, ‘The Sacred, the Holy, the Numinous — and Religion: On the Emergence and Early History of a Terminological Constellation’, Religion, 47, 4 (2017), pp. 557–90. Zamagni, Gianmaria, ‘Ernesto Buonaiuti, la storia del cristianesimo e il terzo esodo’, in Studi di storia della filosofia ricordando Anselmo Cassani (1945–2001), ed. by Domenico Felice (Bologna: Clueb, 2009), pp. 241–62 Zamagni, Gianmaria, Das ‘Ende des konstantinischen Zeitalters’ und die Modelle aus der Geschichte für eine ‘neue Christenheit’: eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2018)

Benedict XV

A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918)

BENEDICT XV A POPE IN THE WORLD OF THE ‘USELESS SLAUGHTER’ (1914–1918)

Volume 2

Directed by Alberto Melloni Edited by Giovanni Cavagnini and Giulia Grossi

F

Translated from Italian by Susan Dawson Vásquez & David Dawson Vásquez. © 2020, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. 2 volumes D/2020/0095/225 ISBN 978-2-503-58289-4 eISBN 978-2-503-58290-0 DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.116417 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

Volume 1 Abbreviations 15 Foreword Cardinal Pietro Parolin

19

Introduction Alberto Melloni

27 Part One Stages Origins and Formation

Genoa: A Capital between Savoyard Annexation and the Risorgimento Nicla Buonasorte

35

The Genoese Aristocracy from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries: Traces of the Della Chiesa Family Federica Meloni

53

The Migliorati and the Ancestry of Innocent VII Anna Falcioni

69

Giacomo Raggi of Genoa, Capuchin Friar, and the Vocation of Giacomo Della Chiesa Aldo Gorini

81

Formation and Studies at the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Genoa Nicla Buonasorte

93

The Students of the Almo Collegio Capranica at the Time of Rector Francesco Vinciguerra Maurilio Guasco

103

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ta bl e o f co nt e n t s

A Diplomat of Leo XIII From Minutante to Sostituto in the Papal Secretariat of State Klaus Unterburger

111

Controversies at the Top: Merry del Val, Della Chiesa, Pius X (1883–1907) Annibale Zambarbieri 121 Rampolla, Della Chiesa, Benedict XV Jean-Marc Ticchi

147

The Bologna Episcopate Giacomo Della Chiesa’s First Pastoral Letter to Bologna Giovanni Turbanti

165

Culture and Catholic Associations in Bologna in the Pre-War Period (1908–14) Marcello Malpensa

185

Archbishop Giacomo Della Chiesa Facing the Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) Alessandro Santagata 207 The Beginning of the Pontificate The Conclave of Benedict XV (1914) Alberto Melloni

225

The First Encyclical: Ad beatissimi Caterina Ciriello 243 Ideas of War, Ideas of Peace Churches in War, Faith under Fire Frédéric Gugelot

263

Religion in War and the Legitimization of Violence Lucia Ceci

285

Italian Military Chaplains and the ‘Useless Slaughter’ Andrea Crescenzi

303

Pope Benedict XV and Pacifism: ‘An Invincible Phalanx for Peace?’ Gearóid Barry

319

tab le o f co nt e nt s

Interventionism and Neutrality in Italy The Extremist Neutrality of Guido Miglioli Claudia Baldoli

339

Italian Foreign Politics at the Dawn of Benedict XV’s Pontificate Michele Marchi

355

‘In pro della pace’: Benedict XV’s Diplomatic Steps to Prevent Italy’s Intervention in the Great War Maurizio Cau

373

Catholic Interventionism Guido Formigoni

391 Diplomacy through Aid

Benedict XV: Aid to Belgium Jan De Volder

407

Benedict XV and the Armenian Question Georges-Henri Ruyssen

417

Aid to the Syrians (1916–17): A Failure Florence Hellot-Bellier

439

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the Vatican and Prisoners of War Mara Dissegna

459

Neutral Switzerland: The Hospitalization of the Wounded and the Credit Owed to Carlo Santucci Stefano Picciaredda

479

The Note of 1917 The Papal Peace Note of 1917: Proposals for Armaments, Arbitration, Sanctions and Damages Alfredo Canavero

501

Reshaping Borders: Europe and the Colonies in Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 Peace Note Patrick J. Houlihan

523

859

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The Italian and French Bishops Dealing with the Note of 1917 Giovanni Cavagnini

533

The Note of 1 August 1917 and Its Failure Xavier Boniface

555

Part Two Problems The Missions Cardinal Willem van Rossum, Benedict XV and the Centralization of the Pontifical Missionary Works in Rome (1918–22) Vefie Poels and Hans de Valk

575

The Roncalli–Drehmanns Mission to the French and German Offices for Missionary Work (1921) Stefano Trinchese

591

Maximum illud, a Missionary Turning Point? Claude Prudhomme

609

The ‘Chinese’ Missionary Policy of the Holy See before Costantini Giuseppe Butturini

629

The Re-Dimensioning of Anti-Modernism ‘A Kind of Freemasonry in the Church’: The Dissolution of the Sodalitium Pianum Alejandro Mario Dieguez

653

Transformations of Integralist Catholicism under Benedict XV: Benigni’s Network after the Dissolution of La Sapinière Nina Valbousquet

673

Modernism during the Pontificate of Benedict XV: Between Rehabilitation and Condemnation Giovanni Vian

691

Benedict XV and Modernism in Germany Klaus Unterburger

707

tab le o f co nt e nt s

Votes for Women and ‘Catholic Feminism’ during the Pontificate of Benedict XV Liviana Gazzetta

717

The View of the People of Israel Benedict XV: The ‘Children of Israel’ and the ‘Members of Different Religious Confessions’ Raffaella Perin

739

The Birth of Vatican Policy on Palestine and the Holy Sites Paolo Zanini

763

Between Unionism and Ecumenism An Indecisive Inter-Confessional Situation (1914–22) Étienne Fouilloux

779

A Parallel Diplomacy? Vladimir Ghika and Catholic-Orthodox Relations in Romania during World War I Clémence de Rouvray

789

Theological Questions and Devotional Practices Religious Interpretations of War as Reflected in Prayers during World War I Maria Paiano

809

Benedict XV and the Nationalization of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in France and Germany (1914–18) Claudia Schlager

827

‘…and yet does not touch us’: A Survey of European Theology during the Pontificate of Benedict XV Gianmaria Zamagni

837

861

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Volume 2 Abbreviations 867 Part Three Relations France ‘Trop Petit?’ Benedict XV in Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart’s Journals and Writings Rodolfo Rossi

875

A Case of Oriental Wisdom: The second ralliement Fabrice Bouthillon 891 The Doulcet–Gasparri Agreement of 1920 and the Restoration of Diplomatic Relations between France and the Holy See Audrey Virot

903

The Appointment of Ambassador Jonnart and the Issue of Religious Associations Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers

913

Italy The Reform of Catholic Action Liliana Ferrari

929

The Dissolution of the Taparellian Concept of Nationality during the Great War Cinzia Sulas

949

The Role of Gaspare Colosimo and the King in the Rejection of the Gasparri Draft Piero Doria

967

The Agony of the non expedit Saretta Marotta 983 Benedict XV and Proto-Fascism Alberto Guasco

1003

tab le o f co nt e nt s

Germany Benedict XV and the German Episcopate Sascha Hinkel

1025

The German Reception of the Peace Note Claus Arnold

1041

The Legacy of Boniface: The Bavarian Episcopate and the In hac tanta Encyclical (December 1918–October 1919) Patrizio Foresta

1051

The In hac tanta Encyclical (1919) and Peace in Europe Letterio Mauro

1071

Russia and Ukraine The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World (1914–22) Laura Pettinaroli

1087

Benedict XV in Search of Peace for Ukraine Athanasius McVay

1105

Peace in Eastern Europe Nathalie Renoton-Beine

1131

Benedict XV and the Caucasus Simona Merlo

1147

The Other European Nations Benedict XV, the Habsburg Empire and the First Republic of Austria Francesco Ferrari

1163

Benedict XV and the British Empire (1914–22) John F. Pollard

1181

Benedict XV and Czechoslovakia Ľuboslav Hromják

1201

Benedict XV and Poland Roberto Morozzo della Rocca

1219

863

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The Irish War of Independence Alberto Belletti

1235

Benedict XV and Yugoslavia (1914–22) Igor Salmič

1249

Finland and the Catholic Church during the Pontificate of Benedict XV Milla Bergström and Suvi Rytty 1265 The Non-European Countries Appeals to Wilson to Avoid the United States’ Entry into War Liliosa Azara

1285

Benedict XV and the Mexican Revolution Paolo Valvo

1313

The Holy See’s Relations with Brazil (1917–19) Ítalo Domingos Santirocchi

1329

Japan on the Vatican’s Radar Olivier Sibre

1341 Part Four Legacy Benedict XV’s Men

Benedict XV and the Cardinals Roberto Regoli

1361

Eugenio Pacelli: Benedict XV’s Man of Peace Philippe Chenaux

1377

A Papal Envoy on the International Stage: Edmund Aloysius Walsh, SJ Marisa Patulli Trythall 1395 Benedict XV, Father Gemelli and the Foundation of the Università Cattolica Maria Bocci 1413 Bonaventura Cerretti and the Impossible Missions Marialuisa Lucia Sergio

1433

tab le o f co nt e nt s

Europe for Peace and the Aftermath of Versailles The Failure to Revise the Treaty of London (July 1918) Sergio Marchisio

1455

New Diplomatic Relations and New Agreements in Europe Stefan Samerski

1477

Post Mortem The Death of the Pope in the Twentieth Century, Change and Continuity: The Example of Benedict XV Édouard Coquet

1491

The 1922 Conclave and the Return of Pope Pius Lorenza Lullini

1507

The Statue of Benedict XV in Istanbul: The East’s Gratitude to the Charitable Pope Rinaldo Marmara

1519

An Image-Building Failure: Biographies in the Era of Pius XI Giulia Grossi

1535

From Fernand Hayward’s Un Pape méconnu to the Spoleto Congress (1955–63) Federico Ruozzi

1557

Benedict XV and the Founding of the Pontifical Oriental Institute (1917): Foresight, Intuition, Hindsight Edward G. Farrugia

1581

Continuity and Discontinuity: Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI Annibale Zambarbieri

1599

Conclusions The Benedict XV Moment Denis Pelletier

1615

Abstracts 1625 Name Index

1663

865

Abbreviations

AAB

Archivio Generale Arcivescovile di Bologna (Bologna) Archiepiscopal Archive of Bologna (Bologna)

AACB

Archivio dell’Azione Cattolica diocesana di Bologna (Bologna) Catholic Action Archive of the Diocese of Bologna (Bologna)

ACACI

Archivio Centrale dell’Azione Cattolica (Roma) Italian Catholic Action’s Central Archive (Rome)

ACDF

Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Roma) Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Rome)

ACEC

Archivio della Congregazione per l’Educazione cattolica (Roma) Archive of the Congregation for Catholic Education (Rome)

ACGA

Archivio della Curia Generalizia degli Assunzionisti (Roma) Archive of the General Curia of the Assumptionists (Rome)

ACO

Archivio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali (Roma) Archive of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches (Rome)

ACPF

Archivio della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli (Propaganda Fide) (Roma) Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) Historical Archives (Rome) Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Roma) Italian Central State Archive (Rome)

ACS ACTS

Archivio storico della Custodia di Terra Santa ( Jerusalem) Custodia Terrae Sanctae Historical Archive ( Jerusalem)

ACUA

American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University of America (Washington, DC) Archivio storico della Segreteria di Stato (Roma), Fondo Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari Archives of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (Rome) Archives françaises de la Société de Jésus (Vanves) French Archives of the Society of Jesus (Vanves)

AES

AFSJ AHAM

Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de México (Ciudad de México) Historical Archives of the Archdiocese of Mexico (Mexico City)

AHAP

Archives Historiques de l’Archevêché de Paris (Paris) Historical Archives of the Archbishop of Paris (Paris)

868

a bbr e v i atio ns

AICP

Archives de l’Institut catholique de Paris (Paris) Archives of the Institut catholique de Paris (Paris)

AICR

Archives of the Pontifical Irish College (Rome)

AISACEM

Archivio dell’Istituto per la storia dell’Azione cattolica e del movimento cattolico in Italia (Roma) Archives of the Institute for the History of the Italian Catholic Action and the Italian Catholic Movement (Rome)

AJ

Arhiv Jugoslavije (Belgrade) Archives of Yugoslavia (Belgrade)

AMAE

Archives diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (La Courneuve) Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (La Courneuve)

AMEP

Archives des Missions étrangères de Paris (Paris) Archives of the Missions étrangères de Paris (Paris)

ARCB

Arhiepiscopia Romano-Catolică Bucureşti (București) Archives of the Catholic Archdiocese of Bucharest (Bucharest)

ARSI

Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (Roma) Archive of the Society of Jesus (Rome)

ASMAE

Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Roma) Archives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Rome)

ASV

Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Roma) Vatican Secret Archives (Rome)

AUC

Archivio generale per la storia dell’Università Cattolica (Milano) General Archive for the History of the Università Cattolica (Milan)

AUSSME

Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito (Roma) Archive of the Historic Office of the General Staff of the Army (Rome)

CADN

Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes (Nantes) Nantes Diplomatic Archives Centre (Nantes)

EAM

Erzbischöfliches Archiv München (München) Archives of the Archdiocese of Munich (Munich)

GUSCRC

Georgetown University Special Collections Research Center (Washington, DC)

IISG

Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (Amsterdam) International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam)

IMS

Institut Marc Sangnier (Paris) Marc Sangnier Institute (Paris)

ab b re vi at i o ns

KDC

Katholiek Documentatie Centrum (Nijmegen) Catholic Documentation Centre (Nijmegen)

NA OPM

The National Archives (London) Archives des Œuvres Pontificales Missionnaires (Lyon) Archives of the Pontifical Mission Societies (Lyon)

TsDIAUL

Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy u misti Lvovi (Lviv) Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine (Lviv)

UMA

Ulkoasiainministeriön arkisto (Helsinki) Archive of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (Helsinki)

869

Part Three

Relations

France

Rodolfo Rossi

‘Trop Petit?’ Benedict XV in Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart’s Journals and Writings

1.

Image Building: A Well-Contrived Device?

The language of the Rector of the Institut catholique de Paris, Alfred Baudrillart, does not reject the enigmatic potentialities of clear syntax.1 He had been reading the classics of rhetoric since he was a boy and before he even turned twenty his maternal grandfather Samuel Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy gave him a volume by Quintilian with the dedication ‘to Mr Alfred Baudrillart, future member of the Académie française’ (‘à M. Alfred Baudrillart, futur membre de l’Académie française’). His style — noted Claude d’Habloville in 1921 — combined both gravity and fairness, united with ‘a very French clarity’.2 Baudrillart was a historian. He employed a discreet clarté that understood its target and knew that one had to take aim in order to strike it. He was





1 On the Oratorian and future Cardinal, see Rodolfo Rossi, La Francia sensibile al cuore: cattolicesimo, nazione e universalismi in Alfred Baudrillart (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2013), which returns to and develops some of the points treated in Rodolfo Rossi, Baudrillart e la coscienza nazionale della Francia (1905–1921) (Rome: Studium, 2002), and the related bibliography. See also Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe (Paris: Cerf, 2006), which collects the proceedings from the study-day sponsored by the Institut catholique de Paris on the occasion of the publication of the ninth and final volume of Baudrillart’s journals, edited by Christophe between 1994 and 2003. I was able to consult the manuscripts of Baudrillart’s journals, which are preserved at the AICP, MS 6618–81 (carnets personnels de Mgr Baudrillart de 1914 à 1942). The references in the notes refer to the published version: Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003). 2 ‘La clarté la plus française’; d’Habloville continued, ‘the one who, expressing premises with perfect accuracy, deduces consequences in concise sentences’ (‘Celle qui, exposant les prémisses dans les termes d’une justesse parfaite, déduit les conséquences en phrases lapidaires’); Claude d’Habloville, Monseigneur Baudrillart: biographie critique suivie d’un autographe, d’opinions et d’une bibliographie portrait-frontespice (Paris: Sansot, 1921), p. 32. The booklet was published in Les célébrités d’aujourd’hui by Éditions E. Sansot following the resumption of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See, in which Baudrillart played a primary role. In fact, its purpose was to honour his work (p. 21). The tone of the text is set by the opening, which is rather brash: ‘There are lives, the unity of which appears so luminous that their trajectory seems to have been traced in advance by a providential

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 875–890 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118808

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direct yet allusive. Behind plainly stated arguments lay a clear chain of subterranean associations. Some, perhaps, were sought, while others are only accessible to a Benjamin-type of counter-reading. The observations made so far find their raison d’être in the specific object of the present study and in the types of sources upon which it is based. As far as the first aspect is concerned, it is not a matter of studying the relationships that existed between Baudrillart and Benedict XV (often through Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri) or the actions undertaken by Baudrillart during the pontificate, either at Rome’s behest or in total autonomy with respect to the Pope’s indications and desires. It is even less a matter of highlighting Baudrillart’s (lack of?) comprehension of Benedict XV’s choices, even if some incursions in that direction are inevitable. The object of this research is rather the image that Baudrillart projects of Giacomo Della Chiesa, with all its inevitable vacillations, ambivalences and changes in tone. To come closer to Baudrillart’s approach, before examining the sources, it is useful to reiterate that he was a French historian. He therefore belongs to a national tradition and series of events that the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss would characterize as a ‘hot society’. In such a society, history is not only constitutive of self-understanding but grapples with the myths and content of what was said and the speeches that were given. Baudrillart’s theology of history, but also that of lay historians such as Jules Michelet and Ernst Lavisse, was not without a sense of his conception of history, in particular of the history of France, which, not merely by chance, was seen as the new Israel.3 As far as the sources are concerned, I used his journals and other writings that pick up Baudrillart’s public interventions, both those relating to Benedict XV and others. They have permitted me, on the one hand, to follow the Rector’s various annotations chronologically and to reconstruct his (more or less conscious) process of image building, highlighting his moments of reticence that are equally as eloquent as a speech, or even more so. Furthermore, the comparison between the texts meant for publication and those that were private has provided significant points of intersection and comparison. The openly autobiographical character that Baudrillart’s reflections and writings assumes in some passages of personal, national or Vatican affairs — with a strongly Gallic-centred sensitivity that is never Gallican — renders the portrait even more complex and multi-layered. This all involves coming to terms with the teleological or retrospective aspect inherent in such narrations, which is subject to continual variations and nuances and where the stages that mark the salient points in Baudrillart’s life and foreign events, in France and in Rome, take form, almost by osmosis, interweaving, clashing and generating a kind of dynamic tension.



hand’ (‘il est des vies dont l’unité apparaît si lumineuse que la courbe semble en avoir été tracée d’avance par une main providentielle’; p. 3). A copy with the author’s dedication to Baudrillart is kept at the AICP, of which Baudrillart was Rector from 1907 until his death in 1942 (AICP, RBa 290). 3 On this and on the specific twist that Baudrillart gives to Roman Catholic universalism, see Rossi, La Francia, pp. 51–88 and pp. 104–13.

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For the reader’s convenience, I have decided to follow partly the expositional traces of the volume that Baudrillart published on Benedict XV in 1920,4 a year before his episcopal consecration.5 Therein, the historically problematic junctions, which Baudrillart also expresses in his journals, are set in sequence. In this regard, it is interesting to note that expressions that were sometimes repeated word for word acquire a different timbre in the volume, such as to make them seem a positive appreciation, which they were not in the journals. This is not, of course, to stigmatize the Rector’s contradictions6 but to seek out those involuntary traces that, as Marc Bloch has already noted, characterize every text and every historical testimony. In particular, Bloch refers to the ‘uncontrolled voices’ (those other than the author’s) that speak through the text. I believe that we can legitimately extend this hearing to the voices present in the Baudrillart himself, which find their expression on the page despite the writer’s close surveillance.

2. The Predecessor Baudrillart’s Benoît XV opens with a brief and intense profile of Pius X, to whom Baudrillart felt close and who became, particularly in certain passages on the war, an immediate point of comparison with respect to his successor. After the death of Pius X, the Rector dedicated four dense pages to him in the Revue pratique d’apologétique, which he founded and directed. The pages were then reprinted in the Bulletin de l’Institut catholique,7 while it did not even publish an article in memoriam on Benedict XV. The presentation of Benedict in 1914 and his necrology in 1922 were instead signed by







4 Alfred Baudrillart, Benoît XV (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1920). The volume was printed by Bloud & Gay, publisher of all the publications of the Comité catholique de propagande française à l’étranger, for which Baudrillart edited some works on the German ‘atrocities’ during the Great War. These texts, and the Comité’s activities, had caused some friction with Rome, which looked unfavourably on men of the Church, especially bishops, directly intervening in issues that led to increased tension in the already bitter relations among Catholics of the belligerent countries; Rossi, La Francia, pp. 131–51. 5 On that occasion, 29 July 1921, Baudrillart expressed his recognition of Benedict XV, ‘that pontiff who suffered so much during the Great War for having wanted, against all odds, to fulfil his duty as the common father to all the faithful. It is a great joy and honour in my life to have been able, in certain circumstances, by word and pen, to avenge the Pope, even with my feeble strength, of some of the slander that they did not fear to level against him’ (‘ce Pontife qui a tant souffert au cours de la grande guerre pour avoir voulu, envers et contre tout, accomplir son devoir de père commun de tous les fidèles. C’est une grande joie et un grand honneur dans ma vie d’avoir pu, en certaines circonstances, par la parole et par la plume, venger le Pape, selon mes faibles forces; de quelques-unes des calomnies qu’on ne craignait pas de dresser contre lui’); ‘Discours de S. G. Mgr Baudrillart’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 12 (1921), p. 215. 6 For a definition of the problem that Baudrillart poses for, in particular French, historical analysis, see Rossi, La Francia, pp. 11–19. 7 The following quotations come from this text. See Alfred Baudrillart, ‘Hommage à Pie X’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 4 (1914), pp. 170–74.

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Jean Verdier.8 In this instance, Baudrillart, in a script that he repeated in the Revue and then the Bulletin, significantly focussed on the newly elected Pius XI.9 For Baudrillart, the figure of Pius X was destined to occupy a place of honour in the series of medallions that adorn the Roman Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. Labelled by statesmen and intellectuals (‘hommes de lettres’) as a country curate (‘curé de campagne’), Baudrillart recognized him as a man endowed with a strong will and a red-blooded goodness, a son of the people who had arrived at the height of human grandeur, a head of government endowed with lucidity and firmness and a supernatural and mystic pontiff who relied entirely upon God: ‘Neither a politician nor a diplomat it was said, a saint!’.10 In these few words, Baudrillart summarized the characteristics of the ideal pontiff that in the Rector’s opinion — as we shall see in the following pages — Benedict would never possess. In sketching this profile, Baudrillart to a certain degree describes himself. He certainly did not claim holiness for himself nor present himself as a man of the people, but he had constructed a precise and unconventional image of ‘the people’ from working in his father’s field of research.11 This expressed the bourgeois side of his family history in contrast to his mother’s aristocratic ancestry. It is no coincidence that he highlights this trait in Pius X while, in places, he criticizes the similar origins of Cardinal Gasparri. However, it is mainly on a doctrinal level that Baudrillart felt in tune with Pius X. In his words, the crisis in doctrine that the Pope found himself facing was far more serious than the one with which Leo X had to deal during the Protestant Reformation or, he seems to say, the internal divisions within Catholicism.12 From this springs his appreciation for Pius X’s decision-making, even authoritarian, stance, for his ability to be a leader (‘chef ’) even at the expense of goodness. It was a trait that was in line with the Rector’s ‘Bonapartism’,13 which he saw as uniting the political with the religious and spiritual aspects of his personal and family experience.



8 The presentation of the new Pope on both occasions was entrusted to the Director of the Carmes seminary, the Sulpician Jean Verdier, ‘Benoît XV’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 4 (1914), pp. 174–76; and Jean Verdier, ‘Benoît XV’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 13 (1922), pp. 26–30. The latter text, in particular, is marked by a great empathy and clear profile of the deceased Pope. In 1929, Verdier became Cardinal Archbishop of Paris. 9 Alfred Baudrillart, ‘Pie XI’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 13 (1922), pp. 30–34. 10 ‘Ni politique, ni diplomate, disait-on, un saint!’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, pp. 5–6. 11 Rossi, La Francia, pp. 37–44. 12 Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 6. ‘Never was there a pope more of a reformer or more modern’ (‘Jamais pape n’a été plus réformateur, ni plus moderne’), he did not fear to write in Pius X’s obituary of 1914, Baudrillart, ‘Hommage à Pie X’, p. 173. 13 ‘Tempérament bonapartiste’; speaking of himself, on 20 July 1920, Baudrillart wrote: ‘Filing papers today I reviewed many letters from 1889 and 1900. My life was easier then. How many things and persons I have had to, more or less, break away from because of events, responsibilities, and the exercise of authority. Commander and cattle herder have become my lot. Basically, it is good, but you have to know how to be a leader’ (‘J’ai rangé des papiers aujourd’hui et revu nombre de lettres de 1899 et de 1900. Ma vie était plus douce alors. Avec combien de choses et de gens j’ai dû rompre plus ou moins, par le fait des événements, des responsabilités, de l’exercice de l’autorité. Commander

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This is a good point on which to focus as it reveals his mentality and sensitivity. In his journals, Baudrillart noted on 18 July 1920, in a sequence that almost builds up to a climax, how complex the formation he had received was, leading him to integrate various elements into his personality. On the one hand, there were the ‘ultra-liberal influences of my grandfather and father (a left-wing liberalism, but not a Catholic liberalism)’. On the other, there were ‘religious influences’, ‘the constant intensity of religious feeling’, and, above all, the ‘Catholic logic that always deterred me from bastard solutions in religion’ (his conclusion is highly significant). Liberal Catholicism, with its openness and the distinction between what pertains to the revealed (immutable) given and that which, on the contrary, is a historical and, therefore, contingent given, a mediation commensurate to a request located within a specific climate (which can be superseded when the latter changes) is rejected as something spurious (‘solutions bâtardes’) that affects precisely the religious dimension. In this way, he came to affirm, further explaining his own point of view, his own personal combination of the political and the religious. In politics, he declared he always felt more comfortable ‘with revolutionaries than with all the kinds of reactionaries14 who curse them’. As for religion, he clearly expressed that he never loved liberal Catholics or any who ‘remain on the edge of orthodoxy, and these two things are blended rather well in what I call my Bonapartism’.15 His portrait of Pius X ends, not very surprisingly, with the recollection of how ‘the holy old man’ (‘le saint veillard’) had done his utmost in imploring the Emperor

et rancher est devenu mon lot. La bonté au fond, mais il faut savoir être chef ’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II (2000), p. 230. These notations bear witness to the periodic reflections upon himself that Baudrillart makes, which was previously mentioned. 14 On Baudrillart’s distance from positions like those expressed, for example, by Action française, see Rossi, La Francia, pp. 125–30 and Jacques Prévotat, ‘Mgr Baudrillart et l’Action française’, in Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Christophe, pp. 97–110. 15 ‘Influences ultra-libérales de mon grand-père et de mon père (libéralisme de gauche, mais non libéralisme catholique)’; ‘influences religieuses’; ‘l’intensité constante du sentiment religieux’; ‘logique catholique qui […] m’a toujours détourné des solutions bâtardes en religion’; ‘avec les hommes qui relèvent de la Révolution qu’avec les réactionnaires de toutes sortes qui la maudissent’; ‘frondent avec l’orthodoxie. Et ces deux choses se fondent assez bien dans ce qu’on appelle mon tempérament bonapartiste’; Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Christophe, pp. 527–28. His distance from liberal Catholicism could not be clearer or more intransigent. It is interesting to note that, in defining himself as Bonapartist, Baudrillart recalls both specific political factors as well as some religious elements that, in themselves, may seem surprising placed together. On the other hand, the concrete interweaving of aspects that might even seem ‘contradictory’ is specifically realistic — and historically accurate as well. In it lies a confusion between the realm of logic — where it makes sense to speak of it as contradictory — and that of reality — where there is no contradiction, but simply a co-presence, the reasons for which need to be understood rather than defended. On Baudrillart’s Bonapartism and his interpretation, for historical analysis and national pedagogy, of the experience of the French Revolution, see Rossi, La Francia, pp. 19–24 and pp. 51–88. See also Jean-Marie Mayeur, ‘Le cardinal Baudrillart et le régime parlementaire à la fin de la IIIe République’, in Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Christophe, pp. 91–96.

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of Austria to avoid war, in case anyone should still have doubts about the moral responsibilities for the world war.16

3. After the ‘Holy’ Pope Moving on to Benedict XV, Baudrillart recalls the conditions in which his election occurred: splits among the Catholic powers; the impending bloody war, at least from what the first ‘atrocities’ foretold; furthermore, the class struggles, people rising in revolt against their rulers and the revolutions in many countries. These were all issues that were announced as the almost inevitable consequence of a war that concerned every family and almost every individual. Was it not the dawn, Baudrillart asked rhetorically, of precisely what Benedict XV had defined with such punctual accuracy as ‘the suicide of Europe’? The shift that Baudrillart makes of the expression that the pontiff used to refer to the war itself, referring it instead to its consequences in terms of the destabilization of established order, is interesting. Who could take up the baton of the pontificate? Baudrillart hypothesizes two possible candidates: either a priest who was only a priest, a pontiff entirely dedicated to the office itself and, therefore, extraneous to the questions of the world, or a priest who was at the same time a politician and a diplomat, capable of making his voice heard during the conflict and of becoming, at the right moment, a possible arbiter of peace. Common sense seemed to tend towards the second option. This is why the choice converged on Cardinal Della Chiesa, not a man of the people but from a noble family, initiated into diplomacy by Cardinal Rampolla, who wanted Della Chiesa with him when Leo XIII sent him to Madrid as Nuncio and again, on his return, in the Secretariat of State, where Della Chiesa ultimately became a Substitute. For Baudrillart, the Pope elected was not only ‘a career man’17 but a true priest, a pious man and a pastor. Immediately afterwards, he was careful to say that France and the Entente had further cause to be satisfied with the next choice, after the death of Cardinal Ferrata, to make Cardinal Gasparri his Secretary of State. Within just a few weeks, however, the initial consensus in France that also seemed to embrace the chosen pontiff shifted, and the Pope found himself in the situation of having to defend himself constantly, a situation that was not suited to the dignity of a pontiff. However, Baudrillart clearly states here, the situation was also unworthy for Catholics, even if it arose ‘from practising a blind patriotism’.18 The adjective he chose risked concealing a wide range of nuances that connote such an inability to see beyond one’s nationalistic passions.

16 Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 6. ‘I bless peace’ (‘Je bénis la paix’) were supposedly Pope Pius X’s last, painful words. In the letter written to Baudrillart in response to receiving his booklet, Gasparri dismissed the issue concisely: ‘What you say about Pius X on page 6 is a legend’ (‘ce que vous dites à la page 6 de Pie X est une légende’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, II, p. 983. 17 ‘Un homme de la carrière’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 11. 18 ‘Dans l’entraînement d’un patriotisme aveuglé’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 14. ‘Undoubtedly’, Baudrillart conceded, ‘some words or deeds, attributable less to the Pope than to his entourage, could have been used as a pretext, but with what complete and black malevolence they were exploited!’

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4. Perspectives on a Pontificate Baudrillart asserted that he did not want to deal with everything as the pontiff ’s advocate, which would place him in the role, in reality, not simply in a narrative, of defendant. He intended to unveil facts in the genetic-historical patrimony of Roman Catholicism and its most specific visible architectonic principle (we shall see which tools he used) in order to attempt to identify what he saw as the ‘spirit’ of the pontifical institution and, what is more interesting here, of Benedict XV.19 He would do so, he continued, by answering four questions, the order of which already says much of the Rector’s mental geography beyond the volume’s contingent intention: he clearly focussed on restoring diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See. The questions were: (1) How did the problem of a great war among Christian peoples appear to the papacy? (2) How did Benedict XV respond to it? (3) Were there any grounds for the criticism that he had an inconstant (‘parfois’) attitude? (4) After the achievement of peace, in which international context (‘dans le monde’) did the Pope find himself, and to which relevant consequences did France have to adapt in its policy (‘pour sa propre conduite’)?20 It was not insignificant that Baudrillart, in support of his almost Cartesian analyses, invoked the voice and the style of a non-believer who was particularly sensitive to the ‘Roman’ qualification of Catholicism, that is to say, of Charles Maurras, who had published various articles on the issue in his daily newspaper L’Action française, collecting them together in the 1917 volume Le Pape, la guerre et la paix. In its preface he stated that Baudrillart wanted to re-establish in these articles ‘a somewhat reasonable idea of the Pope, the Holy See and its function among the peoples and above the peoples’.21 The reference needs to be borne in mind because it later finds its most appropriate meaning in light of the mens and the interpretation that Baudrillart gave both to the papacy’s function and, in the historical context, to Benedict XV.

5. Historical Theology during a Time of War As far as Baudrillart’s first question is concerned, the initial response is rather obvious: the papacy is a centuries-old institution. Two thousand years have passed since Christ asked Peter to feed his lambs and his flocks. It has been sixteen centuries since Constantine issued the Edict of Milan and this institution ‘has been openly engaged in world affairs’. It is not only the historian speaking, or rather, it is the historian

(‘Sans doute, quelques paroles, ou quelques faits, imputables moins au Pape qu’à son entourage, avaient pu servir de prétexte, mais avec quel ensemble et quelle noire malveillance on les exploitait!’). 19 Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 15. 20 Baudrillart, Benoît XV, pp. 15–16. Baudrillart then commented that his reply would be somewhat lengthy because he wanted to get to the bottom of the issues in order thereby to be able to provide answers capable of convincing both the conscience of readers and his own. 21 ‘Une notion un peu raisonnable du Pape, du Saint-Siège, de sa fonction parmi les peuples et au-dessus des peuples’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 16.

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from the perspective in which Baudrillart intends history, and it is the man and the ecclesiastic immersed, by habit and the conscious assumption of very different family backgrounds, in the affaires du monde.22 Baudrillart thus sees the succession of events as aimed at a goal that traverses and goes beyond the bloody fractures of history and revolutions. Or rather, it is precisely through them that the goal maintains its thread of continuity. For Baudrillart, the owl does not take flight only when night falls, but accompanies, almost guiding, the mole’s excavations. The papacy has witnessed all kinds of events, and with it so has Baudrillart, who speaks of them with familiarity. This is why he can draw from the most diverse traditions and from countless precedents. This papacy required an affirmation that was, at one and the same time, fact and principle: ‘The Pope is the universal pastor and, as such, a universal teacher and father’.23 As a doctor, the Pope has the duty to promulgate, recall and explain the moral law (of the Gospel). When he is then presented with concrete cases, he is bound to pronounce judgement upon them. He can, and should, refer to such precedents when he deems it necessary in order not to fail in the duty of his office. As a Doctor, the Pope, therefore, is bound to be a judge, even when this is not requested and when his word, to a certain extent, nullifies whether or not he is capable of fulfilling his task. Baudrillart knew how to be subtle.24 As a father, the pontiff has a ministry of pacification and charity. As a pastor, finally, he has a certain right to counsel and guide the (Christian) authorities and the peoples subject to them. We must be careful, however, as the Pope is not only a universal pastor but is also the Patriarch of the West and Bishop of Rome. As such he has special duties: pastoral duties towards the city and to Italy. It should also not be forgotten that, for many centuries, he was a temporal sovereign. The conceptual framework outlined so far, which in some respects faithfully reproduces traditional teaching, begins to reveal the Cartesian axes upon which Baudrillart located Benedict XV’s figure and actions. The interpretive machinery is set in motion and begins its analysis. Here is where the fluctuations, the differences, the omissions, the second thoughts and the tensions with respect to what is noted in his journals becomes interesting. To these journals Baudrillart entrusted his definitive judgement on the pontiff, after his death, in contrast to his public silence.25 22 ‘Est ouvertement mêlées aux affaires du monde’; that this was a deep-rooted conviction is revealed in several of Baudrillart’s writings. There is an emblematic passage in his carnets, dated 14 March 1925, in which — referring to the members of the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France — he wrote: ‘The archbishops are too old, too weary and too isolated in their episcopal city. They know nothing and do not understand much about great events; what a difference from the bishops of the Ancien Régime who had a sense of politics and a grasp of affairs’ (‘Les archevêques sont trop vieux, trop fatigués, trop isolés dans leur ville épiscopale; ils ne sont au courant de rien et ne comprennent pas grand-chose aux grandes affaires; quelle différence avec les évêques de l’Ancien Régime qui avaient le sens de la politique et la connaissance des affaires’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, III (2001), p. 995. 23 ‘Le Pape est pasteur universel et, comme tel, docteur et père universel’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 17. 24 Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 18. 25 See note 8.

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6. ‘Pope’ is Preached in Many Ways How many wars have there been in nearly 2000 years? Nevertheless, Baudrillart observes, people have the impression that the latest conflict was the greatest, which is normal given that they were directly affected, in terms of the soldiers involved and the atrocity of scientifically perfected weapons. Yet if one looks on it with a certain detachment, one recognizes that, over the centuries, events of far greater significance occurred. Entire peoples were wiped out. There were the huge invasions that led to the destruction of the Roman Empire and the rise of new civilizations and populations that together shaped Christian Europe. There were then struggles internal to Christianity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries because of the Hundred Years’ War, then those of religion, until the French Revolution, which overturned all Europe and wound up consolidating it against France and against ‘the genius who took it in hand at the end of its political convulsions’.26 In all this, ‘the papacy was involved. It had to act, sometimes in one capacity, sometimes in another. On the basis of its position or the reason for its action, it adopted this or the other attitude’.27 Perhaps this comment sheds some light on the Rector’s sympathies for Napoleon’s génie. Baudrillart makes the explicit point from which to draw the first consequence that, in his opinion, ought to explain the incomprehension that Benedict XV faced. He writes, not without arousing a certain surprise in those who know the continuation in the notes gradually entrusted to his journals, how ignorant were those who wanted to crush (‘écraser’) Benedict XV under the weight of historical precedents without realizing that they could not be applied, or that, if there were any similarities between the circumstances (notice how the sentence develops), his predecessors had followed the same line of conduct that he himself was adopting.28 Baudrillart recounts a startling example, which is daring in its immediacy; it is almost obvious and therefore even more subtly ambiguous: It was said that Attila had reappeared in Europe, but was there a St Leo the Great to stop him? The ambiguity lies in the interpretation that Baudrillart gives to the episode. He throws a dim light on Benedict XV while his declared intention was to highlight his stature. Indeed, the Rector notes that Leo would not have intervened if Attila had limited himself to invading Gaul: it was none of his business if the grass stopped growing after the Hun passed through those lands. Leo only intervened because, and when, Attila crossed the Alps heading towards Rome. That was in his interest not as a universal pastor, but as defensor civitatis, neither more nor less than any bishop intervening to save his city.

26 ‘Le génie qui l’a prise en main au sortir de ses convulsions politiques’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 20. 27 ‘La papauté a été mêlée. Tantôt à un titre, tantôt à un autre, elle a dû agir. Suivant le titre et le motif de son action, elle adoptait telle ou telle attitude’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 20. 28 Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 21. He did not say that Benedict XV followed the same course as his predecessors; the sentence was rhetorically constructed in order to allude to an almost temporal paradox: ‘When there were similar circumstances, his predecessors followed the course of action that he himself adopted!’ (‘Quand il y avait analogie de circonstances, ses prédécesseurs avaient suivi la ligne de conduite que lui-même adoptait!’).

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The second example the Rector offers is also notable. He affirms that Pope Gregory IX’s famous excommunication of the ‘German’ Emperor, Friedrich II, which some in France would have liked to have seen repeated in Wilhelm II’s case, was, above all, tied to the Pope’s office as an Italian prince. If at a later moment Gregory also came to claim his prerogatives as universal pontiff, Baudrillart continued, it was by presenting arguments (the so-call Donation of Constantine, in point of fact), to which those who would have liked a similar direct treatment of the German Emperor could not have been more impervious.

7.

With Benedict or Beyond Benedict?

The impression is that in accusing Benedict XV’s detractors, Baudrillart in fact tends mainly to defend his own actions (and those of many French bishops during the Great War) against the objections on the part of the Vatican. It is as if to say: I was a defensor civitatis, or more precisely a defensor Galliae, and I did what I had to, no more nor less than the Pope when he acted not as a universal pastor or teacher or common father. The subtext, which is unsaid but intuitable, is: even when we have gone in different or in opposite directions to the Pope. Baudrillart, with greater finesse and in a much sharper manner, expresses what on many occasions Father Sertillanges said during his preaching at La Madeleine, including his most bombastic speech given on 10 December 1917 before the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris Amette concerning the paix française.29 There is no need to follow Baudrillart any further in the development of his arguments: his purpose is clear. What is, perhaps, worth noting is that, for the most part, at the moment he seemed to have been moving more or less consciously within a perimeter of the divisions internal to Christianity where, on the one hand, the Pope legitimately intervened as a temporal prince with the result however of breaking Catholic unity while, on the other hand, when he intervened, or when one would have perhaps rightly liked him to intervene as the supreme guarantor of orthodoxy, those who urged him to speak out in reality only intended to make him an ally for their own political or nationalistic ends. The result was that if he abstained from pronouncing judgement, he seemed suspicious to both sides.30 29 Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, La Paix française: discours prononcé en l’église Sainte-Madeleine le lundi 10 décembre 1917 en la cérémonie religieuse et patriotique présidée par le cardinal-archevêque de Paris (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1917). That Baudrillart did not always agree with what Sertillanges said is evident in several notes in the journals where, next to a mention of the speaker’s success and the amount of royalties gained (15 March 1915), we read: ‘Father Sertillanges’s speeches at La Madeleine did good and attracted a huge crowd. Regarding some of them, however, one is tempted to write: “Neurotic speech for neurotics”’ (‘les discours du p. Sertillanges à la Madeleine font du bien et attirent une foule immense. Sur quelques-uns pourtant on serait tenté d’écrire: “Discours de névrosé pour névrosées”’; 18 April 1915), also quoting some passages that were later suppressed in the printed version, Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I (1994), p. 172. 30 For example, in Baudrillart’s opinion, the case of Urban VIII between France and the Habsburgs (Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 28).

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According to Baudrillart, therefore, how should Benedict XV have solved the problem? Baudrillart insisted that the role of the men of the Church during the war was, all things considered, simple: ‘Their priesthood, on the one hand, their patriotism, on the other, dictated their duty’.31 It was no coincidence that he offered the example of Cardinal Désiré Mercier, but it is not difficult to read between the lines that Baudrillart also intended to include his own line of conduct during the war. His journals repeatedly confirm it: the only possible room for manoeuvre was the, greater or lesser, measure of heroism with which to execute it. For Baudrillart, Mercier represented the greatest and most authentic figure in the Great War, the beacon illuminating the bright path to follow. To have an idea of this, it suffices to read the words written by the Rector in his journal on 23 January 1926, the date of the Cardinal’s death (‘today died a man who did honour to mankind’) and to compare them with the words, to which we shall return shortly, he reserved for Benedict XV immediately after his death exactly four years earlier, on 22 January 1922.32 As far as Benedict XV was concerned, as Baudrillart recognized in his volume of 1920, the Pope’s situation was decidedly less simple than that of the Belgian Primate in that the conflict presented him with multiple, apparently contradictory, obligations. Whatever choice he may have made, he would have found himself exposed to risks. In actual fact, the construct that Baudrillart builds around the figure of Benedict is more complex than first appears. That is to say, on the one hand, he is careful to emphasize the problematic nature of the pontiff ’s situation. However, on the other, the reconstruction and interpretation of the duties and obligations that Benedict could not escape seem to have been proposed more to divert attention than to highlight an interpretation of reality or of the problems that were proper to the Pope. As you can still read today on some road signs next to railway level crossings in France: ‘A train may be hidden behind another’ (‘Un train peut en cacher un autre’).

8. Vacillations, Misunderstandings and Paradoxes Baudrillart noted that, with the war, Benedict XV found himself faced with an unprecedented ‘moral cataclysm’, which had ‘shattered the world’s [moral] unity’. Alongside this first element, there was another. Within the Church, too, rarely before had the ‘unity of souls’ been so compromised.33 Never before this case, Baudrillart concluded, had the Pope appeared to be the ultimate and supreme resource of the

31 ‘Leur sacerdoce d’une part, leur patriotisme de l’autre leur dictaient leur devoir’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 29. 32 ‘Il est mort aujourd’hui un homme qui faisait honneur à l’homme’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, IV (2002), p. 282: ‘The impression is profound and leads us to relive the heroic hours of the war. His death is a personal sorrow for me’ (‘L’impression est profonde et l’on revit les heures héroïques de la guerre. Cette mort est pour moi une douleur personnelle’). See also his observations on the funeral of Cardinal Mercier where his profound emotion in treating the figure of the Primate does not prevent him from repeating stereotypes of the Belgian people: Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, IV, pp. 287 ff. 33 ‘Cataclysme moral’; ‘brisé l’unité du monde’; ‘l’union des âmes’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 30.

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world’s and the Church’s unity: ‘Never before has the supreme pontiff appeared at this point to be the ultimate expression and supreme resource of this unity and this union’.34 Thus, the Rector combines two aspects: the union of the Church and the unity of the human race, or rather, the unity of what had been called the civil consortium of nations. On the one hand, he sees the divisions among Catholics in the countries at war, mainly siding with the stands taken by their respective national governments. On the other, he sees a problem (which he himself posed and is now posing in constructing his discourse) already entirely projected toward governing peace. He asked himself which moral authority would be able to exercise its own moral expertise and speak to all nations after the war had ended. More generally, it must be said that, in relation to Benedict XV, Baudrillart seems to alternate between two different points of view that, perhaps, are more in juxtaposition than seen as truly interacting, much less complementary: that of Catholic Christianity (also understood in its political implications, according to a model that no longer existed and which was oriented toward the ancien régime) and that of international relations. The American President, Woodrow Wilson, was, from this perspective, Benedict XV’s true antagonist. In the last part of his book, Baudrillart wrote: ‘President Wilson had become the Doctor and the Pope; he was conferred with a moral and spiritual authority to which they claimed to force us to bend our judgement. Wilson dixit!’.35 In his journals, there are frequent references to the American President. In the Rector’s opinion, Pope Benedict was not equal to the challenge of the Protestant Wilson. In this, definitively, lies Baudrillart’s criticism and incomprehension of Benedict XV. The latter found himself, on the one hand, necessarily bound to his office as pontiff (by virtue of which he held the triple, universal role of Doctor, father and pastor) to speak the truth, to be its voice. On the other (and in his journals Baudrillart repeatedly questions the Pope’s adequacy for the task), he had to possess the moral stature in order to be credible when speaking that truth during the historical difficulty. Indeed, to ensure that such truth would be harkened ‘it was necessary for him to prove his impartiality, but that impartiality could be taken for a feeble neutrality between good and evil’.36 Baudrillart concluded that, in order to be credible, the Pope must utter words that cast no doubt on the fact that his impartiality did not conceal his refusal to state a clear moral judgement on the moral responsibilities for the war. In his volume of 1920, Baudrillart wrote that the Pope was like a universal teacher, that is, the one who had to remind everyone of the Gospel’s law of charity among individuals and among nations, even towards one’s enemies.

34 ‘Jamais le Pontife suprême n’était apparu à ce point la dernière expression et la suprême ressource de cette unité et de cette union’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 30. 35 ‘Le Président Wilson était devenu le docteur et le pape; on lui conférait une autorité morale et spirituelle, devant laquelle on prétendait nous forcer à incliner notre jugement. Wilson dixit!’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, pp. 69–70. The context in which Baudrillart is speaking is entirely aimed at supporting the need, for the national good of France, to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See, which would occur in the following year. On this and Baudrillart’s role, see Rossi, La Francia, pp. 161–70. 36 ‘Il fallait avoir prouvé son impartialité et cette impartialité pouvait être prise pour une faible neutralité entre le bien et le mal’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 30.

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He added, however, a not insignificant detail that, in actual fact, sounds like a veiled rebuke of the Pope at the very moment when he is being praised. It is connected to something connoted by Baudrillart’s action and what he would have liked to have heard from the Pope. The Pope should have affirmed the law of the Gospel in a specific historical context ‘at a time when Germany proclaimed a doctrine of force as the basis of international relations and the interest of the state as the justification of all acts’.37 From this point of view, for Baudrillart, the peace that the Pope called for, and for which the Rector drew upon the Augustinian expression ordo amoris,38 could only be a peace that was inseparable from justice. It had to be an authentic, Christian peace, of which the world had lost the sense, a peace that would be of use to all, ‘even to the conquered who, if they suffer material damage because of a deserved defeat, they can draw certain moral advantages from the restored peace’.39 Baudrillart’s perspective is unequivocal: guerre allemande must be matched to the paix française.

9. Concluding Observations In his journals, Baudrillart repeatedly ascribes to Benedict XV and to his Secretary of State, Gasparri, the characteristic of not being equal to the task of speaking about the war with moral clarity. On 26 February 1915, the Rector noted that Paul Bourget had expressed precisely what he had always thought: the Pope should have written an encyclical recalling the Christian moral laws of war and then remained silent.40 It is a constant and, in Baudrillart’s pen, paradoxical, almost surreal, theme: the Vatican and the Pope had only political concerns while what was needed was a ‘greater moral grandeur, concern for what is right and the courage to assert it’.41 In particular, a comparison between the diplomatic Pope (Benedict XV) and the holy Pope (Pius X), who was ‘utterly courageous’ in affirming justice and the law, emerges and recurs.42

37 ‘À l’heure où l’Allemagne a proclamé la doctrine de la force comme la base des rapports internationaux, et l’intérêt de l’état, comme justifiant tous les actes’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 31. 38 Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 33. 39 ‘Même au vaincu qui, s’il subit par une défaite méritée un préjudice matériel, doit tirer de la paix rétablie certains avantages moraux’; Baudrillart, Benoît XV, p. 33. 40 Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 158. 41 ‘Plus de grandeur morale, de souci du droit et de courage à l’affirmer’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 112 (3 December 1914). See also pp. 143 and 164, where he repeats the comparison between the diplomatic Pope (Benedict XV) and the holy Pope (Pius X), who — in affirming justice and law — was ‘entirely courageous’ (‘tout bravé’). 42 ‘Tout bravé’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 143; see also p. 164. Baudrillart gathered various opinions that converged with his evaluation of the pontiff, who was petit in every sense, devoid of Leo XIII’s intelligence and Pius X’s cœur; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 167. Claudel was one of the most scathing: ‘Benedict’s was a “petit politique”, the diplomacy of a second-rate plenipotentiary minister in his sixties’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 147 (4 February 1915). Having been received in an audience with the Pope, Claudel told the Rector of having perceived in the Pope a tragic dissociation between the man and the function he performed; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 199 (1 July 1915).

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On 6 May 1917, the Rector observed that the Pope once again (in this instance, in a letter addressed to Cardinal Gasparri) made no distinction among the various nations in regard to moral responsibility or to the atrocities committed.43 For Baudrillart, the Pope’s death was an occasion to make a comprehensive evaluation of his actions and his image. In some places, his judgement is more nuanced, particularly in connection to the successful resumption of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See, preceded by the canonization of Joan of Arc.44 As far as the Pope’s behaviour during the war period is concerned, however, Baudrillart’s basic evaluation does not change. During the war, he was cautious and charitable, but not truly great. He did not give the impression of seeing things from a very elevated position or in an original or powerful way. Cardinal Gasparri, with his realism and good sense devoid of amplitude and imagination, was not capable of assisting him in this.45 To conclude: His death moves me less than that of Pius X although his policy and his conduct have been for us less rich in embarrassment and difficulties; but he did not give this impression of the supernatural that was felt regarding Pius X. He felt too much like a diplomat and a politician.46

43 Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 542. Baudrillart was in Rome at the time. 44 On 22 January 1922, Baudrillart wrote: ‘Benedict XV died this morning. He showed himself firm, courageous and pious to the end. His last moments evoke the sympathy and admiration of all. Our government is behaving as it should. Millerand cancelled his soirée on Wednesday, and Poincaré went to the Nunciature himself. We felt that the Pope had truly drawn closer to France and that he had sincerely wanted an agreement with us. This nation seemed to him to have a duty to serve the cause passionately assigned to it since the disintegration of old Europe and the conquest of the Slav peoples and the Mediterranean East by the Roman Church. For that, if he had lived a few more years, he would have been able to have a very great reign. It had only just dawned’ (‘Benoît XV est mort ce matin. Il s’est montré jusqu’à la fin ferme, courageux et pieux. Ses derniers moments provoquent la sympathie et l’admiration de tous. Notre gouvernement se conduit comme il le doit. Millerand décommande sa soirée de mercredi et Poincaré se rend lui-même à la nonciature. On sentait que le pape s’était réellement rapproché de la France et qu’il avait très sincèrement voulu l’accord avec nous. Cette nation lui paraissait devoir servir la cause à laquelle il s’était passionnément donné depuis la dislocation de la vieille Europe, la conquête à l’Église romaine des peuples slaves et de l’Orient méditerranéen. Par-là, il aurait pu, s’il eût vécu encore quelques années, avoir un très grand règne. Ce n’en était que l’aube’); Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, I, p. 65. 45 ‘Pendant la guerre, il fut prudent et charitable, mais il ne fut pas vraiment grand. Il ne donnait pas l’impression de voir les choses de très haut et d’une façon originale et puissante. Le cardinal Gasparri, avec son réalisme et son bon sens dépourvu d’ampleur et d’imagination, n’était pas fait pour l’y aider’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, III, p. 65. 46 ‘Sa mort m’émeut moins que celle de Pie X, bien que sa politique et sa conduite aient été pour nous moins fertiles en embarras et difficultés; mais il ne donnait pas cette impression de surnaturel qu’on éprouvait auprès de Pie X; on sentait trop le diplomate et le politique’; Les Carnets, ed. by Christophe, III, p. 66. It should be noted that Baudrillart here openly recognized that his own personal conduct during the conflict was not really in accord with the Pope’s principles: ‘When he saw that I was definitely engaged in propaganda for France, I do not think he was happy’ (‘quand il vit que je tournais décidément à la propagande pour la France, je crois qu’il ne fut pas content’).

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I observed shortly above that Baudrillart’s position on Benedict XV appeared paradoxical. In particular, this is seen in the accusation of his not being aware of the war’s moral aspect and of his dwelling only on the political and diplomatic aspects. Ultimately, in this lay the pontiff ’s lack of stature and grandeur. It is paradoxical because it was precisely Baudrillart’s own mentality, the emotional and conceptual structure of his vision, that was characterized by a strong projection of the political, even within his religious thought. This is what was, reductively, tied to his Bonapartism. This consideration, however, does not seem to me to comprehend fully Baudrillart’s position regarding Benedict XV. The Rector does not seem to understand the Pope’s point of view concerning peace. I shall restrict myself to just a mention of this since it is not the object of this essay. What escaped Baudrillart, what perhaps he could not grasp, was that, precisely through the patient work of diplomacy and appeals to people to pray for peace, a kind of daily ‘resistance’ to the nationalistic hatreds that blinded so many was being unfolded. In this, perhaps, Benedict knew how to be in tune with how those directly affected by the carnage felt: soldiers in the trenches and their families. Perhaps the pastoral nature and the limitations placed on the Pope’s power (to recall the apt expression coined by Andrea Riccardi) help us to understand Benedict’s suffering and various peculiarities in the face of the concreteness of history.47 However, it seems to me that we can take another step precisely in terms of Baudrillart’s historic work on Benedict XV. As noted, apart from the volume of 1920 and the notations in his journals on the death of Benedict XV, the Rector did not write a public obituary for the pontiff. Although he published a piece in honour of Pius X in the Institute catholique’s bulletin, after Benedict’s death, on the contrary, Baudrillart wrote about the newly elected pontiff. The missing piece seems, to me, to present itself as an unfinished symbolization. The burial rite, which should exorcize death by incorporating it into speech, never occurs. In some respects, Baudrillart leaves Benedict XV unburied, puts him away, so to speak, without honouring him. As Michel de Certeau observed, ‘the dead haunt the living’ if they are not comprehended and symbolized in language.48

Bibliography Baudrillart, Alfred, Benoît XV (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1920) Baudrillart, Alfred, ‘Hommage à Pie X’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 4 (1914), pp. 170–74 Baudrillart, Alfred, ‘Pie XI’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 13 (1922), pp. 30–34 Certeau, Michel de, The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992) Christophe, Paul, ed., Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart (Paris: Cerf, 2006)

47 Andrea Riccardi, Il potere del papa da Pio XII a Giovanni Paolo II (Rome: Laterza, 1993), p. xi. The author emphasizes how, in historic events, the Roman pontiff ’s power, at times, was more properly seen as a ‘non-power’. 48 Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 102.

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Christophe, Paul, ed., Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003) d’Habloville, Claude, Monseigneur Baudrillart: biographie critique suivie d’un autographe, d’opinions et d’une bibliographie portrait-frontespice (Paris: Sansot, 1921) Mayeur, Jean-Marie, ‘Le cardinal Baudrillart et le régime parlementaire à la fin de la IIIe République’ in Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe (Paris: Cerf, 2006), pp. 91–96 Prévotat, Jacques, ‘Mgr Baudrillart et l’Action française’, in Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe (Paris: Cerf, 2006), pp. 97–110 Riccardi, Andrea, Il potere del papa da Pio XII a Giovanni Paolo II (Rome: Laterza, 1993) Rossi, Rodolfo, Baudrillart e la coscienza nazionale della Francia (1905–1921) (Rome: Studium, 2002) Rossi, Rodolfo, La Francia sensibile al cuore: cattolicesimo, nazione e universalismi in Alfred Baudrillart (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2013) Sertillanges, Antonin-Dalmace, La Paix française: discours prononcé en l’église SainteMadeleine le lundi 10 décembre 1917 en la cérémonie religieuse et patriotique présidée par le cardinal-archevêque de Paris (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1917) Verdier, Jean, ‘Benoît XV’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 4 (1914), pp. 174–76 Verdier, Jean, ‘Benoît XV’, Bulletin de l’Institut catholique de Paris, 13 (1922), pp. 26–30

Fabrice Bouthillon

A Case of Oriental Wisdom: The second ralliement

To Émile Poulat The nuns who made these cannolis took a vow of silence. (Connie Corleone offering poisoned cannoli to Don Altobello, in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part III)

To name is to erase. The choice of a name represses in the darkness all that it does not bring to light, and the expression second ralliement is no exception. Since its use in 1948 by Adrien Dansette in his Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine,1 it has become canonical to designate the reconciliation that took place, beginning with World War I, between the Catholic Church and the French Republic.2 This was a long, complex process that began with the lifting of some of the most anti-Catholic legislation by the Malvy circular on 2 August 19143 and ended with the pontifical condemnation of Action française in 1926. As far as Rome’s part is concerned, it seems rather hard to discern the position of Benedict XV and Pius XI during this process, as is proved by the fact that it was Cardinal Gasparri who dealt with the issue during both pontificates. The expression has several implications: first of all, there is the idea of victory for the Republic, given that in 1890, at the time of the first ralliement, it was understood that Catholics rallied to the side of the Republic. There was also the idea that, in the battle underway since the time of the Revolution against the nostalgic right of the ancien régime, the Republic had won. However, if there was a need for a second ralliement, it is a clear indication that the first one had not been entirely successful and that the victory of the Republic and of the left, which was attributed much importance, was hence not so definitive. However, the expression is also striking due to the curious combination of humility and reassurance, for the fact that it took as

1 Adrien Dansette, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, 2 vols (Paris: Flammarion, 1948–51), II (1951), pp. 530, 539. 2 See, for example, Gérard Cholvy and Yves-Marie Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, 3 vols (Toulouse: Privat, 1985–88), II (1986), pp. 271–82. 3 Jean-Marie Mayeur, La vie politique sous la Troisième République (Paris: Seuil, 1984), pp. 235–36.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 891–901 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118809

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its norm a previous event, that is to say, it was no innovation; therefore, everything remained traditional. Yet it must have been a matter of a singularly short tradition, because in French, in which deuxième is different from second and is not normally followed by a third (troisième), to speak of a second ralliement signifies a series that does not have a sequel; in other words, it would be something definitive. Qui vivra verra: time will tell. In the meantime, the fact remains that the second ralliement was, for the most part, something very classical, to the extent that it was inscribed in the purest Consalvism. Admitting, in effect, that the twentieth century began in 1914, this date, therefore, must indicate the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, because the nineteenth century began with the French Revolution, there is thus an extremely strong connection between 1914 and 1789. The theological and political meaning of the French Revolution is very clear: it caused the end of a regime in which the legitimacy of the state was ultimately guaranteed by that of the Church, as is witnessed by the ceremony of consecration, in which it was clearly manifest, at least in certain aspects, that the state was inferior to the Church and, in a certain sense, incorporated within it. From the end of antiquity, within the framework of this regime of political Augustinianism,4 the Church of Rome had replaced the Roman Empire as the ultimate source of legitimacy. There existed, therefore, an ecclesial foundation of the state. It was on this that the revolutionaries set a restriction, rescinding the social contract of the ancien régime and re-establishing society on the basis of a unanimous, reasonable agreement between individuals free of any tie inherited from the past. For this reason, given that the Church also constituted a collective body, it therefore had to recognize the new social covenant created by the revolutionaries as its own foundation, by virtue of which it would then be integrated into the state. The revolutionary project presupposed, therefore, a governmental foundation of the Church, which had taken shape in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, imposed by the state on ecclesial society. Catholics responded to this process in three different ways. The first, that of left-wing Catholics, was acceptance. In the name of a theory of secularization that, implicitly or explicitly, saw in modern liberties the legitimate consequences of the Gospel,5 its supporters appropriated the conviction that the Church must accept the requests of liberalism: religious liberty inside and outside the Church, internal democracy (even the election of ministers, or rather, even the erosion of the distinction between clergy and laity, between women and men), the liberalism of customs that keeps step with liberalism in dogmatic matters. Quite recently, a representative of this tradition cited as his theological ancestors Loisy, Renan, de Lamennais and Grégoire.6 Only Judas was missing, or so one detractor commented, one of those who formed the field of intransigent Catholicism. This approach was characterized, on the one hand, by the wish to maintain in the face of revolution the legitimacy proper to the Church,



4 Henri-Xavier Arquillière, L’augustinisme politique: essai sur la formation des théories politiques au MoyenÂge (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1955). 5 Jean-Claude Monod, La querelle de la sécularisation de Hegel à Blumenberg (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2002). 6 Abbé Elie Geffray was the former Mayor, of socialist leaning, of the city of Eréac in Brittany.

A C as e o f O r i e n tal W i s d o m: The second ralliement

which the intransigents saw as founded not on a free adherence of individuals with equal rights with a rationally modifiable agreement, but on the death of Christ, analogous to a university founded not on legislative or regulatory provisions but on those of Socrates. On the other hand, intransigent Catholicism was characterized by a more or less clear nostalgia for Christendom. This ‘no’ camp was divided into two families animated by different spirits, one of which was integralism. It would be wrong, in fact, to restrict the use of this term to those Catholics who called themselves intégraux and who saw their hour of glory under Pius X.7 The definition must, in fact, be extended to include every strong rejection of the revolution by Catholics, even to the point of taking up arms and returning to the Catholic and Royal Army of the wars of the Vendée. It was a frontal opposition, which called for a return to the pre-eminence of the Church to the point of putting the term ‘Catholic’ before ‘Royal’, indicating clearly how integralism had far more nostalgia for political Augustinianism than for the ancien régime in the strictest sense, which was already held to be too secular: after all, Louis XIV had refused to make the Sacred Heart a political symbol, as on the contrary the people in the Vendée had.8 The other form of intransigent Catholicism was Consalvism.9 This could be called Chiaramontism, after the Pope under whom Cardinal Consalvi went to Paris to sign the 1801 Concordat, but this is of little importance because what is essential is that the act defined the politics that it embodied. It is, in fact, a contract based on the equality of the two parties, whose most important clause was the end to the persecution of the Church on the part of the revolution in exchange for the end of Catholic support for the counter-revolution. The 1801 Concordat has thus two principal meanings. The first is the failure of the Revolution, since the signing of the Concordat implies recognition by the state, reorganized on the basis of the principles that it proclaimed, of its powerlessness in subjugating the Church, as it had tried to do since the time of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. If the secular power signs an agreement with the Holy See on equal terms, this means that there is no state foundation for the Church, and, in this sense, it is completely false to claim, as one sometimes reads, that Napoleon had negotiated from a position of strength. He ran a Republic that had emerged from the Thermidorian fallout of revolutionary zeal when the enterprise of the Revolution had been shattered by the Terror, and the left was divided between those who would willingly have prolonged it until their last opponent had been exterminated and those who wanted to put an end to its dynamism for fear of that they themselves would wind up on the guillotine one day. The secular partner of Consalvism, in truth, was not so much the revolutionary state but the ‘revolutionized’ state: fundamentally disillusioned, disconcerted, disoriented, deprived of any legitimacy that it might have had before 1789 and which had by now disappeared, but also lacking any other legitimacy owing to the incapacity of the revolutionaries to persuade all the

7 Émile Poulat, Catholicisme, démocratie et socialisme: le mouvement catholique et Mgr Benigni de la naissance du socialisme à la victoire du fascisme (Tournai: Casterman, 1977). 8 Jean-Vincent Bainvel, ‘Cœur sacré de Jésus (dévotion au)’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1899–1950), III (1908), cols 331–32. 9 On Consalvism, see Fabrice Bouthillon, La naissance de la Mardité: une théologie politique à l’âge totalitaire, Pie XI (1922–1939) (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2001), pp. 43–53.

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French to agree to their new social contract. Challenged as much by the left, angry at its timidity, as by the right, outraged by the audacity that it still had, this state was, therefore, in search of support, even seeking it where it would have never thought to look before. The other meaning of the Concordat, however, was the failure of the counterrevolution. Its signing on the basis of equality sanctioned the powerlessness of the Church to regain the subjugation of the state, as in the case of political Augustinianism. This meant that there was no longer an ecclesiastic foundation for the state, which is above all how Consalvism differed from integralism, thanks to this recognition of the state of affairs arising from 1789. However, as in any good treaty, there were clauses and ulterior motives. On the state’s part, the principal interest was the desire to continue to spread the values of the Lumières, to ensure the long-term emancipation at least of the elite with respect to the Church. Napoleon welcomed an ambassador of the Pope to Paris, but had already worked to guarantee that the imperial university had the monopoly on teaching. On the Holy See’s part, the recognition of the power born from the revolution in no way prevented its aiming to re-Christianize society; however, since the state was no longer Christian, this could not take place from above but only by means of the militancy of the faithful. At the same time that Consalvi was in Paris, the re-establishment of the militant order par excellence, the Society of Jesus, also began to take shape.10 Complete Consalvism was thus the Concordat plus militancy. With it, Catholicism learned to circumvent politics in order to regain control over society, which permitted the Catholic interest in social issues to continue: 1801 saw the beginning of a tradition that would continue throughout the nineteenth century. There is nothing surprising about this because one can consider the twelve revolutionary years an anamorphosis of the following two centuries, from 1789 to 1989. In some ways, except perhaps for the death of the Count of Chambord, nothing happened in France between 1801 and 1914, and there was thus nothing strange in the century-long permanence of the positions that were established during that period of time. Consalvism would thus occupy the theological and political scene throughout the century, alternating regularly with phases of integralism, according to a calendar that varies according to place: Leo XIII was Consalvist in France but integralist in Italy, in the same way that Pius X was integralist in France and Consalvist in Italy. Briefly, then, the best example of the continuity of Consalvism in the nineteenth century is precisely the ralliement,11 in which the principal clause of the accord of 1801 and its ulterior motives can be found. This was the link between the end of the persecution of the Church and the end of the Catholic support for the Restauration: in the conditions of 1890, it became the replacement for the increasingly virulent anti-clericalism of the Third Republic with the adaptation to the ‘new spirit’ (‘esprit nouveau’)12 and, on the other hand, the Pope’s request that Catholics accept the

10 Pierre-Antoine Fabre and Patrick Goujon, Suppression et rétablissement de la Compagnie de Jésus (1773–1814) (Namur: Lessius, 2014). 11 Xavier de Montclos, Le toast d’Alger: documents 1890–1891 (Paris: Éditions de Boccard, 1966). 12 Mayeur, La vie politique, pp. 137–73.

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regime, abandoning the royalists to their fate, just as the agreement with Napoleon had deprived the prétendant of the bulk of his troops. As for the ulterior motives, the Republic kept the schools secular, while Rerum novarum gave new impetus to the social militancy of Catholics. The ralliement therefore was never a second edition of the Concordat. It was a truth so clear that to obscure it would have required the concerted effort of all areas of propaganda: that of the Christian democrats, who claimed that their act of baptism was a single date and not a simple repetition; that of the republicans, who naturally considered that a conciliation with the Republic had to be anything but an agreement with Napoleon; that of the royalists, finally, who considered it treason par excellence because they had disappeared from the scene and found this explanation convenient. Much had blown away with the wind: all that counted in the end was that if the first ralliement was a second (deuxième) Consalvist moment and, therefore, a second (deuxième) concordat, then the second ralliement was nothing other than a third edition of Consalvism, a third concordat. This immediately catches the eye. First of all, the staff of the second ralliement was typically Consalvist both in Rome and in Paris. In the curia, it was the Rampollians who were in charge: Ferrata, Gasparri and Benedict XV himself, elected by the conclave with a clear desire to react to integralism. The movement was Rampollian, that is Leonian, that is to say, as far as the relations with France were concerned, Consalvist. In Paris, however, the people in power were those who had done everything to ensure that the separation did not result in the resumption of the civil war between the left and right initiated by the revolution. Clemenceau had been the prime minister who, as soon as the inventories of ecclesiastical goods caused turmoil and death, decided not to press the issue;13 after the Roman rejection of the 1905 law, Briand had legislatively organized the tolerance of illegality (the expression is from Caillaux).14 As for Poincaré, he was Minister of Religion in 1893 and, in 1895, fully embraced the ‘esprit nouveau’.15 In its internal forum, this whole team would without doubt have preferred that the excitements of the political position of Combes had never caused the separation, given that the French State was completely secular after 1789 and that the Concordat had changed nothing, in so far as it had established that there would no longer be an ecclesiastic foundation of the state. Pelletan himself had proclaimed, when the radical party was formed: ‘It is not possible to call the agreement against freedom between the Roman pontificate and the newly-formed Napoleonic dictatorship a republican institution’, immediately adding that ‘we can only have divergences between us concerning the time of its abolition’, as if to clearly admit that, except for those principles that are not that important, the Concordat could last indefinitely.16 13 Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Clemenceau (Paris: Fayard, 1988), pp. 502–03. 14 Joseph Caillaux, Mes mémoires, 3 vols (Paris: Plon, 1942–47), I (1942), p. 261. 15 See the remarks of Cardinal Ferrata in this regard during his time as Nuncio in Paris: Domenico Ferrata, Mémoires, 3 vols (Rome: Tipografia Cuggiani, 1920), III, pp. 188–209, 222. 16 ‘Nul ne peut considérer comme une institution républicaine le pacte conclu contre la liberté entre le pontificat romain et la dictature napoléonienne naissante’; ‘nous ne pouvons avoir de divergences entre nous que sur le moment de son abolition’; see the text in Jean-Thomas Nordmann, La France

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Yet no less than its creators, the moment in which the second ralliement occurred was also Consalvist, marked as it was by the fear of the rulers in the face of the radicalization of the left. In 1801, the Terror was over and neo-Jacobinism did not lay down its arms; in 1890, the republicans of the government had to face the radicals and, even more to the left, the socialists and anarchists. This was the reason for their search of some support from the centre-right against the extreme-left, through the detachment of Catholics from their alliance with the reactionary right. Consalvism operated a conjunction of centres, a centrism by means of the exclusion of extremes. Now, at the time of the second ralliement the same threat appeared due to the worldwide revival of the Revolution provoked in 1917 by Bolshevism, which led in 1921 to the birth of the French Communist Party at the Congress of Tours. The left-wing French after 1918, as after the Terror, were divided between a moderate wing and an extremist one. Hence there was the need, as a first step, to open the door to the right. Another typical characteristic of the Consalvist moment was the firmness of the Church. The governments turned to the Church because it had survived everything, from revolutionary de-Christianization to Ferry-style secularism and separation. Although apparently shaken by this earthquake, at every occurrence of Consalvism, its position was reinforced by a greater failure of the modern movement of emancipation. In 1801, it was fundamentally the shipwreck of the revolutionary enterprise that brought about the Terror; in 1890, it was the great fear aroused by Boulangism in the republican personnel who had not yet recovered from having nearly seen the people escape them; in 1918, it was the apocalyptic collapse into barbarity of the self-congratulatory progressivism of European liberalism due to the horror of World War I. Even the Consalvism of the second ralliement rested on the clauses that continued to refer to the exchange between the end of persecution of the Church and that of Catholic support of the Restoration. The end of the persecution had begun in 1914 with the Malvy circular. After the war, there came restrictions to the systematic radicalization of the secularizing laws, the return of the regular clergy and, above all, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, when the Law of Separation declared that the Republic did not recognize any religion, as bitter a pill for the left as the establishment of the Concordat on a basis of equality in 1801. On the other hand, the ralliement returned precisely in regard to the most symbolic part of the country, Alsace-Lorraine. Normally this state of affairs is considered an exception to French ecclesiastic law, when in reality it constitutes the revelation of the return to a concordat situation. The best proof of this is the return to shared competence in matters of episcopal appointments: before 1905, the leading role in the choice was played by the head of state, while the influence of the Pope was limited to proposing corrections; after the second ralliement, the situation was reversed since the Holy See had granted to the President of the Republic the right to examine its appointments. With respect to the end of Catholic support for the Restoration, this was expressed under Benedict XV by the simple fact of accepting a dialogue with the radicale (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), p. 45.

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Republic, re-establishing diplomatic relations. Under Pius XI, obviously actions like his condemnation of Action française demonstrates to what extent the abandonment of the monarchs to their fate represented, in France, the inevitable complement to Consalvism. In 1801, the Concordat had deprived the Count of Lille of his supporters; in 1890, the ralliement caused the first Count of Paris to suffer the same fate; there was no reason why, in 1926, neo-monarchists would be any exception. Finally, the second aim: on the part of the state, reconciliation with the Church did not prevent the de-Christianizing machinery of the public schools to return to working at full capacity, while, on the part of the Church, the great revival of Catholic militancy was being prepared. It was, in truth, clearer under Pius XI than under Benedict XV, but it must at least be mentioned that, as far as France is concerned, the birth of the Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens occurred during his reign, initiating what his successor later effected and expressed in Action catholique and Quadragesimo Anno. To sum up: with the second ralliement, one is immersed in an almost perfect Consalvist world. Yet this world was a world of silence. Nothing is more surprising than the contrast between the lasting success of the second ralliement (how many agreements negotiated after World War I are still in force?) and everything in it that points to the unspeakable, the ineffable, the unsaid. The term second ralliement is a phrase coined by historians that is of no importance; it says nothing to the general public, convinced that the last word on Church–state relations was the law of 1905. Proof of this, in an age like ours so obsessed with commemorating everything, is the discretion with which the event was remembered: it is right to ask whether the centenary of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See will be celebrated in March 2020. Certain reasons for this silence are very clear. In Rome, as in Paris, it was undoubtedly understood from the very beginning of the process that, given the ancient forms of hatred which had to be tackled, the work undertaken would be as feasible and lasting as it was discrete: noise does not do any good, and the good does not make any noise. However, for the state, it was impossible to recognize that the separation had not brought about substantial changes to the situation under the concordat, which was already characterized by the disappearance of the ecclesial foundation of the state as well as by the non-existence of any state foundation of the Church, and the law of 1905 did not establish anything different,17 but it was expressed in the hysterical way proper to radicalisms. That there was no longer an ecclesiastic foundation of the state is the essence of Article 2, according to which the Republic neither recognized nor financed any religion. Nevertheless, that there is no state foundation of the Church is what is expressed in Article 4, which, in claiming to regulate the devolution of ecclesiastic goods to diocesan associations given the task of taking care of the needs of the religion, the only official translation of the French law of the existence of the ecclesial body, specifies that these associations do so ‘in conforming to the general rules

17 Émile Poulat, Scruter la loi de 1905: la République française et la religion (Paris: Fayard, 2010).

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of the organization of the religion of which they propose to assure the functioning’.18 Now, in the Catholic Church these ‘general rules of the organization of religion’ are precisely what constitute canon law. Article 4 thus granted recognition of this, admitting that there was no state foundation of the Church and that the Church, therefore, in France as elsewhere, enjoyed a foundation that was its own and that, consequently, it owed nothing to the revolutionary social contract; otherwise, the only public statute of the Church would logically have been, sic et simpliciter, equal to that of an association according to the law of 1901. Such an admission was unthinkable because it was necessary for the left to affirm that something had happened in France between 1801 and 1914; if this were not the case, then the myth that the Republic took root in 1870 would become unsustainable, and it would be necessary to admit that until the union sacrée and victory it had never been but one of the many illegitimate regimes that issued from the rupture of 1789. It was therefore necessary, at all costs, for the Law of Separation to mark a step forward in the secularization of France in relation to the Concordat and hence that the latter stood in opposition to a secularity of the state which was only achieved in 1905, when in fact that had been claimed by the state since 1801. However, for the curia it was no less inconceivable to recognize that the integralist rigour with which Pius X had forbidden the bishops to set up diocesan associations (cultuelles), bringing to fruition the financial ruin of the French Church, already largely undermined by the Revolution, had been essentially useless since Article 4 had obliged these associations to conform to canon law. Hence, both the Romans and the French adopted a modus procedendi that would seem to have been inspired by Eastern wisdom: not to say, see or hear anything, but to achieve the goal in spite of everything. A French diplomat of the time, Paul Révoil, had expressed himself on another matter in a way that also applies perfectly to this issue: ‘Let us rely on the principles, they will certainly end up collapsing’. We might ask ourselves whether this silence had any advantages: it is never good not to call a spade a spade, and the French inability to say what was at stake between 1914 and 1926 with regard to the public management of religions undoubtedly contributed to complicating the current debate on secularism, all the more since it cannot be excluded that the second ralliement had been rendered equally unspeakable because, from another angle, at the very moment in which Consalvism recorded its triumph, it was already somehow outdated. The ideal state partner in the Consalvist approach is, in effect, very clearly the revolutionary state, such as France was after 1789, weakened by several factors. One was the lack of legitimacy, which meant that from the Revolution to 1914 no form of state was considered natural by the French. Another was the civil war between the right and the left, triggered by the dissolution of the constituents. The state thus ended up, in 1801, confessing its need to support the Church. In 1914, on the contrary, the state would undergo a fundamental transformation because in the union sacrée a unanimous reconciliation of the right and the left had been effected. If the lack of legitimacy and the civil war ceased at the 18 Poulat, Scruter la loi, p. 133.

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same time, what need was there for the political contribution of the Church? This was especially so because, in France, the union sacrée was ratified by the victory, and the country thereby avoided the obligation to reconcile right and left in the totalitarian union of extremes, as occurred in the defeated countries. In fact, Russian Stalinism, Italian Fascism and German Nazism were, after all, nothing more than variable combinations of two perennial ingredients: socialism and nationalism, extreme left and extreme right. France was an exception to this totalitarian wave because the victory had consolidated the foundational virtues of the union sacrée; from that moment on, how could Consalvism still be useful? However, the signs of the Church’s decline could still be found. Against the background of Consalvism, in effect, there was still a nostalgia for the Roman role of legitimizing the political, which was a role transferred from the Roman Empire to the Roman Church by means of the work of Augustine in his City of God, as Hannah Arendt noted.19 In regard to the ecclesial function as the ultimate guarantee of the political, Consalvism ensured an extension of this, not only through the attempt, which it always entails, of the return to domination of society through the militancy of the faithful, but also through the agreement that it sought to negotiate with the revolutionary state; in the perspective of the Concordat, there was always, more or less, a consecration at stake. After 1801, all this classicism had been put in the spotlight by Porta Pia because, in the end, how could one say that a temporal power could be sustained by a spiritual power that had not been able to defend itself? Yet it was also necessary to take into account, at the time of the second ralliement, the consequences of the role that Benedict XV himself had played in the world war because, if there was a moment where the political called for ecclesiastic support, it was certainly during World War I, when Gott mit uns was invoked in all languages. The particularity of Benedict XV in the midst of the battlefield was his absolute refusal to compromise. For the good of all and against all, he had kept the Holy See above the fray and consequently the Catholic Church itself, beyond any compromise of national churches with the governments of their different countries, first and foremost the Church of France. The Pope had assumed the role of guarantor against politics, resuming the first political function of Christianity, when the Church was born in spite of the empire, anticipating the best works of Pius XI; not the Consalvist Pius XI, who mixed for the umpteenth time the conciliar current with the militant one, but the anti-totalitarian Pius XI, who held his own against the new empires of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. Moreover, the further shifting of problems caused by Vatican II and the contemporary de-politicization of the religious, conceived increasingly at that time to be a very personal choice and not a space to be cordoned off with respect to the political (except, of course, in the case where the delimitation was made by means of a Kalashnikov), have suggested good reasons for thinking that the second ralliement was already, in some ways, surpassed at its formulation. However, this too is questionable, because it was first and foremost a not too inadequate translation of the French transformation of 1914. Needless to say, the national union had taken 19 Hannah Arendt, La crise de la culture (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), pp. 121–85.

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place, but in regard to the French regime as it existed in 1914. On the theological and political level, since the Law of Separation had only been a rewriting of the 1801 Concordat, that regime had remained fundamentally Consalvist. Thus, the second ralliement was not unsuited to it. Since it had participated in the union sacrée, the Church of France, as it existed in 1914 (that is, as Consalvism had shaped it), thus also participated in the new-found legitimacy. Finally, and above all, the return of Consalvism did not seem so out of place from the moment that the true weakness of the French State after 1914 was perceived. Of course, by virtue of the union sacrée and the confirmation of its reconciling effects through victory, from 1918 in France the Republic had become as legitimate as the monarchy had been until 1788, but one of the meanings of this precedent was evidently that not even this was promised eternal life. On the other hand, all that remained of this consolidated Republic was a nation exhausted by the demographic drain of the war. Finally, from another perspective, the Republic had been threatened by the reopening on a global level of the revolutionary divide between a universalist left and a localist right, from which the union sacrée and victory had kept it safe. The triumph of nationalism in 1914 had, in fact, meant a worldwide revival of the local values of the right, but the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought a new impulse at the planetary level for the universalism of the left, with the not-so-distant prospect of their radical reconciliation within the phenomenon of totalitarianism. Just as the rupture in 1789 between the two types of values had reached their Caesarist unification in Napoleonism, a dictatorship supported by the masses, in the same way, that of 1914–17 resulted in a totalitarian reconciliation between socialism and nationalism. The fragility of the French State in the face of this new threat is evident: not only was it tormented internally by the tensions it caused, as is shown by the succession of February 1934 and by the Front populaire, but in the summer of 1940, the Republic, faced with the most aggressive of these totalitarianisms, would collapse like a house of cards, not without all its leaders having gathered at Notre Dame on 19 May 1940 to ask for a miracle in the face of the Panzer troops.20 The most surprising aspect, however, is that they received it, in the guise of General de Gaulle, in whose person they ended up merging the Republic and the monarchy. So, did this allow the French State to regain the stable foundation of which it had been deprived by the split between the right and the left in 1789? The answer is ‘Yes’, if there had not been May 1968 later and, in our day, the weakness of the state in France were not only too evident. That the Church can do without the state seems by now to have been proven;21 the opposite still remains to be proved.22

20 Emmanuel Beau de Loménie, Les responsabilités des dynasties bourgeoises, 5 vols (Paris: Denoël, 1943–73), V (1973), p. 532. 21 Alphonse Dupront, Puissances et latences de la religion catholique (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), pp. 18–30. 22 Paul Valadier, Détresse du politique, force du religieux (Paris: Seuil, 2007).

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Bibliography Arendt, Hannah, La crise de la culture (Paris: Gallimard, 1989) Arquillière, Henri-Xavier, L’augustinisme politique: essai sur la formation des théories politiques au Moyen Âge (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1955) Bainvel, Jean-Vincent, ‘Cœur sacré de Jésus (dévotion au)’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1899–1950), III (1908), cols 331–32 Beau de Loménie, Emmanuel, Les responsabilités des dynasties bourgeoises, 5 vols (Paris: Denoël, 1943–73), V (1973) Bouthillon, Fabrice, La naissance de la Mardité: une théologie politique à l’âge totalitaire, Pie XI (1922–1939) (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2001) Caillaux, Joseph, Mes mémoires, 3 vols (Paris: Plon, 1942–47), I (1942) Cholvy, Gérard, and Yves-Marie Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, 3 vols (Toulouse: Privat, 1985–88), II (1986) Dansette, Adrien, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, 2 vols (Paris: Flammarion, 1948–51), II (1951) Dupront, Alphonse, Puissances et latences de la religion catholique (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste, Clemenceau (Paris: Fayard, 1988) Fabre, Pierre-Antoine, and Patrick Goujon, Suppression et rétablissement de la Compagnie de Jésus (1773–1814) (Namur: Lessius, 2014) Ferrata, Domenico, Mémoires, 3 vols (Rome: Tipografia Cuggiani, 1920), III Mayeur, Jean-Marie, La vie politique sous la Troisième République (Paris: Seuil, 1984) Monod, Jean-Claude, La querelle de la sécularisation de Hegel à Blumenberg (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2002) Montclos, Xavier de, Le toast d’Alger: documents 1890–1891 (Paris: Éditions de Boccard, 1966) Nordmann, Jean-Thomas, La France radicale (Paris: Gallimard, 1977) Poulat, Émile, Catholicisme, démocratie et socialisme: le mouvement catholique et Mgr Benigni de la naissance du socialisme à la victoire du fascisme (Tournai: Casterman, 1977) Poulat, Émile, Scruter la loi de 1905: la République française et la religion (Paris: Fayard, 2010) Valadier, Paul, Détresse du politique, force du religieux (Paris: Seuil, 2007)

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The Doulcet–Gasparri Agreement of 1920 and the Restoration of Diplomatic Relations between France and the Holy See

1. Introduction The troubled period in the relations between France and the Holy See at the beginning of the twentieth century is historically well documented.1 However, it is appropriate to point out that the rupture between the French government and the papacy took place in two stages. The first stage consisted in the interruption of diplomatic relations through the recall of the French chargé d’affaires in August 1904. The second is represented instead by the passing of the Law on the Separation of Churches and the State in December 1905, which put an end to the Concordat relationship and thus the legal ties that still united Rome and Paris. The pure and simple end of contact between the two sides certainly did not occur in 1904, because the diplomacy was more concrete and less theoretical than the politics. It is almost impossible to indicate the precise moment of the end to the exchanges, given the common interests that had to be negotiated. In reality, France and the Holy See continued to communicate, by means of informal intermediaries, for many years after the break. Moreover, after the actual cessation of contacts in the 1910s, the war that broke out in 1914 made it necessary to put an end to the silence between Rome and Paris. At the end of the conflict, the French context had evolved, and the various protagonists in the political sphere had changed their minds about the desirability of entertaining cordial relations with the papacy. From 1918, the French government adopted an attitude of ‘positive neutrality’ towards the Church, to use an expression by René Metz.2 This resulted in a gradual



1 Rather than list a bibliography that is already widely known, I refer the reader to the non-exhaustive list of main works to be found in Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet, Histoire du droit canonique et des institutions de l’Église latine (XVe–XXe siècle) (Paris: Economica, 2014), p. 562. 2 Metz set this friendly neutrality in contrast with a negative neutrality which the government had maintained against the Church since the Law of Separation. See René Metz, Le droit et les institutions de l’Église catholique latine de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à 1978: Église et sociétés (Paris: Cujas, 1984), p. 223.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 903–911 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118810

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resumption of contact between the two parties, once again thanks to unofficial intermediaries. The issue of Alsace-Lorraine with the renewal of the leadership of the dioceses of Strasbourg and Metz, which had become necessary at the end of the war, was the first real occasion to re-establish a true relationship. However, the question had to be solved urgently: the French government did not want to prolong the presence of the two German bishops. There was thus no time for a preliminary agreement on official relations, which would have required comprehensive negotiations, as both Rome and Paris were aware. The change in the heads of the two dioceses was thus negotiated through an intermediary chosen by the protagonists, in the person of the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Léon-Adolphe Amette.3 The success of these meetings made it possible to pave the way for the restoration of relations between France and the Holy See, a diplomatic success obtained under the pontificate of Benedict XV. As far as the resumption of official relations is concerned, archival documents prove that even the Ambassador to Italy, Camille Barrère, for a long time hostile to the presence of a French diplomat in the Vatican, revised his position in 1919,4 believing that the wind had changed and that the French government had never been in a better position to obtain the maximum concessions from the pontiff. However, the particularity of the time meant that the balance of power changed rapidly. Hence Barrère, only a year after saying that France was in an advantageous position to negotiate with Rome, again reconsidered and stated that the situation had changed to the advantage of the Holy See. It is not surprising that this was the moment chosen by Cardinal Gasparri, Secretary of State to Benedict XV and a fine connoisseur of the French situation, to open a discussion with the French government that took shape a few months later in the Doulcet–Gasparri agreement, which would sanction the restoration of official relations between France and the Holy See.

2. The Preparations for the Agreement The election of Paul Deschanel as President of the Republic in January 1920 and Alexandre Millerand as Prime Minister in the following month marked the beginning of a favourable context for initiating a dialogue with Rome. However, it fell to Gasparri to make the first move. To justify this, Barrère reported that the Secretary of State considered himself to be in a favourable position to negotiate the conditions for the resumption of contacts.5 On this point, some in the curia would later criticize this action on the part of Gasparri, accusing him of having promoted the resumption



3 On the problem of the substitution of the bishops of Strasbourg and Metz, see Audrey Virot, ‘Les négociations diplomatiques entre la France et le Saint-Siège (1870–1939)’ (doctoral thesis, Université Paris-Sud, 2013), pp. 348–69. 4 CADN, fonds Rome Quirinal, vol. 752, Barrère to Pichon, 17 January 1919. 5 CADN, fonds Rome Quirinal, vol. 752, note from 16 January 1920. In this document, Barrère clarified that, with the re-establishment of peace, the Vatican had maintained and broadened official diplomatic relationships, rendering inadequate the unofficial relations with France that had been employed until then to protect French interests.

T h e D o u lc e t– G as parri Ag re e me nt o f 1920

of diplomatic relations with France even though Benedict XV was not in favour of it. Gasparri would vehemently deny this, assuring them that it was brought about ‘without compromising in any way the freedom of the Church’.6 At first, Gasparri decided to use an unofficial intermediary in the person of Mgr Baudrillart7 and drew up a list of prerequisites for him to present to Deschanel. It was necessary, he wrote, ‘that the resumption of relations be easily carried out and that it should not encounter any obstacles’ (‘la reprise des relations se fasse aisément et ne rencontre point d’obstacles’). Among these conditions, there was one on which he would not compromise, that is, that the French representative would in no way have to receive the nihil obstat from Italy: ‘If it had to be this way, that is, if the French representative had to come to the Vatican, and had to do so by means of the Consulta, it would be better that he never left Paris’ (‘s’il devait en être ainsi, c’est-àdire si le représentant de la France, pour venir au Vatican, devait passer la Consulta, il vaudrait mieux qu’il ne partît pas de Paris’). As far as the exchange of diplomatic representatives was concerned, Gasparri did not object to France’s sending a simple chargé d’affaires, even if this left him perplexed due to the risk to France’s prestige. As for the nunciature, he affirmed the need to return to the status quo ante, a first-class nunciature, and immediately specified that it could not be given to a French prelate, because such a situation would be the source of too much confusion between his role as a cleric and his French nationality. Finally, Baudrillart was also to bring up the subjects that Rome wished to discuss: the granting of legal recognition to the Church of France, the freedom of teaching and the possibility for religious congregations to obtain legal status in France. At the end of the meeting with Deschanel, Baudrillart was quite satisfied.8 Deschanel was in fact well-disposed to the different preconditions proposed by Rome but expressed some reservations concerning the appropriateness of not proceeding immediately with the reforms on freedom of teaching and religious congregations. Thus, on the basis of this agreement, the mission of the unofficial intermediary came to an end and gave way to the official negotiations.

3. The Official Negotiations For these negotiations, France nominated Jean Doulcet9 as chargé d’affaires to the Secretariat of State. As evidence of the importance of the mission, Doulcet received instructions directly from Millerand, something rare for the time.



6 ‘Senza compromettere in veruna maniera la libertà della Chiesa’; Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite), ed. by Giovanni Spadolini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972), pp. 256–67. 7 AES, Francia, 1920, pos. 1359, fasc. 713, ff. 20–23, Gasparri to Baudrillart, 28 February 1920. 8 AES, Francia, 1920, pos. 1359, fasc. 713, ff. 26–27, Baudrillart to Gasparri, 5 March 1920. 9 Jean Doulcet was a career diplomat. He would become Ambassador to Rome from 1923 to 1928, the year of his death. See Édouard Clavery, Jean Doulcet, ambassadeur de France: 1865–1928 (Paris: Laborey, 1932).

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In this document, dated 18 March 1920, Millerand first indicated the conditions for Doulcet’s arrival and stay in Rome. Doulcet was to go to the headquarters of the Pieux établissements français, which would be his official residence during his stay in Rome. In this, Millerand had the diplomatic tact to avoid any confusion between the residence of the Ambassador to the Italian government and that of the provisional representative to the Holy See. Cardinal Louis-Ernest Dubois, Archbishop of Rouen, confirmed this intention to Gasparri, affirming that by this gesture the government wanted to underline Doulcet’s freedom of action, separating him completely from Palazzo Farnese.10 After this, Mgr Boudinhon, Rector of the Church of Saint Louis of the French, was to obtain for Doulcet an audience with Gasparri. On this occasion, Doulcet was to declare that ‘the government of the Republic desires to renew traditional relations with the pontifical government’ (‘le gouvernement de la République est désireux de renouer avec le gouvernement pontifical ses relations traditionnelles’), using words expressly indicated in the instructions received and rich in signification. On the one hand, it was clear that officially it was France that took the first step towards the Holy See (a point that Rome would have difficulty denying owing to the way in which diplomatic relations had been severed in 1904); on the other, the choice of words was decisive in convincing Rome of the good will of France and did not hesitate to mention the resumption of ‘traditional relations’. Once the material conditions of the presence of Doulcet in Rome had been specified, the instructions turned to the concerns of the mission of the chargé d’affaires, developing the five areas that were to be the object of the initial discussions. If Millerand affirmed the ‘normal and permanent’ character of the relations to be re-established with Rome, he did not assume the principle of diplomatic reciprocity following from this, which might appear contradictory. In this regard, he cited some precedents, taking the example of England and the United States, which were represented in Rome but did not have a papal representative. Millerand thus left Doulcet a margin within which to negotiate because he was aware of the difficulties that such a position could pose and clarified that, in the event of a reiterated request, it would be possible to send a nuncio once the two governments had decided together on the person to be appointed and the date of his arrival in Paris. France’s position risked conflicting with the right of active legation by the Roman pontiff, that is to say, his right to send diplomatic representatives to states with which the papacy had official relations. The second point concerned the protectorate implemented by France. Millerand was very clear: ‘You will affirm our desire to continue our traditional policy of protecting Catholics in the East and you will claim, as its natural counterpart, the preservation of the prerogatives and privileges of the official representatives of France constantly recognized by the Church’ (‘Vous affirmerez notre désir de continuer notre politique traditionnelle de protection des catholiques en Orient et vous revendiquerez, comme contrepartie naturelle, la conservation des prérogatives et privilèges constamment reconnus par l’Église aux représentants officiels de la France’). 10 AES, Francia, 1920, pos. 1359, fasc. 713, ff. 70–71, Dubois to Gasparri, 3 April 1920.

T h e D o u lc e t– G as parri Ag re e me nt o f 1920

In other words, the exclusive character of the French protectorate in certain territories and the liturgical honours attributed to French agents were the direct consequence of the protection assured by France. In this way, Millerand formally united two aspects that the Holy See had always considered the result of two distinct concessions. Furthermore, Doulcet was to inform the Secretary of State that France hoped to obtain the support of the Holy See for its peace-making activity in the territories of Eastern Europe. This was a way of asking the Pope to distance himself from Germany at a time still characterized by the war. The fourth point is complex, because it concerns the legal categorization of religions in France. Millerand stated that there would be no change in the legislation on religions with regard to teaching, religious congregations or even the principle of separation. We can see here that the climate of conciliation announced by Deschanel to Baudrillart seemed to be called into question since the government was not ready to compromise on certain points in its internal legislation. As far as the choice of bishops was concerned, France did not seek a return to the Concordat conditions, which was unthinkable. Instead, it hoped to obtain the status of ‘most favoured nation’ among those that had diplomatic relations with Rome and operated under a regime of separation. The concrete example was that of England: Rome unofficially submitted the name of a candidate to a vacant see two weeks before his nomination, thus giving the government time to raise any eventual objections. Finally, the last point mentioned in the instructions addressed a sensitive issue: the visit of the French President to the King of Italy, in response to the latter’s visit to Paris in December 1918. In 1904, Loubet’s encounter with Victor Emmanuel III had been one of the causes of the rupture. The context had changed, however. The Pope was certainly still a prisoner in the Vatican, but France was no longer bound by the Concordat. In 1904, it had been the head of a nation with a concordat that came to Rome, while in 1920, Deschanel represented a nation in which the Church and state were separate. France, therefore, sought to be part of that group of states, nearly all of which with a Protestant majority, whose representatives had always been received in the Vatican in spite of their meetings at the Quirinal. On the basis of these new conditions, Millerand indicated that during his next stay in Rome, he wished to pay a visit to Benedict XV as President of the Republic, following the protocol adopted by some heads of state, that is to say, leaving from the residence of the Ambassador to the Holy See. The instructions given to the chargé d’affaires ended in this way, suggesting what Paris considered to be the real basis for future negotiations. The audience with Gasparri was obtained quickly, and Doulcet met him a few days after his arrival in Rome. When speaking of the meeting, Doulcet said he was fairly satisfied. Only the problem of the sending of a nuncio had posed a real difficulty, which is not surprising. The Secretary of State did not accept the analogy between France and England proposed by Millerand because the diplomatic history of the two countries with the Holy See was different. To justify his position, Gasparri affirmed that the criterion of a Catholic nation was decisive: furthermore, while it was no longer a country with a concordat, France remained a Catholic nation, while England was not. The Cardinal further rejected the postponement of the sending of a nuncio without a set date and proposed, according to the opinion of Benedict XV, a

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maximum limit of one year. In regard to the other problems, Gasparri discussed the various details without in principle opposing the French requests. For the protectorate, Gasparri pointed out that the East was in a process of change so that matters were subject to evolution. As for the situation of the French Church, he said that he was concerned in particular about the legal status granted to religious institutions. Finally, there remained the problem of the visit of the French President to the pontiff, which embarrassed the Secretary of State. Ultimately, the problems of sending a nuncio and Deschanel’s visit were the subjects of the Doulcet–Gasparri Agreement.11

4. The Terms of the Agreement The discussion between the French chargé d’affaires and the Secretary of State focussed, in fact, on the case of the nuncio to be sent to Paris and the modalities of the presidential visit. The two problems progressively became one because the concessions made by France became the justification of those made by the Holy See. The problem of the nuncio was discussed with the utmost attention by Doulcet and Gasparri. To justify the proposals of the French government, Doulcet highlighted the continuing strong unpopularity of the Holy See in France and insisted on the example of England and the United States, who had relations with Rome without having themselves a diplomatic representative of the Vatican. In response, Gasparri indicated the continual development of the Holy See’s diplomatic representation throughout the world, which was progressing without any particular problems. In regard to the examples cited, Gasparri corrected Doulcet’s statements, recalling that there was an apostolic delegate in Washington and, even if there was no diplomat in London, the Pope was represented in Canada, Australia and the Indies; all this significantly relativized the French argument. After having adopted a rigid position, Doulcet was authorized by Millerand12 to attenuate his point of view by proposing that the nuncio be sent within 10/12 months after the agreement had been officially signed. Such a proposal reassured Gasparri and seemed to mark the point of conciliation between the parties on this aspect of the negotiations. The French President’s trip to Rome proved to be a more delicate problem, due to the Roman Question and the way in which France and the Vatican had broken their ties in 1904. Faithful to the traditional behaviour of the Holy See, Benedict XV could not receive the French President. Gasparri proposed, therefore, a three-stage solution that could satisfy every requirement: talks to restore official relations, the 11 These two points will be repeated with urgency in another dispatch of Millerand to Doulcet, together with that of maintaining the existing legislation on religions, which, however, assumed a secondary role because it was not really part of the discussion. The inclusion of these problems was suggested to the Foreign Minister by the foreign affairs committee and the budget committee of the house of deputies, which followed the negotiations closely; CADN, fonds Rome Saint-Siège, vol. 957, Millerand to Doulcet, 23 March 1920. 12 CADN, fonds Rome Saint-Siège, vol. 957, Millerand to Doulcet, 28 March 1920.

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visit to Rome of the French President without his meeting the Pope and the official resumption of relations.13 In this way, the conditions for the restoral of relations would be achieved but the absence of a French embassy at the Holy See would justify the lack of a visit to the Pope by the President during his time in Rome. Given that the context was different from that of 1904, Benedict XV would not be opposed to a meeting between France and Italy. Doulcet categorically rejected this three-stage combination proposed by Gasparri and instead maintained that the President could not go to Rome without visiting the Pope. He again based his argument on the fact that what was proposed might become a precedent favourable to the French position. He presented the case of the President of Brazil, who had been received by the pontiff.14 According to Gasparri, the two situations differed in a single but decisive detail: the Brazilian President went to Rome after his election but before his official inauguration, while the French President was already in office. At this point, the discussion seemed to come to a dead end because each side insisted on its own position. However, Gasparri had a network of informers who were able to provide him with the relevant insight in order to attenuate the Roman position. Cardinal Dubois, who was in frequent unofficial contact with the Foreign Ministry, informed Gasparri that the proposed three-step solution was not feasible because at the time of the talks the French President’s trip was only a vague project. It would be a pity to wait for the implementation of the project to make the restoration of relations official, particularly since the moment seemed propitious for a resumption of diplomatic relations with France.15 All this was confirmed by Baudrillart, who stated that French public opinion would be shocked by Benedict XV’s refusal to receive the French President.16 When France withdrew its objections to sending a nuncio, Doulcet made sure that the two aspects of the negotiation were combined in order to obtain some concession concerning the President’s trip to Rome. Gasparri thus attenuated the Roman position, assuring the French representative that he would make the effort to guarantee the solution to the problem according to the wishes of France.17 The discussion, which proceeded at a steady pace throughout the month of March 1920, was interrupted during April, mainly because of the Easter holidays. After this pause, Doulcet took the initiative and proposed in writing the first results obtained, in line with the instructions that he received from Paris. On 1 May 1920, the French representative therefore sent a letter taking note of the declarations of the Secretary of State on the question of the nuncio and of the President’s trip to Rome. With regard to the first point, France acknowledged that

13 AES, Francia, 1920, pos. 1359, fasc. 713, ff. 28–30, Gasparri to Dubois, 22 March 1920. 14 Brazil operated under a regime of separation between Church and state from the approval of various reforms at the beginning of 1890, after the declaration of the Republic in 1889. President Epitácio Pessoa, elected in the 13 April 1919 elections, went to Rome to visit Benedict XV in May of the same year, but officially assumed the presidency only on 28 July 1919. 15 AES, Francia, 1920, pos. 1359, fasc. 713, ff. 34–35, Dubois to Gasparri, 29 March 1920. 16 AES, Francia, 1920, pos. 1359, fasc. 713, f. 36, Baudrillart to Gasparri, 30 March 1920. 17 CADN, fonds Rome Saint-Siège, vol. 957, Doulcet to Millerand, 31 March 1920.

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the Holy See could establish a first class nunciature in Paris ‘if it thought it was useful’ (‘s’il le juge utile’). It is possible to ask oneself here about the questioning of the Pope’s right to active legation, since if Benedict XV decided to send a nuncio before the year was out, he would have to obtain the agreement of the French government. As far as the second point was concerned, Doulcet affirmed that no one would oppose the French President’s visit to Benedict XV during his stay in Rome, following the protocol adopted for non-concordat states. Gasparri’s reply is interesting. It was sent on 18 May in the form of a note, in which he stated that it had no official character. One can see here that the modalities of the negotiation had evolved, passing from verbal exchanges to written notes. In the note, Gasparri returned to the topics previously addressed orally with Doulcet. In regard to the protectorate, the status quo was reaffirmed, but Gasparri reserved for himself the possibility of a nunciature in Peking and Constantinople. Concerning the nomination of bishops, the Holy See would submit the names of the candidates to the embassy, which might then present its observations from a political perspective, the appropriateness of which would be evaluated by the Pope. As far as the other aspects were concerned, the document presented some significant nuances. In regard to the exchange of representatives, the Secretary of State held that if France wished to delay the arrival of the nuncio, it would be better to do the same for the ambassador. The idea of a close diplomatic reciprocity was once again introduced in the proposal to send representatives simultaneously, an idea that had not been agreed upon in Rome. In regard to the visit of the President, Gasparri set three conditions for its implementation: to avoid the period of the anniversary of the entry of Italian troops into Rome; to announce, through the ambassador at the time of the visit, that the President would not intervene in the dispute between the papacy and Italy; finally, to respect the protocol of the visits established by the agreement between Gasparri and Doulcet. The tenor of this unofficial response on the part of Gasparri was very different from the text proposed by Doulcet. However, it seems that it remained unofficial because the official response was to be far more concise. On 28 May, Gasparri sent a note to Doulcet in which he spoke only of the modalities of the visit of the French President to Rome. He reproposed, this time officially, the three conditions given in his unofficial note: to avoid the period of the commemoration of September 1870, to officially announce that it would not interfere with the disagreement between the papacy and Italy and to respect the protocol of the visits that had been established. On this point, Doulcet stated that he was satisfied. With regard to the delay in the sending of the nuncio, Gasparri agreed to not set out his reservations in writing in order not to spark a controversy that would disturb the restoration of diplomatic relations. However, he hoped that the date of sending the nuncio would be definitively decided through the vote on the funding of the embassy by the French Parliament.

5. Conclusions This was the genesis of what is generally known as the Doulcet–Gasparri Agreement, which, however, despite its importance, did not settle all the disputes between Rome

T h e D o u lc e t– G as parri Ag re e me nt o f 1920

and Paris. If, in fact, some points had been solved, other issues were postponed until further talks. Notable among these were the questions of cultural associations18 and, more broadly, that of the situation of the Church of France and liturgical honours, examined within the wider problematic concerning the protectorate. The decision to postpone the discussion on certain problems, which gradually emerged during the discussions between Doulcet and Gasparri, until after the restoration of diplomatic relations testifies to the real desire to achieve a satisfactory outcome. The two parties, in fact, knew the points on which the negotiations were likely to founder. Postponing them, therefore, permitted the restoration of relations in a favourable climate and facilitated the solution to the problems within an official diplomatic framework in the presence of an ambassador and a nuncio. At this point, Millerand considered the negotiations prior to the restoration of relations closed. This means that the conditions for permitting the commencement of the parliamentary procedure to approve funding for the embassy had been met, which, however, was not easily achieved.

Bibliography Basdevant-Gaudemet, Brigitte, Histoire du droit canonique et des institutions de l’Église latine (XVe–XXe siècle) (Paris: Economica, 2014) Clavery, Édouard, Jean Doulcet, ambassadeur de France: 1865–1928 (Paris: Laborey, 1932) Metz, René, Le droit et les institutions de l’Église catholique latine de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à 1978: Église et sociétés (Paris: Cujas, 1984) Spadolini, Giovanni, ed., Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972) Virot, Audrey, ‘Les négociations diplomatiques entre la France et le Saint-Siège (1870– 1939)’ (doctoral thesis, Université Paris-Sud, 2013)

18 On this point, the negotiations were initiated by Doulcet and Gasparri after the former had asked the latter not to present any obstacles ‘on an honest trial basis’ (‘à titre d’essai loyal’) to the constitution of cultural associations in some particular cases. Gasparri responded that, from his personal point of view, such a thing was possible since their hierarchy was protected in the statues, saying that in any case the definitive decision rested with the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. But the French episcopate, having sensed a possible abandonment of the opposition concerning the constitution of the associations, openly expressed their disagreement. This reaction influenced a change in Gasparri’s position, who ended the discussion with a telegram to Doulcet: ‘We were mistaken in the appropriateness and the practicality of the envisaged measure; we had only studied one side of the issue, and we now face the feelings of a vast majority of French bishops and all the cardinals’ (‘nous nous sommes trompé sur l’opportunité et la praticabilité de la mesure envisagée, nous n’avions étudié qu’un côté de la question, et nous nous heurtons maintenant au sentiment de la très grande majorité des évêques et de tous les cardinaux français’); CADN, fonds Rome Saint-Siège, vol. 957, Doulcet to Millerand, 28 March 1920, and Doulcet to Millerand, 28 May 1920.

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The Appointment of Ambassador Jonnart and the Issue of Religious Associations

Charles Jonnart’s appointment on 16 May 1921 as Ambassador Extraordinary to the Holy See by the French government under the presidency of Aristide Briand was part of the process of restoring official relations between France and the Vatican, which had been suspended since 1904. The process had begun one year earlier when the Minister Plenipotentiary Extraordinary, Jean Doulcet, was sent to the Holy See in May 1920. Doulcet was a career diplomat and had been in charge of the preliminary negotiations, dealing more with the technical matters connected to the restoring of relations than with the political aspects. Choosing Jonnart, who was a first-rate political figure but not a career diplomat, was of major political significance. The purpose was to analyse in depth the status of the Church in France and to redefine the new relations with the Holy See. His mission was initially intended to be short in duration, but in fact extended over a period of two and a half years, from May 1921 to November 1923, and went through numerous vicissitudes. The initial phase, a kind of prologue, extended from May to December 1921, and involved Pope Benedict XV, who died shortly afterwards, on 22 January 1922. Indeed, it was only after that period in mid-December 1921 that Briand was able to obtain the approval in the French Parliament of the budget necessary for the creation of the embassy. It was nonetheless during this preliminary period that the stakes and the players involved in the negotiation were clearly defined and identified.

1.

The Context and Meaning of Restoring Official Relations between France and the Holy See

The context can be defined as the post-war reconstruction period. During the war, Catholics had proved their loyalty to the state: officially, 15,000 members of the Association catholique de la jeunesse française (French Catholic Youth Association) died, to which must be added over 4500 priests, seminarians and clerics. In their sermons, the bishops, supported aid associations and the resistance in the occupied territories and also participated in the national cause. In the post-war period, this

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 913–925 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118811

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spirit permitted a process of reconstitution that was to culminate in the religious pacification ‘so ardently sought and so very necessary’, as numerous prelates wrote to Nuncio Bonaventura Cerretti upon his appointment in 1921. This was symbolized by the canonization of Joan of Arc on 16 May 1920 in Rome in the presence of a high-profile French delegation, led by the former Foreign Affairs Minister Gabriel Hanotaux.1 The massive participation of Catholics during the war was made possible by the so-called union sacrée, proclaimed by President Raymond Poincaré in August 1914. This truce lead to the suspension of the anti-clerical laws and the decrees signed by the radical Minister Malvy on 2 August 1914, which suspended the application of both the 1901 and the 1904 laws targeting the congregations. Although it is true that the union sacrée brought together all the political and religious groups of the country — nationalists, Catholics, republicans and socialists — it was however weakened over the years. In 1917, a draft amendment was presented by the left-wing parliamentarians that would have meant that clerics should serve in all the armed service corps, not only in the auxiliary services. In spite of this, during the general elections in 1919, many candidates who defended the union sacrée were elected in the Bloc national, which was seen as an extension of the unitary spirit in the interests of the reconstruction. The coalition obtained a large majority, close to 80 per cent of the seats; the remainder went to the socialists and a very small percentage to the radicals. However, this majority remained fragile as it included Catholics (180 seats on 600, which in itself was a revolution), some ‘moderate’ secular republicans and radicals. In order to last this parliamentary coalition foresaw that Catholics had to accept republican legislation and that the republicans had to accept a more tolerant and flexible application of lay laws. Restoring diplomatic relations with the Vatican was part of this strategy and was encouraged by the supporters of reconciliation on both sides: Catholics and laymen. However, although no one was willing to deny the clear improvement of the atmosphere in the wake of victory, there remained major hurdles to the rapprochement. On the side of Catholics, comprising both bishops and the faithful, there were tenacious prejudices. Recognizing the separation law meant overcoming its repeated condemnation by Pope Pius X in his encyclicals Vehementer nos (February 1906), Gravissimo officii (August 1906) and Une fois encore ( January 1907).2 The undeniable improvement of the circumstances was not sufficient reason, in the opinion of the bishops, to accept the law. In this regard, Louis-Joseph Maurin, Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon, wrote to Cardinal Gasparri in November 1921: ‘It





1 Letters from the bishops de La Celle (Nancy), Paget (Valence) and Flocard (Limoges) to Cerretti, quoted by François Jankowiak, ‘Droit ecclésiastique et régime de séparation: la question des associations diocésaines sous le pontificat de Pie XI’, in Pie XI et la France: l’apport des archives du pontificat de Pie XI à la connaissance des rapports entre le Saint-Siège et la France, ed. by Jacques Prévotat (Rome: École française de Rome, 2010), pp. 33–52 (p. 39). 2 The writings of Pius X can be found at [accessed 10 January 2019].

A m ba s s a d o r J o n n art an d t h e I s s u e o f Re li gi o u s Asso ci at i o ns

is not because of the atmosphere, it is for the very law of 1905 itself that it was condemned’.3 When the bishops had met one year earlier in Rome in May 1920 for the Joan of Arc canonization ceremony, they informed the Holy See of their worries concerning a potential agreement with the French State on the basis of the existing laws. The hostility against the 1905 law was fundamentally based on a matter of principle: although it recognized the principle of freedom of conscience and free exercise of religion, it nonetheless declared: ‘The Republic does not recognize, pay for or subsidize any religion’ (‘la République ne reconnaît, ne salarie ni ne subventionne aucun culte’). This could be interpreted as denying recognition to any institution called ‘church’, and that institutional recognition could only be granted to associations of citizens coming together to celebrate a shared religion. Would not the absence of recognition of the Catholic hierarchy potentially lead to the questioning of the bishop’s authority, even the Pope’s authority, or in the worst scenario lead to schismatic behaviour? And if the Church were to reverse its condemnations expressed in 1906, how could it explain this change? The more relaxed atmosphere was not sufficient to placate the bishops, or at least a good number of them. These concerns were not allayed by the fact that the government frequently recalled the intangible character of the laws on secularism. This term referred to a precise set of laws, as was to be explained soon after in 1925 by Philippe Berthelot, General Secretary of the Quai D’Orsay, in a circular to all diplomats.4 The 1881 and 1882 Ferry laws sanctioned the religious neutrality of public schools and the banning of public financing by state or local authorities of private schools (the school statute); the separation of Church and state meant that it was the responsibility of private persons alone to finance religious practice, without any public aid through religious associations (the civil status of the Church); lastly, the 1904 law banned members of religious congregations from teaching and abolished their right to obtain legislative authorization under the 1901 law. Reservations were expressed concerning the concept of intangibility, and it was recognized that the 1904 law was indeed a law of exception. The considerable corpus of secular laws went beyond the practical issues of religious associations, some of which did not favour a conciliatory approach. Given the context, the appointment of an ambassador who was not a member of the diplomatic corps and who was chosen primarily thanks to his political standing — as a Senator, former Minister, former Governor General in Algeria, President of the General Council of Pas-de-Calais and President of the Compagnie universelle du canal de Suez — was of considerable significance.5 Furthermore,

3 ‘Ce n’est pas à cause de l’atmosphère, c’est pour elle-même que la loi de 1905 a été condamnée’; letter from Cardinal Louis-Joseph Maurin to Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, November 1921, quoted by Jankowiak, ‘Droit ecclésiastique’, p. 40. 4 CADN, Archives Louis Canet, documents du corps diplomatique, vol. 1, Berthelot to all the diplomatic and consular agents, 24 July 1925. 5 Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, République et liberté: Charles Jonnart, une conscience républicaine (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1996).

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Jonnart was one of the rare politicians that all the protagonists could potentially trust. The Catholics had noted that, at the end of the 1880s, Jonnart had defended the esprit nouveau and was favourable to an appeasement of the religious issue. When he was Governor General in Algeria, he had taken leave of absence to participate in every vote concerning the laws on the separation of Church and state in the early years of the 1900s. Finally, he had excellent relations with a number of prelates, including the Bishop of Arras, Eugène Julien, with whom he shared the concern for the reconstitution of the devastated country, a process which implied religious pacification. His family ties with the Catholic deputy from Lyon, Édouard Aynard, whose daughter he married, were also known. As far as the republicans were concerned, none could forget Jonnart’s ralliement in 1899 with the left block slogan, when he recalled that for a certain period he was ‘a moderate liberal and would always be so’ (‘modéré liberal et il le serait toujours’), but that he was not ‘moderately republican’ (‘modérément républicain’). Jonnart’s appointment as ambassador was not merely connected to his personality, his reputation, or his moderatism. It was related to the political project defined in the fall of 1919 during the pre-campaign for the legislative elections that year, in particular to his controversy with Aristide Briand. Briand was against extending the union sacrée and proposed a coalition open to the left on the basis of a republican union, while still favouring a pacification programme through a tolerant application of the secular laws. Jonnart was, on the contrary, favourable to extending the union sacrée to include Catholics, republicans and moderate radicals while excluding, on the right, the Action française royalists, and, on the left, the socialists and the more extremist radicals, in order to defend the social order threatened by revolutionaries. For the plan to succeed, it was necessary to remove the risk of reopening the religious quarrel: the Catholics had to submit to the laws of the Republic in religious matters, and the republicans had to accept a flexible interpretation of the same laws. In May 1920, Jonnart was appointed president of the Alliance démocratique (renamed the Parti républicain démocratique et social), a centre-right secular republican party, and he undertook to make it the linchpin of a majority. Restoring relations with the Holy See and negotiating the legal status of the Church was perfectly in line with this political project. That Catholics should accept, at least tacitly, the provisions of the 1905 law was a necessary condition for religious pacification, which in turn was necessary for the nation’s recovery and reconstruction. An atmosphere of appeasement and union, which would result in the clergy being reassured by a more stable situation, seemed to be a determining factor: Jonnart emphasized that the law had settled the matter of the buildings but not the matter of the subsistence of the clergy, who, in particular in rural areas, were at the mercy of local benefactors. He felt that a better-recognized clergy, with more material security, would contribute to a state of mind more conducive to the perpetuation of the union sacrée.6



6 CADN, Ambassade de France près le Saint Siège, 1921, dossier III C, cable 86, Jonnart to the department, 20 June 1921.

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2. Ambassador Jonnart, from May to December 1921: A Prelude to Long Negotiations The first months of Jonnart’s appointment corresponded to the last months of Benedict XV’s pontificate, since he died at the very moment when Briand, head of the French government from January 1921, was about to hand the country over to Raymond Poincaré. The Ambassador thought it would be a brief, decisive campaign, but in fact it had a stormy start and encountered resistance on various sides. The first difficulty was due to the reticence on the part of certain French parliamentarians to accept the very principle of an Ambassador to the Holy See. Was such a decision not against the principles of the 1905 law, which ‘recognized no religion’? Those in favour of a strict interpretation of the law (some of the radicals and the socialists) campaigned in parliament against the very existence of an embassy. Doulcet’s mission, in 1920, had explicitly been termed as extraordinary. The Bloc national had voted in the lower house on the necessary budget for the functioning of an embassy on 30 November 1920, but the Senate, a bastion of the radical-socialists, which considered itself the guardian of republican values, particularly when it was a matter of the laws pertaining to the relations between Church and state, was in no hurry to follow suit. Jonnart’s appointment, decided in May 1921 by Briand, mentioned therefore that he was appointed as an Ambassador Extraordinary. This title alarmed the Pope, because it was difficult to reconcile such a mission with the appointment of an apostolic nuncio, who could not be considered extraordinary. Benedict accepted the term only because he was convinced that the vote was merely a question of parliamentary scheduling.7 In fact, it took more time than planned because the radicals, who were hostile to the embassy, protracted the process far longer than expected. It was only on 8 December 1921 that the Senate voted on the budget after a heated debate. The radicals split into two tendencies, and many government supporters had been sensitive to the foreign policy aspects because the embassy was presented to them as a useful advantage in terms of France’s international prestige. Meanwhile, the Vatican became distrustful as the procedure wore on. Opposition to the embassy did not come from the ultra-secular republicans alone. Amongst Catholics and their bishops, many considered the reconciliation between France and the Holy See to be an arduous project. Many asked themselves whether this policy would not lead to a denial of the condemnations expressed by Pius X and a more or less disguised recognition of the secular laws. This opposition was echoed in the curia, as can be seen by the incident which took place at the congress on the birth-rate in June 1921 while the embassy was under discussion.8 This annual congress, held in France, convened representatives of both Catholic and non-Catholic associations which defended family values and the promotion of births. In 1921, the



7 CADN, Z Europe Saint-Siège 1918–29, vol. 17, ff. 169 and 189, telegrams 55–56, Doulcet to the department, 10 and 17 May 1921. 8 CADN, Z Europe Saint-Siège 1918–29, vol. 17, ff. 223 and 302, Jonnart to the department, 20 and 22 June 1921.

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congress was to be in Bordeaux, in the diocese of Cardinal Pierre-Paulin Andrieu, who had the reputation of being intransigent. Referring to a letter from Cardinal Merry del Val, Secretary of the Holy Office and former Secretary of Pius X,9 he reminded the organizers that it was forbidden to participate in inter-confessional associations or charities dealing with family morals. According to the organizer of the congress, Auguste Isaac of Lyon, such untimely intransigence would ‘revive old quarrels’, given that the organizers for whom this ban was intended were in fact for the most part practising Catholics and ‘fervent supporters of restoring relations with Rome’.10 Andrieu’s criticism also called into question the union sacrée, of which the birth-rate congress could be considered a concrete example. The issue was settled after rather a long delay by the Holy See, which established a distinction between a permanent commitment to an association or charity and temporary participation in a congress. Had Cardinal Merry del Val retained a strong influence in the curia, as Louis Canet, advisor for religious affairs at the Quai d’Orsay, tended to believe? Probably not, but it was a fact that he existed. Intransigence and a categorical refusal were also the position of the extreme right, represented by Action française, as can be attested to by numerous publications hostile to Jonnart and the embassy.11 The true influence of these contradictions is uncertain. In a response in September 1920 to two Catholic representatives from the Bloc national, Alfred Baudrillart, Rector of the Institut catholique de Paris, emphasized the difference between 1905 and 1920: in 1905 it had been a unilateral decision, whereas in 1920, ‘by the very negotiations with the Pope, his holiness had been recognized as the source of the hierarchy and of the authority of the Catholic Church’. To anyone who feared a state that recognized no religion, the simple retort could be that the mere fact of restoring relations was a kind of recognition.12 Such was the difficult atmosphere when the negotiations on religious associations began, a matter of crucial importance. The conciliatory republicans were in favour of the 9 In June 1921, La Croix published the letter that Merry del Val had sent to Andrieu on 25 April of that year. It was the answer to his request for approval of the ban that Andrieu had issued against Catholics participating in the birth-rate congress, because of its inter-confessional character. He feared that it would expose the faithful to the risk of ‘falling into religious indifferentism’ (‘tomber dans l’indifférentisme religieux’). The letter, written after the Holy Office’s 13 April meeting, fully approved the Archbishop’s ban. See ‘À propos d’un Congrès de la natalité’, La Croix, 12–13 June 1921. 10 ‘Réveiller les anciennes querelles’; ‘chauds partisans de la reprise des relations avec Rome’; Isaac to Jonnart, 15 June 1921. The document is held in the private archive of Ambassador Jean du Sault, sonin-law of Jonnart, and was entrusted to the researcher Gérard Lesage, who let me study it. 11 See, for example, Jules Augustin Delahaye, La reprise des relations diplomatiques avec le Vatican (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1921). 12 ‘En négociant avec le Pape, on l’a reconnu comme la source de la hiérarchie et de l’autorité dans l’église catholique’; note from Baudrillart ‘in response to a question put to me by Mr Boissard and Mr de Chambrun, representatives, in early September 1920. This note was communicated to Cardinal Gasparri’ (‘en réponse à une question qui m’a été posée, au début de septembre 1920, par MM. Boissard et de Chambrun, députés. Cette note a été communiquée au cardinal Gasparri’); reproduced in Émile Poulat, Les diocésaines: République française, Église catholique: Loi de 1905 et associations cultuelles: le dossier d’un litige et de sa solution (1903–2003) (Paris: La Documentation française, 2007), p. 161.



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application of the 1905 law, of which Briand had been the promoter and standard-bearer. In particular, they defended Article 4, according to which the associations in charge of managing the property necessary for the exercise of religion would be set up ‘in keeping with the organizational rules of the religion they were to be exercising’, which was the same as guaranteeing the principle of hierarchy essential to the Catholic Church. Referring to the constant authority of the Conseil d’État, the republicans emphasized that the highest court had always set aside associations that did not benefit from the approval of the bishop. In any case, many of them felt that it was the Church’s task to make use of the existing law. However, in the Republican camp there was no perfect unanimity: Briand was of the opinion that the Church should limit itself to applying the law and that it was not the state’s responsibility to require that the Pope impose it upon Catholics. Jonnart, on the other hand, was favourable to a direct intervention on the part of the Pope: he felt that this would lead to a swift solution to the negotiations. Matters were not that simple, however, amongst the Catholics. The adversaries of the application of the 1905 law, recalling Pope Pius X’s condemnations, noted that according to Article 19, the law required that each year the association’s general assembly approve the management and administrative decisions of the administrators, a requirement seen as an infringement upon the powers of the bishop.13 Furthermore, the authority guaranteed that the law was not to be considered absolute given that it evolved depending on circumstances, as explained by Maurin in November 1921.14 In 1920, those in favour of reconciliation suggested the following: a bishop would draft the statutes of a religious association which would be submitted for approval both to the Holy See and to the French government. Therefore, early in 1921, Henri Chapon,15 Bishop of Nice, published a short text entitled L’Église de France et la loi de 1905.16 This proposal was heartily supported by the Ambassador, who emphasized in June 1921 the ‘interest of the government of the Republic in making known religious associations, which would demonstrate in the eyes of all concerned that the Holy See’s prohibition of the laws of 1905 and 1907 has ceased to exist’.17 It was in this perspective that the initial negotiations on religious associations began. There were a few isolated attempts to set up diocesan associations. In 1918, Chapon had drafted the statutes of an association for ‘the exercise of the Catholic

13 The intransigents consulted renowned jurists such as Auguste Rivet, Charles Jacquier, Emmanuel Lucier-Brun and Constant Groussau, professor of law at the Institut catholique de Lille. On the latter, see Bernard Ménager, ‘Constant Groussau, universitaire et parlementaire (1851–1936)’, in Les ‘Chrétiens modérés’ en France et en Europe (1870–1960), ed. by Jacques Prévotat and Jean VavasseurDesperriers (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2013), pp. 313–28. 14 Jankowiak, ‘Droit ecclésiastique’, p. 41. 15 At the beginning of his career, Mgr Henri Chapon (1845–1925) had been Secretary to Mgr Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, and a major figure of liberal Catholicism. Appointed Bishop of Nice in 1896, Chapon expressed his support for religious associations as early as 1906. 16 Henri Chapon, L’Église de France et la loi de 1905 (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1921). 17 ‘L’intérêt pour le gouvernement de la République de faire état d’associations cultuelles, ce qui serait aux yeux de tous la manifestation que l’interdit du Saint-Siège contre les lois de 1905 et 1907 a cessé d’exister’; CADN, Ambassade de France près le Saint Siège, 1921, dossier III C, telegram 86, Jonnart to the department, 20 June 1921.

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religion in the Diocese of Nice’ (‘l’exercice du culte catholique dans le diocèse de Nice’), referring to the 1901 law on associations. This text was sent to the Ministry of the Interior by Ferdinand Renaud, Chaplain of the Collège Stanislas, who had participated in its drafting; it was also sent to Jonnart, who in Rome consulted Auguste Boudinhon, Rector of Saint-Louis des Français. The latter suggested an explicit reference not only to the 1905 law but also to canon law. The text was submitted to Robert Beudant, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Strasbourg, and was again modified on 13 October 1921 during a meeting of a group of experts held at the Ministry of the Interior. The meeting was chaired by Undersecretary of the Interior, Maurice Colrat, with the participation of Boudinhon, Renaud, Beudant and a number of senior civil servants, such as Canet and Léon Noël, former Head of the Cabinet of Minister Pierre Marraud. Boudinhon, Renaud, Canet and Beudant confirmed that the statutes were in accordance with the 1905 law (although they would have preferred the law to have been specifically quoted) and with canon law.18 In November the text was sent to Cerretti, whose mission was to convince the French bishops. He requested a few amendments, some of which were accepted. It now passed to the French hierarchy and the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, who were consulted on this text, but which was no longer discussed in the negotiations between the Church and the state until the spring of 1922. The first phase in the negotiations on diocesan associations saw the activity of the main figures in the debate. Jonnart was not absent from the negotiation, but his role was above all political and aimed at emphasizing the approval of the embassy’s budget and the campaign in Rome, which sought to show that the parties intended to accept the requirements of the 1905 law. With that purpose in mind, he was able to establish excellent contacts with the Secretary of State, Pietro Gasparri, not to mention with the pontiff himself, while sparing no effort to reassure the papal court. In Rome, Jonnart had an unofficial advisor who was particularly competent in canon law: the previously mentioned Boudinhon, former professor at the Institut catholique de Paris, where he had met Gasparri.19 On the French side, the Ambassador communicated directly not only with Briand but also with major governmental dignitaries, including the President of the Republic himself, Alexandre Millerand. The experts were to play a major role in the negotiation. Eminent jurists were consulted: in addition to Beudant, the supporters of conciliation consulted on numerous occasions Henry Hébrard de Villeneuve, Vice President of the Conseil d’État. In his reasoning, Article 19, in spite of appearances, did not diminish the powers of the bishop guaranteed by Article 4, which prevailed over any other interpretation.20 In the eyes

18 Note by Canet, 15 October 1921. Reproduced in Poulat, Les diocésaines, p. 206. 19 Boudinhon to Jonnart, 10 September 1921, reproduced in Poulat, Les diocésaines, p. 196. Necrology in Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 27, 112 (1941), p. 292. Auguste Boudinhon (1858–1941), born in Le Puy, student of Saint-Sulpice, ordained priest in 1881, had taught canon law in Paris from 1884 to 1916. In 1916, he was appointed Rector of Saint Louis of the French in Rome and held several functions in the Vatican. 20 Opinion by Henry Hébrard de Villeneuve, Vice President of the Conseil d’État, reproduced in Poulat, Les diocésaines, p. 207.

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of the senior civil servants, it was difficult to find specialists able to deal with an issue of such complexity. The experts from the Ministry of the Interior consulted in June 1921 concluded that the Chapon draft was a semblance of an association and that this was the intended goal of the statute.21 Shortly thereafter, Canet became the main interlocutor in the negotiation for the administration. Canet, a Catholic intellectual of vast culture and devotion who had a degree in philology, was sympathetic to the modernist circles; he had studied at the École française de Rome from 1912 to 1916.22 A staunch Gallican and a militant, Canet was close to Boudinhon (favourable to conciliation and a supporter of the ralliement) and was hostile to the Roman Pontifical Seminary of Father Henri Le Floch, an integrist with ties to Merry del Val. Canet’s analysis was designed to verify whether Rome was trying to create a particular status for Catholic religious associations that would be governed by canon law and not by French law. He made his contribution by joining one of these and declared himself against Ultramontanism, intransigentism and anti-modernism.23

3. A More Difficult Process Than Expected It seemed that the agreement reached in 1921 represented a major step forward in the negotiations; however, the resistance of both parties was prolonging the talks more than was expected. Jonnart had to convince the secularist republicans, while Benedict XV and Gasparri had to win over intransigent resistance. Jonnart had no hope of convincing the most adamant anti-clerical group, the leftwing radicals. He did however hope to form a large coalition of the more conciliatory radicals and the centre-right republicans, his closest friends. The most common position of these men was that defended by Briand: the law exists, and the Church must abide by it given the guarantees provided. Jonnart had to begin by reassuring his secular friends of the strict application and the intangibility of the law, and then 21 CADN, Ambassade de France près le Saint Siège, 1921, dossier III C, expert opinion of the Interior Ministry, 6 June 1921. 22 Fabrice Rabardey, ‘Louis Canet et l’Alsace: le double service de l’Église et de l’État (1918–1927)’, in Pie XI, ed. by Prévotat, pp. 53–72 (pp. 57–60). 23 Paul Airiau, ‘Henri Le Floch, recteur du Séminaire français (1904–1927)’, in 150 ans au cœur de Rome: le Séminaire français (1853–2003), ed. by Philippe Boutry, Yves-Marie Fradet and Philippe Levillain (Paris: Karthala, 2004), pp. 103–17. Henri Le Floch, a Spiritan, was Rector of the French seminary in Rome from 1904 to 1927. Canet considered him the head of the ‘fierce opponents’ and against the ‘honest conciliation’ represented by Boudinhon, but Le Floch was later in favour of the diocesan associations. In 1922, Le Floch’s subsequent evolution is attested to by a dispatch of the chargé d’affaires Henri Cambon, according to whom ‘the evolution of the director of the French seminary towards more liberal ideas is a fact that we should note with satisfaction’ (‘l’évolution du directeur du Séminaire français vers des idées plus libérales est un fait que nous devons constater avec satisfaction’); CADN, Ambassade de France près le Saint Siège, 1922, dossier III C, Cambon’s dispatch, No. 54, 30 May 1922. The advisor to the Quai d’Orsay criticized his anti-modernist attitude and in particular his contribution to the warning sounded by Jules Touzard, concerning an article dedicated to Moses and Joshua; CADN, Z Europe Saint-Siège, 1918–29, vol. 17, note dated 17 May 1921.

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leverage the concessions guaranteed by the international relations of the Holy See and the restoration of diplomatic relations to prove the value of the embassy. The law concerning congregations was one of the most difficult and delicate issues. At the end of the hostilities, profiting from the tolerance of the authorities and the support of a large sector of public opinion, some congregations were reconstituted without conforming to the 1901 law that subjected their existence to legislative approval; this put them in an illegal situation. These practices did not seem to have benefitted from the approval of Rome. In July 1921, Cerretti assured the Ambassador that the Pope had recommended to the religious members that they should no longer remain underground.24 Jonnart feared that an anti-clerical reaction would force the government to adopt coercive measures. The rise in anti-clericalism led to establishing the Ligue de la République in October 1921, whose purpose was to unite the leftist movements in view of the upcoming elections of 1924, on the basis of a return to strict secularism. On 21 October, Jonnart spoke before the administrative committee of his party, the Parti républicain démocratique et social, and declared that it was essential to solve any misunderstanding: the congregations in which illegal teaching occurred would not be authorized to reopen schools, but at the same time Jonnart wanted the missionary congregations to benefit from the support of parliament. This speech gave rise to resentment on the part of liberal Catholics, such as Denys Cochin,25 but it was better understood in the Vatican. Needless to say, it was a firm reminder of the republican law but also an attempted gesture towards the missionary congregations. A similar appeal, intended to show the interest in the missions as an instrument for the diffusion of the French language and political influence, became part of the Ambassador’s strategy notwithstanding the refusal on the part of the supporters of the intangibility of the law. When the embassy’s budget was voted by the Senate in 1921, several senators spoke about the usefulness of an embassy in terms of international politics: they felt that the recognition of the Holy See, a major concession, would reinforce France’s position on the international scene. In the speech pronounced when the Ambassador presented his credentials,26 several of these aspects were emphasized: the return of peace which presupposed the ‘scrupulous observation of international treaties’ (‘l’observation scrupuleuse des traités internationaux’), the Protectorate of Christians in the Middle and Far East and the respect of religious missions throughout the world. On each of these points, however, there was little convergence possible: the Holy See was extremely reserved as to the treaties, and the Protectorate of Christians, France’s traditional prerogative, was called into question by the British and Americans, both allies of France. As far as the missions were concerned, there was potential common ground, but as Jonnart observed, promoting the missions

24 CADN, Ambassade de France près le Saint Siège, 1921, dossier III E 2, Jonnart to the department, 20 July 1921. 25 Denys Cochin, ‘Un discours’, Le Figaro, 30 October 1921. 26 Speech given by Jonnart on presenting his credentials, 29 May 1921; CADN, Z Europe Saint-Siège, 1918–29, ff. 214, 223, Jonnart to the department, 29 May 1921.

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was only conceivable if there were a vast educational component, which was directly related to the issue of the congregations. The political composition of parliament did not guarantee their approval, and, moreover, the results in terms of foreign policy were slim. The greatest success, the appointment of a French bishop with canon’s jurisdiction (excluding the local ordinary one), over French families living in the Rhineland, Upper Silesia and the Sarre, had been entrusted to Mgr Paul Rémond in April 1921, before Jonnart’s appointment. In December of the same year, the Holy See accepted the appointment of a French archbishop of Baghdad, in keeping with tradition. Later, a French Carmelite was appointed in Isfahan. Although these results were not insignificant, the desired goal remained out of reach. The Ambassador’s adversaries would later criticize the results on this point. The difficulties for the Holy See were even greater. From the very start, Benedict XV agreed with Gasparri and stated that he was ready to accept the 1905 associations under the guarantee of the French government supported by case law.27 It was only the resistance of the French bishops which led him to delay his decision on this issue. Benedict XV felt that he could not impose a decision of such importance while his interlocutors, on the contrary, considered the Church an absolute monarchy where only the will of the monarch counted. As Baudrillart noted somewhat ironically, the same people who criticized Pius X for his autocracy criticized his successor for his parliamentarianism.28 For its part, the Holy See did not trust the electoral system, which could lead to rapid policy changes depending on whichever party won the majority. Further, the Pope was sensitive to the risk, indicated by the French bishops, of shocking the faithful by what might be considered an about-face with respect to the secular laws. Cerretti followed very attentively the alternatives proposed by the bishops who did not wish to implement the provisions of the 1905 law. What were discussed, therefore, were the 1901 law and that of 1884 on unions (could there be ‘religious unions’ that defended the professional interests of ecclesiastic workers?). Even the status of real estate corporations was examined. Yet all these considerations led to the same conclusion: unlike the others, which established assemblies of members in a democratic organization, it was only the 1905 law, Article 4, that would guarantee the episcopal authority and hierarchical organization of the Church.29 Some even considered calling for a vote in parliament to recognize the Catholic Church explicitly, which was impossible given that it run counter to the ‘disestablishment’ of Churches, one of the essential elements in the separation between Church and state. In order to enable matters to move forward, the Pope endeavoured to obtain a favourable measure from the French government to reassure the bishops, such as the restitution of certain property seized in 1907 that had not yet been assigned, for example, the Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris. On this topic, which overlapped

27 Chapon to Cochin, 15 June 1921, reproduced in Poulat, Les diocésaines, p. 153. 28 Note from Baudrillart, 20 September 1920, reproduced in Poulat, Les diocésaines, p. 162. 29 Jankowiak, ‘Droit ecclésiastique’, p. 41.

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with that of the missions, Jonnart gave his total support without gaining much by way of results.30 After the death of Benedict XV, it was decided in the spring of 1922 to consult the bishops of France on the statutes drawn up in 1921 and subsequently, after an agreement had been reached, to submit it to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Such a consultation was in keeping with the attitude of Benedict XV, a Pope whose policy consisted in avoiding authoritarian procedures. The results revealed that among the French bishops there were intransigent opponents in principle but that a greater number was quite favourable, expressing reservations of a more or less pronounced nature. Although it is difficult to follow how individual opinions evolved, the discussions did have a favourable effect on the acceptance. Between the Chapon draft in September 1921 and that approved at the end of 1923 by the Conseil d’État and published by Renaud,31 there were notable changes. For the most part, but not always, these changes came as a result of demands on the part of the Church to reassure the bishops both in terms of the drafting of the statutes and of the institutional framework. There were changes in three areas. With respect to the judicial aspect, canon law, to which the initial version merely alluded, was explicitly cited. Thus, the text no longer stated that ‘the association shall not’ but rather ‘it is forbidden for the association to’ as is required by canon law. The 1905 law, explicitly mentioned in the initial version, had now disappeared. As far as the recruitment of members in the association and the board of directors was concerned, the principle of elections, which was already limited in scope in the initial version, was even further reduced in the final version. For example, the board of directors, chaired de jure by the bishop, in the initial version was composed of nine members elected by the general assembly from a list proposed or accepted by the bishop; in the final version it included four members, presented by the bishop in agreement with the board, of which one was to be a vicar general and another a member of the Canons Regular. As for financial decisions, the board had considerable powers in the initial version, whereas the final version stated that the four members of the board ‘assist the Bishop in the management as provided for in canon law’.32 Jonnart had accepted the mission entrusted to him by Briand in the hope that it would be a brief task. The situation seemed clear: the Holy See, according to expectations, would approve the draft statute given the desirable guarantees. Indeed, the Pope and Gasparri did favour approval. Yet, the first six months of the negotiations were devoted to defining the framework of the negotiations, which were to last another two years. It is important to emphasize the complexity of the process taking place. A purely judicial approach would be insufficient: there was a deep-seated distrust that went beyond the contents of the text and was manifested 30 CADN, Ambassade de France près le Saint Siège, 1921, dossier III E, cable from Jonnart to the department, 9 December 1921. 31 Ferdinand Renaud, Les associations diocésaines: étude sur le statut de l’Église en France (Paris: Dunod, 1923). 32 ‘Assistent l’évêque dans sa gestion journalière de la manière prévue par les règles canoniques’; draft of Chapon from September 1921, reproduced in Poulat, Les diocésaines, p. 198 and in Renaud, Les associations, pp. 210–14.

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in troublesome debates. The bishops feared that their pastoral authority, essentially guaranteed by the Catholic Church, would be called into question. For their part, the secular representatives feared for the intangibility of the law upon which, they felt, modern society was based. Moreover, a personalized approach would be short-sighted: the diplomatic talents and the strong personality of the Ambassador in respect to Gasparri, an exceptional diplomat, were insufficient to overcome the obstacles during the first attempt. What was at stake was far more than that: ensuring the peaceful coexistence of two very different views of society and the world while ensuring the necessary relations between the two. This goal was attained thanks to the interpretation developed in 1921–23 of the 1905 law, which led most Catholics to accept the second ralliement without too much reticence.

Bibliography Airiau, Paul, ‘Henri Le Floch, recteur du Séminaire français (1904–1927)’, in 150 ans au cœur de Rome: le Séminaire français (1853–2003), ed. by Philippe Boutry, Yves-Marie Fradet and Philippe Levillain (Paris: Karthala, 2004), pp. 103–17 Chapon, Henri, L’Église de France et la loi de 1905 (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1921) Delahaye, Jules Augustin, La reprise des relations diplomatiques avec le Vatican (Paris: PlonNourrit, 1921) Jankowiak, François, ‘Droit ecclésiastique et régime de séparation: la question des associations diocésaines sous le pontificat de Pie XI’, in Pie XI et la France: l’apport des archives du pontificat de Pie XI à la connaissance des rapports entre le Saint-Siège et la France, ed. by Jacques Prévotat (Rome: École française de Rome, 2010), pp. 33–52 Marchese, Stelio, La Francia ed il problema dei rapporti con la Santa Sede (1914–1924) (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1969) Ménager, Bernard, ‘Constant Groussau, universitaire et parlementaire (1851–1936)’, in Les ‘Chrétiens modérés’ en France et en Europe (1870–1960), ed. by Jacques Prévotat and Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2013), pp. 313–28 Paul, Harry W., The Second Ralliement: The Rapprochement between Church and State in France in the Twentieth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967) Poulat, Émile, Les diocésaines: République française, Église catholique: Loi de 1905 et associations cultuelles: le dossier d’un litige et de sa solution (1903–2003) (Paris: La Documentation française, 2007) Rabardey, Fabrice, ‘Louis Canet et l’Alsace: le double service de l’Église et de l’État (1918–1927)’, in Pie XI et la France: l’apport des archives du pontificat de Pie XI à la connaissance des rapports entre le Saint-Siège et la France, ed. by Jacques Prévotat (Rome: École française de Rome, 2010),pp. 53–72 Renaud, Ferdinand, Les associations diocésaines: étude sur le statut de l’Église en France (Paris: Dunod, 1923) Vavasseur-Desperriers, Jean, République et liberté: Charles Jonnart, une conscience républicaine (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1996)

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Italy

Liliana Ferrari

The Reform of Catholic Action

1. Background On 5 September, during its fourth meeting, the congress hall was even more crowded than on previous days. It offered a truly magnificent sight. And here is Count Paganuzzi coming forward, announcing from the podium something very important, that is to say, that the Pope had sent the new Statute of the Opera dei congressi, modifying the way in which the committees were formed. He thanked His Holiness from the bottom of his heart for his interest and for the kindness he had shown to its work, which would thus always a work of the Pope.1 In September 1901, the Opera dei congressi celebrated its eighteenth sitting in Taranto. In the twenty-five years of its existence, it had had two statutes (1875 and 1881),2 which attributed a relatively limited role to the ecclesiastical authorities, notwithstanding the fact that the organization had chosen, in its articulation, to imitate the system of dioceses and parishes. The Comitato permanente (Permanent Committee), the largest structure of the Opera, ‘stands in a relationship with the most reverend episcopal curias’; this was established in Article 2 of the first statute, which limited participation only to priests who were ‘given special commendations by their own ordinary’ (Art. 3), or who represented a women’s section, to which they were perhaps assistants or spiritual directors (Art. 5). In the later version (1881), the Opera undertook to act to ‘conform to the desires and pleasures of the Supreme Pontiff, and under the escort of the episcopacy and the clergy’ (Art. 1). The ‘escort’ implied respect rather than subordination, given that the diocesan committees were constituted





1 ‘L’aula del Congresso il 5 settembre nella sua quarta adunanza era ancora più affollata dei giorni precedenti: presentava un aspetto veramente magnifico. Ed ecco il conte Paganuzzi farsi innanzi, annunziando dalla tribuna cosa importantissima, avere cioè il papa comunicato il nuovo Statuto dell’Opera dei congressi, modificante la formazione dei Comitati. Egli ringrazia dal più profondo del cuore Sua Santità per l’interesse e per la sollecitudine che dimostra verso l’Opera, la quale così sarà sempre più del papa’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 52, 3 (1901), p. 736. 2 Reproduced in an appendix by Marco Invernizzi, I cattolici contro l’unità d’Italia? L’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 2002).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 929–948 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118812

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‘in agreement with the local ecclesiastic authorities’ and ‘with intelligence from the respective parish priests and parish members’ (Art. 4). In truth, the parish priests were given a kind of managerial role in the parish committees. These committees, indeed, operated ‘under the guidance of the parish priest’ (Art. 1), who ‘always had the right to be present at the meetings’ and ‘to have his own veto’ concerning the deliberations (Art. 10). He was always, however, ‘to implement the deliberations of the superior committees’3 (Art. 1), thus exercising a controlling function rather than a leading one. The leaders, on the contrary, had full autonomy in defining the programmes, although this was naturally carried out according to the ‘desires and pleasures’ of the pope. The 1901 reform introduced two decisive points. Strictly speaking, the first was not in the statute but in a letter from the Secretary of State that accompanied it. It stated that, even at the end of a complex selection process that, starting from the bottom, produced a shortlist of candidates, the future presidents would be designated by the pope. Art. 12 of the statute then stated that every further modification of the norm had to come from the pope, or, if put forward by the general council, required his approval.4 The Holy See’s intervention definitively represented the true commissioning of the leaders of the Opera. Although it cannot be compared in its impact to the intervention three years later (the suppression of the Opera by Pius X), at the level of the law, the reform of 1901 produced a small cataclysm, in spite of the fact that, carried out with discretion and agreed on by at least some of the leaders of the Catholic movement,5 it aroused fewer reactions than had been feared. The Opera dei congressi, in point of fact, was in no way similar to a canonically instituted association, such as a confraternity or a pious union, which were certainly capable of being litigious, undisciplined and even rebellious but were structurally dependent on the ecclesiastic organization, which approved their statutes and assigned to their direction a member of the clergy. Just as it originated them, so it could dissolve them. After all, at the beginning of the 1900s, Catholic movements represented a relatively recent reality, part of the general flowering of associations that characterized liberal systems. They were a consequence of that modernity which Pius IX had long mistrusted, and which many bishops continued to mistrust. These associations had earned the consideration of Leo XIII from a practical point of view when, as in Germany, they gained political influence but, among other things, turned out to be difficult to control. The papacy had regained a great deal of territory in



3 ‘Sta in relazione colle reverendissime curie vescovili’; ‘accompagnati da speciale commendatizia del proprio ordinario’; ‘conforme ai desideri e agli eccitamenti del Sommo Pontefice, e sotto la scorta dell’episcopato e del clero’; ‘d’accordo coll’autorità ecclesiastica locale […] d’intelligenza coi rispettivi parrochi i parrocchiali’; ‘sotto la guida del parroco’; ‘sempre il diritto di assistere alle adunanze’; ‘porre il proprio veto’; ‘per attuare le deliberazioni dei comitati superiori’. 4 Invernizzi, I cattolici contro l’unità d’Italia?, pp. 150–51. For the essential parts of the letter, see ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 53, 1 (1902), pp. 611–12. 5 Still fundamental is Angelo Gambasin, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904): contributo per la storia del cattolicesimo sociale in Italia (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958), pp. 539–40.

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regard to the episcopates, but ‘the bishops in top-hat and tails’ (‘vescovi in cilindro’) who acted (and obtained approval) in the name of the interests of the Church and the papacy, still represented an unknown factor, which was also due to the juridical framework of the countries in which they found themselves operating. The Opera dei congressi, in particular, which was an association only in a broad sense, was the centre for coordinating (on the national and local levels) communal realities of various types, none of which were canonical institutions. They were either organizations that, in actual fact, governed themselves, in so far as their programme and the selection of their directors were concerned, with democratic-style mechanisms, or newspapers that operated under the freedom of the press. They were all realities that ‘belonged’ to the Opera but had their own life and depended, to a certain extent, on its decisions. We find ourselves in a context in which penal codes and ministerial circulars not only displayed diffidence towards Catholic associations but also a disposition to sanction ecclesiastical institutions if they believed them to be interfering in citizens’ freedom. This is not to speak of the freedom of the press, which was limited by the law of a state that did not recognize ecclesiastic censorship. As far as relationships with the hierarchy are concerned, from the outset the Opera had undoubtedly shown the height of obsequiousness in its regard. Defending it was, in the end, its public trademark, without considering that during Leo XIII’s pontificate the papacy’s support was determinative for its development, not to say its survival, which allowed it to form a front against the diffidence of many bishops but also (as in the case of the press) against chronic economic difficulties. La Civiltà Cattolica and L’Osservatore Romano were thus to be read with all the attention this case demanded, and relationships with the curia had to be cultivated, unless other paths were followed, which was true of the most rigid intransigents, as had been demonstrated by the history of the previous decades. In 1901, the Holy See stretched its influence further with the consensus of the leaders of the Opera, the ‘social’ wing included, so that, in 1902, one can begin to speak of the ‘high direction’, a formula that was as pompous as it was generic (and which was still, however, missing from the statute), by which was intended supervision from outside by an authority that reserved the right to intervene at any time it thought appropriate. Italian ‘Catholic action’ thus entered stably onto the agenda of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Was the group that directed the Opera able to refuse to hand over the keys to the house? In theory it could, but evidently the advantages of a greater degree of accreditation were felt to be better than the risk from the intransigents and the ‘social’ wing, without taking into account that probably both (and also more than one of their ecclesiastic referents) underestimated the possibility of a radical change, which was soon effected by Leo XIII’s successor.

2. Pius X The relative supervision of 1901, which placed the Christian democratic component under better control, had as its objective the reinforcement of this group, with a view to more weighty future uses. Pius X’s undertaking was, on the other hand, a decisive

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turning point in the direction of the moderates, in the policy as well as in the strategies implemented in order to construct the ever-increasingly unavoidable mass movement. Faced with continuing clashes within the Opera, Pius X used strong methods (and the ‘keys of the house’, which he would in any case probably have requisitioned) to disrupt the leadership, preventing the Christian democrats from occupying it, as was the risk with Grosoli’s presidency. The future ‘Catholic action’ would need to gather around the Unione popolare (People’s Union), a large organization capable of absorbing, or at least directing, the web of associations surrounding the objectives that were dictated by the centre, a centre that was strictly controlled by the Secretariat of State and, in the dioceses, by the bishops. This position was based on a presupposition: the existence, outside the limited zones of the society, of a ‘real country’, still safely Catholic and ready to be organized, provided that no socialist overtones were used. This was the disciplined basis (because it was controlled by the hierarchy) of a great confessional party that would be able to impose itself in negotiations concerning the Roman Question, and even better if became part of the government. Undoubtedly, if by ‘Catholic country’ one meant the practising masses, fond of the rituality perceived to be part of their own social existence, in the country and, partly, also in the city, this would certainly continue to exist, it did not lack organizations. It was only that the latter did not necessarily coincide with the ‘Catholic action’ model. The traditional associations of the confraternities (for the fathers of families) and the new ones (which were aimed at young men and women) had their own points of reference, whether local or not (for example, some religious orders), but, above all, they guaranteed sociability and devotions without calling into question their politics, or at least without waiting, for this reason, for unrequested external directives that did not take into account the priorities and alliances formed at the local level. The wish was to reproduce the German model of the Volksverein in Italy, but the latter associations gained ground well after the Zentrum had been established in the political field; they were set up in order to organize a mass base among the Catholics, and were certainly enviable as far as the number of card-carrying members was concerned, although they were strong in the Rhineland yet had not found fertile ground in Catholic Bavaria. In Italy, this model did not work. Local associations, traditional and new, remained furthermore indifferent, if not to say that they refused to be channelled into the new arrangement. The adult, male Catholic (let us say that this has been one aspect that has lasted ever since then) was not drawn to this ‘Catholic action’. Pius X’s reign was, on the contrary, favourable for the Gioventù cattolica (Catholic Youth), which re-entered the orbit of the official Catholic movement through the front door, thanks to an initiative taken by the Pope himself, who, in 1904, on the dissolution of the Opera, transformed it into a gathering of all the groups of young Catholics, leading it to include the greater part of the Christian democrats. It was a command, but it was Pericoli’s ability that executed it, which he did by stemming the most turbulent sectors and foiling the danger that they might follow Murri at the time of his rebellion. The secret of its success can be measured by the fact that Catholic Youth began to acquire great dimensions, which, however, was due to expansion in

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the recruitment of adolescents. Sections for aspiring youths were created for them, and the sports and recreation component was increased.6 An enthusiast for sporting activities and associations in which he saw the lay equivalent of his model of a seminary, Pius X increasingly trusted Pericoli, who was an exponent, above all, of Roman environments, which in politics had always acted in ways that were congenial to him. He created, on the contrary, more than one problem for the designers of the Unione donne (Women’s Union), whose ‘launch’ was begun in 1906 with a novel that appeared in episodes in La Civiltà Cattolica,7 but whose statutes were only approved in 1909. Precluded from voting (at the express desire of the Pope), the Women’s Union had to function as a pressure group by means of petitions and propaganda. Schools and morality provided the members (amongst whom the bourgeoisie prevailed), a fertile ground for the organization to infiltrate moderate Catholic areas. The area dedicated to social work also continued to grow. Here its success had real needs as its basis, but a clarification needs to be made in this regard: joining a rural bank or a consumers’ cooperative may have signified to those who did so simply the chance to avail themselves of a useful service without actually becoming militants. Unlike these sectors, on the eve of the war, the People’s Union found itself once again at the starting point, disproving the conviction that mobilizing the ‘real country’ would be only a question of propaganda, and that Italian Catholics — or, rather, a very great majority of Italians — would have responded to an efficient chain of command, from the Holy See to their parish priest, a conviction that was voiced by many lay people who were authoritative and disciplined. In those years, France was the only country about which the Catholic press spoke openly of the de-Christianization of the masses. Instead, at the end of the pontificate, and following a succession of reforms, the People’s Union continued to eke out its existence. No less important, the Unione elettorale (Electoral Union) did not manage to live up to the potential that one would have thought it had. In reality, the Catholic vote had not gained the hoped-for advantage from opening up to the moderates. This was a delusion exacerbated by the result of the first elections held with universal suffrage. Only the Unione economico-sociale (Economic-Social Union) grew, even if it was limited to certain regions and thanks to the leagues. In the years of Giolitti’s power, the crisis in the liberal system was evoked as an omen rather than as a reality. L’Osservatore Romano of 2 July 1914 thus said: ‘By force of circumstances, the situation for Italian social systems seems to be turning into the distinction between two large groups: the socialist camp and the Catholic one, facing each other to put an end to liberalism’. The Catholics, moreover, waiting for the order for the final assault, would do well to





6 Liliana Ferrari, ‘Appunti sulla Gioventù cattolica d’inizio secolo: la presidenza di Paolo Pericoli’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 26, 2 (1990), pp. 266–97; Liliana Ferrari, ‘La Gioventù Cattolica Italiana nella seconda fase della presidenza Pericoli (1910–1922)’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 28, 2 (1992), pp. 533–89. 7 Antonio Pavissich, Donna antica e donna nuova: scene di domani (Rome: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1909), published serially in La Civiltà Cattolica beginning in April 1906.

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use ‘prudence and discretion’ in order not to hasten the ruin of the liberals, wrote the author of the article, but perhaps also in order not to risk further disappointments.8

3. The First Reform On the advent of Benedict XV,9 even counting young adherents and women, the 800,000 members of the Volksverein were a distant goal. The People’s Union had, in fact, 160 sections in 310 dioceses and 4150 groups (which, in more than one case, existed only on paper) in more than 20,000 parishes.10 That a change of direction needed to be imposed had been clear, even to Pius X, who in 1912 had instated as Director of the Union Giuseppe Dalla Torre from Padova, who was young, but foreign to the ‘Murrismo’ of the Veneto region, a happy medium between intransigency and moderation, and, above all, a man who had the trust of his Bishop.11 Benedict XV did not lose time. Italy was about to enter a war (which, as was known, would last a long time), the harbinger of a situation of enforced reduction for the organizations, that is to say, the ideal condition for starting a reform. As Archbishop of Bologna, Della Chiesa had had a way of taking in hand the numerous defects, in particular in the operation of the Electoral Union.12 From the first days of the busy schedule of audiences of the newly elected pontiff, the details of which were published daily in L’Osservatore Romano, the names of prelates, ambassadors and members of the Roman nobility alternated with those of the principal exponents of the militant laity in Italy. In the first weeks of October, the board of directors of the People’s Union co-opted two new members, Don Luigi Sturzo and Mario Cingolani, both Christian democrats, the former in its political wing and the latter the founder of a Catholic league in Rome. Benedict XV would shortly after write about Catholic action in the first solemn act of his pontificate, the encyclical Ad beatissimi of 1 November 1914, praising the associations that ‘promote God’s glory and the true welfare of mankind’, provided they did not lose their discipline or, rather, their obedience: vir obediens loquetur victoriam, a motto that was destined to be repeated many times in the coming years. Before God’s enemies who sow discord — he wrote — it is necessary to submit to authorities, even when they order things that we do not welcome, placating the ‘spirit

8 ‘Per forza di cose si va delineando sempre più la situazione per gli ordinamenti sociali in Italia di due grandi campi: il campo socialista e il cattolico, di fronte l’un l’altro per la liquidazione finale del liberalismo’; ‘prudenza e discrezione’; ‘A traverso dei partiti’, L’Osservatore Romano, 2 July 1914, p. 1. 9 On the relationship with the Catholic movement, see Danilo Veneruso, L’Azione cattolica italiana durante i pontificati di Pio X e di Benedetto XV (Rome: AVE, 1984), and above all Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) which is very rich in documentation. 10 ‘Circolare Dalla Torre ai presidenti delle sezioni e agli incaricati diocesani’, L’Osservatore Romano, 21 September 1914. 11 Francesco Malgeri, ‘Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, Giuseppe’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XXXII (1986), pp. 49–53. 12 Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa, pp. 335 ff.

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of insubordination and independence’.13 No sooner said than done, L’Osservatore Romano informed its readers that the Bishop of Vicenza had revoked the license for his clergy to write in the papers. Henceforth, they could only do so if he agreed.14 The encyclicals nearly always had an international scope, and much of the content lent itself to being read as a more general dismantling of anti-modernist repression, in so far as it pertained to the excesses and most dangerous deviations, which were making the recurrant fractures among Catholics worse, above all taking into account the fact that, in various countries, they braced themselves for the trial of war aggravated by national (Austro-Hungarian) and political divisions (France). Commenting on the encyclical, La Civiltà Cattolica insisted on the distinction between ‘true’ Catholics and liberal Catholics, where, for liberalism, one increasingly had to understand that liberalism meant nationalism, a pervasive infatuation that, in Italy, risked putting the Roman Question in the shadows, above all among the youth and many Christian democrats.15 In December, the Pope’s trust in the full general staff of the Italian Catholic movement was reconfirmed, even if for some, such as Gentiloni, this reconfirmation was merely an act of courtesy, expecting obvious resignations: given the certainty of Italy’s entry into the war, the problem of the elections would not, after all, present itself again soon. It was not difficult to imagine that, on the other side of the Tiber, they were preparing themselves for a reform that aimed to empower an organism whose development continued to show that it was far more problematic than the Bishop of Cerreto had assured that it was in a pastoral letter in 1915: In order to become a member of this great union it is enough to accept its statutes and to pay an annual fee of 1 lira. The dissemination of this work is very easy since it does not need any local organization or evoke any opposition and parties; it thus serves as a very easy means of drawing the people to the side of Catholic action […] by means of monthly flyers. One can also note the mention of the frightening political ‘party’, that is to say, anything which might, at the time of an election, have upset the well-established local equilibrium.16 Not long passed: on 25 February 1915, five months after Benedict XV’s election, a letter from the Secretary of State, Pietro Gasparri, to Dalla Torre announced the Pope’s 13 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 (§ § 18, 28) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 14 ‘Norme e disposizioni del vescovo di Vicenza per la stampa cattolica diocesana’, L’Osservatore Romano, 4 November 1914. 15 [Alfonso Casoli,] ‘Moniti della guerra e gli insegnamenti dell’enciclica’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 1 (1915), pp. 9 ff. 16 ‘Per divenire socio di questa grande unione basta accettare lo statuto e versare la quota annua di lire 1. La diffusione di tale opera è facilissima, non richiedendo per sé alcuna organizzazione locale; non suscitando opposizioni né partiti, fornendo anzi un mezzo facilissimo di avviare il popolo sul campo dell’azione cattolica […] per mezzo di fogli volanti mensili’; ‘Il vescovo di Cerreto e l’Unione popolare’, L’Osservatore Romano, 7 January 1915.

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decision to reunify what was increasingly being called Azione cattolica (Catholic Action).17 The text referred to a ‘private conversation’ (‘privato colloquio’) that had occurred in Pisa, whose suggestions would be included in the new system, implying that the Pope was responding to a request from the movement. It repeated the 1901 scheme: the Catholic movement (in the persons of its group of directors) ‘entrusted itself ’ to the Pope, receiving legitimization in exchange. It thus became once again a unitary structure, as many had requested in the previous years, and was anticipated by the decision in 1913 to make it obligatory for everyone, excluding women, to be a member of the People’s Union, which thereby became a partnership. The three unions continued to exist, but were joined together at the top of by a Giunta (junta), which was completed by the presidents of the Società della gioventù cattolica italiana (Society of Italian Catholic Youth) and the Women’s Union, headed by the president of the People’s Union, to whom the document attributed the character of ‘pre-eminence’. This was a definite consecration of Pericoli’s presidency, while even the final reservations about the female organizations were dissolved: women and young people had the success of numbers. The council would share with the president of the People’s Union the governing functions on an ongoing basis, meeting monthly — a not insignificant detail — in Rome. Having established the central structure and the rediscovered unity of the organization, a reform of the three branches was begun, starting with the most important: the Economic-Social Union. In his letter of 26 February 1915 to Medolago Albani, Gasparri called it ‘practical Catholic action’,18 conferring on it the character of the executor of a greater project, which transcended it. The bishops would have to closely oversee it, above all now that it had set about riding the wave of simple professional organizations, that is, the trade unions. The imposition of a confessional character, essential to Pius X, was diluted in the authorization not to make it explicit in the statutes, accompanied by the exhortation to ‘prudence and charitable largesse’ (‘prudenza e caritatevole larghezza’) in recruitment. Catholics were also finding competition by this time in the countryside, and thus, besides working on a policy of a ‘standard contract’ (‘contratto tipo’) that would definitively reconcile landowners and labourers, it was necessary to respond to the requests for ‘material advantages’, ‘perspective’, or a ‘mirage’ (‘vantaggi materiali’, ‘prospettiva’, ‘miraggio’), or whatever the request might be, or else run the risk that the Catholic ranks would remain ‘rare if not deserted’ (‘rade, se non deserte’). Already set in motion in the right direction (at least according to that same Roman journal, La Civiltà Cattolica), Pericoli’s Catholic Youth appeared and, on 3–4 January 1915, celebrated its national assembly in Rome.19 If its diffusion was not very different to that of the People’s Union (177 dioceses), the Youth appeared to be on the

17 ‘Il vescovo di Cerreto e l’Unione popolare’. 18 ‘Azione cattolica pratica’; for the text, see ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 1 (1915), pp. 738–40. 19 There is ample news in ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 1 (1915), pp. 740–43.

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rise — above all in central Italy, where in the previous two years it had opened 484 new clubs — and it was in tune with the latest directives concerning a centralized organization. For every club, a total rate was fixed with the aim of guaranteeing the income necessary to pay for a growing number of full-time publicists and office workers. The old network of aristocratic clubs of fifteen years earlier had given way to a flexible organization, which had its say, and not from a secondary position, in the social field and in the ‘defence of morality’ (‘difesa della moralità’), a fruitful theme of collaboration with the middle class. Open to the language of the leagues, Pericoli’s Youth cultivated the inter-classism which is so valuable in any Catholic activity. The summer reforms, in so far as they are concerned, brought only a ‘minor adjustment’ to the statute, removing the age limit for the president, and hence ensuring the continuity of Pericoli’s presidency.20 ‘It is good for the young to be governed by a mature person who represents them’, La Civiltà Cattolica commented.21 The entry into the war did not interrupt the process of reform. At the June meeting of the junta, the reform of the Electoral Union was announced, and a month later it was the turn of the new statute of the Economic-Social Union,22 which was formally proposed by the governing council on 27 June, and approved by the Pope, who sent it to the President of the People’s Union, once more emphasizing its centrality. The headquarters were in ‘a place chosen by the president’s office’ (‘luogo scelto dall’ufficio di presidenza’; Art. 1) — and not in Rome —, and the ecclesiastical assistant in the president’s office, appointed, however, by the Holy See (Art. 12), had only a consulting vote (Art. 8). From that time on, the president would be chosen by the pope, based on a shortlist of three names presented to him by the Council (Art. 9). Later changes to the statute (Art. 21) proposed by the general council would have to be approved by the governing council of Catholic Action and (above all) confirmed by the Holy See. Discontent was foreseen, as shown in a circular from the junta dated 4 April 1915. The centralization, it assured, would be ‘rational and prudent’ (‘razionale e prudente’) in order to avoid damaging encroachments of areas; this is the reason why trust was placed ‘in the complete cessation of every uncertainty’, ‘possible disagreement’, and ‘mistaken independence in the general field of action’, in the conviction ‘that the unity of direction cannot be reached without the intimate and dutiful adhesion to an authority that, freely elected, had to be entirely and loyally accepted’.23 To allay fears of ‘Romanization’, there was the fact that the Secretary would remain in Padua, and La Settimana Sociale would continue to be the official mouthpiece. The Scuola sociale (Social School) of Bergamo also remained in place, abeit under the

20 ‘Ritocco’; [Giuseppe Quirico,] ‘Il presente assetto della organizzazione cattolica in Italia’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 1 (1916), pp. 140–58. 21 ‘È bene che i giovani siano retti da persona matura, che li rappresenta’; [Quirico,] ‘Il presente assetto’, p. 150. 22 For the complete text, see La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 3 (1915), pp. 627–30. 23 ‘Nella completa cessazione di ogni incertezza’; ‘eventuale dissidio’; ‘malintesa indipendenza nel campo generale dell’azione’; ‘che l’unità dell’indirizzo non si può raggiungere senza l’intima e doverosa adesione ad una autorità che, liberamente eletta, deve essere interamente e lealmente accettata’; ‘Circolare della Giunta direttiva’, L’Osservatore Romano, 4 April 1915.

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control of the Holy See ‘as far as the approval of its professors, its programmes and its regulations are concerned’.24 On 28 August, the junta finally approved a draft of the new statute of the People’s Union, which was published under the title: Disposizioni generali per l’ordinamento dei cattolici in Italia (General Provisions for the Regulation of Catholics in Italy). This was signed by Pericoli, representing Dalla Torre, who had been recalled.25 It is interesting to note that Catholic Youth was the only large organization to continue holding elections: Pericoli’s trustworthiness was demonstrated on many occasions, even making him worthy of the position of the presidency of the central council ad interim, whose secretary was Luigi Sturzo. Apart from him, all the other central presidents were by then papal nominees and always worked alongside an ecclesiastical assistant, who was also designated by the Holy See. This immediately demonstrated that it knew how to use a heavy hand if necessary. Indeed, in November, Benedict ignored the choice of candidates for the presidency of the Economic-Social Union that was offered to him and nominated Carlo Zucchini, who came from Faenza.

4. Dispositions and Statute The definitive statute, launched on 6 December 1915,26 was substantially the same as the August text, with a few modifications. The letter which accompanied it restated the connection between Catholic militancy and membership of the People’s Union, in respect of which the unions were to consider themselves ‘species to genus’ (‘specie a genere’). Art. 1 reaffirmed its character as an association having a single leader, thus no longer a mere coordinating body. The cost of joining was raised from ten cents to one lira, to compensate for the necessary increase in the number of full-time personnel. In Art. 3, both the prohibition — which was still present in August — of approving statutes in which there was no obligation to join the People’s Union, and the exemption from the obligation to join (thus making it no longer an exclusion, as it had been at the time of Pius X) for the members of the Women’s Union and minors under twenty-one years of age were eliminated. The central governing structure, therefore, now consisted of two levels: the junta and the general council. The former (Art. 5) was formed by the presidents of the unions and of some regional representatives, and this was the true organ of government, standing alongside the president, emphasizing his pontifical nomination, responsible for the tasks of study, publicity, organization and, above all, governance and for the ‘development and […] growth of the entire Italian Catholic action’ (Art. 6).27 The council, formed by eighteen members, who were in part designated by the diocesan

24 ‘Per ciò che riguarda l’approvazione dei suoi professori, dei suoi programmi e del suo regolamento’; ‘Gasparri a Medolago Albani, 13 agosto 1915’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 3 (1915), p. 627. 25 ‘Gasparri a Medolago Albani’, pp. 746–49. 26 For the text, see La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 4 (1915), pp. 326–30. 27 ‘Sviluppo e […] incremento di tutta l’azione cattolica italiana’.

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presidents, and in part by the presidents of the branches, served as a tie to the periphery and as monitoring body; assembling once a year, it approved moral relations and the accounts. The centralized character of this statute was confirmed by the fact that, according to the norm in Art. 21, the convocation of the national congresses (a key moment in the life of the organization) took place at the discretion of the governing junta ‘according to opportunities and with the programme and the norms determined each time’.28 Generally speaking, the diocesan juntas (which were permitted, in any case, to maintain their own statute) reproduced the structure of the central one, composed as it was of the presidents of the branches and the representatives of parochial groups. In the parish groups, the figure of president was not foreseen, merely that of a delegate. A diocesan congress (Art. 14) was to be held ‘possibly every year’.29 The text was scanty in its references to ecclesiastic control. It did not mention a central ecclesiastic assistant (who was, however, present in the junta), but only those from the dioceses, who were nominated by the bishop, to whom no powers were specified, just as nothing was said about the roles of parish priests in the parish groups. The statutes of the parish groups — ‘Catholic associations of a general character’ (‘associazioni cattoliche di carattere generale’) — were, in fact, subject to the approval of the diocesan juntas, and these were subject to the approval of the governing junta. The control exercised over the central junta seemed to be sufficient for the time being. The fact remained that, as L’Osservatore Romano informed its readers in December,30 in Padova, the diocesan junta had just been nominated by the bishop, who had also named the president that was to replace Dalla Torre. In the parishes and the dioceses, after all, most of the movement still had to be created, and, as had already been the case with Pius X, Benedict XV similarly counted on the ordinaries to promote it. Hence the choice to retain the old statutes of the diocesan juntas, in which the bishops maintained the functions accorded to them in the 1913 statute (Disposizioni transitorie, Art. 1), including the nomination of the presidents of the diocesan sections, where they still did not exist. In reality, things functioned as follows, in spite of the final ‘warnings’ in the new statutes: ‘Where the diocesan juntas could for no reason whatsoever be instituted in the briefest possible time, it would be the directing junta that would establish the office’.31

5. Interlude The significance of this laborious operation, which had taken a whole year, was the object of two long, complex essays by Father Giuseppe Quirico, published in La Civiltà Cattolica at the beginning of 1916. The author highlighted, as was customary but not

28 29 30 31

‘Secondo le opportunità e con programma e norma determinate di volta in volta’. ‘Possibilmente ogni anno’. ‘La nuova giunta diocesana per l’azione cattolica a Padova’, L’Osservatore Romano, 19 December 1915. ‘Avvertenze’; ‘ove non saranno per qualsiasi ragione istituite le giunte diocesane fra il più breve tempo possibile, spetta alla giunta direttiva costituirle di ufficio’.

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without grounds, the element of continuity (‘to tell the truth, the great changes in the People’s Union seem to have occurred under Pius X himself ’),32 remarking on the necessary reasons that in 1904 had dictated the disbanding of an organization which in 1901 had seemed, according to the writer, to have reached the optimum structure: a system ‘which responded entirely to the ordering of the ecclesiastical hierarchy’, ‘prudently tempered and harmonised with the parts due to the ecclesiastical authorities’.33 For ‘very serious reasons […] in those turbulent times, and too exposed to discordant clashes of ideas’, Pius X had believed ‘it was nearly always more opportune to claim directly for himself the election of the presidents of the unions’,34 initiating a practice which, however, did not have the desired effect, as the disappointing number of members demonstrated. Having realized that re-enforcing control was effected at the expense of vitality and efficiency, a transitional phase was begun, and still continues, in order to give continuity and stability to the leaders of the movement and to give them a professional executive apparatus. Hence came the need to recover flexibility. To achieve its intensions, the People’s Union needed considerable means, which they could never obtain in the desired quantity, even if all of the militant Catholics were to supply their names. Why ignore all those, and they are the majority among Italian Catholics, who do not want to be part of Catholic organizations?35 This means that while confessional identification is a deterrent, it is sometimes a good tactic to renounce it. Reading between the lines of the speech, one can infer the admission that the reform that had just been completed made several compromises, which probably displeased more than one person. However, these compromises were consciously accepted by a Pope who was capable of acting with determination when necessary (for fear that some might miss the strong hand of his predecessor). Working on Italian Catholic action, the speech added, was setting a model that was destined to be copied abroad. Apparently, the 1915 statute loosened the mesh of ecclesiastical control which, in reality, was exercised without too much hesitation, at least centrally. The President of the Electoral Union, Gentiloni, discovered this, and his resignation was courteously solicited, which suggested not so much the end of alliances with the moderates, but the Holy See’s desire to have a freer hand more generally when tackling a pre-existing 32 ‘A dire il vero, la grande mutazione dell’Unione popolare pare sia avvenuta sotto lo stesso Pio X’; [Giuseppe Quirico,] ‘Le varie forme della organizzazione cattolica in Italia’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 1 (1916), pp. 8–23; [Quirico,] ‘Il presente assetto’, p. 150. 33 ‘Del tutto rispondente all’ordinamento della gerarchia ecclesiastica’; ‘prudentemente temperato ed armonizzato con le parti dovute all’autorità ecclesiastica’; [Quirico,] ‘Le varie forme’, p. 11. 34 ‘Gravissime ragioni […] in quei tempi turbolenti e troppo esposti a discordanti cozzi di idee’; ‘più opportune di avocare quasi sempre direttamente a sé la elezione dei presidenti delle Unioni’; [Quirico,] ‘Le varie forme’, p. 18. 35 ‘Per raggiungere i suoi intenti, l’Unione popolare abbisogna di grandi mezzi, che non potrà mai ottenere nella copia desiderata, ancorché tutti i cattolici militanti le dessero il nome. Perché trascurare quei moltissimi, e sono i più tra i cattolici italiani, che non vogliono far parte di organizzazioni cattoliche?’; [Quirico,] ‘Il presente assetto’, p. 157.

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group of directors that had become cumbersome. Medolago Albani was awarded both an honourable retirement and the direction of the Social School of Bergamo. Toniolo’s influence waned, weakened also by a long clash with the Women’s Union’s governing body, and by the fact that he had turned out to be an obstacle to the ‘Romanization’ of the governing group. The new era was represented by Dalla Torre, whose reliability would, a few years later, make him the candidate for a forty-year-long editorship of L’Osservatore Romano. The Opera had returned to its best form, La Civiltà Cattolica announced, but it was not yet time for political parties, even if it was legitimate to nurture hope in this sense for the post-war period. The conflict was in fact revealing itself — and this is a leitmotiv in the journal in those years — to be an opportunity for a religious reawakening, even in France. The crisis of liberalism, punished by the revolution that it had generated, appeared to be irreversible, to the point that it was necessary to contribute to slowing it down in order not to leave room for even more dangerous adversaries. Once more, we note in these texts that ‘Catholic action’ still meant, almost exclusively, an instrument of political action, not one — as it would be a few years later — for formation and the apostolate, to be understood as a recovery of religious practice in the sectors of society that had been distanced from the Church. A ‘Cronaca’ in La Civiltà Cattolica included a revelatory slip. Reporting on the results of the general council on 20 April 1915, the journal upheld the necessity that the action of Catholics in the debate on national life has to maintain its own structure and personality, which is derived from the specific, integral programme, even in the necessary and opportune collaborative contacts with other [sic] parties, avoiding every deplorable confusion.36 We should also note that regarding the dialectic among the parties, disparagingly called ‘parliamentarianism’, the journal continued to write with increasing annoyance. Terms such as ‘party’ and ‘passion’ become almost inseparable; the very ‘creating a party of Catholics’, even at its best, hid a betrayal of universality.37 For Meda, an example of a well-intentioned man with the problem of not knowing how to wait, social Christianity and the growing nationalism among the young were worthy, but the latter had to remember that their first duty was to defend the Pope, following his ‘supreme leadership’.38 The phenomenon is certainly not new, but the danger, not to mention the sad reality, is the lively and open participation of Catholics in such noisy demonstrations, 36 ‘Che l’azione dei cattolici nel dibattito della vita nazionale debba mantenere la propria fisionomia e personalità, la quale deriva dal programma specifico integrale, anche nei necessari ed opportuni contatti di collaborazione con altri partiti, evitando ogni deplorevole confusione’; this was recorded in passing at the second meeting of the diocesan junta, see ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 1 (1918), p. 373. 37 [Enrico Rosa,] ‘I cattolici e la confusione dei partiti nella guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 3 (1916), pp. 640–54. 38 ‘Suprema direzione’; [Enrico Rosa,] ‘I cattolici italiani e la guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 3 (1916), p. 193.

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which are more or less a-Catholic, and therefore do not even, in truth, have any patriotic dignity […]. Why imitate the futile enthusiasms of ‘mutual destruction’, the lyricism of war and the brutal invective of the paladins of the pen?39 Also mistaken were those ‘honest men, including active Catholics’, when they esteemed ‘modern liberal constitutionalism to be the perfect form of government […] now, above all, that those same adversaries of ours have found their own failure, the dusk of liberalism’.40 Catholics, therefore, had to prepare themselves for politics and for the politics of parties, but as a contingent necessity. The fact that the Code of Canon Law, which was being prepared in these years, did not speak of ‘Catholic action’ was also significant in this regard. This would later be regretted, but, in 1917, the only forms of lay associations that were foreseen continued to be confraternities and piety unions. The impatience that was promptly severely criticized by La Civiltà Cattolica and L’Osservatore Romano was accentuated as the war drew to its close. On the occasion of the second assembly of the diocesan juntas (31 January 1918), one agenda seemed to ‘indicate an untimely sally into the political field’.41 The compiler of the chronicle in La Civiltà Cattolica commented that ‘even with the lesson of what had happened’ it would have been opportune to ‘observe and increase concord in all sectors of Catholic action in such a way as to keep them apart from parties and divisions, in docile subordination to the Pope, the bishops and the other ecclesiastic authorities’.42 Ultimately, it would be better if the clergy were at the helm, because the ship was still incapable of maintaining its route. The defence of the Pope continued to hold together a Catholic world, that of the Italians, which was always tempted to split up, at this time even heading in the direction of nationalism. Placing men from the People’s Union in the organizations that were to manage the aftermath of the war was the dominant motive in the months that followed, months in which the very same union also inaugurated a centre for the preparation for politics.43

39 ‘Il fenomeno non è certamente nuovo, ma è nuovo il pericolo, per non dire la triste realtà, della partecipazione viva e aperta dei cattolici a tali manifestazioni clamorose, più o meno acattoliche, e perciò neppure, in verità, dignitosamente patriottiche […]. A che imitare i futili entusiasmi della “mutua distruzione”, i lirismi di guerra e le invettive efferate dei paladini della penna’; [Rosa,] ‘I cattolici italiani e la guerra’, p. 201. 40 ‘Uomini onesti, anche cattolici d’azione’, ritenevano ‘il moderno costituzionalismo liberale per la forma perfetta di governo […] ora sopra tutto che gli stessi avversari nostri riscontrano il proprio fallimento, il tramonto del liberalismo’; [Rosa,] ‘I cattolici italiani e la guerra’, p. 202. 41 ‘Accennare a una intempestiva sortita nel campo politico’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 1 (1918), p. 372. 42 ‘Anche per la lezione dei fatti successi’; ‘osservare e accrescere la concordia in ogni parte dell’azione cattolica, in modo da mantenersi alieni da partiti e da scissioni, nella docile subordinazione al papa, ai vescovi e alle altre autorità ecclesiastiche’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 1 (1918), p. 374. 43 ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 3 (1918), p. 469.

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6. Post-War Period When the war ended, things followed a different course, thus highlighting the limitations of the control mechanisms that had been instated from 1901 onwards. Although Dalla Torre, reconfirmed as president, wrote to Gasparri that ‘the organization is putting itself into the hands of the Pope in order to receive its new tasks’,44 on the union front, and, above all, on the political front, those who were pulling at the reins ended the delays. Putting locks on the structure was not enough, and in the same issue in January 1919, La Civiltà Cattolica published (in ‘Cose romane’, not in ‘Cose italiane’) the appeal that signalled the entry of the Italian People’s Party onto the scene. In the curia, the line that it was a lesser evil prevailed; they were waiting for the events that the following year would turn out to be favourable for the new party. From that time on, the affairs of the Catholic organizations and those of the People’s Party were strictly entwined, perhaps for no other reason than that the same people worked for both organizations at the lower levels, but also often at the leadership level, with Martire and Miglioli at the opposite ends of the spectrum. What was good (from the curia’s point of view) was that the Party held together moderates and Christian democrats, post-traditionalists and nationalists. Several things were less good, starting from a certain resistance to having programmes dictated to them. It was necessary to admit their usefulness and inevitability, but the fact of accepting them imposed a redefinition of ‘Catholic action’ which, in the meantime, risked being disbanded, at least as far as the adult men’s section was concerned. The pressure of events required new, tiring developments on the part of La Civiltà Cattolica. The ‘universal’ programme that suited an almost totally Catholic country, in which Catholics could not be a ‘part’,45 would have to be that of the People’s Union, the only authorized interpreter of the principles ‘on which the Christian restoration of society depended’, and this restoration depended on three crucial nodes: school, family and morality. To that end, it was urged that ‘all Catholics, without exception’ should join, ‘now that all reasons or pretexts have been removed’.46 Yet in the third congress of the diocesan juntas in March 1919,47 although they did seem to have increased in number, the same could, once again, not be said for those joining: only 96,000, including women and minors. A cause for preoccupation, moreover (or perhaps above all), was the fact that many of those joining, above all young people, may, it is true, have been members but they were always inclined to consider the party and the league their own principal, if not sole, reference point. Catholic Youth risked being emptied, reduced solely to aspirants, that is to say, to oratory adolescents. The others were all in politics or the unions, or in both, in the heated climate of the 44 ‘L’organizzazione si mette nelle mani del papa per ricevere i nuovi compiti’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 4 (1919), p. 249. 45 [Enrico Rosa,] ‘Il programma e l’azione religiosa dell’Unione popolare’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 1 (1919), p. 425. 46 ‘Dai quali dipende la restaurazione cristiana della società’; ‘tutti i cattolici, senza eccezione’; ‘rimosse ormai tutte le ragioni o i pretesti’. 47 ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 4 (1919), pp. 520–23.

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Biennio Rosso (Red Biennium). Instead of occupying the party and adapting it, they risked finding themselves being absorbed, so much so that the electoral success of November 1919 definitively cleared the way for votes for the People’s Party. In the following spring, the latter, ‘grown, perhaps, through precocious development’ as La Civiltà Cattolica48 observed, had more than 250,000 members. In the light of these events, a rapid reorganization was imposed: after the Electoral Union had been disbanded, in September the Economic-Social Union also ceased to exist, and its residue survived as the Secretariat of the People’s Union. The objectives of the latter, for better or for worse, were prolonged to the longer times of the ‘apostolate’ in order to raise a new generation of militants, less riotous in following the route indicated, in the same way as the seminaries intended to form a new and more disciplined generation of priests. Focussing on young people and monitoring their training from infancy in a group context that had a national structure became an objective of increasing importance, and not only in the Catholic world. To remain with the latter, and in Italy, the female branch of Catholic Youth was born from the Women’s Union, and it was destined for a rapid and overwhelming success under the guidance of Armida Barelli. The separation of the sexes, which had been imposed by Pius X, would turn out to be a strong point for the women of Catholic Action. In February 1920, La Civiltà Cattolica reiterated the notion that the People’s Union was not superfluous, and that the existence of the party and of leagues required the presence within them of ‘men resolved to act always as Catholics’ who had undergone a ‘long internship’ in Catholic associations.49 However, it was precisely in those regions which had given more in the past (Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna) that ‘Catholic action’ was being dissolved most rapidly. The Pope’s addresses to those bishops were heartfelt, but the frequently severe call for discipline was revealing itself to be ineffective. Faced with this situation, in March 1920 the Holy See once again reconsidered the statutes.

7.

The 1920 Statute

The new statute of the People’s Union was approved by the governing junta at their meeting of 26 March 1920, and by the Holy See, with a letter from the Secretary of State on 13 April. A list of fixed points accompanied it; these points were those to which the diocesan juntas had to adapt.50 As is characteristic of these types of texts, the supervisory bodies shared the same space as those dedicated to publicity. For the first time, the term Azione Cattolica Italiana (Italian Catholic Action; Art. 1) was used as a synonym for People’s Union, with capital letters, to define a specific

48 ‘Cresciuto forse con precoce sviluppo’; [Paolo Silva,] ‘Il congresso del Partito popolare italiano a Napoli’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 2 (1920), p. 269. 49 ‘Uomini risoluti a operare sempre da cattolici’; ‘lungo tirocinio’; [Enrico Rosa,] ‘“Unione popolare” e “Partito popolare” in Italia’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 1 (1920), p. 297. 50 ‘Il nuovo statuto dell’Unione popolare fra i cattolici d’Italia’, L’Osservatore Romano, 26–27 April 1920.

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organization, not a generic movement. This was meant to bring together both the national unions, which were now limited to Catholic Youth and the Women’s Union (the female Catholic Youth did not yet appear as an autonomous branch), and some vaguely defined ‘National Works’ that were to take their ‘common programmatic direction’ from the People’s Union (Art. 1). This was ‘the defence and realization of the social order and of Christian civilization according to the teachings of the Church and the directions of the Holy See: reuniting Italian Catholics and coordinating their various associations into a unique bundle of forces for the fulfilment of this supreme duty that is common to all’ (Art. 2). The intention to incorporate as many Catholics as possible returns in Art. 3, in which the People’s Union is depicted as being ‘made up of all of the members of Catholic associations, and of those Catholics who, while not belonging to that category, declare that they will accept the programme’ (where ‘associations’ indicate a field that was presumably larger than that of the former Opera dei congressi).51 As far as the organization was concerned, at the centre there was still the governing junta, whose directing members were reduced to three (in addition to the president of the People’s Union), the presidents of the Youth sections and the Women’s Union, the latter ‘being accompanied’ by its own national ecclesiastic assistant. Furthermore, there were three members who were elected by the congress of the diocesan juntas, and another three ‘aggregate’ members, who were nominated every three years from the elective members and members by right, in order to cover specific fields of action. The intermediate structure, introduced by the council in 1915, disappeared, while the congress of the diocesan juntas was now obliged to meet every year. The presidency was strengthened: given that the revenue remained the same (one lira per membership), instead of a secretary and treasurer, there was to be a central secretarial office and ‘secretariats, assisted by consultative commissions’, besides ‘an administrative office’ that was headed by a treasurer ‘chosen by the governing junta from amongst its members’ (Art. 7).52 It was not (yet) specified that it would be based in Rome. A centre that programmed, decided and supervised, naturally within the framework of papal directives, required furthermore a base, which mainly still had to be created, starting from the parishes. The obligatory need for annual conferences at the national and diocesan levels (Art. 9), and the monthly meetings for parish groups (Art. 12) showed the awareness that the base had to be involved and hearkened in order to grow, that a certain level of internal democracy was needed and, above all, that it was not necessary to irritate the sensitivities of the existing organizations. One may interpret in this perspective the silence (although this does not necessarily signify absence) regarding the figure of the diocesan president of the People’s Union, who 51 ‘Opere nazionali’; ‘l’indirizzo programmatico comune’; ‘la difesa e l’attuazione dell’ordine sociale e della civiltà cristiana secondo gli insegnamenti della Chiesa e gli indirizzi della S. Sede: riunendo i cattolici italiani e coordinando le loro varie associazioni in un unico fascio di forze per l’adempimento di questo supremo dovere a tutti comune’; ‘costituita da tutti i membri delle associazioni cattoliche e da quei cattolici che, pure non appartenenti a tale categoria, dichiarino di accettarne il programma’. 52 ‘Accompagnata’; ‘aggregati’; ‘segretariati, assistiti da commissioni consultive’; ‘ufficio di amministrazione’; ‘scelto dalla giunta direttiva fra i suoi membri’.

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was replaced by an ‘employee’, ‘nominated by the governing juntas having consulted the diocesan juntas’, with tasks that were merely executive: ‘Promoting membership of the People’s Union, collecting the contributions and quickly dealing with the ordinary correspondence with the central office’ (Art. 10). The awareness that many dioceses were still missing from the appeal called, moreover, for the existence of a regional delegate, nominated by the directing junta every three years ‘as its direct representative’ (Art. 13). Given, then, that Catholic Youth, the Women’s Union and the People’s Union were not sufficient to reach the size that was desired, the diocesan juntas would collect, alongside the legal members and the representatives elected by parish groups, the representatives of ‘all of the various types of Catholic action’ (this time, with a small letter) (Art. 8). The same was valid for the parish. The parish council would thus be composed of the presidents of ‘associations and works’ (Art. 11), in the hope that they would come into being. ‘Where associations or other parish works do not exist, the parish council is elected directly by the members of the People’s Union, and where the group is not sufficiently numerous, it will be enough to have the nomination of a head of the group’.53 Compared to that of 1915, this is a tiresome text, the fruit of an evident stalemate. The elements of internal democracy which it introduced were, in any case, outweighed by the reintroduction of a large amount of ecclesiastic control. As evidence of this, in the text published by L’Osservatore Romano the incongruous formula of ‘high dependency’ appeared (an evident slip for ‘high direction’) in regard to the relationship between diocesan juntas and bishops. It was once again foreseen that, as a member of the directing junta, there would be an ecclesiastic assistant nominated by the papacy. In addition to the directing junta, the diocesan statutes had (once again) to be approved by the ordinary. An ecclesiastic assistant, nominated by the bishop, was to be a member of the diocesan junta (Art. 8). The role of the ecclesiastic assistant in the parish was occupied by the parish priest himself, who, in his turn, was a member of the parish council (Art. 11). This was a true and proper return to Pius X. Evidently, in 1920, the Holy See had concluded that, in relation to the way in which they were behaving, the members of Catholic Action had to be placed under its guardianship again. In a letter of 10 March 1920 to the diocesan juntas, which was published by L’Osservatore Romano before their fourth congress (in the course of which the new statute was presented), Dalla Torre had spoken clearly: Those who participate in this work will have either to return to being, or be, a convinced and industrious collaborator with the People’s Union, or will have to be otherwise animated by another loyal purpose: that of ceding his own place

53 ‘Incaricato’; ‘nominato dalla giunta direttiva sentite le giunte diocesane’; ‘promuovere le iscrizioni all’Unione popolare, riscuotere i contributi e curare sollecitamente l’ordinaria corrispondenza con l’ufficio centrale’; ‘quale suo diretto rappresentante’; ‘tutte le varie forme di azione cattolica’; ‘associazioni e opere’; ‘Ove non esistano associazioni o altre opere parrocchiali, il consiglio parrocchiale è eletto direttamente dai soci dell’Unione popolare; ove il gruppo non sia abbastanza numeroso, sarà sufficiente la nomina di un capo gruppo’.

t h e r e fo rm o f cat ho li c act i o n

and responsibilities to those who, being able to work with alacrity, would be able to take them on.54 His speech then lamented the scarce ‘intensity and efficaciousness’ (‘intensità ed efficacia’) in the very regions that had always shone thanks to their efficiency, while Benedict XV’s address recalled that, in respect of the ‘river’ (‘fiume’) represented by the People’s Union, the party was only a stream, all the more so because the ‘error’ (‘errore’) had even invaded the territory of the countryside that had until then been secure, as was demonstrated by the agitations that had been aroused by the socialists. ‘We do not want to raise any doubt about the existence of the People’s Union’.55 In reality, at this point, the political discourse occupied every space. The contrast between the intransigents and the blocchisti, who agitated the party, reflected on the associations, which were divided in the attitude that should be taken towards the socialists and Fascists. The Milanese Catholic Youth asked for instructions from the Pope. Those who objected received the response from L’Osservatore Romano that when directives of the party conflicted with those of the ecclesiastic authorities, who legitimately imparted them, even in political matters, it was the latter that should prevail. Having to reiterate this was a sign that such obedience was far from obvious. Pericoli managed, with ever greater effort, to govern Catholic Youth, which was beginning to become the most important branch of Catholic Action, thanks, above all, to work among adolescents: Armida Barelli’s Gioventù femminile (Female Catholic Youth) imitated it, with the same (if not greater) success. The Pope died in the middle of this crisis. The army, which in his first encyclical he had presented as strong in obedience, was indeed strong, but far less obedient. The hopes of settling the Roman Question by diplomatic means, which informal contacts had aroused, were fading. In much the same way as in other countries, the liberal structure and democracy seemed to agree very little with the ecclesiastic control of Catholic movements. A little later, when the Fascists had taken power, matters would start to be different.

Bibliography Ferrari, Liliana, ‘Appunti sulla Gioventù cattolica d’inizio secolo: la presidenza di Paolo Pericoli’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 26, 2 (1990), pp. 266–97 Ferrari, Liliana, ‘La Gioventù Cattolica Italiana nella seconda fase della presidenza Pericoli (1910–1922)’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 28, 2 (1992), pp. 533–89

54 ‘Chi parteciperà ai suoi lavori ne deve ritornare o convinto e operoso collaboratore dell’Unione popolare, o altrimenti animato di un altro leale proposito: quello di cedere il proprio posto e le proprie responsabilità a chi, potendo lavorare alacremente, sarà pronto ad assumerle’; ‘L’Unione popolare fra i cattolici d’Italia: IV Congresso delle Giunte Diocesane 27–28–29 aprile 1920’, L’Osservatore Romano, 26 March 1920. 55 ‘Non vogliamo si possa mettere in dubbio l’esistenza dell’Unione popolare’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 2 (1920), p. 379.

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Gambasin, Angelo, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904): contributo per la storia del cattolicesimo sociale in Italia (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958) Invernizzi, Marco, I cattolici contro l’unità d’Italia? L’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 2002) Malgeri, Francesco, ‘Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, Giuseppe’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), XXXII (1986), pp. 49–53 Pavissich, Antonio, Donna antica e donna nuova: scene di domani (Rome: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1909) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Veneruso, Danilo, L’Azione cattolica italiana durante i pontificati di Pio X e di Benedetto XV (Rome: AVE, 1984)

Cinzia Su las

The Dissolution of the Taparellian Concept of Nationality during the Great War

This contribution aims to sketch a comparison among various uses of the concept of nationality on the part of three militant Catholic thinkers: the Jesuits, Luigi Taparelli d’A zeglio and Enrico Rosa, and the Franciscan, Agostino Gemelli. The comparison will be carried taking as benchmark Taparelli’s Della nazionalità (1847), which has become a classic in the historiography of the Risorgimento concerning the Catholic political thought on this theme. The principal aim will be to identify how Rosa and Gemelli’s reference to the Taparellian model is semantically declined in a different way. The reasons for this difference lie as much in the metamorphosis of the political context of reference — radically changed compared to the one experienced by Taparelli — as in the different theological-political ideologies of the two contemporary authors. The contribution consists of three parts: the first summarizes the meaning of the concept of nationality expressed by Taparelli, that is, the historical-political conditions from which it arose and those that occasioned the publication of the work. The second part deals with the new political and ecclesiastical situation during the Great War, in which the Taparellian concept of nationality was reinterpreted by Rosa and Gemelli. The last part makes a comparison among some texts by Rosa and Gemelli, from which their different usage of the Taparellian discourse on nationality will be forthcoming, according to their different positions on the evolution of relations between Church and state in Italy between 1915 and 1918.

1.

A Historical Synthesis of the Taparellian Concept of Nationality

On 16 June 1846, Cardinal Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti ascended to the papal throne adopting the name of Pius IX. During the period of the political and intellectual ferment of the Risorgimento uprisings, the new pontiff granted amnesty to all political prisoners, in line with his internal policy of enlightened despotism and his foreign policy of distancing himself from the Austrian influence that would mark the first

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 949–965 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118813

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two years of his pontificate.1 This gesture immediately took on a symbolic value that, going well beyond the intentions of Pius IX, reflected the image of a pontiff open to liberal reforms, guiding and protecting Italian unity. In this context of great turmoil, but also of great misunderstandings between the politics of Italian liberals and that of Pius IX, in 1847 the essay Della nazionalità2 was published in Genoa, apparently without Taparelli’s knowledge. This was a brief article, which in the explicit intentions of the author was intended to be attached as a note to the fourth edition of his more famous Saggio di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto.3 In a very brief synthesis, Taparelli explained his concept of nationality based on a simple logic of two presuppositions, or rather ‘essential causes’, that were necessary and sufficient, and which were divided into two attributes, which, in their turn, could be described in various ways. The ‘unity of blood’ (‘l’unità di sangue’) and ‘the unity of language’ (‘l’unità di lingua’) constituted the essential causes, and they expressed themselves through two properties: the forms of government (ideally legitimate and proportionate) and the territory (natural dimensions). The attributes, Taparelli underlined, should be understood as being ‘accidental in modification’ (‘accidentali nella modificazione’), so that a nation could vary them without losing its nationality.4 However, to this abstract combination of substances and accidents, it was not difficult to apply the concrete terms of what was at stake in contemporary Italian politics. In particular the pamphlet La Nazionalità came out four years after Balbo’s Speranze d’Italia and only a year after Ultimi casi di Romagna by Massimo d’Azeglio, Taparelli’s brother. Therefore, in terms of political literature, Taparelli’s essay had a great impact on the contemporary public opinion. Taparelli was aware of the polemical implications of his theory as he wrote in a letter to his cousin Cesare Balbo about his essay: ‘The general principles are a double-edged sword and obtain contrary results according to the concrete principle to which they are applied’.5 Taparelli already







1 For a wider historiographical panorama of the beginning of the pontificate of Pius IX, see the classic work Giacomo Martina, Pio IX (1867–1878), 3 vols (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1974–90). 2 Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, Della nazionalità: breve scrittura (Genoa: Fratelli Ponthenier, 1847). To contextualize Taparelli’s formulation better, see Alberto Maria Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita, 3rd edn (Turin: Einaudi, 2011); Nicola del Corno, ‘Patria e nazione negli antiunitari’, in Rileggere l’Ottocento: Risorgimento e nazione, ed. by Maria Luisa Betri (Rome: Carocci, 2010), pp. 129–43. 3 Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto (Palermo: Stamperia d’Antonio Muratori, 1840–43). For various reasons, not least his family and political ties with the greatest exponents of Italian liberalism, the text won exceptional resonance among his contemporaries (immediately after publication it was translated into French, German and Spanish, and was republished eight times in Italy by 1949). 4 Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, Della nazionalità: breve scrittura, rivista e accresciuta notabilmente dall’autore con una risposta del medesimo alle osservazioni di Vincenzo Gioberti, 2nd edn (Florence: P. Ducci, 1849), pp. 30–31. 5 ‘I principi generali sono spada a due tagli e hanno conseguenze contrarie secondo il principio concreto a cui vengono applicati’; Taparelli d’Azeglio to Cesare Balbo, 6 February 1847, in Carteggi del p. Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio della Compagnia di Gesù, ed. by Pietro Pirri (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1932), p. 211. Balbo’s thought on national independence had been known since 1843, when Le speranze d’Italia

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foresaw the condemnations that would afflict him from all sides after the anomalous and mysterious publication of his essay on nationality. In fact, the reactions did not take long: the concomitance between the publication and the crisis caused by the Austrian domination of Lombardy–Venetia led many, both Jesuits, conservative and liberal politicians, to lend a political interpretation to the pamphlet, applying to the philosophical abstractness of the essay the concrete history of the Italian politics.6 From this publication, a diplomatic case was born between the Society of Jesus and the Piedmont parliamentarians.7 The incriminating thesis, according to which independence was not an essential attribute of the nation, led the liberals, including those closest to Taparelli, such as his brothers, Roberto8 and Massimo,9



6



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was published for the first time. In this book, the author declared: ‘I start from the fact that Italy is not well ordered politically, then, that it does not enjoy the whole of that which is the first and essential among the political orders, that which only procures all the other goods that are necessary, that without which all other goods are nothing or national independence is lost’ (‘io parto dal fatto che l’Italia non è politicamente ben ordinata, posciaché ella non gode tutt’intiera di quello che è primo ed essenziale fra gli ordini politici, quello che anche solo procaccia tutti gli altri buoni necessari, quello senza cui tutti gli altri buoni soli nulli o si pèrdono, la indipendenza nazionale’); Cesare Balbo, Le speranze d’Italia (Turin: Tipografia Elvetica, 1844), pp. 9–10. In the first years of his pontificate (1846–47), Pius IX was considered by the Austrian Ambassador to the Holy See, Rudolf Lützow, to be ‘one of the principal promoters of subversive institutions and measures’ (‘parmi les principaux promoteurs des institutions et des mesures subversives’); Angelo Ara, Lo Statuto fondamentale dello Stato della Chiesa, 14 marzo 1848: contributo a uno studio delle idee costituzionali nello Stato Pontificio nel periodo delle riforme di Pio IX (Milan: Giuffrè, 1966), p. 28. On the evolution of Pius IX’s position regarding the Austrian domination of Italy, see Mario Di Gianfrancesco, ‘Un papa federalista: Pio IX propone nel 1847 la lega doganale tra gli stati italiani’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 96, 4 (2009), pp. 483–508. On the political attitude of Pius IX, see instead, Martina, Pio IX, and Il pontificato di Pio IX, ed. by Roger Aubert, 2 vols, 2nd edn (Turin: SAIE, 1970). The first protest was from the then Foreign Minister of Piedmont, Count Solaro della Margarita, who, scandalized by the publication, wrote about it to the Father General of the Jesuits, Joannes Philippe Roothaan. Roothaan replied in a conciliatory spirit, admitting the error of such a publication other than as a Saggio teoretico, explaining, however, that such a decision was taken without his or Taparelli’s knowledge. See Carteggi, ed. by Pirri, p. 14. For further information on this argument, see the correspondence generated by it: Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio to Roberto Taparelli d’Azeglio, 28 January 1847, in Carteggi, ed. by Pirri, pp. 13–15; Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio to Massimo Taparelli d’Azeglio, 25 April 1847, and the draft of the letter sent by Luigi to Roberto in Eugenio Di Carlo, Un carteggio inedito del p. L. Taparelli d’Azeglio coi fratelli Massimo e Roberto (Rome: Anonima romana editoriale, 1926), pp. 30–40. A few months before Luigi’s publication, Massimo Taparelli d’Azeglio published his Degli ultimi casi di Romagna: riflessioni (Bastia: Fabiani, 1846), from which arose a discussion in letters between the two brothers that permits us to clarify the genesis and reasons for Luigi’s essay. As shown in one of Luigi’s letters to Massimo on 5 July 1846, the critical disagreement between their two views was not so much the concept of nationality as that of revolution or insurrection, which Luigi treated from a philosophical-juridical perspective, while Massimo approached it from feeling and the reasons of the oppressed people. For Luigi, therefore, insurrection found its reasons in popular feeling but could not for this reason be justified at the level of the law: insurrection was not a legitimate means of achieving national unity because it would mean not respecting, according to the treaties previously stipulated, the legitimate political possession of a territory and the common good of the two parties in question.

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Balbo10 and his friend Vincenzo Gioberti,11 to assume that the Society had abused the Jesuit pen in order to justify, on a theoretical level, the Austrian domination in the Lombardy–Venetia region, which had been sanctioned by the Congress of Vienna. Although these conspiratorial conjectures were not unfounded, from Taparelli’s correspondence to his superiors, no such manipulations emerge. On the other hand, the author always claimed, against any accusation of plea bargaining with the Austrian Empire, the theoretical nature of his writing, which, while interested in the most vivid social facts of its time, did not intend to take part in the concrete political choices dictated by the contemporary Italian situation.12 The issue culminated in 1847 with the publication of the fifth volume of Il gesuita moderno, in which Gioberti, requested for this purpose by Massimo d’Azeglio himself, took up some of the points Taparelli had treated, without mentioning them explicitly. In a second edition of the work (1849), Taparelli responded to Gioberti’s critiques, seeking to avert conflict, smoothing out the differences and demonstrating agreement, in principle, in regard to the ‘undue domination’ (‘dominazione indebita’) of Austria. Basically, the distance between the two was not in the principles themselves but in the hierarchical order in which they assumed their meaning. If, in fact, for Taparelli, the (abstract and universal) legal norm had to be affirmed as a necessary condition for the historical application of the principle of nationality, for Gioberti it was the reverse: nationality was conceived as being the source of other rights, and, therefore, independence constituted a necessary attribute for guaranteeing that fundamental right. What, for Taparelli, however, was the principle of the legal norm which was the basis of a political decision? In the wake of Joseph de Maistre, he affirmed the precedence (metaphysical, logical and juridical) of a transcendent reality beyond any particular political subject, beyond the form of concrete power that it assumed.13 More specifically, in a normative sense, the law was created from nothing, from the absence of law, from the action of a juridical power other than the normative system in force. In other words, Taparelli did not conceive of the state and the legal system as self-founding and self-regulated; instead, they found their points of reference outside themselves, in a transcendent reality, which only the Church could represent in the world. Taparelli explained the

10 Taparelli d’Azeglio to Balbo, 6 February 1847, and the reply, 20 February 1847, in Carteggi, ed. by Pirri, pp. 217–23. 11 See Eugenio Di Carlo, Una polemica tra V. Gioberti e p. L. Taparelli intorno alla nazionalità (Palermo: Tipografia nazionale, 1919); Francesco Traniello, ‘La polemica Gioberti–Taparelli sull’idea di nazione e sul rapporto tra religione e nazionalità’, in Popolo, nazione e storia nella cultura italiana e ungherese dal 1789 al 1850, ed. by Vittore Branca and Sante Graciotti (Florence: Olschki, 1985), pp. 295–316. 12 See the frequent correspondence between Roothaan and his friend, Count Joseph Anton von Pilat, Metternich’s Private Secretary, in Epistolae Ioannis Phil. Roothaan, Societatis Iesu praepositi generalis XXI, 5 vols (Rome: Apud Postulatorem Generalem, 1935–40), V (1940), p. 940. 13 The person and thought of Joseph de Maistre played a significant role in Taparelli’s formation and remained a constant reference in his major works and in the articles that appeared in La Civiltà Cattolica. See [Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio,] ‘La metempsicosi di Giuseppe de Maistre’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 10, 1 (1859), p. 390.

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mechanism in relation to the concept of nation in the second edition of the booklet, in a paragraph entitled ‘La nazionalità nel cattolicesimo’ (‘Nationality in Catholicism’): Catholicism therefore needs nationality, just as the whole needs the part, just as the end needs the means. […] A practical consequence of this is that nationality must be subordinated to Catholicism with its facts and its effects, as it is logically and ontologically subordinate to it in theory. […] What else is ever the law, if not the command of God? And how and where can this command of God’s be known supernaturally if not in the Catholic Church? To say, therefore, that nationality has to be subordinated to justice and to say that it must be subordinated to Catholicism are, on the lips of Catholics, equivalent if not synonymous phrases.14 This ontological subordination of the nation to Catholicism, which was later shattered by the events of Porta Pia and the opening of the Roman Question, Taparelli took to its extreme consequences, affirming that ‘nation and Church correspond to each other in the heart of the Catholic, as a part to a whole, and, just as a part has its place in a whole, so in the Catholic idea the nation has its place in the Church’.15 However, all the paradoxical burden of his political theology was expressed through the use of a radical kenotic mechanism: ‘Nations lose, it is true, they lose, in adoring a crucified God, that independence belonging to every isolated being […] but, in losing this untamed independence, they raise their being to a singular excellence’.16 Finally, returning then to the historical-contingent level, with a view to compromise, he resumed speaking of that which interests us most, the relationship among the Church, war and the nation: Now, the Church contains within itself very powerful elements with which to […] perfect the vital unity of the national spirit (lineage, language, territorial institutions) […]. Now, fusion is ordinarily obtained by means of war and conquests: the Church, therefore, with its teachings of peace, humility, respect for the rights of others, tending to diminish, to abolish entirely the barbarous mania of war […], tends at the same time to preserve intact the political existence of every nation.17 14 ‘Serve dunque la Nazionalità al Cattolicismo, come serve al tutto la parte, e come serve il mezzo al fine. […] Pratica conseguenza che ne decorre, doversi la nazionalità subordinarsi al Cattolicismo co’ fatti e cogli affetti, come ella è logicamente e ontologicamente a Lui subordinata in teoria. […] Che altro è mai nell’ordine naturale il Dritto, se non il comando di Dio? E questo comando di Dio, come e dove può egli conoscersi soprannaturalmente se non nella Chiesa cattolica? Dir dunque che la Nazionalità dee subordinarsi alla giustizia, e dire che dee subordinarsi al Cattolicismo, sono sul labbro cattolico frasi equivalenti, se non sinonime’; Taparelli d’Azeglio, Della nazionalità, p. 76. 15 ‘Nazione e Chiesa corrispondono fra loro nel cuor del cattolico, come la parte al tutto; e come la parte è ordinata al tutto, così nell’idea cattolica la nazione è ordinata alla Chiesa’; Taparelli d’Azeglio, Della nazionalità, p. 63. 16 ‘Perdono le nazioni, egli è vero, perdono adorando un Dio crocifisso, quella indipendenza assoluta ch’è propria di ogni essere isolato […]. Ma nel perdere questa indipendenza selvaggia, esse innalzano l’esser loro a singolare eccellenza’; Taparelli d’Azeglio, Della nazionalità, p. 63. 17 ‘Or la Chiesa contiene in sé elementi potentissimi a […] perfezionare […] l’unità vitale [dello] spirito nazionale [unità di schiatta, di lingua, d’istituzioni, di territorio]. […] Or la fusione si fa ordinariamente per mezzo di guerre e conquiste: la Chiesa dunque, co’ suoi insegnamenti di pace, di umiltà, di rispetto

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In this worldly order of discourse, the Church no longer assumed a founding role, but rather one that was instrumental to national unification and, in view of this organic unity, it opposed the war, as a divisive element against the process of political unification. To sum up, for Taparelli the three terms Church, nation and war could be articulated in a different manner with respect to the levels of discourse. Firstly, on the logical level, the Church and the Pope — as Vicar of God, giver of natural law — had a founding function in regard to positive law. Secondly, on the historical level, of the factual present, the Church acted as a means, placed at the service of the nations, but, from a supranational perspective, and as a mediator, to find alternative means to war in order to put an end to the conflict and to reach the goal of national unity peacefully. This way of developing an argument was closely connected to the problems that troubled Italy in the Risorgimento, in the era before 1849 and before the clear stance taken by Pius IX, when much seemed still to be at stake in the relations between the Church and the state. The confrontation between Gioberti and Taparelli manifested, in an emblematic way, the beginnings of the complex theoretical construction of the programme and myth of Italian nationalism. From this intellectual dispute the internal disagreement that had characterized the historical representation of the uprisings of the Italian Risorgimento emerged. In fact, for the Italian case, the ideas of the nation-state and those of the people and civilization, conceivings naturally united for the other peoples of Europe of the time, were in conflict.18 In the early 1960s, Franco Rodano, one of the theorists of the ‘historic compromise’ between the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party, was perhaps the first to notice and explain this complex dynamic. It was precisely from the texts of Gioberti and Taparelli that he drew inspiration in order to reflect on the internal dialectic of the process of the Italian Risorgimento: A dimension of universal character has been inherent, has been rather essential, to the history of our country from its origins. This is intimately interwoven in the centuries-old issues […] in the very forms of the daily life of our people […]. From this, again, derives the eminently dialectical nature between the state and people in the perspective of our unitary national policy: since the two terms, if

agli altrui diritti, tendendo a diminuire, ad abolire interamente la barbara mania di guerra, […] tende insieme a conservare intatta l’esistenza politica d’ogni nazione’; Taparelli d’Azeglio, Della nazionalità, p. 64. 18 It is enough to think of the words that Pius IX wrote on 4 May 1848, after the crucial address of 29 April, to the administration of the Council of Rome: ‘I recognize that it is natural for man to have the feeling of nationality and I would be happy if Italy could rise again to be independent’ (‘riconosco naturale nell’uomo il sentimento della nazionalità e sarei lieto se l’Italia potesse risorgere ed essere indipendente’); cited by Giacomo Martina, ‘Nuovi documenti sull’allocuzione del 29 aprile’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 53, 4 (1966), pp. 527–82 (p. 556). The official text of the address Non semel of 29 April can be found in Pii IX Pontificis Maximi Acta, 9 vols (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1971), I/1, pp. 92–98. On Pius IX’s interior conflict and the complex genesis of the address, see Martina, ‘Nuovi documenti’; Giacomo Martina, ‘Ancora sull’allocuzione del 29 aprile e sulla politica vaticana in Italia nel 1848’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 54, 1 (1967), pp. 40–47.

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they were both necessary, that is, if they managed to be founded only in the heart of their mutual relationship, ended, however, inevitably in a mutual negation, and in concrete terms ended up condemning each other to a crisis, which demanded a superior and more comprehensive synthesis of both.19 Following Rodano’s thesis, the Italian Risorgimento sought on the one hand to adapt to the historical need for the recognition of a particular national identity in its current form of a liberal bourgeois state. On the other hand, it sought to preserve the tension with a (universal) Catholic unity, which manifested itself in the profession of the Christian faith and in the ecclesiastic institutions which, manifesting themselves in different ways according to time and place, had embodied the spirituality of the Italian people.20

19 ‘Alla storia del nostro paese è stata infatti inerente sin dalle origini, è stata anzi essenzialissima, una dimensione di carattere universale, che si è intimamente intrecciata alle vicende secolari […] alle forme stesse della vita quotidiana del nostro popolo […]. Da ciò, ancora, la natura eminentemente dialettica fra Stato e popolo nel quadro della nostra politica nazionale unitaria: poiché i due termini, se erano l’uno all’altro necessari, se riuscivano cioè a fondarsi solo nel vivo del loro mutuo rapporto, concludevano però, inevitabilmente, in una negazione reciproca, e in concreto finivano per condannarsi scambievolmente ad una crisi, che pretendeva una sintesi superiore e comprensiva d’entrambi’; Franco Rodano, ‘Risorgimento e democrazia’, La Rivista trimestrale, 1, 1 (1962), pp. 63–130 (pp. 69–70), which inserts the Taparelli–Gioberti argument on the concept of nationality into a historically broader and deeper discourse, taking up again the nexus between Risorgimento and democracy in Italian history in the 1960s. Rodano makes the two authors symbols of the internal dialectic that characterized the reflexion and life of the Italian Risorgimento, and this is necessary to explain the unresolved points that this history has left as an inheritance for Italian democracy. Traniello criticized Rodano’s reading, in particular the dialectic opposition of the two figures, demonstrating that even in Gioberti’s text there was a tension leading to universalism; Traniello, ‘La polemica’, p. 313. However, at the moment in which he attributed to Rodano a vision of Gioberti that negated the universalistic aspects of his thought, we must take note of the Hegelian significance of the contrast, according to which ‘the idea of negativity as a mere lack appears immediately to be totally useless, within a logic based rather on negation, however, through it something “superior and richer” comes to be in respect to what one would have if, hypothetically speaking, it did not intervene’ (‘l’idea della negatività quale mera mancanza appare subito del tutto inusabile, entro una logica fondata bensì sulla negazione, però in quanto attraverso di essa abbia luogo qualcosa di “superiore e più ricco” rispetto a quanto si avrebbe se, per ipotesi immaginaria, essa non intervenisse’); Sergio Landucci, La contraddizione in Hegel (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978), p. 7. From this perspective, it is clear that for Rodano, in line with the texts, not only does Gioberti maintain the universalistic aspects but also that Taparelli exalts and holds firm to the principles of national particularity: it is only that if, for Taparelli, the legal norm (abstract and universal) must be set as a necessary condition for the historical application of the principle of nationality, for Gioberti, it is the reverse, nationality is the very source of the other rights. 20 In regard to the history of nationalism and its relationship to religion, see Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). In particular, Hobsbawm affirms how religion can be represented as an ambivalent instrument: ‘Yet religion is a paradoxical cement for proto-nationalism, and indeed for modern nationalism, which has usually (at least in its more crusading phases) treated it with considerable reserve as a force which could change the “nation’s” monopoly claim to its members’ loyalty’ (p. 68). A significant review of the interpretation of the relationship between religion and the nation in the Italian Risorgimento is found in Guido Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici: fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), pp. 13–32.

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The writing and rewriting of Della nazionalità were also played out within this ‘double bind’: the affirmation of the particular identity of the Italian people as a nation and that of the universal spirit of that civilization, which was due to the historical presence of Rome, or rather of the Church. Taparelli’s final and unequivocal word on intransigentism, expressed in his writings in La Civiltà Cattolica, should be read in relation to the rejection of the liberalism which, in the act of giving life to the new Italian State, would have betrayed its spirit, reducing the Church to a mere instrument aimed at the civil order of the state and depriving the spiritual and temporal government of the institution that, for many liberal Catholics, represented the last bulwark of ‘Italian universalism’.

2. A New Context for the Concept of Nationality The approximately seventy years that separate Taparelli’s writings on nationality from those of Rosa and Gemelli on the same subject are relatively few compared to the millenary history of the Church, but in reality they mark a point of no return in ecclesiastic and global history. The crucial event, the total war, exposed the irreversible change in the political action of nation-states: although found in the rhetoric of the time, the concepts of nationalism and imperialism were inadequate to express their aims, which went beyond territorial conquest at the service of building a people’s identity. The political context, the stakes and the means of total warfare, were not comparable to those of the nineteenth-century wars among the nation-states: ‘In the Age of Empires, politics and economics had fused. International political rivalry was modelled on economic growth and competition, but the characteristic feature of this was precisely that it had no limit’.21 However, in this historical leap forward, the second important fact is the definitive loss of temporal power by the Church and its consequent marginalization in international politics, in a way that is proportionate to the process of the Italian State’s development of autonomy. As Chabod has pointed out, in the space of those seventy years Italy freed itself of the Vatican and now, no longer as a vassal state of the great powers and in an autonomous manner, it could claim its own role on the European chessboard.22 In a speech on 22 January 1915, Benedict XV, after having lamented the failure of his attempts to stop the ‘carnage’, in a few lines brought out the theological-political structure that constituted the constant background to his pontificate: To proclaim that for no reason is it allowable to injure justice is assuredly a duty that belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff, who is the divinely authorized supreme 21 Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Abacus, 1995), p. 29. 22 See Federico Chabod, ‘Considerazioni sulla politica estera dell’Italia dal 1870 al 1915’ in Orientamenti per la storia d’Italia nel Risorgimento, ed. by Gabriele Pepe and others (Bari: Laterza, 1952), pp. 19–49.

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interpreter of the eternal law. […] But it would be neither proper nor useful to entangle the pontifical authority in the disputes between the belligerents […] [since] the Roman Pontiff [is] […] the Vicar of Jesus Christ who died for all and each.23 This theological-political image of the universal scope of Christ’s sacrifice represents and explains the reason for the distance and neutrality assumed by the Church in regard to the war. This did not signify that the Church stood outside the political arena, but manifested a very precise political proposal, which, without opposing the state power tout court, recalled it to a greater political radical approach with respect to the technical-economic drift of modern states. This rhetorical mechanism is very similar to Taparelli’s strategy; it places the Church and the Pope, in being the Vicar of Christ, on a logical plane that is different, superior, to that of the particular interests of states. With respect to this new historical context and this political theological line, how did Rosa and Gemelli make use of the concept of nationality?

3. The Metamorphosis of the War–Nation–Church Triad during the Great War In 1915, the editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, Enrico Rosa, published a significant article on the subject, entitled Legge naturale e diritto internazionale,24 which from its outset revealed a style characterized above all by the concrete emergency situation in which the author found himself: New barbaric and atrocious deeds have occurred in recent weeks and continue to occur each day. And we call these new acts of war barbaric and atrocious, considering them in themselves and in their bloody massacres, not judging

23 Benedict XV, Convocare vos, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7, 2 (1915), pp. 33–36 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 151–54 (p. 152). For a reflection on the attitude of Benedict towards the Great War, see Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 15–46. 24 On Enrico Rosa and his theological political position on the Great War, see Enrico Rosa, Visione cattolica della guerra (Rome: Rassegna Internazionale, 1921); Francesco Malgeri, ‘Rosa, Enrico’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III/2 (1984), pp. 736–37; Giacomo Martina, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2003), p. 167; Francesco Traniello, ‘Guerra, stato, nazione negli scritti di padre Rosa apparsi sulla Civiltà Cattolica (1914–1918)’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 661–77; Eva Del Soldato, ‘Le molte guerre di padre Enrico Rosa: gli articoli censurati de La Civiltà Cattolica durante la Grande Guerra’, Storia e problemi contemporanei, 19, 42 (2006), pp. 37–59.

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the reasons, excuses, or extenuating circumstances that may be proposed. For whatever these causes may be, they are not valid and will never diminish the horror of the effects.25 With respect to Taparelli’s aforementioned steps, and in spite of what the title of the article seemed to announce, in this case, the urgency of the moment prevailed over any theoretical synthesis. If, for Taparelli, the historical situation remained silent, and the theoretical principles were placed in the foreground, for Rosa, the full emergence of the facts that no principle could justify prevailed: according to Rosa, neither nationality nor any other end could legitimize this war. In his opinion, moreover, the war reflected a precise political arrangement of society. These causes are the logical consequences of principles that one does not want to deny; they are applications of doctrines that one does not want to proscribe; they are, finally, fruits of a civilization, of a ‘culture’ that one does not want flaunted, by the school, by the family or by the society. […] Such is the social organism of the paganizing world. […] The sad failures of the present hour […] the failure of so-called international law.26 The sense of this war went beyond the principle of nationality and revealed the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of international law in the contemporary context. The classic friend-enemy political paradigm was no longer any help in explaining the reasons for the war. Like others of his day, Rosa saw a different mechanism, that of the law of the market, or, rather, of economic imperialism; for this reason, he found the war to be unjustifiable because it lacked a true political purpose. Following this logic, the Jesuit was able to clarify to the reader the meaning of the ‘useless slaughter’: truly useless slaughter for those who believe that there are other ways of reason and of justice, as well as of humanity — how can they recognize those who from this slaughter gather, or hope for, gains and experience earnings, murky honours, revolutions, or revolts?27

25 ‘Nuovi fatti barbari e atroci si sono avverati nelle ultime settimane, e si succedono alla giornata. E li diciamo barbari e atroci, questi nuovi fatti di guerra, considerandoli in sé e nei loro sanguinosi eccidi, non giudicando le ragioni, scuse o attenuanti, che si possono supporre; ché quali siano queste cause, non valgono né varranno mai a sminuire l’orrore degli effetti’; [Enrico Rosa,] ‘Legge naturale e diritto internazionale’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 4 (1915), p. 516. 26 ‘Tali cause sono logiche conseguenze di principi che non si vogliono rinnegare; sono applicazioni di dottrine che non si vogliono proscrivere; sono frutti, infine di una civiltà, di una “cultura” che non si vuole sbandire né dalla scuola né dalla famiglia, né dalla società. […] Tale è l’organismo sociale del mondo paganeggiante. […] I tristi fallimenti dell’ora presente […] il fallimento del cosiddetto diritto internazionale’; [Rosa,] ‘Legge naturale e diritto internazionale’, p. 516. 27 ‘Veramente inutile strage per quanti ritengono che altre sono le vie della ragione e della giustizia, nonché dell’umanità — come potranno riconoscere quelli che dalla strage raccolgono o sperano i maggiori e subiti guadagni, i torbidi onori, le rivoluzioni o le sommosse’; Rosa, Visione, p. 75, in which he establishes the censored part of [Enrico Rosa,] ‘Incoerenze di giornalismo e immoralità di vita pubblica nella guerra’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 4 (1917), p. 194.

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For Rosa, the fundamental question did not concern the lawfulness of war (it is not accidental that the traditional and Thomistic subject of a just war was not mentioned) but the causes of this particular war, that were to be sought upstream, in the advancing of the technical, bureaucratic and financial regime which was subverting the world political order and its more traditional political categories. In this changed political condition lay the unbridgeable distance between Rosa and Taparelli, who in fact did not condemn war in itself but the ‘absolutizing’ of the principle of independence with respect to that of legitimacy in the traditional legal sense. However, in claiming a political role in Italian and European society for the Catholic Church, Rosa’s articles and Benedict XV’s document, discussed above, utilized the theological political dialectic of Taparelli, perturbing in its turn the censorship of the state, which during the war years purged the greater part of Rosa’s articles on the topic.28 Furthermore, another close point of contact between Taparelli and Rosa was the question of nationality as a universal ethical-political principle, which, taken to its extreme consequences by Rosa, identifies the economic imperialism as the main reason of the Great War. In 1917, Rosa returned to inveighing against England, an ally, ironically writing on the ‘principle of nationality’, which was being dissolved through the declaration of the Entente and the true interests of the forces in the field: Now the Note of the Entente returns to it, and England is actually thinking about little Ireland, which has been waiting for justice for centuries; it will certainly think, according to the words of the Note, of the reparations of violated rights and liberty in recognition of the principle of nationality, and in Wales and Scotland […] or in India, or on the Italian island of Malta, in the Spanish peninsula of Gibraltar, on the Greek island of Cyprus, in Egypt, etc., having thus established the recognition of the principle of nationality, generous France must think of Corsica and of the pleasant Riviera of Nice.29 By highlighting the discrepancy between the facts and the principle of nationality, the latter totally lost all meaning because, contrary to the wars of independence that were being fought while Taparelli was writing his work, total war no longer had as its cause and purpose the realization of national unity. However, on the other side of the Roman Catholic front, which as is known was not united behind the pontifical position of neutrality, 1917 saw the publication of

28 On this theme, see Antonio Fiori, Il filtro deformante: la censura sulla stampa durante la prima guerra mondiale (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 2001). 29 ‘Ora la Nota dell’Intesa vi ritorna sopra, e l’Inghilterra penserà appunto alla piccola Irlanda, che aspetta giustizia da secoli; penserà certamente secondo le parole della Nota, alla riparazione dei diritti e delle libertà violate, al riconoscimento del principio di nazionalità e nel paese del Galles e della Scozia […] o nell’India, come nell’isola italiana di Malta, nella spagnola penisola di Gibilterra, nella greca isola di Cipro, nell’Egitto ecc. così posto il riconoscimento del principio di nazionalità la Francia generosa dovrà pensare alla Corsica e alla ridente riviera di Nizza’; Rosa, Visione, p. 203 of [Enrico Rosa,] ‘La parola dei politici e il suo omaggio alla forza morale’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 1 (1917), p. 141.

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Il principio di nazionalità by Agostino Gemelli, a leading exponent of intransigent Catholicism. For Gemelli, who even recognized in the war one of the disastrous fruits of the ‘false new civilization’,30 the war emergency seemed […] the historic occasion to overcome the fracture created at the origins of the history of united Italy between religious specificity and political citizenship, not however as a sign of the passive acceptance of the slogans of the liberal ruling class but in that of a civil recomposition that should have projected the Catholics to the top of politics and into the heart of the national cultural outlook.31 Gemelli thus saw in the war the chance for Catholics to reacquire a political role, healing the rift between Catholics and Italians caused by the Risorgimento. Unlike Rosa, Gemelli justified the Italian intervention in the war on the basis of the principle of nationality. From a certain point of view, the link with Taparelli may seem closer, or at least more explicit: from the first introductory pages, in fact, the author declared his debt to Taparelli’s philosophical reflection and his desire to remain in continuity with it. Even with regard to the style and development of the text, Gemelli’s essay is far more in line with that of Taparelli. Gemelli, in fact, seemed initially to want to place the emergence of the war within brackets and abstracted the concept of nationality from the context. His commitment to the consecration of the Italian army to the Sacred Heart is well known and followed a logic of politicization of the Catholic cult in a nationalistic key. Gemelli’s vision contrasted with the political meaning that Rosa applied to the Sacred Heart as symbol of the social recognition of Jesus Christ’s reign — a peaceful reign — that could not be implemented but through the affirmation of the rights of the Vicar of Christ in the world.32 From the very first pages of his essay, Gemelli declared his intention to resume the analysis already carried out by Taparelli, not to repeat badly what he has already said well enough, but to highlight the value of the conclusions at

30 Agostino Gemelli, ‘Il nostro programma e la nostra vita’, Vita e Pensiero, 20 January, 1916, pp. 1–15. 31 ‘L’emergenza bellica sembrava […] l’occasione storica per superare la frattura creatasi alle origini della storia unitaria tra specificità religiosa e cittadinanza politica, non però nel segno della passiva accettazione delle parole d’ordine della classe dirigente liberale, bensì in quello di una ricomposizione civile che avrebbe dovuto proiettare i cattolici ai vertici della politica e nel mezzo dell’orizzonte culturale nazionale’; Maria Bocci, ‘Agostino Gemelli e la prima guerra mondiale’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 141 (2015), pp. 79–101 (p. 83). 32 On this argument, see Daniele Menozzi, Sacro Cuore: un culto tra devozione interiore e restaurazione cristiana della società (Rome: Viella, 2001), pp. 262–71; Sante Lesti, ‘Per la vittoria, la pace, la rinascita cristiana: Padre Gemelli e la consacrazione dei soldati al Sacro Cuore (1916–1917)’, Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008), pp. 959–75.

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which our philosophers had already arrived, and to which today […] we return, as it is the task of the Christian philosopher to engage in national education.33 Gemelli presented himself as a ‘Christian philosopher’ devoted to ‘national education’, representing and legitimizing himself within the social system, into which religion had to be integrated at the functional level so that it could continue to have an influence on the contemporary culture and on the institutional realities of society. Like Taparelli and Rosa, he relativized and contextualized the concept of nationality, putting before it an ideal of justice to which the principle of nationality should conform: The principle of nationality is thus not an abstract principle (and here lies the importance of the result of our philosophical investigation), but a concrete principle. It is justified by an abstract principle which in this order is absolute, that is, the principle of justice which wants to be recognized and be respected by the will of nations (it is clear when these nations have come to constitute a moral unity), inasmuch as this unity constitutes their fundamental element. The principle of nationality is a practical application; it is a concrete norm, and thus contingent, subject to modifications and changes in its applications of that principle of justice that must regulate the relationships both of individuals and of nations.34 Gemelli, therefore, distanced himself from nationalism tout court, shifting the focus of his essay on the concept of justice. However, as far as the means for achieving his ideal of justice are concerned, he opened an unbridgeable hiatus between his ideas of the relationship between the Church and the war and that of the two Jesuits: To remember in its fundamental lines which lesson Christian philosophy and history impart to us, to demonstrate that Germany first justified, with a pagan conception of the doctrine of nationality, its aggression against the peace of Europe and the crimes against law and morals. […] Against these abuses, it was the duty of a good soldier (not of a good Catholic) to raise the purity of his own flag.35

33 ‘Riprendere l’analisi già da Taparelli compiuta non per ripetere male ciò che lui ha detto assai bene ma per mettere in luce il valore di conclusioni alle quali filosofi nostri erano già arrivati e alle quali oggi […] si ritorna […] essendo compito del filosofo cristiano fare opera di educazione nazionale’; Agostino Gemelli, Il principio di nazionalità (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1917), p. 5. 34 ‘Il principio di nazionalità non è cioè un principio astratto (e qui sta l’importanza del risultato della nostra indagine filosofica), ma un principio concreto. Esso trova la sua giustificazione in un principio astratto che in tale ordine è assoluto, ossia il principio di giustizia che vuole il riconoscimento e il rispetto della volontà delle nazioni (si capisce quando queste nazioni sono arrivate a costituire un’unità morale), in quanto quest’unità costituisce il loro elemento fondamentale. Il principio di nazionalità è un’applicazione pratica, è una norma concreta quindi contingente soggetta a modificazioni e cambiamenti nelle sue applicazioni di quel principio di giustizia che deve regolare i rapporti dei singoli uomini come delle nazioni’; Gemelli, Il principio di nazionalità, p. 36. 35 ‘Ricordare nelle sue linee fondamentali quale lezione la filosofia cristiana e la storia ci impartiscono, dimostrare che la Germania giustificò dapprima con una concezione pagana della dottrina della nazionalità la sua aggressione alla pace d’Europa e i delitti contro il diritto e la morale. […] Contro questi abusi era dovere, per un buon soldato (non per un buon cattolico) innalzare la purezza della propria bandiera’; Gemelli, Il principio di nazionalità, p. 42.

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Unlike Taparelli and Rosa, Gemelli justified the Italian war, blaming Germany for wanting to affirm a pagan concept of the doctrine of nationality, or rather, for the aggression against the European peace that was being defended by the Entente.36 As we have seen, for Rosa, the critical target, the cause triggering the war, was the entire structure of modern society, beyond any nationalistic peculiarities. On the other hand, Taparelli had not legitimized the war of independence precisely because it would have meant excluding from the Catholic world some Catholics, and more radically, no longer representing Catholicity. In this way, by taking sides under ‘the purity of their own flag’, Gemelli defused the Taparellian rhetorical mechanism that was founded on the complexio oppositorum between the Catholic-universal and the national-particular. In this, and in many other texts by Gemelli about the war, the universal Catholic element, which constituted one of the two poles between which the Taparellian dialectic on nationality unfolded, was completely neutralized. Only in this way, on the theoretical level, was it possible to justify Italy’s entry into the war and the auxiliary function of the Church towards the Italian State. Indeed, for Gemelli, the war proved to be a contingent means of starting to implement his broader cultural programme, which saw the adaptation of the political form of Roman Catholicism to the modern technical-economic structure of the contemporary world.37 Therefore, both the Taparellian theses and those of Rosa on nationality still represented the Church as a katechon, a power that hindered the drift of society,

36 On the partisanship of Gemelli and the way in which it was justified, see Agostino Gemelli, L’idea di patria (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1916), pp. 16–17: ‘The love of the homeland cannot be sincere nor rational if one wishes to exclude religion from social life […] to be a patriot means to defend the political, social and religious beliefs that alone permit the homeland to become great, to continue the teachings that come from tradition […]. Thus Catholics that defend the Church, its liberty, the liberty of its August Head, not only do not oppose the true good of the homeland, they do not lack sincere love for the homeland, but they give the most noble proof of patriotism, in as much as they want a homeland, which, in conformity with their beliefs receives from the Church what it is that they justly esteem to be the most necessary assistance’ (‘l’amor patrio non può essere sincero né razionale, se vuole escludere dalla vita sociale la religione […] essere patriota vuol dire difendere le credenze politiche, sociali e religiose, che sole permettono alla patria di divenire grande, di continuare gli insegnamenti che le vengono dalla tradizione […]. Quindi i cattolici, che difendono la Chiesa, la sua libertà, la libertà del suo Capo Augusto, non solo non si oppongono al vero bene della patria, non difettano di amore sincero per la patria, ma essi danno la prova più nobile di patriottismo, in quanto vogliono una patria, che in conformità alle loro credenze riceva dalla Chiesa ciò che essi giustamente stimano come l’aiuto più necessario’). 37 As Bocci explains, the contingent event of the war was inserted into a much greater project: ‘The war emergency was the occasion for establishing the premises for a national renaissance. In fact, the victory — according to Gemelli — was in no way mutilated: Italy had fought beside the Entente in a battle for civilization. The moment of liberty had therefore come […] which implied for Gemelli the possibility for “everyone” to interfere positively in the creation of a new citizenship’ (‘l’emergenza bellica era stata l’occasione per porre le premesse per la rinascita nazionale. E infatti, la vittoria — a detta del francescano — non era affatto mutilata: l’Italia aveva combattuto a fianco dell’Intesa in una battaglia per la civiltà. Era dunque venuto il momento della libertà […] che implicava per Gemelli la possibilità per “tutti” d’interferire positivamente con la creazione di una nuova cittadinanza’); Bocci, ‘Agostino Gemelli e la prima guerra mondiale’, p. 100.

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unmasking the merely economic interests of the various states. The activation of this katechontic function was also the reflection of the Church’s will to impose itself, as auctoritas, on the political and spiritual level. Without being based on a radical and sterile opposition to the state or subordinating itself to it, the view of Taparelli and Rosa accepted the compromise of the Church with individual states, transcended and included in a spiritual perspective and in that of international politics. In this way, the Church could preserve its own autonomy with respect to the each states and its own movement as the universal representation of the civitas humana. On the other hand, Gemelli’s project, which in the following years would be implemented in the creation of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, proposed a completely different approach. It opened up the way to an alliance between the Church and the state, with a view to an instrumental reconciliation in which the strongly nationalized Church would become part of the technical-economic mechanism that moved contemporary politics within the particular mechanisms that involved the secular powers.

Bibliography Ara, Angelo, Lo Statuto fondamentale dello Stato della Chiesa, 14 marzo 1848: contributo a uno studio delle idee costituzionali nello Stato Pontificio nel periodo delle riforme di Pio IX (Milan: Giuffrè, 1966) Aubert, Roger, ed., Il pontificato di Pio IX, 2 vols, 2nd edn (Turin: SAIE, 1970) Balbo, Cesare, Le speranze d’Italia (Turin: Tipografia Elvetica, 1844) Banti, Alberto Maria, La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita, 3rd edn (Turin: Einaudi, 2011) Bocci, Maria, ‘Agostino Gemelli e la prima guerra mondiale’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 141 (2015), pp. 79–101 Chabod, Federico, ‘Considerazioni sulla politica estera dell’Italia dal 1870 al 1915’, in Orientamenti per la storia d’Italia nel Risorgimento, ed. by Gabriele Pepe and others (Bari: Laterza, 1952), pp. 19–49 del Corno, Nicola, ‘Patria e nazione negli antiunitari’, in Rileggere l’Ottocento: Risorgimento e nazione, ed. by Maria Luisa Betri (Rome: Carocci, 2010), pp. 129–43 Del Soldato, Eva, ‘Le molte guerre di padre Enrico Rosa: gli articoli censurati de La Civiltà Cattolica durante la Grande Guerra’, Storia e problemi contemporanei, 19, 42 (2006), pp. 37–59 Di Carlo, Eugenio, Un carteggio inedito del p. L. Taparelli d’Azeglio coi fratelli Massimo e Roberto (Rome: Anonima romana editoriale, 1926) Di Carlo, Eugenio, Una polemica tra V. Gioberti e p. L. Taparelli intorno alla nazionalità (Palermo: Tipografia nazionale, 1919) Di Gianfrancesco, Mario, ‘Un papa federalista: Pio IX propone nel 1847 la lega doganale tra gli stati italiani’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 96, 4 (2009), pp. 483–508 Epistolae Ioannis Phil. Roothaan, Societatis Iesu praepositi generalis XXI, 5 vols (Rome: Apud Postulatorem Generalem, 1935–40), V (1940)

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Fiori, Antonio, Il filtro deformante: la censura sulla stampa durante la prima guerra mondiale (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 2001) Formigoni, Guido, L’Italia dei cattolici: fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998) Gemelli, Agostino, L’idea di patria (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1916) Gemelli, Agostino, ‘Il nostro programma e la nostra vita’, Vita e Pensiero, 20 January, 1916, pp. 1–15 Gemelli, Agostino, Il principio di nazionalità (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1917) Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Hobsbawm, Eric J., The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Abacus, 1995) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Landucci, Sergio, La contraddizione in Hegel (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978) Lesti, Sante, ‘Per la vittoria, la pace, la rinascita cristiana: Padre Gemelli e la consacrazione dei soldati al Sacro Cuore (1916–1917)’, Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008), pp. 959–75 Malgeri, Francesco, ‘Rosa, Enrico’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), III/2 (1984), pp. 736–37 Martina, Giacomo, ‘Ancora sull’allocuzione del 29 aprile e sulla politica vaticana in Italia nel 1848’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 54, 1 (1967), pp. 40–47 Martina, Giacomo, ‘Nuovi documenti sull’allocuzione del 29 aprile’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 53, 4 (1966), pp. 527–82 Martina, Giacomo, Pio IX (1867–1878), 3 vols (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1974–90) Martina, Giacomo, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2003) Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Menozzi, Daniele, Sacro Cuore: un culto tra devozione interiore e restaurazione cristiana della società (Rome: Viella, 2001) Pii IX Pontificis Maximi Acta, 9 vols (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1971), I/1 Pirri, Pietro, ed., Carteggi del p. Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio della Compagnia di Gesù (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1932) Rodano, Franco, ‘Risorgimento e democrazia’, La Rivista trimestrale, 1, 1 (1962), pp. 63–130 Rosa, Enrico, Visione cattolica della guerra (Rome: Rassegna Internazionale, 1921) Taparelli d’Azeglio, Luigi, Della nazionalità: breve scrittura (Genoa: Fratelli Ponthenier, 1847) Taparelli d’Azeglio, Luigi, Della nazionalità: breve scrittura, rivista e accresciuta notabilmente dall’autore con una risposta del medesimo alle osservazioni di Vincenzo Gioberti, 2nd edn (Florence: P. Ducci, 1849) Taparelli d’Azeglio, Massimo, Degli ultimi casi di Romagna: riflessioni (Bastia: Fabiani, 1846) Taparelli d’Azeglio, Luigi, Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto (Palermo: Stamperia d’Antonio Muratori, 1840–43)

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Traniello, Francesco, ‘Guerra, stato, nazione negli scritti di padre Rosa apparsi sulla Civiltà Cattolica (1914–1918)’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 661–77 Traniello, Francesco, ‘La polemica Gioberti–Taparelli sull’idea di nazione e sul rapporto tra religione e nazionalità’, in Popolo, nazione e storia nella cultura italiana e ungherese dal 1789 al 1850, ed. by Vittore Branca and Sante Graciotti (Florence: Olschki, 1985), pp. 295–316

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The Role of Gaspare Colosimo and the King in the Rejection of the Gasparri Draft

1. Premise After the Breach of Porta Pia and the loss of temporal power, Pius IX saw the imposition of the Law of Guarantees of 13 May 1871; he consequently rejected any conciliation with the Italian State. After his death, his immediate successors, Leo XIII and Pius X, were aware of the need to overcome this situation in order to give the pope effective and true liberty in the completion of his mission. They therefore took some important steps in preparation for a conciliation with the Kingdom of Italy. However, these attempts were destined to fail despite the favourable attitudes of some people in authority, such as Francesco Crispi, due to the clear opposition of Italian right- and left-wing political exponents, some of whom were linked to the Freemasons. With Benedict XV,1 the theme of conciliation became one of the dominant issues in his governmental programme, to the point that in June 1919, after the meeting between Orlando and Cerretti, it seemed that the negotiations had already reached a conclusion, merely lacking the clarification of some details and the King’s placet.2 In reality, as the statements of some of the



1 For an overview of Giacomo Della Chiesa, see Gabriele De Rosa, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), III, pp. 608–17, with related bibliography. 2 In regard to this, in his first encyclical, Ad beatissimi, of 1 November 1914, in which he announced his governmental programme, Benedict XV explained it as follows: ‘For a long time now the Church has not enjoyed that full freedom which it needs — never since the Sovereign Pontiff, its Head, was deprived of that protection which by divine Providence had in the course of ages been set up to defend that freedom. Once that safeguard was removed, there followed, as was inevitable, considerable trouble among Catholics: all, from far and near, who profess themselves sons of the Roman Pontiff, rightly demand a guarantee that the common Father of all should be, and should be seen to be, perfectly free from all human power in the administration of his apostolic office. So while earnestly desiring that peace should soon be concluded among nations, it is also Our desire that there should be an end to the abnormal position of the Head of the Church, a position in many ways extremely harmful to the very peace of nations. We hereby renew, and for the same reasons, the many protests Our Predecessors have made against such a state of things, moved thereto not by human interest, but by the sacredness of our office, in order to defend the rights and dignity of

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 967–982 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118814

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protagonists,3 as well as studies by authoritative historians,4 have shown, matters went very differently. There is only one consideration to take into account before moving on to the next section, and this concerns the Law of Guarantees and its inadequacy, from the Holy See’s point of view. To speak only of the most important aspects, the popes adjudged that the text was inacceptable for the following reasons: (a) The biased nature of the law, whose prologue contains the statement: ‘The Senate and the Chamber of Deputies have approved it; We [the King] have sanctioned and promulgate it’. (b) According to Art. 2, Section 4, ‘The discussion of religious matters is completely free’. This is a principle that stands in contrast to the conviction that Catholicism is the only true religion and the pope is the sole depository of revealed truth. (c) According to Art. 3, Section 1, ‘The Italian government renders to the Supreme Pontiff, in the territory of the Kingdom, sovereign honours, and maintains the pre-eminence of the honours that are recognized by Catholic sovereigns’. The article, thus, does not clearly recognize the sovereignty of the pontiff, placing him under the ordinary law of the state, an article that could be unilaterally revoked at any moment. (d) According to Art. 4, Section 1, ‘An annual annuity of 3,225,000 lire is set aside for the Holy See’. In this way, the Holy See becomes, in all effects, an office of the state, maintained by the Kingdom of Italy.





the Apostolic See’; Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 (§ 31) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 3 Among the sources for the protagonists, see Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti, Guerra diplomatica: ricordi e frammenti di diario (1914–1919) (Milan: Mondadori, 1936); Elvira Cerretti [Giuseppe De Luca], Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti: memoria (Rome: Istituto grafico tiberino, 1939); Sidney Sonnino, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), III; Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Miei rapporti di governo con la Santa Sede (Bologna: Forni, 1980), pp. 117–44; Gaspare Colosimo, Il diario di Gaspare Colosimo, ministro delle Colonie (1916–1919), ed. by Vanni Clodomiro (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 2012). 4 On the events relating to the attempted conciliation of June 1919, see the following authoritative bibliography: Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia negli ultimi cento anni (Turin: Einaudi, 1948), pp. 570–71; Luigi Salvatorelli, Chiesa e Stato: dalla rivoluzione francese a oggi (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1955), pp. 118 ff.; Alberto Monticone, Nitti e la grande guerra (1914–1918) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1961); Francesco Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede: dalla grande guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966), pp. 49–58, 366–67 and 536–39; Pietro Scoppola, Chiesa e Stato nella storia d’Italia: storia documentaria dall’Unità alla Repubblica (Bari: Laterza, 1967), pp. 480–97; Cerretti [De Luca], Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, pp. 193–222; Pietro Scoppola, La Chiesa e il fascismo: documenti e interpretazioni (Bari: Laterza, 1971), pp. 3–19; Alfredo Canavero, I cattolici nella società italiana: dalla metà dell’800 al Concilio Vaticano II (Brescia: La Scuola, 1991), pp. 174–75; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997); Giovanni Spadolini, La questione romana: dal cardinale Gasparri alla revisione del Concordato (Florence: Le Monnier, 1997), pp. 27–38; Giovanni Sale, Popolari e destra cattolica al tempo di Benedetto XV (Milan: Jaca Book, 2006), p. 6; Roberto Perici, Chiesa e Stato in Italia: dalla Grande Guerra al nuovo Concordato (1914–1984) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009), especially pp. 41–59; see also the ample bibliography provided.

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(e) According to Art. 5, ‘The Supreme Pontiff, beyond the annuity established in the preceding article, continues to enjoy the apostolic palace of the Vatican and the Lateran, with all the buildings, gardens and lands, both annexed and dependent, as well as the villa of Castel Gandolfo with all its appurtenances and dependencies’. Given the difference between enjoyment and ownership, it is clearly possible to hold that the Vatican neither owns, nor has true control over these places, including — as a logical conclusion — the pope’s residence. On the contrary, to be able to fulfil his mission in the world — from the papal perspective — the Holy See should have at its disposal an autonomous state, independent of any other, wherein the pontiff could exercise full and supreme temporal sovereignty, not submitting, it is worth saying, to any other authority external to himself. Only in this way can his spiritual actions be true and credible in the eyes of the world.5 These were the points on which Benedict XV placed greatest emphasis and on which full agreement was shown by the Prime Minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando.

2. The Conciliation Attempt of June 1919 Before being able to understand the role of Victor Emmanuel III when faced with the possible attempt at reconciliation between Italy and the Vatican, we should briefly return to the unfolding of the facts, which are widely known.6 Leaving aside the previous events, we move directly to the Paris Peace Conference ( January 1919–January 1920) and to that first, casual meeting from which everything originated. It occurred in the French capital between the American priest, Francis C. Kelley,7 and Marquis Giuseppe Brambilla, Councillor of the Italian Peace Commission. The topic of the encounter very soon became President Wilson’s negative attitude towards Italian interests. Kelley let Brambilla understand that, as long as Italy continued to act as the ‘Pope’s jailer’,8 it would be very difficult for it to find an open door, whether in Catholic nations or in nations with a strong Catholic presence, such as the United States. For Kelley, in short, this meant overcoming the Roman Question and putting an end to the anomalous situation that was created by the Law of Guarantees. Kelley’s argument indubitably made an impression on Brambilla, who immediately proposed that there should be a meeting between him and Italy’s Prime Minister, Orlando. The priest’s stand in actual fact depended on the fact that





5 See AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. IV (1921–24), f. 416r. 6 In addition to the bibliography cited in note 3, see also the timely study by Gerald P. Fogarty, ‘La Chiesa negli Stati Uniti nella Grande Guerra e a Versailles’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 211–28 (pp. 222–25). 7 Francis C. Kelley (1870–1948) was born in Vernon River, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Ordained a priest in 1893, he founded the Catholic Church Extension Society. In 1924, he was named Bishop of Oklahoma City, and remained in this post until his death. 8 ‘Il secondino del papa’; Fogarty, ‘La Chiesa negli Stati Uniti’, p. 224.

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his were personal opinions and that, above all, he had had no mandate whatsoever from the Holy See;9 nevertheless, he decided to speak to Orlando. The meeting took place on 18 May 1919 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris; on its conclusion, Kelley agreed to go to Rome immediately to inform Gasparri and Benedict XV.10 Kelley arrived in Rome on 22 May and met first with the Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Bonaventura Cerretti, then Gasparri and, finally, Benedict XV. By 24 May, he had already left for Paris with Cerretti ‘with a rapidity of decision’, as Orlando emphasizes, ‘which, considering the complexity and gravity of the argument, could well be said to be lightning fast’.11 Arriving in Paris on 25 May, Kelley immediately contacted Brambilla, who, on 26 May, met Cerretti.12 From that moment on, Kelley and Cerretti parted ways: the former left for the United States on 31 May, thus putting an end to the unforeseen mission;13 the latter, on the other hand, thanks to the mediation of Marquis Brambilla,14 met Orlando in his room at the Ritz Hotel on 1 June.15 What remains of this meeting are



9 In this regard, Orlando recalled in his memoir: ‘In that meeting [Kelley–Brambilla], Kelly [sic] strongly insisted on distancing from himself any quality or title for having undertaken work on this question, even showing a preoccupation that the Holy See might have “rebuked him for having assumed such a mission”’ (‘in quel colloquio, il Kelly insistette vivamente nell’allontanare da sé ogni qualità e titolo per occuparsi di quella questione, manifestando persino la preoccupazione che la S. Sede avesse potuto “rimproverarlo di essersi arrogato una tale missione”’); Orlando, Miei rapporti, p. 131. 10 Orlando wrote in his memoir: ‘It was under these conditions that, towards the second half of May, an American prelate, specifically from Chicago, Mgr K., came to Paris and held meetings with Marquis Brambilla, an Italian diplomat, whose death we have recently mourned and whose wife was a genteel American lady. The content of these meetings was to seek to arrange a direct agreement between Italy and the Holy See. Marquis Brambilla spoke to me, and I became conscious of the opportunity to take charge of these negotiations. Thus I had a cordial meeting with Mgr K., who, after this, left immediately for Rome, where he informed Cardinal Gasparri, who in turn informed his Holiness’ (‘fu in queste condizioni che, verso la seconda metà di maggio, un prelato americano e precisamente di Chicago, mons. K., venne a Parigi ed ebbe dei colloqui con il marchese Brambilla, un diplomatico italiano di cui recentemente si è pianta la perdita, la cui moglie era una gentile signora americana. Il contenuto di tali colloqui era di cercare di provocare un accordo diretto tra l’Italia e la S. Sede. Il marchese Brambilla ne parlò con me ed io mi resi conto dell’opportunità di curare tali trattative; onde ebbi un colloquio cordiale con mons. K., il quale, dopo di esso, partì immediatamente per Roma, dove informò il card. Gasparri che, alla sua volta, informò Sua Santità’); Orlando, Miei rapporti, pp. 123–24. 11 ‘Con una rapidità di decisione che, relativamente alla complessità e gravità dell’argomento, può bene dirsi fulminea’; Orlando, Miei rapporti, p. 132. 12 Cerretti [De Luca], Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, p. 214. 13 Cerretti [De Luca], Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, p. 214. 14 Original text: ‘Document on enclosed religious delivered. They promise to examine it attentively. Mgr Vicar confirms all the news. He will arrange a meeting with the Master General. Cerretti’ (‘consegnato religiosi documento clausura. Promettono esaminarlo attentamente. Mons. vicario conferma in tutto notizie. Egli combinerà incontro Maestro Generale. Cerretti’); plain text: ‘Consigned to delegates agreement document relative to the missions. They promise to examine it with attention, Brambilla confirms all news. He will organize a meeting with Orlando’ (‘Consegnato delegati intesa documento relativo missioni promettono esaminarlo attentamente. Brambilla conferma in tutto notizie. Egli combinerà incontro con Orlando’); AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), f. 292r, Cerretti to Gasparri, 27 May 1919. 15 Cerretti [De Luca], Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, pp. 215 ff.

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the report from Cerretti to Gasparri16 and a shorter account in Orlando’s memoir, which was later published.17 The Orlando–Cerretti meeting lasted for little less than an hour and, as the two participants underlined, it was very cordial. Cerretti presented Orlando with a handwritten note from Gasparri in which the essential points of the conciliation were noted, as they were understood by the Holy See.18 The first, on which the Prime Minister agreed, concerned the need for the pope not to be subjected to (or be a subject of) the authority of any government. It was therefore necessary to establish the conditions in which the Vatican would become a small state, with a territory that was more or less extensive, and over which sovereignty could be exercised, with at its head the pope, who would personally hold spiritual and temporal powers. The note was received positively and, for the most part, held to be acceptable by Orlando. This was also because, in the eyes of the Prime Minister, the document had the great merit of ‘being clear and precise’. Another very important aspect that was considered in the course of the meeting was the international recognition of the Holy See’s territory, acknowledging the autonomy of the Vatican with respect to the Italian State. On the other hand, the forceful annexation of the Papal States by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 had been seen, particularly by the various small countries in Europe, as a grave violation of the rights of nations and as a precedent that might be repeated in their regard by means of an action on the part of larger nations. In this way the risk was that the regulation of the relations between nations would no longer be a matter of diplomacy and law but of military strength. This was absolutely out of the question. Once the Vatican State was constituted, for Orlando and Cerretti the solution would be therefore to make it join the newly formed League of Nations, whose Art. 10 foresaw that: The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression, or in the case of any threat or danger of such aggression, the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.19 Taken as a whole, the conciliation project proposed by the Vatican pleased Orlando. He showed, in general, his agreement with it although this was conditional on the 16 See AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), ff. 301r–310r, meeting with Hon. Orlando, President of the Council, n.d. See further the complete text of the meeting in Cerretti [De Luca], Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, pp. 215–22, and in Scoppola, La Chiesa e il fascismo, pp. 10–19. Both versions, in any case, are in agreement with the manuscript that Cerretti sent to Gasparri in 1919, immediately after the meeting with Orlando, which is conserved in AES. 17 Orlando, Miei rapporti, pp. 123–25. 18 Notwithstanding the research conducted in ASV and in AES, it seems that there is no trace of this famous Gasparri document, and there is every likelihood that it was written by Count Carlo Santucci (see Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede, p. 55). Some indications of its content, however, emerge in the Orlando–Cerretti meeting. 19 Covenant of the League of Nations, Art. 10 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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need to inform both the King, about whom he expressed a confident hope, and the Council of Ministers who, Orlando said, would not put forward any particular obstacles, with perhaps the exceptions of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Public Education, Sidney Sonnino and Agostino Berenini. In any case, he assured him that he would be able to manage any opposition on the parts of the monarchy and the government. On the other hand, Orlando paid particular attention to the best time at which the conciliation should be proposed. To his delaying tactics, there was the counterweight of Cerretti’s and the Vatican’s pressure to move quickly, perhaps also to take advantage of the propitious moment. In this regard, in fact, given the information received, he was confident of the monarch’s favourable disposal towards the solution. As is known, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Francis A. Bourne, had informed Gasparri that: The King [George V] received me on Tuesday. He has deigned to accept a copy of La politica di Benedetto XV [The Politics of Benedict XV], and I was thus able to touch on the question of papal independence. The King talked about this with great understanding and sympathy and told me that the King of Italy had spoken to him at various times and was very keen to arrive at some sort of arrangement.20 Having concluded his colloquium with Orlando, Cerretti hurried to send Gasparri a brief telegramme, thus summing up the results of the meeting: Orlando recognized the need for a territorial solution. He wants negotiations between the Holy See and the Italian government. The extension of the territory must be established in the final negotiations but does not exclude in any absolute way an outlet to the sea. He admits that, on reaching a solution, the papal territory could join the League of Nations, and thus obtain internationalization. He desires that a solution be reached quickly so that he can broach the topic with his colleagues as soon as possible, amongst whom is Sonnino, who will probably be opposed to it. The report written by Your Excellency was found to be clear and precise, and was, in the main, accepted.21

20 ‘Il Re mi ha ricevuto martedì. Egli si è degnato accettare un esemplare de La politica di Benedetto XV così ho potuto toccare la questione dell’indipendenza pontificia. Il Re ne ha parlato con molto di comprensione e di simpatia, e mi ha detto che il Re d’Italia gliene aveva parlato varie volte e desiderava vivamente giungere a qualche accomodamento’. The news was transmitted by Gasparri to the Belgian Nunciature, so that Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, would be immediately informed. See ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura del Belgio, b. 128, f. n.n. Gasparri to the auditor of the Nunciature, Giovanni Battista Ogno Serra, 21 April 1919; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), f. 288r, Gasparri to Ogno Serra, 20 April 1919. 21 ‘Orlando riconosce necessità di una soluzione territoriale. Vuole trattative fra S. Sede e governo italiano. L’estensione del territorio dovrà fissarsi nelle ulteriori trattative, ma non esclude in modo assoluto uno sbocco nel mare. Ammette che, raggiunta soluzione, il territorio pontificio possa entrare nella Lega delle Nazioni e così ottenere l’internazionalizzazione. Egli desidera si venga presto alla soluzione, quanto prima egli si abboccherà con i suoi colleghi, fra i quali Sonnino farà probabilmente opposizione. L’esposto redatto da V. E. è stato trovato chiaro e preciso e in massima accettato’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), f. 295r, Cerretti to Gasparri, 1 June 1919.

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Cerretti followed his telegram, on the same day, with a letter that was a little longer and more carefully thought out, even it did not lack imperfections: I want to report all the particulars of the events of that poor Enrico [Hon. Orlando] mentioned in telegramme no. 3, which I sent yesterday to Your Most Reverend Eminence. Prudence, however, has counselled me not to put in a report what happened today in a hotel room in Paris. The meeting, which had been organized several times and always failed to take place due to unforeseen impediments, was of exceptional importance. The encounter lasted for about two hours; it was very cordial and could not have been more satisfactory. I took note of everything. After having read and pondered the brief proposal, he exclaimed: This is a document which has the merit of being clear and precise. To the question of whether he accepted it, he replied overall ‘yes’. The matter is serious, because he is fully convinced of the need to solve the question, and in the way proposed. But… When? How? That is the question. When. He believes that there are strong reasons to act immediately, that is, either before it is signed or after the signature has been placed on the famous document. He seems to tend towards the second option, due also to the lack of time. How. Above all, he will consult his Superior, who will certainly be favourable, then his colleagues. Of these, two will perhaps be against it, but he is not afraid of their opposition. And then, even if he has to throw them into the sea, he will do so. He said: Paris is worth a Mass, but, in this case, we have to say the opposite! He is thinking of making an escape to the centre as soon as possible or to some other place, as has just happened, to lure in his colleagues. He believes that the event will be one of the greatest that history has recorded. If this supremely important affair that has sprung from a merely casual meeting between two people who saw each other for the first time and who were not directly interested in the question, had an epilogue that was much yearned for, it would be a case for proclaiming Dominus ludit in orbe terrarum! Now perhaps you will permit me a question: would it not be advisable to inform the Archabbot of everything, or at least let him know that he should not take other steps?22 22 ‘Vorrei riferire tutti i particolari delle vicende di quel povero Enrico [on. Orlando], accennate nel telegramma n. 3, che ho diretto oggi all’E. V. Rev.ma. La prudenza però mi consiglia di non affidare a un rapporto quello che si è svolto oggi in una camera di un hotel di Parigi. L’incontro, combinato più volte e sempre andato a monte a causa di sopravvenuti imprevisti impedimenti, ha avuto un’importanza eccezionale. Il colloquio, durato circa due ore, cordialissimo, non poteva essere più soddisfacente. Di tutto ho preso nota. Dopo aver letto e ponderato il breve esposto, ha esclamato: questo è un documento che ha il merito di essere chiaro e preciso. Alla domanda se lo accettava, ha risposto in massima sì. La cosa è seria, perché egli è assolutamente convinto della necessità di risolvere la questione e nella maniera proposta. Ma… quando? Come? That is the question. Quando. Egli ritiene che vi siano forti ragioni tanto per agire subito, cioè prima della firma, quanto per attendere che la firma sia apposta al famoso documento. Sembra inclinare per la seconda parte, anche per mancanza di tempo materiale. Come. Anzitutto consulterà il suo Capo, il quale sarà certamente favorevole; poi i suoi colleghi. Di questi, due forse si mostreranno contrari, ma non teme la loro opposizione. E poi, anche se dovesse buttarli a mare, lo farà. Ha detto: Parigi val bene una messa, in questo caso bisogna dire il contrario! Quanto prima pensa di fare una sfuggita al centro o in qualche altro luogo, come avvenne testé, per abboccarsi con i suoi colleghi. Egli crede che l’avvenimento sarà uno

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Later, on 10 June, Cerretti informed Gasparri that, following Orlando’s orders, the Deputy Prime Minister, Gaspare Colosimo, had informed the King and the ministers of the meeting, requesting, furthermore, the original of the draft,23 which, in any case — as he wrote on 14 June — he had not been able to give to them as it had arrived after Orlando’s departure.24 To this, Cerretti added his preoccupations concerning the duration of the government: ‘Will he stay, or will he go? There will be trouble if he goes now that he has shown the good will to act’.25 Evidently, at that point, Cerretti was completely in the dark about Victor Emmanuel III’s reply to Orlando, which arrived through Colosimo on June 9. Here is what the Deputy Prime Minister wrote: About the delicate communication which you entrusted to me, he is grateful for the reserve and tact with which you replied to Mgr Cerretti, but holds that the proposal, if accepted, would cause harm to us and to the Vatican; it would annul all the benefits from many battles, which culminated in the Law of Guarantees; and he would leave, rather than take on a similar concordat.26

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dei più grandi che la storia ricordi. Se quest’affare di suprema importanza, balzato su da un incontro meramente casuale di due persone che per la prima volta si vedevano e che non erano direttamente interessate nella questione, avrà l’epilogo tanto bramato, sarà il caso di ripetere: Dominus ludit in orbe terrarum! E ora mi permetto una domanda: non sarebbe opportuno informare di tutto l’arciabate o almeno fargli sapere che non faccia altri passi’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), ff. 290r–291r, Cerretti to Gasparri, 1 June 1919. AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. 3 (1917–20), f. 297r, Cerretti to Gasparri, 10 June 1919. Original text: ‘Master General treated meeting dispensation with solemn vow | favourable result | interlocutor has already informed superior and colleagues | original urgent’ (‘Maestro Generale tratto abboccamento dispensa voto solenne | risultato favorevole | interlocutore ha già informato superiore e colleghi | urge originale’); explanatory manuscript text: ‘Orlando in the last meeting spoke of the territorial solution of the Roman Question. Favourable result. Colosimo has already informed the King and Ministers. Original document urgent’ (‘Orlando nell’ultimo abboccamento trattò della soluzione territoriale della questione romana. Risultato favorevole. Colosimo ha già informato Re e ministri. Urge originale documento’). AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), f. 299r, Cerretti to Gasparri, 14 June 1919: ‘14 June 1919. Your Most Reverend Eminence, as I already informed your Most Rev. Eminence in telegram no. 6, the original arrived when the Master General had already left. However, I gave him a copy. If he insists on having the original, I shall tell him that he will have to return it’ (‘14 giugno 1919. Eminenza Rev.ma, come già ho informato V. E. Rev.ma, col telegramma N. 6 mi è pervenuto l’originale quando il Maestro Generale era già partito. Gli ho però consegnato la copia. Se insisterà per avere l’originale, gli dirò che lo deve poi restituire’). See also AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), f. 298r, Cerretti to Gasparri, 16 June 1919. Original text: ‘Received | Master General already gone | Copy given’ (‘Ricevuto | Maestro Generale già partito | Consegnata copia’); explanatory manuscript text: ‘Received the original when Hon. Orlando had already left, I have given him a copy’ (‘Ricevuto l’originale quando l’on. Orlando era già partito, gliene ho consegnata una copia’). ‘Resterà egli o se ne andrà? Sarebbe un guaio se se ne andasse ora che ha mostrato la buona volontà di agire’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), f. 298r. ‘Circa la comunicazione delicata che mi hai incaricato di fargli, ti è grato per la riserva e il tatto con cui hai risposto a mons. Cerretti; ma ritiene che la proposta, se accettata, sarebbe di danno a noi e al Vaticano; annullerebbe tutt’i beneficii di tante lotte culminate con la legge sulle Guarentigie; ed egli andrebbe via, piuttosto che sobbarcarsi a un concordato simigliante’; the document was discovered, as were many others, by Margiotta Broglio and was published in Italia e Santa Sede, pp. 366–67.

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In a letter of 31 October 1942, Colosimo repeated this concept to Orlando, re-evoking the negotiations of June 1919, and faithfully reporting the monarch’s thought: The King revealed himself to be contrary to any agreement. He repeated to me that in regard to the disagreement with the Vatican he was of the same opinion as Giolitti, that the State and the Church had to proceed along parallel lines. That if should it be necessary, he would take to the streets with a gun to defend such intentions.27 Apart from his bellicose attitude, Victor Emmanuel III did not seem to understand how the lack of a signing a conciliation contrasted with the idea of ‘two parallels’: in other words, the Holy See, without sovereignty, would become the prisoner of Italy, and thus Italy, to use the words that were dear to Kelley, would be ‘the pope’s jailer’. At this point, however, it is useful to reread for completeness, but also for the differences that were present in the manuscript text, the chronicle of the Orlando– Cerretti meeting, as edited by Cerretti in June–July 1919 for Gasparri. Paris, 1 June 1919. By agreement accorded with Mr Brambilla, Councillor of the Embassy and member of the Italian delegation to the Peace Conference, at 10 a.m., I went to the Ritz Hotel, Place Vendôme, to Room 135, which was occupied by Mr Brambilla. At 10.05 Hon. Orlando entered, accompanied by his Cabinet Secretary, Commander Scordia. Mr Brambilla made the presentations and, exchanging greetings, he withdrew to the adjoining room with his wife and Comm. Scordia. Hon. Orlando seemed to be very weary. Discourse began immediately on the work of the Conference. Hon. Orlando, after having mentioned the gruelling task and the grave difficulties, observed that this conference is not like a usual one that was held in the past after a war, when the plenipotentiaries seated themselves around a table covered with the famous green cloth and played their cards, good or bad, making use of their abilities. In this conference, abilities did not count, because there is one who, due to the circumstances, has been made an arbiter. It is thus necessary to take what the arbiter gives us. The arbiter is Wilson. The circumstances made him so. America was the last to enter the war, and its intervention was the proximate cause of the victory. It was added that America is the sole power that is economically strong, and all the others depend on it. One cannot fight Wilson. Here, Hon. Orlando mentioned the unconscious gesture made against him by the President of the United States and added: ‘For three years I have found myself at the head of the nation, in times which have no parallel in history. I thought that after Caporetto, and after the wonderful resistance that I organized, the critical

27 ‘Il Re si mostrò contrario a qualunque accordo. Mi ripetette che circa il dissidio col Vaticano, egli era dell’opinione di Giolitti e cioè che Stato e Chiesa dovessero procedere come due parallele. Che se fosse stato necessario, sarebbe sceso in piazza col fucile per difendere tali proponimenti’; Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede, p. 538.

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point had been overcome, but, in truth, the Conference came along, and I found myself in a situation that I would never have imagined. Providence’, he concluded, laughing, ‘might have saved me from this cross’. To this pathetic outburst I replied with encouraging words and expressed the wish that his laborious negotiations would have a successful outcome. I then changed the subject, saying that Mgr Kelley had reported to me the conversation that he had had with him on the Roman Question, and that His Excellency the Cardinal, Secretary of State, also knew about it. I added that, considering it exact in all its particulars, I wished that the good will that he had demonstrated would produce a tangible result. I then entered into the merit of the question, bringing up again the great advantage that the Church and Italy would have if he were able to offer them a satisfactory solution. ‘The occasion’, I continued, ‘is perhaps the most favourable that there has ever been, and we must not let it escape us. On the part of the Holy See, moreover, there are the best of inclinations. We must have courage’, I ended, ‘and act with sincerity’. Hon. Orlando, who had listened to me with the liveliest attention, confirmed above all the conversation he had had with Mgr Kelley (he believed him to be Archbishop of Chicago!) and admitted at once the great advantages that a satisfactory solution to the question would give the Church and Italy. He then began to explain at length the psychological state necessary to face the question. ‘I am a lawyer’, he said, ‘by profession and by family tradition. For four generations in an uninterrupted line, the legal profession has been exercised in my family. Meanwhile, when you are dealing with a transaction, and our case is more or less a transaction, I also consider the other party: that is, I also put myself in the shoes of the opposing party, because the transaction also has to be favourable to them. As head of the Italian government, therefore, while I cannot forget the interests of the nation, I also have to bear in mind the Holy See’s situation. Further, the Italian people, whether they desire it or not, are Catholic and will always be Catholic. The Italian is Italian because he speaks the Italian language: he speaks it badly, often making serious mistakes, but he is still an Italian. In the same way he is a Catholic; he is perhaps a Catholic in the same way that he speaks Italian, more or less well, but he is still a Catholic’. It was then added that, due to the dispositions of Providence, or of fate, or of circumstances, as you will, Italy is the residence of the pope. ‘The history of Italy is intimately connected with the history of the papacy. The papacy is the greatest moral force that exists; it is useless to deny this. How then can we ignore it or, worse still, fight it? Now’, he continued, ‘in the examination of this question, my two consciences, as head of government and as an Italian, are united; that is, they are not opposed to each other but are in harmony. Therefore, in the search for a solution, I desire to find one that satisfies both the interests of the nation and of the papacy. It is necessary, therefore, to have the same disposal of mind and to consider the advantage of both one and the other part’. At this point, I interrupted him to assure him that I completely agreed with him, and I added that with such a disposal it would not be difficult to reach a satisfactory solution.

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On this topic, I added: ‘I have here a brief exposition of the issue and the solution, which I should like Your Excellency to read’. In saying this, I gave him the brief note from the Most Eminent Cardinal, Secretary of State. ‘Do you know, Your Excellency, this handwriting?’ I asked him. ‘It seems to me’, he answered, ‘that it is the same hand that wrote the dedication in the copy of the Code of Canon Law that was given to me. In any case’, he continued, ‘Cardinal Gasparri has also written a few letters to me’. With the liveliest attention, he began to read the note and, at the end of the first page, he remarked: ‘It is very true, the pope cannot be subjected to any government’. Another observation that he made while reading was that, in the present situation, it is the disagreement with Italy that has guaranteed liberty and independence to the Holy See. ‘I agree with this fully’, he said. Having finished reading the document, he pronounced these words: ‘This is a document that has the merit of being clear and precise’. To the question of whether he accepted it, he answered, ‘in general, yes’. We then discussed the principal points. ‘As far as the territory to be assigned to it’, he said, ‘it would be good to extend it beyond the Vatican. It is necessary to include within the territory the smallest possible part of the city, which will be to avoid the annoyances that the expropriation might cause, whether to prevent possible nuisances on the part of the inhabitants and the badly intentioned, who might be able to profit from that part of the city that is in contact with the rest of Rome to hold demonstrations, etc.’ I observed, in this regard, that concerning the territory, further negotiations could be brought to the table, and the point of departure could equally be either the Sant’Angelo Bridge or St Peter’s Square. It seemed to me, moreover, that the Borghi neighbourhood should make up part of the territory, because the river could thus be a border line. ‘For the rest’, I added, ‘territory that is more or less extensive is needed, in order to have not material security but a base on which sovereignty can rest, because this cannot be conferred without a territory’. ‘We agree’, Hon. Orlando replied. ‘This does not concern strategic borders, or a desire for conquest; and even if it is limited, it will still be a state, in the way that the bacterium and the elephant are both living beings’. This comparison caused both of us to give a great laugh. ‘In regard to the other questions’, Hon. Orlando began again, ‘which will arise from this new state of affairs, it will be necessary to solve them by mutual agreement and with the intention to eliminate troubles for both parties’. ‘There are difficult questions, but they can be overcome. Certainly, the pope cannot have an entire complete and complex organism for the administration of justice, a tribunal, a court of appeals, a supreme court, etc. There would be a need for a great number of employees, and it would be expensive, and there would perhaps be a murder every five years!!! Policing could perhaps also be carried out by the Italian government. The mail and the telegraph must be their own, but there should be the same tariffs, otherwise if they put the cost of stamps at ten cents, all the Romans would go to post their letters at the Vatican!!’ ‘The same, more or less, can be said for the customs fees’.

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‘Briefly, it is necessary for us to adopt uniform dispositions. On the other hand, for the greater part, we could adapt the legislation that Italy has with the Republic of San Marino. It seems to me’, he continued, ‘that it would be in the interests of the Holy See to exercise civil power as little as possible. Today the times have changed; democracies reign, and modern achievements cannot be introduced and applied to the pope’s civil government. Do you want, for example, the pope to have a parliament and also a municipal council?’. ‘His work as a civil head of state will be subject to discussion, and he will not be safe from criticism and attack. It will be said that there will be a minister who is responsible, but the high pontifical dignity will always be compromised. I say all this in the interests of the Holy See and to guarantee the prestige that it must enjoy. I repeat’, he concluded, ‘that the questions that emerge from the new state of things will present difficulties, but they seem to me to be surmountable’. ‘As far as the welcome that the country will give to the solution of the Roman Question’, I said, ‘I believe that, in general, it will be excellent. The right-minded, and they are by far in the majority, will rejoice. There will be Freemasons who will make some noise, but they will not be able to prevail. Moreover’, I continued, ‘in Italy as abroad, people expect something to be done at this Conference concerning a solution to the Question. Abroad, particularly in America, the press has already dealt with it. In France, too, as soon as the armistice was signed, some newspapers considered the Question. In Italy, then, the newspapers of every leaning, even Il Messaggero and Il Giornale d’Italia, have shown that they are favourable to discussing the Question. The article published in Il Messaggero, by Ciraolo, a Mason and a radical, cannot have escaped Your Excellency’s attention. Does Your Excellency know who induced Ciraolo to write that article?’. After a moment’s pause, Hon. Orlando, replied: ‘Nitti, he has revealed the same ideas on many occasions in recent times’. ‘See, Excellency’, I added, ‘public opinion in Italy is thus already, I would say, prepared, and this must be another reason to tackle the question with a resolute mind’. ‘On this point’, Hon. Orlando began, ‘I say openly what I hear. Above all, you have to know that some months ago — I do not remember the precise date but, if I think about it, I can probably establish the date — a person worthy of the highest esteem spoke to me about this question, and since then I have not rejected it entirely, while restricting myself to observing the grave difficulties that it presents. I have not followed up on that conversation’. ‘Now, as far as the impression that this will make in the country is concerned, it will depend on the psychological state in which the country finds itself. At present, the Italian people, like nearly all the people in the victorious nations, are possessed by a nationalistic spirit, which is perhaps an exaggeration. After five years of the highest tension, after many deep emotions, the public body is almost spent: only one force keeps it alive, nationalism, which, I repeat, is also excessive. Now, if nationalism fails to achieve fully its aspirations, one must fear that the people will not survive this blow, and there will thus be a debacle. Not that I

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already fear a revolution: even if it broke out through the work of the extremist parties, it would very quickly be dominated by the nationalists themselves. What Serrati said to Mussolini, he thus said well: If you want to start a revolution, after fifteen days, it will be we who are the revolutionaries. Having said this, if we add another important and transcendental fact, which is the solution to the Roman Question, we run perhaps the risk of acting too forcefully on a body that is so weakened; I would say that I fear that it is almost an oppression. You know well that even joy, for a weakened body, can be fatal. I do not say this to exclude the possibility of acting, but only to demonstrate that we need to proceed carefully and prepare the ground. Certainly, I see that the great majority of the country will welcome the news of a solution with joy, and abroad the impression will be enormous. All things considered, therefore, I do not have any difficulty in taking the initiative. However, first of all I have to consult the King. I am sure that he will be favourable: after all, you know that he is a truly constitutional sovereign. On his part, therefore, I do not see that we have any difficulty. Then I must submit the question to the Council of Ministers. I think that most of them will also be favourable’. ‘Hon. Sonnino, too?’, I interrupted. ‘Sonnino’, Hon. Orlando replied, ‘is very difficult. I do not know how he will take the matter. Probably, after having examined the question from every angle, he will not oppose it, either. However, he certainly has to be convinced. Another one who may be against it will be Hon. Berenini. If, however, it is a matter of winning or eliminating their opposition, I would not hesitate to get rid of them. The affair is too important. Paris is well worth a Mass?! Here, we have to say the opposite!’. ‘As far as the moment in which to act is concerned, it seems to me that there are strong reasons to do so at once, that is, before the signature of the peace treaty, and there are also good reasons to wait for the signature. If this news comes out while the Conference is still taking place, who knows how it will be understood by the delegates, and who knows what significance they will give to it. Further, I cannot leave Paris, and, from afar, one acts badly. It is necessary to undertake preparatory work to sound out the hearts of the principal political men a little and to prepare all the details, at least the most important ones. All things considered, therefore, it will perhaps be better to wait for the signing of the peace. In the meanwhile, however, I will begin to prepare the ground. In ten days or so I shall convene the Council on the border, or in Rome, and present the question. I shall also see the King, and if the Council is convened on the border, I shall find a way to inform the members about the issue’. ‘We must then’, I responded, ‘find a way to gain recognition of this fact and international guarantees. It is absolutely necessary for the papal territory to be guaranteed by the other nations, too. Otherwise we would be back where we started, and the Pope would remain at the mercy of the government’. ‘To obtain this, we now have a fairly simple and effective means, which is, to have the Pope join the League of Nations. It is to be noted that an article of the League of Nations mutually guarantees the territory of all of the nations that

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are part of the League. I believe, further, that I know that the President of Brazil, in the audience that he had with the Holy Father, of his own initiative, told him that he would work to manage to let the Holy See enter the League. We can be sure that Belgium, Spain and other powers would also support such a proposal’. ‘Certainly’, replied Hon. Orlando, ‘this would be an excellent means. Having solved the question, the Italian government would itself demand the Holy See’s entry into the League, and I am sure that its request would be accepted’. ‘However, there is a difficulty that does not concern us, but perhaps the Holy See, and it is this: the Holy See, becoming part of the League, would be considered like other small nations. Thus the Pope would not be a member of the Council of the League, which handles the most important affairs. Would his dignity then be preserved? Would he not lose a little of his prestige?’. ‘I don’t think so’, I replied, ‘because the Pope will thus be part of the League as the head of a state, and thus if the state is small, his dignity will not be compromised’. ‘Precisely’, Hon. Orlando resumed, ‘it is necessary for the Pope to participate in the League as a head of state, not as the head of a religion, otherwise the Caliph or the Head Rabbi, etc., will also ask to be part of the League, which is absurd. By taking part as the head of a state, in its being very limited, it also seems to me that the dignity of the pontiff will not be compromised’. The conversation continued for some time more, returning to the points on which it had already touched, confirming and extending them. More than once, we committed ourselves to maintaining absolute secrecy about the visit and what had been said there. ‘Be careful’, Hon. Orlando said at a certain point, ‘even the slightest indiscretion and I shall deny everything, and I shall firmly deny having met you’. ‘I will do the same’, I replied. Finally, I introduced the question of the German missions in Palestine and Hagia Sofia, which we discussed for some time. Hon. Orlando promised that he would support the standpoints of the Holy See, particularly as far as the missions were concerned. ‘As for Hagia Sofia’, he said, ‘that will be easy if Italy can have a common mandate on Constantinople with America. This would be an excellent solution, because Italy would add what America lacks, something that makes the exclusive mandate for America unpopular among the people, that is the men and workers. If Italy could have the mandate on Constantinople’, he added, ‘the situation would change in an instant. I would say to the Italian people: not Fiume, but Constantinople! This is, however, very difficult and, until now, nothing positive has occurred’. It was 11.15 when Hon. Orlando took his leave, visibly satisfied with the meeting. Saying goodbye to me, he added: ‘I have faith that this conversation of ours will reach the desired goal!’. 9 June. At 6:30 p.m. Mr Brambilla came to see me, to tell me that Hon. Orlando had discussed the solution to the Roman Question at some length with Hon. Colosimo, the Deputy Prime Minister, yesterday. After having relayed to him to the conversation that he had had with me on 1 June, he gave him the task of informing the

GASPARE COLOSIMO, THE KING AND THE REJECTION OF THE GASPARRI DRAFT

King about everything and, separately, all the Ministers. Hon. Colosimo revealed that he was favourable. Hon. Orlando said all this to Mr Brambilla in the presence of Aldrovandi, the Head of the Cabinet, and of Hon. Sonnino. This leads me to suppose that Hon. Sonnino has been kept up to date on the matter. Mr Brambilla assures me that both he and Marquis della Torretta are working to convince Hon. Orlando to move fast, also in view of the political situation in Italy. It seems, in fact, that the position of Hon. Orlando is very uncertain, and that the strikes and the economic crisis may cause a ministerial crisis. If Hon. Orlando is forced to leave at this moment, it will be a true disaster. 10 June. The newspapers announce that Hon. Colosimo has been received by the King. He must certainly already have informed the sovereign about the issue. 11 June. I receive a telegram from the Most Eminent Cardinal Secretary of State, in which he informs me that next Saturday, the fourteenth of the month, I shall receive the original of the report that was presented to Hon. Orlando and that, following a request from His Excellency, I had sent it last Friday in order for him to complete it. As soon as I have received it, I shall send it to Hon. Orlando. 17 June. Minister Orlando is stepping down!28

3. Conclusions Notwithstanding the in-depth archive research that was conducted on various specific collections present in the Vatican Secret Archives (in the first place, obviously, the private archive of Benedict XV and of the Secretary of State, but also of some nunciatures, cardinals’ records, etc.) and in the Archive of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, it has not been possible to add new documentation concerning what had already been discovered by authoritative historians who have occupied themselves with the period in question ( Jemolo, Salvatorelli, Scoppola, De Luca, Margiotta Broglio, Spadolini, Fogarty, Scottà, Pertici, etc.). There still remains one mystery: the disappearance of Gasparri’s draft, which was presented by Cerretti to Orlando, and which was cited by both of them. Neither a handwritten version nor the typed original that came into the hands of the Vatican negotiators have been found. Further, it is not possible to add anything concerning the position of the King of Italy. In this regard, all we have are the papers already identified by Margiotta Broglio. Whereas, as far as Colosimo is concerned, it does not seem that he played, or was in a position to play, an active role in the conciliation procedure. A close collaborator of Orlando, he seemed inclined towards a solution to the relationship between the state and the Church, but in this specific case, his task was restricted to informing the monarch of the negotiations that were taking place and to communicating to Orlando the negative response of Victor Emmanuel III. If the King of Italy made any use of advisors, they would have been found

28 For the original text see AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1350, fasc. 513, vol. III (1917–20), ff. 301r–310r, Cerretti to Gasparri, n.d.

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outside the members of the government and even parliament. Undoubtedly, the attitude of Victor Emmanuel III, who, in April 1919, explained to George V the desire to reach an ‘accommodation’ with the Vatican, and a few months later was, on the contrary, ready to take ‘to the streets with a gun’ in defence of the Guarantees, remains ambiguous.

Bibliography Aldrovandi Marescotti, Luigi, Guerra diplomatica: ricordi e frammenti di diario (1914–1919) (Milan: Mondadori, 1936) Canavero, Alfredo, I cattolici nella società italiana: dalla metà dell’800 al Concilio Vaticano II (Brescia: La Scuola, 1991) Cerretti, Elvira [Giuseppe De Luca], Il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti: memoria (Rome: Istituto grafico tiberino, 1939) Colosimo, Gaspare, Il diario di Gaspare Colosimo, ministro delle Colonie (1916–1919), ed. by Vanni Clodomiro (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 2012) De Rosa, Gabriele, ‘Benedetto XV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2000), III, pp. 608–17 Fogarty, Gerald P., ‘La Chiesa negli Stati Uniti nella Grande Guerra e a Versailles’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 211–28 Jemolo, Arturo Carlo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia negli ultimi cento anni (Turin: Einaudi, 1948) Margiotta Broglio, Francesco, Italia e Santa Sede: dalla grande guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966) Monticone, Alberto, Nitti e la grande guerra (1914–1918) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1961) Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, Miei rapporti di governo con la Santa Sede (Bologna: Forni, 1980) Perici, Roberto, Chiesa e Stato in Italia: dalla Grande Guerra al nuovo Concordato (1914– 1984) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009) Sale, Giovanni, Popolari e destra cattolica al tempo di Benedetto XV (Milan: Jaca Book, 2006) Salvatorelli, Luigi, Chiesa e Stato: dalla rivoluzione francese a oggi (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1955) Scoppola, Pietro, La Chiesa e il fascismo: documenti e interpretazioni (Bari: Laterza, 1971) Scoppola, Pietro, Chiesa e Stato nella storia d’Italia: storia documentaria dall’Unità alla Repubblica (Bari: Laterza, 1967) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Sonnino, Sidney, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), III Spadolini, Giovanni, La questione romana: dal cardinale Gasparri alla revisione del Concordato (Florence: Le Monnier, 1997)

Saretta Marotta

The Agony of the non expedit

1.

The World War: A Decisive Turning Point?

Historians have traditionally seen in the Great War — except for certain anticipations during the war in Libya1 — the rupture that put an end to the ‘case of the Italian conscience’, well before the Lateran Pacts were signed in 1929.2 This allowed Catholics to become full members of the nation, to shake off accusations of anti-Italianism, support for the Triple Alliance and disaffection with the country, which constituted the onerous legacy of the events of the Risorgimento. After this demonstration of loyalty on the part of the vast majority of Italian Catholics,3 with the small exception of the non-interventionist minority, it would in fact have been unthinkable to return to the pre-war situation, relegating them to the margins of political life and preventing them from participating in the national reconstruction, with the risk, among other things, that their dissatisfaction would be intercepted by the socialists. On the other hand, the neutralist attitude of the Holy See, together with the decision not to abandon Rome once the war had begun, constituted the most effective refutation of the anti-clerical accusations that had been levelled against the Pope for decades, namely, that he was waiting for the opportunity of a war in order to take sides against Italy. According to this historiographical interpretation, therefore, the war laid the foundations for the return of Catholics to Italian politics,



1 On the rise of Catholic nationalism at the time of the colonial enterprise, see Francesco Malgeri, La guerra libica (1911–1912) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970). For a more recent contribution concerning the position of the episcopate, see Giovanni Cavagnini, ‘Soffrire, ubbidire, combattere: prime note sull’episcopato italiano e la Guerra libica (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 27–44, and Giovanni Sale, Libia 1911: i cattolici, la Santa Sede e l’impresa coloniale italiana (Milan: Jaca Book, 2011). 2 Domenico Massè, Il caso di coscienza del Risorgimento italiano (Alba: Società Apostolato Stampa, 1946). 3 In this regard, see the contributions of Pietro Scoppola, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’, Alfonso Prandi, ‘La guerra e le sue conseguenze nel mondo cattolico italiano’ and Carlo Bellò, ‘Miglioli e il movimento contadino “bianco” nel periodo bellico’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 95–151, pp. 153–206 and pp. 429–44.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 983–1001 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118815

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the constitution of their own political party and thus the definitive abolition of the non expedit, which, after all had already been greatly moderated by the efforts of the Unione elettorale cattolica (Catholic Electoral Union) presided by Vincenzo Ottorino Gentiloni to forge alliances with the liberals against socialist candidates, efforts which were tolerated by the pontificate of Pius X.4 In reality, Benedict XV had placed the abolition of the non expedit on the agenda of topics for the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs already at the beginning of his pontificate. From the first consultation of the Congregation on this subject (March–July 1915), there emerged a Holy See now oriented toward the clear condemnation of the so-called Gentiloni Pact and of clerical moderatism and determined to promote an autonomous, organized presence of Catholics in parliament, planning the creation of a party. It was the contemporary entry of Italy into the war that caused the project to be postponed until after peace had been achieved.5 The withdrawal of the non expedit, therefore, rather than being ascribable to the dramatic consequences of the world war, was rather the result of a long agony, inscribed into the very history of the prohibition from its origins, in that it was inherent in the temporary nature of a strategy that the Holy See was never able to choose definitively. The same hypothesis of the constitution of an autonomous party of Catholics had been introduced several times in previous pontificates, even advocated by Leo XIII, while the risk of clerical moderatism, later effected by Pius X, had long been considered the main reason for maintaining the ban. The present contribution proposes, therefore, to retrace briefly the history of this debate that took place entirely within the Apostolic See in order to contextualize the final outcome better: the choice of Benedict XV to consent to the birth of the party. However, in the context of a topic widely investigated by historians,6 it will





4 This is the interpretation of Arturo Carlo Jemolo in Chiesa e Stato in Italia negli ultimi cento anni, 3rd edn (Turin: Einaudi, 1963), pp. 413–16, adopted until John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), p. 163. The participation of the Catholic Filippo Meda, who was Minister of Finance in the government led by Paolo Boselli constituted on 18 June 1916, should also be recalled. 5 See the careful reconstruction of the minutes of the Congregation provided by Alberto Monticone, ‘Benedetto XV e il non expedit’, in Democrazia e coscienza religiosa nella storia del Novecento, ed. by Augusto D’Angelo, Paolo Trionfini and Roberto Pasquale Violi (Rome: AVE, 2010), pp. 13–38. 6 Cesare Marongiu Buonaiuti, Non expedit: storia di una politica (1866–1919) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1971); Gabriele De Rosa, ‘Il non expedit e La Civiltà Cattolica’, in Gabriele De Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico in Italia, 2 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1966), I: Dalla Restaurazione all’età giolittiana, pp. 95–120; Giacomo Martina, ‘Il non expedit’, in Il pontificato di Pio IX, ed. by Roger Aubert, 2 vols, 2nd edn (Turin: SAIE, 1970), II, pp. 849–54; Maria Franca Mellano, Cattolici e voto politico in Italia (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1982); Filippo Tamburini, ‘Il non expedit negli atti della Penitenzieria apostolica (1861–1889)’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 41, 1 (1987), pp. 128–51; Stefano Gizzi, ‘Le osservazioni del cardinale Antonio Maria Cagiano de Azevedo sulla liceità di far parte del parlamento italiano’, Pio IX: studi e ricerche sulla vita della Chiesa dal Settecento ad oggi, 21, 1 (1998), pp. 50–60; Andrea Ciampani, ‘Orientamenti della Curia romana e dell’episcopato italiano sul voto politico dei cattolici (1881–1882)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 34 (1996), pp. 269–324. For a long time, the scarce public knowledge of the position taken by the Holy See, combined with the inaccessibility of the archive of the Apostolic Penitentiary (opened for consultation only in 2011), made it almost

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be privileged a perspective that is as unprecedented as possible, shedding light on the debate within the Holy See by means of the papers of three crucial dicasteries of the Roman government: the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Holy Office and the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.7 For reasons of space, therefore, the contemporary evolution of the so-called Catholic movement,8 along with the parallel strategies of the internationalization of the Roman Question pursued by papal diplomacy, are presupposed.9

2. From Its Origins to Leo XIII: The History of a Provisional Strategy The origins of Italian Catholic abstentionism cannot be attributed to directives of the Holy See or pronouncements of the pontiff but to an article by a famous Catholic publicist. As is well known, it was in fact the priest Giacomo Margotti who, in January 1861, launched from the columns of the Turin newspaper L’Armonia the famous slogan ‘neither elected nor electors’, destined to become the banner of intransigent Catholicism.10 Margotti promoted the abstention campaign because he was convinced of the impossibility of using the electoral process to influence the process of Italian unification. This conviction was confirmed by the experience



7



8



9

10

impossible to reconstruct the chronology of the Vatican pronouncements with any precision. This explains the wide divergence of dates and documents in the various historical reconstructions, which for a long time could almost exclusively make use of articles in the press. The reason for the difficulty encountered by historians resides in the very secrecy allocated to the debate within the Holy See and, in the decision, maintained during the pontificate of Pius IX and Leo XIII, at least until 1886, not to publicize the resolutions made by the various dicasteries charged with tackling the issue. They preferred to circulate general private responses given individually to the bishops, who submitted an official question in this regard to the tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary. For a more detailed and better developed reconstruction, see Saretta Marotta, ‘L’evoluzione del dibattito sul non expedit all’interno della curia romana tra il 1860 e il 1889’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 68, 1 (2014), pp. 95–164. On this, some of the most famous titles in that season of research, both Catholic and secular, that began after World War II and which concerned the social and religious history of Italian Catholicism after the confirmation of Christian Democrats as leaders of the country, overcoming the previous historical paradigm of the confrontation between Church and state, are: Giorgio Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico in Italia (Rome: Edizioni Rinascita, 1953); Fausto Fonzi, I cattolici e la società italiana dopo l’Unità (Rome: Studium, 1953); Angelo Gambasin, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958); De Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico; including the well-known work Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84). See Jean-Marc Ticchi, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1878– 1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002); Laurent Kölliker, La stratégie d’internationalisation de l’audience politique du Saint-Siège entre 1870 et 1921: vers un règlement de la Question romaine (Geneva: Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales, 2002); The Papacy and the New World Order: Vatican Diplomacy, Catholic Opinion and International Politics at the Time of Leo XIII (1878–1903), ed. by Vincent Viaene (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005). Giacomo Margotti, ‘Né eletti né elettori’, L’Armonia, 8 gennaio 1861.

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of the elections of 1857 and 1860, with Catholics unable, in the ballot system of the time, to attract enough votes. The elections of 1857, then, which had seen their own discreet success (and the victorious candidacy of Margotti), had been annulled by Cavour under the pretext of ‘abuse of spiritual weapons’, accusing the clergy of having exercised moral coercion over the electorate.11 Italian intransigents were, therefore, convinced that the boycotting of elections was the only viable means of stopping the process of national unification, or at least of inducing it to hold the pontiff ’s cause in greater consideration through a moral blackmail (or, rather, the concrete protest in particular at the intention to annex Rome), which was also a practical blackmail since the lack of the support of Catholic voters to the government alliance would have left the government more fragile in the face of the opposition of the republican and radical left. While this objective is the complete opposite of what would later persuade Pius X to loosen the ties of the non expedit, agreeing to an alliance with the moderates,12 it clearly emerges that the abstention was considered a temporary measure, awaiting possible international solutions to the Roman Question and in the hope that in the meantime the fragility of the new Italian State would lead to its implosion under the weight of its own contradictions and the opposition from the left. When, in the aftermath of the plebiscites, the bishops began to ask the Apostolic Penitentiary how to handle the absolution in the confessional of electors and elected representatives correctly, the Holy See, which had not yet provided directives, given that the abstention was the result of a spontaneous practice of the faithful, opted at first for an attitude of prudence, preferring neither to take a position nor to respond, particularly in regard to questions that came from territories already belonging by law to the Kingdom of Sardinia.13 The reasons that advised against opposing the abstentionist practice for the time being were principally: (1) the need to remain in a state of protest against the usurpation of the temporal domains of the pontiff, awaiting a rapid restoration of the status quo; (2) the impossibility of recognizing the right of representation in a territory, the former Papal States, that until then had held that the legislative power was reserved to the pontiff alone; (3) the capital problem14 of the oath of loyalty to the sovereign of Italy and to the laws of the state that the newly elected would have to swear in parliament, an oath that, in addition

11 Carlo Pischedda, ‘Una battaglia liberale: Cavour e le elezioni del 1857’, in L’Italia nel secolo XIX: aspetti e problemi di una tradizione contesa: atti del Convegno in onore di Giuseppe Talamo (Roma, 18–20 ottobre 1995), ed. by Sergio La Salvia (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 2002), pp. 51–78. 12 However, it remains to be seen whether this opinion had a real impact on electoral behaviour. Statistical analysis seems to indicate that, until at least the conquest of Rome, the majority of Catholics continued to have access to the ballot boxes en masse (if one can speak of mass voting in liberal Italy under conditional suffrage), satisfying their national patriotic sentiment. See Compendio delle statistiche elettorali italiane dal 1848 al 1934, ed. by Istituto centrale di statistica and Ministero per la Costituente, 2 vols (Rome: Failli, 1946–47). 13 This is the practice described by the Grand Penitentiary, Antonio Maria Cagiano de Azevedo, in a report presented in March 1965 to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (ASV, Archivio Particolare di Pio IX, Oggetti Vari, n. 1945). 14 Paolo Prodi, Il sacramento del potere: il giuramento politico nella storia costituzionale dell’Occidente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992).

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to implying recognition of the fait accompli and of the constituted power, would also have entailed a legitimation of those ecclesiastic laws, for example the Siccardi Laws, which had been approved by the parliament in Turin in the 1850s; (4) finally, the concern for the reaction of Catholic public opinion abroad, which might have provoked schisms against a Pope perceived as a ‘chaplain of the King of Italy’, or more simply a decrease in the contributions to Peter’s Pence, the main source of Vatican income after the collapse of the Papal States.15 In 1866, however, some years after the Unification and in the embarrassment of not yet having given the ordinaries any clear decision on the matter (and probably also in the knowledge that the hopes of a restoration were progressively fading), the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs indicated as a norm to the bishops the maximum ad impendenda mala et ad promovenda bona (i.e. that at all costs the bad should be impeded and the good promoted), leaving them to evaluate independently on a case-by-case basis how to regulate themselves.16 However, this instruction, which advised the ordinaries to be prudent, provoked very diverse forms of behaviour: the bishops in the ecclesiastical region of Piedmont, for example, went so far as to impose on the faithful the obligation to participate in all elections, both local and political,17 triggering a violent opposition in the press, which was forceful enough to make it necessary for the Holy See to issue a clarification.18 This came in

15 After Pius IX’s exile in Gaeta, the collection of Peter’s Pence had already assumed an innovative character, not only thanks to the markedly enlarged proportions, given the striking impact on the public of the image of the persecuted Pope, but also thanks to the tendency to create formal organizations expressly dedicated to it. Between 1860 and 1870, the annual contributions increased to the point of making up almost a third of all the revenue of the papal budget. During the pontificate of Leo XIII, the awareness of the economic importance of the offerings moved the Vatican authorities to set up commissions and regulatory mechanisms to administer the donations. See Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘La devozione al Papa’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), II, pp. 63–76; Silvio Tramontin, ‘La raccolta dell’Obolo di san Pietro a Venezia durante il pontificato di Pio IX (1846–1878)’, Pio IX: studi e ricerche sulla vita della Chiesa dal Settecento ad oggi, 1 (1972), pp. 295–309. 16 ‘It is agreed that, when requested, the bishops, on the occasion of their elections, should recall the duty that awaits the faithful to do everything possible to impede the greatest evil and promote the good’ (‘Si conviene che, a richiesta, i vescovi, in occasione delle elezioni, ricordino il dovere che corre ai fedeli di fare tutto il possibile per impedire il maggior male e promuovere il bene’); AES, Rapporti dalle Sessioni, 1866–67, vol. 23, fasc. 6, sessione 386, f. 364, final resolution of the Congregation on 27 November 1866. 17 In November 1867, the Piedmont bishops ‘were unanimous in declaring that it would be very useful to take part in all elections, whether municipal, provincial or political, to encourage good people to make use of their electoral right and to do everything possible so that they could elect people worthy of the mandate entrusted to them’ (‘furono unanimi nel decidere che sia cosa convenientissima di prender parte a tutte le elezioni sia comunali, sia provinciali, sia politiche, di eccitare i buoni a far uso del diritto elettorale e di fare quanto si può perché riescano elette persone degne del mandato che loro si affida’); see the minutes of the plenary assembly reported in Mellano, Cattolici e voto politico, p. 21. 18 At the centre of the controversy was L’Unità Cattolica, the newspaper founded by Margotti after he was removed from L’Armonia precisely because of his abstentionist positions. On this, see Maurizio Tagliaferri, L’Unità Cattolica: studio di una mentalità (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993). The debate led the Pope to discover and publicly declare, in the pages of the Giornale di Roma on 21 January 1868, that ‘nothing had changed, that the Holy See still stood firm in the principles already

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the form of the first papal non expedit, which bore the date of 1868, seven years after the proclamation of the Unification of Italy. This pronouncement, provoked by the controversy in the press and the fear of a split in the Catholic camp (fears that would arise again several times during the following years, influencing the decisions of the Roman curia), was however equivalent to a consideration of appropriateness limited to the ‘present circumstances’, maintaining the need to remain in a state of protest against the loss of temporal power.19 The annexation of the papal city and the transfer of the capital from Florence to Rome did not substantially change the Holy See’s attitude towards the non expedit (apart from causing the resignation of Vito D’Ondes Reggio and Cesare Cantù, who until then had defended the Catholic cause from their parliamentary seats with the personal, secret approval of Pius IX),20 while it reinforced the abstentionist propaganda that succeeded in making the boycott of the elections the banner that distinguished militant, intransigent Catholicism.21 Indeed, after Rome was taken, many Catholics extended the application of non expedire to local elections. This interpretation was never encouraged by the Pope, who in 1872 firmly reiterated the difference that permitted, indeed impelled, Catholics to take part in local administrations, precisely because the municipal and provincial councillors were not required to swear the oath of loyalty that would entail recognition of the sovereignty of the King of Italy and the laws of the Kingdom.22

19

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22

manifested and that anyone who thought and wrote differently was deceiving himself ’ (‘nulla erasi cambiato, che la S. Sede stava sempre ferma nei principii già manifestati e che s’ingannava chiunque pensasse e scrivesse diversamente’); see the reconstruction of the journalistic debate provided by ‘Cronaca contemporanea’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 19, 3 (1868), pp. 361–62. ‘Wanting then to apply the general principle to the particular case, and considering everything that is currently being sanctioned in Italy to the detriment of the Church, which would be morally impossible with the participation in the elections to procure a remedy and remove the serious evils that afflict society and the Church, having finally taken into account the complexity of the present circumstances, they agreed that they had to respond non expedire’ (‘Volendo poi applicare il principio generale al caso particolare, e considerando tutto ciò che presentemente si sta consumando in Italia a danno della Chiesa, che sarebbe moralmente impossibile col concorso alle elezioni procurare un rimedio e rimuovere i gravissimi mali ond’è afflitta la società e la Chiesa, avuto in fine riguardo al complesso delle presenti circostanze, giudicarono concordemente doversi rispondere non expedire’); AES, Rapporti dalle Sessioni, 1868, vol. 27, fasc. 8, sessione 388, f. 502, final resolution of the Congregation on 30 January 1868. Marongiu Buonaiuti, Non expedit, p. 24. On the assent of Pius IX to the presence of Cantù and D’Ondes Reggio in parliament, see Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, pp. 112–13. After the seizure of Rome, La Civiltà Cattolica thus declared: ‘We attributed this increase in abstentions to an increase in faith […]. We know that there are Catholics who deplore this action of the mass of their brethren. But we also know that the sovereign pontiff never deplored it’ (‘noi ascriviamo quest’aumento nelle astensioni ad un aumento nella fede […]. Sappiamo che v’ha cattolici, i quali deplorano questo procedimento della massa dei loro confratelli. Ma sappiamo altresì che il sovrano pontefice non lo ha mai deplorato’); De Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico, I, pp. 98 ff. Pius IX declared to the Roman parish priests on 2 July 1872: ‘One of the means to prevent the progress of impiety and the perversion of youth could also be to compete in local and municipal elections, which do not entail any real obligation to take the oaths prohibited by the conscience of Catholics’ (‘uno dei mezzi onde impedire i progressi dell’empietà ed il pervertimento della gioventù, potrebbe anche essere il

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If in 1868 the non expedit had been established as a temporary measure in anticipation of eventual developments and solutions to the Roman Question, in 1876, fifteen years after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, the Holy See found itself noting the need for a change in strategy. The fall of the Historical Right did not bring about, in reality, that civil revolution or the subversion of the monarchic system, which had always been associated with a possible seizure of power by the left. If Catholics had abstained from the polls mainly to accelerate the alleged disintegrative process of the state in the hope that the rise to power of the left would lead to a republican revolution, and hence to an international war of restoration, the peaceful establishment of the Depretis government matured in the pontiff and the cardinals a more certain awareness of the irreversibility of the loss of temporal power and the ineffectiveness of the Catholic boycott, which in the long run was proving counterproductive. It was for this reason that a decisive turning point was reached on the issue of the non expedit, which this time was handed over to the Holy Office and no longer to Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. At the end of November 1876, just a few days after the death of Secretary of State, Giacomo Antonelli: All the Eminences have generally agreed to the licere, and that, considering the condition to which the public situation has been reduced, particularly for everything that concerns religion and the rights of the Church, it is not only a right but the religious duty of Catholics to take part in political elections.23 It is interesting to emphasize, precisely in relation to the developments that would later take place in 1919, that at that time the cardinals of the Holy Office did not foresee the formation of a party, being perfectly aware of the impossibility of such a project given the great divergence of political opinions within the Catholic ranks. They imagined, therefore, that Catholic representatives ‘will be neither right nor left, but free in questionable matters of political interest; they will always be united in one body when it is a matter of the defence of the sacred principles of religion and justice’,24 that is to say, only on the occasion of a vote on ecclesiastic laws or

concorrere alle elezioni amministrative e municipali, che non traggono seco verun obbligo di giuramenti vietati alla coscienza dei cattolici’); ‘Cronaca contemporanea’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 23, 4 (1872), p. 233. Moreover, in 1871, in the very city of the Pope, the birth of the Unione romana per le elezioni amministrative (Roman Union for Local Elections) was possible, aimed at bringing Catholic votes to bear on the Campidoglio. On the Unione romana, see Andrea Ciampani, Cattolici e liberali durante la trasformazione dei partiti: la ‘questione di Roma’ tra politica nazionale e progetti vaticani (1876–1883) (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 2000), pp. 111 ff. and Filippo Mazzonis, ‘L’Unione romana e la partecipazione dei cattolici alle elezioni amministrative in Roma (1870–1881)’, Storia e politica, 9 (1970), pp. 216–58. 23 ‘Tutti gli Em.mi sono convenuti in massima del licere; e che alla condizione a cui è ridotta la cosa pubblica segnatamente per tutto quello che si riferisca alla religione ed ai diritti della chiesa, non solo è un diritto ma è un dovere rigoroso dei cattolici di prender parte alle elezioni politiche’; AES, I periodo, Italia, pos. 227, fasc 48, ff. 22–23, minutes of 30 November 1876. 24 ‘Non saranno né destri né sinistri, ma liberi nelle questioni opinabili di particolari interessi, saranno sempre uniti in uno sol corpo, dove si tratta della difesa dei sacri principii della religione e della giustizia’; AES, I periodo, Italia, pos. 227, fasc 48, f. 21, ‘Manifesto pel giuramento dei deputati cattolici’ (draft attached to the ponenza of the Holy Office of November 1876).

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on the Roman Question, while for the rest they could freely align themselves with the different ranks. However, this turning point in favour of electoral participation, which in the early stages was prepared by asking journalists ‘not to deal further with the principle upheld until now of neither elected nor electors and let it slowly fall by the wayside’,25 was blocked by Pius IX who, evidently of the opposite opinion, after having apparently approved this resolution, a few months later, in January 1877, signed the famous brief to Count Giovanni Acquaderni that historians have recorded as an end to the subject that had never been so clear before then.26 This was the situation that Leo XIII found himself having to contradict as soon as he became pope. In 1879, in the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, the examination of the lawfulness of a possible participation of Italian Catholics in political elections began.27 The debate ended only three years later, in 1882, due to the contemporary plans of the government for the extension of electoral suffrage which, extended to the male population with a minimum degree of literacy, would triple the number of those eligible to vote and would give access to the polls to social classes more directly subject to the influence of the socialist movement. The cardinals preferred, therefore, to wait for the definitive developments of the reform before assuming a standpoint.28 In the meantime, twenty-two bishops in the peninsula were consulted, and they were all favourable to permitting Catholics to vote. In particular, the Patriarch of Venice, Domenico Agostini, emphasized that, with the new suffrage, ‘the Church has not changed, social conditions and circumstances have changed,

25 ‘Non si occupassero con calore ulteriormente del principio fin qui sostenuto né eletti né elettori e lo lasciassero cadere appoco appoco’; AES, I periodo, Italia, pos. 227, fasc 48, f. 23, minutes of 30 November 1876. 26 The text of the message was published in Acta Sanctae Sedis, 9 (1876), pp. 581–83. The Pope blamed this reversal on his own Secretary of Briefs who had composed the text, which he signed without reading it. However, Pius IX’s wish, by now at the end of his pontificate, to change nothing in order to leave the matter to his successor, is evident. The background to this story was recounted by Lorenzo Nina at the meeting of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs on 21 February 1881; AES, II periodo, Stati ecclesiastici, pos. 1030, fasc. 329, f. 20. 27 The letter of the Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Włodzimierz Czacki, to the consultors Camillo Guardi and Placido Schiaffino is dated 17 January 1879. By order of the Pope, he instructed them to prepare positions on the question of political elections that would be submitted in the following months to the examination of the cardinal members of the dicastery; AES, II periodo, Italia, pos. 335, fasc. 102, ff. 111–12. 28 For some time, Depretis had promised a revision of the electoral law, which was then implemented with the 1882 reform. It was based more on the level of literacy than on the census and extended the vote to 7 per cent of the population. This threshold was still far from the universal male suffrage implemented in France as early as 1848, but it almost tripled the active electorate foreseen by the previous system, which was the one used in the Kingdom of Sardinia. While waiting for the electoral reform, the plans to abandon specific criteria based on the census or on categories made it easy to predict that this would certainly have entailed access to the vote even for sections of the population previously excluded because they were less well-off. These were especially workers, sympathetic to the demands of the socialist movement that in those years was being organized in increasingly structured forms. See Giovanni Sabbatucci, Le riforme elettorali in Italia (1848–1994) (Milan: Unicopli, 1995); Maria Serena Piretti, Le elezioni politiche in Italia dal 1848 ad oggi (Rome: Laterza, 1995).

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and the Holy Church finds appropriate today what it did not consider appropriate yesterday’.29 These were the premises for the change in course and the beginning of the strategy that historians have called ‘preparation in abstention’.30 While, on the one hand, Catholic journalists were invited, as they already had been in 1876, to present access to the polls as lawful in the near future, on the other hand, the faithful were encouraged to register to vote in order to be readier for an immediate withdrawal of the non expedit, with a manoeuvre that remained easily justifiable even with the need to allow the burden of Catholic abstentionism to emerge quantitatively. For its part, the Penitentiary, as in 1866, began to respond in writing to bishops pro nunc non expedire, while orally inviting them to handle the requests on a case-by-case basis, especially where there was a need to oppose a particularly disliked or totally anti-clerical candidate.31 Leo XIII’s intention was that the non expedit should be abolished in order to permit the birth of a large Catholic political party, along the lines of the German Zentrum, which in his opinion would truly be ‘the only means that Providence has left to the Holy See at this point in time for a civil life to be restored to the Church, for social respect, not the illusory protection of the laws of the country, to be restored, in the midst of the nation such as it is’.32 This would be a party that would make not only a temporary alliance but its own neutrality pay dearly, every single time; it would, therefore, serve to prevent Catholics who were elected from being individually incorporated into the liberal ranks.33 If, in the end, these plans did not come to fruition, it was due to the abrupt, intransigent change in Leo XIII’s policy over the two-year period 1887–88, which continued until the end of his pontificate. The rise of Mariano Rampolla to Secretary of State,34 the exacerbation of Francesco

29 ‘Non muta la Chiesa, mutano le condizioni sociali e le circostanze, e la S. Chiesa trova opportuno oggi quello che ieri non giudicava tale’; AES, Rapporti dalle Sessioni, 1882, vol. 15, fasc. 6, sessione 556, D. Agostini to Leo XIII, 8 April 1882 (attached as summary 3/A to the ponenza of 1882). The originals of the letters of bishops to the Pope sent on the occasion of this consultation can be found in AES, II periodo, Italia, pos. 335, fasc. 110–11. 30 Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, p. 183. The formula was also used, and thus ratified, many times by L’Osservatore Romano (26 May, 2 and 11 June 1880). 31 This is the reconstruction furnished by the Apostolic Penitentiary in a document dated 27 February 1889, published in Tamburini, ‘Il non expedit’, p. 140. See also the testimony of bishops Giovanni Battista Scalabrini and Geremia Bonomelli in Carteggio Scalabrini Bonomelli (1868–1905), ed. by Carlo Marcora (Rome: Studium, 1983), pp. 70–75. 32 ‘Il mezzo unico lasciato dalla Provvidenza in questo periodo di tempo alla S. Sede perché fosse ridonata alla Chiesa la vita civile in mezzo alla nazione come tale, le fosse restituito il rispetto sociale e la protezione non illusoria delle leggi del paese’; ponenza of 1879 in AES, II periodo, Italia, pos. 335, fasc. 103. 33 Eduardo Soderini, Il pontificato di Leone XIII, 3 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1932–33), II (1932), p. 20. 34 Guido Aureli and Crispolto Crispolti, La politica di Leone XIII da Luigi Galimberti a Mariano Rampolla, su documenti inediti (Rome: Bontempelli e Invernizzi, 1912); Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘“Avec lui il n’y en a que pour la France!”: remarques sur la contribution du cardinal Rampolla à la politique de Leon XIII’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 199–241.

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Crispi’s anti-clericalism, the disappointing conciliation attempt of 188735 and finally the new international equilibrium manifested in the renewal of the Triple Alliance (also signed by the highly Catholic Austria and understood as a defensive pact that simultaneously recognized the territorial integrity of Italy)36 all occasioned a profound change in the elderly Pope, similar to that produced in Pius IX after his exile in Gaeta.37 In the meantime, the systematic dispensations granted orally by the Penitentiary did not remain secret for long and, as in 1868, were immediately opposed by the intransigent press, requiring a new explicit clarification from the Holy See, which took the form of the famous note of the Holy Office of 1886, reaffirming the presence of a prohibition in the non expedit formula.38 This official step backwards, which was to relieve the Holy See of the embarrassment of having in fact renounced the non expedit, did not in any case indicate a definitive closure and was limited to a declaration of principle, which did not sanction a problem of illegality but only of opportunity.39 As before, the Penitentiary continued to respond to the bishops, tolerari posse.40

35 Virgilio Procacci, La questione romana: le vicende del tentativo di conciliazione del 1887 (Florence: Vallecchi, 1929); Antonio Quacquarelli, Il padre Tosti nella politica del Risorgimento (Genoa: Società editrice Dante Alighieri, 1945); Fausto Fonzi, ‘Documenti sul conciliatorismo e sulle trattative segrete fra governi italiani e S. Sede dal 1886 al 1897’, in Chiesa e Stato nell’Ottocento: miscellanea in onore di Pietro Pirri, ed. by Roger Aubert, Alberto Maria Ghisalberti and Ettore Passerin d’Entrèves, 2 vols (Padua: Antenore, 1962), I, pp. 167–242. 36 Luciano Trincia, Il nucleo tedesco: Vaticano e Triplice Alleanza nei dispacci del nunzio a Vienna Luigi Galimberti (1887–1892) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2001). 37 Soderini, Il pontificato, II, pp. 398–402; David I. Kertzer, Prisoner of the Vatican: The Pope’s Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004). 38 ‘In order to remove any doubt, the Holy Father, having heard the opinion of my colleagues, their Eminences the general cardinal inquisitors, has ordered that it be declared that the non expedire contains a prohibition’ (‘A togliere ogni equivoco il S. Padre, udito il parere di questi Em.mi signori Cardinali inquisitori generali miei colleghi, ha ordinato che si dichiari il non expedire contenere un divieto’); circular of the Holy Office to the Bishops of Italy, 30 July 1886, in Acta Sanctae Sedis, 19 (1886), pp. 94–95, draft and Italian translation in AES, II periodo, Italia pos. 384, fasc. 126, f. 23. 39 Later, La Civiltà Cattolica would clarify that ‘the Pope did not intend and could not affirm about this [political] participation nothing but the illegality that is proper to things prohibited only because, in certain circumstances, the Pope believes them to be […] not expedient to the good of the Church’ (‘non intese e non poté affermare di tale concorso se non quella illiceità che è propria delle cose proibite soltanto perché, in determinate circostanze, il Papa le crede […] non espedienti al bene della Chiesa’); see [Salvatore Brandi and Angelo De Santi,] ‘I cattolici italiani e le elezioni politiche’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 55, 4 (1904), pp. 549–50. 40 If the elections of 1880 had already seen a considerable participation of Catholics as electors and as those elected, in 1900 the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs noted impotently how in the elections of that year even priests had gone to the polls and how a parish priest was even seen to take up the post of chair of the polling station; AES, Rapporti dalle Sessioni, anno 1900, sessione 886. The political climate had also changed, with Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti dampening the tone of anti-clericalism, initiating the attitude that Jemolo called ‘conciliation in indifference’ (‘conciliazione nell’indifferenza’) and aiming to involve Catholics progressively in the fight against the socialist threat; Jemolo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia, pp. 366 ff.

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3. From Relaxation to Oblivion: The Pontificates of Pius X and Benedict XV The pontificate of Pius X had been underway for a year when the first general strike in Italy, proclaimed in September 1904, profoundly shook public opinion. In the hope that Catholics would not remain indifferent to the danger of a revolution, Giolitti dissolved the parliament and called for new elections, counting on forming a ‘party of order’ (‘partito dell’ordine’) to weaken socialist opposition.41 At the insistence of the Catholics from Bergamo and the Bishop of Cremona, Geremia Bonomelli, Pius X gave private permission to go to the polls: ‘Do as your conscience tells you’, he had been forced to say in an audience.42 Three ‘representatives who were Catholic’, not ‘Catholic representatives’, were elected, mainly from the Bergamo area, but from this moment on a new period began, which saw Catholics and governments side by side in the struggle to maintain public order.43 The elections of 1904 and 1909,44 therefore, constituted the general test of the politics of clerical moderatism, publicly sanctioned the following year by Il fermo proposito (‘society […] must be preserved at all costs’, was the explanation adopted by the encyclical to justify the weakening of the non expedit)45 and by the birth of the Electoral Union, which arose from the dissolution of the Opera dei congressi.46 However, Pius X, while permitting a substantial, public omission of the non expedit, avoided an official abolition of the ban throughout his pontificate, which inevitably would open the way to the formation of an autonomous party of Catholics, as he was convinced, contrary to the position of Leo XIII, that this would ultimately bring the Roman Question to a standstill. It was preferable, on the contrary, while

41 Giuliano Procacci, La lotta di classe in Italia agli inizi del secolo XX (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992). 42 ‘The Pope, who had followed the speech with his elbow on the table and his head resting on the palm of his hand, remained a few moments in silence and then, raising his eyes to heaven, in a slow, serious tone, exclaimed: “Do as your conscience tells you”. “Have we understood well, Holiness? We can interpret that as a yes?”. “Do as your conscience tells you. I repeat”. “Thank you, thank you, Your Holiness”’ (‘Il papa, che aveva seguito il discorso, col gomito sul tavolo e la testa appoggiata al palmo della mano, rimase alcun poco in raccolto silenzio e poi — alzando gli occhi al cielo — con lenta e grave parola esclamò: “Fate quello che vi detta la vostra coscienza”. “Abbiamo ben compreso, Santità? Possiamo interpretare che è un sì?”. “Fate quello che vi detta la vostra coscienza. Ripeto”. “Grazie, grazie Santità”’); audience of Pius X with Paolo Bonomi and Pietro Cavalli, reported in Gianforte Suardi, ‘Quando e come i cattolici poterono partecipare alle elezioni politiche’, Nuova Antologia, 1 November 1927, pp. 118–23 (p. 118). See also Gabriele De Rosa, Storia politica dell’Azione cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1953–54), I (1953), pp. 295–96. 43 Alberto Agazzi, ‘I cattolici bergamaschi e l’attenuazione del non expedit: contributo alla storia del decennio 1904–1913’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 58 (1971), pp. 53–77. 44 In the elections of 1904, Catholics had 8000 votes, i.e., 0.5 per cent of the 1,593,886 votes, passing in 1909 to 4 per cent of the votes (73,000) and from three to sixteen representatives. See Giovanni Schepis, Le consultazioni popolari in Italia dal 1848 al 1957 (Empoli: Caparrini, 1958). 45 Pius X, Il fermo proposito, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 37 (1904–05), pp. 741–67 (§ 18) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 46 Gambasin, Il movimento, pp. 544 ff.

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maintaining a formal opposition to the state of affairs, to negotiate the Catholic vote with the promise of supporting some programmatic points that were dear to the Holy See.47 These were the foundations of the Gentiloni Pact of 1913, an experience that was later condemned by Sturzo’s Italian People’s Party. It was motivated by the concrete fear of a victory of the socialists following the entry into force, in June 1912, of the new electoral law that sanctioned universal male suffrage for citizens over thirty years of age, tripling the number of those able to vote, bringing it to 24 per cent of the population.48 The pact was conceived in secret, but, in an interview released after the elections, the president of the Electoral Union, Vincenzo Ottorino Gentiloni, revealed how a full 228 representatives had entered parliament, agreeing to the pact on seven points that guaranteed the support of the Catholic electorate.49 The revelation sparked controversy and recriminations from the different sides but also the rebellion of many Catholics, given that only 29 of those elected were declaredly of the Catholic faith.50 The pact was the pinnacle but also the demonstration of the inadequacy of the politics of clerical moderatism experienced during the pontificate of Pius X. With only a partial removal of the non expedit, what Leo XIII had strenuously opposed indeed came to pass, that is, an accommodation of Catholics ‘on the right’ of the political spectrum in support of the governing powers. The youth of Romolo Murri’s Christian democrats also had attributed the non expedit with the merit of having protected Italian Catholics from being contaminated by the conservative cause.51 Once elected to the papacy with the name of Benedict XV, Giacomo Della Chiesa, who, among other things, in 1887, as collaborator of Rampolla in the Congregation

47 The attitude of Catholics during the local elections was exemplary in this regard, with the withdrawal of their candidate when opposition to a socialist was not indispensable, for example, in the case of a ballot that had seen the prevalence of liberals and Catholics with the defeat of the left-wing candidate; Agazzi, ‘I cattolici bergamaschi’, pp. 62 ff. 48 Those able to vote were thus 8.6 million. After the end of the Libyan campaign, Giolitti in fact declared: ‘We cannot send people to get themselves killed and then deny them the vote, saying that they are not worthy’ (‘non si può mandare la gente a farsi ammazzare e poi negarle il voto dicendo che non è all’altezza’); Agazzi, ‘I cattolici bergamaschi’, pp. 71–72. In 1918 the age limit was lowered to 21 years of age. 49 The interview appeared in the Giornale d’Italia on 8 November 1913. The shocking number was also confirmed the following day by L’Osservatore Romano. See also Maria Serena Piretti, ‘Il Tevere più stretto: la relazione del Conte Gentiloni a Pio X sulle elezioni del 1913’, Contemporanea, 2, 1 (1999), pp. 65–78. 50 On the positions taken by Catholics elected to parliament before and after the Gentiloni Pact, see Guido Formigoni, I cattolici-deputati (1904–1918): tradizione e riforme (Rome: Studium, 1988). 51 ‘Thanks to the abstention we have avoided compromising ourselves by an irremediable present in order to preserve ourselves for a future that cannot be taken away from us’ (‘Mediante l’astensione noi abbiamo evitato di comprometterci in un presente insanabile per riserbarci intieri ad un avvenire che nulla può toglierci’), thus Romolo Murri, ‘Propositi di parte cattolica’, Cultura Sociale, 16 May 1899, reported in Dal neoguelfismo alla democrazia cristiana: antologia di documenti, ed. by Pietro Scoppola (Rome: Studium, 1963), p. 113.

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for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, was sent to the Italian bishops to consult them on the issue,52 was persuaded that the strategy of maintaining restrictions on the Catholic parliamentary delegation and entrusting the task of representing the interests of the Catholic electorate precisely to that liberal class that insisted on not pursuing a conciliation with the Church in Italy had by now turned out to be harmful to the Holy See. On 8 March 1915, the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, convened by its Secretary Eugenio Pacelli, thus met to discuss in the first place the dissatisfaction that had arisen after the Gentiloni Pact, a dissatisfaction that had already emerged during Benedict’s first audience with the leaders of the Unione popolare (People’s Union).53 From the debate, the cardinals’ profound disappointment became evident, both at the results of the operation, with elected candidates who in the end had proved to be unreliable and not very compliant with the criteria laid down in the agreement, and at the harmful image that a merely partial attenuation of the non expedit cast on the episcopate, who were involved in questionable choices and methods, denounced above all by Cardinal Domenico Serafini in regard to the local dispensations that had made the persistence or not of the prohibition appear to be a mere political choice: The dispensations are given in favour of one of the candidates, while the non expedit itself is maintained for the competitor. They are therefore personal matters, the non expedit removed in favour of an individual becomes an electoral weapon; and all of this mixes ecclesiastical authority with electoral battles.54 It was therefore decided to remove the bishops from the political arena, entrusting the evaluation of candidates and the appropriateness of suspending the non expedit on a case-by-case basis no longer to the central management of the Electoral Union but to local committees composed of the laity, constituency by constituency. Another sign revealing Benedict XV’s confidence in lay responsibility was the fact that the draft circular addressed to the Italian bishops on the subject was submitted for revision — an absolute novelty in the practice of the Holy See — to the leaders of the new Catholic Action, which were at the same time reformulating the statute of the People’s Union:55 ‘There are good Catholics, fond of the Holy See’, Cardinal Filippo

52 The summary of the mission written by the prelate is in AES, II periodo, Stati ecclesiastici, pos. 1075, fasc. 346–47. 53 Its president, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, and other leaders were received in audience on 8 September 1914 (Monticone, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 20). 54 ‘La dispensa è data in favore di uno dei candidati, mentre il non expedit stesso è mantenuto per il competitore. Sono dunque questioni personali, il non expedit tolto in favore di un individuo diviene un’arma elettorale; e tutto ciò mescola l’autorità ecclesiastica nelle lotte elettorali’; AES, Congregazioni particolari, Italia, vol. 70, sessione 1194, minutes of 8 March 1915. 55 With the reform of 25 February 1915, Benedict XV instituted the central committee for Italian Catholic Action, giving the People’s Union ‘the high task of impressing on Catholic Action a programmatic direction and of turning Catholics and their organizations toward unity of thought and harmony of purpose’ (‘l’alto compito di imprimere all’Aci un indirizzo programmatico e di volgere ad unità di

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Giustini said in one of the sessions; ‘Why not trust them and leave the bishops and parish priests out of the electoral battles?’.56 The developments of the war did not allow for the practical implementation of the decisions taken during that spring of 1915, and the circular to the bishops, even though it was ready, in the end was not sent. In any case, the preparation of this plan marked a decisive change in direction with respect to the past, showing from the beginning of the pontificate a clear desire to accord greater autonomy to the laity. Even the possibility of consenting to the birth of a Catholic party had been raised in consideration of the heated debate among the cardinals, which had brought to light opposing views on the matter. On the one hand, in fact, there was the position of former Secretary of State, Pietro Gasparri, who spoke of having opposed the proposal for the formation of a party presented by some Catholics in the past precisely because they had declared that they would not include the solution to the Roman Question in their programme.57 On the other hand, various prelates, such as Cardinal Serafini, believed that the only way not to expose the ecclesiastical authority was to configure the new political entity as openly non-denominational.58 The preparatory document of the session had, after all, already expressed the fear that the Pope would be considered ‘the head of a political faction who would compete every time in these often fierce electoral battles with the danger that he and his cause would be defeated’.59 In this discussion, the arguments undoubtedly echo what would later be used by La Civiltà Cattolica in February 1919 to comment, the day after the birth of the People’s Party, on Sturzo’s non-denominational option:60 The new ‘People’s Party’ is not, is not called and cannot be called, in accurate terms, a ‘Catholic party’. And this is not only because ‘Catholic’ means universal,

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pensiero e concordia di propositi i cattolici e le loro organizzazioni’); see Silvio Tramontin, ‘Unione popolare’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, ed. by Traniello and Campanini, I/2 (1981), pp. 394–95. ‘Vi sono buoni cattolici, affezionati alla S. Sede — aveva detto il card. Filippo Giustini in una delle sessioni — perché non fidarsi di loro e lasciare i vescovi e i parroci al di fuori delle lotte elettorali?’; AES, Congregazioni particolari, Italia, vol. 70, sessione 1195, minutes of 5 April 1915. AES, Congregazioni particolari, Italia, vol. 70, sessione 1194, minutes of 8 March 1915. Gasparri referred to the existence of the proposal without revealing the name of those who put it forward. Given the frequent contacts during those months of the Holy See, and Gasparri in particular, with the heads of the People’s Union for restructuring Catholic Action, Monticone in any case assumed that the idea was aired in the course of those meetings; Monticone, ‘Benedetto XV’, p. 28. In this sense, Cardinal Serafini stated, ‘It would instead be better in Italy as in other Catholic nations to form a non-denominational political party which would avoid divisions between Catholics and could receive the indications of the bishops without involving them directly in the political electoral contest’ (‘sarebbe invece meglio in Italia come nelle altre nazioni cattoliche la formazione di un partito politico non confessionale, che eviterebbe divisioni fra i cattolici e potrebbe recepire le indicazioni dei vescovi senza coinvolgerli direttamente nell’agone politico elettorale’); AES, Congregazioni particolari, Italia, vol. 70, sessione 1194, minutes of 8 March 1915. ‘Come capo di una fazione politica, che scenda in lizza a ogni momento per queste battaglie elettorali, sovente accanitissime, col pericolo di uscirne vinti, egli e la sua causa’; AES, Congregazioni particolari, Italia, vol. 70, sessione 1194, ponenza of March 1915. On the birth of the People’s Party, see Francesco Malgeri, ‘Partito popolare italiano’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 1109–22.

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international, while the new Italian party is naturally national, but more accurately because, in being national, it can find itself lacking, either by defect or by excess, that is to say not conforming to the same just needs of Italian Catholics, as well as foreigners. By default, let us say, insofar as it avoids — even without an express renunciation — questions for which Catholics, as Catholics, still invoke, and must invoke, the solution. […] Although the programme affirms the ‘freedom and independence of the Church in the full exercise of its spiritual magisterium’, it forgets to add that which is no less important, nor less necessary than the magisterium, that is to say, the ministry and the empire or jurisdiction […]. By excess then, because the new party seems to others that it errs its programme, in so far as, on the contrary, it includes other different claims, in the moral, economic and social fields, including those that are strictly political, to which Catholics can more or less reasonably adhere, but to which they are in no way obliged, on the strength of their principles.61 Retracing, in the documents of the cardinals’ congregations, the evolution of the policy of the Holy See in regard to the question of the non expedit has made it possible to bridge the apparently abrupt transition that took place between the politics of clerical moderatism and that rapid precipitation of events that at the end of the war had led, after a very limited consultation of the episcopate,62 to the birth of the Italian People’s Party, to the successive and immediate dissolving of the Electoral Union and finally to the announcement of the abandonment of the non expedit, an announcement made known — without any official act but through, once again, a

61 ‘Il nuovo “Partito popolare” non è, non si denomina e non si può denominare, con proprietà di termini, “partito cattolico”. E ciò non solo in quanto “cattolico” significa universale, internazionale, laddove il nuovo partito italiano è naturalmente nazionale, ma più veramente perché, in quanto nazionale, può trovarsi pure manchevole, sia per difetto, sia per eccesso, cioè dire non conforme alle stesse giuste esigenze dei cattolici italiani, nonché degli stranieri. Per difetto, diciamo, in quanto prescinde nel suo “programma” — e sia pure senza espressa rinunzia — da questioni di cui i cattolici, in quanto tali, invocano ancora, e debbono invocare, la soluzione. […] Sebbene si affermi nel programma la “libertà ed indipendenza della Chiesa nella piena esplicazione del suo magistero spirituale”, si dimentica di aggiungervi quello che non è meno importante, né meno necessario del magistero, cioè dire il ministero e l’impero o giurisdizione […]. Per eccesso poi il nuovo partito può sembrare ad altri che pecchi nel suo programma, in quanto v’inchiude al contrario diverse altre rivendicazioni, nell’ordine morale, economico e sociale ed anche strettamente politico, a cui i cattolici potranno più o meno ragionevolmente aderire, ma non vi sono punto obbligati in forza dei loro principii’; [Enrico Rosa,] ‘A proposito del nuovo Partito popolare italiano’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 1 (1919), pp. 272–74. 62 In fact, only the bishops of the Veneto region were consulted through a request in a letter from the Patriarch of Venice, Pietro La Fontaine, who on 30 November 1918 had asked in the name of his brother bishops for clear directives in political matters. The opinions received can be found in AES, Italia, 1918–1922, pos. 955, fasc. 345 and 346. See Giovanni Mantese, ‘Una risposta del card. Pietro Gasparri all’episcopato veneto sul ricostituendo movimento cattolico (1918)’, Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia, 15, 2 (1967), pp. 140–51; La Santa Sede, i vescovi veneti e l’autonomia politica dei cattolici (1918–1922), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Trieste: LINT, 1994).

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private response on the part of the Apostolic Penitentiary63 — five days before the elections of that year, scheduled for 16 November.64 Far from being an abrupt shift after the events of the Gentiloni Pact, the abandonment of the non expedit therefore appears, in the light of the reconstruction proposed here, the result of the slow degenerative process of a strategy that was already largely disregarded at the local level. Designed with the aim of affecting the political affairs of the new Italian State, in the long run this strategy had turned out to be a golden-gated prison cell. While Benedict alone had the courage in the end to destroy it, his predecessors had already for a long time devised various strategies by which to escape from it.

Bibliography Agazzi, Alberto, ‘I cattolici bergamaschi e l’attenuazione del non expedit: contributo alla storia del decennio 1904–1913’, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 58 (1971), pp. 53–77 Aureli, Guido, and Crispolto Crispolti, La politica di Leone XIII da Luigi Galimberti a Mariano Rampolla, su documenti inediti (Rome: Bontempelli e Invernizzi, 1912) Bellò, Carlo, ‘Miglioli e il movimento contadino “bianco” nel periodo bellico’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a

63 It was first L’Avvenire d’Italia that on 8 November 1919 announced the Holy See’s renunciation of the instrument of the non expedit, with words that repeated almost literally those of the aforementioned resolution of November 1876 of the cardinals of the Holy Office: ‘The constitution of the People’s Party was a fact that made [the non expedit] superfluous […] now that a political party corresponding to their principles has arisen in Italy and as such is able to be the end of their public activity and the subject of their responsibility […] the participation of Catholics in the political struggle for the Italian People’s Party has become a right and yet a duty for them, and the People’s Party asking for a vote for its candidates […] does not ask for anything that is in contradiction […] of the supreme authority of the Church’ (‘la costituzione del Partito popolare è stato un fatto che lo ha reso superfluo […] ora che è sorto in Italia un partito politico corrispondente ai loro principi e come tale capace di essere il termine della loro pubblica attività e il soggetto della loro responsabilità […] la partecipazione dei cattolici nella lotta politica a favore del Partito popolare italiano è divenuta un diritto e però un dovere loro; e il Partito popolare domandando il voto per i suoi candidati […] non chiede nulla che sia in contraddizione […] verso l’autorità suprema della Chiesa’). To justify this assertion, the paper stated that ‘precisely in these days, to the formal question that was posed by an ecclesiastical authority, whether it was licet for Catholics to vote, the same Sacred Penitentiary responded “affirmative” without any limitation or reserve’ (‘proprio in questi giorni, alla domanda formale che da un’autorità ecclesiastica è stata posta, se sia lecito ai cattolici accedere alle urne politiche, la stessa S. Penitenzieria ha risposto “affirmative” senza alcuna limitazione o riserva’). Three days later, L’Osservatore Romano on 11 November 1919 confirmed the news: ‘We also confirm the existence of this response’ (‘anche a noi risulta l’esistenza di questo responso’). See Marongiu Buonaiuti, Non expedit, pp. 154–55; Pollard, The Unknown Pope, pp. 175–76. 64 On 16 November 1919, the first general elections in Italy with universal male suffrage and a proportional system gave the Italian People’s Party 20.5 per cent of the votes and 103 representatives, showing that it was an indispensable force in the formation of any government, especially one with the socialists at 32 per cent and 156 seats.

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Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 429–44 Candeloro, Giorgio, Il movimento cattolico in Italia (Rome: Edizioni Rinascita, 1953) Cavagnini, Giovanni, ‘Soffrire, ubbidire, combattere: prime note sull’episcopato italiano e la Guerra libica (1911–1912)’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 8, 1 (2011), pp. 27–44 Ciampani, Andrea, Cattolici e liberali durante la trasformazione dei partiti: la ‘questione di Roma’ tra politica nazionale e progetti vaticani (1876–1883) (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 2000) Ciampani, Andrea, ‘Orientamenti della Curia romana e dell’episcopato italiano sul voto politico dei cattolici (1881–1882)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 34 (1996), pp. 269–324 De Rosa, Gabriele, ‘Il non expedit e La Civiltà Cattolica’, in Gabriele De Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico in Italia, 2 vols (Rome: Laterza, 1966), I: Dalla Restaurazione all’età giolittiana, pp. 95–120 De Rosa, Gabriele, Storia politica dell’Azione cattolica in Italia, 2 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1953–54), I (1953) Fonzi, Fausto, I cattolici e la società italiana dopo l’Unità (Rome: Studium, 1953) Fonzi, Fausto, ‘Documenti sul conciliatorismo e sulle trattative segrete fra governi italiani e S. Sede dal 1886 al 1897’, in Chiesa e Stato nell’Ottocento: miscellanea in onore di Pietro Pirri, ed. by Roger Aubert, Alberto Maria Ghisalberti and Ettore Passerin d’Entrèves, 2 vols (Padua: Antenore, 1962), I, pp. 167–242 Formigoni, Guido, I cattolici-deputati (1904–1918): tradizione e riforme (Rome: Studium, 1988) Gambasin, Angelo, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei congressi (1874–1904) (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1958) Gizzi, Stefano, ‘Le osservazioni del cardinale Antonio Maria Cagiano de Azevedo sulla liceità di far parte del parlamento italiano’, Pio IX: studi e ricerche sulla vita della Chiesa dal Settecento ad oggi, 21, 1 (1998), pp. 50–60 Istituto centrale di statistica and Ministero per la Costituente, eds, Compendio delle statistiche elettorali italiane dal 1848 al 1934, 2 vols (Rome: Failli, 1946–47) Jemolo, Arturo Carlo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia negli ultimi cento anni, 3rd edn (Turin: Einaudi, 1963) Kertzer, David I., Prisoner of the Vatican: The Pope’s Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) Kölliker, Laurent, La stratégie d’internationalisation de l’audience politique du Saint-Siège entre 1870 et 1921: vers un règlement de la Question romaine (Geneva: Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales, 2002) Malgeri, Francesco, La guerra libica (1911–1912) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970) Malgeri, Francesco, ‘Partito popolare italiano’, in Cristiani d’Italia: chiese, società, Stato, 1861–2011, ed. by Alberto Melloni, 2 vols (Rome: Treccani, 2011), I, pp. 1109–22 Mantese, Giovanni, ‘Una risposta del card. Pietro Gasparri all’episcopato veneto sul ricostituendo movimento cattolico (1918)’, Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia, 15, 2 (1967), pp. 140–151 Marcora, Carlo, ed., Carteggio Scalabrini Bonomelli (1868–1905) (Rome: Studium, 1983) Marongiu Buonaiuti, Cesare, Non expedit: storia di una politica (1866–1919) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1971) Marotta, Saretta, ‘L’evoluzione del dibattito sul non expedit all’interno della curia romana tra il 1860 e il 1889’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 68, 1 (2014), pp. 95–164

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Martina, Giacomo, ‘Il non expedit’, in Il pontificato di Pio IX, ed. by Roger Aubert, 2 vols, 2nd edn (Turin: SAIE, 1970), II, pp. 849–54 Massè, Domenico, Il caso di coscienza del Risorgimento italiano (Alba: Società Apostolato Stampa, 1946) Mazzonis, Filippo, ‘L’Unione romana e la partecipazione dei cattolici alle elezioni amministrative in Roma (1870–1881)’, Storia e politica, 9 (1970), pp. 216–58 Mellano, Maria Franca, Cattolici e voto politico in Italia (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1982) Monticone, Alberto, ‘Benedetto XV e il non expedit’, in Democrazia e coscienza religiosa nella storia del Novecento, ed. by Augusto D’Angelo, Paolo Trionfini and Roberto Pasquale Violi (Rome: AVE, 2010), pp. 13–38 Piretti, Maria Serena, Le elezioni politiche in Italia dal 1848 ad oggi (Rome: Laterza, 1995) Piretti, Maria Serena, ‘Il Tevere più stretto: la relazione del Conte Gentiloni a Pio X sulle elezioni del 1913’, Contemporanea, 2, 1 (1999), pp. 65–78 Pischedda, Carlo, ‘Una battaglia liberale: Cavour e le elezioni del 1857’, in L’Italia nel secolo XIX: aspetti e problemi di una tradizione contesa: atti del Convegno in onore di Giuseppe Talamo (Roma, 18–20 ottobre 1995), ed. by Sergio La Salvia (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 2002), pp. 51–78 Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Prandi, Alfonso, ‘La guerra e le sue conseguenze nel mondo cattolico italiano’ in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 153–206 Procacci, Giuliano, La lotta di classe in Italia agli inizi del secolo XX (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992) Procacci, Virgilio, La questione romana: le vicende del tentativo di conciliazione del 1887 (Florence: Vallecchi, 1929) Prodi, Paolo, Il sacramento del potere: il giuramento politico nella storia costituzionale dell’Occidente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Quacquarelli, Antonio, Il padre Tosti nella politica del Risorgimento (Genoa: Società editrice Dante Alighieri, 1945) Sabbatucci, Giovanni, Le riforme elettorali in Italia (1848–1994) (Milan: Unicopli, 1995) Sale, Giovanni, Libia 1911: i cattolici, la Santa Sede e l’impresa coloniale italiana (Milan: Jaca Book, 2011) Schepis, Giovanni, Le consultazioni popolari in Italia dal 1848 al 1957 (Empoli: Caparrini, 1958) Scoppola, Pietro, ‘Cattolici neutralisti e interventisti alla vigilia del conflitto’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 95–151 Scoppola, Pietro, ed., Dal neoguelfismo alla democrazia cristiana: antologia di documenti (Rome: Studium, 1963) Scottà, Antonio, ed., La Santa Sede, i vescovi veneti e l’autonomia politica dei cattolici (1918–1922) (Trieste: LINT, 1994) Soderini, Eduardo, Il pontificato di Leone XIII, 3 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1932–33), II (1932)

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Suardi, Gianforte, ‘Quando e come i cattolici poterono partecipare alle elezioni politiche’, Nuova Antologia, 1 November 1927, pp. 118–23 Tagliaferri, Maurizio, L’Unità Cattolica: studio di una mentalità (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993) Tamburini, Filippo, ‘Il non expedit negli atti della Penitenzieria apostolica (1861–1889)’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 41, 1 (1987), pp. 128–51 Ticchi, Jean-Marc, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1878–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002) Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘“Avec lui il n’y en a que pour la France!”: remarques sur la contribution du cardinal Rampolla à la politique de Leon XIII’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 116, 1 (2004), pp. 199–241 Tramontin, Silvio, ‘La raccolta dell’Obolo di san Pietro a Venezia durante il pontificato di Pio IX (1846–1878)’, Pio IX: studi e ricerche sulla vita della Chiesa dal Settecento ad oggi, 1 (1972), pp. 295–309 Tramontin, Silvio, ‘Unione popolare’, in Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, ed. by Francesco Traniello and Giorgio Campanini, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84), I/2 (1981), pp. 394–95 Traniello, Francesco, and Giorgio Campanini, eds, Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia, 1860–1980, 3 vols (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1981–84) Trincia, Luciano, Il nucleo tedesco: Vaticano e Triplice Alleanza nei dispacci del nunzio a Vienna Luigi Galimberti (1887–1892) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2001) Viaene, Vincent, ed., The Papacy and the New World Order: Vatican Diplomacy, Catholic Opinion and International Politics at the Time of Leo XIII (1878–1903) (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005) Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘La devozione al Papa’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878– 1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), II, pp. 63–76

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Alberto Guasco

Benedict XV and Proto-Fascism

1.

After the ‘Useless Slaughter’: Encounters with Fascism

The theme of this contribution is a topic that is treated relatively little despite the fact that what has been written on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Fascism certainly does not amount to little.1 In order to bring it into focus better, it might be useful to take a look at some of the broader post-war horizons within which the second part of the pontificate of Benedict XV operated and with which early Fascism, or proto-Fascism, intersected. To paraphrase Stefan Zweig, looking at the ‘world of yesterday’, at that very same war that pulverized four centuries-long empires and opened the door to the totalitarian experiments that would stain Europe in the 1920s and 30s, it should first be noted that the Genoese nobleman, a pupil of Capranica, authentic Rampollian and Archbishop of Bologna, that is to say, Giacomo Della Chiesa, Pope Benedict XV, had a complex interpretation of World War I. At the causal level, the war had at least three intersecting levels of interpretation: at ground level, metaphorically speaking, the war was a ‘useless slaughter’; higher up, at mezzanine level, it became the fruit of concrete foundations (and nascent national hatreds); at the uppermost level, it was seen as the result of the modern world’s gradual loss of contact with God, with Jesus Christ and with his Vicar on earth.2 In terms of consequences, the war inspired multiple response



1 See Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997); Giovanni Sale, Popolari, chierici e camerati, 2 vols (Milan: Jaca Book, 2006–07), I: Popolari e destra cattolica al tempo di Benedetto XV, 1919–1922 (2006); Alberto Guasco, Cattolici e fascisti: la Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del regime (1919–1925) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013). 2 For some treatments of the theme, see Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963); Francis Latour, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996); John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999); Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004); Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1003–1021 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118816

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a l be rto guas co

strategies, from the higher floors of theology descending to the lower ones of diplomacy and politics. (1) At the theological level, the post-war Church was faced with old and new ideologies, which in the course of the 1920s and 30s affected nearly all the countries on the continent, from socialism that had become a state (which with Lenin and the ruling Bolshevik Party professed an ideology already widely condemned by the magisterium),3 to secularism (which was clearly visible in Czechoslovakia but was not an illustrious stranger either in Western Europe or in America),4 to the nationalism that the pontiff had clearly identified as one of the first causes of the war and then of the non-peace, alongside which Fascism may be rightly ranked for many reasons.5 It is precisely around the problem of the relationship with the Italian nation that, on 20 September 1870, the Church and the state concluded a dramatic divorce. However, it was also following this same path that a laborious rapprochement was attempted. In the end, they embraced once again well before that 11 February 1929, when Mussolini and Gasparri signed the Lateran Pacts. The factors that once more





Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82; Jean-Jacques Becker, Le Pape et la Grande Guerre (Paris: Bayard, 2006); Gabriele Paolini, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008); Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009); Marcel Launay, Benoît XV (1914–1922): un pape pour la paix (Paris: Cerf, 2014); and Umberto Mazzone, ‘Cristiani davanti alla prima guerra mondiale’, in La Chiesa e la ‘memoria divisa’ del Novecento, ed. by Alessandra Deoriti and Giovanni Turbanti (Bologna: Pendragon, 2016), pp. 39–62. 3 Andrea Riccardi, ‘La Chiesa cattolica, il comunismo e l’Unione Sovietica’, in La Chiesa cattolica e il totalitarismo: VIII Giornata Luigi Firpo: atti del convegno, Torino, 25–26 ottobre 2001, ed. by Vincenzo Ferrone (Firenze: Olschki, 2004), pp. 79–92 (p. 80). For a more general treatment of the relations between Russia and the Holy See, see Étienne Fouilloux, Au cœur du XXe siècle religieux (Paris: Les éditions ouvrières, 1993), pp. 147–66; Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche e dall’Istituto di Storia Universale dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Mosca: Mosca, 23–25 giugno 1998 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002); Laura Pettinaroli, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015). 4 On Czechoslovakia, see Emilia Hrabovec, Der Heilige Stuhl und die Slowakei 1918–1922 im Kontext internationaler Beziehungen (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2002). On Messico, see instead Paolo Valvo, Pio XI e la Cristiada: fede, guerra e diplomazia in Messico (1926–1929) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2016). 5 See Danilo Veneruso, Il seme della pace: la cultura cattolica e il nazional-imperialismo fra le due guerre (Rome: Studium, 1987); Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), pp. 245–53; and Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Benedetto XV e il nazionalismo’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 17, 3 (1996), pp. 541–66. On the greater intrerconnections with the theme of the war, see, for example, Luigi Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970); Guido Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici: fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998); Renato Moro, ‘Nazione, cattolicesimo e regime fascista’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 1, 1 (2004), pp. 129– 47; Renato Moro, ‘I cattolici italiani tra pace e guerra: dall’inizio del secolo al Concilio Vaticano II’, in Guerra e pace nell’Italia del Novecento: politica estera, cultura politica e correnti dell’opinione pubblica, ed. by Luigi Goglia, Renato Moro and Leopoldo Nuti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), pp. 359–400; and Francesco Traniello, Religione cattolica e Stato nazionale: dal Risorgimento al secondo dopoguerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007). See also Francesco Malgeri, La guerra libica (1911–1912) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970); and Lucia Ceci, Il papa non deve parlare: Chiesa, fascismo e guerra d’Etiopia (Rome: Laterza, 2010).

b e n e d i ct  xv and proto -fasci sm

stitched together that relationship were the wars, first that in Libya and then, to put it in the words of Pius X, the guerrone (‘big war’) of 1915–18, when the patriotism of Catholics found an ever-increasing convergence with nationalism. It was only a convergence precisely because, with respect to Corradini and Federzoni, there remained an unbridgeable moat that had been dug by the condemnation that, since at least the times of the Syllabus, the magisterium had pronounced against the ‘Greek and Roman statolatry’, or rather, against that nationalism that does not heal but rather aggravates the evils of liberalism. Nevertheless, behind the official pronouncements, things were different although it was true that World War I had ambiguously and more than dangerously raised the level of contamination between religion and nation. In times of war, homilies bore witness to this contamination, from references to the God of Hosts to likening the trenches to Calvary,6 as did the conscription of saints under national flags (from the poor man of Assisi to the maid of Orleans), and even the consecration of armies to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which Benedict XV also elevated to a spiritual bulwark of his pontificate and to which he commended the process of the continent’s spiritual regeneration, which he hoped to see at the end of the war.7 But practices during peacetime also testify to this as well, such as (as early as in November 1921) the funeral honours to the Unknown Soldier8 paid when squadrism had already had its first summer of glory and Fascism had already entered into parliament and was starting to form a party. This was a party guided by a leader







6 On the contamination between the language of war and religious language, see Fulvio De Giorgi, ‘Linguaggi totalitari e retorica dell’intransigenza: Chiesa, metafora militare e strategie educative’, in Chiesa, cultura e educazione in Italia tra le due guerre, ed. by Luciano Pazzaglia (Brescia: La Scuola, 2003), pp. 55–103, and Francesco Piva, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015). On the adoption of religious language by one of the voices of secular war propaganda, see Antonio Guasco, ‘L’uso bellico della Bibbia in Gabriele D’Annunzio’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 108 (2014), pp. 339–54. On the use of saints, particularly St Francis of Assisi, see Sandra Migliore, Mistica povertà: riscritture francescane tra Otto e Novecento (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2001) and San Francesco d’Italia: santità e identità nazionale, ed. by Roberto Rusconi and Tommaso Caliò (Rome: Viella, 2011). 7 On this theme, see Annibale Zambarbieri, ‘Per la storia della devozione al Sacro Cuore in Italia tra ’800 e ’900’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 41, 2 (1987), pp. 361–432; Fulvio De Giorgi, ‘Forme spirituali, forme simboliche, forme politiche: la devozione al S. Cuore’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 48, 2 (1994), pp. 365–459; Giorgio Rumi, Santità sociale in Italia tra Otto e Novecento (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1995), pp. 23–38; Daniele Menozzi, Sacro Cuore: un culto tra devozione interiore e restaurazione cristiana della società (Rome: Viella, 2001). 8 On the sacralization of the war, see Umberto Mazzone, ‘A Religious War? Suggestions from the First World War’, Annali di storia dell’esegesi, 26, 2 (2009), pp. 251–77 (pp. 256 ff.); Xavier Boniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014); and Sante Lesti, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015). On the ceremony of the Unknown Soldier, see Vito Labita, ‘Il Milite Ignoto: dalle trincee all’Altare della Patria’, in Gli occhi di Alessandro: potere sovrano e sacralità da Alessandro Magno a Ceauşescu, ed. by Sergio Bertelli and Cristiano Grottanelli (Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1990), pp. 120–53.

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who, speaking at the Teatro Augusteo in Rome on 8 November 1921, wanted to use, among other things, ‘Catholicism […] for national expansion’.9 In any case, whatever it was and whatever its relationship with the Church,10 modernity was the sign under which the ecclesiastical authority structured its own judgement on the Blackshirts in the last two years of Benedict XV’s pontificate. It was an ambiguous sign, laced with divergences that showed not a few chances for convergence, convergences that always required differentiations and distinctions. In Rome, according to classic eighteenth- or nineteenth-century apologetics, it seems obvious that Fascism was the child of modernity and its constellation of errors, just like its grandfather liberalism and its father socialism. Yet, ever since it visibly burst onto the scene, in the autumn of 1920 with the events of Palazzo d’Accursio in Bologna, where Giacomo Della Chiesa was archbishop, distinctions were already being made. As with several other -isms of the time (modernism, nationalism, anti-Semitism), a distinction was drawn between the forms and methods with which coexistence or even agreement is possible and the forms and methods with which it is not. This was not true, or not equally as true, on the level of orthodoxy or practice, although at the time of the first wave of squadrism, as La Civiltà Cattolica wrote in May 1921, a ‘good’ fascism was one ‘of defence’ while a ‘bad’ fascism was one ‘of violence’ in which ‘red terror’ replaced the ‘tricolour tyranny’ and that ‘of sects’ and was subject to ‘anti-clerical infiltration’.11 (2) At a diplomatic level, the isolation that the Holy See experienced during the war (Benedict XV had nuncios in Austria, Belgium and Bavaria, but not in London, Saint Petersburg or Rome, except for the unofficial channel established by Baron Monti) was an obstacle that Gasparri attempted to overcome with concordat policies, gaining diplomatic representation and representatives on the European chessboard, above all in Paris and Berlin, but also in Prague, Warsaw and Belgrade. A clearly established legal position was essential to the task of the universal and spiritual magisterium performed by the Church, freeing it from the cumbersome and unsuccessful tutelage of ‘political compromise with a single state or a single government’.



9 ‘Il cattolicismo […] per l’espansione nazionale’; Benito Mussolini, ‘Il programma fascista’, in Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, ed. by Duilio Susmel and Edoardo Susmel, 36 vols (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–63) [hereafter OOBM], XVII (1955), pp. 216–23 (p. 221). 10 See Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Chiesa cattolica e modernità’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 65, 2 (2011), pp. 563–71 (p. 563) and Renato Moro, ‘Il “modernismo buono”: la “modernizzazione” cattolica tra fascismo e postfascismo come problema storiografico’, Storia contemporanea, 19, 4 (1988), pp. 625–716 (p. 677). On the subject, see also Émile Poulat, Église contre bourgeoisie: introduction au devenir du catholicisme actuel (Tournai: Casterman, 1977); Renato Moro, ‘La religione e la “nuova epoca”: cattolicesimo e modernità tra le due guerre mondiali’, in Il modernismo tra cristianità e secolarizzazione: atti del Convegno internazionale di Urbino, 1–4 ottobre 1997, ed. by Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2000), pp. 513–73; and René Rémond, Religion et société en Europe: essai sur la sécularisation des sociétés européennes aux XIXe et XXe siècles (1789–1998) (Paris: Seuil, 1998). 11 ‘Buono’; ‘di difesa’; ‘cattivo’; ‘di violenza’; ‘terrore rosso’; ‘tirannia tricolore’; ‘di setta’; ‘infiltrazione anticlericale’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 2 (1921), pp. 371–73.

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The dream, desired all the more after the prelude to conciliation thanks to the work of Orlando and Cerretti in June 1919 in Paris, which in turn was the result of a wider context of easing relations, was also to reach a diplomatic agreement with Italy.12 This was attested by conciliatory signs such as the Pope’s green light to receive visits of Catholic heads of state in the Vatican (as per Pacem Dei munus of 23 May 1920) and even more by the resumption of diplomatic contacts with France.13 However, the right people were needed to create a conciliation upon which the king’s veto might still hang. Although it was true that after the fall of the Orlando Cabinet, the subsequent Nitti, Giolitti and Bonomi ministries maintained the ‘conciliatorist climate at the summit’,14 while applying the brakes to relations with the Apostolic See. Nevertheless, on 25 January 1921, after a conversation with Father Enrico Rosa, the Director of La Civiltà Cattolica, Giolitti’s Secretary, Enrico Insabato, informed the Head of Government that the agreement between Church and state was ‘a fervent thought and desire of many in the Vatican’ and, even more, ‘the verbal expression of His Holiness’s thoughts’.15 On the other hand, on the opposite side of the barricade, in September 1921, Gasparri confided to Ernesto Buonaiuti that these men still leave us uncertain and unsure. It is true that we are no longer faced with […] Giolitti, but we think it will not even be ministers Bonomi and della Torretta who will achieve a reconciliation. We are still waiting […] for our man.16 While the other liberal prime ministers were parading on the scenes between 1919 and 1921, the man that the Secretary of State was waiting for (it is easy to say ex post that it was Mussolini) effected a turnabout in ecclesiastic politics, abandoning the anti-clericalism that had led him, in 1910, to define Della Chiesa as a ‘reverend

12 On the Roman Question, see Francesco Pacelli, Diario della conciliazione: con verbali e appendice di documenti (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1959); Angelo Martini, Studi sulla questione romana e la conciliazione (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963); Francesco Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966); Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite), ed. by Giovanni Spadolini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972); and Giovanni Battista Varnier, Gli ultimi governi liberali e la questione romana (1918–1922) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1976). On the Paris talks, see instead Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Miei rapporti di governo con la Santa Sede (Milan: Garzanti, 1944), pp. 123–26. For Cerretti’s version, see AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1350 P. O., vol. 3, ff. 290–310. 13 It was an occasion for renewed discussion on the topic; see, for example, Una nuova discussione sui rapporti tra Chiesa e Stato in Italia, ed. by Amedeo Giannini (Rome: Libreria di scienze e lettere, 1921) and Francesco Ruffini, ‘La questione romana e l’ora presente’, Nuova Antologia, 1 June 1921, pp. 193–206. 14 ‘Clima conciliatorista di vertice’; see Vittorio De Marco, Un diplomatico vaticano all’Eliseo: il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti (1872–1933) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984), pp. 63 ff. 15 ‘Un pensiero e un desiderio vivo di molti in Vaticano’; ‘l’espressione verbale del pensiero di Sua Santità’; recounted in Nino Valeri, Da Giolitti a Mussolini: momenti della crisi del liberalismo (Florence: Parenti, 1956), pp. 118–19; see also Varnier, Gli ultimi governi liberali, p. 149. 16 ‘Sono gli uomini che ci lasciano tuttora incerti e mal sicuri. È vero che non ci troviamo più dinanzi […] Giolitti, ma pensiamo che non saranno nemmeno i ministri Bonomi e Della Torretta che giungeranno alla conciliazione. Noi attendiamo ancora […] il nostro uomo’; Ernesto Buonaiuti, Pellegrino di Roma: la generazione dell’esodo (Rome: Darsena, 1945), pp. 199–204.

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Cardinal of the criminal Church’17 and to label the pontiff ’s peace proposal in 1917 as ‘criminal’. He considered the latter the ‘greatest act of sabotage of our war’ and a ‘poison’ by means of which ‘Pilate XV’ boycotted the Italian war in favour of a pro-German peace.18 His persistent and confused post-war anti-clericalism disappeared, in fact, along with the electoral reverse suffered by the Fasci of Combat in November 1919, changing direction due to the awareness of the need to abandon the old anti-religious prejudices. This change can be seen in Mussolini’s addresses at the Second National Congress of the Fasci held from 24 to 25 May 1920 (‘The Vatican represents 400 million persons scattered throughout the world, and an intelligent policy should use this colossal force for its own expansion. […] No one in Italy, unless he wishes to unleash a religious war, can attack this spiritual sovereignty’)19 and in Trieste on 20 September 1920 (‘Through Christianity, Rome finds its form and its way of standing up in the world’).20 The culmination of this complete change in stance is found in Mussolini’s first speech to parliament when he introduced the issue of the historical problem of relations that can take place […] between Italy and the Vatican […]. Rome’s Latin and imperial tradition is represented today by Catholicism. If […] you cannot remain in Rome without a universal idea, I think and affirm that the only universal idea of Rome that exists today is the one that radiates from the Vatican […]. If the Vatican definitively renounces its temporal dreams — and I believe it is already on that path — then Italy, profane or secular, must provide the Vatican with material aid: the material assistance for schools, churches, hospitals and more, which a secular power has at its disposition. The development of Catholicism in the world, the increase in the 400 million people who look to Rome from all parts of the world, is also of interest and pride for us Italians.21

17 ‘Reverendo porporato della Chiesa criminale’; Benito Mussolini, ‘Per un anniversario’, in OOBM, III (1952), pp. 9–10. 18 ‘Criminosa’; il più grande atto di sabotaggio della nostra guerra’; ‘tossico’; ‘Pilato XV’; see OOBM, IX (1952), pp. 120–27 and OOBM, X (1952), pp. 387–89 and 428–29. 19 ‘Il Vaticano rappresenta 400 milioni di uomini sparsi in tutto il mondo e una politica intelligente dovrebbe usare, ai fini dell’espansionismo proprio, questa forza colossale. […] Nessuno in Italia, se non vuole scatenare la guerra religiosa, può attentare a questa sovranità spirituale’; Benito Mussolini, ‘Discorso inaugurale al secondo congresso dei fasci’, in OOBM, XIV (1954), pp. 466–71 (p. 471). 20 ‘Attraverso il cristianesimo Roma trova la sua forma e trova il modo di reggersi nel mondo’; Benito Mussolini, ‘Discorso di Trieste’, in OOBM, XV (1954), pp. 214–23 (p. 218). 21 ‘Il problema storico dei rapporti che possono intercedere […] fra l’Italia e il Vaticano […]. La tradizione latina e imperiale di Roma è oggi rappresentata dal cattolicismo. Se […] non si resta a Roma senza un’idea universale, io penso e affermo che l’unica idea universale che oggi esista a Roma, è quella che s’irradia dal Vaticano […]. Se il Vaticano rinunzia definitivamente ai suoi sogni temporalistici — e credo che sia già su questa strada — l’Italia, profana o laica, dovrebbe fornire al Vaticano gli aiuti materiali, le agevolazioni materiali per scuole, chiese, ospedali o altro, che una potenza profana ha a sua disposizione. Perché lo sviluppo del cattolicismo nel mondo, l’aumento dei 400 milioni di uomini, che in tutte le parti della terra guardano a Roma, è di un interesse e di un orgoglio anche per noi che siamo italiani’; Benito Mussolini, ‘Il primo discorso alla camera dei deputati’, in OOBM, XVI (1955), pp. 431–46.

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(3) At a socio-political level, the war also left an inheritance of unhinging traditional political representations of the state. Benedict XV understood perfectly that the non expedit was worse than obsolete in a world born of the ‘useless slaughter’ and, in fact, repealed it. Like him, the Venetian bishops, whose dioceses had been hardest hit by the Great War, and particularly Don Luigi Sturzo, the founder and first Secretary of the Italian People’s Party (PPI) understood this. Contrary to what critics said, the PPI was not the Pope’s party (the latter considered it an embankment against socialists and liberals, a buffer to free the Church from direct involvement in political matters and a bridgehead for a solution to the Roman Question) even if pontifical endorsement constituted its conditio sine qua non. Rather, it was a new operative instrument with ‘its own programme, responsibility and physiognomy’, as L’Osservatore Romano described it on 20 January 1919.22 Nevertheless, within itself and at the crossroads of its relations with St Peter, it brought some unsolved contradictions. In short, no one who supported, belonged to or protested at them (whether they were heirs to intransigentism or conciliatorism, clerical moderates, Christian democrats or the white union wing) thought the same way on matters of non-confessionality, relations with ecclesial authorities or political alliances. The brief history of the PPI certainly saw several turning points, but that in the autumn of 1920, corresponding to the local November elections, was particularly significant since the three points mentioned above became one and one alone. If the scolding that Gasparri aimed at the party on electoral matters23 led to a political outcome in Turin that was pleasing to the Holy See, in Milan the result was quite different. In this city, a party composed of do-it-yourself Catholics did not listen to the indications on voting promoted by Cardinal Ferrari and did not enter the moderate block since it included the Fascists there. Rather, they abstained from the electoral process, allowing the socialists to conquer the municipality. Reprimands in L’Osservatore Romano24 reveal a substantial difference of opinion between Sturzo and the Holy See, between the complete freedom of action that he assigned to the party and 22 ‘Un partito popolare italiano’, L’Osservatore Romano, 20 January 1919. 23 ‘Where understanding is necessary to prevent the advance of socialism, understanding is a duty. The directives and discipline of the party! But when these oppose duty, it is clear that it is duty that must prevail, and directives and discipline must stand aside. In short, the absolute intransigence proclaimed by the People’s Party was an error and no one is bound to serve an error’ (‘Ove l’intesa è necessaria per impedire l’avanzata socialista, l’intesa è un dovere. Le direttive e la disciplina del partito! Ma quando queste si oppongono a un dovere, è chiaro che è il dovere che deve prevalere, e le direttive e la disciplina debbono porsi in disparte. Insomma, l’intransigenza assoluta proclamata dal Partito popolare è stata un errore e nessuno è tenuto a servire a un errore’); Filippo Crispolti, Corone e porpore: ricordi personali (Milan: Treves, 1937), pp. 238–39. 24 ‘No one can deny the conscience of every faithful Catholic, whatever party he may belong to, to be asked to accept, for all religious and moral issues, which political and social action does so often involve that it be guided and directed by the sole spiritual authority whose competence they recognize: the Church’ (‘Nessuno può negare alla coscienza di ogni fedele cattolico, a qualunque partito appartenga, di chiedere di accettare, per tutte le questioni religiose e morali, che l’azione politica e sociale involge sì spesso, guida ed indirizzo all’unica autorità spirituale che riconosce in ciò competente: la Chiesa’); commentary published without an author or a title in L’Osservatore Romano, 18 February 1921.

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the relative freedom granted to it by the Vatican, which was not an inch more than the obedience that popular leaders, as professed Catholics, owed the ecclesiastic authority.25 Benedict XV’s approval of the party was already very cautious. On 5 February 1919, the pontiff invited Father Rosa ‘to postpone definitive judgement until [the PPI] had shown, in practice, what it truly stood for’.26 Mario Sturzo, Bishop of Piazza Armerina, wrote a letter to the Pope on 12 October 1920, stating: ‘I want what Your Beatitude wants. Certainly, however, Your Beatitude does not want the ruin of the PPI’. On this, the Pope, who was increasingly unsure about it, noted: ‘And why not?’.27 Moreover, the pontiff ’s uncertainties were those of his diplomacy. Gasparri, another Rampollian, knew that the Church reasons according to the measure of eternity and that party forms are transient, and the sostituto Federico Tedeschini thought in exactly the same way. On 30 January 1921, after the results of the Milanese administrative elections, in the margin of a letter received from the assistant of the Federazione giovanile diocesana (Diocesan Youth Federation) of Milan, Giovanni Rossi noted: ‘Even if the PPI were to die, no one would cry’.28 Even more radical pronouncements came from bishops, at least judging from the pastoral letter of 25 July 1920 in which Tommaso Boggiani, Archbishop of Genoa, blindly attacked the party that ‘is not, does not call itself and can in no way be called Catholic’ and that ‘today associates with liberals, tomorrow with Freemasons, and thereafter with the socialists’.29 They also noted, in some areas in particular, such as Romano Cocchi’s Bergamo, Guido Miglioli’s Cremona and Giuseppe Corazzin’s Treviso, and during the agrarian unrest of 1919–20, that the imagination and words of those who, within the entire spectrum of opinions, from those of good faith to those with keen interests, were scandalized by the sight of priests who, ‘preparing the path for […] socialists’, went further than ‘the most daring communist conceptions’ and competed with ‘Errico Malatesta in incendiary concoctions to stir up this people’: We can even tolerate that the clerical laity […], generously sowing the seeds of Bolshevism, wants to create a political pedestal, but that the Church through its ministers should become an accomplice in this is not admissible.30

25 Pietro Scoppola, Coscienza religiosa e democrazia nell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1966), pp. 312–16. 26 ‘Differire il giudizio definitivo a quando avrà mostrato nella pratica che cosa è veramente’; Sale, Popolari, I, pp. 38–39. 27 ‘Voglio quello che V. B. vorrà. Certo però che V. B. non vorrà la rovina del PPI’; ‘e perchè no?’; AES, Italia, 955 P. O., fasc. 346, ff. 16–17. 28 ‘Muora [sic] pure il Pipì, nessuno piangerà’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1921, rubr. 80, fasc. unico, f. 6. 29 ‘Non è, non si chiama, e non si può in alcun modo chiamare cattolico’; ‘oggi dovrà associarsi ai liberali, domani ai massoni, poscia ai socialisti’; AES, Italia, 955 P. O., fasc. 348, f. 10, ‘L’Azione Cattolica e il Partito popolare italiano. Lettera al clero e al popolo dell’Archidiocesi’, 25 July 1920. 30 ‘La via ai […] socialisti’; ‘le più ardite concezioni comuniste’; ‘con l’Errico Malatesta nelle incendiarie concioni per sobillare questo popolo’; ‘Che il laicato clericale […] voglia, seminando a piene mani il germe del bolscevismo, crearsi un piedistallo politico possiamo anche tollerarlo, ma che la Chiesa con i suoi ministri si faccia complice di ciò, non è ammissibile’; all the quotations are taken from memoranda sent to the Holy See, ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1920, rubr. 80, fasc. 1.

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It was upon this uneasy point that Mussolini soon began to pound, placing himself between the Holy See and the PPI. This was seen, for example, in an article published on 15 December 1920, a month after administrative elections, when the editor of Il Popolo d’Italia noted the growing ‘disagreement between party and Church, between politics and religion, between bishops and organizers of crowds’.31 Even further, on 21 October 1921, commenting on the Third PPI Congress in Venice, he emphasized the issue at the heart of the Vatican’s concerns, that of a ‘double obedience’. Who can rule out a conflict between the people who, as a party, obey Don Sturzo and the people who, as Catholics, do not recognize any authority other than that emanating from the Vicar of God? Conflicts of this kind […] have already occurred. There have already been clamorous rebellions in which the ‘party’ banished the ‘Catholic’; in which the profane element overwhelmed the religious one; in which the union organizer refused to obey the pastor of the diocese. The People’s Party’s weak point is precisely its special situation in regard to the Vatican.32

2. Benedict XV, the Bishops, and the 1921 Squadrism Given these general coordinates, how did Benedict XV follow the developments in post-war Italy and, in the matter in question, the appearance of squadrism and the rise of the Blackshirts in 1920–21? First of all, it should be pointed out that, seeking in the papers of the Apostolic See or its official (L’Osservatore Romano) or unofficial (La Civiltà Cattolica) news outlets for traces of the initial occurrences of Fascism, that is to say, of a severe-futurist, urban and Milanese bent, would be a fruitless endeavour. Such traces that can be made out in the confused picture of post-war political violence (nearly) always lead back to the socialists. References to the movement were equally rare in the phase between the electoral debacle of November 1919 and the autumn–winter of 1920,33 when the Vatican was faced with many other problems, which were made evident in the pages of La Civiltà Cattolica: the ‘economic setbacks’, the ‘financial worries’ 31 ‘Dissidio fra Partito e Chiesa, fra politica e religione, fra i vescovi e gli organizzatori di folle’; see Benito Mussolini, ‘Decadenza’, in OOBM, XVI, pp. 56–57 (p. 57). 32 ‘Chi può escludere un conflitto fra il popolare che come partitante obbedisce a don Sturzo e il popolare che come cattolico non riconosce altra autorità all’infuori di quella che emana dal Vicario di Dio? Conflitti di tal genere […] si sono già verificati. Si sono già avute clamorose ribellioni in cui il “popolare” bandiva il “cattolico”; in cui l’elemento profano sopraffaceva il religioso; in cui l’organizzatore sindacale rifiutava obbedienza al Pastore della Diocesi. Il punto debole del Partito Popolare è appunto in questa sua speciale situazione davanti al Vaticano’; See Benito Mussolini, ‘Popolarismo (sul terzo congresso di Venezia)’, in OOBM, XVII (1955), pp. 193–95. 33 See, for example, ‘Giornata di sangue a Milano’, L’Osservatore Romano, 19 November 1919; ‘La giornata di sciopero a Milano’, L’Osservatore Romano, 20 November 1919. La Civiltà Cattolica then called Il Popolo d’Italia a paper full of ‘filthy blasphemies and ignoble turpitudes’ (‘di luride bestemmie e ignobili turpitudini’), lamenting that ‘the flag of patriotism and national honour’ (‘la bandiera del patriottismo e dell’onore nazionale’) had fallen into Mussolini’s hands. See ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 1 (1920), pp. 472–74.

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and ‘the diplomatic defeats and political setbacks, specifically for the configuration of the Adriatic and the question of Fiume’.34 It was only at the end of D’Annunzio’s endeavour, which the Holy See followed closely and continued to follow through the reports of the city’s Apostolic Administrator to the Secretariat of State,35 and, equally, the exhaustion of the maximalist socialist thrust and the beginning of the industrial and agrarian reaction, that squadrism became visible even from St Peter’s. Both L’Osservatore Romano and La Civiltà Cattolica then began to deal systematically with the Blackshirts, starting precisely from those episodes that historical analysis has marked as the source of their offensive: the events of Palazzo d’Accursio in Bologna on 21 November 1920 and at Castello Estense in Ferrara on 20 December 1920. From then until the spring of 1921, they dealt with them by referring to the duty of the pacification of souls but, according to their first model of interpretation, judging ‘what was called Fascism’ to be both the ‘fruit of the de-Christianization that is being absorbed by the people’ and the result of the socialists’ ‘unprecedented arrogance’ and the government’s inaction. Yet, while deploring the ‘organized bands of ex-combatants claiming the right to take justice into their own hands’ with their excesses and adoption of the same ‘methods employed by their adversaries’, L’Osservatore Romano made a distinction: ‘While some have the same programme of the destruction of constituted order […], others, albeit with excesses, aim to defend order and with it the freedom of all citizens. It is an essential difference, which cannot be overlooked’. There was also a difference between the two forms of violence: ‘One is effective and programmatic. The other is, nearly always, defensive and, on the part of many, effected so dismissively that it cannot stop the red Landsknechte mercenaries’.36 Certainly not everything was so clear if, from the early months of the year, L’Osservatore Romano,

34 ‘Disdette economiche’; ‘angustie finanziarie’, ‘le sconfitte diplomatiche e le disdette politiche, nominatamente per l’assetto dell’Adriatico e la questione di Fiume’; see [Enrico Rosa,] ‘La “follia del naturalismo” nel “folle anno” che è finito’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 1 (1920), p. 98. 35 These issues are treated in Guasco, Cattolici e fascisti, pp. 126–35. This is to be read along with Celso Costantini, Foglie secche: esperienze e memorie di un vecchio prete (Rome: Tipografia Artistica, 1948), pp. 343–432. On Fiume as a ‘paradigm of indiscipline’ (‘paradigma dell’indisciplina’) of the army and the government’s inability to manage it, see Marco Mondini, La politica delle armi: il ruolo dell’esercito nell’avvento del fascismo (Rome: Laterza, 2006), pp. 42–51; as a ‘political laboratory’ (‘laboratorio politico’) of Fascism, see Marina Cattaruzza, L’Italia e il confine orientale (1866–2006) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007). 36 ‘Quello che si chiama il fascismo’; ‘frutto della scristianizzazione che si viene consumando nel popolo’; ‘metodi o sistemi dei suoi avversari’; ‘bande organizzate degli ex combattenti che si arrogano il diritto di farsi giustizia da sé’; ‘mentre gli uni hanno nello stesso programma la distruzione dell’ordine costituito […] gli altri, pure eccedendo, mirano alla difesa dell’ordine e con esso alla libertà di tutti i cittadini. La differenza è essenziale, e non può essere trascurata’; ‘l’una è effettiva e programmatica, l’altra è, quasi sempre, difensiva e per parte di molti fatta in modo così dimesso che non riesce a fermare i lanzichenecchi rossi’; ‘Pacificazione’, L’Osservatore Romano, 7 November 1920. On the events of Palazzo d’Accursio, see ‘Giornata di sangue a Bologna’, L’Osservatore Romano, 23 November 1920 and ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 4 (1920), pp. 472–74; 72, 1 (1921), pp. 180–81, and 272–73. For commentaries, see Bologna 1920: le origini del fascismo, ed. by Luciano Casali (Bologna: Cappelli, 1982) and Fabio Fabbri, Le origini della guerra civile: l’Italia dalla Grande Guerra al fascismo (1918–1921) (Turin: UTET, 2009), pp. 337–68. On

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on the one hand, considered socialism to have been routed, forced by the Fascist offensive to ‘return […] to legality’ after a ‘history of unimpeded violence and unpunished oppression’ while, on the other, it started to judge that same Fascism as ‘a reactionary phenomenon, initially neither social nor political, but only natural and human’, ‘arising from a disturbed order in order to re-establish it’37 and as a factor of dangerous anarchy, if not categorically the most serious danger to the state. On the other hand, the first type of approach changed, according to how it was interpreted, in correspondence to the squadrist boom in the spring–summer of 1920 and the contingent entry of Fascists into parliament. This was also because the clergy and Catholic organizations, particularly in some areas, such as along the eastern border, had become the object of the Blackshirts’ attention. It suffices to reread the letters that the bishops sent the Pope or Secretary of State between March and July 1921 to understand how the Fasci, previously considered a kind of anti-subversive barrier, in those months came to be considered persecutors of the Church. It also suffices to obtain information from articles in the Holy See’s publications, which attentively followed the impressive increase in violence that the new movement, welcomed in the national bloc by Giolitti, employed as the 15 May elections drew near. L’Osservatore Romano, while not modifying its line of opposition and, in substance, equating red with black violence and characterizing socialism as the initial aggressor and Fascism as the (bourgeois) victim whose reaction exceeded what was lawful, started to call for the need for pacification that was the ‘prime duty’ of the various political forces. In the same sense, La Civiltà Cattolica was ready to rebuke the Blackshirts for overstepping ‘the limits, sinning by that same arbitrary violence for which the subversives were rightly reproached and increasing confusion instead of serving order and tranquillity’.38 It was not surprising, therefore, that, in a confidential conversation with Ludwig von Pastor on 19 April, Gasparri condemned the violence of the Fascists, calling them ‘madmen […] stepping forward in a worse way than the socialists’.39 The ‘bravado’ of the events at Castello Estense, instead see ‘Conflitto a Ferrara tra fascisti e socialisti’, L’Osservatore Romano, 22 December 1920 and ‘Dopo la tragedia di Ferrara: invito alla pace dell’arcivescovo’, L’Osservatore Romano, 26–28 December 1920. 37 ‘A rientrare […] nella legalità’; ‘una storia di facili violenze e di impunite sopraffazioni’; ‘fenomeno di reazione, inizialmente né sociale, né politica, ma solo naturale e umana’; ‘sorto dall’ordine turbato, per ristabilirlo’; T. [Giuseppe Dalla Torre], ‘L’autorità della legge’, L’Osservatore Romano, 5 February 1921. 38 ‘Limiti della misura, peccando di quella stessa arbitraria violenza giustamente rinfacciata ai sovversivi e raddoppiando la confusione invece di servire l’ordine e la tranquillità’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 2 (1921), pp. 371–73. On the 1921 elections, see Pier Luigi Ballini, Le elezioni nella storia d’Italia dall’Unità al fascismo: profilo storico-statistico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), pp. 195–207 and Maria Serena Piretti, Le elezioni politiche in Italia dal 1848 a oggi (Rome: Laterza, 1995), pp. 232 ff. 39 ‘Pazzi […] che si fanno innanzi in modo peggiore dei socialisti’; see Ludwig von Pastor, Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen 1854–1928, ed. by Wilhelm Wühr (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1950), p. 704: ‘The cardinal condemned the violent acts of the nationalist fascist party in the strongest terms’ (‘das gewaltsame Vorgehen der nationalistischen Partei des Fascisti der Kardinal auf der schärfste’); for Pastor’s report see Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Il Vaticano fra fascismo e nazismo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973), p. 47 and, for an even harsher judgement, p. 384.

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the ‘madmen’, accustomed to ‘abusive bullying’, who encouraged ‘brotherhood by bomb strikes’ and boasted of ‘bringing true freedom by threatening death to those who did not bend the neck to their yoke’,40 marked both the eve of the election, during which Father Rosa called the Fascists the ‘anti-clerical and Masonic’ result of liberalism, ‘not much better than the socialists and anarchists’,41 and the weeks following the vote. On 20 May 1921, the Archbishop of Udine, Antonio Anastasio Rossi, reported on the ‘bloody roar of the Fascist assassin’, on the ‘outlaw executors’, who were ‘enemies of God and his Church’, once again in Father Rosa’s words. It was a document that contained further elements of evaluation, in which the Bishop recounted some specific modalities of the squads’ activity: the convergence of those ‘from Udine, Trieste, Monfalcone and even Ferrara’ testified to their coordination and territorial mobility, as well as the plurality of their objectives. He wrote of the attack on ‘buildings belonging to the Archiepiscopal See’42 in retaliation for the good electoral results obtained by the PPI. Furthermore, yet differently, describing the particular situation in the Isonzo area, on 24 May the Bishop of Trieste, Angelo Bartolomasi, informed the Secretariat of State about abuses committed in the diocese against the Slovenian clergy: ‘The approaching political elections and the multiplication of Fascists, audacious young individuals, have sparked a persistent, daily struggle here, which is unfortunately also bloody. Many priests were victims to it, especially parish priests who, battered, beaten and wounded, were dragged off or forced to flee’. In the letter, the prelate reiterated the government’s impotence (‘the impression is that such enterprises are a legalized and desired brigandage, or at least are not prevented by the authorities’) along with the complicity of law enforcement (‘the military themselves have proven either indifferent to the scenes, or worse, some have even been involved’).43

40 ‘Le bravate’; ‘forsennati’; ‘abuso della prepotenza’; ‘alla fratellanza a colpi di bombe’; ‘di recare la vera libertà minacciando la morte a chi non piega il collo al loro giogo’; Engel-Janosi, Il Vaticano, p. 384. For an overview of the violence of the electoral campaign, see ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 2 (1921), pp. 184–86, 275–77 and 370–74. 41 ‘Anticlericale e massonico’; ‘non troppo migliori dei socialisti e degli anarchici’; [Enrico Rosa,] ‘I torti dei partiti e i doveri dei cattolici’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 2 (1921), pp. 193–209. 42 ‘Ruggito sanguinario dell’assassino fascista’; ‘esecutori fuori della legge’; ‘nemici di Dio e della sua Chiesa’; ‘di Udine, Trieste, Monfalcone, e persino di Ferrara’; ‘edificii di proprietà della sedia arcivescovile’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1921, rubr. 80, f. 95. On the events in Udine, see ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 2 (1921), p. 467; La Santa Sede, i vescovi veneti e l’autonomia politica dei cattolici (1918–1922), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Trieste: LINT, 1994), pp. 452–53 and Mimmo Franzinelli, Squadristi: protagonisti e tecniche della violenza fascista (1919–1922) (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), pp. 331–32. 43 ‘L’avvicinarsi delle elezioni politiche e il moltiplicarsi di fascisti, giovani audaci, hanno suscitato qui una lotta quotidiana, incalzante, purtroppo anche cruenta. Di essa furono vittime parecchi sacerdoti, specialmente parroci, che, malmenati, percossi, danneggiati, vennero asportati o costretti a fuggire’; ‘l’impressione è che tali imprese siano un brigantaggio legalizzato e voluto, o almeno non impedito dalle autorità’; ‘i militari stessi si dimostrarono o indifferenti di fronte alle scenacce o, peggio, alcuni anche conniventi’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1921, rubr. 3, fasc. 5, ff. 40–41. On the ‘collusion between military commands and squadrists’ (‘collusione tra comandi militari e squadristi’) during the months of the Giolitti government, see Mondini, La politica delle armi, pp. 83 ff. and Adrian Lyttelton, La conquista del potere: il fascismo dal 1919 al 1929 (Rome: Laterza, 1994), pp. 65–66.

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A week later, on 21 May, the Bishop of Poreč i Pula, Croatia, Trifone Pederzolli, asked the Secretariat of State about the issue that most concerned him: ‘The recent phenomenon of modern society, the so-called Fascism that, if well-moderated in the defence of beauty and justice, might have led to good consequences, has also been manifested in Istria’, but in an orgy of nationalism that has driven it ‘to insulting acts, even to interfering in Church matters’.44 For his part, the Bishop of Treviso, Andrea Giacinto Longhin, in a report sent to the Pope on 8 July 1921, complaining about the passivity ‘of the authority for public safety, which in the face of these murderous expeditions lets them be if when it does not even encourage the delinquents’, clearly noted all the support of which the squadrists could avail themselves: the farmhands […] suddenly called on the Fascists in Padua to step in with terror and fury. In fact, on Saturday morning, the Fascists arrived in two trucks, armed with revolvers and other instruments of death. Then, led by a farmer from the noble farmhands, they broke into some of the main houses of the landowners, who were still in bed, spreading terror through threats, searches and other acts of vandalism. Some heads of families were arrested by those very Fascists and then taken away by truck while their loved ones cried out anxiously.45 Further testimony came from Liguria, where on 21 July, in the aftermath of one of the few and most sensational defeats suffered by the Fasci, the Chapter Vicar of Sarzana reported the episode to Gasparri. In response, he received a telegram signed by Benedict XV, appealing to principles of Christian ‘brotherhood’ as an antidote to ‘new fratricidal conflicts’ in the hope of ‘complete social pacification’.46

44 ‘Il recentissimo fenomeno della moderna società, il così detto fascismo, che, ben moderato entro la difesa del bello e del giusto, avrebbe potuto apportare delle buone conseguenze, si è manifestato anche in Istria’; ‘ad atti inconsulti, d’ingerirsi fin nelle questioni di Chiesa’; AES, Italia, 975 P. O., fasc. 356, ff. 14–15. 45 ‘Dell’autorità di Pubblica Sicurezza, che dinanzi a queste spedizioni assassine lascia correre, quando non incoraggia i delinquenti’; ‘I fittanzieri […] chiamarono improvvisamente i fascisti di Padova, per imporsi col terrore e con la furia. Difatti, sabato mattina per tempo arrivarono su due camions i fascisti, armati di rivoltella e altri strumenti di morte; indi, guidati da un fattore dei signori fittanzieri, irruppero in alcune delle principali case dei coloni, che erano ancora a letto, spargendo il terrore con minacce, perquisizioni e altri atti vandalici. Alcuni capi di famiglia furono dagli stessi fascisti arrestati e poi fra i pianti angosciosi dei loro cari portati via col camion’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1921, rubr. 80, ff. 119–20 (underlined in the original); see La Santa Sede, ed. by Scottà, pp. 233–34. On the Fascist occupation of Treviso on 13 July, see the photographic documentation maintained in ASV, Segreteria di Stato, rubr. 80, fasc. 1, ff. 8–8c; ‘Scene di terrore a Treviso’, L’Osservatore Romano, 15 July 1921; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 3 (1921), p. 275; Franzinelli, Squadristi, pp. 34, 85–86. For an overview of the situation in Treviso and the events of July of 1921, see Francesco Scattolin, Assalto a Treviso: la spedizione fascista del 13 luglio 1921 (Verona: Cierre, 2001). 46 ‘Umana fratellanza’; ‘nuovi conflitti fratricidi’; ‘completa pacificazione sociale’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1921, rubr. 80, ff. 127–28. For an account of the events at Sarzana, see ‘La tragedia di Sarzana’, L’Osservatore Romano, 23 July 1921; ‘Dopo la tragedia di Sarzana’, L’Osservatore Romano, 24 July 1921; and ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose italiane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 3 (1921), pp. 275–76. See also Sandro Setta, Renato Ricci: dallo squadrismo alla Repubblica sociale italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986),

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And the Pope? It is not easy to say because the documentation does not allow us to recreate his attitude completely. However, after a silence of a few months that seemed to entail prudent meditation and the formation of judgement, two documents, the handwritten prayer O Dio di bontà of 25 July 1921 and the letter to Bartolomasi a week later, permit some light to be shed on the subject. In the prayer, it is the universal pastor who speaks, remaining super partes, that is to say, without attributing any specific blame, but calling for the pacification of hearts and deploring the ‘fierce hatred that makes men of the same family persecute and kill each other’ and turns the land into ‘a bloodstained field of civil war’.47 The day before, however, the Pope had received the extensive, detailed collective denunciation, backdated to events of the previous year, such as the assault on the Narodni Dom (National Hall) of the Hotel Balkan in Trieste on 13 July 1920, sent by the episcopacy of the dioceses of Trieste, Gorizia, Poreč i Pula and Ljubljana through the Archbishop of Gorizia, Franz Borgia Sedej. The situation was considered so serious that on 2 August Benedict XV sent Bartolomasi a letter deploring the violence, which was published in the Trieste journal Vita Nuova.48 Here, it was above all the pastor of the Catholic flock that was speaking. As Gasparri pointed out on 11 August, it was a response to the ‘sacrilegious attacks in which many priests were victims of acts on the part of Fascists’. We are not just looking at the most serious public criticism that Benedict XV made of Fascism. The official text and handwritten corrections made before its publication show how, in the summer of 1921, the pontiff had perfectly grasped some of the profound reasons why Fascism was being embraced: from the reigning authorities’ support of the myths that were referred to and sustained by the movement itself. And such greater sorrow has been caused by Our knowledge of these facts, inasmuch as it shows that, due to the deplorable deficiency of the authorities responsible for preventing and suppressing them, the authors of such enormous crimes go unpunished, and this increases their boldness and almost legitimizes their violence while, on the other hand, the fear and mistrust of the defenceless pp. 39–47; Giuseppe Mayda, Il pugnale di Mussolini: storia di Amerigo Dùmini, sicario di Matteotti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004), pp. 92–96; and Franzinelli, Squadristi, pp. 120–29 and 345. On the events in Treviso as a demonstration of the local authorities’ ability to keep the army’s intemperance under control and on the events in Sarzana as a demonstration of the military’s actual powers of repression, see Mondini, La politica delle armi, pp. 138–41. 47 ‘Odio feroce per cui gli uomini d’una stessa famiglia s’inseguono e s’uccidono’; ‘un campo cruento di lotte civili’; Benedict XV, O Dio di bontà, 25 July 1921 [accessed 10 January 2019]. an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 312–13. See also ‘La preghiera del papa per la pacificazione degli animi’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 72, 3 (1921), pp. 285–86. 48 See Fulvio Salimbeni, ‘Vita Nuova di Trieste e la lotta politica italiana dal 1920 al 1925’, in Chiesa, Azione Cattolica e fascismo nell’Italia settentrionale durante il pontificato di Pio XI (1922–1939), ed. by Paolo Pecorari (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1979), pp. 821–39 and Liliana Ferrari, ‘Il giornale cattolico triestino Vita nuova (1920–1943)’, Storia e problemi contemporanei, 16, 33 (2003), pp. 21–52.

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victims increases. We are sure that these excesses are condemned by all persons of good faith. Nor do we doubt that, when the political passion for which they were committed will leave room for reflection, there will be remorse and shame in those responsible for their deeds. That notwithstanding, we must deplore the fact that, for the purposes of a too easily misunderstood politics, all restraints of morality and humanity are being broken, with obvious harm to the very ideals that wish to be advocated by such illicit means.49

Bibliography Ballini, Pier Luigi, Le elezioni nella storia d’Italia dall’Unità al fascismo: profilo storicostatistico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988) Becker, Jean-Jacques, Le Pape et la Grande Guerre (Paris: Bayard, 2006) Boniface, Xavier, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014) Buonaiuti, Ernesto, Pellegrino di Roma: la generazione dell’esodo (Rome: Darsena, 1945) Casali, Luciano, ed., Bologna 1920: le origini del fascismo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1982) Cattaruzza, Marina, L’Italia e il confine orientale (1866–2006) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007) Ceci, Lucia, Il papa non deve parlare: Chiesa, fascismo e guerra d’Etiopia (Rome: Laterza, 2010) Costantini, Celso, Foglie secche: esperienze e memorie di un vecchio prete (Rome: Tipografia Artistica, 1948) Crispolti, Filippo, Corone e porpore: ricordi personali (Milan: Treves, 1937) De Giorgi, Fulvio, ‘Forme spirituali, forme simboliche, forme politiche: la devozione al S. Cuore’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 48, 2 (1994), pp. 365–459 De Giorgi, Fulvio, ‘Linguaggi totalitari e retorica dell’intransigenza: Chiesa, metafora militare e strategie educative’, in Chiesa, cultura e educazione in Italia tra le due guerre, ed. by Luciano Pazzaglia (Brescia: La Scuola, 2003), pp. 55–103 De Marco, Vittorio, Un diplomatico vaticano all’Eliseo: il cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti (1872–1933) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984) Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Il Vaticano fra fascismo e nazismo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973)

49 ‘E tanto maggior dolore Ci ha procurato la conoscenza di tali fatti, in quanto mostra che per deplorevole deficienza delle autorità cui spetta impedirli e reprimerli rimangono impuniti gli autori di tali enormi misfatti delitti e ciò aumenta la loro baldanza e legittima quasi la loro violenza, mentre s’accresce d’altra parte il timore e la sfiducia delle inermi vittime. Siamo bensì sicuri che tali eccessi sono anche riprovati da quelle autorità cui spetta impedirli da tutte le persone di buona fede; né dubitiamo che quando la passione politica, per la quale sono commessi, sedata, lascerà luogo a riflessione, si susciterà negli aggressori nei responsabili il rimorso e la vergogna del loro operato: ciò non pertanto dobbiamo deplorare il fatto che per i fini di una male intesa politica troppo facilmente, ormai si rompe ogni ritegno di moralità ed umanità, con evidente danno degli stessi ideali che si con tali illeciti mezzi si vogliono propugnare. Del resto è evidente che le inumanità commesse da quei faziosi tanto più veementemente vanno condannate in quanto son commesse in nome di una civiltà di cui essi si vantano, e con certo intendimento di percuotere sacrilegamente i pastori per disperdere il gregge’; AES, Italia, 991 P. O., fasc. 356, ff. 34–35 (strikeout in the original).

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Fabbri, Fabio, Le origini della guerra civile: l’Italia dalla Grande Guerra al fascismo (1918– 1921) (Turin: UTET, 2009) Ferrari, Liliana, ‘Il giornale cattolico triestino Vita nuova (1920–1943)’, Storia e problemi contemporanei, 16, 33 (2003), pp. 21–52 Formigoni, Guido, L’Italia dei cattolici: fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998) Fouilloux, Étienne, Au cœur du XXe siècle religieux (Paris: Les éditions ouvrières, 1993) Franzinelli, Mimmo, Squadristi: protagonisti e tecniche della violenza fascista (1919–1922) (Milan: Mondadori, 2003) Ganapini, Luigi, Il nazionalismo cattolico: i cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970) Giannini, Amedeo, ed., Una nuova discussione sui rapporti tra Chiesa e Stato in Italia (Rome: Libreria di scienze e lettere, 1921) Guasco, Alberto, Cattolici e fascisti: la Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del regime (1919–1925) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013) Guasco, Antonio, ‘L’uso bellico della Bibbia in Gabriele D’Annunzio’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 108 (2014), pp. 339–54 Hrabovec, Emilia, Der Heilige Stuhl und die Slowakei 1918–1922 im Kontext internationaler Beziehungen (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2002) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Labita, Vito, ‘Il Milite Ignoto: dalle trincee all’Altare della Patria’, in Gli occhi di Alessandro: potere sovrano e sacralità da Alessandro Magno a Ceauşescu, ed. by Sergio Bertelli and Cristiano Grottanelli (Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1990), pp. 120–53 Latour, Francis, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996) Launay, Marcel, Benoît XV (1914–1922): un pape pour la paix (Paris: Cerf, 2014) Lesti, Sante, Riti di guerra: religione e politica nell’Europa della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015) Lyttelton, Adrian, La conquista del potere: il fascismo dal 1919 al 1929 (Rome: Laterza, 1994) Malgeri, Francesco, La guerra libica (1911–1912) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1970) Margiotta Broglio, Francesco, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966) Martini, Angelo, Studi sulla questione romana e la conciliazione (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Mayda, Giuseppe, Il pugnale di Mussolini: storia di Amerigo Dùmini, sicario di Matteotti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004) Mazzone, Umberto, ‘Cristiani davanti alla prima guerra mondiale’, in La Chiesa e la ‘memoria divisa’ del Novecento, ed. by Alessandra Deoriti and Giovanni Turbanti (Bologna: Pendragon, 2016), pp. 39–62 Mazzone, Umberto, ‘A Religious War? Suggestions from the First World War’, Annali di storia dell’esegesi, 26, 2 (2009), pp. 251–77 Menozzi, Daniele, Sacro Cuore: un culto tra devozione interiore e restaurazione cristiana della società (Rome: Viella, 2001)

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Migliore, Sandra, Mistica povertà: riscritture francescane tra Otto e Novecento (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2001) Mondini, Marco, La politica delle armi: il ruolo dell’esercito nell’avvento del fascismo (Rome: Laterza, 2006) Moro, Renato, ‘I cattolici italiani tra pace e guerra: dall’inizio del secolo al Concilio Vaticano II’, in Guerra e pace nell’Italia del Novecento: politica estera, cultura politica e correnti dell’opinione pubblica, ed. by Luigi Goglia, Renato Moro and Leopoldo Nuti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), pp. 359–400 Moro, Renato, ‘Il “modernismo buono”: la “modernizzazione” cattolica tra fascismo e postfascismo come problema storiografico’, Storia contemporanea, 19, 4 (1988), pp. 625–716 Moro, Renato, ‘Nazione, cattolicesimo e regime fascista’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 1, 1 (2004), pp. 129–47 Moro, Renato, ‘La religione e la “nuova epoca”: cattolicesimo e modernità tra le due guerre mondiali’, in Il modernismo tra cristianità e secolarizzazione: atti del Convegno internazionale di Urbino, 1–4 ottobre 1997, ed. by Alfonso Botti and Rocco Cerrato (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2000), pp. 513–73 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV e il nazionalismo’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 17, 3 (1996), pp. 541–66 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Benedetto XV e la sacralizzazione della prima guerra mondiale’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 165–82 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Chiesa cattolica e modernità’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 65, 2 (2011), pp. 563–71 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Mussolini, Benito, Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, ed. by Duilio Susmel and Edoardo Susmel, 36 vols (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–63) Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, Miei rapporti di governo con la Santa Sede (Milan: Garzanti, 1944) Pacelli, Francesco, Diario della conciliazione: con verbali e appendice di documenti (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1959) Paolini, Gabriele, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008) Pastor, Ludwig von, Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen 1854–1928, ed. by Wilhelm Wühr (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1950) Pettinaroli, Laura, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Piretti, Maria Serena, Le elezioni politiche in Italia dal 1848 a oggi (Rome: Laterza, 1995) Piva, Francesco, Uccidere senza odio: pedagogia di guerra nella storia della Gioventù cattolica italiana (1868–1943) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Poulat, Émile, Église contre bourgeoisie: introduction au devenir du catholicisme actuel (Tournai: Casterman, 1977)

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Rémond, René, Religion et société en Europe: essai sur la sécularisation des sociétés européennes aux XIXe et XXe siècles (1789–1998) (Paris: Seuil, 1998) Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Riccardi, Andrea, ‘La Chiesa cattolica, il comunismo e l’Unione Sovietica’, in La Chiesa cattolica e il totalitarismo: VIII Giornata Luigi Firpo: atti del convegno, Torino, 25–26 ottobre 2001, ed. by Vincenzo Ferrone (Firenze: Olschki, 2004), pp. 79–92 Rossini, Giuseppe, ed., Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962 (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963) Ruffini, Francesco, ‘La questione romana e l’ora presente’, Nuova Antologia, 1 June 1921, pp. 193–206 Rumi, Giorgio, Santità sociale in Italia tra Otto e Novecento (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1995) Rusconi, Roberto, and Tommaso Caliò, eds, San Francesco d’Italia: santità e identità nazionale (Rome: Viella, 2011) Sale, Giovanni, Popolari, chierici e camerati, 2 vols (Milan: Jaca Book, 2006–07), I: Popolari e destra cattolica al tempo di Benedetto XV, 1919–1922 (2006) Salimbeni, Fulvio, ‘Vita Nuova di Trieste e la lotta politica italiana dal 1920 al 1925’, in Chiesa, Azione Cattolica e fascismo nell’Italia settentrionale durante il pontificato di Pio XI (1922–1939), ed. by Paolo Pecorari (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1979), pp. 821–39 Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche e dall’Istituto di Storia Universale dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Mosca: Mosca, 23–25 giugno 1998 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002) Scattolin, Francesco, Assalto a Treviso: la spedizione fascista del 13 luglio 1921 (Verona: Cierre, 2001) Scoppola, Pietro, Coscienza religiosa e democrazia nell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1966) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Scottà, Antonio, ed., La Santa Sede, i vescovi veneti e l’autonomia politica dei cattolici (1918–1922) (Trieste: LINT, 1994) Setta, Sandro, Renato Ricci: dallo squadrismo alla Repubblica sociale italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986) Spadolini, Giovanni, ed., Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972) Traniello, Francesco, Religione cattolica e Stato nazionale: dal Risorgimento al secondo dopoguerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007) Valeri, Nino, Da Giolitti a Mussolini: momenti della crisi del liberalismo (Florence: Parenti, 1956) Valvo, Paolo, Pio XI e la Cristiada: fede, guerra e diplomazia in Messico (1926–1929) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2016)

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Varnier, Giovanni Battista, Gli ultimi governi liberali e la questione romana (1918–1922) (Milan: Giuffrè, 1976) Veneruso, Danilo, Il seme della pace: la cultura cattolica e il nazional-imperialismo fra le due guerre (Rome: Studium, 1987) Zambarbieri, Annibale, ‘Per la storia della devozione al Sacro Cuore in Italia tra ’800 e ’900’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 41, 2 (1987), pp. 361–432

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Germany

Sascha Hinkel

Benedict XV and the German Episcopate1

1. Introduction At first glance, an essay on Benedict XV and the German episcopate would not seem to present any particular difficulties. Jörg Ernesti has, in point of fact, recently published a new biography of the Pope ‘between the fronts’ for the German-speaking world.2 However, in this work, the bishops are hardly ever mentioned. The same can be said for Josef Schmidlin’s classic work on the history of the popes in the modern era, published in 1936. It deals with fundamental themes such as the Pope’s peace initiative, his concern for prisoners of war or the restoration of diplomatic relations with the German Reich, but a close relationship between Benedict and the German episcopate seems to be missing.3 Surprisingly, the reports of Eugenio Pacelli as Nuncio in Munich also offer modest results.4 As literature offers no clues on this issue, one may ask whether the relationship between Benedict XV and the German bishops can be considered an independent theme at all. Were contemporary critics right when, together with General Erich Ludendorff, an exponent of ethnic nationalism, they claimed that the Pope was an enemy of Germany and hence a ‘French Pope’?5



1 I should like to thank Matthias Daufratshofer, Josef Jung, Maria Pia Lorenz-Filograno, Elisabeth Richter, Christoph Valentin and Hubert Wolf for the stimulating discussions on the concept and content of this essay. My thanks also go to the participants in the conference for the numerous, fruitful discussions. The essay was revised to include the results of these discussions, but the lecture style was retained. 2 Jörg Ernesti, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016). 3 Josef Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte der neuesten Zeit (Munich: Josef Kösel & Friedrich Pustet, 1933–39), III: Papsttum und Päpste im XX. Jahrhundert: Pius X. und Benedikt XV. (1903–1922) (1936), pp. 277–84. 4 Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 5 Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte, III, p. 195. See the documents connected to the topic ‘Äußerungen Erich Ludendorffs gegen die katholische Kirche im Hochverratsprozess nach dem Hitlerputsch’, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019].

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1025–1039 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118817

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2. Benedict XV: A ‘French Pope’? Three observations can be made on this topic. (1) In 1916, the Pope nominated three French bishops and a single German bishop, the Prince-Bishop of Wrocław, Adolf Bertram, to the College of Cardinals; however, the latter was only in pectore, thus a secret nomination.6 It was only in 1919 that this action was made public, while the Archbishop of Munich, Michael von Faulhaber, was not yet considered for the red hat. (2) The example of Faulhaber in particular makes it possible to understand significant differences between the German bishops and the Pope with regard to the question of peace. While he was still Bishop of Speyer, in 1914 Faulhaber described the Great War that had just erupted as ‘a textbook case of a just war’,7 while Benedict XV, in his first encyclical Ad beatissimi on 1 November of that year, stated that ‘surely there are other ways and means whereby rights can be rectified’.8 (3) For the German bishops, and for their French and Belgian brother bishops, the link between nation and religion was crucial for their own self-comprehension. After the Kulturkampf, German Catholics were late in aligning themselves with the Protestant German Empire. Cardinals Felix von Hartmann of Cologne and Bertram were seen, not without reason, as bishops of the state. In 1914, they wanted to prove that they were loyal subjects, justifying the German war of aggression as a defence desired by God, whereas the Catholic universalism expressed by the Pope did not stop at national borders.9

6 Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004), p. 65; Benedict XV, Allocutio SS. D. N. Benedicti PP. XV et creatio cardinalium S. R. E., Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 8 (1916), pp. 465–77. 7 ‘I am convinced that this military campaign will be for us, from the point of view of the ethics of war, the textbook example of a just war’ (‘Nach meiner Überzeugung wird dieser Feldzug in der Kriegsethik für uns das Schulbeispiel eines gerechten Kriegs werden’); Michael von Faulhaber, Waffen des Lichtes: Gesammelte Kriegsreden (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1915), p. 132 (emphasis in the original); Matija Gasparevic, Die Lehre vom gerechten Krieg und die Risiken des 21. Jahrhunderts: der Präventivkrieg und die militärische humanitäre Intervention (Munich: Universitätsbibliothek der Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität, 2010), pp. 30–93. 8 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 (§ 4) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 9 Heinrich Missalla, ‘Gott mit uns’: die deutsche katholische Kriegspredigt 1914–1918 (Munich: Kösel, 1968); Johann Klier, Von der Kriegspredigt zum Friedensappell: Erzbischof Michael von Faulhaber und der Erste Weltkrieg: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen katholischen Militärseelsorge (Munich: Kommissionsverlag UNI-Druck, 1991); Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991), pp. 70–89; Sascha Hinkel, Adolf Kardinal Bertram: Kirchenpolitik im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010), pp. 93–102; Ria Blaicher, ‘Gottes Strafgericht: Hirtenbriefe der deutschen Bischöfe während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 62 (2014), pp. 315–28; Bernhard Lübbers, ‘“Segne die Waffen unserer Brüder!”: die Hirtenbriefe des Regensburger Bischofs Antonius von Henle aus der Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Regensburg im Ersten Weltkrieg: Schlaglichter auf die Geschichte einer bayerischen Provinzstadt zwischen 1914 und 1918, ed. by Bernhard Lübbers and Stefan Reichmann (Regensburg:

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However, there are also arguments against the theory that Benedict was an enemy of Germany. (1) In 1921, the Pope created two German cardinals, Faulhaber of Munich and the new Archbishop of Cologne, Karl Joseph Schulte,10 noting in the consistory that this was ‘a sign of goodwill towards [their] homeland’ as well.11 (2) On the occasion of the conclave in 1914, the Austro-Hungarian and German cardinals voted, initially together as a block, for Giacomo Della Chiesa. During the vote, Cardinal Hartmann clearly departed from this block to join the integrist group led by Cardinal Gaetano De Lai.12 In his opinion, Della Chiesa had no chance because (1) his election would constitute an affront to Pius X since he had been […] Undersecretary to Rampolla and later worked along the same lines, which was why he was sent to Bologna; (2) he had an impetuous character; (3) not capable of being representative.13

It is true that on the occasion of the German dispute over trade unions14 Hartmann had a conciliatory approach; however, on the eve of the conclave, he clearly adopted an integrist stance.15 When, in the end, the Archbishop of Bologna, a well-known exponent of a moderate approach to the modernist crisis, was elected

Morsbach, 2014), pp. 105–18. The Austrian bishops offered almost identical arguments: see Wilhelm Achleitner, Gott im Krieg: die Theologie der österreichischen Bischöfe in den Hirtenbriefen zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997). 10 See Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 13, 14 (1921), pp. 521–27. 11 Friedrich Ritter von Lama, Papst und Kurie in ihrer Politik nach dem Weltkrieg (Illertissen: Martinusbuchhandlung, 1925), p. 207. 12 Scottà believes that during the conclave Hartmann stopped voting for Della Chiesa and instead voted for the Abbot General of the Subiaco Benedictines, Cardinal Domenico Serafini, which seems very plausible. See Antonio Scottà, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002), p. 574. On the election, see Josef Lenzenweger, ‘Neues Licht auf die Papstwahlen von 1914 und 1922’, TheologischPraktische Quartalschrift, 112 (1964), pp. 51–58; Maximilian Liebmann, ‘Les conclaves de Benoît XV et de Pie XI: notes du cardinal Piffl’, La revue nouvelle, 38, 7–8 (1963), pp. 34–52. 13 ‘Weil 1. seine Wahl als ein Affront gegen Pius X. gedeutet würde, da […] [er] Unterstaatssekretär des Rampolla gewesen [sei] und in seinem Sinne noch später gearbeitet habe, weshalb er auch nach Bologna kam; 2. sei er ein heftiger Charakter; 3. nicht repräsentationsfähig’; Lenzenweger, ‘Neues Licht’, p. 52; Liebmann, ‘Les conclaves’, pp. 43 ff. 14 Rudolf Brack, Deutscher Episkopat und Gewerkschaftsstreit 1900–1914 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1976). 15 ‘After dinner, there arose a sharp controversy between Bettinger and Hartmann on the trade union issue. Hartmann theoretically defended the intransigent point of view that also Protestants have to follow the instructions of the Catholic Church. There is only one truth, the Catholic one, and Christ died for all people. Bettinger supported the point of view of the unions according to which the Church had to express itself in non-religious contexts in a non-binding way’ (‘Nach dem Abendessen kam es in der Gewerkschaftsfrage zwischen Bettinger und Hartmann zu einer scharfen Kontroverse. Hartmann verteidigte theoretisch den intransigenten Standpunkt, daß auch die Protestanten den Weisungen der Kath. Kirche zu folgen haben. Es gibt nur eine Wahrheit — die Katholische und Christus ist für alle Menschen gestorben. Bettinger steht auf dem Standpunkt der Gewerkschaften, daß die Kirche auf nicht religiösem Gebiet nicht verbindlich sprechen wird’); Maximilian Liebmann,

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pope, the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, Franz von Bettinger, who was given a chair next to Della Chiesa in the randomly selected seating of the conclave, urged him to accept.16 The Bavarian Ambassador, Ritter zu Groenesteyn,17 reported with evident satisfaction the role played by the German cardinals during the conclave. Bettinger told him verbatim that ‘we made the Pope and the Pope knows it’.18 Then, when the Cardinal visited him to pay him homage after the election, Benedict called him ‘meus maximus amicus’ (‘my best friend’).19 Bettinger was able to speak openly to Benedict, asking him frankly to put an end to integrism; the Pope promised to do so and asked the Cardinal to keep him informed on the events in Germany.20 It is not known whether Bettinger, who died in the spring of 1917, obeyed this request because the collection of the archdiocesan archives in Munich is incomplete, and the reference literature does not provide information on this point.21 (3) Benedict cultivated a close personal relationship with his private chamberlain, the German Rudolf Gerlach, who from 1915 until his expulsion from Italy for espionage in 1917 enjoyed the unconditional trust of the Pope and served as the informal German ambassador to the Vatican.22

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

‘Wie werden Päpste gewählt? Die Konklave von 1914 und 1922’, in Österreich und der Heilige Stuhl im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. by Hans Paarhammer and Alfred Rinnerthaler (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 257–71 (p. 262). Konrad von Preysing, Kardinal Bettinger: nach persönlichen Erinnerungen (Regensburg: Manz, 1918), pp. 19 ff. Jörg Zedler, Bayern und der Vatikan: eine politische Biographie des letzten bayerischen Gesandten am Heiligen Stuhl Otto von Ritter (1909–1934) (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013). ‘Wir haben den Papst gemacht und der Papst weiß es’; Engelbert Maximilian Buxbaum, ‘Der Münchener Kardinal-Erzbischof Franz von Bettinger und das Konklave von 1914 im Urteil eines Zeitgenossen’, Beiträge zur altbayerischen Kirchengeschichte, 33 (1981), pp. 131–47 (p. 144). Buxbaum, ‘Der Münchener Kardinal-Erzbischof Franz von Bettinger’, p. 144. Buxbaum, ‘Der Münchener Kardinal-Erzbischof Franz von Bettinger’, p. 144. Hans Nesner, Das Erzbistum München und Freising zur Zeit des Erzbischofs und Kardinals Franziskus von Bettinger (1909–1917) (St Ottilien: EOS, 1987). According to the words spoken in January 1916 by the Austrian Ambassador to the Holy See, Johann Schönburg-Hartenstein, Gerlach acted as representative of the Central Powers to the Roman curia: ‘This young prelate owes his particular position of trust, I believe, first of all, to his simple and open nature, which perhaps, thanks to a certain righteousness, is best suited to the complex nature of the pontiff ’ (‘Dieser junge Prälat verdankt seine besondere Vertrauensstellung, wie ich glaube, in erster Linie seinem einfachen und offenen Wesen, welches sich der komplizierteren Natur des Papstes vielleicht eben durch eine gewisse Geradheit am besten anzupassen weiß’); quoted in Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960), p. 271; Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées, pp. 59–62; Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 131–41; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997); Carlotta Benedettini, ‘Le Carte Erzberger’, in Dall’Archivio Segreto Vaticano: miscellanea di testi, saggi e inventari, 10 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006–2018), VII (2004), pp. 3–102.

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(4) After the war, Benedict sent a great deal of humanitarian aid to Germany. This included substantial donations of money but also material goods, collected by the Holy See from 1920, mainly in the United States.23 Given these elements, the Pope’s alleged Germanophobia, in my opinion, offers no valid explanation of the reason why the relationship between Benedict and the German bishops has not yet become a true and proper object of study.

3. The Image and Role of the Bishops in the Perspective of the Roman Curia If for the natural sciences a negative conclusion is fully acceptable, for the human sciences, on the contrary, it presents a challenge to be overcome: what is there to write about? Schmidlin offers a clue: the Pope sent ‘prudent instructions’ to the ‘German hierarchy devastated by apostasy’ with the goal of ‘revitalizing the Church in Germany’.24 In this way the bishops appear to be passive receivers of the pontifical instructions. It might be the key to understanding the problem. Let us consider the image of the bishop provided in the Codex iuris canonici promulgated by Benedict XV in 1917. They ‘are successors to the apostles and by divine institution are placed over specific Churches, which they govern with ordinary

23 See, for example, Gasparri to Schioppa, 9 February 1920 [accessed 10 January 2019] and Gasparri to Pacelli, 25 March 1921 [accessed 10 January 2019]. Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte, III, pp. 218–26. 24 ‘The extent to which the Pope of peace, in addition to this partial exterior restoration of the German hierarchy devastated by apostasy, has at the same time done everything possible to bring about, from the warlike and spiritual plagues of swirling upheavals and decay, an internal revitalization of the Church in Germany is indicated by his prudent instructions to the German episcopacy and clergy on the reparation of damages caused by the war in Germany through religious works of Christian charity after the peace agreement’ (‘Wie sehr der Friedenspapst neben dieser äußerlichen Teilrestauration der durch den Glaubensabfall zerstörten deutschen Hierarchie zugleich auch nach Kräften die innerkirchliche Neubelebung Deutschlands aus den Kriegs- und Seelenwunden wirren Taumels und Niedergangs betrieb, lehren uns seine umsichtigen Weisungen an den deutschen Episkopat und Klerus über die Wiedergutmachung der Kriegsschäden in Deutschland durch religiöse Glaubenswerke nach dem Friedensschluß’); Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte, III, pp. 282 ff. In another passage, Schmidlin repeats that ‘after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June, Pope Benedict, on 15 July 1919, gave healthy advice and exhortations, in line with the times, to the German bishops that they should heal, soothe and repair the damages caused by the war as soon as possible after the definitive establishment of peace, the end of the war and the lifting of the hunger blockade, on the basis of the Catholic faith’ (‘Nachdem der Versailler Vertrag unterzeichnet war (28. Juni), richtete Papst Benedikt an die Bischöfe Deutschlands am 15. Juli 1919 heilsame und zeitgemäße Ratschläge und Mahnungen, um nach endlicher Herstellung des Friedens, Beendigung des Kriegs und Aufhebung der Hungerblockade auf der Grundlage des katholischen Glaubens möglichst bald die Kriegsschäden zu heilen, zu beheben und wiedergutzumachen’); Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte, III, p. 280.

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power’ and they do so ‘under the authority of the Roman pontiff ’.25 Episcopal powers are divided into the full power of the sacrament of ordination, which is indelible, and the pastoral power, which the residential bishop, but not the auxiliary bishop, has. The pastoral power, through which the reigning bishop is the legislator, judge and administrator of his diocese, can be revoked by the pope. The dependence of German bishops on the pontiff was particularly evident in the five-year faculties which the pope delegated for that length of time to the ordinary of the diocese for jurisdictional and consecratory acts.26 The main issue was granting dispensations for mixed marriages, which were common in Germany. Maintaining this image of a bishop, Benedict finally implemented the primacy of jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over all the other bishops into canon law. In this way, Della Chiesa, a diplomat and well-known adversary of integrism, became the bearer of an ecclesiology that echoed Vatican I.27 The instructions of Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri to the Munich Nuncio, Giuseppe Aversa, in November 1916, which remained valid for Pacelli, clearly reflect this image of a bishop. The Nuncio was to spur the bishops to a greater commitment to the issue of the working class28 and to use ‘dexterity and prudence […] in order to maintain good relations with the episcopacy throughout the empire […] in order to make them benevolent collaborators’.29 The result was the cooperation of bishops

25 Codex iuris canonici Pii X Pontificis maximi iussu digestus, Benedicti Papae XV auctoritate promulgatus, ed. by Pietro Gasparri (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1917), p. 86 (can. 329, § 1): ‘Episcopi sunt Apostolorum successores atque ex divina institutione peculiaribus ecclesiis praeficiuntur quas cum potestate ordinaria regunt sub auctoritate Romani Pontificis’. English translation in The 1917 or PioBenedictine Code of Canon Law, ed. by Edward N. Peters (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001), p. 132. 26 Nikolaus Hilling, ‘Fakultäten’, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 3 (1931), col. 941 ff. 27 Pastor Aeternus, 18 July 1870 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 28 ‘It does not seem possible to put right this painful fact: greater energy on the part of the episcopacy and clergy could certainly put some brakes on it, but on the other hand it has to be considered that, given the enormous needs of the population and the very active socialist propaganda, the workers are easily enticed and they join the socialist party, or they vote for its members without joining themselves’ (‘A tale doloroso fatto non si vede come possa rimediarsi: maggiore energia da parte dell’Episcopato e del Clero potrebbe certo porre un qualche freno, ma da un’altra parte bisogna considerare che, attesi gl’ingenti bisogni della popolazione e la attivissima propaganda Socialista, gli operai si lasciano facilmente allettare e si ascrivono al partito socialista o, senza ascriversi, votano per i suoi aderenti’); Gasparri to Aversa, November 1916 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See Eugenio Pacelli: die Lage der Kirche in Deutschland 1929, ed. by Hubert Wolf and Klaus Unterburger (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006), p. 37. 29 ‘From this, you can clearly see, Mgr Nuncio, how much dexterity and prudence is needed to maintain good relations with the episcopacy throughout the empire, with the most influent members of the Zentrum, and with other persons, in order to make them benevolent collaborators in the high task given them to always improve the condition of the Catholic Church in the various regions of Germany’ (‘Da ciò ben vede Mgr. Nunzio di quanta destrezza e prudenza debbasi far uso per mantenere buoni rapporti con tutto l’Episcopato dell’Impero, coi più influenti membri del Centro e con altri personaggi, allo scopo di renderli benevoli collaboratori dell’alto incarico affidatogli di migliorare sempre più le condizioni della Chiesa Cattolica nelle varie regioni della Germania’); Gasparri to Aversa, November 1916 [accessed 10 January 2019]

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as collaborators who were bound to follow instructions, with the envoy from the Apostolic See acting as their superior. This conception of the episcopal office was, in turn, in tune with the provisions in the Code of Canon Law, which attributed a double function to nuncios: they represented the Holy See not only at the diplomatic level in the country to which they were sent but were also vicars of the Vicar of Christ on earth, ‘superintendents’ of the bishops and required to inform the Pope about the situation in the dioceses.30 Pacelli’s management of his office of Nuncio in Munich and Berlin seems to have followed these guidelines. Hartmann was on good terms with Emperor Wilhelm II and the government of the Reich, from which he sought to profit in conformity to the intentions of the Roman curia. He was in contact with the Holy See directly or through the Nunciature in Munich, headed by the Dominican, Andreas Frühwirth, and, from May 1917, by Pacelli. The latter had been handling the correspondence with Hartmann since the period after the outbreak of the war when he was Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.31 Hartmann took action, for example, in Berlin regarding the question of the bombardment of the Cathedral of Reims,32 and on the divergences concerning the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines, Désiré-Joseph Mercier,33 or the Apostolic Administrator of Vilnius, Kazimierz Mikołaj Michalkiewicz.34 He also acted as an intermediary between the curia and the government of the Reich in matters of assistance to prisoners of war35 or the deportation of civilians in Belgium and in France.36 It follows that the relevance of Hartmann to the Pope and the curia diminished to the same extent 30 ‘1. Fovent, secundum normas a Sancta Sede receptas, relationes inter Sedem Apostolicam et civilia Gubernia apud quae legatione stabili funguntur; 2. In territorio sibi assignato advigilare debent in Ecclesiarum statum et Romanum Pontificem de eodem certiorem reddere’; Codex iuris canonici Pii X, p. 72 (can. 267, § 1). 31 See, for example, the correspondence between Pacelli and Hartmann between December 1915 and July 1916, available in AES, Germania, pos. 1588, 1915–16, fasc. 839, ff. 21–82. See also Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, pp. 196 ff.; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, p. 70. 32 Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe, pp. 284–320; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 54. 33 Ludwig Volk, ‘Kardinal Mercier, der deutsche Episkopat und die Neutralitätspolitik Benedikts XV. 1914–1916’, Stimmen der Zeit, 192 (1974), pp. 611–30. 34 Pacelli to Gasparri, 4 January 1918 [accessed 10 January 2019]. On this point, see Sascha Hinkel, ‘Critical Online Edition of the Nuncial Reports of Eugenio Pacelli (1917–1929)’, in Church History between Rome and Vilnius: Challenges to Christianity from the Early Modern Ages to the 20th Century, ed. by Arūnas Streikus (Vilnius: LKMA, 2012), pp. 89–95. 35 Benedict XV, Ex quo pontificatum, 8 November 1914 [accessed 10 January 2019]; Benedict XV, Gratum equidem, 18 October 1914 [accessed 10 January 2019]; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, pp. 100, 110–21 and 264. 36 See, for example, Pacelli to Gasparri, 29 September 1917 [accessed 10 January 2019] in which Pacelli sent the Holy See a letter that Hermann von Stein, Prussian Minister of War, had sent to Hartmann on 22 September 1917 [accessed 10 January 2019], or Pacelli to Gasparri, 10 January 1918 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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that a Nuncio with a firm character like Pacelli took charge in Munich. Pacelli tried to make up for the lack of a nunciature in Berlin and to establish contacts with the imperial government. In these circumstances, however, the Nuncio did not turn to Hartmann, who was considered a tenacious defender of national interests,37 but rather to the diligent deputy of the Zentrum, Matthias Erzberger, with whom Pacelli had already cooperated when he was Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.38 Moreover, from the spring of 1915, Erzberger was in contact with the controversial Rudolf Gerlach, through whom the Reich leadership was able to establish direct contact with the Pope. Erzberger was a prominent representative of the left wing of German Catholicism. He supported, on the one hand, making the German Reich both parliamentary and democratic, representing on the political level a significantly different orientation from that of Benedict XV and Pacelli. On the other hand, he advocated a peace without annexations, fully in line with the designs of the pontiff. During the preparations for the call for peace, Pacelli relied completely on the mediatory activity of Erzberger, excluding Hartmann and the entire German episcopate from the negotiations. After the failure of the initiative, the Nuncio explained himself, telling Gasparri that, like all conservative German Catholics, Hartmann would be against Erzberger.39 Ultimately, Hartmann rejected the pontifical peace initiative, which coincided with Erzberger’s programme, following, as did some exponents of the Zentrum and the clergy, a conservative attitude in internal politics and a Pan-Germanist one in external policies. He complained to others about the fact that the Nuncio constantly dealt with Erzberger and not with him, who could have given him better information. Pacelli thus asked for the permission to visit Hartmann in Cologne because until that moment a personal meeting between the two had not yet taken place.40 Although Gasparri immediately gave him permission,41 Pacelli went to Cologne only nine months later, a clear clue of how

37 Ernesti, Benedikt XV., p. 108; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, I, pp. 293 ff. 38 Klaus Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959); Hubert Wolf, ‘Verlegung des Heiligen Stuhls: ein Kirchenstaat ohne Rom? Matthias Erzberger und die Römische Frage im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, 11 (1992), pp. 251–70; Stefano Trinchese, ‘I tentativi di pace della Germania e della Santa Sede nella I guerra mondiale: l’attività del deputato Erzberger e del diplomatico Pacelli (1916–1918)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 35 (1997), pp. 225–55; Hubert Wolf, ‘Matthias Erzberger, Nuntius Pacelli und der Vatikan; Oder: Warum der Kirchenstaat nicht nach Liechtenstein verlegt wurde’, in Matthias Erzberger: ein Demokrat in Zeiten des Hasses, ed. by Haus der Geschichte BadenWürttemberg and Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart (Karlsruhe: Braun, 2013), pp. 134–57 and 258–65; Benedettini, ‘Le Carte Erzberger’. 39 Pacelli to Gasparri, 22 October 1917 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 40 Pacelli to Gasparri 8 December 1917 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 41 Gasparri to Pacelli 21 December 1917 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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little he trusted Hartmann as an informer.42 He met Erzberger far more frequently, who went personally to Munich when he intended to talk with Pacelli, or was summoned by him.43 Faulhaber was considered someone Pacelli could trust. His notes on the papal audience granted to him on 30 December 1919 show that after the war issues of current relevance were discussed, such as the education question, the validity of concordats or the restoration of the monarchy (the opinion of the Archbishop of Munich was that it was ‘impossible to reintroduce it now’).44 From them, Faulhaber’s defence of the Nuncio against the curial criticisms of the management of his job in Munich also emerges (‘Pacelli does what he can’).45 It is also clear that the Pope had little understanding of the peculiarities of German political Catholicism: ‘Are the Catholic representatives truly active’, he asked, ‘and are they advised by the bishops? They think too much about their families; they should remain celibate and not compromise on fundamental issues’.46 From Faulhaber’s diary entries concerning

42 ‘Passing through Cologne, I paid the most Eminent Cardinal Hartmann a visit, one that had been promised for a long time. Hartmann welcomed me with signs of the greatest benevolence and begged me to convey to the Holy Father the feelings of his filial devotion’ (‘Passando attraverso Colonia, ove feci la visita, già da tanto tempo promessa, all’Eminentissimo Signor Cardinale Hartmann, il quale mi accolse coi segni della più grande benevolenza e mi pregò di umiliare al Santo Padre i sentimenti della sua filiale devozione’); Pacelli to Gasparri, 30 September 1918 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 43 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Monaco, 408, fasc. 4, f. 307r, Erzberger to Pacelli, 30 May 1917: ‘Your Excellency, I acknowledge receipt of this morning’s dispatch. I should very much like to have gone to Munich this week; however, I have to leave tomorrow for the northern countries on a matter of urgency. However, next Monday or Tuesday I shall be in Munich. I will send a message to Your Excellency. I am very much looking forward to meeting Your Excellency as I would also like to discuss a number of important issues. But I apologize for this week, for not being able to come now, because the trip north has already been decided’ (‘Euerer Exzellenz bestätige ich den Empfang der Depesche von heute früh. Ich würde sehr gern in dieser Woche nach München gekommen sein, muß jedoch morgen in dringender Angelegenheit nach dem nördlichen Ausland abreisen. Am kommenden Montag oder Dienst[ag] werde ich mich jedoch in München einfinden. Ich werde Euerer Exzellenz noch Mitteilung zugehen lassen. Ich freue mich sehr auf die Zusammenkunft mir Euer Exzellenz, da ich auch eine Reihe von wichtigen Fragen besprechen möchte. Ich bitte mich aber für diese Woche zu entschuldigen, da ich wegen der schon festgestellten Reise nach dem Norden jetzt nicht kommen kann’); ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Monaco, 409, fasc. 2, f. 221rv, Erzberger to Pacelli, 26 September 1917: ‘This shows how much the exchange of ideas in person are absolutely necessary and important, and I declare that I am ready again, when summoned by a telegram of Your Excellency, to come immediately to talk’ (‘Es zeigt sich hier wieder, wie absolut notwendig und wie wichtig mündliche Aussprachen sind und ich erkläre mich nochmals bereit, auf telegraphischen Ruf Euerer Exzellenz sofort nach dorten zur Besprechung zu kommen’). 44 ‘Unmöglich, sie jetzt zurückzuführen’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers (1917–1945), 3 vols (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1975–2002), I: 1917–1934, ed. by Ludwig Volk (1975), p. 123. 45 ‘Pacelli tut, was er tun kann’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 124. 46 ‘Ob die katholischen Abgeordneten wirklich eintreten’; ‘und von den Bischöfen sich beraten lassen? Sie denken zu viel an ihre Familie, müßten Zölibatäre sein und sollten keine Kompromisse in grundsätzlichen Fragen schließen’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 123.

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his visits to Rome, it emerges that the pontifical peace initiative was not the subject of his countless meetings.47 It appears, on the other hand, that Pacelli, through his Nunciature, systematically and progressively reduced the already meagre importance of the German bishops as informers of the Pope and the curia, dominating the management of contacts between Rome and the bishops. Looking at Pacelli’s considerations at the end of his tenure as Nuncio in Berlin in 1929, one can draw up a list of the criteria for evaluating bishops: (a) formation and purity of doctrine, (b) devotion to the Holy See and to his vicar in loco, the Apostolic Nuncio to Berlin [thus Pacelli himself], and, finally, (c) his character, conduct and attitude.48 Of these criteria, ‘devotion’ or ‘attachment’ to the Holy See and formation in Rome, hence doctrinal reliability, were considered the most important. From this point

47 The diaries on the meetings and appointments of Faulhaber in the years 1911–52 are currently being transcribed from the Gabelsberger shorthand and published in an online critical edition with commentary, Kritische Online-Edition der Tagebücher Michael Kardinal von Faulhabers (1911–1952) ( [accessed 10 January 2019]), as part of a long-term project financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under the academic direction of Andreas Wirsching of the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich and Hubert Wolf of the Department for Medieval and Modern Church History at the University of Münster. The entries in these diaries of Faulhaber as Bishop of Speyer in the early months of 1917 and as Archbishop of Munich and Freising in the second half of the same year, besides those from 1918 and 1919, do not permit any conclusions to be drawn about the relationship between Faulhaber and Pope Benedict. The notes from 1920–21 have not yet been transcribed. It seems that only Supreme War Court Councilor Steidle in Tournai directed the conversation towards the peace initiative: ‘Why does the Pope interfere in the question of peace?’ (‘was gehe den Papst der Frieden an’). The Archbishop did not document his own reaction (entry on 22 December 1917 [accessed 10 January 2019]). That Faulhaber defended the pontiff from the accusation made by the German diplomat Clemens von Brentano di Tremezzo on 7 November 1917 (‘Why does the Holy Father do nothing for the Germans?’; ‘Warum der Heilige Vater nichts tue für die Deutschen?’) should not be surprising; the Archbishop in fact defended the Pope from that criticism, which was unjustified in his eyes; see entry on 7 November 1919 [accessed 10 January 2019]. Not even the notes before and after the death of Benedict XV offer ample conjectures on the personal relationship between him and the Cardinal of Munich. On 20 January, Pacelli called Faulhaber, who was busy in a meeting at the chancery, to communicate to him that the Holy Father was ‘gravely ill’ (‘gravamente malato’); entry on 20 January 1922; EAM, Nachlass, Faulhaber 10006, p. 93. Faulhaber remained silent about his personal feelings, but his entry on the day of the Pope’s death reveals something about the Nuncio, evidently much moved by the death of the one who promoted him to that position: ‘Again terrible; it is a disaster — the Nuncio did not manage to say more than that, and his voice trembled’ (‘Wieder terribile, è un desastro [sic] — mehr kann Nuntius Pacelli nicht sagen und seine Stimme zittert’); entry of 22 January 1922; EAM, Nachlass, Faulhaber 10006, p. 93. 48 ‘(a) Ausbildung und Reinheit der Lehre, (b) Ergebenheit gegenüber dem Hl. Stuhl und seinem Vertreter vor Ort, dem Apostolischen Nuntius in Berlin [also Pacelli selbst], und schließlich (c) Charakter, Lebensführung und Umgangsformen’; Eugenio Pacelli, ed. by Wolf and Unterburger, p. 60.

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of view, the ideal profile was that of the Bishop of Mainz, Ludwig Hugo, who had studied theology in Rome and whom the Nuncio himself had recommended for that office: ‘He has a good philosophical and theological culture, he is very attached to the Holy See and very orthodox in doctrine’.49 The president of the Fulda Episcopal Conference, Bertram, according to Pacelli’s words, was, on the contrary, ‘not easy, authoritarian and susceptible in character. In the defence of the faith against modern errors, he has often shown himself […] not equal to the task’.50 He ‘“sabotaged” all of the attempts and initiatives’ to affirm Catholic action in Germany.51 He further had ‘a marked tendency to act on his own, willingly leaving aside, as far has he can, the Holy See itself (except in cases when he needs it to protect his own responsibility)’.52 Difficult characters such as Bertram did not conform to Pacelli’s picture of a good bishop. On the other hand, Bertram’s conception of the office of the nuncio is significant: The Roman congregations are identified, as it were, with the Pope; for me, they are organs of the primacy; I obey them as my legitimate superiors, with a good heart. That of the nuncio is a substantially different position. Nuncios do not hold the position of the Roman congregations.53 It is evident that such an interpretation of the office of the nuncio, opposed to that of supervisor of the episcopacy, as attributed to it in the Code of Canon Law, would inevitably lead to conflict. It should not be surprising, therefore, that Bertram was not Pius XII’s point of reference during World War II. The man whom the Pope trusted was, rather, the Bishop of Berlin, Konrad von Preysing, who was also promoted to bishop thanks to Pacelli. While Bertram did not obtain anything through a policy of supplication (Eingabenpolitik) and his countless letters of protest to the most diverse offices of the Nazi regime, Preysing wanted to protest openly against the illicit methods of Hitler’s state. Pius XII aligned himself on the side of Preysing in the differences among the bishops regarding the right tactic to use to fight the regime.54 However, he could

Eugenio Pacelli, ed. by Wolf and Unterburger, p. 241. Eugenio Pacelli, ed. by Wolf and Unterburger, p. 219. Eugenio Pacelli, ed. by Wolf and Unterburger, p. 221. Eugenio Pacelli, ed. by Wolf and Unterburger, p. 223. ‘Die Römischen Kongregationen identifizieren sich sozusagen mit dem Papst, sie sind für mich Organe des Primats, ihnen also, wie meinen legitimen Vorgesetzten, gehorche ich guten Herzens. Die Position des Nuntius ist eine wesentlich andere. Die Nuntien haben nicht die Position der Römischen Kongregationen’; AES, Germania 1920–21, pos. 1739, fasc. 918, ff. 74r–75r, Bertram to Canon Johannes Steinmann of the Chapter of the Wrocław Cathedral, consultor of the Embassy of Germany to the Holy See, 21 November 1920. See Hinkel, Adolf Kardinal Bertram, p. 231. 54 Pius XII was ‘grateful for the clear and direct words that you have addressed on many occasions to your faithful and, thus, to the public’ (‘dankbar für die klaren und offenen Worte, die du bei verschiedenen Gelegenheiten an deine Gläubigen und damit an die Oeffentlichkeit gerichtet hast’); see Pius XII to Preysing, 30 April 1943, in Die Briefe Pius’ XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe, 1939–1944, ed. by Burkhart Schneider (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1966), p. 238. On the differences within 49 50 51 52 53

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not encourage an unlimited offensive tactic since he himself followed Bertram’s defensive tactics: We leave it to the pastors working on the spot to assess whether, and to what extent, the danger of reprisals and means of pressure in cases of episcopal declarations […] seem to call for reserve ad maiora mala vitanda. This is the reason why We also impose limits on ourselves in our messages.55 In writing to the Bishop of Würzburg, Matthias Ehrenfried, whom he had also helped elevate to bishop, Pius XII drew a line from World War II to World War I: In the present hour, two realities intersect: the powerful events in the extra-ecclesial field in the face of which the Pope intends to practise that reserve that imposes on him complete impartiality, on the one hand, and the duties and emergencies of the Church that require his intervention, on the other. These intersect with such frequency in a very disastrous manner, even more disastrously than in the previous world war […]. Where the Pope would prefer to shout, he is constrained to wait and be silent; where he would like to act and help, he must wait patiently.56 As far as the debated question of Pius XII’s silence about the Holocaust is concerned, I limit myself to mentioning that the pontiff expressly defined his own attitude as a ‘waiting silence’.57 However, let us return to Pacelli’s image of a good bishop. If until World War II devotion and filial attachment to the Holy See were the decisive criteria for a positive evaluation of the bishops, who should not, like Bertram, be autonomous or act without the Holy See, Pius XII suddenly overturned these criteria in the course of the war. Could he really be surprised, at that point, that only a few bishops were ready to take responsibility for an open protest against Nazism?

the Fulda Episcopal Conference, see Antonia Leugers, Gegen eine Mauer des bischöflichen Schweigens: der Ausschuß für Ordensangelegenheiten und seine Widerstandskonzeption: 1941–1945 (Frankfurt a.M.: Knecht, 1996). 55 ‘Den an Ort und Stelle tätigen Oberhirten überlassen Wir es abzuwägen, ob und bis zu welchem Grade die Gefahr von Vergeltungsmaßnahmen und Druckmitteln im Falle bischöflicher Kundgebungen […] es ratsam erscheinen lassen… ad maiora mala vitanda Zurückhaltung zu üben. Hier liegt einer der Gründe, warum Wir selber Uns in Unseren Kundgebungen Beschränkungen auferlegen’; Pius XII to Preysing, 30 April 1943, in Die Briefe, ed. by Schneider, p. 240. 56 ‘In der gegenwärtigen Stunde kreuzen sich einerseits das gewaltige Geschehen im außerkirchlichen Raum, dem gegenüber der Papst die Zurückhaltung beobachten will, die ihm die unbestechliche Unparteilichkeit auferlegt, andererseits die kirchlichen Aufgaben und Nöte, die sein Eingreifen verlangen: sie überkreuzen sich so vielfach und verhängnisvoll, verhängnisvoller noch als im vergangenen Weltkrieg […]. Wo der Papst laut rufen möchte, ist ihm leider manchmal abwartendes Schweigen, wo er handeln und helfen möchte, geduldiges Harren geboten’; Pius XII to Ehrenfried, 20 February 1941, in Die Briefe, ed. by Schneider, p. 125. 57 José M. Sanchez, Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002); Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current State of Research, ed. by David Bankier, Dan Michman and Iael Nidam-Orvieto ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2012).

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4. Conclusions What then remains regarding Benedict XV and the German bishops? Even without becoming a truly autonomous topic, it is part of the pontifical ecclesiology in the first half of the twentieth century. The Church of Benedict XV, then of Pius XII, was essentially a Church of the Pope, constituted in a monarchical sense, in which there was no place for bishops to act in a political spirit autonomously. In their dioceses, the bishops undoubtedly enjoyed full faculties for governing and the care of souls, but nothing more. The important decisions and those of a political nature were taken by the Pope or by one of his vicars (the Nuncio or the Cardinal Secretary of State). It was in this way that Bismarck and Leo XIII ended the Kulturkampf in Germany and it was in this way that Pacelli concluded the Concordat with Hitler’s Reich. Independent lay people from the Zentrum or politically active bishops were not welcome. It is not surprising, therefore, that the German bishops were not asked anything about Benedict XV’s peace initiative of 1917 (in fact, Nuncio Pacelli alone negotiated with Wilhelm II) and that they ultimately did not even support it.58 Considering this recognition, it may seem rather unusual that Pius XII himself, during World War II, exhorted the German bishops to take political action and to take the initiative, something that not even he was able to achieve. Such an exhortation did, however, point the way to a new ecclesiology, confirmed at Vatican II yet not always followed consistently. However, caution is needed in recognizing in Benedict XV or Pius XII the precursors of a collegial conception that the order of bishops was in a direct line of succession to the apostles.

Bibliography Achleitner, Wilhelm, Gott im Krieg: die Theologie der österreichischen Bischöfe in den Hirtenbriefen zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997) Bankier, David, Dan Michman and Iael Nidam-Orvieto, eds, Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current State of Research ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2012) Benedettini, Carlotta, ‘Le Carte Erzberger’, in Dall’Archivio Segreto Vaticano: miscellanea di testi, saggi e inventari, 10 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006–2018), VII (2004) Blaicher, Ria, ‘Gottes Strafgericht: Hirtenbriefe der deutschen Bischöfe während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 62 (2014), pp. 315–28 Brack, Rudolf, Deutscher Episkopat und Gewerkschaftsstreit 1900–1914 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1976) Buxbaum, Engelbert Maximilian, ‘Der Münchener Kardinal-Erzbischof Franz von Bettinger und das Konklave von 1914 im Urteil eines Zeitgenossen’, Beiträge zur altbayerischen Kirchengeschichte, 33 (1981), pp. 131–47

58 Hubert Wolf, ‘Der Papst als Mediator? Die Friedensinitiative Benedikts XV. von 1917 und Nuntius Pacelli’, in Frieden stiften: Vermittlung und Konfliktlösung vom Mittelalter bis heute, ed. by Gerd Althoff (Darmstadt: WBG, 2011), pp. 167–220.

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Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960) Epstein, Klaus, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959) Ernesti, Jörg, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016) Faulhaber, Michael von, Waffen des Lichtes: Gesammelte Kriegsreden (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1915) Gasparevic, Matija, Die Lehre vom gerechten Krieg und die Risiken des 21. Jahrhunderts: der Präventivkrieg und die militärische humanitäre Intervention (Munich: Universitätsbibliothek der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 2010) Hilling, Nikolaus, ‘Fakultäten’, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 3 (1931), col. 941 ff Hinkel, Sascha, Adolf Kardinal Bertram: Kirchenpolitik im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010) Hinkel, Sascha, ‘Critical Online Edition of the Nuncial Reports of Eugenio Pacelli (1917– 1929)’, in Church History between Rome and Vilnius: Challenges to Christianity from the Early Modern Ages to the 20th Century, ed. by Arūnas Streikus (Vilnius: LKMA, 2012), pp. 89–95 Klier, Johann, Von der Kriegspredigt zum Friedensappell: Erzbischof Michael von Faulhaber und der Erste Weltkrieg: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen katholischen Militärseelsorge (Munich: Kommissionsverlag UNI-Druck, 1991) Lenzenweger, Josef, ‘Neues Licht auf die Papstwahlen von 1914 und 1922’, TheologischPraktische Quartalschrift, 112 (1964), pp. 51–58 Leugers, Antonia, Gegen eine Mauer des bischöflichen Schweigens: der Ausschuß für Ordensangelegenheiten und seine Widerstandskonzeption: 1941–1945 (Frankfurt a.M.: Knecht, 1996) Liebmann, Maximilian, ‘Les conclaves de Benoît XV et de Pie XI: notes du cardinal Piffl’, La revue nouvelle, 38, 7–8 (1963), pp. 34–52 Liebmann, Maximilian, ‘Wie werden Päpste gewählt? Die Konklave von 1914 und 1922’, in Österreich und der Heilige Stuhl im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. by Hans Paarhammer and Alfred Rinnerthaler (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 257–71 Lübbers, Bernhard, ‘“Segne die Waffen unserer Brüder!”: die Hirtenbriefe des Regensburger Bischofs Antonius von Henle aus der Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Regensburg im Ersten Weltkrieg: Schlaglichter auf die Geschichte einer bayerischen Provinzstadt zwischen 1914 und 1918, ed. by Bernhard Lübbers and Stefan Reichmann (Regensburg: Morsbach, 2014), pp. 105–18 Missalla, Heinrich, ‘Gott mit uns’: die deutsche katholische Kriegspredigt 1914–1918 (Munich: Kösel, 1968) Nesner, Hans, Das Erzbistum München und Freising zur Zeit des Erzbischofs und Kardinals Franziskus von Bettinger (1909–1917) (St Ottilien: EOS, 1987) Peters, Edward N., ed., The 1917 or Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001) Preysing, Konrad von, Kardinal Bettinger: nach persönlichen Erinnerungen (Regensburg: Manz, 1918) Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004)

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Ritter von Lama, Friedrich, Papst und Kurie in ihrer Politik nach dem Weltkrieg (Illertissen: Martinusbuchhandlung, 1925) Sanchez, José M., Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002) Scheidgen, Hermann-Josef, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991) Schmidlin, Josef, Papstgeschichte der neuesten Zeit (Munich: Josef Kösel & Friedrich Pustet, 1933–39), III: Papsttum und Päpste im XX. Jahrhundert: Pius X. und Benedikt XV. (1903–1922) (1936) Schneider, Burkhart, ed., Die Briefe Pius’ XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe, 1939–1944 (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1966) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Giacomo Della Chiesa arcivescovo di Bologna (1908–1914): l’‘ottimo noviziato’ episcopale di papa Benedetto XV (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Trinchese, Stefano, ‘I tentativi di pace della Germania e della Santa Sede nella I guerra mondiale: l’attività del deputato Erzberger e del diplomatico Pacelli (1916–1918)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 35 (1997), pp. 225–55 Volk, Ludwig, ed., Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers (1917–1945), 3 vols (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1975–2002), I: 1917–1934 (1975) Volk, Ludwig, ‘Kardinal Mercier, der deutsche Episkopat und die Neutralitätspolitik Benedikts XV. 1914–1916’, Stimmen der Zeit, 192 (1974), pp. 611–30 Wolf, Hubert, and Klaus Unterburger, eds, Eugenio Pacelli: die Lage der Kirche in Deutschland 1929 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006) Wolf, Hubert, ‘Matthias Erzberger, Nuntius Pacelli und der Vatikan; Oder: Warum der Kirchenstaat nicht nach Liechtenstein verlegt wurde’, in Matthias Erzberger: ein Demokrat in Zeiten des Hasses, ed. by Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg and Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart (Karlsruhe: Braun, 2013), pp. 134–57 and 258–65 Wolf, Hubert, ‘Der Papst als Mediator? Die Friedensinitiative Benedikts XV. von 1917 und Nuntius Pacelli’, in Frieden stiften: Vermittlung und Konfliktlösung vom Mittelalter bis heute, ed. by Gerd Althoff (Darmstadt: WBG, 2011), pp. 167–220 Wolf, Hubert, ‘Verlegung des Heiligen Stuhls: ein Kirchenstaat ohne Rom? Matthias Erzberger und die Römische Frage im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, 11 (1992), pp. 251–70 Zedler, Jörg, Bayern und der Vatikan: eine politische Biographie des letzten bayerischen Gesandten am Heiligen Stuhl Otto von Ritter (1909–1934) (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013)

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The German Reception of the Peace Note

It would be an understatement to say that the diplomatic aspect of the German reception of Pope Benedict XV’s Peace Note has been profoundly studied. Ever since Matthias Erzberger’s post-war claim that the German government had intentionally missed a chance for peace by its tardy, non-committal answer, the diplomatic aspect of the problem has been the focus of attention.1 We have critical editions of the key documents: the German diplomatic documents were edited in 1970 by Wolfgang Steglich,2 and those of the curia are now accessible through the online edition of Pacelli’s papers.3 There is also no lack of syntheses, for example, that of Konrad Repgen in Hubert Jedin’s History of the Church4 and Emma Fattorini’s more recent reconstruction.5 Fattorini more or less supported Erzberger’s point of view, whereas Repgen showed greater understanding for the decision of Chancellor Michaelis to make no concrete promises regarding Belgium, perhaps because the German government did not want to give away this only bargaining chip too early. Rather

1 Erzberger’s claim triggered a parliamentary enquiry (1919–22); see Die Verhandlungen des 2. Unterausschusses des parlamentarischen Untersuchungsausschusses über die päpstliche Friedensaktion von 1917, ed. by Wolfgang Steglich (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1974). On Erzberger, see Christopher Dowe, Matthias Erzberger: ein Leben für die Demokratie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011). 2 Der Friedensappell Papst Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917 und die Mittelmächte, ed. by Wolfgang Steglich (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1970). 3 ‘Päpstliche Friedensinitiative Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917’, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 4 Konrad Repgen, ‘Foreign Policy of the Popes in the Epoch of the World Wars’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), X: The Church in the Modern Age (1981), pp. 35–96. 5 Emma Fattorini, ‘La Germania e la nota di pace di Benedetto XV’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 229–52. See Emma Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede: le nunziature di Pacelli tra la Grande Guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1041–1050 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118818

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than take up once again a topic already treated by other scholars,6 this contribution will focus on the public reception of the Note within German Catholicism, paying particular attention to the dioceses of Fulda and Mainz.7

1.

The Overall Situation of German Catholicism during the Great War

The German bishops interpreted the war as an occasion for the religious purification and self-reform of society.8 National integration was paramount, and the support for the just cause perceived thereby, that is to say, the self-defence of the German nation against the Russian and French threat, was unanimous. The Jesuit Peter Lippert proclaimed confidently that the edifying national solidarity and religious awakening at the outset of the war in August 1914 had also been prepared for by the pastoral and educational work of German Catholicism. In spite of all difficulties (an allusion to the Kulturkampf), its priests had maintained the people mentally sane and physically fit, contributing to national education with their patriotic political and social activity in the associations (‘Vereine’). National unity was thus interpreted as a successful result of ecclesiastic reform and mobilization. In this sense, the war was a great opportunity for missions and outreach. Theologically, the war created new opportunities for national ecumenism. During the Reformation Jubilee of 1917, a joint committee of Protestant and Catholic Church historians (amongst others Adolf von Harnack, Karl Holl, Sebastian Merkle and Martin Spahn) was formed in order to overcome the confessional stereotypes concerning the interpretation of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation (or Catholic Reformation). Catholic war theology itself became less triumphant from 1915 and centred on the significance of suffering. On the whole, the expressions pronounced by the German episcopate were more restrained than those of their Austrian colleagues.9 The ‘spectacle’ of an open clash with the French episcopate, which had backed the propaganda work La guerre allemande et le catholicisme, published in Paris in 1915, and its interpretation of the war as an anti-Catholic Prussian aggression, was narrowly







6 Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004); Hubert Wolf, ‘Der Papst als Mediator? Die Friedensinitiative Benedikts XV. von 1917 und Nuntius Pacelli’, in Frieden stiften: Vermittlung und Konfliktlösung vom Mittelalter bis heute, ed. by Gerd Althoff (Darmstadt: WBG, 2011), pp. 167–220. See also Philippe Chenaux, ‘Eugenio Pacelli: Benedict XV’s Man of Peace’, in the present volume. 7 See the approach of Patrick J. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 8 See Claus Arnold, ‘German Catholicism and National Integration (1870–1945)’, in Cattolicesimo, nazione e nazionalismo, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2015), pp. 59–68. See also Martin Lätzel, Die Katholische Kirche im Ersten Weltkrieg: zwischen Nationalismus und Friedenswillen (Regensburg: Pustet, 2014). 9 Michaela Sohn-Kronthaler, ‘“Auch wir schauen ein furchtbares Weltdrama”: apokalyptische Metaphorik und religiöse Kriegsdeutungen österreichischer Bischöfe während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 110 (2016), pp. 143–57.

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avoided and the task of anti-propaganda delegated to a working group of Catholic theologians, philosophers, historians and Zentrum politicians.10 Christian universalism did not become entirely extinct although reservations regarding the war were rare among the Catholic elite.11 The German bishops’ main pastoral preoccupation was not the slaughter at the front but the sexual morality behind the front. When reports of organized prostitution in the army became public, the cardinals of Cologne and Munich wrote to Wilhelm II directly and personally (‘Immediateingabe’). Several bishops protested publicly against a planned distribution of condoms to the soldiers in order to reduce venereal diseases.12 The Catholic soldier should come home, as Bishop Faulhaber of Speyer affirmed in May 1915, with a ‘clean shield of honor’ (‘mit reinem Ehrenschild’).13

2. The Reception of the Note Shortly after the publication of the Note, the Fulda Episcopal Conference met from 21 to 23 August 1917: a public declaration in support of the document was deemed to be inopportune.14 The bishops sent instead a declaration of faithfulness and devotion to the Pope, which was not made public. The bishops thanked the Pope for his various peace initiatives and his apostolic work, particularly for completing the new Code of Canon Law. This decision is none too surprising: Cardinal Felix von Hartmann,15 the Archbishop of Cologne and President of the Fulda Conference, was the most Prussian- and nationally-minded president the Conference had ever had. Although Hartmann used his influence with Wilhelm II to intercede sometimes in the interests of Belgian and French Catholics,16 his view of the Note was that it was clearly a political matter which had to be handled by the German government in the first place, without any intervention on the part of the Church. The Note was, after all, of a diplomatic nature; it had been addressed to the governments, not to the bishops, and it had been first of all secret. The same sentiment was true

10 Claus Arnold, ‘La Guerre Allemande et le Catholicisme (1915): Catholic Theological War Propaganda and the Modernist Crisis’, Modernism, 3 (2017), pp. 192–211. 11 Stephan Fuchs, ‘Vom Segen des Krieges’: katholische Gebildete im Ersten Weltkrieg: eine Studie zur Kriegsdeutung im akademischen Katholizismus (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004). 12 Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991), pp. 90–102, 370–72. 13 See Dominik Schindler, ‘Der Speyerer Bischof Michael von Faulhaber im Ersten Weltkrieg unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Besuche an der Westfront’, Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 68 (2016), pp. 273–86 (p. 284). 14 Akten der Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz, ed. by Erwin Gatz, 3 vols (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1977–85), III (1985), pp. 276, 286. 15 Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, ‘Felix Kardinal von Hartmann, Erzbischof von Köln (1912–1919)’, Portal Rheinische Geschichte [accessed 10 January 2019]. 16 Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe, pp. 285, 297–98, 316–18, 337–46.

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for the monarchist Archbishop, Michael von Faulhaber,17 of the Bavarian Episcopal Conference, who evinced a certain lack of enthusiasm. In his opinion, the German government had answered the Note in an appropriate way, and the responsibility for the failure of the papal initiative lay with the Entente Powers which had ignored or rejected it.18 In accordance with the line taken at Fulda, that is to consider the Note a diplomatic affair which should be left to the government, the bishops did not publish the document in their official gazettes.19 As Patrick J. Houlihan has shown, this practice also prevailed in Austria, where even Catholic newspapers like the Reichspost, or diocesan papers, refused to print it. An exception was made by the Jesuits, whose Stimmen der Zeit printed it fully, although with a rather nationalist commentary by its editor Father Franz Ehrle, later Cardinal, at the beginning of 1918.20

3. The Echo in the German Catholic Press The echo of the Note in the German press has been subject to various studies. Matthias Erzberger himself already wrote two detailed reports to Eugenio Pacelli about it, which have been used by Emma Fattorini, for example, and are now accessible online.21 If we look at German Catholicism in general, it seems that the theologically and ecclesiastically more progressive sector, as represented by the Kölnische Volkszeitung, which had opted for inter-confessionalism in the struggle over Christian trade unions (‘Gewerkschaftsstreit’) under Pius X, now showed a certain lack of enthusiasm for the Note, while not openly rejecting it, whereas the more integralist party, represented by

17 For an overview of the extensive new research on Faulhaber, see Holger Arning and others, ‘Faulhabers Tagebücher und die Katholizismusforschung: Forschungsübersicht und Ausblick’, Kritische Online-Edition der Tagebücher Michael Kardinal von Faulhabers (1911–1952) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 18 Johann Klier, Von der Kriegspredigt zum Friedensappell: Erzbischof Michael von Faulhaber und der Erste Weltkrieg: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen katholischen Militärseelsorge (Munich: Kommissionsverlag UNI-Druck, 1991), pp. 201–02. See Martin Greschat, Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Christenheit: ein globaler Überblick (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014), p. 81; Jörg Ernesti, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016), p. 145. 19 Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe, pp. 331–32. 20 Houlihan, Catholicism, pp. 202–03. Ehrle argued that the German government could not offer peace as long as Britain was intent on destroying Germany. See Thomas Ruster, ‘Krieg gegen die Glaubensbrüder: die Nationalisierung der Religion im Spiegel der Theologie’, in Urkatastrophe: die Erfahrung des Krieges 1914-1918 im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Theologie, ed. by Joachim Negel and Karl Pinggéra (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016), pp. 77–109 (pp. 87–88). 21 [Matthias Erzberger,] ‘La nota di risposta tedesca alla lettera pontificia: e la stampa dei grandi partiti in Germania: I: 22. September 1917’, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019]; [Matthias Erzberger,] ‘La Nota di risposta tedesca alla lettera pontificia e la stampa dei grandi partiti in Germania: II: 26. September 1917’, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019].

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the other big Zentrum journal, the Berlin Germania, showed greater understanding for the papal intentions.22 This is analogous to the situation in France: Jean-Marie Mayeur has demonstrated that the integralist French Catholics were more prepared to receive the papal message, whereas the more culturally and nationally open members of the Church rejected it.23 René Schlott has placed the reaction of the Germania within the context of the political press in Berlin as a whole.24 Here, only the most conservative and Protestant journals were critical of the Note. The Catholic press, that is the Germania, the progressive liberal and the social-democratic press was enthusiastic, whereas the national-liberal and the neutral journals were less sanguine in their support. Of major importance was the fact that the parliamentary majority in the Reichstag (Zentrum, Social Democrats and Progressive Liberals) had used the vacuum of power between the chancellorship of Bethmann-Hollweg and Michaelis in order to pass a resolution of peace on 19 July 1917. This call for a so-called Verständigungsfrieden, a peace based on multilateral compromise, was now placed parallel to the papal suggestions. The Reichstag had spoken against all annexations (which implied the freedom of Belgium); it had called for the freedom of the seas, for economic peace and for the creation of international juridical organizations. Using other words, the Pope had become a supporter of the democratic majority in the Reichstag, and their press repaid him for it, a fact that was already stressed by Erzberger in his reports to Pacelli. Chancellor Michaelis set up a parliamentary commission in order to prepare his answer to the Pope but did not feel bound by its suggestions. When he replied to Gasparri on 21 September 1917, he stressed that the Emperor had followed with great respect and true gratefulness the efforts of Benedict XV, who, in a spirit of true impartiality, was attempting to alleviate the sufferings of war as much as possible and to accelerate an end to the hostilities. The Emperor recognized in the pontiff ’s latest initiative new proof of his noble and humane attitude and expressed his vivid desire that the papal call should be rewarded with success for the well-being of the entire world. The outbreak of war was attributed to a ‘disastrous concatenation of events’ which had turned Europe into a site of bloodshed.25 Talks about a limitation of arms and an international court of arbitration were mentioned as concrete steps towards peace, and finally the Chancellor mentioned the July 1917 peace declaration by the Reichstag. He failed to mention Belgium explicitly, but the democratic press in Berlin was inclined to

22 Ernst Heinen, Zentrumspresse und Kriegszieldiskussion: unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der ‘Kölnischen Volkszeitung’ und der ‘Germania’ (Cologne: Photostelle der Universität, 1962). 23 Jean-Marie Mayeur, ‘Les catholiques français et Benoît XV en 1917: brèves remarques’, in Chrétiens dans la première guerre mondiale, ed. by Nadine-Josette Chaline (Paris: Cerf, 1993), pp. 153–65. 24 René Schlott, Die Friedensnote Papst Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917: eine Untersuchung zur Berichterstattung und Kommentierung in der zeitgenössischen Berliner Tagespresse (Hamburg: Kovač, 2007). 25 Schlott, Die Friedensnote, pp. 310–13. See ‘Antwortnote Michaelis an Gasparri, 19. September 1917’, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019].

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consider the restoration of Belgium to be implicit in this reference. Pacelli did not and eventually was very disappointed, as we know.26

4. The Reception in Mainz and Fulda Given this general background, I should now like to look at the Catholic reception of the Note in Mainz and Fulda. Theologically and politically, Mainz had been one of the strongholds of Ultramontanism in Germany, beginning with the importation of Alsatian Ultramontane theologians under Bishop Colmar in the Napoleonic period. Even in 1914, the main Catholic newspaper in Mainz, the Mainzer Journal, still stood for this tradition, which had gained further momentum after the Revolution of 1848 and under the episcopate of Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler. When reading the Mainzer Journal in the period of the Great War, we find some remarkable variations from mainstream German Catholic opinion, particularly on the part of academics.27 Unlike many Catholic university theologians and students in Germany, the Mainzer Journal regretted the destruction of Leuven, even if it eventually accepted the German military’s explanation for it. It defended the Belgian clergy against the Protestant claim that they were responsible for the francs-tireurs’ fight against the German army. With regard to the Note, the Mainzer Journal was convinced that much of the French episcopate and good Catholics were not against it (we might speak here of an entente intégraliste). The Mainzer Journal even had some understanding for the negative view of Germany held by French Catholics, insofar as the French thought that Germany consisted entirely of Protestant heretics. The Note was eagerly awaited by the journal, which had already written about its forthcoming arrival at the end of July 1917. This expectation was tinged by a typical Ultramontane sentiment: the German government would certainly accept the Note, whereas the ‘Jacobin-socialist’ government of France and the ‘masonic’ governments of London, Rome and Washington would almost certainly reject it. When the Note appeared, the Mainzer Journal immediately printed its full text on the front page of the 17 August 1917 edition. Towards the end of war, it called the Note ‘the purest and most splendid testimony of this period in history of all times’.28 The newspaper was not surprised by the Entente’s reaction. However, during the process of the reception, it also revealed some characteristic hesitations: the Note was seen to be divided into a religious aspect and a diplomatic one. Catholics were to follow the Pope’s religious

26 See Chenaux, ‘Eugenio Pacelli’. 27 For details, see Simon Brössner, ‘Der Mainzer Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg’ (M. A. thesis, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 2015) [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also Simon Brössner, ‘Der Mainzer Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg’, Archiv für mittelrheinischer Kirchengeschichte, 69 (2017), pp. 213–57. 28 ‘Die Weltkrisis und ihre Entwicklung’, Mainzer Journal, 12 September 1918; see Brössner, ‘Der Mainzer Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg’, p. 59.

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ideal of peace, but as far as the concrete suggestions, regarding Alsace-Lorraine for instance, were concerned, they could have a differing national point of view. The most important steps proposed by the Pope were in any case unproblematic: that is disarmament and the international court of arbitration. Like so many others, the Mainzer Journal failed to recognize that the Pope had shifted away from the theory of a just war, at least in regard to the present war. Therefore, the Mainzer Journal concluded that for the moment it was necessary to continue fighting in order to gain an honourable peace. In comparison to other periodicals in German Catholicism, the Mainzer Journal proved its strong ultramontane orientation by praising the impartial ‘Pope of Peace’ until the very end of the war. German Catholic student organizations acted differently, as is revealed in Stephan Fuchs’s study ‘Vom Segen des Krieges’. Whereas Unitas and Kartellverband at least praised the Pope from 1914 until 1916, the periodical of the nationalist Cartellverband dedicated only a few lines to the Pope in the 2236 pages it published between 1914 and 1918.29 Even if the Mainzer Journal struck a different note, the concrete result of its pro-papal coverage was the same, that is to say, practically nil. Another centre of Ultramontanism in Germany was Fulda.30 The diocese had become Prussian by annexation only in 1866, and the resulting marginalization of Fulda, not to mention the Kulturkampf, were still felt in 1914, although there were also signs of nationalization after 1900, for instance in the naming of football clubs: ‘Borussia Fulda’ and ‘Germania Fulda’. In any case, the cleavage between Berlin, the Protestant centre, and the Catholic periphery in Fulda led to a strong Catholic mobilization and the strengthening of the Catholic milieu in Fulda. Bishop Joseph Damian Schmitt, an alumnus of the German College in Rome, was of a strictly Roman orientation, but also had a strong liking for Wilhelm II, whom he perceived as a pro-Catholic. The Fulda press, as studied by Oliver Göbel, especially the Fuldaer Zeitung, took a very similar line to that of the Mainzer Journal. There was no criticism of the Pope and his desire for peace was idealized, but the national necessities were borne in mind. The Fulda Catholics also failed to understand that the Pope had implicitly rejected the just nature of the war. As Daniele Menozzi has rightly stressed,31 this was not surprising because the Pope had not spoken clearly to the Catholics but diplomatically to the governments. Thus, the Fulda Catholics were also prepared to fight on for the just cause, even if a Christian universalism was upheld in theory. Only in October 1918, when the end to the old regime was close, were the Fulda Catholics very quick to revoke their vows of allegiance to the Hohenzollern dynasty and call for a rapid end to the fighting.

29 Fuchs, ‘Vom Segen des Krieges’, pp. 140–43. 30 For details concerning the following, see Oliver Göbel, Die Fuldaer Katholiken und der Erste Weltkrieg (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2011). 31 Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 45–46.

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5. A German Catholic Monument to the Note There is at least one monument to the Note in the world, although it is perhaps more typical of a certain strain of German Catholicism: the Frauenfriedenskirche (Our Lady’s Peace Church) in Frankfurt am Main.32 Hedwig Dransfeld, President of the Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund (Catholic German Women’s Organization), took the Note as the occasion for rendering her plan for the building of such a church public. It was meant to be not only a memorial to the fallen and a monument of gratitude for the divine protection of the fatherland, but also an expression of the Friedensgesinnung (‘ethos of peace’). This was also Dransfeld’s interpretation of the Note: Benedict XV wanted to promote an ethos of peace. Yet in her opinion, paradoxically, it was necessary to enforce this ethos by tackling Germany’s enemies by means of military and economic strategies.33 The church was eventually built during the Weimar Republic, under far more pacifist auspices. The Catholic women of Germany still organize an annual pilgrimage to the church, a lieu de mémoire that has undergone interesting transformations. What was intended to be a monument to the sacrifice of fathers, husbands and sons, became a sacrifice of the women themselves, who had to conform to the pastoral needs and the financial demands established by the male hierarchy.34

Bibliography Arning, Holger, and others, ‘Faulhabers Tagebücher und die Katholizismusforschung: Forschungsübersicht und Ausblick’, Kritische Online-Edition der Tagebücher Michael Kardinal von Faulhabers (1911–1952) Arnold, Claus, ‘German Catholicism and National Integration (1870–1945)’, in Cattolicesimo, nazione e nazionalismo, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2015), pp. 59–68 Arnold, Claus, ‘La Guerre Allemande et le Catholicisme (1915): Catholic Theological War Propaganda and the Modernist Crisis’, Modernism, 3 (2017), pp. 192–211 Brössner, Simon, ‘Der Mainzer Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg’ (M. A. thesis, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 2015) Brössner, Simon, ‘Der Mainzer Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg’, Archiv für mittelrheinischer Kirchengeschichte, 69 (2017)

32 Regina Heyder, ‘Ein “steingewordenes Friedensgebet”: die Frauenfriedenskirche in Frankfurt am Main’, in Katholikinnen und Moderne: katholische Frauenbewegung zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation, ed. by Gisela Muschiol (Münster: Aschendorff, 2003), pp. 121–42. 33 Heyder, ‘Ein “steingewordenes Friedensgebet”’, p. 124. 34 Regina Heyder, ‘Heterotopie, Heiliger Raum, Erinnerungsort: Frauenfrieden in Frankfurt am Main’, in Raumkonzepte in der Theologie: interdisziplinäre und interkulturelle Zugänge, ed. by Angela Kaupp (Ostfildern: Grünewald, 2016), pp. 89–112.

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Dowe, Christopher, Matthias Erzberger: ein Leben für die Demokratie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011) Ernesti, Jörg, Benedikt XV.: Papst zwischen den Fronten (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016) Fattorini, Emma, ‘La Germania e la nota di pace di Benedetto XV’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 229–52 Fattorini, Emma, Germania e Santa Sede: le nunziature di Pacelli tra la Grande Guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Fuchs, Stephan, ‘Vom Segen des Krieges’: katholische Gebildete im Ersten Weltkrieg: eine Studie zur Kriegsdeutung im akademischen Katholizismus (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004) Gatz, Erwin, ed., Akten der Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz, 3 vols (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1977–85), III (1985) Göbel, Oliver, Die Fuldaer Katholiken und der Erste Weltkrieg (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2011) Greschat, Martin, Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Christenheit: ein globaler Überblick (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014) Heinen, Ernst, Zentrumspresse und Kriegszieldiskussion: unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der ‘Kölnischen Volkszeitung’ und der ‘Germania’ (Cologne: Photostelle der Universität, 1962) Heyder, Regina, ‘Ein “steingewordenes Friedensgebet”: die Frauenfriedenskirche in Frankfurt am Main’, in Katholikinnen und Moderne: katholische Frauenbewegung zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation, ed. by Gisela Muschiol (Münster: Aschendorff, 2003), pp. 121–42 Heyder, Regina, ‘Heterotopie, Heiliger Raum, Erinnerungsort: Frauenfrieden in Frankfurt am Main’, in Raumkonzepte in der Theologie: interdisziplinäre und interkulturelle Zugänge, ed. by Angela Kaupp (Ostfildern: Grünewald, 2016), pp. 89–112 Houlihan, Patrick J., Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Klier, Johann, Von der Kriegspredigt zum Friedensappell: Erzbischof Michael von Faulhaber und der Erste Weltkrieg: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen katholischen Militärseelsorge (Munich: Kommissionsverlag UNI-Druck, 1991) Lätzel, Martin, Die Katholische Kirche im Ersten Weltkrieg: zwischen Nationalismus und Friedenswillen (Regensburg: Pustet, 2014) Mayeur, Jean-Marie, ‘Les catholiques français et Benoît XV en 1917: brèves remarques’, in Chrétiens dans la première guerre mondiale, ed. by Nadine-Josette Chaline (Paris: Cerf, 1993), pp. 153–65 Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) ‘Päpstliche Friedensinitiative Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917’, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Repgen, Konrad, ‘Foreign Policy of the Popes in the Epoch of the World Wars’, in History of the Church, ed. by Hubert Jedin, 10 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1965–81), X: The Church in the Modern Age (1981), pp. 35–96

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Ruster, Thomas, ‘Krieg gegen die Glaubensbrüder: die Nationalisierung der Religion im Spiegel der Theologie’, in Urkatastrophe: die Erfahrung des Krieges 1914-1918 im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Theologie, ed. by Joachim Negel and Karl Pinggéra (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2016), pp. 77–109 Scheidgen, Hermann-Josef, Deutsche Bischöfe im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991) Scheidgen, Hermann-Josef, ‘Felix Kardinal von Hartmann, Erzbischof von Köln (1912–1919)’, Portal Rheinische Geschichte Schindler, Dominik, ‘Der Speyerer Bischof Michael von Faulhaber im Ersten Weltkrieg unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Besuche an der Westfront’, Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 68 (2016), pp. 273–86 Schlott, René, Die Friedensnote Papst Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917: eine Untersuchung zur Berichterstattung und Kommentierung in der zeitgenössischen Berliner Tagespresse (Hamburg: Kovač, 2007) Sohn-Kronthaler, Michaela, ‘“Auch wir schauen ein furchtbares Weltdrama”: apokalyptische Metaphorik und religiöse Kriegsdeutungen österreichischer Bischöfe während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 110 (2016), pp. 143–57 Steglich, Wolfgang, ed., Der Friedensappell Papst Benedikts XV. vom 1. August 1917 und die Mittelmächte (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1970) Steglich, Wolfgang, ed., Die Verhandlungen des 2. Unterausschusses des parlamentarischen Untersuchungsausschusses über die päpstliche Friedensaktion von 1917 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1974) Wolf, Hubert, ‘Der Papst als Mediator? Die Friedensinitiative Benedikts XV. von 1917 und Nuntius Pacelli’, in Frieden stiften: Vermittlung und Konfliktlösung vom Mittelalter bis heute, ed. by Gerd Althoff (Darmstadt: WBG, 2011), pp. 167–220

Patrizio Foresta

The Legacy of Boniface: The Bavarian Episcopate and the In hac tanta Encyclical (December 1918–October 1919)

1. Introduction In his pronouncements on the war, for example, the Ad beatissimi (1 November 1914) and Quod iam diu (1 December 1918) encyclicals and the Allorché fummo chiamati (28 July 1915) and Dès le début (1 August 1917) apostolic exhortations, Benedict XV always operated within the confines of the cultural heritage of the Catholicism that had emerged from the French Revolution and the nineteenth century. The characteristics of this mentality are well known: the tragedy of the war was considered to be the latest outcome of the venomous series of modern errors that were initiated by Luther’s rebellion, which first resulted in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, then liberalism and culminated in socialism. The latter had given proof of its ability to subvert the traditional order three years after the beginning of the war and mortally threatened Christian civilization. In this perspective, the only salvation from barbarism and the frenzy of war was seen to be a return to the idealized medieval hierocratic society, the last bulwark against the perversions of the modern world. Consistent with this vision of history, and despite his efforts towards the reconciliation among the belligerents, Benedict XV held that true peace could be possible only if European society publicly recognized the authority of the Church, from which it had distanced itself with the devastating effects that were visible to the eyes of all. It was in the guidance of the Church that European society should confide for the very conservation of peace. The war, thus, was nothing other than a punishment for the apostasy of the European nations, which had experienced its feral effects on the battlefield and in the discord that emerged in the aftermath of the conflict. This position is also expressed in the way in which both Benedict XV, in Pacem Dei munus (1920), and his successor Pius XI, in Ubi arcano (1922), assessed the constitution and activity of the League of Nations, which from the outset followed a different path from that requested by the two pontiffs, which was to establish a new international order on the principles inherited from

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1051–1070 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118819

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medieval Christianity.1 Even in this cultural context, the actions of Benedict XV were seen to be prophetic and a pastoral commitment that marked his difficult pontificate.2 Taking these considerations into account, this contribution seeks to analyse the way in which the intransigent Catholic mentality and culture declined in the attitudes of the Bavarian episcopacy in the aftermath of the outbreak of the revolution of November 1918 in the Kaiserreich, between first the institution of the People’s State of Bavaria (7–8 November 1918) and then of the Bavarian Soviet Republic (7–13 April 1919), until the fall of the latter on 1 May 1919 and the promulgation of both the constitution of the Weimar Republic on the following 11 August and that of Bavaria, promulgated on 15 September 1919 but approved on the previous 14 August.3 In analysing the attitude of the Bavarian clergy immediately after the war, this contribution intends to take up an aspect left untreated in the extensive works of Hermann-Josef Scheidgen and Wilhelm Achleitner. The first is concerned with the members of the Episcopal Conference of Fulda, from which the Bavarian Episcopal Conference maintained its independence even after 1871 and with which it began to cooperate in a closer way from 1919–20. The second work is dedicated to the theology of the Austrian bishops as it was expressed in the pastoral letters of the war period.4 The Bavarian case was part of that process, occurring between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Benedict XV, in which the Holy See reacquired an active role in international relations. This role had been lost after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648; it was regained through diplomatic mediation, arbitration and the so-called diplomacy of charity. This kept step with the general historical-ecclesial context in which the pontifical authority was strengthened, allowing the pope to exercise a de facto sovereignty that he claimed by right.5







1 Daniele Menozzi, ‘Ideologia di cristianità e pratica della “guerra giusta”’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 91–127; Daniele Menozzi, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), pp. 15–76; La Chiesa e la guerra: i cattolici italiani nel primo conflitto mondiale, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (= Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008)); Maria Paiano, ‘Pregare per la vittoria, pregare per la pace: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 45–52. 2 See Giorgio Rumi’s reading of this in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 7–8. Along the same interpretive lines and in strict reliance on the pontifical documents are the treatments by Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), as well as the contributions of Letterio Mauro, ‘Introduzione’, and Giovanni Battista Varnier, ‘Benedetto XV e i problemi della società contemporanea’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 11–14 and 327–43. 3 For the general context in 1918–19, see Heinz Hürten, Die Kirchen in der Novemberrevolution: eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der deutschen Revolution (1918–1919) (Regensburg: Pustet, 1984). 4 Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Deutsche Bischöfe im ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991); Wilhelm Achleitner, Gott im Krieg: die Theologie der österreichischen Bischöfe in den Hirtenbriefen zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997). 5 Jean-Marc Ticchi, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1872–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002), p. 379.

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This article then accepts, mutatis mutandis, the suggestions offered by Giuseppe Battelli in the introduction to his contribution on secular clergy and Italian society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It aims to sketch briefly the role played by the hierarchy in the relationship between the Catholic Church and German society, analysing the religious, social and ideological message directed to the clergy and the faithful in response to the dramatic events of 1918–19 in order to show both the type of message transmitted to the surrounding society and the ‘inevitable conditioning that society exercised on this message and on the mentality of those who transmitted it’.6 The initiative was prompted by a series of documents produced by the Bavarian Episcopal Conference and its president, the Archbishop of Munich and future Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, in particular his pastoral letter of September–October 1919. The letter took up themes and suggestions from the In hac tanta encyclical, which celebrated the twelfth centenary of the mission of St Boniface to Germany.7 It also focussed on the contemporary situation, becoming a genuine reference text for Catholic Bavarians in the wake of the birth of the Weimar Republic.

2. The Anniversary of St Boniface in May 1919 and the Initiative of the German Bishops A dispatch from Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli to Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri on 7 April 1919 shows that the idea of celebrating the centenary of the mission of St Boniface came from the Bishop of Fulda, Joseph Damian Schmitt. In his words, which the dispatch conveys, the encyclical would be a very effective instrument, in the general disorientation which followed the fall of the Reich, for winning back ‘many Protestants of good will’ who ‘in the current confusion place their hope in the Catholic Church’ and for urging them to ‘return to the house of the Father’, that of ‘the Head that Christ gave to the Church’, Peter’s successor.8 Hence, In hac tanta



6 ‘Condizionamenti inevitabili che la società esercitò su quello stesso messaggio e sulla mentalità dei suoi divulgatori’; Giuseppe Battelli, ‘Clero secolare e società italiana tra decennio napoleonico e primo Novecento: alcune ipotesi di rilettura’, in Clero e società nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. by Mario Rosa (Rome: Laterza, 1992), pp. 43–123 (pp. 43–48). 7 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 11, 7 (1919), pp. 209–21 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also the treatment of the encyclical by Letterio Mauro in this volume. 8 ‘Molti protestanti di buoni sentimenti’; ‘nell’attuale confusione ripongono la loro speranza nella Chiesa cattolica’; ‘a tornare nella casa paterna’; ‘Capo dato alla Chiesa da Cristo’; Pacelli to Gasparri, 7 April 1919, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019]. For a general perspective, see Emma Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede: le nunziature di Pacelli tra la Grande Guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). Pacelli was the Nuncio to Bavaria from 20 April 1917 to 18 August 1925, after the end of the negotiations for the Bavarian Concordat (23 March 1924) and the nomination of his successor, Alberto Vassallo-Torregrossa on 8 June 1925. On 31 May 1934, all pontifical diplomatic representation to the Bavarian State ended, after the reform of the Reich of the previous 31 January

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was part of the programme outlined by Benedict XV starting with Ad beatissimi and culminating in Pacem Dei munus. In celebrating Boniface’s evangelizing work, the pontiff intended to revive the Church’s ‘rescue operation’ (‘opera di salvataggio’) of the West. The restoration of Christendom would thereby become ‘the authentic journey towards the reconciliation of peoples, the only remedy for the shipwreck of civilization’ (‘l’autentico cammino verso la riconciliazione dei popoli, il solo rimedio al naufragio della civiltà’) that served to re-establish religious unity. If ‘the nostalgic memory of confessional unity’ (‘il ricordo nostalgico dell’unità confessionale’) saw in the Lutheran apostasy and the abandonment of the true faith the causes of the disasters that afflicted it, a renewed fidelity to the Holy See ‘promised the restauration to Germany of its past greatness’ (‘prometteva alla Germania la restaurazione della passata grandezza’). In ‘Romanizing German Catholicism’, even by the repression of modernism,9 In hac tanta proposed the model of the Church of Rome to the German faithful, in which Catholicism once again became, as in the time of the Holy Roman Empire, ‘the custodian of German values and of the greatness and the prosperity of Germany’ (‘il depositario dei valori germanici, della grandezza e della prosperità della Germania’).10 In the collective memory of St Boniface, who was identified as the ‘precursor of German unity’ (‘precursore dell’unità tedesca’), in the pastoral letter of the German bishops of 8 May 1919, ‘the unity of German Catholicism and its significance for the national transformation of Germans’ (‘l’unità del cattolicesimo tedesco e il suo significato per la trasformazione nazionale dei tedeschi’) was self-consciously expressed. This permitted German Catholics to identify with the nation from the end of the Wilhelmine Era to the Weimar Republic.11 Although they were in a minority, they created national narratives alternative to the dominant one of liberal Protestantism, in which the Catholic clergy and laity expressed their idea of the nation, its identity and history. That of St Boniface was one of these narratives. From being a saint of the whole of German Christianity, he assumed markedly confessional traits between the revolution of 1848–49, representing the victory of the political idea of a small, Prussian-loving and Protestant Germany over that of Austria-loving and Catholic

had abolished the right of each single Land to have legations to or from other countries: see Giuseppe De Marchi, Le nunziature apostoliche dal 1800 al 1956 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1957), pp. 59–60. 9 ‘Romanizzare il cattolicesimo tedesco’; Marie Levant, ‘Pio XI e la sfida del nazismo: dai compromessi all’enciclica Mit brennender Sorge del 1937’, in La Chiesa e la ‘memoria divisa’ del Novecento, ed. by Alessandra Deoriti and Giovanni Turbanti (Bologna: Pendragon, 2016), pp. 143–63 (p. 149). On modernism in Germany, see Klaus Unterburger, Vom Lehramt der Theologen zum Lehramt der Päpste? Pius XI., die Apostolische Konstitution ‘Deus scientiarum Dominus’ und die Reform der Universitätstheologie (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2010). 10 On the signficance of In hac tanta in the immediate post-war period, see Marie Levant, ‘Le Vatican et l’Allemagne de Weimar, des nonciatures Pacelli au Reichskonkordat (1919–1934)’ (doctoral thesis, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Sapienza Università di Roma, 2012), pp. 109–10. I thank the author for having kindly given me access to the work. 11 Klaus Unterburger, ‘Fulda’, in Erinnerungsorte des Christentums, ed. by Christoph Markschies and Hubert Wolf (Munich: Beck, 2010), pp. 262–79 (pp. 275–76).

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Greater Germany, which was then definitively consolidated during the Kulturkampf. Despite this, St Boniface never became the saint of German Catholic nationalism because his tradition also expressed a strong bond with Rome. Through his image, the Catholic hierarchy was able to express its version of a Catholic national idea and fidelity to Rome in order to reconcile political and confessional allegiances.12 Gasparri informed the Nuncio in Munich that he had received the dispatch in a telegram sent on 13 May, just a day before the publication of In hac tanta. He then sent a second dispatch in which he included several copies of the encyclical, which was then published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.13 During the same days, Faulhaber composed a typewritten note with the eloquent title ‘The Bavarian Episcopate against the Violent Peace Treaty of Versailles, May 1919’. The author had asked the other Bavarian bishops whether they agreed to implore the Pope to intercede in order to mitigate the peace conditions made known on the previous 10 May, and he received a chorus of affirmative responses. Thus, on 13 May, he went to Pacelli to hand him the request and encourage him: such a ‘violent peace’ would not constitute the basis for peace but rather an ‘eternal hatred’ that would impede the realization of the ‘society of nations’ already indicated during the war by the Holy Father as the ‘result of the course’ of events and a ‘guarantee of peace’.14

3. The Meeting of the Bavarian Bishops in Freising (December 1918 and May 1919) The Bavarian Episcopal Conference met in Freising on 17–18 December 1919, just a few weeks after the end of the war, the end of the Kingdom of Bavaria with the proclamation of the Free State of Bavaria, the fall of the Wilhelmian Kaiserreich, the outbreak of the November Revolution and the beginning of the Council Republic. Among the various items on the agenda, the first and second stand out (in particular the fourth aspect of the second). These were a letter of homage to the Pope and a confidential report by Archbishop Faulhaber on the political and ecclesiastic situation

12 Siegfried Weichlein, ‘Religion und Nation: Bonifatius als politischer Heiliger im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 100 (2006), pp. 46–54; Siegfried Weichlein, ‘Der Apostel der Deutschen: die konfessionspolitische Konstruktion des Bonifatius im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Konfessionen im Konflikt: Deutschland zwischen 1800 und 1970: ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter, ed. by Olaf Blaschke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), pp. 155–79. 13 See, in Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929), Gasparri to Pacelli, 13 May 1919 [accessed 10 January 2019], and Gasparri to Pacelli, 28 May 1919 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 14 ‘Pace violenta’; ‘odio eterno’; ‘società delle nazioni’; ‘esito del corso’; ‘garanzia della pace’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers (1917–1945), 3 vols (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1975–2002), I: 1917–1934, ed. by Ludwig Volk (1975), pp. 72–73. Among the many contributions on Benedict XV and his work for peace, see, for example: Francis Latour, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996); John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999); and Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004).

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in Bavaria. With the first, the Bavarian bishops wanted to thank the Pope for his efforts in promoting peace and in support of Germany (above all, as far as the provision of supplies and the prisoners of war were concerned) and to offer him their due loyalty ‘in the turmoil of the revolution’. The second, on the other hand, saw in the recent events ‘the signs of an imminent Kulturkampf ’ against the clergy, Christian schools and the freedom of the Church.15 The greeting to Benedict XV took up the same theme: in thanking the Pope for his efforts to promote peace during the war and exhorting the peoples and governments to a general repentance, the Bavarian bishops observed that, although the war was over, peace was not yet re-established, and in fact ‘civil disorders’ had arisen after the end of the Reich. To fulfil their pastoral duty, the bishops, ‘in unison with Peter’s Chair in the present distress’, asked Rome to give them directions, aware that ‘a stable peace among the nations’ and ‘the order of the peoples’ was not possible except ‘in the saviour Jesus Christ and thanks to the Church and its visible head, the Roman pontiff, leader of truth and defender of justice’. In reflecting on their pastoral duties, the salvation of souls and the customs of the peoples, ‘changed by the long war and recent disorders’, the bishops decided, for the future, to exhort the faithful through common pastoral letters, in order not to depart from ‘the way of Catholic truth and the path of justice’.16 The record of the meeting of 18 December set the agenda for the future standpoints of the Bavarian bishops, who often returned to the principal points of the document. These were the uprisings of the previous November; the new Bavarian government; its ecclesiastic policies and the possibility of a new concordat; the teaching of religion and the abolition of ecclesiastic supervision in Bavarian schools; the defence of confessional schools and of the faculties of Catholic theology; the secularization of society and the loss of the influence of the Church in the new political entity. These themes are the core of the group letter to Benedict XV17 and also of the pastoral letter of September–October 1919, which makes explicit reference to the 15 ‘Inhaltlich ist es der Dank für die Bemühungen des Hl. Vaters um den Frieden und die Versorgung mit Lebensmitteln, ein Gelöbnis zur Treue zum Apostolischen Stuhle in den Wirren der Revolution […]. Die Anzeichen eines kommenden Kulturkampfes werden immer deutlicher’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, pp. 53–54. 16 ‘Nunc quidem occisio hominum in bello cessat, at pax non est restituta et insuper civiles perturbationes supra modum venerunt […]. His in angustiis cum Cathedra Sancti Petri et cum Sanctitate Tua tanto intimius nos coniungimus, quanto magis directione Summi Pastoris indigemus ad satisfaciendum muneri nostro pastorali, et quanto plus nobis persuasum est, stabilitatem pacis inter nationes et restitutionem ac tranquillitatem ordinis in populis creare non possit nisi in Jesu Christo Salvatore et per Ecclesiam eiusque Caput visibile, Pontificem Romanum, magistrum veritatis et defensorem iustitiae […]. Interim deliberamus uniti, quid officium nostrum in his difficultatibus exposcat, quid salus animarum et mores populi longo bello et perturbatione nuperrima mutati exigant. Fideles per litteras pastorales comune adhortabimur, ne a via veritatis catholicae et a tramite iustitiae aberrent’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, pp. 59–60. 17 ‘Perturbatio civilis et socialistarum dominantium conatus nos Episcopos in maximam sollicitudinem adduxerunt de futura conditione Ecclesiae et de Concordatu in regno hucusque vigente, de schola christiana et educatione iuventutis, de sustentatione cleri et ordinibus religiosis, etiam de bonis ecclesiasticis et solutione totius ordinis civilis ab Ecclesia influxuque legis evangelicae’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 60.

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In hac tanta encyclical. It appropriates these themes to treat once again the issue placed on the table only some months before. The pastoral letter was preceded by the Bavarian bishops’ meeting in Freising on 3–4 September 1919. However, compared to the meeting of the previous December, the situation in Germany, and in particular in Bavaria, had radically changed: from June to August of that year, in fact, the Treaty of Versailles had been signed, and both the Weimar Constitution (whose Articles 135–41 regulated the relationship between Church and state) and the new constitution of the Free State of Bavaria (which was of interest to the Bavarian bishops, particularly as far as paragraphs 17–1918 were concerned) had been approved. The two constitutions had very severe repercussions on the Bavarian Catholic Church because they marked the end of the period regulated by the Concordat, which had begun in 1817 in the Kingdom of Bavaria after the post-Napoleonic restoration. In reality, after the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in 1917, a new organization of the relationship between Church and state in the Bavarian Kingdom was under consideration. However, the events of the autumn of 1918, together with pressure from Pacelli and Benedict XV, accelerated the process, which was concluded with the Concordat signed in 1924. It was in some respects more advantageous than that of 1817.19 A new meeting of the Bavarian episcopate had therefore become necessary. The conference had to deal with a new reality which was uncertain and, in the eyes of the bishops, even threatening and a foreboding of future troubles, well surpassing present needs. The two new constitutions, the ‘cruel’ Peace of Versailles, ‘the annihilation’ of the federal autonomy of Bavaria and the recent laws regarding the educational system were all matters of concern. As a first item on the agenda, the bishops decided to discuss the question of an eventual new concordat, given that the one currently in vigour was incompatible with the new constitution on many fundamental points, such as the fidelity oath, the assigning of ecclesiastic offices, parishes in particular, and the issue of teaching religion and philosophy in schools and universities.20 In the third point, the bishops tackled the new Kulturkampf in education, which from their perspective was manifest in the omission, in the new educational law, of the confessional character of the schools of religious institutions, of compulsory religious instruction and of the right of the Church to supervise teaching in the schools. They entrusted their message to the pastoral letter, which was published the following month and asked Catholic parents to speak out publicly in favour of confessional schools.21 Other than regularizing some important aspects of the life of the Bavarian Church, the document condemned the recent turmoil that had occurred during the

18 Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 89. 19 Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenwesens, ed. by Ernst Rudolf Huber and Wolfgang Huber, 5 vols (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1973–95), I: Staat und Kirche vom Ausgang des alten Reichs bis zum Vorabend der burgerlichen Revolution (1973), pp. 170–78; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, pp. 129–30, 138–40; Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933: von den Ansätzen in der Weimarer Republik bis zur Ratifizierung am 10. September 1933 (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1972), pp. 1–5. 20 Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, pp. 89–90. 21 Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 91.

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time of the conciliar revolution in Bavaria and the attacks on the Catholic Church, which culminated in Pacelli’s flight to Switzerland at the end of April 1919.22 Finally, the bishops sent Benedict XV a letter of homage that in many ways was analogous to that of the previous December, thanking him for the charity shown during the war for ‘the wretched and the afflicted’, for his efforts for peace and for his help to prisoners of war. The letter began with a declaration of fidelity to Rome: ‘As ever more sorrowful are the times, so ever more intimately do we unite ourselves to the Apostolic See, the centre of unity’. Echoing the criticism of the ‘ephemeral human agreements’ in In hac tanta, the letter denounced the exclusion of the Pope, ‘Vicar of the Prince of Peace’, from the negotiations of Versailles and from the future League of Nations, above all because ‘there cannot be a firm and lasting peace if this is not founded on the Gospel’. In addition to repeating the points recalled above concerning the disorders that had endangered the Nunciature in Munich, the Bavarian school system and the poisonous revolutionary climate throughout the country, the letter thanked the pontiff for In hac tanta.23

4. The Days of Anger and Shame: The Pastoral Letter to the Faithful of September–October 1919 In authorizing the record of the meeting at Freising on 3–4 September 1919, on the eighth day of the same month, the Bavarian bishops commissioned the Archbishop of Munich to write the message that was to be read to the faithful from the pulpit together with some of the decisions made at the meeting. After a few modifications, the final text was finally published on 7 October 1919 and included with the diocesan bulletin of Munich and Freising.24 Some references external to the document show how, at

22 Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 92. 23 ‘Uniti Sanctitati Vestrae obsequia pietatis et obedientiae offerimus, et quo luctuosiora sunt tempora, eo intimius Apostolicae Sedi, centro unititatis, nos conjungimus. Finito bello denuo gratias agimus maximas protanta [sic] omnibus miseris et afflictis exhibita caritate per annos fere quinque, pro tot laboribus ad pacem inter populos restituendam susceptis, pro omni studio, ut sors captivorum mitigetur eorumque desiderio ad suos in patria revertendi citius satisfiat. Dolemus, quod Sanctitas Vestra, Vicarius Principis pacis, exclusa fuit a conferentia, in qua de pace inter populos restituenda consilia capta sunt, sicut etiam a concilio populorum pro pace conservanda, quia solida et firma pax haberi non potest, nisi in lege evangelica sit fundata’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, pp. 101–02. See Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 26: ‘Id igitur votis omnibus comprecamur ut […] charitas christiana revirescat, quae […] populos inter se foedere devinciat arctiore quam fluxis hominum pactis’. 24 ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz, Beilage B’, Amtsblatt für die Erzdiözese München und Freising, 21 (1919). A copy is conserved in AES, Baviera, 1919, pos. 54, fasc. 38, ff. 7r–11v; it can be found at Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929) [accessed 10 January 2019]. The terminus a quo of the final version of the document cannot be 4 September, as stated in the edition of the dispatches of Pacelli’s nunciature, but 8 September, the day on which the report of the meeting was approved, given that the Bavarian Episcopal Conference enjoined Faulhaber with writing it; see Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 96.

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the end of September, significant additions could still be requested in regard to the pastoral content. For example, on 23 September, the Bishop of Augusta, Maximilian von Lingg, suggested to Faulhaber that he delete the passage on Joan of Arc and the polemics that had erupted after the ‘fatal speech’ of Benedict XV on the previous 6 April, when the Congregation of Rites had recognized the two miracles necessary for the canonization of the pucelle.25 On that very same day, Benedict XV, in a speech given on the occasion of the solemn reading of the decree of the Congregation of Rites, citing the Bishop of Orleans, Stanislas Touchet (principal promotor of the cause of beatification and canonization of Joan of Arc), called himself the Pope of Joan of Arc (‘le Pape de Jeanne d’Arc’) and regretted, thereby, in practice, solemnly refuting the accusations of Germanophilia advanced by Georges Clemenceau, ‘to be French only in his heart’ (‘de n’être Français que par le cœur’), praising Joan of Arc’s love of her country.26 Touchet himself had described the episode in triumphalist terms in his biography of ‘the fatherland’s saint’.27 While, in order to attenuate the controversy, the draft exhorted the faithful to listen to In hac tanta rather than the message to the French faithful, Lingg’s advice was that the passage should be deleted, as it then was, ‘in order not to draw the people’s attention to the issue because they know nothing of it’.28 Among other things, to contrast Boniface, apostle to the Germans, with Joan of Arc, patron of the French, would have meant going against the spirit and letter of the encyclical, in which the Pope — stating that he was sure that all the German bishops were aware of it and with this asking them in none too veiled a manner to put an end to the polemics — proposed a model of missionary charity: Boniface did not limit his astounding charity to Germany, but rather embraced all peoples, even those who were enemies of one another. The apostle of Germany thus charitably embraced the neighbouring nation of the Franks. He became their prudent reformer and his companions, ‘descendants of the English race’, upon whom ‘he, their countryman, the representative of the universal Church and the servant of the Holy See’ conferred the task of extending the Catholic faith. This faith was first announced to the English by the representatives of Saint Gregory the

25 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 11, 6 (1919), pp. 187–89. 26 Actes de Benoît XV, 3 vols (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1924–26), II (1926), pp. 22–24. On the relationship of the Pope with the ‘German colony in Rome’ in the culture and in the ecclesiastic and diplomatic institutions, see Alberto Monticone, ‘Benedetto XV e la Germania’, in Benedetto XV, ed. by Rumi, pp. 9–17 (p. 10). 27 Stanislas Touchet, La sainte de la patrie, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Bouère: Morin, 1992–93), II (1993), pp. 433–42. On the controversy that erupted in Germany, see Friedrich Ritter von Lama, Papst und Kurie in ihrer Politik nach dem Weltkrieg (Illertissen: Martinusbuchhandlung, 1925), pp. 178–80. 28 ‘Ich [Lingg] hielte es für besser, die fatale Ansprache des Heiligen Vaters betreffs Jeanne d’Arc nicht zu berühren und das Volk, das nichts von ihr weiß, nicht erst darauf aufmerksam zu machen’; and in note 4: ‘Wir wollen uns zu Herz nehmen, was er [der Papst] in diesem Bonifatiusschreiben vom 14. Juni den Deutschen gesagt hat, statt immer wieder ins Auge zu fassen, was er in der Jeanne d’Arc-Rede vom 6. April den Franzosen gesagt hat’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 106.

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Great, who were sent to establish it among the Saxons and the peoples of the same race. Boniface recommended to his countrymen to preserve ‘the unity of love’.29 Three days earlier, on 20 September, in a letter to Faulhaber, the Bishop of Regensburg, Antonius von Henle, had, furthermore, not disguised the fact that he would have liked a warning from the highest pastoral authority against ‘the increasingly immoderate hedonism of the masses (dance parties everywhere!)’. This was then inserted into the final text in far more catastrophic tones that, given the state of Bavaria, would have seemed grotesque if not for the intended audience and the literary genre of the text (a homily, and in particular a penitential homily): ‘Such a low point of public morality that can be found today, such hedonism and love of dance and carnal desire reminiscent of the days of Sodom […] must provoke ever new punishments from God’.30 The prophetic and penitential tone is clear from the very introduction to the letter, which cites no less than six quotations from the first two chapters of Lamentations on the weeping over the ruin that befell Jerusalem and its inhabitants in 587 bce: ‘Faced with the ruins of war and its aftermath’, the bishops write, ‘we repeat the lamentations that the prophet Jeremiah wailed over the ruins of his city and his country’.31 In order to stress the tone even more, a few lines later reference is made to the passage on the ‘day of anger’ from the Book of Zephaniah (Zephaniah 1. 15), which inspired the celebrated late medieval liturgical sequence Dies irae, traditionally attributed to Thomas of Celano and which later became part of the office of the dead in the Roman missal. For this reason, the pastors felt obliged to show to their diocesan faithful publicly ‘what moves our hearts’, consoling them ‘in the distress and sadness of our days’ and indicating to them the path to follow in these imminent, difficult matters.32 More than In hac tanta (cited only once), the introduction to the letter took up the themes discussed in the previous months by the Bavarian bishops. Above all, these were the ‘cruel’ Peace of Versailles, which two months previously had brought Germany to ‘a horrifying end, and a horror with no end in sight’,33 and the definitive sunset of the autonomy of the Kingdom of Bavaria, provoked by that 29 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 25. 30 ‘Im Hirtenbrief an das Volk hätte ich freilich auch eine oberhirtliche Verwarnung gegen die ins Unangemessene sich steigernde Vergnügungssucht der Masse (Tanzbelustigungen an allen Enden!)’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 105. ‘Ein solcher Tiefstand der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit, wie er sich heute offenbart, eine solche Vergnügungssucht und Tanzwut und Fleischeslust, die an die Tage von Sodoma erinnern […] müssen immer neue Strafgerichte Gottes herausfordern’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 8v–9r. 31 ‘Vor den Trümmerfeldern des Krieges und seiner Nachspiele wiederholen wir die Klagelieder, die der Prophet Jeremias auf den Trümmern seiner Vaterstadt und seines Vaterlandes gesungen hat’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 8v–9r, f. 7r. 32 ‘Es drängt uns aber auch, vor unseren Diözesanen auszusprechen, was uns das Herz bewegt, ihnen Trost zu bringen in der Not und Betrübnis unserer Tage, ihnen Richtung zu geben für die sich erhebenden schwierigen Fragen’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 8v–9r, f. 7r. 33 ‘Seit zwei Monaten ist durch den grausamen Frieden ein Ende mit Schrecken und ein Schrecken ohne absehbares Ende über uns gekommen’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 8v–9r, f. 7r.

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‘unitarism of the Reich’ in ecclesiastic issues that Faulhaber considered the fruit of the ‘perjury’ and the ‘high treason’ perpetrated by the November Revolution, perennially marked by the ‘mark of Cain’ (Genesis 4. 15).34 Faulhaber expressed his position unequivocally during the famous Katholikentag in Munich in 1922 when he thundered against those, like the Burgermeister of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, who without ‘thinking clearly’ spoke of a ‘German Catholicism’, laying bare the controversial relationship established between it and Bavarian Catholicism, which began in 1918.35 For the Archbishop, illustrious son of that ‘second confessional age’ that was so crucial in the construction of national unity and the division of Europe from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, Bavaria remained a Catholic region whose particularity and traditions were to be defended from pernicious external influences and above all from the ‘unitarism’ of Weimar. For example, to the proposal of the Interior Minister Erich Koch-Weser to observe a day of mourning for the victims of war on the first Sunday of March, he replied: ‘I am of the opinion that we bishops cannot permit ecclesiastic holidays to be imposed by Berlin, not even by parliament, and that we in Bavaria do not have to conform to the Protestant North’.36 The ‘pastors of the Bavarian dioceses’ had met to discuss ‘how to bring about the salvation of their beloved diocesan faithful even in the days of disaster, how to resist the river of the perdition of youth and how to defend the holy right of the Church in the new conflict with the state’. This ‘river of perdition’ is the opposite of the ‘river of blessing’ inspired by the book of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 47) and cited later in the text in regard to St Boniface, bringer of salvation to Germany. The letter is addressed to five parties: the Pope, the Bavarian clergy, prisoners on their way home, religious associations and Catholic parents. As on previous occasions, in particular the bishops swore a pledge ‘of fidelity and obedience’ to Benedict XV, thanking him for his effort throughout the war to bring about peace and especially his efforts against the famine that Germany suffered and those in favour of the prisoners of war without any bias about a person’s confession. From these efforts, the bishops were convinced that in a few years everyone would realize that no one had exerted himself more than the Pope for peace, even if ‘blind ignorance and hatred for Rome

34 ‘Die Revolution war Meineid und Hochverrat und bleibt in der Geschichte erblich belastet und mit dem Kainsmal gezeichnet’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, pp. 278–79, n. 3. Here and below, see Heinz Hürten, ‘Bayern im deutschen Katholizismus der Weimarer Zeit’, Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, 55 (1992), pp. 375–88 (pp. 375–77). 35 ‘[Adenauer sagte], der Deutsche Katholizismus — schon dieser Ausdruck zeigt sein unklares Denken — sei auf das deutsche Vaterland angewiesen’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 283. 36 ‘Ich [Faulhaber] bin der Auffassung: Daß wir Bischöfe kirchliche Feiern uns nicht von Berlin diktieren lassen dürfen, auch nicht vom Reichstag, und daß wir in Bayern uns nicht nach dem protestantischen Norden zu richten haben. Es ist das der erste Versuch des Reichsunitarismus, tastend auf das religiöse Gebiet überzugreifen’; Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, I, p. 177. On the nineteenth century second confessional age, see Olaf Blaschke, ‘Das 19. Jahrhundert: ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 26 (2000), pp. 38–75; on the role of the various confessions during the war period, see instead Xavier Boniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014).

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always obstructed his path’. The hope, therefore, was that the acts of charity to the prisoners of war would be rewarded by God with the end to his ‘imprisonment in the Vatican prison’ and that the Pope would be given once more the ‘full freedom and independence necessary for the exercise of his high office’. However, even Bavaria — the only Land in Germany to have the honour of hosting a representative of the Holy Father — had replied unworthily to the efforts of the pontiff, occupying, in the ‘days of shame’, the Apostolic Nunciature and threatening the Nuncio, in violation of every international law.37 Nevertheless, In hac tanta explained to German Catholics how to return the ‘loving care’ of the Pope: they should like an heirloom of St Boniface, keep holy the filial devotion and obedience of fidelity to the Apostolic See, and in communion with Rome, which in the days of St Boniface led to a river of blessings for our country, we should now recognize a rich source of blessings for the reconstruction of national order. For this reason, even in the spiritual confusion of the time, the faithful were to be on their guard against Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses (‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’), who spread ‘hatred against the papacy and the Papal States’, such that they would make their houses and hands impure; it is through the false proselytism by these groups that ‘the revolution against Church and altar is being prepared’.38

37 ‘Darum haben sich die Oberhirten der bayerischen Bistümer in der ersten Septemberwoche in Freising […] versammelt, um gemeinsam zu beraten, wie das Heil ihrer geliebten Diözesanen auch in den Tagen des Unheils zu wirken, wie dem Strome des Verderbens in der Jugend zu wehren, wie das heilige Recht der Kirche in dem neuen Kulturkampfe zu verteidigen sei […]. Einen allerersten Gruß der Treue und des Gehorsams richten wir an unseren Heiligen Vater, Papst Benedikt XV. […] Wenn einmal die geschichtliche Wahrheit über die letzten fünf Jahre zum Durchbruch kommt, wird man erkennen, dass kein Mensch auf Erden so unablässig Gedanken des Friedens dachte und Wege der Versöhnung suchte wie der Hl. Vater, auch wenn der blinde Unverstand und Hass gegen Rom seine Wege immer wieder verbaute […]. Wie väterlich hat sich der Hl. Vater um die Gefangenen ohne Unterschied des Glaubens angenommen! […] Möge der allmächtige Gott dem Nachfolger des hl. Petrus diese Gefangenenfürsorge damit lohnen, daß die Tage seiner eigenen Gefangenschaft im Vatikanischen Kerker bald zu Ende seien, und er jene volle Freiheit und Unabhängigkeit wieder erlange, die zur Ausübung seines hohen Amtes notwendig sind! Nun hat man aber gerade in jenem Lande, das unter allen deutschen Ländern den Vorzug besitzt, einen Gesandten des Hl. Vaters in seiner Hauptstadt zu haben, gerade in Bayern, die Bemühungen des Hl. Vaters… schlecht gedankt. Mit tiefem Schmerz und Abscheu denken wir an jene Tage der Räterepublik in München zurück, an denen der Hochwürdigste Nuntius Pacelli persönlich bedroht und allem Völkerrecht zum Hohn in der schwersten Form beleidigt wurde […]. Es werden […] jene Apriltage von uns immer als Tage der Schande in der bayerischen Geschichte empfunden werden’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 7r–8r. 38 ‘In seiner Bonifaziusenzyklika vom 14. Mai dieses Jahres hat der Hl. Vater kundgegeben, in welcher Weise die deutschen Katholiken ihm für seine fürsorgende Liebe danken können. Wir sollen, sagt er, wie ein Erbstück vom hl. Bonifatius die kindliche Ergebenheit und den Gehorsam der Treue gegen den Apostolischen Stuhl heilighalten, und in der Verbindung mit Rom, die in den Tagen des hl. Bonifazius einen Segensstrom in unser Vaterland leitete, auch jetzt für den Wiederaufbau unserer staatlichen Ordnung eine reiche Segensquelle erkennen […]. Darum lasst euch, Geliebte, in der kindlichen und opferwilligen Liebe zum Hl. Vater nicht irreleiten! Wenn von sogenannten.

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The only explicit reference to the encyclical of Boniface thus allowed the bishops to emphasize to the faithful the idea of a salvific bond with Rome, even if, in the general tone of the letter, the juxtaposition of Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses and an imminent religious revolution betrayed at least a certain disorientation of the Bavarian hierarchy, who from the political-ecclesiastical structure of Weimar feared the Protestantization of the country. The comparison of the ‘prison’ of the Pope and that, far more severe, of the combatants suggests in a scarcely veiled manner how the Pope was also a prisoner of war in the battle declared by the anti-Christian society. In its second point, the letter is dedicated to the issue of the clergy. According to the bishops, from the early days of the November Revolution they were the object of a persecution that was ‘reminiscent of the French Revolution’. In particular, the bishops’ thoughts went to those who were in parishes and in the chaplaincy against those who had ‘incited’ the returning soldiers, without gestures or thanks of any kind for their service at the front and in military hospitals. The government, moreover, was in no state to guarantee either domestic safety or the personal freedom of the clergy, who, reprimanded for having preached on educational policies or on the role of religion in public life, had to console themselves with the words of the Saviour ( John 15. 18, 20–21; 16. 4).39 Even in the comment on the effects of the political upheavals triggered by the November Revolution there are confessional echoes. One can think, for example, of the considerations concerning the ecclesiastic policies of the Weimar government: ‘the sacrileges in the churches and the blasphemous burglaries’ brought to the bishops’ minds ‘the worst moments in the Thirty Years’ War’. From the beginning of the Revolution ‘public blasphemies’ and the theft of vestments and sacred vessels have increased, awakening the appetites of predators having their sights on religious property of which false tales of untold riches were told. Citing almost word-for-word the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 5. 50), the bishops concluded

Bibelforschern oder anderen Sekten, die immer in unruhigen Zeiten auftauchen, euch Flugschriften in die Hand gespielt werden, die den Haß gegen das Papsttum und den Kirchenstaat an der Stirne tragen, dann sollen solche Flugblätter euer Haus und eure Hände nicht entweihen […]. Durch die verhetzende Tätigkeit der Adventisten und Bibelforscher und anderen bösen Geister, die jetzt als Wölfe im Lammfell auch die Dorfgemeinden aufsuchen, soll die neue Revolution, die Revolution gegen Kirche und Altäre, vorbereitet werden’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, f. 8r. 39 ‘Vom ersten Tage der bayerischen Revolution an hat gegen die Priester, Ordensleute und Bischöfe eine Hetze begonnen, die immer wieder an die französische Revolution erinnert. In aufdringlicher Weise wurden die heimkehrenden Soldaten gegen ihre Seelsorger aufgehetzt und selbst gegen die Feldgeistlichen, die während der langen Kriegsjahre an der Front und in den Lazaretten den Kriegern die Tröstungen der Kirche zugewendet hatten und dann bei der Heimkehr von der Revolutionsregierung ohne ein Wort des Dankes verabschiedet wurden […]. Wenn die Geistlichen pflichtgemäß von der Schulfrage oder von Religion im öffentlichen Leben predigten, wurde ihnen der Vorwurf gemacht, sie hätten Politik auf die Kanzel getragen […]. Die Regierung war nicht imstande, den Hausfrieden und die persönliche Freiheit dieser Bürger zu schützen. Bei all diesen Unbilden müssen sich die Priester mit den Abschiedsreden des Heilandes an seine Jünger trösten’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 8r–8v.

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their greeting to the clergy with a desperate analysis: the continuing insults to God have caused a general overturning of moral concepts […]. Light becomes darkness, darkness is called light; high treason becomes faithfulness and faithfulness is taken to be high treason; lies are presented as truth, and truth as lies.40 A special ‘greeting of benediction’ was addressed to prisoners of war on the way home. It should be guaranteed that they ‘may again quickly find a place to stay, a speedy return to their families and their old professions and, in God’s name, the joy of living and working’.41 In speaking of the tragic years spent at the front, whose physical and psychological sufferings are described vividly and with a great deal of sympathy, the bishops assumed an openly consoling and nationalist position without the slightest mention of the responsibility of Germany in the outbreak or the conduct of the war; the exaltation of the patriotic virtues of the soldiers and the exhortation to thank them for their sacrifice acutely jars with what had been written a few lines earlier on the pontiff and the search for peace. This attitude was the consequence of ‘the adaption, developed step by step over the course of decades, of Catholics to the mentality and methods of the new German politics’. The German Catholicism of the Kaiserreich lacked as much ‘organizational, spiritual and personal relationships’ with Catholics of other European countries as ‘ethical universalism and Christian solidarity’ because ‘the idea of a supranational Church’, which in fact had always been defended and preserved, and ‘the living, visible reality of the Church’ were reduced to a single abstract dimension, namely, ‘the relationship between German Catholics and the Pope’. This ‘poor scheme’ thus clarifies the attitude of German Catholicism, starting from 1914, compared to that of Belgium or France.42 On the other hand, the variety registered in religious discourse is linked to the different levels of responsibility and authority into which the ecclesial community is differentiated […]. Below

40 ‘Seit dem Ausbruche der Revolution haben sich die Frevel in den Kirchen und die gottesräuberischen Einbrüche verdoppelt und verdreifacht. Wie hat es uns an die schlimmsten Zeiten des 30jährigen Krieges erinnert, als Bewaffnete in unsere Kirchen stürmten […]. Dabei werden durch die tollsten Gerüchte von vermeintlich großen Kirchenvermögen die Raubgelüste nach Kirchengut immer wieder aufs neue geweckt […]. Und mit der Gotteslästerung ist in weiten Kreisen ein Umsturz der sittlichen Begriffe eingerissen. Das Licht wird Finsternis, die Finsternis wird Licht genannt, der Hochverrat wird als Treue, die Treue als Hochverrat ausgegeben, die Lüge wird als Wahrheit, die Wahrheit als Lüge hingestellt’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 8r–8v. 41 ‘Jetzt müsste alles zusammenhelfen, auf dass die Heimkehrenden rasches Unterkommen, baldige Rückkehr zu ihrer Familie und ihrem alten Berufe und in Gottes Namen Lebensfreude und Arbeitsfreude wiederfinden’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, f. 9r. 42 ‘Dell’adeguamento, sviluppatosi passo a passo nel corso dei decenni, dei cattolici alla mentalità e ai metodi della nuova politica tedesca’; ‘i rapporti organizzativi, spirituali e personali’; ‘universalismo etico e di solidarietà cristiana’; ‘l’idea della Chiesa sopranazionale’; ‘la realtà viva e visibile della Chiesa’; ‘il rapporto tra i cattolici tedeschi e il papa’; ‘povero schema’; Heinrich Lutz, ‘I cattolici tedeschi di fronte alla guerra ed alle sue conseguenze’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 313–42 (p. 323).

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the formally univocal adhesion to the position defined by the Pope — the war is a manifestation of the divine punishment of a modern society that has apostatized from the Church, and peace can be reconstructed only on the condition that civil society be brought back under pontifical guidance — itineraries can be glimpsed, certainly not without convolutions and contradictions, which strive to introduce patriotic or nationalistic positions into the pontifical interpretation of the conflagration.43 This is as true of the Italian case as it is for the German one, whose ‘convolutions and contradictions’ are well evident even in war-time sermons.44 The Freising conference then set out the active role that the Bavarian Church should play in the post-war period: economic support should be accompanied by pastoral care so that ‘these people do not sink into resentment and displeasure, do not create new ruins, do not stay away from worship and the holy sacraments and do not accuse those who are not to blame for the injustice they have suffered’ and to ‘raise these broken souls up again and lead them to the source of salvation’.45 The return of prisoners, in the end, assumed even a religious significance through the almost literal citation of a passage from Psalm 126 (Psalms 126. 1–3, 5): When the Lord restored the captives of Zion, […] our mouths were filled with laughter; our tongues sang for joy. […] The Lord has done great things for us […]. Those who sow in tears will reap with cries of joy. The only positive note in the pastoral letter concerned Catholic associations that were well capable of overcoming ‘the heavy shock of the war years and the months of revolution’ and consisted in people who ‘with great courage did not deny their religious conviction and their membership in a Catholic professional association, even in the face of overpowering tyranny’. Although it did not explicitly cite it, the social teaching of Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum stands at the basis of the bishops’ considerations about the tragedy of the circumstances and its possible remedy. Consider, for example, the link between religion and the solution to the social issues; 43 ‘Varietà registrata nel discorso religioso si lega ai diversi livelli di responsabilità e di autorità in cui si articola la comunità ecclesiale […]. Al di sotto dell’adesione, formalmente univoca, alla linea definita dal papato — la guerra è manifestazione del castigo divino su una società moderna che ha apostatato dalla Chiesa e la pace potrà ricostruirsi solo a condizione di riportare il consorzio civile sotto la guida pontificia — si intravedono itinerari, certo non privi di tortuosità e contraddizioni, che si sforzano di ricondurre alla lettura pontificia della conflagrazione posizioni patriottiche o nazionalistiche’; Daniele Menozzi, ‘I cattolici italiani nel primo conflitto mondiale’, in La Chiesa e la guerra, ed. by Menozzi, pp. 900–04 (p. 903). 44 Heinrich Missalla, ‘Gott mit uns’: die deutsche katholische Kriegspredigt (1914–1918) (Munich: Kösel, 1968). 45 ‘Jetzt müsste alles zusammenhelfen, die wirtschaftliche Fürsorge und die kirchliche Seelsorge, auf dass diese Männer nicht in Groll und Missmut untergehen, nicht neue Trümmer schaffen, dem Gottesdienste und den hl. Sakramenten nicht ferne bleiben und das erlittene Unrecht nicht jene entgelten lassen, die nicht daran schuld sind. Jetzt müsste alles zusammenhelfen, um diese gebrochenen Seelen wieder aufzurichten und zu den Quellen der Erlösung zu führen’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, f. 9r.

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the faith in the Church as a bulwark against materialistic opinions in terms of work and salary; the ‘religious promotion of their members’ as the main goal of Catholic workers’ associations; the vision of work in terms of ‘moral duty’. The tension between the ‘working class’ and that of the peasants is also seen in the light of Rerum novarum, affirming that Catholic workers’ associations ‘possess the key to finding a balance here and to building bridges of reconciliation’.46 The final greeting of the bishops, the longest and the one considered most carefully, was addressed to Catholic parents. They were called to fight, in society, against the ‘revolution that, after some reversals, has increasingly turned against Christian schools and the education of the young’. In fact, the teaching of religion (a ‘school subject of the highest pedagogical value’) had been ‘arbitrarily degraded to the status of an optional subject’ to the point of excluding ‘any ecclesiastic cooperation in educational activity’. This ‘governmental fury’ produced — and here the bishops return to the decline in public morality condemned at the beginning of the letter, following the suggestion of the Bishop of Regensburg, Henle, — the ruin of many ‘sons and daughters who have fallen victim to bad society, to bad books, to bad theatre and cinema, and the other tentacles of seduction’.47 Consequently, the prelates asked the parents who ‘do not kneel before the god Baal’ to intervene by every lawful means in defence of the confessional school (‘a sanctuary that cannot bear darkness’). The solemn declaration in support of Catholic schools was ‘the only glimmer in a present without character’. On the contrary, ‘a responsibility as heavy as a boulder’ weighs on those who, fighting against Christian schools, deprive education ‘of the blessing of religion and of the Church’ and ‘undermine the solid ground from which alone an ordered and happy family and community life can arise’. If the struggle of the state against the church should continue, the bishops would be forced to tell Catholic parents that no law of the state can bind the conscience if it contradicts the commandments of God and disregards the God-given rights of the Church […]. Parents have their parental rights not from the state but from God […]. We would oppose 46 ‘Unsere Katholischen Arbeitervereine und die übrigen katholischen Standesvereine haben die schwere Erschütterung in den Kriegsjahren und Revolutionsmonaten gut überstanden. Ihre Mitglieder haben mit großem Bekennermut die religiöse Überzeugung und die Zugehörigkeit zu einem katholischen Standesverein auch gegenüber einer übermächtigen Gewaltherrschaft nicht verleugnet. […] In der Verbindung mit der Kirche besitzen sie aber das Geheimnis, im Strudel der materialistischen Geistesrichtung nicht unterzugehen, vielmehr eine Schutzwehr gegen die rein irdische Lebensauffassung in den Kreisen ihrer Arbeiterkollegen zu bilden. […] In der lebensvollen Verbindung mit der Kirche besitzen sie aber die Bürgschaft, ihrem ursprünglichen und unveräußerlichen Vereinsziel, der religiösen Förderung ihrer Mitglieder, auch unter den neuen Zeitumständen treu zu bleiben, weil ohne Religion die soziale Not an der Wurzel nicht geheilt, die Arbeit als sittliche Pflicht nicht erfasst wird. […] In der lebensvollen Verbindung mit der Kirche besitzen aber unsere Katholischen Arbeitervereine den Schlüssel, um hier auszugleichen und Brücken der Versöhnung zu schlagen’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 9v–10r. 47 ‘Groß ist die Zahl der verlorenen Söhne und Töchter, die der schlechten Gesellschaft, dem schlechten Buche, dem schlechten Theater und Kino und anderen Fangarmen der Verführung zum Opfer gefallen [sind]’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, f. 11r.

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all school laws that trouble the conscience with the same resistance that the German bishops opposed the Kulturkampf laws of the [18]70s […]. Parental law prevails over school law, the law of conscience prevails over the law of the state!48 The letter closes with the same prophetic and penitential tone with which it opened, poised between perdition and salvation. If the abyss and terror caused by the war — and peace! — corresponds to the ‘future of tribulation’ that the ‘powers of darkness’ have sworn against the Catholic Church in Bavaria, the ‘powers of heavenly grace’ always work ‘new miracles’ precisely where ‘the legions of hell are at work’. However, the Church, in its nature as societas perfecta indifferent to the contingent governmental forms that a political community gives itself, whether these be democratic or authoritarian, is not bound to any particular political order. It does not depend on it, nor is its existence threatened when it collapses, because the eternal divine commandments are superior to the laws of both the old and new state order. As in the case of Catholic associations, here, too, the Bavarian bishops remained faithful to the Leonine magisterium, and in particular to the Immortale Dei encyclical of 1882.49

5. Conclusions In the interpretation of the war, it has by now been established and unanimously accepted that during it religion assumed a great importance as the cultural foundation of an ‘operation of a construction of meaning able to give motivations to and explanations for the war’ and of a post-war period that ‘hardly seemed endowed with any rationality’. It was therefore necessary ‘to elaborate rhetorical practices aimed at giving meaning to the shocking tragedy in progress’ that distinguished itself in the aspects and the ways in which it proposed ‘the relationship with the supernatural to people […] needing new orientations capable of sustaining them in the traumas 48 ‘Kein Gesetz des Staates kann im Gewissen verpflichten, wenn es mit den Geboten Gottes im Widerspruch steht und die gottverbrieften Rechte der Kirche missachtet […] Die Eltern haben ihre elterlichen rechte nicht vom Staate, sondern von Gott […] Allen Schulgesetzen, die ins Gewissen greifen, würden wir den gleichen Widerstand entgegensetzen, den die deutschen Bischöfe den Kulturkampfgesetzen der siebziger Jahre entgegengesetzt haben […] Elternrecht bricht Schulrecht, Gewissensrecht bricht Staatsrecht!’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, ff. 10r–11r. 49 ‘Mächte der Finsternis haben der katholischen Kirche in Bayern eine Zukunft in Trübsal geschworen. Wo aber die Legionen der Hölle am Werke sind, wirken auch die Gnadenkräfte des Himmels neue Wunder […]. Die Kirche ist aber nicht derart auf Leben und Tod mit dem Staate verbunden und auf den Staat angewiesen, dass sie bei einem Zusammenbruch der staatlichen Ordnung in ihrem eigenen Bestande bedroht wäre […]. Über allen Gesetzen der alten und neuen Staatsordnung stehen die ewigen Gebote Gottes’; ‘Hirtenbrief der bayerischen Bischofskonferenz’, f. 11v. On the renunciation of the principle of Christianity in the pontificate of Leo XIII, see Enrico Galavotti, ‘La democrazia “sana” di Pio XII e i progetti dei cattolici italiani per il dopoguerra’, in La Chiesa e la ‘memoria divisa’, ed. by Deoriti and Turbanti, pp. 243–64 (pp. 245–47).

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that had befallen them’.50 Hence the multiple and sometimes contradictory ways in which the relationship with religion was depicted: from an expiatory, apotropaic and consoling function to a patriotic, heroic and, at the same time, pacifist one — elements that, as has been seen, can all be found, to a greater or lesser degree, in the letter of the Freising conference. The documents analysed in this contribution are no exception. In hac tanta, which in the intentions of Schmitt, the Bishop of Fulda, was to contribute to regaining for the Catholic faith some of the German Protestants overwhelmed by the crisis that followed the end of the war and the fall of the Reich, became in the hands of the Bavarian bishops an instrument of pastoral teaching and defence against the new-born republic and the system of Versailles, which were seen as the latest fruits of modernity subverting the idealized traditional and hierocratic order. The prelates saw in the encyclical an official opportunity to legitimize publicly their ecclesiastic policies through a series of public and private positions culminating in the pastoral letter of September 1919, a true call to arms for Bavarian Catholicism against the new order born both of the war and, even more, of peace.

Bibliography Achleitner, Wilhelm, Gott im Krieg: die Theologie der österreichischen Bischöfe in den Hirtenbriefen zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997) Battelli, Giuseppe, ‘Clero secolare e società italiana tra decennio napoleonico e primo Novecento: alcune ipotesi di rilettura’, in Clero e società nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. by Mario Rosa (Rome: Laterza, 1992), pp. 43–123 Blaschke, Olaf, ‘Das 19. Jahrhundert: ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 26 (2000), pp. 38–75 Boniface, Xavier, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014) De Marchi, Giuseppe, Le nunziature apostoliche dal 1800 al 1956 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1957) Fattorini, Emma, Germania e Santa Sede: le nunziature di Pacelli tra la Grande Guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Galavotti, Enrico, ‘La democrazia “sana” di Pio XII e i progetti dei cattolici italiani per il dopoguerra’, in La Chiesa e la ‘memoria divisa’ del Novecento, ed. by Alessandra Deoriti and Giovanni Turbanti (Bologna: Pendragon, 2016), pp. 243–64 Huber, Ernst Rudolf, and Wolfgang Huber, eds, Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenwesens, 5 vols (Berlin: Duncker &

50 ‘Operazione di costruzione di senso in grado di proporre motivazioni e spiegazioni di una guerra’; ‘appariva malagevole dotare di una qualsiasi razionalità’; ‘l’elaborazione di pratiche retoriche volte a corredare di significato la sconvolgente tragedia in atto’; ‘il rapporto con il soprannaturale a uomini […] bisognosi di nuovi orientamenti in grado di sorreggerli dei traumi che li hanno colpiti’; Menozzi, ‘I cattolici italiani’, pp. 901–02. On this topic, see also Boniface, Histoire religieuse.

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Humblot, 1973–95), I: Staat und Kirche vom Ausgang des alten Reichs bis zum Vorabend der burgerlichen Revolution (1973) Hürten, Heinz, ‘Bayern im deutschen Katholizismus der Weimarer Zeit’, Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, 55 (1992), pp. 375–88 Hürten, Heinz, Die Kirchen in der Novemberrevolution: eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der deutschen Revolution (1918–1919) (Regensburg: Pustet, 1984) Latour, Francis, La Papauté et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996) Levant, Marie, ‘Pio XI e la sfida del nazismo: dai compromessi all’enciclica Mit brennender Sorge del 1937’, in La Chiesa e la ‘memoria divisa’ del Novecento, ed. by Alessandra Deoriti and Giovanni Turbanti (Bologna: Pendragon, 2016), pp. 143–63 Levant, Marie, ‘Le Vatican et l’Allemagne de Weimar, des nonciatures Pacelli au Reichskonkordat (1919–1934)’ (doctoral thesis, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Sapienza Università di Roma, 2012) Lutz, Heinrich, ‘I cattolici tedeschi di fronte alla guerra ed alle sue conseguenze’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 313–42 Mauro, Letterio, ‘Introduzione’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 11–14 Menozzi, Daniele, ‘I cattolici italiani nel primo conflitto mondiale’, in La Chiesa e la guerra: i cattolici italiani nel primo conflitto mondiale, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (= Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008)), pp. 900–04 Menozzi, Daniele, ed., La Chiesa e la guerra: i cattolici italiani nel primo conflitto mondiale (= Humanitas, 63, 6 (2008)) Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa, pace e guerra nel Novecento: verso una delegittimazione religiosa dei conflitti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008) Menozzi, Daniele, ‘Ideologia di cristianità e pratica della “guerra giusta”’, in Chiesa e guerra: dalla ‘benedizione delle armi’ alla ‘Pacem in terris’, ed. by Mimmo Franzinelli and Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 91–127 Missalla, Heinrich, ‘Gott mit uns’: die deutsche katholische Kriegspredigt (1914–1918) (Munich: Kösel, 1968) Monticone, Alberto, ‘Benedetto XV e la Germania’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 9–17 Paiano, Maria, ‘Pregare per la vittoria, pregare per la pace: Benedetto XV e la nazionalizzazione del culto’, in La Chiesa italiana nella Grande Guerra, ed. by Daniele Menozzi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015), pp. 45–52 Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Renoton-Beine, Nathalie, La colombe et les tranchées: Benoît XV et les tentatives de paix durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 2004) Ritter von Lama, Friedrich, Papst und Kurie in ihrer Politik nach dem Weltkrieg (Illertissen: Martinusbuchhandlung, 1925) Rumi, Giorgio, ed., Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990) Scheidgen, Hermann-Josef, Deutsche Bischöfe im ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991)

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Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Ticchi, Jean-Marc, Aux frontières de la paix: bons offices, médiations, arbitrages du Saint-Siège (1872–1922) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002) Touchet, Stanislas, La sainte de la patrie, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Bouère: Morin, 1992–93), II (1993) Unterburger, Klaus, ‘Fulda’, in Erinnerungsorte des Christentums, ed. by Christoph Markschies and Hubert Wolf (Munich: Beck, 2010), pp. 262–79 Unterburger, Klaus, Vom Lehramt der Theologen zum Lehramt der Päpste? Pius XI., die Apostolische Konstitution ‘Deus scientiarum Dominus’ und die Reform der Universitätstheologie (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2010) Varnier, Giovanni Battista, ‘Benedetto XV e i problemi della società contemporanea’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 327–43 Volk, Ludwig, ed., Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers (1917–1945), 3 vols (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1975–2002), I: 1917–1934 (1975), pp. 72–73 Volk, Ludwig, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933: von den Ansätzen in der Weimarer Republik bis zur Ratifizierung am 10. September 1933 (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1972) Weichlein, Siegfried, ‘Der Apostel der Deutschen: die konfessionspolitische Konstruktion des Bonifatius im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Konfessionen im Konflikt: Deutschland zwischen 1800 und 1970: ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter, ed. by Olaf Blaschke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), pp. 155–79 Weichlein, Siegfried, ‘Religion und Nation: Bonifatius als politischer Heiliger im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 100 (2006), pp. 46–54

Letterio Mauro

The In hac tanta Encyclical (1919) and Peace in Europe

1.

The Nature and Purpose of the Encyclical

The In hac tanta1 encyclical was promulgated on 14 May 1919 by Benedict XV to celebrate the twelfth centenary of the start of the most famous of the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon missions, that carried out for decades by Wynfrith, a nobleman of Wessex, to the peoples of Germany in strict conformity with the intents of the Apostolic See. Moved, like other Anglo-Saxon and Irish monks, by the desire for the peregrinatio pro Christo, after the failure of his first attempts to evangelize Frisia, Wynfrith in fact had travelled to Rome (where he assumed the name of Boniface) to meet Pope Gregory II. In May 719, ‘in the solemnest words and with official letters, the Pope conferred on him the mission of preaching the Gospel to all the peoples of Germany’.2 He faithfully carried out this mandate, which was confirmed by three successive pontiffs (Gregory III, Zachariah and Stephen II), and always maintained a constant bond with the Apostolic See,3 until he perished at the hands of the Frisians in 754.

1 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 11, 7 (1919), pp. 209–21 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 2 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 6. ‘Precepit quoque mihi prefatus apostolicus pontifex [Gregorius], ut populorum, quoscumque visitassem, conversationem et mores apostolice sedis pontifici indicassem. Quod in Domino confido ut fecissem’; Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. by Michael Tangl (Berlin: Weidmann, 1955), p. 193. On the person and work of Boniface, see Günter Bernt, ‘Bonifatius (Winfrid)’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols (Munich: Artemis, 1980–99), II (1983), pp. 417–21. 3 Boniface recalled this once again in 752 in his act of submission to the new Pope Stephen II: ‘Sanctitatis vestrae clementiam intimis ac visceratis obnixe flagito precibus, ut […] sedi apostolice serviendo servus vester fidelis ac devotus permanere possim eodem modo, quo ante sub tribus precessoribus vestris apostolice sedi serviebam, venerabilis memoriae duobus Gregoriis et Zacharia, qui me semper hortatione et auctoritate litterarum suarum muniebant et adiuvabant’; Die Briefe, ed. by Tangl, pp. 233–34.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1071–1084 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118820

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In hac tanta is therefore one of Benedict XV’s encyclicals dedicated to the great figures of spirituality and Christian thought.4 At the same time, it is also a useful document for understanding the guiding principle of his politics in the delicate period between the end of the Great War and the beginning of the difficult peace process. The encyclical is not a mere celebration of a person and an event that are very important in the history of European spirituality; it is a gesture that is anything but obvious in the anti-German climate that prevailed at that time in Europe. The person and the event in question permit the Pope to present again that ‘theology of peace’5 based on a ‘return to the Gospel’ and informed by the principles that had inspired his thought and action during the war years and that he considered indispensable for a future, authentic and lasting peace. In In hac tanta, the premises, the context and the development of the Boniface’s evangelizing mission to the peoples of Germany are presented as capable of shedding light on the grave problems of the post-war period, thus allowing the Pope to reiterate the fundamental lines of his teaching, which he had proclaimed in the programmatic encyclical of his pontificate, Ad beatissimi, of 1 November 1914.6

2. The German Situation The encyclical fell at a particularly difficult moment in the already painful and confused affairs of Germany7 after the military defeat and the fall of the monarchy





4 This group of encyclicals includes, with In hac tanta, Spiritus Paraclitus (15 September 1920) on the fifteenth centenary of the death of St Jerome, Principi apostolorum Petro (5 October 1920) issued along with the proclamation of St Ephrem the Syrian as a Doctor of the Church, Sacra propediem (6 January 1921) promulgated on the seventh centenary of the founding of the Franciscan Third Order and dedicated to the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi, Fausto appetente die (29 June 1921) on the seventh centenary of the death of St Dominic de Guzmán, and In praeclara summorum (30 April 1921), on the sixth centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri. 5 See Nando Simonetti, Principi di teologia della pace nel magistero di Benedetto XV (Santa Maria degli Angeli: Porziuncola, 2005). 6 ‘Never perhaps was there more talking about the brotherhood of men than there is today; in fact, men do not hesitate to proclaim that striving after brotherhood is one of the greatest gifts of modern civilization, ignoring the teaching of the Gospel, and setting aside the work of Christ and of His Church. But in reality never was there less brotherly activity amongst men than at the present moment. Race hatred has reached its climax; peoples are more divided by jealousies than by frontiers; within one and the same nation, within the same city there rages the burning envy of class against class; and amongst individuals it is self-love which is the supreme law over-ruling everything. You see, Venerable Brethren, how necessary it is to strive in every possible way that the charity of Jesus Christ should once more rule supreme amongst men. That will ever be our own aim; that will be the keynote of Our Pontificate’; Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81 (§ § 7–8) [accessed 10 January 2019]. 7 On this, see the bitter estimation of Nuncio Pacelli a few days after the armistice: Emma Fattorini, ‘La Germania e la nota di pace di Benedetto XV’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 229–52 (pp. 248–52).

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on 9 November 1918. On 7 May 1919, only seven days before its promulgation, the German delegation at the Paris Peace Conference had in fact received the conditions imposed by the victorious nations. By putting an end to hopes still fairly widespread in Germany,8 these conditions caused a true trauma due to the territorial settlements, the financial demands and above all the legal and moral interpretations, which attributed full responsibility for the war to the defeated nation (Art. 231). These conditions, approved by the Reichstag on 22 June, aroused indignation and hitherto unknown revisionist aspirations in German public opinion and politics.9 At the beginning of 1919, the situation in Germany was characterized by great instability, due to various elements. The collaboration between the Social Democratic party and the Catholic Zentrum was difficult, opposed by a widespread ultraconservative movement that included a substantial proportion of the Catholics and the archbishops of Cologne and Munich, who were two of the most prominent exponents of that episcopate to which In hac tanta was addressed. Insurrectionary attempts such as that of April–May 1919 in Munich seemed to lend substance to the feared Bolshevik danger. Furthermore the civilian population experienced serious humanitarian conditions due to the continuing maritime blockade. The Catholic world was divided10 and Catholics and Protestants did not agree regarding the problems posed by the post-war period, particularly as far as the peace treaty was concerned.11 The international position of Germany was no less delicate. Aware of its diplomatic isolation, and therefore of the need to find external support and backing, it was also inclined to appraise the similarities between its emerging interests and those of the Holy See.12 The latter, in turn, despite being excluded from the peace conference,13 did not want to miss the opportunity that the situation offered to

8 On this, see Joachim Scholtyseck, ‘La Germania a Versailles’, in La Conferenza, ed. by Scottà, pp. 87–93. 9 See Gunther Mai, La repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011), pp. 51–59. 10 On this series of problems, see Stefano Trinchese, La Repubblica di Weimar e la Santa Sede tra Benedetto XV e Pio XI (1919–1922) (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1994), pp. 75–93. 11 On the different positions assumed by Catholics and Protestants on these themes, see Bernard Bonnery, Les revues catholiques ‘Stimmen der Zeit’ et ‘Literarischer Handweiser’ dans l’Allemagne de 1918 à 1925 (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1978), pp. 4–74 and 179–91. 12 Other than the questions tied to Bolshevism, the need for mutual support between Germany and the Holy See was also relevant in regard, for example, to the fate of the German religious missions after the loss of the colonies. On this last point, see Giuseppe Butturini, ‘Benedetto XV e la questione missionaria’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 181–208 (pp. 183–86). 13 Americo Miranda, ‘Il papa non “ammesso tra le grandi potenze”: Benedetto XV e l’esclusione della Santa Sede dalla Conferenza di pace di Parigi’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 45, 1 (2009), pp. 341–67.

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make its own voice heard and to reintegrate itself into the game of powers.14 On the other hand, such a reintegration could not be achieved without maintaining a political balance on the continent and, therefore, the central role of Germany within this.15

3. The Search for a ‘Just and Lasting Peace’ The Pope made an explicit reference to this complex picture, and in particular to the recent insurrection in Munich, from the very beginning of the encyclical: We are in the midst of many trials and difficulties [acerbissimis hisce temporibus] […]. We have closely followed those unexpected events, those manifestations of disorder and of anarchy which have recently occurred among you and among neighbouring countries. They continue to hold us in suspense.16 The themes enunciated in the title of the encyclical, that is, the celebration of Boniface’s evangelizing mission to the Germans and his close unity of intent and action with the Apostolic See, were therefore immediately seen in relationship to the question of peace, or rather to the state of non-peace that, in spite of a formal truce, continued to characterize Europe and in particular Germany. Since the weeks following the armistice, Benedict XV had drawn attention to the dangers for losers and winners connected to the theme of a ‘just and lasting peace’. In response to the Christmas wishes of the College of Cardinals in 1918, he had in fact affirmed: The enormous storm that has passed over the earth has left you very sad remnants of its devastation. But even more so, it is to be feared that it has left, in the hearts of the people, grim relics of ancient resentments, unhealthy germs of discord, of revenge, of ungenerous reprisals. The very fires of war and passion, noble in origin, in the defence of the homeland […] can too easily be excessive in their consequences, not by suffocating but rather by aggravating with new germs the ancient seeds of social disorder that should be restored in justice.17

14 On the convergences at the diplomatic level between the Holy See and Germany after the end of the war, see Stewart A. Stehlin, Weimar and the Vatican, 1919–1933: German-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in the Interwar Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 21–56. 15 See Trinchese, La Repubblica di Weimar, pp. 93–97. 16 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 1. 17 ‘La tempesta immane che è passata sulla terra vi ha lasciato tristissime vestigia delle sue devastazioni. Ma più ancora è da temere che abbia lasciato, nei cuori degli uomini, funeste reliquie degli antichi rancori, germi malsani di discordie, di vendette, di rappresaglie ingenerose. Gli ardori stessi della guerra e la passione, nobile nella sua origine, della difesa della patria […] può troppo facilmente esorbitare nelle conseguenze, non soffocando, anzi aggravando con nuovi germi gli antichi semi del

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Emphasizing that without the Christian principles of justice and charity only a kind of truce or armed peace would be obtained, the Pope also reaffirmed his impartiality, as the Father common to all people: If in the past and in the present We have taken Our paternity to be a norm for action, We do not intend to look elsewhere for directives for the future. We were Fathers in the past; we are Fathers in the present; we will be Fathers […] in the future, always aiming, according to the norms and directives of Our work, at the Fatherhood that God gave Us, which is universal, like that of a participated similarity.18 This is also the reason stated in the first lines of Ad beatissimi.19 These themes were reaffirmed at the beginning of 1919 by La Civiltà Cattolica, a journal which was an authoritative interpreter of the Pope’s thought. Noting the instability of the principles of law, justice and peace when separated from their foundation, that is God, the journal affirmed: By the re-establishment of ideas, with a return to rational and Christian principles, foolishly abandoned by false ‘culture’, or modern civilization, one easily arrives at the union of spirits with the suppression of hatred, with the moderation of national powers or rivalries […]. But such a union cannot be intimate and lasting if it is not animated by a Christian spirit and reinforced by the law of love, which is the life of Christianity. […] In this way, and in this way alone — in the bond of love — can true and lasting peace be achieved.20

disordine sociale che vorrebbe restaurato nella giustizia’; Benedict XV, È la quinta volta, 24 December 1918 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 18 ‘Se nel passato e nel presente avemmo a norma di azione la Nostra paternità, Noi non intendiamo di cercare altrove le direttive dell’avvenire. Noi fummo Padri nel passato; siamo Padri nel presente; saremo Padri […] nell’avvenire, sempre mirando, come a norma e a direttiva della Nostra opera, alla Paternità che Iddio Ci diede, e che è universale come quella di cui è somiglianza partecipata’; Benedict XV, È la quinta volta. 19 ‘Raised by the inscrutable counsel of Divine Providence without any merit of our own to the Chair of the Prince of the Apostles, we […] at once with affectionate love we cast our eyes over the flock committed to our care — a numberless flock indeed, comprising in different ways the whole human race. For the whole of mankind was freed from the slavery of sin by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ as their ransom, and there is no one who is excluded from the benefit of this Redemption […]. We make no secret, Venerable Brethren, that the first sentiment we felt in our heart […] was the inexpressible yearning of a loving desire for the salvation of all mankind […]. For what could prevent the soul of the common Father of all being most deeply distressed by the spectacle presented by Europe, nay, by the whole world, perhaps the saddest and most mournful spectacle of which there is any record’; Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi, § § 1–3. 20 ‘Dalla ristaurazione delle idee, col ritorno ai principii razionali e cristiani, stoltamente abbandonati dalla falsa “cultura” o civiltà moderna, si verrà agevolmente all’unione degli animi, con la soppressione degli odii, con la moderazione delle competenze o rivalità nazionali […]. Ma una siffatta unione non può essere intima e duratura se non è animata dallo spirito cristiano e rafforzata dalla legge dell’amore, che è la vita del cristianesimo. […] Così, e così solamente — nel vincolo dell’amore — si potrà avverare la pace vera e duratura’; ‘All’alba dell’anno di pace’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 1 (1919), p. 8.

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Therefore, at the end of the editorial it was recalled how this restoration could not be carried out if not through the effectiveness of Christian civilization and of that law of charity and love which is in particular the essence of Christianity and a synthesis of the apostolic office of the pontificate, the continuator of the very mission of Christ on earth and hence assumed by the reigning pontiff, since his first encyclical, as the ‘special uniform’ of his pontificate.21 The same issue of the journal also featured an article by Father Rosa on ‘The Peace Conference and the Fears of New Wars’, corrected and re-elaborated personally by the Pope,22 in which these points were mentioned once again. Condemning those who ‘presume that one cannot speak of peace if not in the partial and exclusive sense, either for one side or for the other: therefore, they thus exaggerate and inveigh against a “Christian peace”, which is also the only just and lasting peace’,23 the article stated: Without this order of justice and love, there is no satisfaction of reason, no tranquillity of the social life, no possibility of universal peace. […] When this is lacking, all the peace conferences, all the arbitrations and the like, what will they be but empty phrases and vain parries […]?24 Precisely for this reason, a partial and unjust peace ‘can never be called peace; it will rather be a continuation of war’. From this ‘there would be a worsening of restlessness and disturbance, both cause of, and a clue to, the social malaise and distress, thus producing new crises, whether they be called internal revolutions or external wars, in short, the negation of peace’.25

21 ‘Se non per l’efficacia della civiltà cristiana, e di quella legge segnatamente di carità e d’amore che è l’essenza del cristianesimo, e sintesi dell’ufficio apostolico del pontificato, continuatore della missione medesima di Cristo in terra e perciò assunta dal regnante pontefice, fino dalla sua prima enciclica, come “divisa speciale” del suo pontificato’; ‘All’alba dell’anno di pace’, pp. 9–10. 22 See La Santa Sede, i vescovi veneti e l’autonomia politica dei cattolici (1918–1922), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Trieste: LINT, 1994), pp. 29–30. 23 ‘Presumono che non si possa parlare di pace, se non in senso parziale ed esclusivo, a solo pro degli uni o degli altri: quindi spropositano e inveiscono, contro la “pace cristiana”, che pure è la sola pace giusta e duratura’; [Enrico Rosa,] ‘La Conferenza di pace e i timori di nuove guerre’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 1 (1919), p. 186. 24 ‘Senza quest’ordine adunque di giustizia e di amore non si dà appagamento di ragione, né tranquillità di vita sociale, né possibilità di pace universale. […] Quando ciò manchi, tutti i congressi della pace, tutti gli arbitrati e simili, che altro saranno se non vuote frasi e parate vane […]?’; [Rosa,] ‘La Conferenza di pace e i timori di nuove guerre’, pp. 181–82. 25 ‘Si avrebbe un aggravarsi della inquietudine e turbazione, causa insieme ed indizio del malessere e disagio sociale, quindi prodromo di nuove crisi, si chiamino rivoluzioni interne o guerre esterne; insomma negazione di pace’; [Rosa,] ‘La Conferenza di pace e i timori di nuove guerre’, pp. 185–86.

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4. The Example of the Life and Action of Boniface In In hac tanta, Benedict XV observed that, although this was a very troubled phase in the history of Europe, it was precisely from Germany, thanks to the celebration of Boniface’s centenary, that there came ‘a ray of light and a messenger of hope and joy’. On that occasion, he took the opportunity to confirm his own love for and benevolence towards the German nation: ‘We commemorate with great joy [iucundissime] the ancient union [antiquam … coniunctionem] of the German people with the Apostolic See, which we vehemently [vehementissime] desired’.26 Later in the text, the Pope repeated this expression of esteem, linking it to the themes of unity and peace: Twelve centuries later, we think you should plan as many celebrations as possible to commemorate this new era of Christian civilization. This era was begun by the mission and the preaching of Boniface, and then carried forth by his disciples and successors. From these came the salvation and the prosperity of Germany. Another purpose of the celebrations is to perfect the present and to re-establish religious unity and peace for the future. These are the greatest goods and they come only from Christ who charged the Church with preserving, spreading, and defending Christian faith and charity. Thus, it is necessary for the Apostolic See to be united [coniuntio] with the faithful. Boniface was the perfect herald and the model [exemplar] of such unity. This led to close, friendly relationships [consensio] between the Roman See and your nation. While celebrating this unity and this perfect accord, we fervently desire [votis omnibus cupimus] to see them re-established among all peoples so that ‘Christ might be all in all’.27 It was not just a matter of standard expressions. If the aforementioned strongly anti-German climate allowed for vicious accusations of Germanophilia (that initiated in the war years),28 the Pope’s words reiterate that the essential conditions for a true 26 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 2. The official English translation has been modified to better match the original Latin. 27 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § § 3–4. 28 To consider in particular the Italian context, see for example Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 239–52. Such suspicions and accusations of partisanship or a departure from impartiality, from both sides, are recorded regularly in the diary of Baron Carlo Monti: see Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, pp. 233–34, 315–17, 340, 494–502; II, pp. 220–21. The Pope expressly protested against these rumours; see, for example, his letter of 22 May 1918 to the bishops of Lombardy: ‘The insidious and refined campaign of slander and hate that has been waged against Our Person and Our work saddens us. […] When this conflagration broke out […] We, as much as was in our power, did not allow ourselves ever to neglect doing nor attempting anything that could ameliorate and mitigate the very sorrowful consequences […]. We reproved, as We reprove again even now, all violations of law, wherever they have been perpetrated. Beyond this, with exhortations, public prayers, expiatory services and proposals for a just and lasting peace, We have laboured to bring ever closer the end to this terrible slaughter. […] You well know […] the foolish and absurd slanders that in varied and multiple guises, both publicly

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peace, understood not as a simple absence of war, would be the reconciliation of the nations through charity, benevolence and the universal brotherhood taught by the Gospel, together with the union of these nations with the pontiff, recognized — in a manner no different from Boniface and the peoples he evangelized — as Vicar of God and Father of all people. Thus, although he was aware of the marginalization of the Church in society and in politics, Benedict XV attributed to the papacy a political role, understood in the sense of a service to and for the human polis, in virtue of the many initiatives undertaken during the war. He reaffirmed at the same time, in contrast to the narrow nationalistic interpretations of religion typical of those years,29 the supranational character of the Church. On the other hand, the central role of charity in re-establishing on new foundations the relations between peoples was explicitly evoked, with a clear reference to the contemporary situation, by the example of Boniface, who ‘did not limit his astounding charity to Germany, but rather embraced all peoples, even those who were enemies of one another’, embracing ‘the neighbouring nation of the Franks. He became their prudent reformer and his companions, “descendants of the English race”’.30

5. The Universal Relevance of Evangelical Values The central (and larger) part of In hac tanta illustrates the main stages in Boniface’s life and mission, based on his rich collection of letters, the Vita Bonifatii by Willibald of Eichstätt,31 and the Vita Bonifatii by Otloh von St Emmeram.32 Particular attention

and clandestinely, spoken and written, are being spread by any means. […] Rumour has it that We want peace, but an unjust peace that is advantageous for only one of the group of belligerents. They misinterpret Our words, they are suspicious of Our thoughts and Our intentions, and even give to Our silence […] a slanderous interpretation’ (‘Ci rattrista l’insidiosa e raffinata campagna di calunnie e di odio a cui sono fatte segno la Nostra Persona e l’opera Nostra. […] Scoppiata questa conflagrazione […] Noi, per quanto fu in Nostro potere, non tralasciammo mai né di fare né di tentare cosa alcuna che potesse lenirne e mitigarne le dolorosissime conseguenze […]. Noi riprovammo, come riproviamo di nuovo anche adesso, tutte le violazioni del diritto, dovunque esse siano state perpetrate; e oltre a ciò, con esortazioni, con pubbliche preghiere, con funzioni espiatorie, con proposte di pace giusta e durevole Ci studiammo di rendere più vicina la fine di questa immane carneficina. […] Voi ben conoscete […] le stolte ed assurde calunnie che in varie e molteplici guise, pubblicamente e clandestinamente, a voce ed in iscritto, si vanno per ogni dove diffondendo. […] Si sparge la voce che Noi vogliamo la pace, ma una pace ingiusta, vantaggiosa soltanto per uno dei gruppi belligeranti. Si travisano le Nostre parole, si sospettano i Nostri pensieri e le Nostre intenzioni; e persino al Nostro silenzio […] si dà un’interpretazione calunniosa’); Benedict XV, Maximas inter, 22 May 1918 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 29 See Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, pp. 279–87. 30 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 25. 31 Willibald of Eichstätt, ‘Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldo’, in Vitae Sancti Bonifatii Archiepiscopi Moguntini, ed. by Wilhelm Levison (Hannover: Hahnian, 1905), pp. 11–58. 32 Otloh von St Emmeram, ‘Vita Bonifatii auctore Otloho libri duo’, in Vitae Sancti Bonifatii, ed. by Levison, pp. 111–217.

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was paid to the close union with the Holy See, as is testified by the support given to his actions by as many as four popes: the insistence on the amicitiae communio, the familiaritas and the volutantum consensio that characterized the relations between Boniface and the pontiffs implied that the ultimate reasons for the success of his mission lay precisely in fidelity to the papacy.33 Significant in this respect are the mention of the fact that Boniface (already awarded with the dignity of Bishop of the entire German province) was granted by Gregory II of the familiaritas of the Apostolic See for eternity, and of the praise for the extraordinary results obtained despite the countless difficulties encountered in the course of his mission. The analogies with the woes of the present hour, marked ‘by bloody massacres [cruentisque caedibus]’,34 suggested that the only way out was that followed by Boniface, or rather the unbreakable bond with the Holy See, which ‘was the source of faith, of prosperity and of civilization for the Germans [omnis est apud Germanos profecta religio et prosperitas ipsa humani civilisque convictus]’.35 In this sense, Boniface became a model for the ‘correct’ relationship with the papacy, with a value that exceeded the confines of Germany: He lives among you; indeed he lives in glory. He lives as ‘the representative of the Roman Catholic Church for Germany’. He still performs his mission by his prayers, his example and the memory of his works […]. He, as a faithful prophet and herald of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus, seems to exhort and invite his people to unity with the Roman Church. Christ himself beseeches his people ‘to be one’. He invites the faithful disciples to cling to the Church more closely and more lovingly. He invites those who have separated from unity to return to the Church after abandoning the old hatreds, rivalries, and prejudices. He invites all the faithful of Christ, old and new, to persevere in the unity of faith and wills. From this unity divine charity and the harmony of human society will flourish. […] For, to borrow the words of an ancient writer, your compatriot, whose words are so clear and so appropriate at the time you celebrate the centenary of the mission of Boniface in your country: ‘If, according to the Apostle, we have had for teachers our fathers in the flesh and if we honoured them, should we not obey all the more our spiritual fathers? It is not only God who is our spiritual father but also all those whose wisdom and example teach us the truth and arouse us to cling strongly to the faith. Abraham is called the father of all believers because of his faith and obedience which are an example for all; in the same way Saint Boniface can be called the father of the Germans because he led them to Christ by his preaching, confirmed them by his example, and offered his life for them, thus giving them the greatest proof of love anybody can show’.36

33 See for example Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 11: ‘The popes always helped and favoured him. Boniface, on his part, neglected nothing, and abandoned none of his zeal nor efforts to fulfil the mission he received from the popes he venerated and loved as a son’. 34 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 20. 35 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 21. 36 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § § 22–24.

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In its commentary on In hac tanta, La Civiltà Cattolica took this quotation from the Vita Bonifatii by Otloh37 to be a reminder that ‘only those who keep themselves united to this unshakable rock [the Apostolic See], in the unity of the Church, share in its divine firmness, and with it unalterable peace and universal charity’.38 Noting then that the citation omitted the reference to the just punishments with which God punishes those who do not follow in the footsteps of the fathers with veneration (in this case, the Germans who had moved away from the teachings of Boniface), it expressly stated: The frank observation of the coarse medieval monk, perhaps because it might seem to be an inopportune reprimand of the afflicted peoples of Germany in the present hour, was well omitted in the context of the encyclical, but it cannot escape the careful observer. And it is now time for us to remember it […] only as a painful omen that has an even more painful historical parallel in the facts that everyone knows and which would upset the whole of Germany in the following centuries, mainly after the outbreak of the false Reform. Thus, it seems impossible for us not to recognize in the very series of painful events how harmful this negligence on the part of the children in honouring the Father and in welcoming his holy inheritance, an inheritance of love especially and of union with Holy Mother Church that had sent him.39 The reference to the Protestant Reformation as a kind of terminus a quo of the most serious misfortunes that had afflicted Germany is striking in this context because it has little to do with the central theme of the encyclical and bears witness to an obvious difficulty in the reception of its contents. The papal document contained only a veiled reference to the ‘old discords’ and the ‘evils which came from them’, immediately followed, however, by an explicit invitation to remember above all how many positive things the past has handed down: It is of little benefit to recall those evils at the present time when we are burdened with new disasters and bloody massacres […]. Rather let us celebrate the ancient unity which bound Boniface […] and the Germans themselves to the Holy See.40

37 Otloh of St Emmeram ‘Vita Bonifatii auctore Otloho libri duo’, pp. 158, 10–23. 38 ‘Il richiamo del Papa all’unità religiosa nel duodecimo centenario della missione di S. Bonifacio M. ai popoli della Germania’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 2 (1919), p. 502. 39 ‘La franca osservazione del rude monaco medievale, forse perché potrebbe sonare rampogna inopportuna agli afflitti popoli di Germania nell’ora presente, fu bene omessa nel contesto dell’enciclica, ma non può sfuggire all’attento osservatore. Ed essa viene ora da noi ricordata […] solo come un doloroso presagio, che ha un riscontro storico, più doloroso ancora, nei fatti che tutti sanno e che sconvolsero la Germania tutta nei secoli susseguenti, massime dopo lo scoppio della falsa Riforma. Così pare a noi impossibile non riconoscere nella serie stessa degli eventi dolorosi, quanto sia stata dannosa questa negligenza dei figli nell’onorare il Padre e nell’accoglierne la santa eredità, eredità di amore specialmente e di unione con la Chiesa madre che l’aveva inviato’; ‘Il richiamo del Papa’, p. 501. 40 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § § 20–21.

T h e In h ac tanta E n cyc l i cal and Pe ace i n Eu ro pe

As has been noted for other points in La Civiltà Cattolica’s exegesis of the texts of Benedict XV, it seems that in this case, too, the journal, while an authoritative commentator on the thinking of the Pope, in ‘its method of inserting such thinking into doctrinal schemes’, has allowed ‘those nuances […] that arise from the tension present in the Pope between principles and situation to escape its notice’.41 On the other hand, at that dramatic juncture, the Pope looked above all to the future, and his call to the unity of peoples with the Apostolic See following the example of Boniface had in the background the desire to underline the universal value of Catholic doctrine. With his appeal, the Pope did nothing but repropose those principles of the theology of peace that implied a return to the situation prior to the Reformation, not so much from the institutional point of view but rather from the spiritual one. It was a matter, therefore, for the different peoples to recognize the universal meaning and relevance of those evangelical values of which the papacy had made itself (and was making itself) the interpreter and announcer, but certainly not in view of a project of ‘restoration’, tied to temporal perspectives completely alien to the pontiff ’s outlook. Characteristic of this position are, among others, two letters sent by the Pope, one to the bishops of Germany after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 15 July 1919, and another to the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Léon-Aldophe Amette, on the occasion of the consecration of the Montmartre Basilica on 7 October 1919. In the former, he proposed charity and universal brotherhood as a condition for peace: It is above all necessary to eliminate every feeling of hate, whether towards the foreigners with whom one was at war or towards one’s fellow citizens who belong to the opposite party. Hate must be replaced by fraternal charity which comes from Jesus Christ, and which knows no barriers, no borders, no class struggles. We repeat here the prayer that we recently expressed in the Holy Consistory, that ‘men and peoples once again embrace Christian charity because if this is lacking, every peace treaty will be useless’.42 In his letter to Amette, Benedict XV once again indicated in the teachings of the Gospel the sole way to build true peace and in the principle of universal brotherhood the foundation of his discourse on charity: ‘Love for one’s neighbour […] must be extended to all men, even to the enemy, since we are all united by a fraternal bond

41 ‘Il suo metodo d’inserimento di tale pensiero in schemi dottrinali’; ‘sfuggire quelle sfumature […] che nascono dalla tensione presente nel papa fra principi e situazione’; Simonetti, Principi di teologia, p. 299. 42 ‘È necessario soprattutto eliminare ogni sentimento di odio, sia verso gli stranieri coi quali si fu in guerra, sia verso i concittadini appartenenti ad altro partito, e sostituire all’odio quella fraterna carità, che è di Gesù Cristo, e che non conobbe né barriere, né confini, né lotte di classe. E qui ripetiamo il voto che esprimemmo recentemente nel sacro Concistoro, cioè che “gli uomini e i popoli tornino ad abbracciarsi nella carità cristiana, perché se questa viene a mancare ogni trattato di pace sarà inutile”’; Benedict XV, Diuturni luctuosissimique, 15 July 1919 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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as children of the same God and redeemed by the same blood of Jesus Christ’.43 Moreover, in relation to the consecration of the basilica he specified: If we want to render to the divine Heart of Jesus worship that is most pleasing to him, we must cultivate in our souls a double love, that of God and that of men, however hostile these may be or even if they may have turned out to be enemies. In fact, everyone should remember that God will absolve us from our sins only if we forgive those who have sinned against us […] because it is difficult to hope to heal such deep wounds caused by the war and establish true peace if souls and people are not reconciled to each other.44

6. The Fragility of Human Agreements To return to the text of In hac tanta, in the face of the contrasts in the German Catholic world, the Pope reaffirmed the need for reconciliation not only with foreign countries but also within the individual nations. Addressing his confreres, he therefore once again stressed the values of fraternity and solidarity, underlining how consolatory it was for him to linger on the events celebrated in the encyclical: It is pleasing for us to recall the examples and the remarkable virtues of Boniface because we see the same in you, particularly the friendship and unity which we wished to celebrate in this letter and which we see with admiration embodied somehow in your way of life.45 It was thus by continually harkening the example of Boniface that Benedict XV again proposed the renewal of modern civilization, Christianly inspired by the principles of mutual forgiveness and charity for all peoples, the only effective foundation of true peace.46 That this peace was at the core of the Pope’s concerns was clearly testified

43 ‘L’amore per il prossimo […] si deve estendere a tutti gli uomini, anche ai nemici, dal momento che noi tutti siamo uniti da un vincolo fraterno in quanto figli dello stesso Dio e redenti dallo stesso sangue di Gesù Cristo’; Benedict XV, Amor ille singularis, 7 October 1919 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 44 ‘Se vogliamo rendere al divino Cuore di Gesù il culto a lui più grato, dobbiamo coltivare negli animi un duplice amore, quello verso Dio e quello verso gli uomini, per quanto questi ci siano ostili o si siano rivelati nemici. Infatti, tutti dovranno ricordare che Dio ci assolverà dai nostri peccati solo se noi perdoneremo a coloro che avranno peccato contro di noi. […] Perché difficilmente si può sperare di sanare così profonde ferite causate dalla guerra e stabilire una vera pace se gli animi e i popoli non si saranno tra loro riconciliati’; Benedict XV, Amor ille singularis. 45 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 22. The official English translation has been modified to include passages from the Latin that were missing in the translation. 46 On the characteristics of a ‘true’ peace, a theme to which Benedict returned a year after In hac tanta in the encyclical Pacem Dei munus of 23 May 1920 [accessed 10 January 2019], see Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, pp. 365–72.

T h e In h ac tanta E n cyc l i cal and Pe ace i n Eu ro pe

by the closing passage of the encyclical, which contrasted it to the ‘transient pacts of men [fluxis hominum pactis]’: We long for the day when the rights of Almighty God and of the Church, their laws, their worship and their authority will be restored in this troubled world. We hope that then Christian charity will end wars and furious hatreds, dissensions, schisms and the errors which creep everywhere. May it link the peoples by a more stable treaty than the transient pacts of men. Its special means toward this goal are the unity of faith, in particular, and the tradition, or rather the requirements, of the ancient union [veteris coniunctionis consuetudine, seu necessitudine potius] with the Holy See. This Holy See was established by Christ as the foundation of His family on earth and was consecrated by the virtues, the wisdom, the efforts of so many saints and martyrs, such as Boniface.47 The explicit reference to the ‘transient pacts of men’ confirmed how, in the thought of Benedict XV, peace was not to be identified with a treaty, that is, with a state of affairs external to man, but only with a concrete practice on a personal and social level by consciences capable of believing in it and willing to overcome any cause of contrast or hostility. This was even more true for the Christian peoples who had been opposed to the conflict and to whom Benedict addressed the words of St Clement to the Corinthians in the first century: ‘You would give us great joy if, obeying us who write moved by the Holy Spirit, you would cease your illegitimate rivalry, as we recommended in this exhortation to peace and harmony’.48

Bibliography Bernt, Günter, ‘Bonifatius (Winfrid)’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols (Munich: Artemis, 1980–99), II (1983), pp. 417–21 Bonnery, Bernard, Les revues catholiques ‘Stimmen der Zeit’ et ‘Literarischer Handweiser’ dans l’Allemagne de 1918 à 1925 (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1978) Butturini, Giuseppe, ‘Benedetto XV e la questione missionaria’, in Benedetto XV: profeta di pace in un mondo in crisi, ed. by Letterio Mauro (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), pp. 181–208 Fattorini, Emma, ‘La Germania e la nota di pace di Benedetto XV’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 229–52 Mai, Gunther, La repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011) Miranda, Americo, ‘Il papa non “ammesso tra le grandi potenze”: Benedetto XV e l’esclusione della Santa Sede dalla Conferenza di pace di Parigi’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 45, 1 (2009), pp. 341–67

47 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 26. The official English translation has been modified to include passages from the Latin that were missing in the translation. 48 Benedict XV, In hac tanta, § 27, citing 1 Clement 63.

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Otloh of St Emmeram, ‘Vita Bonifatii auctore Otloho libri duo’, in Vitae Sancti Bonifatii Archiepiscopi Moguntini, ed. by Wilhelm Levison (Hannover: Hahnian, 1905), pp. 111–217 Scholtyseck, Joachim, ‘La Germania a Versailles’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 87–93 Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Scottà, Antonio, ed., La Santa Sede, i vescovi veneti e l’autonomia politica dei cattolici (1918–1922) (Trieste: LINT, 1994) Simonetti, Nando, Principi di teologia della pace nel magistero di Benedetto XV (Santa Maria degli Angeli: Porziuncola, 2005) Stehlin, Stewart A., Weimar and the Vatican, 1919–1933: German-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in the Interwar Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014) Tangl, Michael, ed., Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus (Berlin: Weidmann, 1955) Trinchese, Stefano, La Repubblica di Weimar e la Santa Sede tra Benedetto XV e Pio XI (1919–1922) (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1994) Willibald of Eichstätt, ‘Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldo’, in Vitae Sancti Bonifatii Archiepiscopi Moguntini, ed. by Wilhelm Levison (Hannover: Hahnian, 1905), pp. 11–58

Russia and Ukraine

Laura Pettinaroli

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World (1914–22)

As humanitarian questions have gradually taken precedence as a crucial topic in the history of international relations,1 participants from the religious sphere have regularly attracted attention.2 In this framework, the Catholic Church, having quite early developed charitable infrastructure on an international scale,3 has often been the subject of research. Local and international charitable Catholic organizations — present too in other religions — have been studied in connection with those







1 See Philippe Ryfman, Une histoire de l’humanitaire (Paris: La Découverte, 2008), and Antoine Fleury, ‘Droits de l’homme et enjeux humanitaires’, in Pour l’histoire des relations internationales, ed. by Robert Frank (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2012), pp. 453–69. There is an increasing number of monographic approaches: Dzovinar Kévonian, Réfugiés et diplomatie humanitaire: les acteurs européens et la scène proche-orientale pendant l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004), and the contributions in Une autre approche de la globalisation: socio-histoire des organisations internationales (1900–1940) (= Critique internationale, 14, 52 (2011)), pp. 5–84. 2 Recent research about the emergence of humanitarianism has highlighted the importance, in the nineteenth century, of the fight against slavery and the protection of minorities in Eastern Europe and the Middle East with, in both cases, strong religious implications; see Humanitarian Intervention: A History, ed. by Brendan Simms and David J. B. Trim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, ed. by Fabian Klose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). For the twentieth century, the actions of the Holy See appear in more general studies: Annette Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914–1918: populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Noêsis, 1998); and Delphine Debons, L’assistance spirituelle aux prisonniers de guerre: un aspect de l’action humanitaire durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: Cerf, 2012). 3 Some charity networks were active from the nineteenth century; see Vincent Viaene, ‘Professionalism or Proselytism? Catholic Internationalists in the Nineteenth Century’, in Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks, and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s, ed. by Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck and Jakob Vogel (New York: Berghahn, 2015), pp. 23–43. The structuring of charitable organizations, however, would only evolve in the years between the two world wars, arriving at a system of centralized action in the 1950s with the creation of Caritas Internationalis, which was directly linked to the Holy See: Magali Lafourcade, ‘Caritas Internationalis’, in Dictionnaire du Vatican et du Saint-Siège, ed. by Christophe Dickès (Paris: Laffont, 2013), pp. 206–08. More generally, see Les ONG confessionnelles: religions et action internationale, ed. by Bruno Duriez, François Mabille and Kathy Rousselet (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1087–1104 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118821

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of the Vatican, itself subject to international law and centre of a highly developed diplomatic network. It is precisely this last dimension — the humanitarian diplomacy of the Holy See, that is the charitable actions organized by the Vatican diplomatic network — that has held a particular place in the literature, especially regarding the period between the two world wars,4 sometimes with an apologetical perspective.5 Such longstanding controversy, particularly with regard to World War II, should not overshadow the watershed of the preceding war under Benedict XV. Indeed, the Holy See’s humanitarian action changed at this point both in degree and kind. Initiatives took on a whole new scale and those qualifying for this humanitarian aid were no longer, or at least no longer systematically, limited to Catholics.6 This shift to a non-denominational solidarity was furthermore reinforced by the fact that the Holy See was clearly inspired by the neutral states and the different sections of the Red Cross.7 This contribution highlights the humanitarian actions led by the Holy See towards the Russian world under the pontificate of Benedict XV. Our purpose is to illustrate the general features of a larger charitable programme implemented during World War I (1914–end of 1917), but also in its aftermath. Our analysis will continue to the end of the pontificate, covering both Russia itself under the rise of the Bolsheviks, and the vast emigration of Russians abroad.

1.

Humanitarian Operations on the Eastern Front (1914–17)

The difficult humanitarian situation on the Russian front soon caught the attention of the Holy See which attempted different operations for addressing it.









4 See Jean Chrétien Joseph Kleijntjens, ‘Activité charitable de Benoît XV’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 43 (1948), pp. 536–45; Leon Papeleux, L’action caritative du Saint-Siège en faveur des prisonniers de guerre (1939–1945) (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1991); Massimiliano Valente, ‘La nunziatura di Eugenio Pacelli a Monaco di Baviera e la “diplomazia dell’assistenza” nella Grande Guerra (1917–1918)’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 83 (2003), pp. 264–87. 5 Charitable outreach played an important role in the debate on the Holy See’s action in World War II. It is worth noting that the only archive at the ASV available for this period concerns the Vatican office for prisoners of war: Inter arma caritas: l’Ufficio Informazioni Vaticano per i prigionieri di guerra istituito da Pio XII (1939–1947), ed. by Francesca Di Giovanni and Giuseppina Roselli, 2 vols (Vatican City: Achivio Segreto Vaticano, 2004). 6 Some popes had intervened to defend non-Catholic minorities before 1914: aside the very ambiguous question of the ‘double protectorate’, with respect to Jewish minorities (both protecting Jews and protecting themselves from them), there are also the Vatican interventions for the Armenian people since Leo XIII’s pontificate: Georges-Henri Ruyssen, La Santa Sede e i massacri degli armeni (1894–1896) (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2012). 7 Historical analysis has made great progress concerning these aspects: see the essays in États neutres et neutralité dans la Première Guerre mondiale, 2 vols (= Relations internationales, 159–60 (2014)); and Lindsey Cameron, ‘The ICRC in the First World War: Unwavering Belief in the Power of Law?’, International Review of the Red Cross, 97, 900 (2015), pp. 1099–120. On relations between the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Holy See, see María Eugenia Ossandón, ‘Colaborar en el terreno de la caridad’: Santa Sede y Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja entre los siglos XIX y XX (Rome: Edizioni Santa Croce, 2014).

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World

1.1.

The First Experience: Galicia

The first noteworthy experience on the Russian front concerned Galicia. This was an Austrian territory whose population was mostly Catholic despite linguistic and cultural diversity, in particular Ruthenians (of the Eastern Rite) and Poles (of the Latin Rite).8 A Slavic region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it had been subject to pro-Russian cultural and political pressure before the war.9 As the Russian army conquered the territory (August/September 1914 to May/June 1915), certain categories of the population (particularly the ‘pro-Ukrainians’ who rejected the annexation) were deported and an effort towards religious reunification with the Greek Catholics was made.10 The religious leader of this last group, the Metropolitan Archibishop of Lviv, Mgr Sheptytsky, was deported to Russia along with more than 800 of his clergy members.11 If the Holy See’s intervention can be understood through the typical lens of defending a Catholic minority, still it took part in a global and humanitarian logic. In fact, its first attempt, in October of 1914, meant to support the initiative of a neutral diplomacy: the US ambassador in Vienna intended to intercede with the Russian government on Mgr Sheptytsky’s behalf.12 This effort came up against the denials of Russian diplomacy asserting that the Uniates were treated with ‘tolerance’ and the Metropolitan ‘who was removed as a political agitator […] has been interned in Russia in conditions in keeping with his ecclesiastical dignity’.13 After this failure, the Holy See maintained its reserve, even though it seemed to support indirectly the press campaign of December 1914 and January 1915 led by the Catholic daily, the Corriere d’Italia.14

8 In 1910, the two nationalities most represented in Galicia were Poles (58.55 per cent) and Ruthenians (40.2 per cent): see Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 12 vols (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973–2018), III/1: Die Völker des Reiches, ed. by Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (1980), pp. 526, 560. 9 Anna Veronika Wendland, Die Russophilen in Galizien: ukrainische Konservative zwischen Österreich und Russland (1848–1915) (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001). 10 Aleksandra Jur’evna Bachturina, Politika rossijskoj imperii v vostočnoj Galicii v gody pervoj mirovoj vojny (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2000), pp. 142–83. 11 Wendland, Die Russophilen, p. 546. On Sheptytsky, see Athanasius McVay, ‘A Prisoner for His People’s Faith: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky’s Detentions under Russia and Poland’, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 50, 1–2 (2009), pp. 13–54. 12 AES, III, Austria, pos. 1204, fasc. 492, f. 3, Scapinelli di Leguigno to Ferrata, 5 October 1914. 13 ‘Tolérance’; ‘éloigné comme agitateur politique […] est interné en Russie dans des conditions conformes à sa dignité ecclésiastique’; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1204, fasc. 492, f. 34: note from the Russian government, sent by Nelidov to Pacelli, 13 November 1914. 14 The AES (III, Austria, pos. 1051, fasc. 447, ff. 34 ff.) also keep a series of articles on the ‘religious persecution in Galicia’: ‘La persecuzione religiosa in Galizia documentata dalla pubblicazione dei giornali russi’, Corriere d’Italia, 3 and 6 December 1914; ‘Come procede in Galizia la persecuzione religiosa russa’, Corriere d’Italia, 27 January 1915, p. 3; ‘Nuovi episodi della persecuzione russa contro i cattolici della Galizia’, Corriere d’Italia, 24 February 1915, p. 3; ‘I metodi della propaganda ortodossa dei Russi in Galizia’, Corriere d’Italia, 28 February 1915, p. 3. Russian diplomacy was disturbed by this ‘systematic campaign’ in the Catholic press (Nelidov to the Russian Foreign Minister, February 1915, cited in Bachturina, Politika rossijskoj imperii, p. 176).

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Then came a second Russian memorandum accusing Mgr Sheptytsky of ‘hostile activity’ to Russia and of participation in the ‘so-called “pro-Ukrainian” movement’ (February 1915).15 Despite this, the Holy See bided its time until Russian military pressure weakened. It then took bilateral diplomatic action addressing the Russian government a memorandum on 21 May 1915: this document did not refer to Mgr Sheptytsky’s personal situation, but rather denounced the transfer of Uniate parishes to Orthodox priests, both as ‘an obvious violation of the rights of the Catholic Church’ as proprietor but also of the specifically-cited 1907 Hague Convention (‘Regulation Concerning the Laws and Customs of Land War’, Section III, art. 46, which provided for the respect of properties and worship in the case of territorial occupation).16 In response to this argument, on 5 July, Russian diplomacy denied any exactions against the Catholics or the Jews of Galicia, and justified arresting ‘a few Greek Uniate priests’ for cases ‘of spying’.17 The humanitarian arguments that Rome used to strengthen its interventions did not enable success to this diplomatic intervention. Despite the fact that Galicia was taken back again during the summer of 1915 by the Central Powers’ armies, Mgr Sheptytsky remained a prisoner in Russia until the February Revolution. The Holy See succeeded only in obtaining some improvements in his condition by way of continuous personal and diplomatic appeals.18 1.2.

The Care of Prisoners of War

As soon as the war started, the Holy See participated with the neutral states and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as they began their efforts in favour of prisoners of war. More particularly, the Vatican insisted on the prisoners’ spiritual aid, as guaranteed by the 1907 Hague Convention. By the summer of 1914, Russia had organized a central office for prisoners. Despite this and the official will to respect international law,19 prisoners were in a particularly vulnerable position,20 especially because of their extremely high number (between 1.6

15 ‘Activité hostile’; ‘mouvement dit ukraïnophile’; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1204, fasc. 492, ff. 50–51; memorandum of the Russian Imperial Legation, 18 February 1915. 16 ‘Una evidente violazione del diritto della Chiesa Cattolica’; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1051, fasc. 447, ff. 53–54; original of the memorandum to Nelidov, 21 May 1915. 17 ‘Quelques prêtres grecs-unis’; ‘espionnage’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, rubr. 244 D (guerra), fasc. 95, ff. 33–34, Nelidov to Gasparri, 5 July 1915. 18 Laura Pettinaroli, ‘Entre impartialité et engagement: le Saint-Siège face aux pressions des belligérants sur le front russe (1914–1917)’, in 1914: neutralités, neutralismes en question, ed. by Ineke Bockting, Beatrice Fonck and Pauline Piettre (Bern: Peter Lang, 2017), pp. 57–76. 19 Marina Rossi, I prigionieri dello zar: soldati italiani dell’esercito austro-ungarico nei lager della Russia (1914–1918) (Milan: Mursia, 1997), pp. 32–33. 20 Alon Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford: Berg, 2002); Reinhard Nachtigal, Rußland und seine österreichisch-ungarischen Kriegsgefangenen (1914–1918) (Remshalden: Greiner, 2003); Georg Wurzer, Die Kriegsgefangenen der Mittelmächte in Russland im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), pp. 409–41; and Gerald H. Davis, ‘National Red Cross Societies and Prisoners of War in Russia (1914–1918)’, Journal of Contemporary History, 28, 1 (1993), pp. 31–52.

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World

and 2.2 million). The majority of them being Austro-Hungarians, mostly arrested by 1914–15,21 a controversy quickly raised about the forced conversion of Slavic prisoners from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Orthodox Church.22 Since there was no nuncio in Russia, local interventions — such as visiting the camps and distribution of foodstuffs — were impossible. So the Vatican again turned to bilateral diplomacy. Seeking support, it used a double strategy, revealing the outline of a global humanitarian diplomacy: on one hand, the Holy See enforced the treaties signed by other belligerent states, and on the other hand, it relied — to justify its interventions — on the information given by neutral ambassadors and societies of the Red Cross. The French and German governments had indeed reached an agreement which provided the prisoners with visits from an ‘ecclesiastic belonging to a neutral country’. In November 1915, the Holy See planned on extending this agreement to Russian territory and drafted a note to this effect, but it was in the end cancelled.23 The negotiations were particularly fraught. Cardinal Gasparri suggested that Catholic priests taking refuge in occupied zones and prisoner priests might attend to the prisoners’ spiritual welfare.24 The Russian Ministry, however, being of the opinion that the prisoners’ rights were already respected, refused any intercession on this head.25 A new attempt was made in September 1916. An ecclesiastical hierarchy for the army, experimented elsewhere, was proposed. This would include chaplains for the prisoners and would be given over to the Archbishop of Mohilev, the most important Russian diocese.26 This request went without answer for several months and was ultimately stonewalled by Russian diplomacy.27 It was only after the February Revolution that the question was once more brought up.28 Furthermore, from 1916 on, the Vatican’s operations in favour of prisoners of war in Russia relied systematically on information from the kinds of players typical of the new international configuration triggered by the world war: neutral states and international organizations. In this context, the Nuncio in Vienna communicated information on prison camps sourced from the then-neutral US diplomacy.29 In

21 Wurzer, Die Kriegsgefangenen, pp. 49–53. 22 AES, III, Austria, pos. 1204, fasc. 492, ff. 8–9: Scapinelli di Leguigno to Gasparri, 19 October 1914; and AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1346, fasc. 501, f. 36, Ledóchowski to Tacchi Venturi, 23 April 1917 (report edited by Rev. Trzeciak). 23 ‘Ecclésiastique appartenant à un pays neutre’; AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1346, fasc. 500, ff. 17–18, [illegible] to Nelidov, [n.d.] November 1915. 24 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, rubr. 244, fasc. 132 [H2b], ff. 139–40, Gasparri to Nelidov, 21 November 1915. 25 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, rubr. 244, fasc. 132 [H2b], ff. 145–46, Nelidov to Gasparri, 17 December 1915. 26 AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1399, fasc. 535, ff. 2–3, Gasparri to Bock, 26 September 1916. 27 AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1399, fasc. 535, f. 5, Bock to Gasparri, 5 March 1917. 28 Laura Pettinaroli, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015), p. 265. 29 It is through this Nunciature that the report of William Warfield (member of the American Red Cross in charge of a mission on behalf of the State Department) about the camp in Sretensk, drawn up on 20 January 1916, was sent to Rome: AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1346, fasc. 500, f. 35, Scapinelli di Leguigno to Gasparri, 20 March 1916 and ff. 36–41, attachment.

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August 1916, Rome also received the report of the Danish Ambassador to Russia, Harald Scavenius (1873–1939), expressing himself ‘privately and as a Catholic’ and not ‘as a minister of Denmark’.30 This neutral information turned into the control lever of diplomatic action. Thus, in August of 1916, Rome based one of its documents to the Russian Legation on information received from a ‘respectable lady’ linked to the Red Cross, indicating that certain imprisoned priests were hindered from ministering to the other prisoners.31 Russian diplomacy denied this and produced testimony to this effect from members of the Swiss Red Cross.32 Thus, new arguments and new players, which might be called humanitarian, contributed to the transformations of the Vatican’s practice of war-time diplomacy. Rome also supported unprecedented rescue actions for civilian populations.33 1.3.

Aid to Civilians: Supporting Nationalities in a Disintegrating Empire?

On the western parts of the Russian Empire, the shifting lines of the front rendered the populations particularly vulnerable.34 As early as February 1915, Benedict XV urged a world-wide collection for the Polish people. On 28 October 1916,35 he made a similar call for Belgium. Then in February 1917 he allowed the Bishop of Samogizia, Pranciškus Karevičius, to apply to the bishops all over the world to launch a fundraising day for Lithuania.36 The resulting amounts were significant. More especially Catholic clergy, particularly Father Costantino Olšauskas (1867–1933),37 became a privileged liaison in one of the first actions in which the Lithuanian people appear on the international stage.

30 ‘Comme homme privé et comme catholique’; ‘comme ministre de Danemark’; AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1346, fasc. 501, ff. 7–8, Scavenius to Benedict XV, 26 August 1916. 31 ‘Respectable dame’; AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1346, fasc. 500, f. 62, Gasparri to Bock, 9 August 1916. 32 AES, III, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1346, fasc. 501, Bock to Gasparri, 18 August 1916. 33 Gabriele Paolini, ‘Contre la guerre par la faim: le Saint-Siège et les tentatives de ravitaillement des populations civiles des territoires occupés (1915–1918)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 258 (2015), pp. 57–70. 34 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 35 Benedict XV to the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, James Gibbons, 28 October 1916, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 1 (1917), pp. 10–11. The Vatican effort was part of a larger mobilization: see Sébastien Farré, ‘La Commission for Relief of Belgium: neutralité, action humanitaire et mobilisations civiles durant la Première Guerre mondiale’, Relations internationales, 159 (2014), pp. 69–82 (p. 78). 36 Gasparri’s letter to Karevičius of 10 February 1917 was accompanied by a donation of 20,000 francs: see Rolandas Makrickas, Santa Sede e Lituania: la rinascita dello stato lituano nei documenti dell’archivio della Nunziatura apostolica di Monaco di Baviera (1915–1919) (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 2006), pp. 245–49. 37 Makrickas, Santa Sede e Lituania, pp. 52, 72.

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World

At this point we can observe a leverage effect. In February 1917, ‘Ukrainian’ activists appealed to the Secretariat of State.38 The office accepted a hypothetical collection for the Lithuanians on condition ‘that a corresponding request be addressed to the Ruthenian bishops of the Holy See’.39 In these years, a model for charitable action thus comes into focus, bringing together the endorsement of the Pope and a decentralized organization of the collections whose initiative and organization were given over to local bishops. The period of World War I shows that the Holy See was concerned with what was happening on the Eastern front. Even if it had but little means of helping and the results were often limited, Rome mobilized Catholic agents both locally and abroad (sometimes through the press), as well as the diplomatic instruments at its disposition (network of nuncios, bilateral relations, and the good offices of other powers).

2. Civil War and the Installation of the Bolshevik Regime (1917–22) The October Revolution put an end to the war on the Eastern front in December 1917 with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, followed by peace in March 1918, but yet it upheld an extremely violent situation (advances of the Central Powers in 1918 then Civil War) that continued until the beginning of 1922. Even if the pontifical diplomacy had lost the channel of the Russian Legation at Rome (which remained however officially — but with no power — in place until the beginning of 1924), it intervened on Russian terrain taking advantage of all means available, including contacts with the Soviet government. Humanitarian operations once again allowed innovative ventures. 2.1.

Interventions for Notable Figures

Among the actions that the Holy See presented as humanitarian, we must mention interventions for celebrities, including non-Catholics,40 persecuted by Bolshevik authorities. Rome interceded for the imperial family in the summer of 1918, while its fate hung in the balance.41 As the Central Powers had significantly advanced eastward by

38 AES, III, Russia, pos. 959, fasc. 332, f. 28, Count Michel Tyszkiewicz to Mgr [Pacelli], 17 February 1917. 39 ‘Qu’une demande dans ce sens fût adressée par les évêques Ruthènes au Saint-Siège’; AES, III, Russia, pos. 959, fasc. 332, f. 30, [illegible] to Tyszkiewicz, 3 March 1917. 40 On the interventions for the Catholic leaders, see Pettinaroli, La politique russe, pp. 288–92. These interventions also followed complex paths, with appeals to the Soviet government and mediations by European states, as well as petitions to the ICRC. Negotiations for the exile of Archbishop Eduard von der Ropp between July and December 1919 proceeded through direct operations with Lenin, the intermediary of Christian X of Denmark and the Polish Red Cross. The intervention in 1921 for the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary went through the ICRC and its delegates in Estonia and Poland. 41 Marc Ferro, Nicholas II: Last of the Tsars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 268–76.

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August of 1918, the Secretariat of State mobilized the nuncios of Vienna and Munich in order to obtain the liberation and extradition of the women of the imperial family.42 The Holy See immediately spread the news of this effort in its unofficial daily.43 It was, however, a triple failure. Firstly, part of the family had already been executed, and secondly the Bolsheviks were irritated by this ‘unacceptable intrusion on the internal conditions of Russia’.44 Finally, the prestige of this operation was utterly destroyed by the silence of the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, who declared that he interceded in the matter on behalf of the King of Spain.45 A few months later, in February of 1919, Benedict XV received a message from the Orthodox bishops in Siberia (a zone under the control of the White Army) which listed Bolshevik persecutions and pleaded with the Pope for help ‘out of human solidarity and feeling of Christian fraternity’.46 Beyond a friendly response assuring the bishops of his ‘prayers’,47 the Pope consulted Italian officials (via Baron Monti) in order to come up with possibilities of contacting Lenin and halting ‘the persecutions and massacres’.48 This was to be the well-known exchange of telegrams between Gasparri and Chicherin of March 1919. There, Gasparri asked Lenin in the name of ‘humanity and religion’ to make it so that ‘the ministers of whatever religion be respected’.49 Chicherin’s lengthy answer denied any and all persecution and in fact accused the Catholic Church of having long oppressed the Orthodox Church, emphasizing therefore the hypocrisy of the values of ‘religion’ and ‘humanity’ claimed by the Pope. Furthermore, the People’s Commissar reproached the pontiff for not having denounced certain crimes whose victims were the people and the Soviet delegates. Thus, the efforts of Vatican’s humanitarian diplomacy clashed with the 42 First of the Tsarina and four grand duchesses (ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Berlino, b. 29, fasc. 3, f. 6, Gasparri to Pacelli, 9 August 1918, enciphered document), then also of the Empress Mother Maria Feodorovna (ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Berlino, b. 29, fasc. 3, f. 7, Gasparri to Pacelli, 10 August 1918, enciphered document). The documents in the Archive of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs reveal that the Nuncio in Vienna, Valfrè di Bonzo, was also solicited; AES, III, Russia, pos. 983, fasc. 348, ff. 67–69. 43 ‘L’interessamento del Santo Padre per la Czarina e le Granduchesse di Russia’, L’Osservatore Romano, 11 August 1918, p. 3. 44 ‘Inammissibile intrusione nelle condizioni interne della Russia’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Berlino, b. 29, fasc. 2, f. 243, Pacelli to Gasparri, 27 September 1918. 45 ‘In seguito a preghiera re di Spagna’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Berlino, b. 29, fasc. 3, f. 15, Gasparri to Pacelli, 28 September 1918 (enciphered document). 46 ‘Par force de solidarité humaine, par sentiment de fraternité chrétienne’; AES, III, Russia, pos. 998, fasc. 361, f. 34 (document delivered by the representative of the provisional government: see, AES, III, Russia, pos. 998, fasc. 361, f. 36, Lysakovsky to Gasparri, 13 February 1919). 47 ‘Preghiere’; AES, III, Russia, pos. 998, fasc. 361, f. 39, Benedict XV to Bishop Sylvester Olshevsky, 14 February 1919. 48 ‘Le persecuzioni e i massacri’; AES, III, Russia, pos. 998, fasc. 361, f. 40, [illegible] to Baron Monti, 6 March 1919. 49 ‘L’humanité et [de] la religion’; ‘ministres de n’importe quelle religion soient respectés’; ‘religion’; ‘humanité’; this exchange was published in the Soviet newspapers (Izvestiâ, 15 March 1919), then in L’Osservatore Romano, 2 April 1919, p. 1. See ‘Document 15: Échange de télégrammes au sujet de l’Église orthodoxe (mars 1919)’, in Pettinaroli, La politique russe [accessed 10 January 2019].

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World

conflictual history of relations between Catholics and Orthodox, as well as with the Bolshevik value system. 2.2.

Visitors to the Outskirts of Russia

In a second phase of humanitarian action, the Holy See sent ‘apostolic visitors’ to the outskirts of Soviet Russia. Their mission was to observe the religious situation but also included humanitarian action. This is what occurred in the Caucasus. There, several apostolic visitors, one after the other, were part of a missionary project drawn up in 1920 by the General Curia of the Jesuits and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches but also a project planned by the Italian Red Cross to provide medical materials in order to ‘inspire in these countries sympathy towards our homeland’.50 In fact, the Apostolic Visitor to the Caucasus sent to Tiflis in June of 1920 was Italian, the Dominican Mgr Natale Gabriele Moriondo (1870–1946). Benedict XV granted the important sum of 30,000 lire to the project, ‘the conditions of the clergy and of the people of the Caucasus being so miserable and the hopes of all being so high’.51 Even if this project failed because the Bolsheviks regained control of the region, it shows both the omnipresence of the humanitarian aspect as well as its potential ambiguities with regard to national interests. At the extreme East of the country, the French Bishop Mgr de Guébriant was appointed Apostolic Visitor to East Siberia in the summer of 1921: he envisioned the possibility of establishing ‘permanent charity organizations, hospitals, dispensaries, etc.’, that could be entrusted to the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary — an international congregation of French origin already well-established in Asia.52 Humanitarian action, which in this case went hand in hand with missionary work, could also be instrumental. This is quite clear in Cardinal Gasparri’s explanations to the Nuncio of Warsaw on the two-pronged goal of the visitor to Ukraine, Giovanni Genocchi. Designated in February of 1920, his ‘public task’ was ‘to distribute medicine and succour to these unhappy populations’, but the ‘principal mission’ was to ‘report on the spiritual needs of these people and to give an exact account to the Holy See’.53 The major aspects of the Vatican’s humanitarian intercession in Russia, however, for the period of 1917–22, concerned prisoners of war and famine.

50 ‘Avviare verso la nostra patria le simpatie di quei paesi’; ARSI, Prov. Neapolitana, 2003, Missione in Georgia, President of the Italian Red Cross Giovanni Ciraolo to Tacchi Venturi, 29 December 1920. 51 ‘Essendo molto misere ora le condizioni del clero, e del popolo del Caucaso e grandi le aspettative di tutti’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, rubr. 18 (1920), fasc. 1, f. 117, Papadopoulos to Benedict XV, 23 August 1920. 52 ‘Œuvres permanentes de bienfaisance, hôpitaux, dispensaires, etc.’; ACPF, rubr. 106 (1922), NS, vol. 749, ff. 135–136, Guébriant to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, 16 August 1921. 53 ‘L’incarico pubblico’; ‘di distribuire medicinali e soccorsi a quelle infelici popolazioni’; ‘missione principale’; ‘rendersi conto dei bisogni spirituali di quei luoghi e di riferire accuratamente alla Santa Sede’; AES, III, Russia, pos. 1012, fasc. 366, f. 4, Gasparri to Ratti, 14 February 1920.

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2.3.

Prisoners of War in Siberia

While the nationals of countries at war were one by one brought home after the peace treaties, Russian prisoners remained in the Central Powers’ camps (the Nuncio to Munich helped them in 1920).54 More especially, many Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners remained in the Asian region of Russia. This was due to three reasons: the country’s disorganization, the cancellation of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty by that of Versailles, and the battles between the Czechoslovakian legions and the Red Army. There were about 425,000 prisoners of war still in Russia in 1920.55 By December 1918, the Primate of Hungary called the Holy See’s attention to this issue, putting the number of Hungarian prisoners in Siberia at about 100,000.56 In January 1919 there was a first attempt to intercede with the Entente, simultaneously through the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, the British representative in Rome and the Cardinal of Paris.57 The results were disappointing: the French and English governments confined themselves to working together ‘so that the Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian Red Cross might continue their work in favour of the prisoners of Siberia’.58 In 1919, the ICRC investigated the situation of prisoners in Siberia,59 for the most part Austrians and Hungarians.60 The ICRC’s president, Gustav Ador, turned directly to Benedict XV for his help. To convince him, he recalled the ‘tireless zeal’ of the Pope during the war and played on his religious sentiment by citing the Gospel in Latin and declared himself ‘in the communion of Christian love’.61 At the same time, the pontifical representative at Berne, Mgr Maglione, had received requests for ‘a collection in all the churches of the world’, whose aim would be to repatriate prisoners suspected of being ‘the most determined and cruel core of the Bolshevik revolutionaries’.62 He advocated for these requests to the Pope. In the end though,

54 ‘Prigionieri tedeschi e russi visitati dal Nunzio Apostolico di Baviera’, L’Osservatore Romano, 10 January 1920, p. 1. 55 Wurzer, Die Kriegsgefangenen, p. 526. 56 AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 570, ff. 44–45, Černoch to Benedict XV, 19 December 1918. 57 AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 570, f. 47, Gasparri to the Apostolic Delegate in the United States, Bonzano, 13 January 1919 (encrypted document); f. 48, Gasparri to Count de Salis, 14 January 1919; and f. 49, Gasparri to Cardinal Amette, 14 January 1919. 58 ‘Afin que les Sociétés de la Croix Rouge suédoise, danoise et norvégienne puissent continuer leur œuvre en faveur des prisonniers en Sibérie’; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 570, f. 52, Count de Salis to Gasparri, 11 February 1919. 59 A mission was sent in February of 1919; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 570, f. 54, Édouard Naville to Amette, 6 February 1919. 60 AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 571, f. 9, Paul Des Gouttes to Gasparri, 16 December 1919; ff. 10–11, Naville to the presidents and members of the central committees of the Red Cross, 28 November 1919; and ff. 12–15, ‘Appel du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge en faveur des prisonniers en Sibérie: annexes’. 61 ‘Infatigable zèle’; ‘dans la communion de l’amour chrétien’; AES, III, Svizzera, pos. 551, fasc. 296, f. 24, Ador to Benedict XV, 16 December 1919. 62 ‘Una colletta in tutte le chiese del mondo’; ‘i nuclei più decisi e crudeli di rivoluzionarii bolscevisti’; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 571, ff. 17–18, Maglione to Gasparri, 1 December 1919. On the issue of the ‘bolshevization’ of prisoners, see Arnold Krammer, ‘Soviet Propaganda among German and

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World

the Holy See did not act by way of financial aid (Rome had just launched a fundraising campaign for the children of Central Europe and wished to avoid a proliferation of initiatives).63 It acted instead through high-level diplomacy. In Geneva, Mgr Maglione contacted the ICRC. On 19 December 1919, he offered the Holy See’s help, by means of the Apostolic Delegate to Tokyo, and advised Rome to ‘publicize’ the operation.64 On 2 January 1920, the front page of L’Osservatore Romano published Gustave Ador’s letter in its entirety, along with a commentary by the editors declaring that Benedict XV was ‘unreservedly in agreement’ with the president of the ICRC.65 Still in early 1920, Rome interceded with the Entente at the same time that relations with its individual members were precarious. Cardinal Gasparri contacted the Italian Prime Minister Nitti to see if the Entente could intercede with Kolchak and Denikin so that the latter might allow prisoners to leave for the East.66 Furthermore, Benedict XV personally turned to Wilson asking for boats to repatriate all the prisoners and not just those from ‘allied’ countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia).67 Due to the hesitations of the Entente and the lack of financial backing, the fate of the prisoners was not entirely settled until the summer of 1922, when this crisis finally ended thanks to Fridtjof Nansen and the collaboration of the League of Nations and the ICRC.68 Even if the Holy See did not meet with success in the field, it however helped to raise the question and proved its sensitivity to humanitarian matters. 2.4.

The Vatican’s Early Humanitarian Efforts in Russia

It was in this context that in 1921 the Holy See began to participate in the international efforts to aid Russia against famine. Between 1920 and 1923, the famine killed around

63

64 65 66 67 68

Austro-Hungarian Prisoners of War in Russia (1917–1941)’, in Essays on World War I: Origins and Prisoners of War, ed. by Peter Pastor and Samuel R. Williamson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 239–64. The request for a collection was repeated in January of 1920; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 571, ff. 71–72, the Consul General, President of the Hungarian Red Cross mission in Switzerland to Maglione, 27 January 1920. AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 571, f. 73, [illegible] to Maglione, 11 February 1920. The encyclical Paterno iam diu of 24 November 1919, in fact, called for a collection for Eastern European children on the occasion of the Feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December 1919): Benedict XV, Paterno iam diu, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 11 (1919), pp. 437–39 [accessed 10 January 2019]. ‘Dare pubblicità’; AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 571, ff. 40–44, Maglione to Gasparri, 27 December 1919. ‘Illimitato consenso’; ‘Il Santo Padre pei prigionieri internati in Siberia’, L’Osservatore Romano, 2 January 1920, p. 1. AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 571, ff. 63–64, Gasparri to Nitti, 4 January 1920. AES, III, Austria, pos. 1425, fasc. 571, f. 74, Gasparri to Bonzano, 16 February 1920 (encrypted document). Francesca Piana, ‘L’humanitaire d’après-guerre: prisonniers de guerre et réfugiés russes dans la politique du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et de la Société des Nations’, Relations internationales, 151 (2012), pp. 63–75.

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five million people with tragic social consequences such as child criminality and migration.69 The Soviet State was overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation: in the summer of 1921, it appealed for international help and received a highly favourable response.70 The principal foreign organizations were American (the American Relief Administration provided 82 per cent of shipments from abroad) and international, in cooperation with the League of Nations (the Nansen International Office for Refugees shipped 14 per cent).71 On 5 August 1921, the Pope launched a world-wide fundraising for the Russian famine.72 From the outset, he offered important financial support to two organizations, the Nansen Committee (500,000 lire) and Save the Children (500,000 lire), which was one of the principal international humanitarian organizations to come out of World War I.73 These organizations were identifiably humanitarian and, in backing them financially, the Vatican outsourced its charitable action which then took on a non-denominational cast. Aiding non-Catholics by way of non-Catholic organizations did not go without question. A French contribution was sent with a letter saying ‘For the starving Russians, rescued by the Father of all Pastors and all the faithful, and even of Schismatics! One hundred francs […]’.74 This outsourcing of pontifical charity was, however, only partial since Benedict XV attempted to direct its distribution. One part of the supplies sent through Save the Children for example was given to certain members of the clergy.75 Furthermore, Rome tried to name the Chapter Administrator of Mohilev, Jan Cieplak, as ‘papal delegate to the Nansen organization’. The Soviet government refused this outright in January 1922 since the latter had been investigated as an ‘active protestor against the Socialist

69 Sergueï Adamets, Guerre civile et famine en Russie: le pouvoir bolchevique et la population face à la catastrophe démographique (1917–1923) (Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 2003), pp. 121–52, 186–87. 70 See Harold H. Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia (1919–1923): The Operations of the American Relief Administration (New York: Macmillan, 1927); Benjamin M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia (1921–1923) (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1974); and Marin Coudreau, ‘Le Comité international de secours à la Russie: l’Action Nansen et les bolcheviks (1921–1924)’, Relations internationales, 151 (2012), pp. 49–61. 71 Adamets, Guerre civile, pp. 171–72. 72 Benedict XV to Gasparri, 5 August 1921, L’Osservatore Romano, 8–9 August 1921. The letter launched an appeal to the ‘Christian peoples’ (‘popoli cristiani’) but also ‘to all other civilized peoples, for any man worthy of the name must feel obliged to rush in where another man is killed’ (‘a tutti gli altri popoli civili, per qualunque uomo degno di questo nome deve sentirsi in dovere di accorrere dove si uccide un altro uomo’). 73 Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism (1918–1924) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 277–95. 74 ‘Pour les affamés russes secourus par le Père commun des Pasteurs et des Fidèles, et même des Schismatiques! Cent francs’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, rubr. 244–N5, fasc. 452, f. 257. 75 AES, III, Russia, pos. 1023, fasc. 373, f. 35, W. A. MacKenzie, extract of the report (repeated in French) of the UISE representative, Saratov, 10 January 1922. This document analysed the geographical division of the food purchased thanks to the Pope’s donation. Also in Saratov, ‘9000 poods [sic]’ were for ‘doctors, teachers, professors, lawyers, widows and clergy’ (‘les médecins, les instituteurs, les professeurs, les avocats, les veuves et le clergé’).

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World

Soviet Government of Russia’.76 Only under Pius XI, after the Gasparri–Vorovksy treaty of March 1922, was an autonomous Pontifical Mission formed, active in Russian territory from the summer of 1922 to the summer of 1924. In this way the Holy See managed to lend a confessional character to the framework of its charitable efforts, albeit with forces outside those of the local church (the mission consisted of foreign religious members) and without obtaining permission to perform religious activities.77

3. Russian Emigration (1918–22) As in Russia, papal aid to emigrants was first expressed by supporting non-Catholic charitable organizations, and then later by the creation of specifically Catholic ones. 3.1.

Russian Emigrants and International Aid

Russians emigrated en masse between 1918 and 1920: the historians calculate that about 700,000 people then left the country.78 Many refugees passed through Constantinople and Poland then onward to Germany and France. In this context, charitable organizations managed by the Russians themselves (for example the Russian Red Cross, Zemgor and various religious organizations) played a crucial role.79 These were however completed by a broad international solidarity,80 taking form more particularly in Geneva under the High Commission for Refugees headed by Nansen.81 3.2.

Catholic Aid to Russian Organizations

Catholics participated in this movement. In a first phase, the Holy See helped individuals and financed Russian charitable organizations. This is especially the case in Constantinople.

76 ‘Représentant du pape dans l’organisation Nansen’; ‘aktiver Gegner der Russischen Sozialistischen Sowjetregierung’; State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow, f. 1058, op. 1, d. 94, l. 24, the representative of the Soviet government to the International Committee for Russian Relief Alexander Vladimirovich Eiduck to Nansen’s representative in Russia, John Gorvin, 12 January 1922. 77 Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche e dall’Istituto di storia universale dell’Accademia delle scienze di Mosca (Mosca, 23–25 giugno 1998), ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002), pp. 122–80. 78 Catherine Gousseff, L’exil russe: la fabrique du réfugié apatride (1920–1939) (Paris: CNRS, 2008), pp. 54–56. 79 Zarubežnaâ Rossiâ 1917–1939 gg.: sbornik statej, ed. by Vladimir Ju Černjaev and others (Saint Petersburg: Evropejskij Dom, 2000), pp. 10–15; L’invention d’une politique humanitaire: les réfugiés russes et le Zemgor (1921–1930), ed. by Catherine Gousseff and Olga Pichon–Bobrinskoy (= Cahiers du monde russe, 46, 4 (2005)), pp. 667–854. 80 See Corine Nicolas, ‘Les réseaux d’entraide face au problème des réfugiés russes (1919–1929)’, Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin, 14 (2002), pp. 103–18; and Corine Nicolas, ‘Le CICR au secours des réfugiés russes (1919–1939)’, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, 25, 95 (2009), pp. 13–24. 81 Piana, ‘L’humanitaire d’après-guerre’.

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There, on 28 November 1920, the Apostolic Delegate, Mgr Dolci, appealed to the small Catholic community with these very words: ‘Unfortunate are our brothers in many ways. They are children of the same Heavenly Father, redeemed by the blood of the Saviour’.82 Further to this local effort, Mgr Dolci could rely on funds provided by Rome, to the amount of 200,000 lire.83 We know that part of these funds (10,000 lire) were given to the President of the Russian Red Cross Committee, attached to the Consulate at Constantinople, through the Orthodox Bishop, Anastasij Gribanovski, at the request of the Russian Minister to the Holy See, Lysakovsky.84 Such complex channels highlight the diplomatic and religious stakes of the humanitarian intervention of the Vatican. Mgr Dolci’s letters reveal moreover his keen awareness of the effects of such an intervention. Thus in 1927, the delegate distributed 5000 cans of sterilized milk. This targeted act was named ‘Gouttes de lait pour l’enfance russe, bienfaisance de SS. Benoît XV’. For Dolci it was ‘a form of charity that, in being more practical than others, attracted sympathy for the Holy See’.85 So, even before the establishment of specific Catholic organizations, we can see some efforts, since the pontificate of Benedict XV, to lay the foundations for actions clearly identified as Catholic. 3.3.

The Creation of Catholic Charitable Organizations to Aid the Russians

November of 1921 saw the foundation of the Union française d’aide aux Russes in Paris, put forward by French Catholics, particularly Father Emmanuel Chaptal. It did not make a great show of its Catholic character.86 Situated on the Rue de Sèvres, this organization focussed its efforts on two points. First was helping employment. In 1922, for instance, 3000 men are ‘placed’ in the automobile industry of the Parisian region, with Peugeot, Renault and Delaunay-Belleville.87 Its second focus was enrolling children in school.88 It was at this same time that the Aide belge aux Russes was founded by Cardinal Mercier,

82 ‘Ces malheureux sont nos frères à beaucoup de titres. Ce sont des enfants du même Père céleste, des êtres rachetés par le sang du Rédempteur’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica di Turchia, III, Opere di Beneficenza: manifesto, 21 November 1920. 83 ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica di Turchia, III, Russi, Dolci’s report to the Secretariat of State, to Propaganda Fide, and to the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, 6 December 1920. 84 ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica di Turchia, III, Russi, Gasparri to Dolci, 16 January 1922. On the Bishop, see Manuil Lemeševskij, Die russischen orthodoxen Bischöfe von 1895 bis 1965, 6 vols (Erlangen: Lehrstuhl für Geschichte und Theologie des christlichen Ostens, 1979–89), I (1979), pp. 211–13. 85 ‘Una forma di carità che pur essendo più pratica delle altre, attirasse le simpatie verso la S. Sede’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica di Turchia, III, Russi, Dolci to Gasparri, [1921]. 86 AHAP, 635 (Administration des étrangers-Russes), Chaptal, Pour les Russes dans la détresse à Paris, [1922]. The Union française d’aide aux Russes became an association by law 1901 in June of 1922: see AFSJ, Institut Saint-Georges, Meudon, 1921–2002, E–ME 5, Union française d’aide aux Russes, minutes from the general assembly, November 1922. 87 AFSJ, Institut Saint-Georges, Meudon, 1921–2002, E–ME 5, Union française d’aide aux Russes, minutes from the general assembly, November 1922. 88 AFSJ, Institut Saint-Georges, Meudon, 1921–2002, E–ME 5, Union française d’aide aux Russes résidant en France, Résultats obtenus de mars 1922 à janvier 1924.

The Holy See’s Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World

promoting similar actions.89 If, in the 1920s, these foundations became controversial for supposedly requiring conversion, they seem to have been truly effective in the field.

4. Conclusions In the early 1920s, the harsh situation of Russia made of this country an experimental terrain for new forms of humanitarianism. The initiatives elaborated by the Holy See, mostly proceeding by trial and error, show the complexity of the establishment of a humanitarian action properly said, that is that aims to help every man, regardless of his religious affiliation. In the examples we have seen, confessional borders were often crossed but the Vatican’s entry into modern humanitarianism did not go without resistance, both within and without the Catholic Church. Nor was it entirely unambiguous, due to its diplomatic dimensions and its expected religious impact. The development of these actions takes place in a context in which significant exchanges are made between the various humanitarian experiments rolled out between 1914 and 1922, in the Russian world and beyond. Even if these experiments were destined to different recipients in very different contexts, the players are often the same. The Jesuits, for instance, were to develop a humanitarian mission in the Caucasus, but also to fight the famine in Russia and they were afterward transferred to help Russian immigrants in France or Belgium. The same type of transfer can be seen with regard to financial backing. The funds for the ‘Pro Russia’ commission (created in 1925) for example came from what was left over from the humanitarian mission in Russia of 1922–24.90 Thus Benedict XV’s pontificate, so rich in varied initiatives that it is sometimes difficult to give an overview, opens the way to the operations implemented under Pius XI. These exchanges require historians to leave behind national case studies in order to develop a comparative approach to the different humanitarian actions that the Holy See led in the world during this inaugural moment of the ‘short twentieth century’.91

Bibliography Adamets, Sergueï, Guerre civile et famine en Russie: le pouvoir bolchevique et la population face à la catastrophe démographique (1917–1923) (Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 2003), pp. 121–52, 186–87 Bachturina, Aleksandra Jur’evna, Politika rossijskoj imperii v vostočnoj Galicii v gody pervoj mirovoj vojny (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2000)

89 AFSJ, Institut Saint-Georges, Meudon, 1921–2002, E–ME 5, Letter for general circulation from reverends August and Clément Derselle (ABAR — Aide belge aux Russes), 10 November 1923. 90 Pettinaroli, La politique russe, pp. 368–69. 91 Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994).

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Becker, Annette, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914–1918: populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Noêsis, 1998) Cabanes, Bruno, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism (1918–1924) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) Cameron, Lindsey, ‘The ICRC in the First World War: Unwavering Belief in the Power of Law?’, International Review of the Red Cross, 97, 900 (2015), pp. 1099–120 Černjaev, Vladimir Ju, and others, eds, Zarubežnaâ Rossiâ 1917–1939 gg.: sbornik statej (Saint Petersburg: Evropejskij Dom, 2000) Coudreau, Marin, ‘Le Comité international de secours à la Russie: l’Action Nansen et les bolcheviks (1921–1924)’, Relations internationales, 151 (2012), pp. 49–61 Davis, Gerald H., ‘National Red Cross Societies and Prisoners of War in Russia (1914– 1918)’, Journal of Contemporary History, 28, 1 (1993), pp. 31–52 Debons, Delphine, L’assistance spirituelle aux prisonniers de guerre: un aspect de l’action humanitaire durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: Cerf, 2012) Di Giovanni, Francesca, and Giuseppina Roselli, eds, Inter arma caritas: l’Ufficio Informazioni Vaticano per i prigionieri di guerra istituito da Pio XII (1939–1947), 2 vols (Vatican City: Achivio Segreto Vaticano, 2004) Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 12 vols (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973–2018), III/1: Die Völker des Reiches, ed. by Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (1980) Duriez, Bruno, François Mabille, and Kathy Rousselet, eds, Les ONG confessionnelles: religions et action internationale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007) États neutres et neutralité dans la Première Guerre mondiale, 2 vols (= Relations internationales, 159–60 (2014)) Farré, Sébastien, ‘La Commission for Relief of Belgium: neutralité, action humanitaire et mobilisations civiles durant la Première Guerre mondiale’, Relations internationales, 159 (2014), pp. 69–82 Ferro, Marc, Nicholas II: Last of the Tsars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) Fisher, Harold H., The Famine in Soviet Russia (1919–1923): The Operations of the American Relief Administration (New York: Macmillan, 1927) Fleury, Antoine, ‘Droits de l’homme et enjeux humanitaires’, in Pour l’histoire des relations internationales, ed. by Robert Frank (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2012), pp. 453–69 Gousseff, Catherine, L’exil russe: la fabrique du réfugié apatride (1920–1939) (Paris: CNRS, 2008) Gousseff, Catherine, and Olga Pichon–Bobrinskoy, eds, L’invention d’une politique humanitaire: les réfugiés russes et le Zemgor (1921–1930) (= Cahiers du monde russe, 46, 4 (2005)) Hobsbawm, Eric J., The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994) Kévonian, Dzovinar, Réfugiés et diplomatie humanitaire: les acteurs européens et la scène proche-orientale pendant l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004) Kleijntjens, Jean Chrétien Joseph, ‘Activité charitable de Benoît XV’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 43 (1948), pp. 536–45

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Klose, Fabian, ed., The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) Krammer, Arnold, ‘Soviet Propaganda among German and Austro-Hungarian Prisoners of War in Russia (1917–1941)’, in Essays on World War I: Origins and Prisoners of War, ed. by Peter Pastor and Samuel R. Williamson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 239–64 Lafourcade, Magali, ‘Caritas Internationalis’, in Dictionnaire du Vatican et du Saint-Siège, ed. by Christophe Dickès (Paris: Laffont, 2013), pp. 206–08 Lemeševskij, Manuil, Die russischen orthodoxen Bischöfe von 1895 bis 1965, 6 vols (Erlangen: Lehrstuhl für Geschichte und Theologie des christlichen Ostens, 1979–89), I (1979) Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Makrickas, Rolandas, Santa Sede e Lituania: la rinascita dello stato lituano nei documenti dell’archivio della Nunziatura apostolica di Monaco di Baviera (1915–1919) (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 2006) McVay, Athanasius, ‘A Prisoner for His People’s Faith: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky’s Detentions under Russia and Poland’, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 50, 1–2 (2009), pp. 13–54 Nachtigal, Reinhard, Rußland und seine österreichisch-ungarischen Kriegsgefangenen (1914– 1918) (Remshalden: Greiner, 2003) Nicolas, Corine, ‘Le CICR au secours des réfugiés russes (1919–1939)’, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, 25, 95 (2009), pp. 13–24 Nicolas, Corine, ‘Les réseaux d’entraide face au problème des réfugiés russes (1919–1929)’, Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin, 14 (2002), pp. 103–18 Ossandón, María Eugenia, ‘Colaborar en el terreno de la caridad’: Santa Sede y Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja entre los siglos XIX y XX (Rome: Edizioni Santa Croce, 2014) Paolini, Gabriele, ‘Contre la guerre par la faim: le Saint-Siège et les tentatives de ravitaillement des populations civiles des territoires occupés (1915–1918)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 258 (2015), pp. 57–70 Papeleux, Leon, L’action caritative du Saint-Siège en faveur des prisonniers de guerre (1939– 1945) (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1991) Pettinaroli, Laura, ‘Entre impartialité et engagement: le Saint-Siège face aux pressions des belligérants sur le front russe (1914–1917)’, in 1914: neutralités, neutralismes en question, ed. by Ineke Bockting, Beatrice Fonck and Pauline Piettre (Bern: Peter Lang, 2017), pp. 57–76 Pettinaroli, Laura, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Piana, Francesca, ‘L’humanitaire d’après-guerre: prisonniers de guerre et réfugiés russes dans la politique du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et de la Société des Nations’, Relations internationales, 151 (2012), pp. 63–75 Rachamimov, Alon, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford: Berg, 2002) Rossi, Marina, I prigionieri dello zar: soldati italiani dell’esercito austro-ungarico nei lager della Russia (1914–1918) (Milan: Mursia, 1997)

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Ruyssen, Georges-Henri, La Santa Sede e i massacri degli armeni (1894–1896) (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2012) Ryfman, Philippe, Une histoire de l’humanitaire (Paris: La Découverte, 2008) Simms, Brendan, and David J. B. Trim, eds, Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) Une autre approche de la globalisation: socio-histoire des organisations internationales (1900– 1940) (= Critique internationale, 14, 52 (2011)) Valente, Massimiliano, ‘La nunziatura di Eugenio Pacelli a Monaco di Baviera e la “diplomazia dell’assistenza” nella Grande Guerra (1917–1918)’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 83 (2003), pp. 264–87 Valente, Massimiliano, ed., Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche e dall’Istituto di storia universale dell’Accademia delle scienze di Mosca (Mosca, 23–25 giugno 1998) (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002) Viaene, Vincent, ‘Professionalism or Proselytism? Catholic Internationalists in the Nineteenth Century’, in Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks, and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s, ed. by Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck and Jakob Vogel (New York: Berghahn, 2015), pp. 23–43 Weissman, Benjamin M., Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia (1921–1923) (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1974) Wendland, Anna Veronika, Die Russophilen in Galizien: ukrainische Konservative zwischen Österreich und Russland (1848–1915) (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001) Wurzer, Georg, Die Kriegsgefangenen der Mittelmächte in Russland im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005)

Athanasius McVay

Benedict XV in Search of Peace for Ukraine

This is neither the time nor the place to examine thoroughly how and why the Vatican manifested sympathy for the idea of the Ukrainian State. That should be done by the historian who, at the proper time, may gain access to the sources which are certainly to be found in the Vatican and in other places.1

1.

Born during Benedict XV’s Reign

There is no peace for Ukraine, not a hundred years after it fleetingly appeared on the world stage, nor twenty-five years after having finally achieved independence. One hundred years ago, Benedict XV addressed to the world the words ‘nations do not die’.2 Sometimes, however, nations are born only with great difficulty, as is the case of Ukraine, whose cause did not provoke any moralizing campaign of sympathy from the Western powers. During the pontificate of Benedict XV, Ukraine was born as a state but died as a nation ‘which never enjoyed a single day’s peace’. Nonetheless, Pope Benedict took up the cause of Ukraine and strove, with numerous significant gestures, to bring peace to ‘his beloved Ukrainians’.3



1 ‘Не місце тут і не пора розводитися широко над тим, в чому проявлялася симпатія Ватикану до ідеї української держави, і що було мотивом цієї симпатії. Це зробить історик, що своєчасно найде доступ до джерел, які напевно буде можна найти у Ватикані, і до інших джерел, які повинні би зберігтися в актах нашої дипломатичної місії’; Petro Karmansky, ‘Kardynal P. Gaspari j Ukraïna’, Dilo, 55, 319 (27 November 1934), p. 2. 2 ‘Nations do not die; humbled and oppressed, they chafe under the yoke imposed on them, preparing a renewal of the combat’; Benedict XV, Allorché fummo chiamati, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7 (1915), pp. 365–77. See Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). 3 Benedict XV, Ex iis litteris, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 13, 6 (1921), pp. 424–26. See also Anglo-Vatican Relations 1914–1939: Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See, ed. by Thomas E. Hachey (Boston: Hall, 1972).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1105–1130 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118822

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2. Rus, Ruthenia, Ukraine ‘Nation’ is a modern concept. There is no strict need for any given nation to come into being. However, the process of a national awakening among certain tribes or ethnic groups is a historical fact. Ukrainian national consciousness emerged in the nineteenth century on the basis of a few precedents.4 In the ninth century, the Norse Ruriks, who ruled over the Slavic tribes surrounding the Dnipro River, formed a state called Rus with its capital in Kiev. The people of Kievan Rus eventually constituted themselves into three nations: Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.5 After the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century, the political and cultural inheritance of Kievan Rus passed to Lithuania, Poland and Muscovy. The people called themselves Rusyn or Ruski in the plural. Westerners began to refer to those in Poland–Lithuania as Ruthenians.6 Prince Volodymyr the Great7 accepted Byzantine Christianity in 988.8 After the Great Schism, the Orthodox Church of Rus continued to maintain some contact with the Roman Apostolic See.9 In 1253 Pope Innocent IV sent his legate with a royal crown to Danylo of Halych,10 the last independent Rus principality.11 Most of south-western Rus passed to Lithuania, but Halych was conquered in 1349 by the Polish King. North-eastern Rus became Muscovy.12 In 1439, Isidore, Metropolitan of Kiev, signed the act of union of the Roman and Byzantine Churches at the Council of Florence, and was made a cardinal. But his efforts to turn the union into a reality were met with opposition at home.13 In 1595, the bishops of the Kievan Metropolia signed another act of union with the Roman

4 Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus (1569–1999) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); John A. Armstrong, ‘Myth and History in the Evolution of Ukrainian Consciousness’, in Ukraine and Russia in Their Historical Encounter, ed. by Peter J. Potichnyj and others (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1992), pp. 125–39 (pp. 129–30). 5 Paul R. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 51–82, 128–37; Serhii Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 20–65, 69–80. 6 Subtelny, Ukraine, pp. 69–73; Magocsi, A History, pp. 67–68, 123–24; Snyder, The Reconstruction, pp. 17–18. 7 Volodymyr (Vladimir) the Great (958–1015): youngest son of Svjatoslav, Prince of Kiev, he became Prince of Novgorod in 969, Grand Prince of Kievan Rus in 978, and married Anna, sister of Byzantine Emperor Basil II in 988. 8 Magocsi, A History, pp. 69–71; Subtelny, Ukraine, pp. 33–34. 9 Athanasius G. Welykyj, ‘Kyïvs’ka mytropolia v 100 lit po shyzmi Kerularia’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 2, 3 (1960), pp. 348–74; 2, 4 (1963), pp. 461–83. 10 Danylo Romanovych (1201–64): son of Roman Mstyslavych, he was Prince of Halych in 1205–55, Prince of Peremyshl in 1211, Prince of Volodymyr in 1212–31, first King of Rus in 1253–64. 11 Documenta Pontificum Romanorum historiam Ucrainae illustrantia, ed. by Athanasius G. Welykyj, 2 vols (Rome: Basiliani, 1953), I, pp. 5–42; Magocsi, A History, p. 121; Subtleny, Ukraine, p. 62. 12 Subtelny, Ukraine, pp. 73, 112–13; Snyder, The Reconstruction, p. 105. 13 Oskar Halecki, From Florence to Brest (1439–1596) (New York: Archon Books, 1958).

b e n e d i ct   x v i n s e arch o f pe ace fo r u k rai ne

See. This ‘Union of Brest’ only united one part of the Kievan Church,14 while another part remained in communion with the Orthodox world.15 The Kievan metropolitans received patriarchal-like powers from the Roman pontiff.16 Yet, despite opposition from Roman Catholics and the Orthodox,17 the Uniate Church flourished in Poland–Lithuania, and Pope Urban VIII told the Ruthenians that he hoped to convert the entire East through them.18 When Muscovy, then already known as Russia, invaded Poland–Lithuania, the Uniates were forcibly absorbed by the Russian Orthodox Church. After the last partition in 1795, the Uniate Church was destined to survive only in Austrian Galicia (the name for the old Halych principality). Empress Maria Theresa abolished the term ‘Uniate’ as pejorative and replaced it with ‘Greek Catholic’, on a par with her Roman Catholic subjects.19 With the awakening of the nations after the French Revolution, the Ruthenians also began to assert a national-ethnic consciousness. The Ukrainian Risorgimento began in the Russian Empire but grew in Austrian Galicia where, in the absence of a secular nobility, it was led by the Greek-Catholic clergy.20 Just as the Italic peoples of various dialects and principalities became the Italian nation, so the Ruthenians of the Austrian and Russian Empires came to see themselves as a single nation.21 And, 14 Documenta Unionis Berestensis eiusque auctorum (1590–1600), ed. by Athanasius G. Welykyj (Rome: Basiliani, 1970); Borys Gudziak, Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). For a negative evaluation see Sophia Senyk, A History of the Church in Ukraine, 2 vols (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1993), II. 15 Antoni Mironowicz, ‘Orthodoxy and Uniatism During the 17th Century’, in Churches and Confessions in East Central Europe in Early Modern Times, ed. by Hubert M. Łaszkiewicz (Lublin: Instytut Europy Środkowo Wschodniej, 1999), pp. 74–77; Sophia Senyk, ‘The Ukrainian Church in the Seventeenth Century’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 2, 15 (1996), pp. 339–74. 16 Clement VIII, Magnus Dominus and Decet Romanum Pontificem, in Documenta Pontificum, ed. by Welykyj, I, pp. 236–43 and pp. 266–68; ACO, Ruteni 18, pos. 1021/28, ff. 2r–3r; AES, Russia, per. IV, pos. 636 P. O., fasc. 23, ff. 5r–7v, Papadopoulos to Gasparri, 20 June 1921. See Eugenius Kaminskyj, De potestate Metropolitarum Kioviensium-Haliciensium (1596–1805) (Rome: Università Cattolica Ucraina, 1969). 17 Athanasius Pekar, ‘The Union of Brest and Attempts to Destroy It’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 2, 14 (1992), pp. 152–70. 18 ‘Per vos, mei Rutheni, Orientem convertendum spero’: cited in Michaele Harasiewicz, Annales Ecclesiae Ruthenae (Lviv: Institutus Ruthenus Stauropigianus, 1862), p. 323; also cited in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 13, 6 (1921), p. 219; Documenta Pontificum, ed. by Welykyj, II, p. 530. 19 Michael Lacko, Synodus episcoporum ritus byzantini catholicorum ex antiqua Hungaria Vindobonae a. 1773 celebrata (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1975), p. 311. See Magocsi, A History, pp. 397–98 and John-Paul Himka, Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia (1867–1900) (Montréal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1999), p. 5. 20 John-Paul Himka, ‘Priests and Peasants: The Greek Catholic Pastor and the Ukrainian National Movement in Austria, 1867–1900’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 21, 1 (1979), pp. 1–14; Himka, Religion and Nationality, pp. 10–11. 21 John-Paul Himka, ‘The Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Nation in Galicia’, in Religious Compromise, Political Salvation: The Greek Catholic Church and Nation-building in Eastern Europe, ed. by James Niessen (Pittsburgh: Center for Russian & East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1993), pp. 7–26 (p. 11).

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just as Italia was once only a geographical term, so the geographical designation Ukraïna was adopted as a name for the nation in order to distinguish it from Russia.22

3. Relations with Ukraine: Pro and Contra Until World War I, the Russian Empire was the most powerful state in Central Eastern Europe and represented the determining factor in papal policy.23 Viewing the region’s political and religious futures within the Russian context, Leo XIII had inaugurated a diplomatic outreach to Russia24 and, at the same time, supported religious ‘unionism’, as opposed to Latin missionary proselytism, as a means for eventual ecclesial reunion.25 The policy aimed to strengthen and support Eastern Catholicism, particularly among the Ruthenians, so that they would become missionaries to nearby Orthodox countries.26 The papacy’s relations with the stateless Ruthenian-Ukrainian people were mainly ecclesiastic and determined by a religious-political policy geared to each empire to which Ukrainians were subject.27 From the second half of the nineteenth century, as a distinct nation began to reveal itself, the Holy See had to include Ukraine in its outlook. From a religious point of view, Ukrainians were considered within a unionistic framework: Greek-Catholics in Austria were seen as the protagonists of unionism, and Orthodox Christians in Russian Ukraine were viewed as the object of unionistic hopes.28 The Holy See had no political hopes for Ukrainians either in 22 ‘Ucrainienses ut neorutheni dicuntur […] asserunt esse nationem a Russis omnimodo aliam’: ACO, Russi 58, pos. 170/52, fasc. 300/47, f. 21b, Sheptytsky to Gotti, 22 August 1903. See Magocsi, A History, p. 171; Snyder, The Reconstruction, pp. ix, 110. 23 Giuseppe M. Croce, ‘Le Saint-Siège, l’Église orthodoxe et la Russie soviétique: entre mission et diplomatie’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 105, 1 (1993), pp. 267–97. 24 Giovanni Coco, ‘Tra la Galizia e la Russia: la nomina episcopale di Andrej Szeptycki nell’ambito dell’Unionismo di Leone XIII’, in Dall’Archivio Segreto Vaticano: miscellanea di testi, saggi e inventari, 10 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006–18), I (2006), pp. 59–91; Viktor Gajduk, ‘Russia e Vaticano tra XIX e XX secolo: il dialogo secondo materiali d’archivio inediti’, in Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche e dall’Istituto di storia universale dell’Accademia delle scienze di Mosca (Mosca, 23–25 giugno 1998), ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002), pp. 43–61 (p. 46); Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘La représentation du Saint-Siège au couronnement des tsars Alexandre III (1883) et Nicholas II (1896): deux étapes dans les relations vaticano-russes’, in Le pontificat de Léon XIII: renaissances du Saint-Siège?, ed. by Philippe Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi (Rome: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 139–47. 25 Leo XIII, Orientalium dignitas, Acta Sanctae Sedis, 27 (1894–95), pp. 257–64. See Angelo Tamborra, Chiesa cattolica e ortodossia russa: due secoli di confronto e dialogo: dalla Santa Alleanza ai nostri giorni (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1992), pp. 259–359, 389–93. 26 ACO, Ponenze, 1920; AES, Russia, per. IV, pos. 610 P. O., fasc. 5, f. 3, Circa i mezzi più acconci per facilitare il ritorno dei Russi scismatici all’Unità Cattolica, 28 June 1920, p. 17. See Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, pp. 68–70, 94. 27 Documenta Pontificum, ed. by Welykyj, I and II. 28 ACO, rubr. 117, pos. 10, fasc. 57, f. 21r; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 77, fasc. 49, f. 49rv, Marini to Cerretti, 16 May 1918. See Laura Pettinaroli, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015).

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Austria or in Russia. Better relations with Russia aimed to secure increased freedom for Catholics in the Tsarist Empire. Since Austria-Hungary had replaced Poland as the Catholic state in Central Eastern Europe, the Holy See saw it as an antidote to the encroaching influence of Orthodox Russia.29 Consequently, Rome could not favour independence for any of Austria’s constituent nationalities.30 World War I threw the status quo into chaos and necessitated a reconfiguration of the papal outlook for Central Eastern Europe.

4. Open Diplomacy: ‘Above the Parties’ Benedict XV’s pontificate saw a return of the grande politique of Leo XIII, which he himself had helped Cardinal Rampolla implement while serving in the Secretariat of State.31 The policy of patient, free-manoeuvre diplomacy, independent of political alliances and with diplomatic outreach to all states,32 was perfectly suited to new states such as Ukraine.33 In his first encyclical letter, the Pope identified nationalistic hatred as one of the principal causes of the war.34 Nevertheless, as the conflict developed, so Vatican policy evolved from favouring a political status quo to one of a reserved acceptance of national movements.35 With Catholics on all sides of the conflict demanding papal support, Benedict XV moved from favouring a policy of disinterested neutrality to that of a peacemaker and mediator ‘above the parties’.36 His two main

29 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, rubr. 244, fasc. 29, Gasparri to Scapinelli, 12 January 1915. See John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 89, 96–97; Angelo Tamborra, Studi storici sull’Europa orientale: raccolti per il 70º compleanno dell’autore, ed. by Attilio Chitarin, Francesco Guida and Rita Tolomeo (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1987), pp. 316–17; Luciano Trincia, ‘Relations internationales et gouvernement central de l’Église’, in Le pontificat, ed. by Levillain and Ticchi, pp. 111–24 (p. 123). 30 Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), I, p. 68, and II, p. 391. 31 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, pp. 7­–18. 32 Philippe Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘Léon XIII: une vision du monde entre deux siècles’, in Le pontificat, ed. by Levillain and Ticchi, pp. 3–8; Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘Bons offices, médiations, arbitrages dans l’activité diplomatique du Saint-Siège de Léon XIII à Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 105, 2 (1993), pp. 567–612 (p. 572); Trincia, ‘Relations internationales’, pp. 111, 122–23. 33 ‘As soon as any sort of a Government was set up in either, the Vatican instructed its representative in Vienna to enter into friendly relations with it. The Vatican was, in fact, among the first to deal with the new States’; De Salis to Curzon, 25 October 1921, in Anglo-Vatican Relations, ed. by Hachey, p. 4. See Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, pp. 251–52. 34 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum Principis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6, 18 (1914), pp. 565–81. In the pontiff ’s vocabulary, race was often synonymous with nationalism (Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 86). 35 Anglo-Vatican Relations, ed. by Hachey, p. 4; Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, pp. 251–52; Pollard, The Unknown Pope, pp. 91, 103. 36 Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard, ‘A Diplomacy like Any Other: Papal Diplomacy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, ed. by Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard (London: Praeger, 1994), pp. 11–21.

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diplomatic objectives, general pacification and drawing separated Christians closer to Rome,37 directly concerned the Ukrainian situation.

5. Ukraine between Russia, Austria and Poland At first, Benedict XV did not have a specific Ukrainian policy. The future of ‘Ruthenians’ was seen in the contexts of the two empires to which they were subject. The Holy See supported the integrity of Austria-Hungary as the strongest Catholic state in Central Europe. As far as Russia was concerned, the Vatican was favourable to the autonomy or independence of as many of the nations as possible due to the Tsarist Empire’s consistent oppression of Catholicism.38 This was especially true for Poland, the largest area of which had been partitioned to Russia.39 During the war, the Holy See took up the Polish cause, and the Pope included it in his 1917 Note.40 When it became clear that the Austrian Empire could not be salvaged, the Vatican turned to Poland as a substitute Catholic power.41 Following Polish independence, Rome included the Ukrainians in its political plans for Poland and Russia.

6. The Turning Point of the Revolution The 1917 Revolution in Russia marked a turning point in Vatican policy. Since the Provisional Government granted religious freedom,42 the Roman curia had to

37 Tamborra, Studi storici, p. 332. 38 AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 39, fasc. 27, ff. 3r–4v, Scapinelli to Gasparri, 8 October 1915; Anglo-Vatican Relations, ed. by Hachey, p. 3; Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘La Russie, l’URSS et le Saint-Siège’, in Nations et Saint-Siège au XXe siècle: actes du colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, octobre 2000), ed. by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse and Philippe Levillain (Paris: Fayard, 2003), pp. 235–49; Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Santa Sede e Russia rivoluzionaria’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 151–69. 39 AES, Austria-Ungheria, per. III, pos. 1204, fasc. 492, f. 2rv, Scapinelli to Gasparri, 3 October 1914; Anglo-Vatican Relations, ed. by Hachey, p. 34; Michail I. Odincov, ‘I cattolici e la Chiesa cattolica in Russia nel 1914–1920’, in Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del secondo Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche e dall’Istituto di storia universale dell’Accademia russa delle scienze (Vienna, 25–30 aprile 2001), ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006), pp. 121–49 (p. 125). 40 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 147; Jurij E. Karlov, ‘La Russia e il Vaticano tra il febbraio e l’ottobre 1917: un’occasione storica perduta’, in Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del secondo Simposio, ed. by Valente, pp. 100–20 (pp. 114–15); Angelo Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV alle potenze belligeranti nell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 363–87 (pp. 379 ff.). 41 ‘Della guerra si parla per constatare che la partita è ormai perduta per gli imperi centrali: il papa sembra fondar grandi speranze sulla Polonia come baluardo contro la Russia e contro la Germania’: Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 390. See Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 132. 42 Karlov, ‘La Russia’, p. 104.

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consider the best way of reintroducing, into those vast regions, the Catholic presence which had been suffocated under Tsarist rule.43 The Revolution strengthened the national movements of Russia’s subject peoples and facilitated their independence. With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, of February 1918, the Central Powers recognized the newly proclaimed Ukrainian National Republic and immediately transformed it into a client state.44 The euphoria that followed religious freedom in Russia gave rise to ‘mirages’ of a union between a number of national Orthodox Churches and Rome.45 In response to such hopes, Benedict XV established an autonomous department, the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches, to coordinate Eastern Catholic life and promote unionistic missions.46 The new office was accorded significant authority in order to promote and defend the Eastern Catholic Churches. The ‘Oriental Congregation’, as it was often referred to, paid careful attention to the religious and political affairs of the Ukrainian National Republic together with those of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholics in Austria.47

7.

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky

Perhaps the most important Eastern-Catholic leader of the period was Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky,48 Archbishop of Lviv-Halych and Primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.49 Of Ruthenian-Polish aristocratic lineage,50 Sheptytsky chose to return to his Eastern roots by enlisting in the Basilian Order, one of

43 ACO, Ponenze, 1917, ff. 631–59, ‘Russia interessi religiosi’, July 1917. See Laurent Koelliker, ‘La perception de la Russie per le pape Benoît XV: aspects politiques, diplomatiques et religieux’, in Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del secondo Simposio, ed. by Valente, pp. 17–49. 44 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 9 February 1918: Magocsi, A History, p. 485; Subtelny, Ukraine, p. 353; Gregor Dallas, 1918: War and Peace (London: Pimlico, 2000), pp. 41–42; Rudolf Jeřábek, ‘The Eastern Front’, in The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. by Mark Cornwall (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), pp. 149–66 (p. 162). 45 Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 351. See Giuseppe M. Croce, ‘Alle origini della Congregazione Orientale e del Pontificio Istituto Orientale: il contributo di mons. Louis Petit’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 53 (1987), pp. 257–333; Croce, ‘Le Saint-Siège, l’Église orthodoxe’; Pollard, The Unknown Pope, pp. 198­–200. 46 Benedict XV, Dei providentis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 11 (1917), pp. 529–31. AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, per. III, pos. 1429, fasc. 572, f. 17r, Gasparri to Marchetti Selvaggiani, 19 August 1917. See Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 74. 47 ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28. ACO, Ruteni 20, pos. 2166/28. 48 Andrey Roman Aleksander Maria Sheptytsky (Szeptycki in Polish) (1865–1944): entered the Basilians in 1888, priest in 1892, Bishop of Stanyslaviv in 1899, Metropolitan-Archbishop of LvivHalych in 1900. 49 On the title of Lviv-Halych: ACO, Ruteni 35, pos. 385/31. AES, Polonia, per. IV, pos. 40 P. O., fasc. 50; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 257, fasc. 910. 50 Jerzy S. Dunin-Borkowski, Almanach błękitny (Lviv: Altenberg, 1908), pp. 915–16; Krzysztof Stopka, ‘Historyczne początki rodu Szeptyckich’, in Metropolita Andrzej Szeptycki: studia i materialy, ed. by Andrzej A. Zięba (Kraków: Nakładem Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, 1994), pp. 11–16.

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Leo XIII’s unionist experiments.51 In the eyes of the Poles who governed Austrian Galicia, his double pedigree made Sheptytsky ideal for leading the Greek-Catholic Church along a subservient path at a time when Ukrainian national consciousness was gaining ground.52 Sheptytsky’s ideals sprang from Leo XIII’s unionism but matured thanks to his personal contacts among the Ukrainian, Polish and Russian elites.53 In 1907, he obtained unprecedented powers from Pius X, kept secret even from Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val, in order to begin rebuilding the foundations for Eastern Catholic Churches where they had been suppressed by Russia.54 Sheptytsky cautiously but also critically supported the Ukrainian national movement in Austrian Galicia.55 Two weeks after the election of Benedict XV, Sheptytsky was arrested by the Russians, as a dangerous opponent to Tsarist assimilation plans.56 Cardinal Gasparri launched an energetic yet fruitless diplomatic campaign for his release.57 From Russian captivity, Sheptytsky sent six letters to the new pontiff, outlining his unionist vision for Russia and Ukraine.58 As soon as he was freed, the Metropolitan established a Russian Catholic Exarchate, using the secret faculties granted him by Pius X.59 Benedict XV tended to favour Sheptytsky’s proposal for a predominant

51 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 494, fasc. 152; pos. 500–01, fasc 156. ACO, Ponenze, 1882, no. 6, ff. 231–84, 17 March 1882. Himka, Religion and Nationality, pp. 79–84, 119. Andrzej A. Zięba, ‘W sprawie genezy decyzji Romana Szeptyckiego o zmianie obrządku’, in Metropolita Andrzej Szeptycki, ed. by Zięba, pp. 43–64. 52 Andrzej A. Zięba, ‘Sheptyts’kyi in Polish Public Opinion’, in Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi, ed. by Paul R. Magocsi (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1989), pp. 377–405 (pp. 377–79); Coco, ‘Tra la Galizia’, pp. 31–168. 53 Coco, ‘Tra la Galizia’, pp. 97–103; Mytropolyt Andrej Sheptyts’kyj і hreko-katolyky v Rosії: dokumenty і materіjaly 1899–1917, ed. by Yuri P. Avvakumov and Oksana Haiova (Lviv: Ukrainian Catholic University Press, 2004). 54 AES, Austria-Ungheria, per. III, pos. 1318, fasc. 518, ff. 66r–71r, Sheptytsky to Pius X, 17 February and 18 December 1908; copies in ACO, Pro Russia 12, pos. 130/28, ff. 5 and 7–2. See Vittorio Peri, Orientalis varietas: Roma e le chiese d’Oriente: storia e diritto canonico (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1994), p. 269. 55 John-Paul Himka, ‘Sheptyts’kyi and the Ukrainian National Movement before 1914’, in Morality and Reality, ed. by Magocsi, pp. 31–40; John-Paul Himka, ‘The Greek Catholic Church in Galicia, 1848–1914’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 26, 1–4 (2002–03), pp. 245–60 (p. 256). 56 Ordo Sancti Basilii Magni (OSBM), ‘Lviv Chronicle’ (18 September 1914); TsDIAUL, fond 684, opys 1, sprava 2195, arkush 97–15. See Athanasius McVay, ‘A Prisoner for His People’s Faith: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky’s Detentions under Russia and Poland’, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 50, 1–2 (2009), pp. 13–54 (pp. 19–23). 57 AES, Austria-Ungheria, per. III, pos. 1204, fasc. 492–94. See McVay, ‘A Prisoner’, pp. 24–31. 58 AES, Austria-Ungheria, pos. 1204, fasc. 492, f. 56rv, Sheptytsky to Benedict XV, 14 December 1914; AES, Austria-Ungheria, pos. 1204, fasc. 492, ff. 66r–67v, Sheptytsky to Benedict XV, 29 April 1915. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, 763, fasc. 3a, ff. 93r–94v, 27 July 1915. ACO, Russi 58, pos. 170/52, fasc. 300/47, ff. 36–37rv, 23 and 29 September 1916. AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 1429, fasc. 572, ff. 9r–12r, 16–25 March 1917. 59 AES, Russia, per. IV, pos. 662 P. O., fasc. 54, ff. 21–27, Petrograd Synod to Benedict XV, 31 May 1917. ACO, Russi 58, pos. 170/52; Pro Russia 12, pos. 130/28.

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Byzantine Rite as opposed to a Latin mission in post-revolutionary Russia. This view was fiercely opposed by the Poles, who had long held the monopoly over Catholic activities in Russia.60 As long as Italy and Austria were at war, Sheptytsky was barred from visiting Rome to explain his plans to the Pope and prove the authenticity of his special faculties.61 His first meeting with Benedict XV occurred on 18 February 1921, and it provoked a turning point in Vatican policy. Pope Benedict confirmed Sheptytsky’s faculties by recognizing the Bishop that he had consecrated and the Russian Exarch that he had nominated.62

8. The Holy See’s Relations with Ukraine Until World War I, Ukrainian representation at the papal court was of an exclusively religious nature. From 1626, the Metropolitans of Kiev maintained a procurator to the Holy See.63 At the outbreak of the war, Ukrainians began a campaign to bring their still-stateless nation to the attention of the international community.64 They also entered into direct contact with the Roman curia and papal diplomatic representatives abroad. Catholic aristocrats from Russian Ukraine, who were friends of Metropolitan Sheptytsky, were among Ukraine’s keenest promoters. The most important of these amateur diplomats was Count Mykhailo Tyshkevych.65 With his vast financial resources and social connections, Tyshkevych moved to Switzerland to promote the Ukrainian cause and was largely responsible for bringing it to the attention of the Western press. Several qualities also made him an ideal representative to the Vatican: he had had a Western European education,

60 ACO, Ponenze, 1920; AES, Russia, per. IV, pos. 610 P. O., fasc. 5, f. 3, Circa i mezzi più acconci per facilitare il ritorno dei Russi scismatici all’Unità Cattolica, 28 June 1920. See Croce, ‘Le Saint-Siège, l’église orthodoxe’, p. 272; Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, pp. 163–64, 169. 61 AES, Austria-Ungheria, per. III, pos. 1204, fasc. 494. AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, per. III, pos. 1429, fasc. 572, ff. 19r–36r, Sheptytsky to Benedict XV, 18 August 1917. See McVay, ‘A Prisoner’, pp. 32–33. 62 ACO, Pro Russia 12, pos. 130/28, f. 46rv; TsDIAUL, fond. 358, opys 3, sprava 104, arkush 1–14, Papadopoulos to Sheptytsky, prot. 5230/21, 24 February 1921: AES, Russia, per. IV, pos. 636 P. O., fasc. 23, ff. 5r–7v, Papadopoulos to Gasparri, 20 June 1921. See McVay, ‘A Prisoner’, p. 33; Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, pp. 169–70. 63 Litterae episcoporum historiam Ucrainae illustrantes (1600–1900), ed. by Athanasius G. Welykyj, 4 vols (Rome: Basiliani, 1972–76), I (1972), p. 300. 64 Manifestos from the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, dated August and October 1914, are found in: ACO, Ruteni 20, pos. 2166/28, fasc. 1; ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 2, ff. 1–4. 65 Mykhailo Tyshkevych (Michał Tyszkiewicz in Polish) (1857–1930): born in Andrushivka near Kiev, diplomat, artist, publicist, patron of Ukrainian culture. See Jerzy S. Dunin-Borkowski, Rocznik szlachty polskiej, 2 vols (Lviv: K. Łukaszewicz, 1881–83), II (1983), p. 334; Ivan Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl ì Ukraïna, 1919–1922 (Rome: Ukrajins’kyj katolyts’kyj universytet, 1987), pp. 13–20; A. Smyrnov, ‘Hraf Mykhailo Tyshkevych—ukraïnskyi hromadskyi diach i dyplomat’, Vyzvol’nyi shliakh, 57, 4 (2004), pp. 119–27.

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was a papal knight and had founded Catholic associations in Russia.66 Since both the Holy See and Ukraine were seeking international recognition, Tyshkevych sought to promote Ukraine by collaborating with Benedict XV’s ideals: peace and humanitarian diplomacy.67 Tyshkevych had already obtained Pius X’s encouragement in founding the Kiev Peace Association. On 27 December 1914, he approached the papal Secretariat of State for a blessing from the new pontiff, not omitting to ask for support for the suffering Ukrainian nation.68 On 9 January 1915, Monsignor Pacelli replied that the Pope had been ‘moved by the expression of your sentiments’ (‘très sensible à l’expression de vos sentiments’) and accorded him the apostolic blessing.69 On 1 June 1916, Tyshkevych approached Pacelli again, touching on another of Pope Benedict’s key policies: Church unity. He told Pacelli that both Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians in Austria and Russia had asked him to approach him as their ‘protector and intermediary’ (‘protecteur et interprète’) by delivering a confidential memorandum on Ukraine to His Holiness.70 On 9 June, Pacelli wrote to assure him that he had delivered the document personally.71 In 1917, Tyshkevych began to write directly to Cardinal Gasparri. Pope Benedict had launched a collection for the Poles and Lithuanians struck by the war. On 17 February, Tyshkevych sent a petition asking that such a collection should also be initiated for the Ukrainians.72 In March 1918, he took greetings to the pontiff from the Association of Roman Catholics in Ukraine as the newly-elected head of their association. He also presented a memorandum in support of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk’s controversial award of the disputed Kholm region to the nascent Ukrainian Republic.73 The Ukrainian State was slow to make use of the Catholic notables who had promoted its cause abroad. Only on 1 September 1918 did Tyshkevych ask the Holy See to accept an official Ukrainian representative.74 However, after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Germans occupied Ukraine and turned it into a satellite 66 ‘Hraf Mykhailo Tyshkevych pomer 3. serpnia 1930 r.’, Dilo, 51, 172 (6 August 1930), p. 1. ‘Hraf Mykhailo Tyshkevych: 20.IV.1852–3.VIII.1930’, Dilo, 51, 173 (7 August 1930), p. 1. See Smyrnov, ‘Hraf Mykhailo Tyshkevych, p. 121. 67 Benedict XV, Allorché fummo chiamati. See Robert J. Araujo, Papal Diplomacy and the Quest for Peace: The Vatican and International Organizations from the Early Years to the League of Nations (Ann Arbor, MI: Sapientia Press, 2004), pp. 104–05, 120. 68 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, per. III, pos. 1313, fasc. 453, ff. 13r–15r, Tyshkevych to Pacelli, 27 December 1914. 69 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, per. III, pos. 1313, fasc. 453, f. 6rv; ACO, Archivio Singalevych, 2, Pacelli to Tyshkevych, 9 January 1915. 70 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, per. III, pos. 1313, fasc. 453, ff. 35r–36v, Tyshkevych to Pacelli, 1 June 1916. 71 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, per. III, pos. 1313, fasc. 453, f. 37r, Pacelli to Tyshkevych, 9 June 1916. 72 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 959, fasc. 332, f. 28rv, Tyshkevych to Gasparri, 17 February 1917. Gasparri responded that the Holy Father was well disposed but that, as with the Poles and Lithuanians, the request had to come from the Ukrainian bishops: see f. 30r, Gasparri to Tyshkevych, 3 March 1917. 73 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 981, fasc. 348, ff. 12r–13v, Tyshkevych to Gasparri, 24 March 1918. The memorandum is at ff. 14–17. 74 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 356, f. 34rv, Tyshkevych to Gasparri, 1 September 1918.

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state, recognized only by the Central Powers.75 Given the uncertainty of the war’s outcome, Gasparri preferred to ‘defer this project for a while’.76 Tyshkevych having failed, another Catholic aristocrat took up the cause. In October 1918, Jan Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, who was serving as attaché to the Ukrainian Consulate in Vienna,77 approached the Apostolic Visitor to Poland, Achille Ratti, on the matter of Vatican–Ukraine relations.78 With the fall of Austria-Hungary, on 8 November 1918, Benedict XV gave orders for his representatives to establish relations with the various nations.79 In February 1919, Tokarzewski went to see the Nuncio in Vienna and informed him that his government had decided to send a three-man diplomatic mission to the Holy See, headed by Tyshkevych. Tokarzewski suggested that diplomatic relations were necessary due to the possibilities for Catholicism in predominantly Orthodox Ukraine.80 On 12 March 1919, the Ukrainian Consul in Berne asked Mgr Luigi Maglione to transmit an official request for a diplomatic mission to be accredited to the Holy See.81 Gasparri responded to Maglione on 26 March 1919 that the Holy See would be particularly pleased to enter into diplomatic relations with Ukraine, especially in view of its promised freedom for Catholicism. However, it did not accord full relations to new countries that had not been recognized by the Great Powers (meaning the Entente). In the meantime, only Tyshkevych, deemed ‘acceptable, being already in relations with the papal court’, was to be received in the role of semi-official envoy.82 The Ukrainian National Republic regarded the acceptance of Tyshkevych’s mission as recognition by the Holy See of the Ukrainian State.83 In reality, it merely 75 I. Kamenets’kyi, ‘UNR i Ukraïns’ka Zahranychna Polytika mizh dvoma Svitomymy Viinamy’, Ukraïns’kyi Istoryk, 30, 1–4 (1993), p. 78; Volodymyr Kosyk, La politique de la France à l’égard de l’Ukraine (mars 1917–février 1918) (Paris: Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1981), pp. 259–60. 76 ‘Différer encore pour quelque temps la réalisation de ce projet’; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 356, f. 36rv, Gasparri to Tyshkevych, 1 September 1918. 77 Jan Stefan Maria Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz (1885–1954): diplomat, historian, attaché to Ukrainian National Republic missions in Vienna and Istanbul in 1918–1920, Consul General in Istanbul 1920–21, Director of the UNR Ministry of External Affairs, in exile from 1922 to 1924. See Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, pp. 20–22; Encyclopedia of Ukraine, ed. by Volodymyr Kubiyovych, 5 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984–93), III (1993), p. 232; Athanasius McVay, ‘Sviata Stolytsia i Ukraïna: Dyplomatychne poserednytsvo kniazia Tokarzhevs’koho Karashevycha’, Progress: Ukrainian Catholic News, 5, 2134 (9 March 2008), pp. 7, 12, 14. 78 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 191, ff. 299r–300v; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 356, f. 40rv, Tokarzewski to Ratti, 14 September 1918: reproduced in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, 60 vols (Rome: Institutum historicum Polonicum, 1990–), LVII/2 (1996), pp. 179–81. 79 Benedict XV to Gasparri, 8 November 1918, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 10, 12 (1918), pp. 478–79. See Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, p. 247. 80 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, 797, fasc. 10, ff. 444r–445v, Tokarzewski to Valfrè di Bonzo, 21 February 1919. See also ff. 440r–443r; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 357, ff. 2–4r, Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 6 March 1919. 81 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 357, f. 8r, Lukasevych to Gasparri, 12 March 1919. 82 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 357, ff. 26r–27v, Gasparri to Maglione, 26 March 1919. 83 Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, p. 18; Liliana Hentosh, ‘Dyplomatychnі kontakty Ukraїns’koї Narodnoї Respublіky z Apostol’s’koju stolytseju v 1919–1921 rokakh u kontekstі skhіdnoї polytyky Ryms’koї kurії’, Ukraïna Moderna, 4–5 (2000), pp. 163–87 (p. 170).

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represented a de facto recognition of the Ukrainian government84 and a gesture of good will, in the hope that if the state survived, the Church would be accorded the promised religious freedom.85 Tyshkevych spent virtually two years instructing the Holy See about the Ukrainian cause, promising a bright future for Catholicism in Ukraine86 and reporting on the political and humanitarian challenges faced by the nascent republic.87 He was received several times by curial officials and, on 25 May 1919, by Benedict XV himself.88 The pontiff assured him that he supported ‘the autonomy of Ukraine’ and had asked his representative at the Peace Conference to defend the Ukrainian cause.89 From August 1919, Tyshkevych took charge of the Ukrainian National Republic delegation at the Paris Peace Conference,90 during which time he did not neglect his Vatican contacts. He pursued a fruitless quest for full diplomatic recognition until 1920.91 The Pope’s promise to instruct his representative to support Ukraine at the Paris Conference was confirmed by Gasparri on 20 July 1920.92

84 Tyshkevych to Bachynsky, 9 December 1919, in Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, pp. 42–43; Liliana Hentosh, Vatykan ì vyklyky modernostì: skhìdnoêvropejs’ka polityka papy Benedykta XV ta ukraïns’kopol’s’kiyj konflìkt u Halyčynì (1914–1923) (Lviv: VNTL-Klasyka, 2006), p. 299; Smyrnov, ‘Hraf Mykhailo Tyshkevych’, pp. 123–24. 85 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 357, ff. 26r–27v, Gasparri to Maglione, 26 March 1919. 86 Michał Tyszkiewicz, L’Ucraine et l’union religieuse avec Rome (Grottaferrata: Tipografia ‘ItaloOrientale’, 1919). 87 Tyshkevych’s letters as envoy to the Holy See: AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 82, fasc. 55, f. 4rv, 21 January 1919; pos. 90, fasc. 58, f. 7, 22 September 1919. AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 356, f. 58r, 18 July 1919. AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 357, ff. 3r–32v, 29 March 1919; ff. 36r–37v, 9 April 1919; f. 38rv, 19 April 1919; ff. 43r–46r, 20 May 1919; f. 41r, 21 May 1919; ff. 47r–48v, 24 May 1919; f. 49rv, 3 June 1919; f. 50r, June 1919; f. 69r, 12 July 1919; ff. 71r–74r, 18 July 1919. 88 Petro Karmansky, Nadzvychajna dyplomatychna misija U. N. R. pry s’v. Prestol (Frascati, 1920), p. 41; Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, p. 16. 89 ‘Il conte Michele Tiszkiewicz è stato ricevuto in udienza privata dal S. Padre, il quale lo ha assicurato d’essersi rivolto con protesta al Nunzio Ratti e all’inviato polacco presso il Vaticano per causa degli avvenimenti polacco-ruteni. Ed avendo il conte Tyszkiewicz osservato che il Nunzio Ratti ha fama di amico dei polacchi’; ‘Il Papa in difesa dei Ruteni’, Gazeta Poranna, 13 December 1919, p. 3 (copy in AES, Polonia, pos. 90, fasc. 58, f. 16). 90 Michel Tyshkevych, L’Ucraina dinanzi alla Conferenza della pace (Rome: Società Anonima Poligrafica Italiana, 1919); Notes présentées par la délégation de la République Ukrainienne a la Conférence de la paix à Paris (Paris: Robinet-Houtain, 1919). 91 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 356, ff. 81–82v, 30 August 1919. AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 357, ff. 24r–25v, 25 September 1919; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 358, f. 26r, 11 December 1919; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 359, f. 17r, March 1920 and ff. 18r–19r, 18 March 1920; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 941, fasc. 320, f. 24r, 12 January 1920; ff. 30r–31v, 1 May 1920; f. 40rv, 1 May 1920; ff. 32r–33v, 2 May 1920; ff. 34r–35v, 2 May 1920; ff. 22r–23v, 24 July 1920. 92 ‘J’ai reçu la lettre en date du 14 courant, par laquelle V. E. demande l’intervention du Saint-Siège en faveur de l’indépendance de l’Ukraine, que d’après les informations de V. E., serait compromise par les décisions de la Conférence de la Paix. V. E., qui connait les sentiments du Saint-Siège pour la noble population Ukrainienne, peut être amurée que, quoique le chose soit bien difficile et délicate, le Saint-Siège ne manquera pas de tenir compte de votre demande’; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 941, fasc.

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9. Ratti and the Polish-Ukrainian War Six months before the war’s end, Benedict XV sent Vatican Librarian Achille Ratti to Warsaw as Apostolic Visitor in order to breathe new life into the Polish Church, devastated from over a century of Russian rule.93 Ratti’s mission was soon extended to include Russia94 and the former Austrian Galicia. By November 1918, his visit technically included all the lands which the Ukrainians claimed to be part of their national state.95 In the conflict between Poles and Ukrainians, Benedict XV’s predictions about nationalistic hatred came true, and his stance as mediator ‘above the parties’ was put to the test.96 Following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, the two nations fought over the sovereignty of Eastern Galicia.97 The national conflict became a religious feud between Roman-Catholic Poles and Greek-Catholic Ukrainians. Each side was supported in its political aspirations by its respective hierarchies and clergies, and each called on the Holy See to support the justice of its cause.98 Ratti declared that the Pope supported both peoples but left political judgements to the politicians.99 He intervened with the authorities on both sides on behalf of those who had been harshly treated.100 While publicly combatting ingrained prejudice

93

94 95 96 97

98 99

100

320, f. 42rv, Gasparri to Tyshkevych, 20 July 1920. See Yevhen Onats’kyĭ, Po pokhyliĭ ploshchi: zapysky zhurnalista i dyplomata, 2 vols (Munich: Dniprova khvylia, 1964), I, p. 29. Smyrnov, ‘Hraf Mykhailo Tyshkevych’, p. 125. AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 76, fasc. 49, ff. 31r–32r, Benedict XV to Kakowski, 25 April 1918; Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 10, 6 (1918), pp. 227–28; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 77, fasc. 49, f. 38r, Cerretti’s minutes of audience with Benedict XV, 14 May 1918. See Yves Chiron, Pie XI (1857–1939) (Paris: Perrin, 2004), p. 81. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 191, ff. 202r–203v, Gasparri to Ratti, 30 June 1918, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/1 (1995), p. 201. AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 77, fasc. 50, f. 68r; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 191, f. 919r; Gasparri to Ratti, 12 April 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/4 (1998), p. 293. Liliana Hentosh, ‘Vatican Policy on the Ukrainian-Polish War of 1918–1919 as an Example of the Catholic Church’s Response to National Conflicts’, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 37, 1–2 (2012), pp. 94–111. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 192–194, f. 200. AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 56–59. See Liliana Hentosh, ‘Rites and Religions: Pages from the History of Inter-denominational and Inter-ethnic Relations in Twentieth-Century Lviv’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 24 (2002), pp. 171–203; Christoph Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2015). ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 192, ff. 801–02; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 997, fasc. 361, ff. 7–8r, Ratti to Gasparri, 30 December 1918. ‘Il S. Padre vuole certamente e innanzitutto la giustizia; ma non potendo di questa farsi giudice, esorta come padre alla pace e cerca di promuoverla in tutti i modi a lui consentiti, lasciando il giudizio della giustizia e la discussione e composizione dei diritti a quelli che ne hanno i dati ed il potere’; Ratti to Sheptytsky, 13 February 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/4, pp. 60–61. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 191, 192, 194, 200. See Athanasius McVay, ‘“Catholicize Not Latinize”: The Missions of Achille Ratti and Giovanni Genocchi according to the Archives of the Apostolic See’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2007).

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against the Eastern Churches,101 privately and to his superiors he expressed relief at the Polish victory in Galicia.102 In the end, the Polish-Ukrainian War affected Ratti’s idealistic perceptions. By the time of his appointment as Apostolic Nuncio to Poland, in July 1919, his attitude toward Polish Catholicism had become more critical, in particular as far as its attitude towards national minorities and its strong aversion to the Eastern Rites were concerned.103 Any correctives that Ratti offered the Poles were largely ignored when the time came to deal with the vanquished Ukrainians, who were forced to endure harsh repression.104 Protests about the persecution of GreekCatholics prompted the Roman curia to rethink its position regarding a delegate to Ukrainian affairs.105

10. The Apostolic Visit to Ukraine In consultation with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, Ukrainian diplomats had asked for an apostolic visit on 14 September 1918.106 Ratti encouraged TokarzewskiKaraszewicz to petition the Holy See, and even declared himself willing to perform the visit personally. He also signalled his approval of Tyshkevych’s being appointed envoy to the Holy See.107 Despite this, Tyshkevych voiced Ukrainian dissatisfaction with Ratti’s alleged bias towards the Poles. From May to October 1919, Tyshkevych and Tokarzewski did not cease to petition for the appointment

101 ‘È superfluo che io Le dica che in fatto di “Unione” la mia formula è quella del S. Padre: “cattolicizzare non latinizzare”’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 194, ff. 14r–15r, Ratti to Cerretti, 21 December 1919. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 197, f. 190r, Ratti to Matulaitis, 3 January 1920. I diari di Achille Ratti, ed. by Sergio Pagano and Gianni Venditti, 2 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2013–15), II (2015), pp. xiii–xvi, 212. 102 AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 78, fasc. 52, ff. 13r–18v; ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 3r, Ratti to Gasparri, 10 November 1918, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/2, pp. 294–95. See Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, p. 129. 103 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 194, f. 1937rv; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 56, f. 69r, Ratti to Gasparri, 20 August 1919. See Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Achille Ratti e la Polonia (1918–1921)’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 95–122 (pp. 108–09); Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Introduzione’, in I diari di Achille Ratti, ed. by Pagano and Venditti, pp. vii–xvi. 104 Pellegrinetti to Gasparri, 1–8 July 1921, in Ottavio Cavalleri, L’archivio di mons. Achille Ratti visitatore apostolico e nunzio a Varsavia (1918–1921): inventario (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 1990), p. 171. 105 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 1012, fasc. 366, f. 3rv, archival note, circa January 1920. 106 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 191, ff. 299r–300r; Tokarzewski to Ratti, 14 September 1918, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/2, pp. 179–81. 107 ‘Si le gouvernement ukrainien par Votre intermédiaire dont je Vous prie, veut bien me faire le même traitement, je viendrai en Ukraine le plus tôt possible’; Ratti to Tokarzewski, 21 October 1918, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/2, p. 227.

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of an apostolic visitor to Ukraine and Eastern Galicia and the exclusion of Ratti from this appointment.108 The internal situation in the Ukrainian Republic was only one factor impeding an apostolic visit. Reports continued to arrive at the Vatican of the persecution of Ukrainians in Galicia at the hands of the victorious Poles. In one such report, that of August 1919, Ratti expressed his own fears that the Poles intended to eliminate the Greek-Catholic Church altogether.109 In September, the government threatened to recall its ambassador if the Holy See ‘ruled in favour of the Ukrainians’.110 A summary of the Galician situation was taken to Benedict XV on 28 January 1920. The Oriental Congregation concluded that an unbiased inspection was necessary in order to verify the reports and provide humanitarian aid. A purely religious mission was proposed without political connotations, which would show interest in Ukrainians affairs without provoking a diplomatic rupture with the Poles.111 On 13 February, Benedict XV appointed Giovanni Genocchi112 as Apostolic Visitor to Ukraine.113 His shrewd judgement and diplomatic finesse were esteemed by the diplomats of the Rampolla school, including his former fellow student Pope Benedict.114 Genocchi’s instructions outlined three main aspects of his mission. The first was public: the visitation was a benevolent gesture, in particular in the form of medical aid to the Ukrainian people. The second was not public: to prepare terrain for the Catholic Church in Ukraine. The third was secret: to verify the truth of the

108 AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 58, f. 16r, translation of Gazeta Poranna, 13 December 1919. AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 357, ff. 43r–46r, Tyshkevych to Gasparri, 20 May 1919. AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 56, f. 63r, Tyshkevych to Gasparri, 18 July 1919. AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 995, fasc. 358, ff. 12r–13v, Tokarzewski to Cerretti, 18 October 1919. 109 ‘Ho l’impressione e la persuasione che il governo polacco nulla ometta e voglia anche in seguito omettere, come ha fatto per il passato, affine di distruggere il rutenismo religioso, ritenendolo fomite (e sostegno) del rutenismo politico; come nulla ha omesso e ometterà per ostacolare e sopprimere ogni unionismo e grecismo religioso, ritenendolo avverso o certo non favorevole al polonismo, come è invece il latinismo. Ho anche l’impressione e la persuasione che il clero polacco ed anche l’episcopato non saranno malcontenti se il governo riuscirà nei suoi due intenti, tenendolo essi desiderabile anche dal punto di vista puramente religioso’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 194, f. 1037rv; ACO, Pro Russia 13, fasc. 135/28, f. 17; AES, Polonia, pos. 90, fasc. 58, ff. 2r–3r, Ratti to Marini, 14 September 1919. 110 ‘Secondo le medesime fonti segrete a cui ho attributo la precedente informazione, a cotesto ministro di Polonia sono stati impartiti ordini telegrafici di lasciare Roma qualora l’intervento in parole fosse sfavorevole alla Polonia’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 194, f. 1042r; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 58, f. 11r, Ratti to Gasparri, 24 September 1919. 111 ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 20; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 59, ff. 6r–11r, Papadopoulos report for audience with Benedict XV, 28 January 1920. 112 Rocco Cerrato, ‘Genocchi Giovanni’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 97 vols (Rome: Treccani, 1960–), LIII (1952), pp. 134–38; Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, pp. 68–129. 113 ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 22, decree De Apostolico Visitatore in Ukrainam mittendo, 13 February 1920, in Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, p. 106. 114 Cerrato, ‘Genocchi’; Tamborra, Studi storici, pp. 322, 331; Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, p. 108.

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persecution and help the Greek-Catholic Church in Polish-administered Eastern Galicia.115 Genocchi was told that the Holy See has declared in the first place its respect for the principle of nationality and the free determination of peoples; it has no reason to be opposed to the Ukrainians’ demands and hopes that the Ukrainians can demonstrate their certain right to independence and that this will be recognized by those in Paris who are deciding the fate of Eastern Europe. It also looks benevolently on their efforts, which it hopes will be advantageous for Catholicism.116 The Apostolic Visitor was told to emphasize the equality of the Latin and ByzantineCatholic Rites, to enquire into the true situation in Galicia and report it to Holy See, which would bring them to the attention of Poland at an opportune time. On his way back from Rome, Genocchi met Ukrainian representatives in Paris, Vienna and Warsaw.117 Hitherto the Warsaw Nunciature had been responsible for Ukrainian affairs. Since the Apostolic Visitor had to travel through Poland, the Secretariat of State asked Ratti to take Genocchi’s mission under his wing.118 However, unbeknown to the Vatican, Genocchi was arriving at the worst possible moment. Before he could reach Lviv, the Poles took control over his mission. Marshall Piłsudski had concluded an alliance with the Ukrainian National Republic and was about to liberate it from Bolshevik rule. En route to Lviv, Genocchi was summoned to Warsaw, where he was told that Piłsudski had decided that he should wait until military victories made it safe for him to go to Kiev. Ratti promised to accompany him personally in June; Piłsudski promised to pay for the journey;119 and Bishop Dubowski of Lutsk promised them hospitality along the way.120

115 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 200, f. 213r; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 1012, fasc. 366, f. 4rv, Gasparri to Ratti, 14 February 1920. ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 24, Marini to Genocchi, 13 March 1920. See Vincenzo Ceresi, Padre Genocchi (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1934), p. 509. 116 ‘La Santa Sede, che ha proclamato per la prima il rispetto al principio di nazionalità e alla libera disposizione dei popoli, non ha alcun motivo per opporsi alle rivendicazioni ucraine, e fa voti che gli ucraini possano dimostrare il loro buon diritto alla indipendenza, e che questo diritto venga riconosciuto da coloro che stanno decidendo a Parigi le sorti dell’Europa orientale. Vede anche con simpatia la loro azione, dalla quale spera un vantaggio per il cattolicesimo’; ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 24, Marini to Genocchi, 13 March 1920. 117 Genocchi to Marini, 19 April 1920, in Gianpaolo Rigotti, ‘Sources Concerning Ukraine in the Archives of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches (1862–1939)’, in Ukraine’s Re-Integration into Europe: A Historical, Historiographical and Politically Urgent Issue, ed. by Giovanna Brogi Bercoff and Giulia Lami (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2005), pp. 109–38 (p. 123). Genocchi to the Princess of Venosa, 28 May 1920, in Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, p. 110. 118 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 1012, fasc. 366, f. 4; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 200, f. 213, Gasparri to Ratti, 14 February 1920. 119 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 200, f. 233r; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 1012, fasc. 366, ff. 7r–8v, Ratti to Gasparri, 13 May 1920. See Ceresi, Padre Genocchi, p. 510. 120 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 200, f. 232r, Dubowski to Ratti, 7 May 1920. Genocchi to Marini, 5 June 1920, in Rigotti, ‘Sources’, p. 125.

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Polish hopes came to naught. By the end of June, the Bolsheviks had begun a counterattack that would lead them to the very gates of Warsaw.121 As the government abandoned the capital, Ratti sent Genocchi to Vienna122 where, on 14 September 1920, the Apostolic Visitor submitted a full report to Pope Benedict.123 One of Genocchi’s conclusions was that ‘many Ukrainians feel abandoned by the Holy See because it does not [intervene to] stop the Polish persecutions’.124 Due to his forthright evaluations, the future Primate of Poland, Father August Hlond, told Genocchi that he would not be welcome in Poland anytime in the near future.125 The most concrete result of the apostolic visit was the aid provided: 150,000 Italian lire via the Red Cross for Ukrainian children,126 131 cases of medicine worth 100,000 lire127 and 50,000 lire for the destitute Greek-Catholic clergy in Galicia.128 From Vienna, he also sent 220,000 marks for the Latin Bishops in Ukraine and for Greek-Catholic bishops and religious figures in Eastern Galicia.129 Perhaps as significant as the humanitarian diplomacy were the reports which the Apostolic Visitor sent to Rome.130 Genocchi’s judgements, and those of others, led Benedict XV to make more than one clamorous gesture in support of Ukrainians.131 On 24 February 1921, the pontiff addressed a public letter to Metropolitan Sheptytsky, ostensibly on the occasion of the reopening of the Ruthenian College in Rome. The letter was actually a solemn act of solidarity with

121 ACO, Pro Russia, 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 31, Genocchi to Marini, 20 July 1920, in Rigotti, ‘Sources’, pp. 127–28. ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 37rv, Genocchi to Papadopoulos, 27 August 1920. 122 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 194, fasc. K, f. 327v, Ratti to Gasparri, 20 July 1920. 123 AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 1012, fasc. 366, ff. 9r–14r, Genocchi to Benedict XV, 14 September 1920. 124 ‘Parrebbe incredibile, ma è un fatto che non pochi Ruteni si credono abbandonati dalla S. Sede perché non fa cessare le persecuzioni polacche’; AES, Russia, per. III, pos. 1012, fasc. 366, ff. 9r–14r, Genocchi to Benedict XV, 14 September 1920. 125 ‘Il p. Hlond, ispettore salesiano per l’Austria, tornato ora da un viaggio in Polonia […] mi assicura che molti Polacchi sono irritati contro la S. Sede e anche contro di me, a cui ben difficilmente si concederebbe di andare in Polonia, e tanto meno in Galizia’; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 92, fasc. 60, ff. 6r–7r, Genocchi to Marini, 15 June 1921. 126 Genocchi to Marini, 12 May 1920, in Rigotti, ‘Sources’, p. 125; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 200, f. 243r, MacKenzie to Ratti, 25 May 1920. ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1920, rubr. 235, fasc. 1, f. 4rv, Genocchi to Tedeschini, 20 July 1920. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 200, f. 347r, Pellegrinetti to Mother Superior of Sisters of St Joseph, 8 April 1921; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1920, rubr. 235, fasc. 1, f. 4rv, Genocchi to Gasparri, 20 July 1920. 127 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1920, rubr. 235, fasc. 1, f. 4rv, Genocchi to Gasparri, 20 July 1920. 128 ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 39rv, Genocchi to Papadopoulos, 1 October 1920. 129 Ratti to Genocchi, 26 April 1921, in Ceresi, Padre Genocchi, pp. 515–16; L’vivski Arkhyeparkhialni Vidomosti, 2 (20 April 1921), p. 7, reproduced in Hentosh, Vatican Policy, p. 318. 130 The bulk of Genocchi’s thirty-six numbered reports, dated 19 April 1920 to 10 March 1922, are found in ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1. The most important are reproduced in Rigotti, ‘Sources’, pp. 109–38. The remaining reports are scattered throughout the following archival positions: ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 130/28, f. 45; ACO, Ruteni 3, pos. 478/28, fasc. 1, f. 2; ACO, Ruteni 20, pos. 2166/28, fasc. 1; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 92, fasc. 60, ff. 6–7r; ACO, Ruteni 21, pos. 2425/28; ACO, Ruteni 3, pos. 452/28, f. 7. 131 A number of letters, sent to Monsignor Enrico Benedetti, are in the Archives of St Clement Ukrainian Catholic University, Rome; a number are published in Choma, Apostol’s’kyj prestìl, pp. 109–29.

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the Ukrainian people and contained allusions to religious persecution perpetrated by the Poles. Even Genocchi was shocked by the strength of the protest and by the fact that his mission had been cited publicly.132 Contrary to warnings advising prudence from the Secretariat of State, Pope Benedict insisted that this letter be published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis.133 As a result, Poland maintained its promise and recalled its ambassador to the Holy See.134 Then, on 16 July 1921, the Pope lectured the Polish episcopate in another public letter, admonishing them to manifest universal charity for their fellow clergy of different nationalities and rites.135 By the end of the year, the Polish press was reporting that Gasparri had advised the new Polish Ambassador not to upset the Holy Father by saying anything against ‘his beloved Ukrainians’.136 The Bolshevik takeover of Ukraine precluded the possibility that Father Genocchi would be able to carry out his mission. In December 1921, he asked to be recalled on condition that the visitation to Ukraine continue, at least on paper, as a gesture of solidarity.137 Upon his arrival in Rome, Benedict XV insisted on receiving him immediately, despite the fact that the pontiff was suffering his final illness and died a few days after the audience,138 which took place on 11 January 1922.139 Elected to the papacy as Pius XI, Ratti retained Genocchi as his official Ukrainian advisor140 and 132 AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 92, fasc. 60, ff. 6r–7r, Genocchi to Marini, 15 June 1921. 133 Benedict XV to Sheptytsky, 24 February 1921, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 13, 6 (1921), pp. 218–20; Documenta Pontificum, ed. by Welykyj, II, pp. 528–30. 134 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 200, ff. 384–385r; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 92, fasc. 60, ff. 3r–4v, Pellegrinetti to Gasparri, 13 June 1921. See Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, p. 299. 135 Benedict XV, Ex iis litteris. 136 ‘M[onsieur Wierusz-] Kowalski […] aurait alors avoué que pour épargner au Saint Père la peine qu’il n’aurait alors avoué que pour éprouver en apprenant la cruauté de ses chers Ukrainiens, Mgr. Gasparri l’aurait prié, lui Ministre de Pologne, de n’en pas souffler mot à Benoît XV’; ‘Chronique polonaise’, Bulletin Catholique de Pologne, 15 June 1921, pp. 38–39; copy in AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 59, f. 19. Nevertheless, this report is denied by Gasparri and Wierusz-Kowalski; AES, Polonia, per. III, pos. 90, fasc. 59, ff. 20–21, Gasparri to Kakowski, 10 August 1921. 137 Genocchi to Marini, 21 April 1921, in Rigotti, ‘Sources’, pp. 132–33; ACO, Pro Russia 13, pos. 135/28, fasc. 1, f. 68rv, Marini to Genocchi, 21 December 1921. 138 ‘S. Padre gravemente infermo’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 210, fasc. 18, f. 2r, Gasparri to Lauri, 20 January 1922. ‘Compio doloroso dovere partecipare S. V. morte S. Padre avvenuta questa mattina ore sei’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 210, fasc. 19, f. 2r, Gasparri to Lauri, 22 January 1922. 139 ‘Del suo operato il dotto missionario non poté rendere conto al Pontefice in più larga misura, ché, giunto a Roma l’11 gennaio del 1922, il p. Genocchi trovava Papa Benedetto XV già accasciato dalla malattia che doveva pochi giorni dopo condurlo al sepolcro, sì che non ebbe agio di diffondersi in precisioni nell’affrettata, unica udienza concessagli’; Giulio Castelli, ‘In margine alla visita di mons. Cortesi in Galizia Orientale: il problema ucraino e “le armi della carità e della giustizia”’, Corriere diplomatico e consolare, 20 December 1938; copies in ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 293, fasc. 1287, f. 143; AES, Polonia, per. IV, pos. 54 P. O., fasc. 63, f. 15r. ‘Quantunque indisposto, Benedetto reggeva ancora al lavoro e fece un’eccezione per il Visitatore dell’Ucraina, che ricevette nel suo studio’; Ceresi, Padre Genocchi, p. 522. 140 AES, Russia, per. IV, pos. 644 P. O., fasc. 26–27; AES, Russia, per. IV, pos. 538 P. O., fasc. 3; AES, Polonia, per. IV, pos. 23 P. O., fasc. 33, ff. 21r–22v, Genocchi to Pius XI, 28 September 1922. See Ceresi, Padre Genocchi, pp. 522–25.

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sent him back to Eastern Galicia for one more visit.141 In gratitude for Genocchi’s efforts, the government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic sent a delegation to his funeral in 1926.142

11. Friends and Failed Dreams The Entente’s politics of ‘might makes right’ prevailed over Wilson’s principles of national self-determination and over Benedict XV’s ethics, which opposed a peace dictated to the vanquished by the victors.143 Ukraine arose from the ashes of the war, but its foes were too powerful and its allies too few. Nonetheless, it was destined to remain nominally on the map as the ‘Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’, a concession to the national movement that even Lenin found hard to refuse.144 Benedict XV reserved a place for Ukraine in his Pax Romana, his peace of strong ethical worth, with the papacy as mediator and magister. Ukraine never forgot that the Pope had been favourably disposed towards it, and when Giacomo Della Chiesa died, condolences arrived at the Holy See declaring that ‘Ukrainians have lost a friend and magnanimous protector’, and a ‘special benefactor’.145 Indeed, up 141 AES, Polonia, per. IV, pos. 27 P. O., fasc. 35, f. 69r, Gasparri to Lauri, 3 February 1923; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 233, fasc. 395, f. 212r, Genocchi to Lauri, 4 February 1923; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 233, fasc. 395, f. 70rv, Gasparri to Tacci Porcelli, 7 February 1923. 142 ‘Come avessero gli ucraini accolta la missione del p. Genocchi fu palese alla sua morte, avvenuta nel 1926. Alla veglia delle esequie, alle ore 22 si presentavano alla Casa dei Missionari del S. Cuore a Roma due autorevoli esponenti dell’Associazione Nazionale Ucraina, che, inginocchiatisi presso la salma, pregarono fervorosamente, quindi sul registro apprestato per le firme di condoglianza scrissero: “Au nom du Conseil National Ukrainien et de son Président, le docteur Eugène Petruchezytch, les soussignés apportent l’expression profondément émue de la douleur que ressent le peuple ukrainien en perdant dans la personne du p. Genocchi l’auguste et vénérable protecteur de sa juste cause. Wladimir Stepankozski et C. de Danilowicz”. E la mattina seguente una grande corona di fiori rossi riaffermava a piè della bara il dolore riconoscente della nazione oppressa nella dedica in latino: “Al Visitatore Apostolico, al Padre amatissimo, gli Ucraini”’; Castelli, ‘In margine’. See Ceresi, Padre Genocchi, pp. 535–36. Ivan Choma, ‘La Visita Apostolica del p. Giovanni Genocchi in Galizia (Ucraina occidentale) nell’anno 1923’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 5, 3–4 (1960), pp. 204–24 and 492–512 (pp. 511–12). 143 Tamborra, Studi storici, p. 311; William R. Keylor, ‘Versailles and International Diplomacy’, in The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years, ed. by Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 469–506 (pp. 473–75); [Enrico Rosa,] ‘L’ipocrisia nella politica: è il fallimento del Congresso per la pace’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 70, 3 (1919), p. 3. See Araujo, Papal Diplomacy, pp. 116–17. 144 Jon Jacobson, ‘The Soviet Union and Versailles’, in The Treaty of Versailles, ed. by Boemeke, Feldman and Glaser, pp. 451–68; Magocsi, A History, pp. 526–28; Subtelny, Ukraine, pp. 383–87; Myroslav Shkandrij, Ukrainian Nationalism: Politics, Ideology and Literature (1929–1956) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 145 ‘Mnohostradalnyj ukrainskyj narid stratyw w upokoi wzsomusia papa i sczyroho pryjetelja ta welykodushnoho opikuna szczo blahoslowyw naszomu narodowy u jeho tiakzkij borbi za swobodu i poper jeho zmahania do zoli imia welykoho papy zytyme u wdiacznych serciach ukrainskoho narodu wo wiky wikow’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 210, fasc. 20, f. 34r, Stavropigian Institute to Lauri, 27 January 1922. ‘Maximo animi moerore tristem nuntium de morte Sanctissimi Patris

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to the present day such open support for Ukraine has never been seen again in the Vatican corridors. Non omnia praetera vulgata hac de re sunt: multa tabulariis sunt, quae cum proferentur, nimium quantum Benedicti sapientiam, iustitiam, constantiam, caritatem illustrabunt.146

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Benedicti XV. Amantissimi Pastoris Ecclesiae Christi, specialisque Benefactoris populi nostri, accepi’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 210, fasc. 20, f. 66r, Kotsylovsky to Lauri, 29 January 1922. ‘Une ineffable affliction a saisi le Comité Central Ukrainien à la funeste nouvelle de la mort de Sa Sainteté le Saint Père que tous les émigrés ukrainiens, de quelle religion qu’ils soient, vénèrent comme leur Bienfaiteur qui, dans son cœur, compatissait toujours à nos malheureux compatriotes’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 210, fasc. 20, f. 79r, Lukashevych to Lauri, 30 January 1922. ‘En qualité de représentant de la République d’Ukraine auprès du Saint-Siège, j’ai eu le bonheur d’approcher le Saint Père défunt et d’admirer un des plus grands Pontifes que l’histoire avait connu. Je garde un souvenir profondément reconnaissent et ému de bontés paternelles pour mon peuple méconnu et malheureux et pour moi personnellement, de l’intérêt qu’Il avait daigné accorder à mon pays’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 210, fasc. 20, f. 78rv, Tyshkevych to Lauri, undated but received 1 February 1922. 146 Pacifico Massella, Laudatio Benedicti XV Pontificis Maximi habita in aede Xystina kalendis februariis an. MCMXXII per sollemnia funeris (Rome, 1922), p. 9: copy in ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, 210, fasc. 19, f. 22.

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Himka, John-Paul, ‘Priests and Peasants: The Greek Catholic Pastor and the Ukrainian National Movement in Austria, 1867–1900’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 21, 1 (1979), pp. 1–14 Himka, John-Paul, Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia (1867–1900) (Montréal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1999) Himka, John-Paul, ‘Sheptyts’kyi and the Ukrainian National Movement before 1914’, in Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi, ed. by Paul R. Magocsi (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1989), pp. 31–40 Jacobson, Jon, ‘The Soviet Union and Versailles’, in The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years, ed. by Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 451–68 Jeřábek, Rudolf, ‘The Eastern Front’, in The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. by Mark Cornwall (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), pp. 149–66 Kamenets’kyi, I., ‘UNR i Ukraïns’ka Zahranychna Polytyka mizh dvoma Svitomymy Viinamy’, Ukraïns’kyi Istoryk, 30, 1–4 (1993), p. 78 Kaminskyj, Eugenius, De potestate Metropolitarum Kioviensium-Haliciensium (1596–1805) (Rome: Università Cattolica Ucraina, 1969) Karlov, Jurij E., ‘La Russia e il Vaticano tra il febbraio e l’ottobre 1917: un’occasione storica perduta’, in Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del secondo Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche e dall’Istituto di storia universale dell’Accademia russa delle scienze (Vienna, 25–30 aprile 2001), ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006), pp. 100–20 Karmansky, Petro, ‘Kardynal P. Gaspari y Ukraïna’, Dilo, 55, 319 (27 November 1934), p. 2 Karmansky, Petro, Nadzvychaina dyplomatychna misija U. N. R. pry s’v. Prestol (Frascati, 1920) Kent, Peter C., and John F. Pollard, ‘A Diplomacy like Any Other: Papal Diplomacy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, ed. by Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard (London: Praeger, 1994), pp. 11–21 Keylor, William R., ‘Versailles and International Diplomacy’, in The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years, ed. by Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 469–506 Koelliker, Laurent, ‘La perception de la Russie per le pape Benoît XV: aspects politiques, diplomatiques et religieux’, in Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del secondo Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche e dall’Istituto di storia universale dell’Accademia russa delle scienze (Vienna, 25–30 aprile 2001), ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006), pp. 17–49 Kosyk, Volodymyr, La politique de la France à l’égard de l’Ukraine (mars 1917–février 1918) (Paris: Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1981) Kubiyovych, Volodymyr, ed., Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 5 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984–93), III (1993) Lacko, Michael, Synodus episcoporum ritus byzantini catholicorum ex antiqua Hungaria Vindobonae a. 1773 celebrata (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1975)

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Levillain, Philippe, and Jean-Marc Ticchi, ‘Léon XIII: une vision du monde entre deux siècles’, in Le pontificat de Léon XIII: renaissances du Saint-Siège?, ed. by Philippe Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi (Rome: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 3–8 Magocsi, Paul R., A History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) Martini, Angelo, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV alle potenze belligeranti nell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 363–87 Massella, Pacifico, Laudatio Benedicti XV Pontificis Maximi habita in aede Xystina kalendis februariis an. MCMXXII per sollemnia funeris (Rome, 1922), p. 9 McVay, Athanasius, ‘“Catholicize Not Latinize”: The Missions of Achille Ratti and Giovanni Genocchi according to the Archives of the Apostolic See’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2007) McVay, Athanasius, ‘A Prisoner for His People’s Faith: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky’s Detentions under Russia and Poland’, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 50, 1–2 (2009), pp. 13–54 McVay, Athanasius, ‘Sviata Stolytsia i Ukraïna: Dyplomatychne poserednytsvo kniazia Tokarzhevs’koho Karashevycha’, Progress: Ukrainian Catholic News, 5, 2134 (9 March 2008), pp. 7, 12, 14 Mick, Christoph, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2015) Mironowicz, Antoni, ‘Orthodoxy and Uniatism During the 17th Century’, in Churches and Confessions in East Central Europe in Early Modern Times, ed. by Hubert M. Łaszkiewicz (Lublin: Instytut Europy Środkowo Wschodniej, 1999), pp. 74–77 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Achille Ratti e la Polonia (1918–1921)’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 95–122 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Introduzione’, in I diari di Achille Ratti, ed. by Sergio Pagano and Gianni Venditti, 2 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2013–15), pp. vii–xvi Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘La Russie, l’URSS et le Saint-Siège’, in Nations et SaintSiège au XXe siècle: actes du colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, octobre 2000), ed. by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse and Philippe Levillain (Paris: Fayard, 2003), pp. 235–49 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Santa Sede e Russia rivoluzionaria’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 151–69 Odincov, Michail I., ‘I cattolici e la Chiesa cattolica in Russia nel 1914–1920’, in Santa Sede e Russia da Leone XIII a Pio XI: atti del secondo Simposio organizzato dal Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche e dall’Istituto di storia universale dell’Accademia russa delle scienze (Vienna, 25–30 aprile 2001), ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006), pp. 121–49 Onats’kyĭ, Yevhen, Po pokhyliĭ ploshchi: zapysky zhurnalista i dyplomata, 2 vols (Munich: Dniprova khvylia, 1964), I

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Pagano, Sergio, and Gianni Venditti, eds, I diari di Achille Ratti, 2 vols (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2013–15), II (2015) Pekar, Athanasius, ‘The Union of Brest and Attempts to Destroy It’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 2, 14 (1992), pp. 152–70 Peri, Vittorio, Orientalis varietas: Roma e le chiese d’Oriente: storia e diritto canonico (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1994) Pettinaroli, Laura, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Plokhy, Serhii, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Rigotti, Gianpaolo, ‘Sources Concerning Ukraine in the Archives of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches (1862–1939)’, in Ukraine’s Re-Integration into Europe: A Historical, Historiographical and Politically Urgent Issue, ed. by Giovanna Brogi Bercoff and Giulia Lami (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2005), pp. 109–38 Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Senyk, Sophia, A History of the Church in Ukraine, 2 vols (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1993), II Senyk, Sophia, ‘The Ukrainian Church in the Seventeenth Century’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 2, 15 (1996), pp. 339–74 Shkandrij, Myroslav, Ukrainian Nationalism: Politics, Ideology and Literature (1929–1956) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015) Smyrnov, A., ‘Hraf Mykhailo Tyshkevych—ukraïnskyi hromadskyi diach i diplomat’, Vyzvol’nyi šliakh, 57, 4 (2004), pp. 119–27 Snyder, Timothy, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus (1569–1999) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) Stopka, Krzysztof, ‘Historyczne początki rodu Szeptyckich’, in Metropolita Andrzej Szeptycki: studia i materialy, ed. by Andrzej A. Zięba (Kraków: Nakładem Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, 1994), pp. 11–16 Subtelny, Orest, Ukraine: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994) Tamborra, Angelo, Chiesa cattolica e ortodossia russa: due secoli di confronto e dialogo: dalla Santa Alleanza ai nostri giorni (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1992) Tamborra, Angelo, Studi storici sull’Europa orientale: raccolti per il 70º compleanno dell’autore, ed. by Attilio Chitarin, Francesco Guida and Rita Tolomeo (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1987) Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘Bons offices, médiations, arbitrages dans l’activité diplomatique du Saint-Siège de Léon XIII à Benoît XV’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 105, 2 (1993), pp. 567–612 Ticchi, Jean-Marc, ‘La représentation du Saint-Siège au couronnement des tsars Alexandre III (1883) et Nicholas II (1896): deux étapes dans les relations vaticanorusses’, in Le pontificat de Léon XIII: renaissances du Saint-Siège?, ed. by Philippe Levillain and Jean-Marc Ticchi (Rome: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 139–47

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Trincia, Luciano, ‘Relations internationales et gouvernement central de l’Église’, in Le pontificat de Léon XIII: renaissances du Saint-Siège?, ed. by Philippe Levillain and JeanMarc Ticchi (Rome: École française de Rome, 2006), pp. 111–24 Tyshkevych, Michel, L’Ucraina dinanzi alla Conferenza della pace (Rome: Società Anonima Poligrafica Italiana, 1919) Tyszkiewicz, Michał, L’Ucraine et l’union religieuse avec Rome (Grottaferrata: Tipografia ‘Italo-Orientale’, 1919) Welykyj, Athanasius G., ed., Documenta Pontificum Romanorum historiam Ucrainae illustrantia, 2 vols (Rome: Basiliani, 1953), I Welykyj, Athanasius G., ed., Documenta Unionis Berestensis eiusque auctorum (1590–1600) (Rome: Basiliani, 1970) Welykyj, Athanasius G., ‘Kyïvs’ka mytropolia v 100 lit po šyzmi Kerularia’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 2, 3 (1960), pp. 348–74 Welykyj, Athanasius G., ‘Kyïvs’ka mytropolia v 100 lit po šyzmi Kerularia’, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni, 2, 4 (1963), pp. 461–83 Welykyj, Athanasius G., ed., Litterae episcoporum historiam Ucrainae illustrantes (1600– 1900), 4 vols (Rome: Basiliani, 1972–76), I (1972) Zięba, Andrzej A., ‘Sheptyts’kyi in Polish Public Opinion’, in Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi, ed. by Paul R. Magocsi (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1989), pp. 377–405 Zięba, Andrzej A., ‘W sprawie genezy decyzji Romana Szeptyckiego o zmianie obrządku’, in Metropolita Andrzej Szeptycki: studia i materialy, ed. by Andrzej A. Zięba (Kraków: Nakładem Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, 1994), pp. 43–64

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Nathalie Renoton-Beine

Peace in Eastern Europe

Addressing the question of Eastern Europe during World War I involves reflecting at the same time on Benedict XV’s pastoral work for peace together with the political-religious objectives of the Holy See in the context of international relations. The archives, particularly those on the specific sessions, bear witness to the considerable importance that the destiny of the peoples of Eastern Europe had assumed for the Vatican, but also to its hesitations about adopting a political position. There was the fear that a failure in this regard might have disastrous consequences since the Eastern Question not only concerned the bilateral relations between Rome and Moscow but Petrograd, Lviv, Vilnius, Kiev and Minsk were also at stake. In this context, Benedict XV and his Secretary of State struggled to assume a position that would not risk offending the sensitivities and expectations of any of these. In Rome, the path of prudence was chosen, supporting the national clergy in the uncertainty and postponing any decision until the end of the war and the peace conference. This attitude on the part of the supreme pontiff, which some have described as wavering, was often misunderstood and even criticized. It can be justified by Benedict XV’s ultimate aim: peace, a just and lasting peace.

1.

The Russian Revolution: A New Element in the War

From 1914 to 1916, Russia presented a double factor of risk: the oppression of the Catholic Church in Central and Eastern Europe and the question of Constantinople. From 1917, the Russian revolution reversed these issues. The problem of Constantinople seemed to become remoter, while the proclamation of religious freedoms sparked new hopes. However, the rumours of a separate peace between Russia and the Central Powers aroused the fear of an alliance between Protestant Prussia and Orthodox Russia. On 23 January 1917, Mgr Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani1 received a telegram from Rome ordering him to transmit



1 Marchetti Selvaggiani was sent to Bern in July 1915 to negotiate agreements regarding prisoners of war and, especially, to establish relations between the Austro-German delegations and the Holy See.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1131–1145 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118823

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as quickly as possible to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs ‘precise information on the political, economic and military situation in Russia’. Marchetti Selvaggiani did not hide the scanty, vague information at his disposal: ‘We do not understand anything’, he simply declared. He informed Mgr Pacelli of Germany’s repeated attempts to reach a separate peace with Russia and the risk that such an alliance would pose. ‘It would constitute a grave danger for Western Europe and the Church’, he wrote.2 ‘A union between the German organization and millions of Russian soldiers’ would create an imposing military force. A coalition of Germany, its allies and Russia would become ‘the arbiter of the earth’s destinies’.3 If the Pope wanted peace, an agreement between Germany and Russia would mean a division of the territorial spheres of interest that would not necessarily lead to respect for Catholicism, on the contrary!

2. The Fall of the Romanov Empire The abdication of Nicholas II on 5 March 1917 aroused great emotion. In Bern, Marchetti Selvaggiani admitted that ‘it is difficult to make predictions about Russia’, but for the Catholic Church, he continued, the new regime could not be any worse than that of the Romanovs.4 The Russian Revolution was therefore experienced as an event of paramount importance. The cardinals in the curia soon recognized that the profound political change in Russia might be favourable to the Catholic cause. From 18 March 1917, the Russian Ambassador to the Vatican, Nikola Bock, set out the new regime’s firm liberal intentions towards the Catholic Church.5 From the outset, however, the Secretariat of State adopted an extremely prudent attitude, taking care not to pass judgement and avoiding encouraging or hindering the initiatives of the national Churches, because if the revolution in Russia opened up many possibilities, it was not easy to see how to take advantage of them. Was one to support the new Catholic Poland and Lithuania, with the risk of provoking the discontent of one or the other, including Russia? Would an agreement with Russia not risk disturbing relations with Poland and Ukraine? Finally, would taking into consideration the autonomist ambitions of the Metropolitan of Lviv Sheptytsky regarding Ukraine not irritate the Poles and the Russians? The Holy See found itself faced with a dilemma and chose to encourage the Russian Catholic clergy to take the initiative, while advising caution. In Petrograd Mgr Cieplak, and in Vilnius Mgr von der Ropp acted without even waiting for the instructions of Benedict XV in an attempt to acquire



2 ‘Informazioni precise sulla situazione politica, economica e militare della Russia’; ‘non ne capiamo nulla’; ‘ciò costituirebbe, per l’Europa occidentale e per la Chiesa, un grave pericolo’; AES, Russia, vol. 495, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Pacelli, 21 January 1917. 3 ‘Un’unione fra l’organizzazione tedesca e milioni di soldati russi’; ‘arbitro del destino della terra’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 216, vol. 1, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 4 November 1916. 4 ‘È difficile fare pronostici sulla Russia’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 96, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 16 March 1917 (copy). 5 AES, Russia-Polonia, vol. 495, Bock to Gasparri, 18 March 1917.

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the greatest possible freedom of action and administration possible in directing the separation between Church and state: ‘We are living in a revolution, and we cannot know what soon awaits us’.6 The Pope gave his blessing to these initiatives, and in June 1917 a report was consigned to the Russian government concerning the wrongs suffered by Catholics under the tsars. Von der Ropp was nominated Archbishop of Mogilev. In the spring of 1917, he received from the provisional government the authorization to create five dioceses (Mogilev, Minsk, Kamianets, Zhytomyr and Tiraspol), which represented 600 churches. The Jesuits also obtained the right to return to Russian territory.7 The rather positive attitude observed by the Provisional Government in regard to Catholics would be maintained even when Lenin’s October Revolution took a distinctly anti-religious turn. However, it must be specified that this attitude applied only to Latin-Rite Catholics, whose practice they did not fear would spread; the same freedom was not accorded to the Uniate Churches. In the context of this policy, it is evident that part of the calculations went well beyond the fate of the Catholic Church properly speaking. It was also a matter of obtaining the adhesion of the Poles, whose territory was largely occupied by German and Austrian troops.

3. The Mixed Congregation of 15 July 1917 In the Vatican, the new situation in Russia led the Pope to convene a mixed congregation of the Secretariat of State and Propaganda Fide on 15 July 1917, shortly before the Peace Note. It seems that the two themes of peace and Russia bear witness to a broader reflection on the future of Catholicism in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe. On 15 July, the seven cardinals present (Vannutelli, De Lai, Merry del Val, Serafini, Scapinelli, Marini and Gasparri) agreed to exploit ‘the situation in Russia to gain advantages in the religious field’. Gasparri summarized it thus: The Russian Revolution has proved providential. When we were suffering the nightmare of an establishment of the Russian Empire and Orthodoxy in Constantinople, Providence averted the danger and even opened the doors of Russia to the beneficial influence of the Catholic Church.8 If the consensus was therefore general as far as the theme of Russia was concerned, it was not the case for the Eastern Rite. Vannutelli recalled that it would be



6 ‘Nous vivons dans une révolution et ne pouvons savoir ce qui nous attend sous peu’; AES, Russia, vol. 501, von der Ropp to Benedict XV, 26 April 1917. 7 Hansjakob Stehle, Die Ostpolitik des Vatikans: Geheimdiplomatie der Päpste von 1917 bis Heute (Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, 1983), p. 20. 8 ‘La Rivoluzione russa si è rivelata provvidenziale. Vivevamo con l’incubo di un insediamento dell’Impero russo e dell’ortodossia a Costantinopoli, quando la Provvidenza ha allontanato questo pericolo e ha aperto le porte della Russia all’influsso benefico della Chiesa cattolica’; AES, Sessioni, vol. 71, minutes of the Particular Congregation, 15 July 1917.

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important to resume initiatives in favour of the Byzantine-Russian Rite ‘on which many hopes for the Holy See rest’.9 De Lai warned, on the contrary, of the danger that Sheptytsky represented in his opinion. He criticized the activity of this Byzantine-Ruthenian Archbishop, adding in no uncertain terms that, following his recent liberation by the Russian government, he should consider having a rest: ‘I consider him a dreamer, without judgement and without measure, capable of seriously compromising the situation of the Catholic Church’.10 Only Serafini openly approved of De Lai’s intentions; no one else took a stand on the matter, and Gasparri closed the session without mentioning it or making a decision on Sheptytsky. The episode testifies to the existence of two currents of thought that at the time divided the clergy and also the Holy See itself. The Eastern Rite was viewed with a certain distrust by the traditional Latin clergy, in particular the Polish clergy. In Einsiedeln, Mgr Skirmunt also expressed his fears about the expansion of the Eastern Rite in Russia at the expense of the Latin Rite.11 What was Pope Benedict XV’s standpoint? One can see that in that year, 1917, Benedict XV decided to separate Eastern Affairs from Propaganda Fide in order to endow it with a congregation of its own, of which he himself took charge. Would he have done so if he had shared the traditional position of the Roman curia, as defended by De Lai and Serafini? In other words, by taking personal charge of Eastern Affairs, the Pope not only valued its importance but also intended to reserve for himself the decisions made by the new congregation. The silence of the College of Cardinals regarding De Lai is comprehensible; it was a silence reinforced by the presence of Marini, the newly appointed secretary of the new congregation. In July 1917, the Russian Revolution was still the symbol of hope for a Catholic renewal. In order to exploit the effects of the Revolution, however, the empire had to become stable. Now more than ever, peace became indispensable, a peace of compromise, in order to avoid any grudges connected to territorial annexation and the oppression of the vanquished. In this context, in the summer of 1917, the decision made by the Pope not to mention Russia in the Peace Note is surprising. Was it made, as the Germans interpreted it at the time, in order to leave them with carte blanche in this region? That is unlikely. Was it a method of creating a separation between the status quo in the West and not in the East?



9 ‘Sul quale poggiano tante speranze per la Santa Sede’; AES, Sessioni, vol. 71, minutes of the Particular Congregation, 15 July 1917. 10 ‘Lo ritengo un sognatore, senza giudizio e senza misura, capace di compromettere seriamente la situazione della Chiesa cattolica’; Sheptytsky had already planned with Pius X to convert Russia to Catholicism by means of the Byzantine-Slav Rite, thus allowing the creation of an independent Catholic Ukrainian state. 11 In a report from July 1917, Skirmunt did not hide his disapproval of Sheptytsky’s activity in Eastern Europe; AES, Russia-Polonia, vol. 493, Skirmunt to Gasparri, 30 July 1917.

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4. The Silence Concerning Russia in the Note In the first version of the Note, the Pope mentioned Russia. In order to reach a peace agreement, the Germans were asked to free the occupied Belgian and French territories in exchange for the return of Germany’s colonies. In the same way, the territories of the former Russian Empire, occupied by the Central Powers, were to be returned. This mention was later deleted.12 The primary aim of the Note was to achieve a ‘just and lasting peace’ on the basis of a status quo ante bellum in Western Europe, since in Eastern Europe the Holy See clearly could not hope for the return to Russia of Poland and the territories conquered by the Central Powers. Prudently, the Pope did not openly promote the creation of an independent Polish state in order to avoid future reprisals by the Russians and in order to show respect for the Austrians, who still hoped to annex Poland to the empire. It was also necessary to take into account the growth of Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian and Ukrainian nationalism. If the Pope had invoked a return to the pre-war situation in this region, he would have been denigrated by every country except Russia. At this juncture, we arrive at the limits of Vatican diplomacy in the summer of 1917. On 8 August, when the Note was about to be distributed to the heads of state of the belligerent nations, the Provisional Government approved ‘the law on the reform of the existing legislation concerning the affairs of the Catholic Church in Russia’. It granted freedom of worship and sanctioned the neutrality of the state in matters of religion.13 The coincidence of the two events could not have occurred in a worse manner. On the one hand, the Provisional Government had made concrete efforts in favour of the Catholic Church; on the other, the Pope did not mention Russia in the Note. The decision was serious and risky, showing that, in the summer of 1917, Benedict XV’s primary objective was to restore peace in Europe, starting with Western Europe. The Russian case seemed irresolvable; to mention it, in one way or another, would have risked provoking strong reactions. Some general observations, therefore, were sufficient: The same spirit of equity and justice should guide the examination of all other territorial and political questions, specifically those concerning Armenia, the Balkan States and the countries which constitute the ancient Kingdom of Poland, whose noble historical traditions and the sufferings it has undergone in particular during the present war ought rightly to enlist the sympathies of nations.14

12 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 216, vol. 3, draft of the Note to the heads of the belligerent peoples of 1 August 1917. 13 The law concretely allowed the passage from one confession to the other, the free erection of new Catholic churches, and the reconstitution of suppressed dioceses: Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), pp. 51–56. 14 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 216, vol. 3; Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32.

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In this passage, the Pope recalls the former Kingdom of Poland without specifying the fate of the territories that were part of it, aware of the claims of independence by the peoples in that region and the differences between Austria and Germany on the issue.15 From the Vatican’s point of view, the first thing to do was to create peace in the West and protect the Catholic Church in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the heavily threatened area of Eastern Galicia. Territorial issues were not a priority. The Russian government did not appreciate the lack of all reference to Russia in the Note. In Paris, on 30 August, the Quai d’Orsay received a note from the Provisional Government interpreting the Note as ‘overtly directed against Russia’.16 On 18 September, Skirmunt reported the complaints of Petrograd to the Holy See and, a few days later, informed the Austrian Ambassador, Prince Schönburg-Hartenstein, about them.17

5. The Evolution of the Polish Question: The Dilemma of Lithuania In the Note, when introducing the notion of the ‘Kingdom of Poland’, the Pope posed the question of the rebirth of this state on the international level. It was no longer a pure and simple restauration of Russian power in Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Belarus and Western Ukraine; therefore, there was to be no return to the status quo ante bellum in Eastern Europe. The independence and sovereignty of the various peoples and national groups in the territories that had belonged to this ancient part of Russia called the Kingdom of Poland was no longer merely a Russian or German issue but a problem that was to be solved by the future peace conference.18 The very prudent language was often interpreted as a refusal on the part of the Pope to understand the birth of national movements in Eastern Europe. Here, too, it seems impossible to reduce the vastness of the problem to a simple stance for or against. The example of the Diocese of Vilnius demonstrates that the situation was

15 On 22 July 1917, the German Ambassador to Vienna, Wedel, wrote to the new Chancellor Michaelis that the Polish Question was the only reason able to explain the great ‘bitterness’ or even the ‘hatred’ of the Austrians towards Germany. He proposed to return to the situation outlined in an earlier phase of the war, namely, a ‘union of Greater Poland with Galicia and its annexation to Austria-Hungary’ with a military agreement and the creation of an economic body consisting of Germany, the AustroHungarian Empire and Poland: Wedel to Michaelis, 22 July 1917, in L’Allemagne et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale: documents extraits des archives de l’Office allemand des Affaires étrangères, ed. by André Scherer and Jacques Grunewald, 4 vols (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1962–78), II (1966), pp. 276–83. 16 ‘Ouvertement dirigée contre la Russie’; AMAE, serie A Paix, vol. 13, the Russian Provisional Government to the French Foreign Ministry, 30 August 1917. 17 Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Politisches Archiv, vol. 962, report of Schönburg-Hartenstein to Czernin, 27 September 1917. 18 In the first version of the Note, it can be seen that ‘the examination of the questions relative to the fate of the nations’, including Poland, was cited in a non-specific way; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, pos. 216, vol. 3.

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particularly complex, since it concerned the emerging Polish and Lithuanian clergy and relations with Germany. Although in the Pope’s entourage some, such as Skirmunt, still cultivated the dream of a great Catholic Poland, it seems that realism and above all caution prevailed in the decisions of the Vatican while the war still raged throughout Europe. In 1918, Vannutelli put the Lithuanian issue in these terms: ‘Can the Holy See, at this moment, attract the hatred of Poles in order to promote the interests of Germany?’. In other words, should the Pope support Germany in its desire to separate the district of Vilnius-Suwalki from Poland, knowing perfectly well that its objective was to weaken Poland, on the basis of the principle of divide and rule, in order to annex Lithuania? In December 1917, Marchetti Selvaggiani reported in fact that Berlin ‘looked unfavourably on the restoration of a Poland that was too large, that risked becoming too strong […] and too powerful, on its eastern border’.19 For the Holy See, the issue of Lithuania did not, therefore, present itself as the emergence, whether justified or not, of a national Lithuanian movement or as the defence of the idea of a great Polish nation that would include Lithuania; it was, rather, a question of endorsing the politics of division pursued by the German military administration. This point permits us to understand why the Holy See was opposed to the desire of the German military authorities to replace the Apostolic Administrator Michalkiewicz, of Polish origins, with a Lithuanian bishop. On 24 June 1917, Pacelli, then Nuncio to Munich, reported to Gasparri the complaints of Prince Isenburg, head of the German administration for Lithuania, regarding Michalkiewicz, whom he accused of being too Polish. The Nuncio commented in annoyance: ‘This seems to depend on an excessive interference by the German military authority in ecclesiastic issues’.20 Towards the end of 1917, the administrator remained in office, but German pressure did not diminish, and Berlin assumed threatening tones. On 16 December, Secretary of State, von dem Bussche, notified Marchetti Selvaggiani that the German General Staff was threatening to use military force against the administrator. If the Vatican had entered into a diplomatic joust with Germany in defence of the administrator, the latter did not make the task any easier. In December, the prelate signed a petition to the German Chancellor requesting the annexation of Lithuania to Poland on the basis of regional autonomy. The Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Ministry) took the opportunity to ask the Holy See for the immediate recall of the administrator responsible for the problems in Vilnius. Pacelli was aware of the situation and explained to Gasparri that in Vilnius the German government favoured the Lithuanians at the expense of the Poles, trying in every way to have the administrator removed. However, Berlin, in the desire to avoid attracting the hatred of the Poles, urged the Holy See to act in its place, even threatening to arrest

19 ‘Di mal occhio la restaurazione di una Polonia troppo grande, che rischiava di diventare troppo forte […] e troppo potente sul confine orientale’; AES, Russia, vol. 498, Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri, 29 December 1917. 20 ‘Ciò sembra dipendere da un’eccessiva ingerenza dell’autorità militare tedesca nelle questioni ecclesiastiche’; AES, Russia, vol. 498, Pacelli to Gasparri, 24 June 1917.

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and deport Michalkiewicz to Germany under the pretext of preventing riots. Pacelli concluded: ‘This is the famous method that consists in removing the chestnuts from the fire with the paw of a cat’,21 adding a warning, however, that the situation of Michalkiewicz would become unsustainable when the new Lithuanian State with Vilnius as its capital was proclaimed. Despite his willingness to resist German pressure, the Pope decided to remove the administrator because, ever since he had begun to engage in politics, his position had become indefensible. Aware, however, of the fact that the operation was not too delicate, the Secretary of State left him free to decide ‘whether he wanted to assume the risk of remaining’ or rather leave German-occupied Russian territory.22 The matter shows in all its complexity the problem of Eastern Europe for the Holy See. In this specific case, it was a question of managing, on the one hand, the sensitivities of the Poles, who considered Vilnius an integral part of the Kingdom of Poland, and on the other, the emergence of Lithuanian nationalism supported by the Germans. In January 1918, the Vatican seemed to want to teach Germany a lesson. Mgr Bonaventura Cerretti, Prefect of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, proposed replacing Michalkiewicz with Baron von der Ropp, who was of Polish origin. The German government stated that it was clearly ‘astonished, surprised’,23 and Cerretti did not insist on the action. With this proposal, the Secretary of State gained a month’s respite, which was time enough to allow a discrete departure of the Apostolic Administrator, who, however, refused to leave. He was arrested in April 1918 and deported to Germany, to the Maria Laach Abbey, under the jurisdiction of Felix von Hartmann, Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne, who was known to frequent governmental and nationalist German circles.

6. The Particular Congregation of 29 April 1918 Convened by the Pope to settle the question of the nomination of a prelate in Vilnius, the Particular Congregation of 29 April 1918 saw the cardinals united in their criticism of the Germans. Proud of their military success, they ‘did not hesitate to create problems for the Holy See’.24 Their aim was clear: they did not want a strong Poland on their borders and thus hoped for an independent Lithuania subject to Germany. Vannutelli recalls that the Pope had no interest in attracting the hatred of the Poles, who represented a majority in the Diocese of Vilnius and had imposed their language and culture throughout Lithuania. According to Merry del Val, it would be convenient to

21 ‘Il famoso metodo che consiste nel togliere le castagne dal fuoco con la zampa del gatto’; AES, Russia, vol. 518, Pacelli to Gasparri, 4 January 1918. 22 Von der Ropp also objected to the moral offence committed by Pacelli in sending Michalkiewicz an order to present his resignation by means of telegraph, which could at that time be read by the public; AES, Russia, vol. 518. 23 AES, Russia, vol. 514, Pacelli to Gasparri, 14 January 1918. 24 ‘Non esita[no] a creare problemi alla S. Sede’; AES, Sessione anno 1918, n. 1217, Congregazione particolare, Lituania, Diocesi di Vilnius, 29 April 1918.

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buy some time since the situation was uncertain and might change at any moment. He did not reject the possibility that the German government would reject the Vatican’s candidates, but held that the Holy See could make good use of the time necessary to write and then to respond. Finally, he stated that he preferred the candidate Giorgio Matulewicz: ‘To what might the German government object in his regard? That he was not able to respect his mandate because, despite his talent, he has little political experience?’. To which Vannutelli responded: ‘All the better: that is exactly what we want’. There remained the problem raised by De Lai. If Michalkiewicz were removed, the Chapter would proceed to nominate a successor. Gasparri responded: ‘Perfect; in that case the Holy See would play no role in the nomination’.25 The exchange of opinions among the cardinals made it possible to reach a broad consensus during the meeting of 29 April 1918. The curia had no illusions about the German intentions and rejected its politics. The debate did not deal with the birth of an independence movement in Lithuania nor with the theme of the Kingdom of Poland. In regard to these two issues, the cardinals postponed the discussion until after the war, when the situation would become clear once and for all. For the moment, it was a matter of arm-wrestling with the German authorities, who were denied the right to interfere in ecclesiastic affairs. Gasparri’s conclusion to the session, regarding the approach to Germany, can be summed up in one word: ‘firmness’. In the spring of 1918, the Note was ancient history. The search for an agreement with the government in Berlin able to orient it towards a negotiated peace proved to be in vain. Germany, it was observed in the Vatican, was full of pride in its military successes and would no longer hesitate to place the Holy See in difficulty when it came to defending its own strategic interests. This time the Vatican, however, decided not to cede. The German authorities had managed, through an act of force, to remove the Apostolic Administrator but they could go no further. The candidates suggested by Berlin would have placed the Holy See in a difficult position with the Poles. It was necessary to avoid as much as possible mixing religion and politics, thus making the diocese of Vilnius a bone of contention between Poles and Lithuanians. The proposed candidate would have to be neutral, as far as this was possible. It must be remembered in this regard that the Kaiser (among other things, a Protestant) could not propose, let alone nominate, a bishop or an apostolic administrator. In this debate, the Holy See seemed to have reached a point of rupture in its politics towards Germany: it could not give in in order not to create a precedent. It was important for the Pope, as Cardinal Filippo Giustini stated, not to seem to be an agent of the German government in Lithuania. Only on 14 October, or rather six months after the extraordinary session, did Benedict XV nominate a new bishop, in the person of Matulewicz. In the whole affair of the Diocese of Vilnius, the Holy See found itself divided between two parties: that of the Poles and that of the Lithuanians

25 ‘Cosa gli potrebbe rimproverare il governo tedesco? Di non essere in grado di portare avanti il mandato perché, nonostante il talento, ha poca esperienza politica?’; ‘tanto meglio: è proprio quello che vogliamo’; ‘perfetto, in tal caso la S. Sede sarà estranea alla nomina’; AES, Sessione anno 1918, n. 1217, Congregazione particolare, Lituania, Diocesi di Vilnius, 29 April 1918.

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supported by Germany. The Catholic religion might thus become the engine of political action, something that the Holy See wanted to avoid at all costs. The prudence adopted from the beginning of the war in Eastern Europe was shown, in the spring of 1918, to be the only possible path for the Pope to follow, since peace in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine had become very difficult due to the growth of independence movements. Benedict XV chose to remain detached from the heated debates. The defence of Catholic interests, in particular those of the Byzantine Rite, constituted the cornerstone of his politics of peace in Eastern Europe. Unlike in Western issues, there was no search here for a compromise with the Central Powers; on the contrary, the Holy See did not hesitate to oppose Germany firmly on issues that it considered to be the exclusive competence of the papacy. If the Secretary of State did not want any conflict with the new Polish State, the mission of Mgr Achille Ratti to Warsaw cooled relations between the papacy and the local clergy. The Uniate Question and that of Ukraine were particularly dear to Benedict XV, at the cost of opposing the Poles.

7.

Ratti’s Mission: The Uniate Question

At the end of May 1918, the future Pius XI was sent as Apostolic Visitor to Warsaw, entrusted with the task of reorganizing the Church in Poland and in all regions that had been part of the Russian Empire, from Lithuania to Siberia.26 His order for the mission, dated 16 May 1918 and written by Marini, the Secretary of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, set out in broad strokes Benedict XV’s Eastern policy. The Secretary recorded how worried the Congregation was about the fate of the Ruthenians. Insofar as this people belonged, as Catholics, to the new Kingdom of Poland, ‘they could act as a link with the Russian schismatics’.27 Marini strongly urged Ratti to try to obtain from the German and Polish authorities civil rights equal to those of the Poles. Ratti was also to ensure that the Ruthenians would not, owing to their rite, be considered to be religiously inferior to the Latin Poles, as they had been in the previous regime. The aim was to obtain equality in both civil rights and religious status; here Benedict XV’s standpoint was truly innovative. It was a matter of creating a bridge between Catholics and the Orthodox and, by means of the Eastern Rite, considered to be in greater harmony with the Slavic soul, of permitting the Catholic Church to regain territory in Eastern Europe. This policy encountered strong resistance among the Polish clergy, however, who were traditionally hostile to the Uniate Church.

26 On 30 March 1919, he would become Apostolic Nuncio to Warsaw: see Angelo Tamborra, ‘Benedetto XV e i problemi nazionali e religiosi dell’Europa orientale’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 855–84. 27 AES, Russia, vol. 527, Marini to Ratti, 16 May 1918.

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Marini focussed on the fate of the minorities, in particular the Belarussians or the White Russians, partly incorporated into the new Kingdom of Poland. In the Western region, there was a majority of Latin-Rite Catholics with a considerable minority of Orthodox believers (30/40 per cent). The new Apostolic Visitor was charged with examining their expectations, concentrating not only on the educated Belarussian classes (nobles and clerics) who were strongly ‘Polonized’ but also on the rest of the population who were more closely tied to the ancient traditions, since to take as the only reference the aspirations of the aristocracy and the clergy without also consulting the people would risk […] indulging in serious errors and displeasing the population, who must be used as a lever, first of all, for the conversion of Russia.28 This statement reveals the renewed hopes for Catholicism in 1918, which arose not only from the Bolshevik Revolution but also from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which had been signed two months earlier and made the rebirth of the Kingdom of Poland possible. This hope also included the emergence of the Uniate Church, oppressed by the Russians and discredited by the Poles. Only in this way could there be hope for a conversion of the Russians, which would begin at the base, through the people, through neither the Latin Rite nor the elite formed in the traditions and language of Poland. The Polish peculiarity tended to confound too easily religion and nationalism: ‘For a Pole, Latin means Polish and Byzantine Catholic means Russian and Orthodox, hence the enemy. The Uniate is not a Catholic like him but a man standing mid-way between a Catholic and a schismatic’.29 If during the pontificate of Benedict XV the Eastern Rite experienced a renewed fervour and opened up new prospects for the creation of a Russian Catholic Church, its breadth must also not be overestimated. In fact, beyond the Latin or Eastern Rite proper, there were questions of nationalism and of territorial claims that divided the Catholics in Eastern Europe. In this respect, the Pope wanted to maintain a perfect neutrality. In 1918, the Uniate Question was bound to that of Ukraine and to the conflict that opposed it to Poland in respect to the Chełm territory and that of Eastern Galicia.

8. The Question of Ukraine: The Pope Remains Neutral In July 1917, Sheptytsky described to the Allies the union that he envisaged between Eastern Galicia, populated mainly by Ruthenians, and Ukraine in order to form an autonomous state, allied to Russia.30 The Russian Provisional Government, in

28 AES, Russia, vol. 527, Marini to Ratti, 16 May 1918. 29 ‘Per un polacco, latino vuol dire polacco e cattolico greco significa russo e ortodosso, quindi l’avversario. L’Uniate non è un cattolico come lui, ma una via di mezzo fra cattolico e scismatico’; AES, Russia, vol. 460, report of Father Sandulgi, 29 June 1916. 30 AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Russie/Ucraine, vol. 693, Thiebaut to the Foreign Ministry, 20 July 1917.

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effect, had recognized the autonomy of Ukraine, which had been declared by the Rada on 23 June, on 16 July. Faced with the emergence of a Ukrainian state, Germany followed a policy quite similar to its policy in Lithuania: support for the independence claims of the non-Russian provinces of the former empire in order to weaken Russia. The Revolution had accelerated the emergence of movements for autonomy and, in August 1917, the German generals let it be understood that an agreement would be reached with Austria to grant Eastern Galicia to the Ukrainians.31 For Vienna, this issue was directly connected to that of Poland. In August 1917, Count Czernin had offered it to the Germans in exchange for the annexation of Poland to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a solution rejected by Berlin, which had opted for Poland’s declaration of independence. For the Allies, the emergence of nationalisms in Eastern Europe was from the outset a problem of the alliance with Russia. The February Revolution had forced London and Paris to rethink their own policies. In France, Ambassador Joseph Noulens succeeded Maurice Paléologue as Ambassador to Russia and brought to Petrograd Jean Pélissier, founder of the Office central des nationalités and supporter of an active Allied policy aimed at the recognition of the rights of non-Russians in order for them to be able to continue to fight alongside Russia against the Central Powers.32 Pélissier was in Kiev from 16 August to 8 September 1917 examining the nature and scope of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. His conclusions put an end to the continuing hesitant policy of the French government. In his opinion, Paris had to make the Ukrainians understand that they could count on its support as long as they adopted an attitude favourable to the Entente: ‘The allegation that the Ukrainian movement is perhaps a separatist tendency promoted by Germany does not give us the right to despise this movement […]. The danger cannot be reduced by denying it’. He concluded: It would be advantageous to organize a methodical and continual propaganda among each of the nationalities of the Russian State in order to make them understand that their particular fate is tied to that of the victory of the Entente and that they have a vital interest in remaining united, at least until the end of the war.33

31 Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, Politisches Archiv, WK15, vol. 4, Ludendorff to Michaelis, 18 August 1917. 32 In 1911, Pélissier, a journalist specialized in autonomist issues, founded, with Joseph Gabrys, the leader of the Lithuanian independence movement, the Office central des nationalités and a journal, Les annales des nationalités; see Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘Jean Pélissier et l’Office central des nationalités (1911–1918): un agent du gouvernement auprès des nationalités’, in Georges-Henri Soutou, Ghislain de Castelbajac and Sebastien de Gasquet, Recherches sur la France et le problème des nationalités pendant la Première Guerre mondiale: Pologne, Ukraine, Lithuanie (Paris: Presses de l’Université ParisSorbonne, 1995), pp. 11–38. 33 ‘L’allégation que le mouvement ukrainien est peut-être une tendance séparatiste favorisée par l’Allemagne ne nous donne pas le droit de mépriser ce mouvement […]. On ne diminue pas le danger en le niant’; ‘Il y aurait avantage à organiser une propagande méthodique et continue auprès de chacune des nationalités de l’État russe, pour arriver à leur faire comprendre, que leur sort particulier

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With the October Revolution, the Entente realized that a separate peace was inevitable. At the Inter-Allied Conference in November, Lloyd Geoge and Clemenceau agreed to provide military and financial support to the nationalist movements who were willing to continue fighting.34 In Paris, on 23 December, France marked Ukraine, Bessarabia and the Crimea as its zones of influence; England, on the other hand, the Caucasus and, in particular, Armenia and Georgia. Paris appointed in Kiev General Tabouis as Commissioner of the French Republic in Ukraine, but it did not officially recognize the Ukrainian government. In January 1918, the Central Powers, in reaction, recognized the Ukrainian delegation to Brest-Litovsk in order to detach the Ukrainians from Petrograd and, on 9 February, they signed a peace treaty with Ukraine. Through this treaty, the Central Powers recognized its independence and Ukraine promised to supply them grain until July 1918. On 18 February, the German troops entered Ukraine and expelled the Bolsheviks from Kiev on 2 March. For the Holy See, the Peace of Brest-Litovsk was not the subject of official discussion, despite the lively protests, especially on the part of the Polish clergy, who had been arriving in Rome since mid-February. On 15 February 1918, Mgr Zaleski sent a long report in which he argued against the borders drawn up for Ukraine, which included the territory of Chełm. He stated that the ‘Ruthenians of the Uniate religion’ constituted only 32.5 per cent of the population and accused Austria of having offered a territory ‘profoundly Catholic to schismatic Ukraine’.35 The Secretary of State did not think it appropriate to intervene in the issue of the borders, since he did not have sufficient information to offer an opinion. In January 1918, Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, Nuncio to Vienna, had communicated to Gasparri that the supreme council of the Rada had just proclaimed religious freedom, declaring the autocephalous Ukrainian Church to be the state religion.36 In May, the Pope instructed Ratti to restore the Uniate dioceses that had existed in that province,37 where Ratti arrived only in November. In his report on the situation of the Church, he observed that the Uniate propaganda had almost no effect: the rare Orthodox who converted to Catholicism adopted the Latin Rite, and Sheptytsky, who until that time had been endeavouring to promote the Uniate Church, had met with little success. Ratti observed that it is all too true that the Greek-Ruthenian propaganda was supported and promoted by the Ukrainian government for purposes and interests that are anything but religious […] for the purpose of political penetration and annexation to an openly anti-Polish tendency, doubly dangerous for the religion, coming from a

34 35 36 37

est lié à celui de la victoire de l’Entente, quelles ont un intérêt capital à rester unies, du moins jusqu’à la fin de la guerre’; AMAE, Guerre 1914–18, Russie/Ucraine, vol. 394, Pélissier to the French Foreign Minister, 15 September 1918 (transmitted by Noulens). Sebastien de Gasquet, ‘La France et les mouvements nationaux ukrainiens (1917–1919)’, in Soutou, Castelbajac and Gasquet, Recherches, pp. 105–210 (p. 127). ‘32.5% de Ruthènes de religion uniate’; ‘si profondément catholique à l’Ukraine schismatique’; AES, Russia-Polonia, vol. 538, Zaleski to Gasparri, 15 February 1918. AES, Russia, vol. 540, Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 6 January 1918. AES, Russia, vol. 540, Marini to Ratti, May 1918.

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country whose government is already in the hands of the Russians and perhaps destined to disappear, absorbed by the new Russia.38 A little further down, the document described the attitude of the Poles of Chełm: ‘Even if it is true […] that the Poles do not lack zeal, are attentive and active in Roman Catholic propaganda, they do not dedicate themselves to it all the time and not only for Catholicism but also for the Polish cause’.39 Ratti’s report on the topic of Eastern and Latin Rites, in the background of the conflict between Poland and Ukraine regarding Chełm, makes it possible to grasp, on the one hand, the complexity of the Eastern issues for the Holy See and, on the other, the decision of Benedict XV to use the utmost prudence and to not intervene in territorial issues. Moreover, the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, in the eyes of the Vatican, was of a provisional nature, like Bolshevism. The peace conference could also call this separate peace into question. Any hasty decision might, therefore, have harmful consequences for the Catholic Church. After the first religious liberties granted in the spring of 1917, the decree of 23 January 1918 approved the separation of Church and state but also the profound secularization of the new Russian State, beginning with the confiscation of ecclesiastic property, the suppression of the teaching of religion in schools, the nationalization of educational institutions, including seminaries, and so on… What future could be foreseen for the Catholic Church in the former Russian Empire? The abundant and at times contradictory information only consolidated, in the Holy See, a wait-and-see tendency, wrongly interpreted as a refusal to support the emergence of nationalities in favour of the great nations like Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The situation was even more complex because religion and politics were mingled. Benedict XV ultimately made an almost obligatory choice, opting for patience and prudence. In July 1915, Benedict proclaimed that ‘nations do not die; humbled and oppressed, they chafe under the yoke imposed upon them, preparing a renewal of the combat, and passing down from generation to generation a mournful heritage of hatred and revenge’.40 The message is striking because of its simplicity and its realism, calling into question the utter purpose of war, rejecting the absolutism of victory and invoking the respect of peoples throughout the world and in particular in Eastern Europe. The papacy and the Catholic Church were directly affected by the stakes in the Great War: the expansion of the Habsburg monarchy, Russian repression in Uniate lands,

38 ‘È fin troppo vero che la propaganda grecorutena è sostenuta e promossa dal governo ucraino per fini e interessi tutt’altro che religiosi […], a scopo di penetrazione e annessione politica con una tendenza dichiaratamente anti-polacca, doppiamente pericolosa per la religione, provenendo da un Paese il cui governo è già in mano ai russi ed è forse destinato a scomparire, assorbito dalla nuova Russia’; AES, Russia, vol. 540, Ratti to Gasparri, 10 November 1918. 39 ‘Anche se è vero […] che i polacchi non mancano di zelo, sono attenti e operosi nella propaganda cattolico-romana, non ci si dedicano per tutto il tempo e solo per il cattolicesimo, ma anche per la causa polacca’; AES, Russia, vol. 540, Ratti to Gasparri, 10 November 1918. 40 Benedict XV, Allorché fummo chiamati, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7 (1915), pp. 365–77 [accessed 10 January 2019].

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the case of Constantinople, or even the future of the ancient Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, or Ukraine. The importance attributed to the Pope and the frequency of curial debates on these issues are explained within the context of reflections on peace, but they do not constitute its foundation. The interests of the Vatican were in the end always subordinate to the ultimate goal of Benedict XV: to restore peace in Europe.

Bibliography Gasquet, Sebastien de, ‘La France et les mouvements nationaux ukrainiens (1917–1919)’, in Georges-Henri Soutou, Ghislain de Castelbajac and Sebastien de Gasquet, Recherches sur la France et le problème des nationalités pendant la Première Guerre mondiale: Pologne, Ukraine, Lithuanie (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), pp. 105–210 Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Scherer, André, and Jacques Grunewald, eds, L’Allemagne et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale: documents extraits des archives de l’Office allemand des Affaires étrangères, 4 vols (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1962–78), II (1966) Soutou, Georges-Henri, ‘Jean Pélissier et l’Office central des nationalités (1911–1918): un agent du gouvernement auprès des nationalités’, in Georges-Henri Soutou, Ghislain de Castelbajac and Sebastien de Gasquet, Recherches sur la France et le problème des nationalités pendant la Première Guerre mondiale: Pologne, Ukraine, Lithuanie (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), pp. 11–38 Stehle, Hansjakob, Die Ostpolitik des Vatikans: Geheimdiplomatie der Päpste von 1917 bis Heute (Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, 1983) Tamborra, Angelo, ‘Benedetto XV e i problemi nazionali e religiosi dell’Europa orientale’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 855–84

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Simona Merlo

Benedict XV and the Caucasus

The bond between Benedict XV and the Caucasus can be seen within the wider perspective of Vatican diplomatic efforts in the years that disrupted the territories in the former Russian Empire. These Caucasian territories were peripheral to the games played by the great powers. They were located in a position marginal to European geopolitics, and Catholics constituted a slim minority there. However, in the years of Benedict XV’s pontificate, the interest of the Holy See in the region increased not only for the Catholics in that area but, on a broader scale, for the issues that concerned Christians in an imperial world in evolution, whether Russian or Ottoman. The South Caucasus was located at this intersection. It was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious reality where Orthodoxy played an important role in the particular relationship between nation and religion that influenced the political agendas in this turbulent historical quadrant. The first direct contact of Benedict with the Caucasus came on the eve of the October Revolution, in September 1917, when the newly elected Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Kyrion II (Sadzaglishvili), sent to the Pope a letter in which he expressed his desire to establish relations with the Holy See. It was a turning point for Georgia and its Church. The revolutionary events of 1917 placed the South Caucasus outside the orbit of Russia. For the Georgian Church, this signified a liberation from that of Russia, which had incorporated the Georgian Patriarchate in 1811, ten years after the annexation of Eastern Georgia to the empire, and had transformed it into an exarchate dependent on the Saint Petersburg synod. In this sense, the Revolution was a great opportunity for the Georgians. In March, immediately after the abdication of the Tsar, an assembly of bishops, members of the lower clergy and representatives of the laity had already re-established the autocephaly of the Georgian Church. In the following September, a local council confirmed that decision and elected Kyrion II Catholicos-Patriarch, crowned on the first day of the following October in the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, a symbolic place for the Georgian Church. This step, which was not approved by the Russian Church, led first to a crisis and then to

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1147–1159 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118824

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the rupture in canonical communion, restored only in 1943 in completely different political conditions, with the reconstituted Moscow Patriarchate.1 It is in this context that the Georgian Patriarch sent his message to Benedict, to the Catholicos of All Armenians, George V, and to the Ecumenical Patriarch, Germanus V. In a moment of instability for the Caucasian area, it was Kyrion’s concern that the Georgian Patriarchate be recognized by the other Christian Churches and also that its isolation be avoided. The letter to Benedict XV was not a direct request for the approval of autocephaly but a first step towards a communion in what the Catholicos called the ‘day of restoration of the happiness of the Georgian Church’. Kyrion reminded the Pope of the centuries-long bonds between Georgia and Rome (‘Peter and Andrew, the first of the apostles chosen by Christ, who sowed the pure seed of the true faith in the hearts of the Romans and the Georgians, have by their fraternity symbolized the charity and alliance between these two churches’) and asked him to grant his ‘benevolence to Georgian Catholics with their numerous religious and civil needs’.2 Kyrion’s letter reached the Holy See only in August of the following year, when it was sent to the Apostolic Delegate to Constantinople, Angelo Maria Dolci, by the president of the delegation of the Georgian government who had come to confirm ‘the support of the Holy Father to see the stabilizing of the new republic’.3 Two months earlier, however, Kyrion had been mysteriously killed by unknown assailants. From Constantinople, Dolci had in any case sent the letter to the Secretary of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Niccolò Marini, who gave it to the Pope. Benedict XV, through Dolci, had expressed his condolences to the delegation and assured them that he would do everything possible ‘for the perfect fulfilment of every legitimate religious and civil aspiration of the noble Georgian people’.4 Meanwhile, the Caucasian political situation had changed. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan had given life to a short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, which was declared on 22 April 1918. It imploded just a month later due to rivalries among the three component entities. In Georgia, power was assumed by a Menshevik-dominated executive led by Noe Zhordania, which declared its independence on 26 May 1918. It was the delegation of this new government that took the letter of the Catholicos to Dolci in August 1918.





1 On this chapter in the story of the Georgian Church, see Simona Merlo, Russia e Georgia: ortodossia, dinamiche imperiali e identità nazionale (1801–1991) (Milan: Guerini, 2010), pp. 114–19 and 208–30. 2 ‘Giorno di restaurazione e di felicità della Chiesa georgiana’; ‘Pietro e Andrea, i primi eletti tra gli apostoli di Cristo, che hanno sparso il più puro seme della vera fede nei cuori dei romani e dei georgiani, hanno, con la loro fraternità, simboleggiato la carità e l’alleanza tra queste due Chiese’; ‘benevolenza ai cattolici georgiani e ai loro numerosi bisogni religiosi e civili’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, Kyrion to Benedict XV, 25 September 1917. 3 ‘Appoggio del S. Padre per vedere consolidata la nascente repubblica’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, Dolci to Marini, 26 August 1918. 4 ‘Per il perfetto compimento di ogni legittima aspirazione religiosa e civile del nobile popolo georgiano’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, Dolci to the president of the delegation of the Georgian Republic to Constantinople, 15 March 1919 (copy).

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This contingency marked the beginning of a bond that Benedict maintained with the South Caucasus until it fell under Soviet domination.

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Between Pastoral Care and Diplomacy

The relationship between Benedict and the Caucasus involved religious and political concerns, as the Pope himself emphasized in the letter to the government of Tiflis referred to above, when he evoked the religious and civil aspirations of the Georgian people. As has been stated, Catholicism was a minority confession in Georgia. Furthermore, it was also a heterogenous reality. There were Chaldean-Rite Catholics, many of whom had fled the massacres perpetuated by the Young Turks against Christians in Asia Minor. There were Latin-Rite Poles who had their own parish in Tiflis. There were also Georgians of the Armenian Rite, mainly residents in the provinces of Axalcixe and Axalkalaki; they belonged to the new Georgian nation but were for the most part Armenian. A group of the latter had sent to Benedict a letter in the summer of 1918, requesting permission to change from the Armenian Rite, which had been imposed on them, to the Latin one. They also asked for the re-establishment of the hierarchy of their Church, with the Bishop of Tiflis as its head.5 Until then, in fact, they had been under the jurisdiction of the dioceses of Tiraspol, which covered all of Southern Russia and whose bishop resided at Saratov, several days’ journey from the South Caucasus. In those days, the post was held by the German Josef Kessler, who would have shortly thereafter fled to Odessa under the protection of French troops to avoid arrest by the Bolsheviks.6 The request of the Georgian Catholics arose from the desire to break away from their Armenian fellow worshipers and adopt the characteristically distinct Latin Rite, at a stage when ethnic unrest swept through peoples who had up until then lived together, for good or for bad, under the domination of Imperial Russia. Russia had fostered a homogenization even in regard to religion, which, in the wake of the fall of the Tsar, broke down due to the affirmation of ethnic identities. With the shrinking of the imperial umbrella, the Caucasian people felt more than ever the need to distinguish themselves from the others. In the border zones, such as the regions of Axalcixe and Axalkalaki, in the absence of other factors, the hope for a different rite assumed this role of differentiation. In response to the letter of the Georgian Catholics, and within the context of the Holy See’s diplomatic activity, the following year Benedict decided to send an apostolic visitor to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to meet the Catholic communities and establish relations with the political and religious authorities of the new nations



5 On this episode, see Vincenzo Poggi, ‘P. Antoine Delpuch, Visitatore in Transcaucasia (1919)’, Studi sull’Oriente cristiano, 5 (2001), pp. 96–103. 6 Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), pp. 190–91.

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that had risen from the ashes of the Russian Empire. Benedict’s idea was that these nations required assistance. It was a delicate mission and the White Father Antoine Delpuch, Acting President of the Pontifical Oriental Institute and a collaborator with the Pope in the creation of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, was selected for it. Delpuch had a fine understanding of Eastern Christianity and was esteemed by the Pope for his competence and for the sensitivity he gained at the order founded by Cardinal Lavigerie. His mission was carried out between September and December 1919, at a time of great difficulty in the relations between the Georgian Church and the Orthodox world. Exactly one year earlier, Kyrion had been succeeded by Leonid (Okropiridze), who like his predecessor saw the need to find a patron of the Georgian cause within the wider Christian world. The Vatican’s interest represented an important support of this cause. A few days before the arrival of Delpuch, the new Catholicos had decided to write to Tikhon (Bellavin), Patriarch of Russia, in an attempt to heal the break with the Moscow Patriarchate that had occurred with the unilateral declaration of autocephaly by Georgia. Leonid defended the decision to Tikhon, explaining it and adding canonical reasons, but at the same time he affirmed that the ecclesiastical leaders ‘did not want and do not want’ division, hostility and conflict between the two Orthodox Churches. The letter of the Georgian Catholicos and the silence of Moscow only served, however, to deepen the rift that separated them.7 The break between Moscow and Tiflis was accompanied by the refusal to recognize the ecclesial autocephaly of the Georgians by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. As recalled above, immediately after his election, Kyrion had written in vain to the Ecumenical Patriarch Germanus, hoping to obtain the canonical recognition of autocephaly, which was to be accorded only in 1990. The favour shown to the leaders of the Tiflis Patriarchate by the establishment of relations with Rome needs to be understood within this framework of difficult relations with the Orthodox world, with Moscow and Constantinople, which had relegated the Georgian Church to a marginal position and to isolation. Certain members of the Holy See saw the new relationship as an opportunity for a union of the Georgians with Catholicism. Dolci himself, referring to the trust placed in the Holy See by members of the delegation of the Georgian government that visited him and the intention of Georgia to ‘distance itself from Russia’ by any and all means, showed how there was no lack during the conversation of ‘prudently insinuating that the most effective break with Orthodox Russia would be the Catholic religion’.8 The common aversion in regard to Soviet Russia was evident in a letter to Cardinal Marini, in which Dolci stressed how the representatives of the Georgian government ‘spoke of the disintegration of Russia, their bitter enemy’ and how they showed



7 On the Russian reactions to Georgian autocephaly, see Simona Merlo, ‘La questione georgiana al concilio di Mosca’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 28, 2 (2007), pp. 285–321. 8 ‘D’allontanarsi dalla Russia’; ‘prudentemente insinuare che il distacco più reciso con una Russia ortodossa è la religione cattolica’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, Dolci to Marini, 26 August 1918.

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‘lively satisfaction’ at the statement by the Apostolic Delegate that ‘Russia was their common enemy, since it was the enemy of the Roman Church’. Dolci then repeated the idea of their joining Catholicism as a sure means of release from it: On this subject, I strove with all my might to show them that the Catholic religion had for them a transcendental importance because it would raise between Georgia and Russia a barrier that no one could break.9

2. An Orthodoxy in Difficulty Beyond the difficult inter-Orthodox relations, other concerns troubled the head of the Georgian Church. These emerge in the report drawn up by Delpuch for the Pope. It is a revealing document that offers a vivid cross-section of the ecclesial situation within a state governed by Mensheviks. Thanks to the first-hand news gathered by Delpuch and to the extracts from his conversations with Leonid, it is possible to reconstruct the dominant political and religious climate in Georgia in the wake of the establishment of the new nation. Leonid complained to Delpuch about ‘the current of religious indifference and even hostility that influences the people’, the responsibility for which was ‘the oppression that, for over a century, Russia [had] inflicted upon Georgia’.10 In his opinion, ‘Russification’, the substitution of the Georgian language with Church Slavonic in the liturgy and the transformation of members of the clergy into state functionaries under the control of the Russian Exarchate were the evils that had gripped the Georgian Church during the lengthy period in which it was subject to the Saint Petersburg synod. The legacy of such a difficult period was the deplorable condition in which the Church under his care found itself. The parish clergy, ‘prohibited from taking part in the education of the Georgian people and contributing to maintaining the national sentiment’ had lost their roots and their vocation. The priests were without education, except on rare occasions, and had a mediocre, questionable morality. They ‘no longer believed anything’ and enlarged the ranks of the revolutionary parties. Such a state of affairs had played a vital role in the loss of the influence of the clergy on society and the disaffection towards the Church that was evident in the cultured strata of the population who had thrown themselves into the political opposition, ‘prey to revolutionary parties for which religion no longer counted’. Unlike the parish clergy, the Georgian bishops represented, in the eyes of the Catholicos, ‘the healthy



9 ‘Parlare dello sfacelo della Russia, loro acerrimo nemico’; ‘viva soddisfazione’; ‘la Russia era nemica comune, essendo essa nemica della Chiesa Romana’; ‘su questo soggetto mi studiai a tutto potere di fare loro rilevare che la religione cattolica era per loro di un’importanza trascendentale poiché innalzava tra la Giorgia [sic] e la Russia ortodossa una barriera che nessuno avrebbe potuto spezzare’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, Dolci to Marini, 23 March 1919. 10 ‘La corrente d’indifferenza religiosa e pure di ostilità che influenza il popolo’; ‘l’oppressione che, nel corso di oltre un secolo, la Russia ha fatto pesare sulla Georgia’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, attached to the ponenzas 3825–26, p. 14, report of Father Antonio Delpuch, 5 February 1920.

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part of the clergy, who feel the need to regain the people’. One cannot speak in the same way about the monks, among whom religious life, according to Delpuch, was ‘annihilated’ and what little remained was ‘in a lamentable state’.11 If the world of the peasant remained ‘profoundly religious but with an exterior religion that bordered on superstition’ and in cities the lowest social classes ‘still retained an albeit superficial religious life’, the intelligentsia had instead abandoned the Orthodox Church, which it saw as inferior and incapable of satisfying their religious aspirations. They were attracted by the West and by the Catholic religion ‘for the prestige of the Roman Church, which, however, they did not yet know’. It was in the intellectual milieu of the nobility and the cultured upper middle class that, according to Delpuch, a spiritual and religious search that was not answered by the traditional offer of Orthodoxy was evident, and where a fertile ground for the Catholic apostolate might be found. ‘There are people in this condition’, he wrote, ‘who asked me to establish houses of educated and eloquent religious representatives in the principal cities, who, through the attraction of preaching in French would draw them to the Church, showing them the Catholic truth. They would lead these souls and these disoriented consciences’.12 This visit gave birth to a joint project of the Jesuit general curia and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches to establish a Jesuit mission in the Caucasus besides sending humanitarian aid through the Italian Red Cross.13 Unlike other Catholic exponents, however, Delpuch did not have too many illusions about the possible transition of the hierarchy from Georgian Orthodoxy to Catholicism, as he wrote to the Assessor of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Isaias Papadopoulos: ‘The Catholicos [Leonid] is certainly an excellent man, a good priest, deeply religious, moved by the best intentions, but he does not have, at least for the moment, more than a sincere desire for a simple friendly relationship with the Catholic Church’.14 The Georgians needed, above all from the ecclesiastic point of view, an authoritative contact within the Christian world and, from the political outlook, support in preserving the independence of their republic. The relationships with the Holy See addressed these two objectives.

11 ‘Interdetto a collaborare all’educazione del popolo georgiano e a contribuire a mantenere il sentimento nazionale’; ‘non credevano più a niente’; ‘preda dei partiti rivoluzionari per i quali la religione non conta più’; ‘la parte sana del clero, che sente il bisogno di riguadagnare il popolo’; ‘annientata’; ‘in uno stato lamentabile’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, attached to the ponenzas 3825–26, p. 15. 12 ‘Profondamente religioso, ma di una religione esteriore e che confina con la superstizione’; ‘conservano ancora una certa vita religiosa, almeno di superficie’; ‘per il prestigio della Chiesa romana che però non conosce ancora’; ‘Sono le persone di questa condizione’; ‘che mi hanno pregato di stabilire nelle città principali case di religiosi istruiti ed eloquenti che, tramite l’attrattiva di predicazioni fatte in francese, attirerebbero a sé questi elementi, farebbero loro conoscere la verità cattolica, sarebbero i direttori di queste anime e di queste coscienze disorientate’; ACO, rubr. 101, b. 10, attached to the ponenzas 3825–26, pp. 16–17. 13 On the previous relations between the Jesuits and Georgia, see Vincenzo Poggi, ‘I gesuiti e la Georgia’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 145, 1 (1994), pp. 246–59. 14 ACO, rubr. 84/1930 (Pontificia Commissione Pro Russia), Delpuch to Papadopoulos, 5 December 1919.

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3. The Caucasus and the ‘Great Game’ In the transitional period between the Tsarist rule and that of the Soviet, the Caucasus was once again a piece in the ‘great game’ among the powers. If one looks at the history of these newly formed republics — Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan — in this ‘interlude’, the fragility of the political entities is evident because they were in reality occupied during the brief period of their independence by foreign armies. The intersecting European interests were added to the traditional rivalry in the area between Russia and Turkey. The latter had profited from the weakness of the former Russian Empire, which had been required by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to consign the territories of Kars and Ardahan, part of the Russian Empire since 1878. While the Ottomans and British battled for control of Baku and the oil fields in the region, the Germans sent their armies into newly independent Georgia, transforming it de facto into a protectorate. This situation lasted until the autumn of 1918, when the German troops were replaced by British ones, who had landed at Batumi, on the shores of the Black Sea.15 As far as the French were concerned, they were also present in the area with their military mission in the Caucasus under the command of Colonel Pierre Chardigny. Georgians and Azerbaijani would turn to them when the British army departed.16 The documentation produced by the French military mission is a privileged source not only in order to follow the political and religious affairs during this ‘interlude’ but also to understand how the confessional element became once again advantageous for the European powers which had decided to penetrate the area. In particular, the French looked with apprehension on the first contacts of the Georgian Patriarch with the Anglican Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, whose interest was seen as a factor in the expansion of British influence in the region: In the Caucasus, the English have even sought to act in the religious sphere. After the fall of the Tsar, the Orthodox Church lost its spiritual head. The Greeks took advantage of this situation and tried to transform the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople into a true papacy. Furthermore, the Orthodox Church is on the point of being reformed. In support of these two events, the English have tried to become the protectors of the Orthodox Church in the Caucasus. Hence, they have tried to obtain the merging of the Georgian Orthodox Church with the Greek one, and the Archbishop of Trebizond has even gone to Canterbury to talk to the Head of the Anglican Church.17 The interests of the great powers — above all France and Britain — in the Christians of the Caucasus aimed in this sense to effect a hegemony in a strategic region on the international scene. Even Delpuch’s visit, despite the fact that it was an eminently

15 Aldo Ferrari, Breve storia del Caucaso (Rome: Carocci, 2007), pp. 89–91. 16 Serge Afanasyan, L’Arménie, l’Azerbaïdjan et la Géorgie: de l’indépendance à l’instauration du pouvoir soviétique (1917–1923) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1981), pp. 87–88. 17 AMAE, série Z–URSS, vol. 627, pp. 373–74, report of Lieutenant Pellé-Desforges, 28 October 1919.

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religious and ecclesiastic action, was seen in a political light by the French military mission, to which Delpuch’s citizenship represented an opportunity to increase French influence in the area to counteract the British: Father Delpuch’s trip has great importance from the French perspective. Father Delpuch, by always presenting himself officially as a representative of the Holy See and being effectively obliged to deal in the same way with all the European nations, has reaffirmed his French origins and his patriotism everywhere. The French influence has effectively benefitted from the popularity that he has everywhere in Transcaucasia. The future will show that he has laid a solid foundation for a moral and intellectual action on the part of France. A footnote reads: Until now, in regard to the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, Transcaucasia has depended on the Bishop of Saratov, who is a fanatical German. It is of greatest importance that the new delegate of Transcaucasia be a French bishop. He can then fight against the English project for an Anglican protectorate of the Christians in Transcaucasia, which would naturally be clearly anti-French.18 A further clue to the political interpretation of Delpuch’s mission is provided by the letter in which the High Commissioner of the French Republic in the East, Albert Defrance, described to Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon the visit that Delpuch made to Constantinople in December 1919 on his return journey from the South Caucasus. In particular, he emphasized the desire of the Georgians ‘to preserve their independence and resist any attempt by Russia to re-establish its authority in Georgia’. Delpuch ‘noted the Georgians’ desire to not be bound, from the religious point of view, to the Russian Orthodox Church and their inclination […] to draw close to the Holy See and thus to consolidate the political separation that they intended to maintain’. Furthermore, he — once again according to Pichon — intended to ‘propose to send an apostolic delegate to Tiflis’ who would have to ‘naturally be a bishop of French nationality’.19 What Delpuch’s impressions were in regard to the equilibrium in the Caucasus, and in particular towards the role that the European powers should play there, is reported in a ‘highly confidential’ document sent by François Charles-Roux, counselor at the French Embassy in Italy, to the Foreign Ministry of his country, which reported on the visit Delpuch paid him on his way back from the Caucasus. In respect to the new governments constituted as autonomous from Russia, Delpuch lamented the incapacity of the Entente to ‘profit from the opportunity offered to constitute barriers against the Bolshevik expansion’ through a ‘common and coherent policy’. In particular, ‘the French representation and activity in the Caucasus had been particularly weak’.20

18 AMAE, série Z–URSS, vol. 628, p. 72, report of Commander de Nonancourt, 8 December 1919. 19 AMAE, série Z–URSS, vol. 628, p. 90, Defrance to Pichon, 21 December 1919 (confidential). 20 AMAE, série Z–URSS, vol. 628, p. 260, Charles-Roux to the Foreign Minister, 11 February 1920 (highly confidential).

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4. Administration and Resistance From the point of view of ecclesiast life, as a result Delpuch’s mission led to the decision to institute an Apostolic Administration in Tiflis. The Holy See held that the times were ripe enough to re-establish the ancient Archiepiscopal See of Tiflis, with an ordinary bishop at its head, bearing the title ‘Apostolic Administrator of Georgia’. Under his jurisdiction, he would have all Catholics, regardless of their rite, but at the same time would be an apostolic visitor to the territories that, under Tsarist control, had belonged to the Caucasus Viceroyalty, along with the regions of Dagestan, Kuban and the Crimea.21 The documentation conserved in the Archive of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches permits us to understand who Benedict’s advisers concerning the Caucasus issue were in this phase. Above all, it was the Dutch Cardinal Willem van Rossum, Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith and author of a report on ‘the provisions to take for the better ecclesiastical and religious organization of the Caucasus regions’, who redesigned the Catholic presence in that area, partly adopting Delpuch’s proposals. Mgr Eduard von der Ropp, Bishop of Vilnius and later of Mohilev, was also consulted on these topics; he was the most influential of the Catholic prelates in the former Russian Empire. The opinion of von der Ropp, who had previously been Ordinary of Tiraspol, which had jurisdiction over Georgia, was held in great respect by the Holy See since it came from a person who was intimately familiar with the situation. It is reported by van Rossum that von der Ropp, during a stay in Rome, had formally declared that it would be ‘very advantageous to establish [now] a distinct diocese for Georgia separate from Russia’.22 Such was effectively the choice of the Holy See, which in July of 1920 nominated the Dominican Natale Gabriele Moriondo, former Bishop of Cuneo, Apostolic Administrator of Georgia and Apostolic Visitor to the Caucasus. It is clear that Benedict believed it so urgent to establish the presence of the Catholic Church in Tiflis that he obliged the Bishop to leave as quickly as possible.23 Moriondo arrived in the South Caucasus on 14 September,24 a year after Delpuch’s visit. In the meantime the political context had evolved. After the entry of the Red Army, in April 1920, the establishment of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was 21 ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 639/1, attachment to no. 4283/20, note of Papadopoulos on the mission of the Apostolic Vistor to the Caucasus, 19 August 1920. 22 ‘Molto opportuno costituire una diocesi distinta per la Georgia e separata dalla Russia’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, fasc. 18, p. 11, Ponenza of Cardinal van Rossum, ‘Relazione sui provvedimenti da prendere per la migliore organizzazione ecclesiastica e religiosa delle regioni del Caucaso, secondo la proposta del Rev.mo P. Antonio Delpuch, Visitatore Apostolico’, no. 4, May 1920. 23 ‘As already indicated to Your Grace, this Holy Congregation believes your presence in Tiflis is urgent, and the Holy Father, while appreciating the considerations of Your Grace, has confirmed that you should depart for the Caucasus from Italy within next August at the latest’ (‘Come già significai alla S. V., questa S. Congregazione ritiene urgente la sua presenza in Tiflis e il S. Padre, pur apprezzando le considerazioni di V. S., ha confermato che Ella debba partire dall’Italia per il Caucaso dentro [sic] il mese di agosto prossimo al più tardi’); ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 619, Marini to Moriondo, 14 July 1920. 24 ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 657, Moriondo to Marini, 25 September 1920.

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announced. The threat of a similar fate for Georgia was momentarily dissipated by the treaty of 7 May in which the Soviet government recognized Georgian independence.25 In November, two months after his arrival in Tiflis, Moriondo drafted a detailed report for Cardinal Marini in which all his worries about the course of the events were evident: ‘The situation, both political-economical and religious, in the region to which the Sacred Congregation has sent me has totally changed from that which was described to Your Eminence last year by the Apostolic Visitor’. Moriondo could report only on Georgia because the difficult political conditions prevented him from visiting the other regions subject to his jurisdiction: ‘The boarder with Azerbaijan is closed by the Bolshevik occupation, as is that of Dagestan and Kuban. The Crimea is wracked by hunger because of the ever-raging war between the army of Wrangel and the Bolsheviks’.26 In regard to the government of Georgia, Moriondo considered it ‘anything but good and far from obtaining the welfare of the nation’; however, it was ‘strong because [it had] with it a large parliamentary majority and, despite the weak opposition that [had begun] to contest it’, it might govern for a long time. There was, however, ‘the Bolshevik peril that threaten[ed] the nation from the east and the south’.27 The view that Moriondo had of the context in which he found himself working was totally negative. He had not received an enthusiastic welcome from the Georgian government, unlike the Apostolic Visitor the year before, when ‘the Republic of Georgia, having a very controversial existence and not yet having been recognized by the nations, was begging for support to consolidate its position’. Now that the Georgian government felt strong and saw itself ‘recognized by all the nations in Europe’, it was no longer interested in the support of the Vatican. Even the impressions he took away from the meetings with Leonid and the members of the clergy were far from positive: ‘I do not know whether it is because of the changes that have taken place or due to other causes, but I note that no serious intention, nor credible probability, currently exists, on the part either of the people or of the Orthodox clergy, to become united with the Roman Church’.28 He concluded: ‘I think that the only option would be for 25 Sbornik dejstvujuščich dogovorov, soglašenij i konvencij, zaključënnych R. S. F. S. R. s inostrannymi gosudarstvami, vypusk I. Dejstvujuščie dogovory, soglašenija i konvencii, vstupivšie v silu po 1-oe janvarja 1921 goda [Collection of treatises, agreements, and understandings in force, stipulated by RSFSR with foreign nations, Part 1: Treatises, agreements and understandings in force, active before 1 January 1921], 2nd edn (Petrograd: n. pub., 1922), pp. 27–34. 26 ‘La situazione, tanto politico-economica che religiosa, della regione, in cui la S. Congregazione m’inviò, è totalmente mutata da quanto fu descritta all’E. V. nello scorso anno dal visitatore apostolico’; ‘la frontiera dell’Azerbedjian [sic] è chiusa dall’occupazione bolscevica, come pure quelle del Daghestan e del Kuban. La Crimea è in preda alla fame, per la guerra sempre imperversante fra l’armata di Wrangel e i Bolscevichi’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, ff. 670–71, Moriondo to Marini, 12 November 1920. 27 ‘Tutt’altro che buono e ben lontano di procurare il benessere della nazione’; ‘forte, perché ha con se [sic] una grande maggioranza parlamentare e, nonostante la debole opposizione che incomincia ad avversarlo’; ‘il pericolo bolscevico che minaccia la nazione all’est e al sud’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, ff. 670–71, Moriondo to Marini, 12 November 1920. 28 ‘Io non so se per cambiamenti avvenuti o per altre cause, constato che nessun’intenzione seria, né probabilità credibile esiste attualmente, sia nel popolo che nel clero ortodosso, di unirsi alla Chiesa Romana’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 677.

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me to return and wait for a more opportune time to accomplish the work that the Sacred Congregation has in mind to carry out in these regions’.29 In such a context, Moriondo believed that it was inopportune to send Jesuit missionaries to carry out pastoral activity in Georgia. Effectively, a small group of the Society of Jesus, three priests and one layman, had been designated since May 1920 for the mission in Georgia.30 In November, while the Apostolic Administrator was writing his alarming report, the four were received in a special audience by Benedict. They left for the Caucasus at the beginning of the following year but would never reach Tiflis. From Constantinople, where they made a stop, two of them returned directly to Rome while the other two remained in the Ottoman capital to tend to Russian emigrants. Included in Moriondo’s report was a letter in which the Apostolic Administrator explicitly criticized the choices of the Holy See in the Caucasus, saying that he was ‘persuaded’ that to have re-established the Episcopal See of Tiflis and to have sent a bishop with the title of Apostolic Administrator was ‘a move that was not well prepared and premature, inspired by pleasant hopes lacking solid foundations’. If the Congregation had thought his presence necessary in the Caucasus despite the circumstances, he was not sure, however, that he could stay.31 The position of Benedict in this regard was, on the contrary, that resistance was necessary, as Marini related: ‘All that you told me I also shared with the Holy Father, but while the Holy Father has expressed words of regret about the material and moral difficulties that Your Grace has encountered, he expressed at the same time the opinion that for various reasons you should remain in Tiflis’.32 Moriondo anxiously observed the course of events, without deluding himself about the outcome of the advance of the Red Army towards Georgia. The fatal change in the precarious balance of the region was brought about by the Soviet intervention in the Armenian affairs and the announcement of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic on 2 December 1920.33 This act, which marked the end of the strategy of prudence advocated by Lenin in the preceding months, was to have direct repercussions on the destiny of the Georgian Republic, which at this point found itself surrounded by the Soviet power. A few days after the entry of the Red Army into Armenia, Moriondo wrote of the ‘complete success of the Bolshevik government of Moscow’, by then ‘owner of 29 ‘Io penso che l’unico partito a scegliere sia quello di ritornarmene e attendere tempo più propizio al compimento dell’opera che la S. Congregazione ha in animo di svolgere in queste regioni’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 681. 30 ACO, rubr. 106, b. 3, f. 20, the Secretary General of the Society of Jesus Pietro Tacchi Venturi to Isaias Papadopoulos, 4 June 1920. 31 ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 685, Moriondo to Marini, 12 November 1920. 32 ‘Di tutto quanto Ella mi ha riferito ho reso consapevole anche il S. Padre, ma mentre S. S. ha avuto parole di rincrescimento per le difficoltà materiali e morali dalla S. V. incontrate, ha espresso in pari tempo il parere che Ella per diverse considerazioni debba rimanere in Tiflis’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 687, Marini to Moriondo, 15 December 1920. 33 Firuz Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917–1921) (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), pp. 286–93.

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all Southern Russia up to the old borders with Asia Minor’. The Republic of Georgia would ‘escape the common fate’ with difficulty: ‘The competent and well-informed believe that this will certainly happen; they only disagree about the date’. It was common opinion — he referred to the Holy See — that the Caucasus would return ‘under the dominion of a Russian regime’. He also asked: ‘When these things happen, what can I continue to do in these regions? […] Under a Bolshevik regime my stay will certainly be even more difficult, if it does not even become dangerous’.34 The correspondence between Moriondo and Marini is pervaded by a note of drama concerning the shape taken by the events. At the same time, however, the tenacity of Benedict stands out. He did not want to deprive these peoples of a strong pastoral presence at a time of grave difficulty. The Catholics of the various rites in Georgia and the Caucasus could not be ‘abandoned’ by their Bishop, ‘the only authoritative and capable person’ that could ‘represent and help’ them.35 It was necessary to remain in the region for as long as possible. If in the aftermath of the fall of Tsarism, the Pope had thought it necessary to help the new nations in the Caucasus, after the affirmation of Soviet power, the Vatican position was that of resistance and maintaining positions already conquered, chiefly for pastoral reasons rather than diplomatic ones. In reality, the events went in the opposite direction. Moriondo would leave Tiflis together with the foreign delegation at the beginning of March 1921, after the Red Army’s entry into Georgia on 25 February, completing the reconquest of the territories of the Caucasus that had escaped the control of Russia with the Revolution.36 The departure of the Apostolic Administrator marked the end of the most intense season of relations between the Holy See and the South Caucasus, which Pope Benedict XV had so strongly desired, despite every impediment and obstacle.

Bibliography Afanasyan, Serge, L’Arménie, l’Azerbaïdjan et la Géorgie: de l’indépendance à l’instauration du pouvoir soviétique (1917–1923) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1981) Ferrari, Aldo, Breve storia del Caucaso (Rome: Carocci, 2007) Jones, Stephen, ‘The Establishment of Soviet Power in Transcaucasia: The Case of Georgia 1921–1928’, Soviet Studies, 4 (1988), pp. 618–39

34 ‘Pieno successo del governo bolscevico di Mosca’; ‘padrone di tutta la Russia del sud, fino all’antico confine dell’Asia Minore’; ‘sfuggire alla sorte comune’; ‘le persone competenti e ben informate ritengono ciò come certo, solo dissentono sulla data’; ‘sotto il dominio di un regime russo’; ‘Quando simili fatti avvengano, che potrò io fare ancora in queste regioni? […] Sotto un regime bolscevico sarà certo più difficile ancora la mia permanenza, se pure non diverrà pericolosa’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, ff. 711–12, Moriondo to Marini, 18 December 1920. 35 ‘Abbandonati’; ‘l’unica persona autorevole e capace’; ‘rappresentare e assistere’; ACO, rubr. 106, b. 4, f. 715, Marini to Moriondo, 28 February 1921. 36 See Stephen Jones, ‘The Establishment of Soviet Power in Transcaucasia: The Case of Georgia 1921–1928’, Soviet Studies, 4 (1988), pp. 618–39.

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Kazemzadeh, Firuz, The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917–1921) (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951) Merlo, Simona, ‘La questione georgiana al concilio di Mosca’, Cristianesimo nella storia, 28, 2 (2007), pp. 285–321 Merlo, Simona, Russia e Georgia: ortodossia, dinamiche imperiali e identità nazionale (1801–1991) (Milan: Guerini, 2010) Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Poggi, Vincenzo, ‘P. Antoine Delpuch, Visitatore in Transcaucasia (1919)’, Studi sull’Oriente cristiano, 5 (2001), pp. 96–103 Sbornik dejstvujuščich dogovorov, soglašenij i konvencij, zaključënnych R. S. F. S. R. s inostrannymi gosudarstvami, vypusk I. Dejstvujuščie dogovory, soglašenija i konvencii, vstupivšie v silu po 1-oe janvarja 1921 goda [Collection of treatises, agreements, and understandings in force, stipulated by RSFSR with foreign nations, Part 1: Treatises, agreements and understandings in force, active before 1 January 1921], 2nd edn (Petrograd: n. pub., 1922)

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The Other European Nations

Francesco Ferrari

Benedict XV, the Habsburg Empire and the First Republic of Austria

The pontificate of Benedict XV occurred at a crucial moment in the history of Central Europe because the Pope had to come to terms with the definitive end to the secular Habsburg monarchy and the foundation of the First Republic of Austria. The relationship between Benedict XV and the Austro-Hungarian Empire has been the subject of important studies, beginning with the pioneering work of Friedrich Engel-Janosi, presented at the Spoleto congress of 1962.1 In the last fifty years, Giorgio Rumi and Antonio Scottà2 have further contributed to the topic. After the meeting in Spoleto, there were two other important conferences, in Portogruaro–Bibione in 2000 and in Rome in 2014, in which Scottà and Andreas Gottsmann presented innovative research on the relationship between Benedict XV and the declining Habsburg Empire.3 Italian historical studies have devoted less attention to the contacts between the Pope and the First Republic of Austria, although Luca Lecis has recently begun to fill this gap.4





1 Friedrich Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 343–57. 2 Giorgio Rumi, ‘Austria e Santa Sede: da Leone XIII a Benedetto XV, nella crisi dell’Impero’, in Storia religiosa dell’Austria, ed. by Ferdinando Citterio and Luciano Vaccaro (Milan: Centro Ambrosiano, 1997), pp. 489–516 and Antonio Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009). 3 See Giorgio Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni del Comando Supremo italiano dei dispacci telegrafici tra Benedetto XV e Carlo I d’Asburgo’; Antonio Scottà, ‘Benedetto XV, la pace e la Conferenza di Parigi’; and Lothar Höbelt, ‘L’Austria e il trattato di Versailles’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 267–76, pp. 437–60 and pp. 461–76. For the Roman conference, see Andreas Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica e la Grande Guerra in Austria’, in ‘Inutile strage’: i cattolici e la Santa Sede nella Prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Lorenzo Botrugno (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2016), pp. 49–90, which presents the most important studies on the topic in German. I thank the author for the reference. 4 Luca Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”: la Santa Sede e la “difesa a oltranza” dell’indipendenza della Prima repubblica austriaca (1918–1938)’, Theologica & Historica: Annali della Pontificia Facoltà Teologica della Sardegna, 25 (2016), pp. 293–320.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1163–1179 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118825

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These contributions have made extensive use of the papers in the Vatican Secret Archives and, in particular, in the collections of the Secretariat of State and the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Rumi, on the other hand, has analysed the documentation in the Italian Central State Archive, especially the Sonnino Papers, and has demonstrated that the Italian government systematically intercepted the correspondence between the Pope and Emperor Karl I.5 This essay aims to summarize the principal themes examined in the Italian historical studies, paying particular attention to the situation within the Catholic Church in Austria-Hungary, the diplomatic relationship between Benedict XV and the Habsburg authorities and the relationship between the Pope and the First Republic of Austria.

1.

Austro-Hungarian Catholicism at War

When Giacomo Della Chiesa was elected pope, Austrian Catholicism was racked with many tensions that intensified in those dioceses composed of ethnic minorities. This was the case of Trent, for example, where Celestino Endrici had been bishop since 1903. He was openly critical of the religious choices of the imperial authorities who, from 1911, kept him under special surveillance.6 Once the war had begun, the Habsburg government became increasingly hostile towards him, and Endrici was forced to move to Vienna, where he was practically placed under house arrest. The situation was complicated by his obstinate refusal to resign; Endrici, however, knew that he had the support of Benedict XV and that of the Nuncio in Vienna.7 Nevertheless, the aversion of the imperial authorities grew, and he was sent to the monastery of Heiligenkreuz to break all ties with his community. At the beginning of 1918, Karl I wrote to the Pope that Endrici was considered an enemy of the state and a threat to the peace in the Trentino region and requested his removal.8 The response was negative9 because, as Gottsmann pointed out, ‘the Pope had the idea, perhaps counting on a future succession of Trentino to Italy, that after the war the issue would be solved’.10 The tensions between the Holy See and the imperial authorities, however, also concerned other border dioceses such as Ljubljana, where Bishop Anton Bonaventura



5 Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’. 6 For more about Endrici, see Celestino Endrici (1866–1940) vescovo di Trento: atti del convegno: Trento, 23 maggio 1991, ed. by Umberto Corsini (Trento: Centro di cultura A. Rosmini, 1992). On the relationship between him and Benedict XV, see Sergio Benvenuti, ‘Lettere del vescovo Celestino Endrici al papa Benedetto XV da Vienna e Heiligenkreuz (14 maggio 1916–1 agosto 1917)’, Studi trentini di scienze storiche, 70 (1991), pp. 163–224. 7 During the difficult months of his Viennese exile, ‘the Pope wrote to Endrici that he had complete faith in him and that he would never give in to the pressure from Vienna’ (‘il papa scrisse a Endrici di avere piena fiducia in lui e che mai avrebbe ceduto alle pressioni di Vienna’); Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 52. 8 Karl I to Benedict XV, 26 January 1918; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 52. 9 Benedict XV to Karl I, n.d.; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 52. 10 ‘Il papa era dell’avviso, forse riferendosi a una futura cessione del Trentino all’Italia, che dopo la fine della guerra si sarebbe risolta la questione’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 52.

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Jeglič was accused by the Viennese government of supporting the separatist movements and, in particular, the Slovene People’s Party, founded in 1918 to work for the creation of an independent southern Slav nation. The imperial authorities asked him many times to take up a stance against the movement, particularly after Jeglič signed the southern Slav declaration of May 1917, but the position of the Pope and the Nuncio was again inflexible in this regard.11 In other dioceses of the Empire, meanwhile, the Holy See witnessed an increase in tensions between various entities without being able to take any action. These were at times exacerbated by the inability of some bishops to bring about peace within their communities. For example, in Trieste, Bishop Andrej Karlin upset the Italians in the diocese, and in Pola, Bishop Trifone Pederzolli could not stop the emergence of conflicts among the various national groups. It was in Bohemia that the ethnic conflict within the Empire was the most serious because the Czech nationalist movement had many supporters in the clergy, which put even the Archbishop of Prague, Pavel Huyn of German origin, in grave difficulty. The ethnic tensions reached even the centre of Austro-Hungarian Catholicism or at least the Nunciature in Vienna, which was ‘the most important in the Catholic world’.12 It was responsible for a religion that, together with the monarchy, bureaucracy and the army, represented one of the four pillars of imperial unity. The Italian Raffaele Scapinelli di Leguigno was Nuncio from 1912, and his position was complicated by Italy’s declaration of war against Austria-Hungary. The relationship between Scapinelli di Leguigno and the Habsburg authorities became less cordial and, when the Nuncio was made a Cardinal in 1915, ‘even the act of granting the red biretta — which was the duty of the Emperor — revealed their diffidence towards the “Italian” Nuncio’.13 In 1916, the Pope decided to replace Scapinelli di Leguigno with Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo,14 who, however, became involved in a diplomatic incident when some of his private letters, in which he described the increased inflation in Vienna and the difficult economic situation of the Nunciature, were published in La Stampa on 10 January 1917.15 The article in the Turin paper provoked the anger of the Habsburg authorities and in particular that of the Emperor, who ‘from the beginning saw the Nuncio as persona non grata and refused to accept his credentials’.16 Valfrè di Bonzo’s removal was requested, but Secretary of State, Pietro Gasparri, turned down Vienna’s request and only admonished the Nuncio to act with prudence. He remained in his

11 On 6 January 1918, the Nuncio in Vienna wrote to Gasparri that Jeglič was an ‘excellent bishop’, who had been persecuted for years without cause by the political authorities; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 53. For more on the role of Jeglič, see the contribution by Igor Salmič in this volume. 12 ‘La più importante del mondo cattolico’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 110. 13 ‘Anche nell’atto della consegna della berretta cardinalizia — che era compito dell’imperatore — fu evidente la diffidenza verso il nunzio “italiano”’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 58. 14 For more on the close friendship between the Pope and Valfrè di Bonzo, see Benedict XV, Lettere ad un amico: Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Milan: NED, 1992). 15 ‘Un documento ufficiale delle tristi condizioni di vita in Austria’, La Stampa, 10 January 1917. 16 ‘Fin dall’inizio ritenne il nunzio persona non grata e si era rifiutato di accettare le sue credenziali’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 59.

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post without, however, maintaining the important role of mediator between the Holy See and the Habsburg authorities that Scapinelli di Leguigno had played. This was also because in the intensest of the war years the government turned to the military bishop, Emmerich Bjelik, with whom Valfrè di Bonzo was always on bad terms.17 The relationship between the Holy See and Austria-Hungary was thus complicated by the tensions caused by some bishops who were out of favour with the authorities, by ethnic conflicts that divided certain dioceses and by the difficulty of finding a nuncio who was acceptable to both Vienna and the Vatican. These, however, were not the only preoccupations Benedict XV had concerning the Habsburg Empire. The Austrian bishops, in fact, found it hard to follow the Pope’s directions regarding peace and the need not to become involved in any extreme nationalism. Gottsmann argues that the bishops in the region could not distance themselves from the progressive militarization of Austrian society and thus, particularly through youth organizations, contributed to ‘the establishment in Austria […] of a “culture of violence” that resulted in the Dollfuss dictatorship’.18 The episcopacy was not prepared to welcome the Pope’s peace message, expressed with authority in an article entitled ‘La Chiesa e i suoi ministri nelle amarezze dell’ora presente’ (‘The Church and its Ministers in the Bitterness of the Present Hour’) published in L’Osservatore Romano on 8 October 1914.19 Some bishops already disregarded the directions of the Pope even in the early months of the war. For example, on 18 January 1915, the Archbishop of Gorizia, Franz Borgia Sedej, wrote: The hatred of Russia for the Catholic Church […] wants to weaken and destroy Catholic Austria: thus weakened and destroyed, it hopes to eradicate the people’s Catholic faith and draw them into its deplorable schism. Thus, it appears that our war […] is a war for the preservation of our faith, of the Catholic religion.20

17 Valfrè di Bonzo complained that Bjelik wanted to limit the Nunciature to being a ‘simple communications office’ (‘semplice ufficio di trasmissione’); Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 31 December 1917; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 262. Among the other reasons that the Nunciature under the direction of Valfrè di Bonzo did not play a central role in the relations between the Holy See and the imperial authorities was the fact that many of these contacts were made in Switzerland (where the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See had taken refuge) and at the Nunciature of Munich (because Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli took care of relations between the Vatican and the Central Powers). Beyond that, according to Valfrè di Bonzo, his role as mediator was restricted by the Habsburg Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin, who, like most of the government, feared the influence of the Church over Karl I; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 59. 18 ‘Allo stabilirsi in Austria […] di una “cultura della violenza” che sfociò nella dittatura di Dollfuss’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 72. 19 ‘La Chiesa e i suoi ministri nelle amarezze dell’ora presente’, L’Osservatore Romano, 8 October 1914. The article is not signed, but ‘it is not difficult to see that it is by Benedict XV, and in any case the diary of Baron Monti confirms it’ (‘non è difficile capire che è di Benedetto XV, e comunque nel diario del barone Monti se ne ha la certificazione’); Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 439. 20 ‘L’odio della Russia contro la Chiesa cattolica […] vorrebbe indebolire e annientare la cattolica Austria: indebolita e annientata la quale, spera di sradicare dai popoli la fede Cattolica e tirarli al suo sciagurato scisma. Da ciò apparisce che la guerra nostra […] è una guerra per la conservazione della nostra fede, della religione cattolica’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 62.

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Sedej’s belligerent tones were not those of a minority of the Austro-Hungarian bishops but were rather shared throughout the Austrian bishops’ conference, which since 1848 had united the bishops of the German-speaking dioceses in the Empire. In 1916, the bishops’ conference entrusted Bishop Johannes Maria Gföllner of Linz with writing a pastoral letter on the war. In the text, he affirmed the need for the war, interpreting it as a legitimate self-defence of Austria-Hungary and a great purification, even going so far as to write that ‘from the sea of blood and tears a new Austria will rise, stronger and rejuvenated’.21 The person who had the greatest difficulty in following the papal directives was the most important ordinary in the region, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Friedrich Gustav Piffl,22 who wrote several articles during the war that were published in one of the most important Austrian Catholic publications, the Wiener Diözesanblatt. On 28 October 1914, for example, he invited Catholics to ‘fight for God, for the Emperor and for the nation!’.23 On 14 November, he added the necessity of creating an ‘army of the faithful’24 that, through pilgrimages, processions and prayers for victory, would defend religious liberty, which was threatened in regions such as Galicia. The bimonthly publication adopted this patriotic stance and also tried to weaken the import of the Pope’s message. For example, in its first issue of 1915,25 it printed the full text of Benedict XV’s Ad beatissimi encyclical ‘in Latin, thus making it incomprehensible to the majority of its readers’.26 ‘While the Pope spoke of peace’, Gottsmann writes, ‘the representatives of the Austrian Church encouraged prayers for victory and for the nation’. One can hence say that ‘the terrible spectre of war that loomed everywhere — of which the Pope spoke in his encyclical — [found] its true home in Austria’.27 Piffl continued to rely on martial language, even using it in his Lenten pastoral letter of 1915, praising Austria’s victims who, by setting themselves against the ‘greed and hunger for power of the enemy’,28 had died for a just cause. The Pope’s increasing activity seeking to bring about an end to the war obliged the Viennese periodical to find a difficult balance between the Pope’s message and the belligerent words of the Austrian bishops. This can be seen in its April 1915 issue, which tried to link the words of Benedict XV’s call for peace with the victory procession in

21 ‘Dal mare di sangue e lacrime sorgerà una nuova Austria, più forte, ringiovanita’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 72. 22 Piffl has left us an interesting testimony to the election of Della Chiesa: see Maximilian Liebmann, ‘Les conclaves de Benoît XV et de Pie XI: notes du cardinal Piffl’, La revue nouvelle, 38, 7–8 (1963), pp. 34–52. 23 ‘A combattere per Dio, per l’imperatore e per la patria!’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 79. 24 ‘Esercito di fedeli’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 80. 25 Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 80. 26 ‘In latino, risultando così incomprensibile alla maggior parte dei lettori’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 80. 27 ‘Mentre il papa lanciava l’idea della pace’; ‘i rappresentanti della Chiesa austriaca incitavano a pregare per la vittoria e per la patria’; ‘il tremendo fantasma della guerra che dominava ovunque — e di cui il papa aveva parlato nella sua enciclica — [trovò] la sua patria proprio in Austria’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 81. 28 ‘Avarizia e alla fame di potere del nemico’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 81.

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Vienna.29 Be that as it may, on 12 May Piffl published an article in which he praised the war and the defence of religion and nation.30 Italy’s declaration of war did not change the Austrian bishops’ attitude. This tendency was resilient, to the point that the German translation of the Dès le début exhortation ‘did not also manage to convince the Austrian episcopate’.31 In his Lenten pastoral letter of 1917,32 Piffl called on the faithful to mobilize in defence of the nation, stating that prolonging the war was not the fault of the Habsburgs but of the enemies that wanted to destroy Austria. The war was transformed into a struggle for the survival of the community, and Piffl appealed to all the Empire’s subjects to unite. Only in 1918, when the war was not going well for the Empire, did the Archbishop of Vienna decide to stop using martial language, opening his Lenten pastoral letter with the words ‘Domine da nobis pacem!’.33 The Cardinal continued by affirming that the reasons for the war were due to the fact that the peoples had lost the path of the Lord. He stressed that the Pope and the Emperor shared the same desire for peace and concluded saying that he had also prayed for an end to the war.

2. Benedict XV, the Habsburgs and the Viennese Government The diplomatic activity of the Pope in regard to Austria-Hungary thus took place within a religious and ecclesial context torn apart by profound conflicts which did not seem able to represent fully Benedict XV’s efforts for peace. It should be added that the relationship between the Habsburgs and the Holy See never saw the complete assimilation between the dynastic aims and the Vatican activity as a whole. After the Congress of Berlin, moreover, Bismarck’s great Germany was definitively established, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which survived particularly thanks to the action of the German Chancellor, was ‘relegated to a subordinate and quasi-satellite position in respect to the grand design established by Berlin’.34 For the Holy See, however, the Habsburg Empire was still a great Catholic power and the crisis with France and Italy reinforced its diplomatic ties to Vienna. The Austro-Hungarian government favourably welcomed the election of Benedict XV because — as Engel-Janosi writes — the new Pope promised not to pursue Pius X’s integralist policies and did not have the avowed nationalist attitude that the Habsburg leaders noticed in Cardinal Pietro Maffi of Pisa and Andrea Carlo Ferrari of Milan.35 From the beginning of the war, the Holy See tried to dissuade Italy from entering it, 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 82. Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 82. ‘Non riuscì a convincere nemmeno l’episcopato austriaco’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 84. Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 85. Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 86. Rumi, ‘Austria e Santa Sede’, p. 489. Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 343.

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initiating negotiations attempting to convince Vienna to renounce some territories, particularly Trentino. These attempts, which were also known by the most important figures in the Italian government,36 were somewhat coldly received by the AustroHungarian leadership, in particular because Emperor Franz Joseph was opposed to the idea.37 This did not discourage the Holy See: on 17 January 1915, Gasparri repeated the need for compromises with Rome,38 but the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Stephan Burián and the Hungarian Prime Minister István Tisza replied that they were opposed to any territorial concessions.39 To reinforce the negotiations and convince the German Empire to agree to the Vatican proposals, the Pope decided to send the Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Eugenio Pacelli, to Munich. He met Burián very soon, on 18 January, but the Minister stood firm in his position and said that the Vatican should clearly realize the difference between ‘thwarting a danger (which the Holy See could do) and choosing the means to tackle it (something that only the government could do)’.40 Since the situation could not be solved, Gasparri asked Piffl to try to change the Emperor’s mind, but this did not work, either. The German Ambassador to the Holy See, Bernhard von Bülow, provides a rather colourful account of the episode. According to him, once Franz Joseph had heard the Cardinal’s exposition of the Pope’s wishes, ‘his elderly face became flushed with anger. He seized the Cardinal by the arm and literally pushed him out of the door’.41 Regardless of this, the negotiations went ahead with German support, and on 6 March 1915 Germany suggested that Vienna should agree to the Italian requests in exchange for the district of Sosnowisz, which was under Germany’s control.42 The room for manoeuvre to keep Italy out of the war was shrinking and seemed to vanish on 4 May, when Italy secretly signed the Treaty of London. On 19 May, Benedict XV took a drastic step, personally telegraphing the Nuncio in Vienna asking him to communicate to the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister that ‘in the Holy Father’s opinion, a telegram from the Emperor to the King of Italy might still save

36 See, for example, Sidney Sonnino, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), II, p. 96. 37 Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 64. 38 Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 65. 39 Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 65. 40 ‘Contrastare un pericolo (cosa che poteva fare la S. Sede) e scegliere i mezzi per ovviarlo (cosa che compete solo al governo)’; Sonnino, Diario, II, p. 94. 41 ‘Il suo volto senile si coperse del rossore della collera. Afferrò il cardinale per un braccio e lo spinse letteralmente fuori dell’uscio’; Bernhard von Bülow, Memorie (1909–1920) (Milan: Mondadori, 1931), p. 233. According to Scottà, Franz Joseph ‘was a faithful son of the Church and conscientiously observed its rules, but the conscience of a prince was even stronger in him than his religious sentiment’ (‘era figlio fedele della Chiesa, della quale osservava coscienziosamente i precetti, ma la coscienza di principe era in lui più forte ancora del sentimento religioso’); Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 67. See also the detailed treatment of the episode in the contribution by Maurizio Cau in the first volume of this work. 42 Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 68.

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the situation’.43 The response, however, was once again negative, and on 20 May, Benedict XV and Gasparri were forced to admit that ‘the game was lost’.44 On 24 May, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, aligning itself with the Entente, which had promised, in the event of victory, that it should have Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and Dalmatia. The event signalled the failure of the main diplomatic effort of the Holy See in the first year of the war, during which, moreover, other papal initiatives were also rejected, such as the request for a Christmas truce in 1914, icily received by the European powers and rejected by the Tsar. In this case, Austria-Hungary also played an important role because the Habsburg authorities, like the German, English and Belgians, accepted the Pope’s proposal only after having assured themselves of Russia’s rejection of it.45 Italy’s entry into war directly threatened the papal residence, and Benedict increased his efforts to obtain peace and reduce the dramatic consequences of the war. In this phase, the relations between Benedict XV and Austria-Hungary became tenser because Austria-Hungary started bombing Italy without any concern for religious buildings, hitting the sanctuary of Loreto on 24 May, Venice on 11–12 August and Padua on 11 November. The Pope was highly troubled by the increase in violence between the two traditionally Catholic peoples and telegraphed the Nuncio in Vienna telling him to work with the Habsburg government in order to prevent serious damage to the religious and cultural patrimony of Italy. Scapinelli di Leguigno acted upon Benedict’s orders without concealing from him ‘the livid hatred against Italy among the AustroHungarian people and army’.46 Furthermore, the Nuncio warned Benedict XV that the Kingdom of Italy’s entry into war had forced the Vatican diplomatic corps in the Habsburg Empire to operate more cautiously because ‘in Austria there existed those who wanted to influence public opinion, convincing the people that the Pope was more favourable to Italy and wanted to promote its interests’.47 In the Vatican, the diplomatic repercussions of the hostility between Rome and Vienna became evident on 3 June 1915 when the Austrian and Bavarian ambassadors to the Holy See left their historic Roman offices in Palazzo Venezia and retreated to Switzerland. In the following year, the violence on the front between Italy and Austria reached perturbing levels, particularly after the Strafexpedition and the killing of various Italian irredentists, such as Cesare Battisti on 12 July 1916 and Nazario Sauro on 10 August 1916. On 25 August, the Italian government decided to confiscate Palazzo Venezia, and the move was also signed by Finance Minister Filippo Meda,

43 ‘A giudizio S. Padre un telegramma spontaneo ed esplicito imperatore al re d’Italia potrebbe ancora salvare situazione’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 28, f. 158, Benedetto XV to Scapinelli di Leguigno, 19 May 1915; quoted in Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 69. 44 ‘La partita era perduta’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 345. 45 Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 348. 46 ‘L’odio vivissimo contro l’Italia nel popolo e nell’esercito austro-ungarico’; Scapinelli di Leguigno to Gasparri, 4 June 1915; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 90. 47 ‘In Austria esisteva una corrente che cercava di farsi strada nell’opinione pubblica tendendo a far credere il papa come propenso verso l’Italia e intenzionato a favorirne gli interessi’; Benedetto XV to Scapinelli di Leguigno, 3 August 1915; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 90.

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a Catholic, ‘to the further embarrassment of the Holy See’.48 The act provoked the protest of the Central Powers, but the Pope did not immediately realize its severity, stating on 26 August that ‘the action […] cannot touch the Holy See. It concerns Austria-Hungary’.49 The governments of the Central Powers let the Pope know of their indignation at the occupation of their diplomatic offices, compelling Benedict XV to make an official complaint to the Italian government for what he called ‘an offence against the Holy See and a violation of the right of representation due to it’.50 The decision created discord even among his closest collaborators because Gasparri did not want the Vatican protest to become public knowledge. For this reason, immediately after sending the complaint, which even bore his name, he left Rome to spend fifteen days in Ussita in the province of Macerata. On the first of October, the Stefani press agency published the Holy See’s document, provoking the livid reaction of the Italian press and giving great satisfaction to the Habsburg government, which sent an official protest affirming that the Italian government’s action ‘violated both the prerogatives of His Holiness the Pope and the rights of Austria-Hungary’.51 On 21 November 1916, relations between the Holy See and Austria-Hungary entered a new phase because after a sixty-eight-year reign Franz Joseph died and was succeeded by Karl I of Austria (Karl IV of Hungary). He was endowed with profound religiosity and spirituality, had married the Italian Zita of Bourbon-Parma in 1911 and eventually had eight children with her. Pietro Borzomati has written that ‘his inner richness was far superior to that of Pius X’.52 In the interior structure of the Habsburg domain, furthermore, the Emperor did not have only a representative role but was ‘the person with the ultimate decision whom the Pope [could] approach, evoking the weight of traditional ties as well as the bonds of affection that the young couple [had] for some time established with the successor of Peter’.53 Rumi perceptively noted that, in his relationship to Karl I, the Pope assumed ‘a function similar to that of political-spiritual direction’.54 The Emperor immediately wrote a heartfelt message asking Benedict XV to contribute to the negotiations for the interruption of hostilities.55 He feared that ‘the 48 Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’, p. 267. 49 ‘Il fatto […] non può toccare la S. Sede. È cosa che riguarda l’Austria-Ungheria’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 155. 50 ‘Un’offesa verso la S. Sede e una lesione al diritto di rappresentanza che le compete’; Gasparri to Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, 27 August 1916; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 158. 51 ‘Viola in egual modo le prerogative di S. S. il papa come i diritti dell’Austria-Ungheria’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 164. 52 ‘La sua ricchezza interiore era superiore di gran lunga a quella dello stesso Pio X’; Pietro Borzomati, ‘La spiritualità dell’imperatore Carlo I d’Asburgo’, in La Conferenza di pace, ed. by Scottà, pp. 429–35 (p. 430). 53 ‘L’istanza ultima decisionale su cui il pontefice può intervenire facendo pesare la somma di legami tradizionali, e quel tanto di affettività che la giovane coppia ha da tempo costruito con quel successore di Pietro’; Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’, p. 269. 54 ‘Una funzione che si avvicina a una sorta di direzione politico-spirituale’; Rumi, ‘Austria e Santa Sede’, p. 505. 55 Gasparri responded that he ‘has done and will continue to do everything possible’ (‘avrebbe fatto e continuato a fare tutto il possibile’); Gasparri to Karl I, 12 December 1916; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 176.

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peace efforts would be only those of the socialists’ and wanted ‘the Holy Father, with a solemn pronouncement, to call for union and an end to hatred among the Catholics in the warring nations’.56 This position was shared by the powerful Habsburg Foreign Minister, Ottokar Czernin, who was persuaded that, given the pacifist aspirations of the socialists, ‘the only conservative power that is organized in a sufficiently energetic way and that has sufficient influence in almost all the nations is the Catholic Church’.57 In the meantime, the idea was forming in the Vatican ‘of a peace without either winners or losers, without either annexations or reparations’.58 The promoter of this conviction to the Central Powers was Pacelli, who met Karl I on 30 June in Kreuznach, near Koblenz. The Emperor said he was ready ‘to renounce all or part of Trentino, if there were some compensation in colonial territory’.59 Despite the repeated Vatican attempts at peace supported by Karl I, the fighting became increasingly brutal. In August 1917, the celebrated Note to the heads of the belligerent peoples Dès le début was published, in which the Pope used the famous expression ‘useless slaughter’. Contrary to Benedict’s wishes, the document was icily received by the political leaders of the nations involved in the war, including those of Austria-Hungary. The Habsburg Foreign Minister seemed primarily interested in delaying and blaming his enemies for being responsible for the failure of the proposal. When Czernin received the text, indeed, he sent an instruction to his colleagues stating that ‘what interests me more is to show Rome and the public our good will’.60 When the protests of Sofia and Constantinople against the pontifical action arrived in Vienna, Czernin added that his principal aim was ‘to blame the adversary with the responsibility for the — to my mind unavoidable — failure of the Pope’s action’.61 The Minister’s attitude seems to be quite similar to that of the majority of Austrians. The main national newspaper, the liberal Neue Freie Presse, strongly protested at the proposal to cede Trento and Trieste to Italy, and on 19 August, even the Catholic Reichpost wrote that this part of the document should not be interpreted as though the Pope wanted ‘to gratify the tendencies of brigands with gifts’.62 Things being what

56 ‘L’azione di pace rimanga ai socialisti’; ‘che il S. Padre, con un atto solenne, raccomandi la unione e la cessazione degli odi fra cattolici delle nazioni belligeranti’; Pacelli to Gasparri, 26 May 1917; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 195. Pacelli referred to a private comment made to him by Adam Sapieha, Archbishop of Kraków. 57 ‘L’unica potenza conservatrice, che sia organizzata in modo sufficientemente energico e che disponga di un adeguato influsso su quasi tutti gli Stati, è la Chiesa cattolica’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 348. 58 ‘L’idea di una pace senza vincitori né vinti, senza annessioni né riparazioni’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 197. 59 ‘A cedere tutto o parte del Trentino, dietro compenso di qualche territorio coloniale’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 204. 60 ‘Quello che più mi interessa è il mostrare a Roma e all’opinione pubblica la nostra buona volontà’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 349. 61 ‘Addossare all’avversario la responsabilità di un fallimento, a mio avviso inevitabile, dell’azione del papa’; the opinion given in quotation marks, like the preceding one, is by Czernin, but Engel-Janosi does not give the source: Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 349. 62 ‘Gratificare istinti briganteschi con doni’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 349.

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they were, the Emperor was also compelled to refuse Benedict XV’s request, writing on 4 October in cordial but firm terms that ‘his people, regardless of ethnicity, would be opposed to even the smallest territorial concession to Italy’.63 Karl, therefore, had had a change of mind with respect to what was communicated to the Holy See on 30 June. This was also because in the government and among the Austrian people the hostility against Italy was reaching its acme. The Reichpost, in fact, published a harsh article declaring: Never will the Catholics of Austria-Hungary and the Tyrol and Friuli peoples, faithful to God and the Emperor, permit that even a single strip of land be ceded to the Masonic kingdom, an enemy of God and of the Church. The thieving desire of the Savoys has nothing to do with the directives given by the Pope.64 The papal proposal was submerged in the hostility between the warring sides; however, it must be said that even the strongest supporter of the ideas of Benedict XV among the warring heads of state expressed the impossibility for his country to follow Rome’s suggestions. This discouraged the Pope, who confided to Karl I that it was for him ‘perhaps the most bitter hour of my life’,65 saying that he was aware that ‘neither I nor you count any longer; who does count is the President of the great American Republic’.66 On 24 October, the war seemed to turn in favour of the Habsburg Empire, which inflicted a serious defeat on Italy at Caporetto, and invaded Friuli and an extensive area in the Veneto region. It was one of the most difficult moments for the Pope and Italian Catholics, who had to act extremely cautiously because the Italian government severely punished anyone suspected of supporting the enemy or — as people said at the time — of ‘Austriacantismo’.67 After Caporetto, the interests and concerns of the Vatican diplomatic policy went in two directions. First, the Holy See tried to alleviate the sufferings of the people in the areas invaded. Concern increased because unsettling rumours circulated in Vatican circles that ‘hunger reigned to the point that even rats were sold on the black market’ in the prison camps.68 The Nuncio in Vienna expressed the Pope’s fears to the Emperor, who assured him that he had ordered the troops to refrain from stealing and harsh actions ‘unless severe measures were necessary’.69 Second, the

63 ‘I suoi popoli, senza distinzione di nazionalità, si opporrebbero alla più piccola concessione territoriale all’Italia’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 228. 64 ‘Giammai permetteranno i cattolici dell’Austria-Ungheria e la popolazione del Tirolo e del Friuli, fedele a Dio e all’imperatore, che anche un sol lembo di terreno venga ceduto al regno massone, nemico di Dio e della Chiesa. Le velleità brigantesche dei Savoia non hanno niente a che fare con le linee direttive stabilite dal papa’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 350. 65 ‘Forse l’ora più amara della vita’; Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, p. 437. 66 ‘Né io, né voi contiamo più nulla, quello che conta è il presidente della grande Repubblica americana’; Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’, p. 271. 67 Scottà, Papa Benedetto XV, pp. 239–52 (translator note: the word suggests being under the spell of Austria). 68 ‘Regnava la fame al punto che si vendevano al mercato nero persino i topi’; Gottsmann, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica’, p. 65. 69 ‘A meno che delle misure severe non si fossero rese necessarie’; Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’, p. 270.

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Holy See wanted to understand what Austria-Hungary intended to do with the newly conquered territory, holding that the annexation of these lands to the Empire would render any attempt to re-establish peace ‘impossible’.70 Valfrè di Bonzo reassured the Pope by telling him that the Emperor was not planning an annexation ‘but wanted to end irredentist aspirations once and for all by Italy’s definitive renunciation of such aspirations’.71 The autumn of 1917 was difficult for Italy and seemed splendid for Vienna. One year later, however, the Italian counteroffensive reversed the situation and put the very survival of the centuries-old Habsburg Empire at risk. Vienna had become ungovernable, and the risk of socialist uprisings perturbed the imperial authorities and the Holy See. On 4 July 1918, the Nuncio wrote of a worrisome campaign against the monarchy orchestrated by ‘Masonry and Judaism’ and that the situation was ‘rather serious and not without danger’.72 From the second half of 1918, the efforts of the Vatican concentrated on the desperate attempt to safeguard the existence of the Empire. On 10 October, the Pope sent to the Emperor an urgent request that disrespected all protocol, asking for a reform of the Habsburg state structure that would be open to a federal structure and substantial autonomy for Czechoslovaks and Yugoslavs.73 The efforts of the Holy See continued right up to the eve of armistice, when on 2 November Benedict XV telegraphed Vienna, informing the Emperor that he had convinced Great Britain to guarantee the survival of the Empire.74

3. Benedict XV and the First Republic of Austria Despite repeated Vatican attempts, the destiny of the Habsburg monarchy had been sealed. On 11 November, the imperial family left Vienna, and on the following day the German-Austrian Republic was declared an integral part of Germany.75 In these difficult years, in fact, a consistent sector of the Austrian people wanted to belong to the newly created German Republic. This desire was condemned by the victorious powers, and the Treaty of Versailles expressly prohibited the possibility of an Anschluss and required that the Viennese Republic change its name to Republic of Austria. The peace treaty brought about a clear reduction in the territory of the young republic, which Gasparri called ‘a crime. Those crazy men, Wilson and Poincaré, are the main 70 ‘Impossibile al papa il proseguimento di ogni tentativo per ristabilire la pace’; Engel-Janosi, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, p. 352. 71 ‘Ma che si vuole assolutamente finire una volta per sempre con le aspirazioni irredentiste mediante rinunzia da parte Italia a tali aspirazioni’; Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’, p. 270. 72 ‘Dalla massoneria e dal giudaismo’; ‘assai grave e non scevra da pericoli’; Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 4 July 1918; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 299. 73 Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’, p. 272. 74 Rumi, ‘Intercettazioni’, p. 273. 75 For a history of the First Austrian Republic, see Barbara Jelavich, Modern Austria: Empire and Republic (1800–1986) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 151–91. For an analysis of the role of Austrian Catholics in this period, see Alfred Diamant, I cattolici austriaci e la prima repubblica (1918–1934) (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1961).

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guilty parties’.76 The act had its consequences for the Viennese Nunciature as well; it lost its central role when it was downgraded and absorbed into those of the new nations which arose from the ashes of the Central Powers. The declaration of the Republic saw ‘the Holy See express prudent suspicion about the general state of the country even after it had received communications from the Austrian episcopate’.77 The bishops of the region, in fact, did not hesitate to state their unconditional loyalty to the new nation, but they very soon began to manifest their displeasure with the new structure. This was the case of the Apostolic Administrator of Innsbruck–Feldkirch, Sigismund Waitz, who accused the new institutions of being the ‘fruit of Freemasons’ works that sought to bring about an all-out fight against Christianity through the introduction of the Republic’.78 The Apostolic See knew that the factor that contributed most to political instability was the serious economic situation, which many Austrians sought to combat by being united with Germany. Union with Germany was ‘strongly opposed by the Vatican although the Holy See never [took] an official stance on the issue’79 because, as Gasparri wrote to the Nuncio in Paris, Bonaventura Cerretti: ‘Every time the Church puts itself in opposition to national feeling, even for reasons that seem harmless and just, the result at the end of the day has always been disastrous for the Church’.80 The Holy See opposed annexation to Germany, but was clear about the impossibility of a reconstruction of the monarchy. Benedict XV and his successor thus increased the frequency of their appeals to the European powers for them to support the Austrian nation, arguing that the religious condition of the country was in danger. The weakening of Austrian Catholicism caused concern because it might bring about increased support for the socialists, who were ‘allied’, as Valfrè di Bonzo wrote to Gasparri on 22 November 1918, ‘to Freemasonry and Judaism which want to gloss over the substantial profit they made during the war’.81 The national elections on 16 February 1919 resulted in gains for the social democrats who also won the administrative consultations that followed, rewarding them with a real triumph in Vienna. The results shocked the Nuncio, who expected ‘the socialization of property’ and the subsequent expulsion of ‘religious men and

76 ‘Un crimine. Quel pazzo di Wilson e Poincaré ne sono i principali colpevoli’; Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Il Vaticano fra fascismo e nazismo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973), p. 36, cited in Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 297. Ludwig von Pastor was Austrian Ambassador to the Holy See from 1920 to 1928. 77 ‘La S. Sede esprimere prudente diffidenza per il contesto generale del paese, anche a seguito delle comunicazioni a essa pervenute dall’episcopato austriaco’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 300. 78 ‘Frutto dell’opera di massoni che, con l’introduzione della Repubblica, cercano di condurre una lotta senza quartiere al cristianesimo’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 301. 79 ‘Fortemente osteggiata dal Vaticano, anche se la S. Sede non assume mai una posizione ufficiale al riguardo’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 301. 80 ‘Ogni qualvolta la Chiesa, per motivi che pur sembrano innocui e giusti, si pose in opposizione al sentimento nazionale, il risultato in fin dei conti fu sempre disastroso per essa’; Gasparri to Cerretti, 20 November 1921; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 301. 81 ‘Alleati alla massoneria e al giudaismo, che vuole far passare inosservati i lautissimi guadagni realizzati durante la guerra’; Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 22 November 1918; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 303.

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women from hospitals and schools’.82 He was ‘certain that the socialists would pass a series of unjust laws, justified more or less by financial needs, constructions for public hygiene, against the Church and against religious communities, their homes and their schools’.83 From 1920, the situation deteriorated, with a progressive and profound separation between Vienna and the rural parts of the country. The chargé d’affaires for the Nunciature, Giovanni Battista Ogno Serra, wrote: ‘We are experiencing a decisive moment for the existence of this country. The communist threat is not at vain term’. He called for the unity of Catholic forces to combat ‘the common enemy: the Judeo-socialist alliance’.84 Ogno Serra said, however, that the Holy See should not have too catastrophic an impression of the Austrian situation because the President of Austria, Karl Seitz, rejected, during a meeting, any possibility of a persecution of Catholics, stating that ‘today’s socialism, at least in Austria, no longer has reason to have an anti-clerical agenda’.85 Just a few months later, however, optimism gave way to preoccupation. The national elections of 1920 saw the ephemeral success of the Christian Social Party, which was not able to form an autonomous government. On 7 July, a weak executive was formed, supported by the Christian Social Party and Pan-Germanists. The solution was precarious and Ogno Serra wrote: The ministry reflects the true image of Austria: one cannot say whether and how long it will survive! […] If the winners do not seriously help Austria, it will surely die. It cannot survive on its own power. The winter, already well underway here, will be tremendous for this poor country.86 The relationships between Austria and the Holy See entered a new phase on 30 November 1920, when Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani was named Nuncio to Vienna. He received a memorandum on the relationships that he had to maintain with the government and on resolved issues. According to Lecis, the document reveals that ‘the importance of Austria to the Holy See [had] not only not changed, but rather [increased], given the strategic position of the Alpine country in the context of

82 ‘Socializzazione delle proprietà’; ‘religiose e dei religiosi dagli ospedali e dalle scuole’; Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 31 December 1918; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 305. 83 ‘Certo che bisognerà attendersi dai socialisti una serie di angherie mascherate più o meno da necessità finanziarie, edilizie igieniche, contro le Chiese e contro le comunità religiose, le loro case, le loro scuole’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 305. 84 ‘Traversiamo un momento decisivo per l’esistenza di questo paese. La minaccia comunista non è una vana parola’; ‘il nemico comune: il connubio giudaico-socialista’; Ogno Serra to Gasparri, 27 March 1920; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 306. 85 ‘Il socialismo d’oggi, in Austria almeno, non ha più ragione di avere nel suo programma l’anticlericalismo’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 310. 86 ‘Il ministero riflette la vera immagine dell’Austria: non si può dire se e quanto a lungo vivrà! […] Se i vincitori non aiutano seriamente l’Austria, a questa non rimane che morire. Con le sue proprie forze non può assolutamente tirare innanzi. L’inverno, qui già ben avanti, sarà temibile per questo disgraziato paese’; Ogno Serra to Gasparri, 21 November 1920; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 312.

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Central Europe’.87 According to him, ‘the Holy See [proved] to be one of the European powers that were most favourable to Austria, and it supported the path of political normalization, which it held to be the only solution for peace in Central Europe’.88 The memorandum set forth the central points of the mission of Marchetti Selvaggiani: ‘1. Church–state relationships; 2. organization of dioceses; 3. ecclesiastic property; 4. Catholic action; 5. Christian Social Party; 6. the Holy See’s interest in Austria’.89 The highest priority was to be given to the composition of a concordat and to fighting the loss of religiosity in the cities so that a ‘new Catholic Austria’ could be established.90 Benedict died in Rome on 22 January 1922, a few months before the beginning of a decade of Austrian politics dominated by the figure of Mgr Ignaz Seipel, which solved the serious economic problems of the country and led it, however, to unsettling circumstances, culminating in the Anschluss to Nazi Germany.

4. Conclusions On the whole, it can be said that in the period studied here the relations between the Holy See and Austria were intense, reinforced during the reign of Karl I, due in particular to the relationship of Benedict XV with the highly religious imperial family. This bond did not, however, prevent the Church and Empire from following different and sometimes divergent paths. Between 1914 and 1918, the Holy See often turned to Austria-Hungary to strengthen its peace negotiations, but the reasons for the conflict were numerous and were principally determined by the fact that the Habsburg authorities and the Church did not neglect their own interests, which were at times in conflict. For this reason, under Franz Joseph and Karl I, the Empire could not completely approve the papal peace proposals, thus weakening the Vatican’s initiative. For the same reason, the Holy See always refused to agree to the Viennese government’s requests to replace the bishops and nuncios who were not to its liking. The Empire and the Holy See were thus united by a profound, above-all religious bond, but during World War I, opposing interests prevented their cooperating in order to end the ‘useless slaughter’. The same ‘useless slaughter’ brought about the fall of the Habsburg monarchy, which deprived the Holy See of an important diplomatic reference point, although Benedict XV realized that the axis of Western political-economic power was abandoning

87 ‘L’interesse della S. Sede nei confronti dell’Austria non solo rimane immutato, ma anzi aumenta, data la strategica posizione del paese alpino nel contesto dell’Europa centrale’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 312. 88 ‘La S. Sede si dimostra fra le potenze europee più vicine alla giovane nazione austriaca e ne sostiene il difficile percorso verso la normalizzazione politica, ritenuta l’unica soluzione per la pacificazione dell’area mitteleuropea’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 313. 89 ‘1. Relazioni tra Chiesa e Stato; 2. Sistemazione delle diocesi; 3. Beni ecclesiastici; 4. Azione cattolica; 5. Partito cristiano-sociale; 6. Interessamento della S. Sede per l’Austria’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 314. 90 ‘Nuova Austria cattolica’; Lecis, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”’, p. 315.

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Europe to find its home across the Atlantic. In the immediate aftermath of the war, in any case, the bond between the Holy See and Austria was not weakened. The Vatican pursued its commitment to safeguard the religious unity of the nation, opposing the annexation of Austria to the German Republic, which had a Protestant majority. The concern remained constant and even increased from 1920, with the nomination of Marchetti Selvaggiani as Nuncio. The Holy See continued to support the small republic, which was considered fundamental to stabilizing Central Eastern Europe and the fate of Catholicism in that area. In 1922, the deaths, a few months apart from each other, of Benedict XV and Karl I ended an important phase in the relationships between the Holy See and Vienna, which then entered a new season dominated by the figures of Pius XI and Seipel.

Bibliography Benedict XV, Lettere ad un amico: Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Milan: NED, 1992) Benvenuti, Sergio, ‘Lettere del vescovo Celestino Endrici al papa Benedetto XV da Vienna e Heiligenkreuz (14 maggio 1916–1 agosto 1917)’, Studi trentini di scienze storiche, 70 (1991), pp. 163–224 Borzomati, Pietro, ‘La spiritualità dell’imperatore Carlo I d’Asburgo’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 429–35 Bülow, Bernhard von, Memorie (1909–1920) (Milan: Mondadori, 1931) Corsini, Umberto, ed., Celestino Endrici (1866–1940) vescovo di Trento: atti del convegno: Trento, 23 maggio 1991 (Trento: Centro di cultura A. Rosmini, 1992) Diamant, Alfred, I cattolici austriaci e la prima repubblica (1918–1934) (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1961) Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, ‘Benedetto XV e l’Austria’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 343–57 Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Il Vaticano fra fascismo e nazismo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973) Gottsmann, Andreas, ‘La Chiesa Cattolica e la Grande Guerra in Austria’, in ‘Inutile strage’: i cattolici e la Santa Sede nella Prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Lorenzo Botrugno (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2016), pp. 49–90 Höbelt, Lothar, ‘L’Austria e il trattato di Versailles’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 461–76 Jelavich, Barbara, Modern Austria: Empire and Republic (1800–1986) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Lecis, Luca, ‘“L’Austria sia l’Austria”: la Santa Sede e la “difesa a oltranza” dell’indipendenza della Prima repubblica austriaca (1918–1938)’, Theologica & Historica: Annali della Pontificia Facoltà Teologica della Sardegna, 25 (2016), pp. 293–320

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Liebmann, Maximilian, ‘Les conclaves de Benoît XV et de Pie XI: notes du cardinal Piffl’, La revue nouvelle, 38, 7–8 (1963), pp. 34–52 Rumi, Giorgio, ‘Austria e Santa Sede: da Leone XIII a Benedetto XV, nella crisi dell’Impero’, in Storia religiosa dell’Austria, ed. by Ferdinando Citterio and Luciano Vaccaro (Milan: Centro Ambrosiano, 1997), pp. 489–516 Rumi, Giorgio, ‘Intercettazioni del Comando Supremo italiano dei dispacci telegrafici tra Benedetto XV e Carlo I d’Asburgo’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 267–76 Scottà, Antonio, ‘Benedetto XV, la pace e la Conferenza di Parigi’, in La Conferenza di pace di Parigi fra ieri e domani (1919–1920): atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Portogruaro–Bibione, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2000), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), pp. 437–60 Scottà, Antonio, Papa Benedetto XV: la Chiesa, la Grande Guerra, la pace (1914–1922) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009) Sonnino, Sidney, Diario, ed. by Benjamin F. Brown and Pietro Pastorelli, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1972), II

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Benedict XV and the British Empire (1914–22)

1. Introduction On 11 December 1914, the Vatican Secretariat of State announced the agrément to the accreditation of Sir Henry Howard, KCB, KCMG as ‘His Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on a Special Mission to His Holiness the Pope’. By the end of the year, Sir Henry had been duly received in audience by both Pope Benedict XV and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, and the British Mission had been established in Palazzo Borghese. Howard’s mission was a remarkable turning point in the history of relations between the English/British monarchy and the papacy; the last regular ambassador from London had withdrawn in 1558 on the death of Mary I and the accession of her sister, Elizabeth. There had been various periods when certain kinds of diplomatic relations had been briefly maintained between London and Rome, such as when a papal nuncio was sent to the court of James II in 1685, and in 1884 when liberal Prime Minister Gladstone despatched another ‘special mission’ to inform the Vatican about the nationalist movement in Ireland.1 Similarly, in 1890, the conservative government of Lord Salisbury sent an Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, General Simmons, to discuss with the Secretariat of State various issues affecting Britain’s Mediterranean naval base and island colony, Malta.2 The Act of Settlement



1 Between 1858 and 1874, Sir Odo William Russell, father of a future Minister to the Holy See, Sir Odo Theophilus Russell, played the role of informal British representative in papal Rome: see Alec Randall, Vatican Assignment (London: Heinemann, 1956), p. 17. See also John F. Pollard, ‘AngloVatican Relations’, in Encyclopedia of the Vatican and the Papacy, ed. by Frank J. Coppa (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 28–31. 2 For an account of the mission, see AES, Inghilterra-Irlanda-Malta, Indice delle carte del Secondo periodo comprendente il Pontificato di S. S. Leone XIII (1878–1903), especially b. 120, fasc. 47, Malta 1889–90 Missione del Gen. John Lintorn Simmons, Inviato Straordinario della Regina Vittoria presso la S. Sede per regolare gli affari religiosi dell’isola di Malta. There is an interesting parallel with the American ‘Taft Mission’ to the Vatican following the annexation of Cuba and the Philippines by the USA: see John F. Pollard, ‘Leo XIII and the United States of America (1898–1903)’, in The Papacy in the New World Order: Vatican Diplomacy, Catholic Opinion and International Politics at the Time of Leo XIII (1878–1903), ed. by Vincent Viaene (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005), pp. 465–78.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1181–1199 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118826

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of 1701, the thriving ‘no-popery’ (anti-Catholic) sentiments in British society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and Britain’s support for the nationalist movement during the Risorgimento, the Italian Wars of Independence and Unification which resulted in the Pope’s loss of his territorial sovereignty over Rome and Central Italy, prevented the establishment of lasting, formal diplomatic relations. This essay will examine the circumstances surrounding the genesis of the British Mission to the Holy See during the early months of Benedict XV’s reign. It will consider the development of Benedict’s relations with Britain during war and peace, particularly matters affecting relations between the colonial authorities and the Roman Catholic Church in the various dominions, protectorates and colonies of the British Empire, and explain why what had clearly been intended as a temporary arrangement became a permanent part of the British foreign service.

2. The Genesis of the British Mission What had prompted the Foreign Office decision to establish relations with the Holy See? Fundamentally, it was the realization that, with the onset of World War I, the major Entente Powers, Britain, France and the Russian Empire, had virtually no influence within the walls of the Vatican. As Sir Rennell Rodd, British Ambassador to the Quirinale at the time, stressed in his memoirs, ‘The Foreign Office became convinced during the early months of the war that the success of German and Austro-Hungarian propaganda at the Holy See could result in serious political and moral consequences for the Allied cause’.3 According to Abbot Butler, a key role in the rapprochement between Britain and the Vatican was played by the English Benedictine scholar Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet, who was appointed to the Roman curia in 1907 to oversee the revision of the Vulgate and made a cardinal in May 1914.4 Gasquet was the major pro-Entente figure in the Roman curia and he





3 James Rennell Rodd, Social and Diplomatic Memoirs (1902–1919), 3 vols (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1922–25), III (1925), p. 11: the Central Powers had three envoys, those of Bavaria, Prussia and Austria-Hungary. According to William A. Renzi, ‘The Entente and the Vatican during the Period of Italian Neutrality’, The Historical Journal, 13, 3 (1970), pp. 491–508 (pp. 492–93), all three envoys were very efficient diplomats. 4 Gasquet was not the only major British advocate of the establishment of relations with the Holy See. Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, also had a hand in the affair. Norfolk, the leading Catholic peer (he was the Premier Duke and Earl Marshal) and a politician in his own right, exercised considerable influence in governmental circles and the choice of his kinsman, Henry Howard, was no accident. See John Martin Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk: A Quincentennial History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 288–89; [K. D. Reynolds,] ‘Howard, Henry Fitzalan, 15th Duke of Norfolk’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 63 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), XXVIII, pp. 382–83, which says that ‘throughout his life, Henry Duke of Norfolk was close to the Vatican and had dealings with successive popes. In 1887 he was sent by Queen Victoria as Special Envoy to Pope Leo XIII to reciprocate a visit by a papal envoy to her jubilee celebrations’.

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worked tirelessly on behalf of the British Mission after it was established.5 In a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, in November 1914, Gasquet wrote in much the same vein as Rennell Rodd: The Pope and his Secretary have been quite correct in their attitude, but the mentality of the clergy generally is astounding […] Germany and Austria and Bavaria have been at work for the past two years and more, and when the war started, they had the ground well-prepared. Prussia does not leave things to chance and had a good deal of the wisdom of the serpent.6 None of this was really ‘astounding’ at all. As Rennell Rodd understood only too well, the Vatican was, and is, in Italy, and was, and is, largely staffed by Italians.7 Since Italy’s accession to the Dual/Triple Alliance (later the Central Powers) of AustriaHungary and Germany in 1882, German influence on Italian politics, culture and society had been overwhelming. And the Austro-Hungarian Empire was regarded with particular favour in the Vatican as the last great Catholic power and as a bulwark against dreaded Russian Orthodoxy. On the other hand, the French had been considered suspect by the Vatican since the commencement of the anti-modernist witch-hunt in 1906 because many ‘modernists’, such as Loisy and Duchesne, were French. What was worse was that France had broken off diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1904. Papal relations with Russia were very strained due to the anti-Catholic policies of the Tsarist government in what are now the Baltic states, Poland and the Ukraine. Of the Entente Powers, only the ageing envoy of ‘plucky little Belgium’ enjoyed some credit within the walls of the Vatican. Gasquet’s fear that the Vatican might abandon its neutrality and support Austria-Hungary and Germany was shared in some sections of the Foreign Office.8 Whereas the major Central Powers, Austria-Hungary and Germany, were largely Catholic states, and their governments were not fundamentally hostile to the Catholic Church, the Entente Powers consisted of Protestant Britain, Orthodox Russia and anti-clerical France. A further anti-clerical power would be added to the equation with Italy’s entry into the war in May 1915. Therefore, the Foreign Office’s decision was one of pure Realpolitik, a move to counter the influence of the Central Powers in Rome. We have little evidence of pressure exerted by the Pope and Gasparri in support of the British decision, but the extent of Gasquet’s influence on the decision to send an envoy may be

5 John Duncan Gregory, On the Edge of Diplomacy: Rambles and Reflections (1902–1928) (London: Hutchinson, 1928), pp. 96–97. 6 As quoted in Shane Leslie, Cardinal Gasquet: A Memoir (London: Burns & Oates, 1953), p. 214. 7 It seems highly likely that Rennell Rodd was also a strong advocate of the British Mission. In his memoirs he wrote: ‘I had always advocated that the British Empire, which has so many Roman Catholic subjects, should have the means of securing due consideration for their interests by maintaining a diplomatic agent at a centre which has exceptional opportunities for influencing opinion’; Rennell Rodd, Social and Diplomatic, p. 215. 8 Anglo-Vatican Relations 1914–1939: Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See, ed. by Thomas E. Hachey (Boston: Hall, 1972), p. xvi.

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judged by the fact that the first two envoys, Sir Henry Howard (1914–16) and Count John de Salis (1916–22), were both Catholics (as was J. Duncan Gregory, whom the Foreign Office appointed as secretary to the Mission).9 They were also both aristocrats, Howard being related to the dukes of Norfolk and Count de Salis an Anglo-Irish landowner whose title was originally granted by Francis I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Howard was plucked from retirement in Rome to serve his country, while de Salis had been British Envoy to the Kingdom of Montenegro. Gasquet hoped that their Catholicism would commend itself in the Vatican thereby facilitating their mission. It is difficult to assess whether this was truly the case, although Henry Howard was certainly at ease in Roman society, particularly among the ‘black’ aristocracy, i.e., those Roman aristocrats who remained loyal to the Pope after the Italian occupation of Rome in 1870. The Foreign Office did not share Gasquet’s opinion. In 1917, an internal Foreign Office memo stated: In future, it would be better to send a man who is not a Catholic. The British Minister should actually be someone of standing but should not be filled with uneasy awe of the Pope […]. Moreover, by sending a Protestant, we shall be emphasizing to the Vatican that the Mission is purely political, having nothing to do with religion.10 After Count de Salis’s retirement in 1922, he was indeed replaced by a Protestant, Sir Odo (Theophilus) Russell, with no objections from the Holy See.11 The British Mission was established in the teeth of opposition from the French and the Italians.12 The Italian Foreign Minister, the half-Anglican, half-Jewish, and totally anti-clerical Baron Sidney Sonnino, feared that the British link would reinforce the Pope’s diplomatic prestige and influence to Italy’s disadvantage: in the long term he was proved right.13 The Mission to the Vatican also inevitably aroused fierce opposition in Protestant circles at home.14 Indeed, the position of the British Mission was very precarious in the first few years of its existence, largely due to the hostility of Protestant pressure groups, especially those in Ulster. In a letter that Duncan Gregory wrote to Eugenio Pacelli, then Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, in August 1916, he apologized for the announcement of the

9 Agnes de Dreuzy, The Holy See and the Emergence of the Modern Middle East: Benedict XV’s Diplomacy in Greater Syria (1914–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), p. 33. 10 As quoted in Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. xvii. 11 NA, Foreign Office (hereafter FO), 608/173/58 political general, the Vatican at the Peace Conference, Ronald Graham to Hardinge, 21 March 1919, where he says he had had a conversation with Cerretti: Drummond had hinted to him that the Foreign Office wished to replace de Salis with a Protestant. Cerretti said they liked de Salis but would have no objection to a Protestant. 12 Italo Garzia, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981), pp. 17, 20; Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. xv, says that the Foreign Office was anxious to reassure Italy, in particular, that the Mission was only intended to last for the duration of the war. 13 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 68. 14 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, pp. xviii–xix.

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appointment of Howard’s successor, Count de Salis, before the announcement of the Pope’s acknowledgement of him: You are aware — as we have often talked about it — of the difficulties which we have to encounter from extreme Protestant quarters here in maintaining the British Mission to the Vatican. There is still a considerable amount of prejudice and we have to act very warily in the arrangements we make in regard to it.15 Again, in December 1919, Sir Samuel Hoare, a leading conservative politician, later Foreign Secretary, wrote to Gasquet saying that he had had to persuade a certain Colonel Guiness to speak in the House of Commons against ‘bigoted Ulstermen’ who were seeking to bring the British Mission to an end. He added that the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, ‘is still nervous of taking a final decision but that the general impression is that the Mission in some form will be continued’.16 On the other hand, officials of both the Mission and the Foreign Office were not averse to threatening to end relations with the Pope as a way of bringing pressure to bear on the Vatican and of supporting their various policies, particularly as far as Ireland was concerned. Thus Eyre Crowe, Permanent Undersecretary of State in the Foreign Office, in a letter to de Salis in December 1921, complaining about the alleged interference of Cardinal Mercier in the affairs of Ireland, warned that, ‘unless the Legation speaks more toughly to the Holy See on this issue, it will be difficult to justify its [the Mission’s] continuation’.17 Although it had been assumed that the Mission would last only for the duration of the war, and despite persistent, vociferous Protestant opposition, the Foreign Office continued to renew the Mission on an annual basis. It is significant in this regard that exactly the same name used for Sir Lintorn Simmon’s Mission in 1890 was used for this one. Only in 1926 was it decided to put the ‘Special Mission’ onto a more permanent basis, although the envoy could not be upgraded to ambassador, far less a nuncio received at the Court of St James, precisely owing to the fear of domestic political opposition. However, the future of the British mission to the Vatican was now more assured, its title being changed to ‘His Majesty’s Legation to the Holy See’, thereby making it a formal, permanent part of Britain’s foreign service.

3. The Early Years of the Mission Howard’s Mission to the Holy See did not last long. In 1916, he was allowed to return to the retirement from which he had been torn in 1914, but his replacement, Count de

15 AES, II periodo, Inghilterra, pos. 239, ff. 125–37, Irlanda 1917–22, Indipendenza d’Irlanda, Pacelli to Gregory, 12 December 1916. 16 AES, II periodo, Inghilterra, pos. 261, f. 144, Inghilterra 1919, Rappresentanza presso la S. Sede, Hoare to Gasquet, 16 December 1919. Hoare also wrote an article in favour of continuing British relations with the Holy See in the magazine New Europe, 18 September 1919; see also Randall, Vatican Assignment, p. 13. 17 AES, II periodo, pos. 239, ff. 125–37, Irlanda 1917–22, Indipendenza d’Irlanda, ff. 26–28, E. A. Crawe [sic] to de Salis, 15 December 1916.

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Salis, lasted much longer in the post — until shortly after Benedict XV died in 1922. Howard’s Secretary, Gregory, formed a poor impression of Vatican diplomacy, and of the Pope in particular, during his few months in Rome. In a report to the Foreign Office during his stay at the British Mission, he declared: The present pope is a decided mediocrity. He has the mentality of a parochial Italian who has hardly travelled at all and a tortuous method of conducting affairs which arises from years of office with a fifth-rate diplomacy (the Vatican). He is capable of neither rising to great heights nor of efficiently controlling the ordinary routine of his administration. He is without particular charm and bad tempered to a degree.18 The most positive thing that Gregory could say of Benedict was, ‘but I am convinced that he is not either temperamentally or politically pro-German’.19 There is ample evidence to refute most of these observations. Be that as it may, it should be noted that the reference to the Vatican being ‘a fifth-rate diplomacy’ concerns Della Chiesa’s experience in the Secretariat of State from the late 1880s to 1907 when, in the later years, under Pius X and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, the influence of Vatican diplomacy reached its nadir. It is significant that when Gregory published his memoirs at the end of the 1920s, his opinion of Benedict had mellowed.20 Count de Salis had formed a rather different view of the Vatican when he left after six years in his post. In his farewell report to the Foreign Office in 1922, he wrote of the papacy that it was ‘practically a first-class power possessing an organization throughout the world which is as complete in many ways as that of any great state’, and that it ‘brings to the discharge of its business the widest experience and the oldest traditions of Europe’.21 He also made the point that Howard had gone beyond merely using his time to defend to Benedict and his subordinates in the Secretariat of State Britain’s reasons for intervening in the war and its attitude towards related matters, as set out in the original brief for the British Mission: ‘[the Envoy shall] present the Pope with the motives which compelled His Majesty’s Government to intervene in the war and to inform him of the British attitude towards the various questions arising from the war’.22 As de Salis explained, ‘the scope of the mission was, therefore, in the first instance work in connection with the war, but very soon, and that before Sir Henry Howard’s retirement, it was occupied with many other matters’.23 Those matters essentially concerned the role and activity of the Catholic Church in the various dominions, protectorates and colonies of the British Empire, such as the Portuguese padroado, or right of presentation to certain bishoprics in areas of British India close

18 NA, FO, 371/3086, Gregory to Foreign Office, 30 November 1917 (confidential memorandum). 19 NA, FO, 371/3086, Gregory to Foreign Office, 30 November 1917 (confidential memorandum). 20 Gregory, On the Edge, pp. 88–89. 21 As quoted in Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 31. 22 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. viii. 23 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 30.

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to the Portuguese possession of Goa, especially Bombay.24 De Salis also cites the controversial language question in Québec.25 Language and education questions in various Canadian provinces would be recurrent issues during the pontificates of Benedict XV and his successor, Pius XI.26 A common theme that emerged during Benedict’s reign was the issue of episcopal and other high ecclesiastical appointments in Britain’s colonial territories. Like other imperial powers, Britain was anxious that the Christian missions, of whatever denomination, should help buttress the authority of colonial power. Thus the British took advantage of their new presence at the Vatican to bring pressure to bear on matters concerning the British Empire more broadly. They therefore lobbied for the appointment of an English-speaking bishop for Port Louis, Mauritius, a colony where French was still widely spoken thanks to its earlier possession by France.27 Again, in November 1915, Howard asked the Pope to appoint an Englishman to the Bishopric of Port-Victoria in the Seychelles, another bilingual colony, ‘someone with a thorough knowledge of English who would assist the Governor in his efforts to encourage the use of the English language and to inculcate a spirit of loyalty to the Throne’.28 The answer was fairly non-committal, the Vatican claiming, as it would in response to many requests of this type from the British government, that the scarcity of British Catholic priests made it extremely difficult to appoint qualified men to higher ecclesiastical positions in the British Empire.29

4. Britain and Benedict’s Peace Initiatives during World War I In the long term, the British Mission was a major coup for the Holy See, the crucially important milestone in its efforts to escape from the diplomatic isolation in which Pius X and Merry del Val had left the Vatican in 1914. On the eve of the outbreak of World War I, the Holy See enjoyed relations with only two major powers, AustriaHungary and Imperial Russia, with Prussia, a few European Catholic states such as Spain, Bavaria and Belgium and with a dwindling number of Latin American republics. It is no accident that in the most recent, authoritative analysis of the causes of World War I by Christopher Clark there is no mention of either Pius X, Merry del

24 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 30. 25 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 30. 26 John F. Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 208. The educational question was not new: see AES, I periodo, Inghilterra-Irlanda-Malta, pos. 161, fasc. 79–103, 162, 104 and 163, 106–07, Canada. All are concerned with the Manitoba schools question. 27 AES, II periodo, Africa-Asia-Oceania, pos. 18, fasc. 7, Africa, Inghilterra, Porto Luigi (Isole Mauritius), Provvista della Sede Sollecitazione del Governo inglese circa la nomina del nuovo vescovo. 28 NA, FO, 371/169966, report from de Salis, 12 November 1915; AES, III periodo, Inghilterra, pos. 272, fasc. 151, Australia 1920, Provvista di Victoria-Seychelles. See also AES, Africa-Asia-Oceania, pos. 223, fasc. 121, Egitto, Le Scuole Cattoliche in Egitto e la lingua inglese, Nota verbale del Ministro Inglese, n.d. 29 The British also lobbied about another appointment, that of the Vicar Apostolic of Egypt: see AES, Inghilterra, pos. 50, fasc. 32, Africa, Egitto 1917, Vicari Apostolici della Prefettura d’Egitto.

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Val, the papacy, the Holy See, the Vatican or even the Catholic Church…30 During the July crisis which led to the outbreak of war, the papacy was a passive, impotent bystander, quite unlike the situation in the run up to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.31 However, by the end of Benedict XV’s reign six years later, papal diplomacy had been reinvigorated, and the countries with which the Pope had ties had nearly doubled to twenty-eight, thanks to no small degree to the prestige accruing to Vatican diplomacy from the British connection. In the short term, however, the benefits to the Holy See of the British diplomatic mission did not seem very significant. As is well known, almost from the beginning of his reign, Benedict embarked upon a series of initiatives seeking to bring about peace among the warring powers, which were coupled with a campaign of humanitarian relief efforts by the Vatican.32 Benedict’s first peace initiative, his plea for a Christmas truce on the front lines, was rejected by London.33 Benedict’s chief peace-making efforts in early 1915 were devoted to preventing Italy’s entry into war against Austria-Hungary, but here again he failed. His efforts were not appreciated by the British, who were obviously working for precisely the opposite objective. In fact, in April 1915, Britain signed the Treaty of London, together with France and Russia, in order to bring Italy into the conflict on their side. One of the secret clauses in the Treaty (Article 15) excluded the possibility of the Pope’s representative participating in any peace conference, which was the Italian Foreign Minister’s way of ensuring that the Roman Question was not raised at an international meeting. At the back of Sonnino’s mind, no doubt, was the unfortunate precedent of Cardinal Secretary of State Ercole Consalvi’s presence at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which had resulted in the restoration of the Papal States.34 In his various attempts to persuade the British to consider opening peace negotiations with one or more of the Central Powers, Benedict was not assisted by the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Francis Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster. Although Scotland and Ireland both had their own episcopal hierarchies, as a cardinal and metropolitan in the British Empire’s capital, London, Bourne carried great weight in governmental circles as a kind of voice of British Catholics.35 Unlike his predecessors, Wiseman, Manning and Vaughan, Bourne was emphatically not ‘more papal than the Pope’, but rather very British, even English, in his sentiments, and although he was no less ‘Roman’ in his ecclesiology and mentality than his predecessors, he was, nevertheless, not entirely comfortable with

30 Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914 (London: Penguin, 2013). 31 Pollard, The Papacy, pp. 300–16. 32 John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 112–39. 33 Luigi Accattoli, ‘Natale 1914: respinto anche Benedetto XV’, Corriere della Sera, 2 April 1999. 34 Edward E. Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy (1769–1846) (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960), pp. 227–44. 35 Randall, Vatican Assignment, p. 16: ‘The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster was often seen at the Colonial Office discussing missionary affairs’.

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the policy decisions of the Holy See during the course of his tenure at Westminster.36 His first problem was the standpoint to be taken by British Catholics when faced with the adoption, on the part of Pope Benedict XV, of a position of impartiality and neutrality towards World War I that had broken out just a month before his election to the papal throne. English Catholics, like those in all the nations at war, were very supportive of their country’s cause.37 For example, Mercier, Primate of Belgium, was so ardent in his resistance to the German occupiers of his country that he was nearly imprisoned, and his behaviour was certainly an embarrassment to the Vatican’s policy of neutrality.38 Bourne was more circumspect, but he strongly backed the Entente against Germany and the other Central Powers, in particular, Britain’s war effort.39 The Tablet, a Catholic weekly which Bourne owned, reflected that position. The entry of the USA into World War I in April 1917 was greeted with dismay in the Vatican. Commenting on L’Osservatore Romano’s response, The Tablet declared rather patronizingly that ‘these are not easy matters for the Roman mind to grasp’.40 In February 1917, after a conciliatory speech by German Chancellor BethmannHollweg, Bourne, who was on a ‘business’ visit to the Vatican concerning the British military chaplaincies, passed on a blunt message to the Pope that ‘any action of the Holy See which sought to promote peace would be unwelcome to the British government’.41 This was not a good augury for Benedict’s most important peace-making initiative during the entire course of the war, that is to say, the Note of August 1917, in which the Pope set out seven fundamental proposals on which a peace negotiation should be based.42 The involvement of the British Minister in the papal initiative was restricted to conveying the Note to his government, which, in turn, conveyed it to the other Entente Powers.43 De Salis gave little or no encouragement to the Vatican in this particular peace effort but he was able to soothe the Pope’s injured reaction to the very negative, even violent, response of The Times and other British newspapers to the Peace Note.44

36 For a brief assessment of Bourne and his influence, see Michael J. Walsh, The Westminster Cardinals: The Past and the Future (London: Burns & Oates, 2008), pp. 84–109. 37 For a very interesting analysis of Benedict’s policy of impartiality and neutrality and the responses of British Catholics, especially Bourne, to it, see Charles R. Gallagher, ‘The Perils of Perception: British Catholics and Papal Neutrality (1914–1923)’, in The Papacy since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor, ed. by James Corkery and Thomas Worcester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 162–81. 38 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 95. 39 Gallagher, ‘The Perils’, p. 177. 40 ‘Rome: From Our Correspondent’, The Tablet, 27 April 1917, p. 441. 41 Conversation with Cardinal Gasparri, 13 February 1917; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), II, pp. 31–32. 42 Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. 43 NA, FO, 608/147/7, Peace Overtures by the Vatican in August 1917, pp. 387–88. 44 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 9.

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De Salis did, however, seek clarification concerning German intentions regarding Belgium on behalf of his government in an encounter with Gasparri. In his turn, the Cardinal Secretary of State informed de Salis that he would reply to the British request after he had consulted the German envoys.45 In the end, no German assurances about Belgium were forthcoming.46 It is very clear that any Vatican optimism concerning the possibility of a peace negotiation was unfounded. Pacelli, who as Nuncio in Bavaria had spent time encountering German military and civilian leaders, had overestimated the influence of the latter in relation to the real rulers of Germany, Marshal Hindenburg and General Ludendorff.47 However, had there been more genuine good will and flexibility on the part of the Germans, then the British Mission would undoubtedly have played a key role in any preparatory moves towards peace negotiations. Another area in which the Holy See sought the help of the British was the matter of humanitarian relief measures, such as the repatriation of POWs and food for starving civilian populations. For the POWs, and also interned or deported civilians, Benedict had set up a kind of missing persons’ bureau attached to the Secretariat of State, which, besides attempting to trace soldiers missing in action, also sought to reunite separated relatives and provide treatment for sick and wounded soldiers in Switzerland.48 The British made use of the helpful offices of the Vatican in their search for missing officers and men in Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.49 On the other hand, an area in which the Vatican obtained little satisfaction from the Foreign Office was the provision of food to starving civilian populations. Benedict sought to collaborate with operations intended to provide foodstuffs in a number of affected countries.50 When the Vatican asked Britain for permission to send a humanitarian relief convoy to Syria, the request was refused.51

5. The German Missions and the Versailles Peace Conference One of the casualties of World War I was the Christian missionary effort in Africa, Asia and Oceania. The Catholic missions were particularly badly affected by the decisions of Britain, France and Belgium to arrest and expel German missionaries operating in

45 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 10. 46 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey; it is noteworthy that at this juncture the French, in the form of their Ambassador to the Quirinale, Camille Barrère, took exception to this communication between Britain and the Vatican. 47 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, pp. 126–28. 48 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, pp. 112–16. 49 See for example, NA, FO 383/233, Gen Sir Francis Howard (brother of the British Minister) of 7 March 1916. This file, and subsequent files 383/205, 215, 224, 249 and 284, all contain correspondence over missing British soldiers or POWs or interned civilians whom the Vatican endeavoured to trace. 50 Pollard, The Unknown Pope, p. 115. 51 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1916–22, pos. 1148, fasc. 563, Hugh Gaisford (Secretary to the British Mission) to Gasparri, 11 October 1917.

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their colonial territories.52 The lack of a large body of British Catholic missionary clergy, despite the substantial contribution of Irish priests, meant that many Catholic missionaries in the British Empire were foreigners and there were several Germans. The archives of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs demonstrate that a great deal of time was occupied by the Secretariat of State urging the British to persuade colonial administrators in the field to release the interned missionaries in Africa, India, other parts of Asia, the islands in Oceania and even Australia.53 One of the most important collaborators of Benedict and Gasparri in the Secretariat of State was Mgr Bonaventura Cerretti, who was appointed Undersecretary of State in the place of Eugenio Pacelli after the latter had been posted to Bavaria as Nuncio in April 1917. Cerretti had considerable experience in Vatican diplomacy, first as a Secretary to the Apostolic Delegation in Mexico in 1904, then as auditor to the Delegation in Washington in 1906 and finally as the first Apostolic Delegate to Australia and New Zealand in 1914. He thus spoke fluent English. Cerretti’s first major mission as papal Undersecretary of State was to negotiate behind the scenes at the Versailles Peace Conference.54 Benedict had, needless to say, been excluded from the peacemakers’ deliberations and would later have many reservations and criticisms concerning their decisions, but for the moment the question of vital importance to the Church worldwide was the fate of the German missions, not only in the German colonies but also in the colonial territories of the victorious powers. At the outset, Cerretti’s mission seemed hopeless, given the intransigent position of the British, and to a lesser extent of the French, who wished to eliminate all German influences, including cultural and religious ones, from their existing colonies and those that they had acquired from Germany. The proposals before the Versailles Peace Conference which affected the German missions, Articles 122 and 438 of the draft Treaty, would have sanctioned the deportation of the German missionaries from all colonial territories and placed their property in the hands of councils of administration composed of Christians, in other words with no guarantee that those Christians would be of the same denomination as the missions themselves.55 Cerretti’s adroit diplomacy attempting to remedy this situation, conducted in difficulty behind the scenes, was aided by the fact that Britain was the only Allied

52 French, Italian and British missionaries in the Near and Middle East were similarly affected by the actions of the government of the Ottoman Empire; de Dreuzy, The Holy See, pp. 110–17. 53 See, for example, AES, Inghilterra, II periodo, Africa-Asia-Oceania, pos. 3 (German Pallottine fathers in Western Australia, 1916), 5 (German missionaries in East Africa, 1916–19), 39 (German missionaries in India, 1915–17), 42 (German Missionaries at Ras-el-Tin, Egypt, 1917); there are a total of 16 fascicoli regarding the fate of German missionaries in this section. 54 Vittorio De Marco, ‘L’intervento della Santa Sede a Versailles in favore delle missioni tedesche’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 65–82. 55 NA, FO 608/173/58 political general, the Vatican at the Peace Conference, Mr Gaisford, despatch no. 53 of June 2 1919 from Vatican, ‘Alleged Injury to the Interests of Catholic Missions under the Peace Treaty’, where he says that there had been an article in L’Osservatore Romano alleging that Articles 122 and 438 of the draft Treaty of Versailles would be seriously injurious to Catholic missions (‘all Catholic missions, whether as regards their personnel or their property […] are dependent on the Holy See’).

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power present at the conference which had relations with the Holy See. The Vatican used this as a lever in its efforts to obtain a modification of Article 438.56 In the end, Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, seconded by the efforts of Count de Salis in Rome, managed to persuade the Peace Conference to accept a modification of the Article to the effect that the trustees of the property of the missions would be composed of people of the same faith as the missions.57 Moreover, the Conference adopted a note drawn up by Balfour guaranteeing that the German missions would remain Catholic.58 The Vatican had obtained almost all it wanted, and it is not difficult to see how this could not have been achieved had there been no formal diplomatic link with Britain. Ironically, one of the major fruits of the experience of the Cerretti mission, and of the Vatican’s many negotiations with Britain, held to reinstate German missionaries in the territories of its empire, was to persuade Benedict and the Dutch Prefect of Propaganda Fide, Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum, that the age of empires was over, that the time had arrived for the Vatican to assert its diplomatic influence in defence of the missions whoever the colonial power was and to prepare for a post-colonial future by developing an indigenous clergy and episcopacy wherever possible in missionary territories. This was the thrust of his apostolic letter Maximum illud of November 1919, which heralded a veritable revolution in the Vatican’s missionary policy.59 Although Vatican diplomacy may have prevented the German missions from falling into the hands of Protestants, the Holy See remained unhappy about the policies of the British Colonial Office and the India Office towards the Church. In the same despatch of July 1919, Gaisford warned the Foreign Secretary: I have lately and before now drawn Your Lordship’s attention to the feeling which has been expressed in ecclesiastical circles by the supposed change of British policy in regard to the activities of the Catholic Church in the colonies. That feeling has now become more acute.60 Things do not seem to have changed much when Count de Salis finished his tour of duty in 1922. In his valedictory report, he showed an acute awareness of the importance of the Catholic missionary effort within the British Empire. Writing of the work of Cardinal van Rossum, de Salis complained: Some 60% of the students trained under him in Rome are British subjects, and an even larger proportion are destined to work under the British flag. Because of this, I have had reason to regret that suggestions and representations from Propaganda

56 De Marco, ‘L’intervento’, p. 77. 57 De Marco, ‘L’intervento’, p. 76. 58 De Marco, ‘L’intervento’. 59 Benedict XV, Maximum illud, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 2, 13 (1919), pp. 440–44 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 60 NA, FO, 608/173/58 political general, the Vatican at the Peace Conference, p. 67, Gaisford to Foreign Secretary, n.d.

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have rarely found favourable consideration either in the India Office or Colonial Office, and that in the strained situation thus created, it was rather difficult for me to carry out the wishes of HMG in matters in the Near and Middle East and elsewhere which were of consequence to us.61

6. The Irish Question Long before Benedict came to the papal throne, the Vatican had been forced to devote its attention to the Irish Question. As we have already seen, one of the formal contacts between Britain and the Vatican in the late nineteenth century had been precisely the mission sent by Gladstone to explain his policies in Ireland.62 The Vatican under Leo XIII and Pius X was naturally wary of being dragged into the Irish imbroglio. Under Leo, nevertheless, it issued a letter to the Irish bishops which condemned much agitation on the part of those protesting the iniquities of British rule, largely on the grounds that it believed the agitators were communists, causing much resulting damage to the nationalist cause.63 Ireland suddenly came back into the picture with a bang thanks to the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, the subsequent bloody war of independence conducted by Irish nationalists and the even bloodier campaign of repression carried out by British forces, including the Black and Tans, between 1916 and 1921. The Secretariat of State was consequently very preoccupied with the problem of Ireland and with how to respond to it. The minutes of the two sessions of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs that were devoted to Ireland suggest that the Vatican was very well informed about events there by widely different sources.64 In August 1916, the Secretary to the British Mission telegraphed to the Foreign Office that: The Cardinal Secretary of State has sent a Note stating that the Holy See learns on reliable authority that execution of Casement would cause profound discontent among Irish in America. He submits that commutation of capital sentence would be ‘act of high policy’.65 Sir Roger Casement was a British diplomat of Irish birth who had engaged in gun running on behalf of the nationalist cause with the Germans and in consequence had been sentenced to death for treason. The British ignored the papal plea. The minutes also confirm that opinion in the Vatican on how to respond was profoundly divided,

61 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 16. 62 AES, Inghilterra-Irlanda-Malta, Indice delle carte del Secondo periodo, pos. 102, fasc. 44, Inghilterra Irlanda 1886 and 124 48 Irlanda 1890. 63 Dermot Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics (1919–1939) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 9–10, 13. 64 AES, Indice delle Sessioni della Congregazione, 1814–1939, 1919, pos. 1218, 13 May 1919, Irlanda and 1921, pos. 1238, 13.1, Irlanda, Situazione politica. 65 NA, FO 608/147, Home Office, 144/1637, Sir Roger Casement, Decypher Mr Gaisford (Rome) (Vatican), 1 August 1916.

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with cardinals Gasquet, De Lai and Merry del Val leading those supportive of the stance of the British government.66 The Irish Question was, for the British, probably the most important issue on which they sought to influence the Vatican, after that of the war itself. Count de Salis was heavily engaged in the Question as soon as he arrived in Rome. This Anglo-Irish Catholic landlord was certainly a natural supporter of the British position, but the earlier quotation from Eyre Crowe suggests that his dealings with the Secretariat of State on the Irish Question did not entirely satisfy his superiors in the Foreign Office. He was very concerned about the activities of the representatives which the shadow Sinn Féin government sent to Rome to lobby on its behalf in 1921, the Speaker of Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament), Seán T. O’Kelly, and his companion, Oliver St John Gogarty, particularly in 1920.67 Yet he seems to have been remarkably sanguine about the much longer term, efficacious influence which the Rector of the Irish College in Rome, Mgr John Hagan, exercised in the Vatican, Rome, and more generally in Italy, on behalf of the Irish nationalist cause.68 A particular problem with which de Salis had to deal was the demand by William Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia, that Daniel Mannix, Archbishop of Melbourne and a late convert to the Irish cause, be removed from his post and ‘retired’ to Rome. With the zeal typical of a convert, Mannix had preached ‘with very violent language’ against the conscription bill that Hughes was trying to have passed by the Australian Parliament in 1918.69 De Salis had great difficulty making London understand that the Holy See could not simply move an archbishop around at will, although he did make it clear in the Vatican that Britain would take a dim view if Mannix was appointed to the Dublin Archbishopric, a move that was mooted in several quarters.70 On the whole, Britain obtained what it wanted from the Holy See on the Irish Question. In April 1921, Benedict sent an anodyne letter to the Irish bishops appealing for peace, with no condemnations of either side. Indeed, however much sympathy there was in the Vatican for the Irish nationalist cause, there was also a strong feeling in the Secretariat of State that relations with Britain were paramount. As early as May 1917, Gasparri said to Carlo Monti, the Pope’s confidant: ‘In no way can the Holy See afford to be on bad terms with England, which offers the broadest freedom to Catholics: it would mean the end to Catholicism in England’.71 This was obviously an exaggeration, but it does underline the central importance in Vatican diplomacy of the tie with Britain. Equally, the Irish Question shows that, from the British point of view, the Special Mission had turned out to be a very good investment.

66 AES, Indice delle Sessioni della Congregazione, 1814–1939, 1919, pos. 1218, 13 May 1919, Irlanda. 67 Keogh, The Vatican, pp. 35–47 deals exhaustively with the Sinn Féin lobby and de Salis’s efforts to frustrate it. 68 There is virtually no mention of Hagan and the Irish College in the reports of de Salis in AngloVatican, ed. by Hachey. 69 Keogh, The Vatican, p. 47. 70 Keogh, The Vatican, p. 47. 71 ‘La S. Sede ha interesse assoluto di non mettersi male coll’Inghilterra, che lascia la più ampia libertà ai cattolici: sarebbe finito col cattolicesimo in Inghilterra’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, p. 88.

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7.

Zionism and Palestine

If Ireland was an old issue in relations between the Vatican and the British Empire, the question of Palestine was a totally new one. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the British Empire was significantly extended in terms of territory and population, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. It received the lion’s share of Germany’s colonies, that is to say, League of Nations mandates over Tanganyika (now Tanzania), a share with France of Togoland and Cameroon, South West Africa (now Namibia), which the British devolved to the self-governing Union of South Africa, Northern New Guinea (now part of Papua New Guinea), which they devolved to the Commonwealth of Australia, and various island groups in the Pacific which were devolved to both Australia and the Dominion of New Zealand. Most importantly, Britain obtained mandates over Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq, all former possessions of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, Britain’s role in the economically and strategically important Middle East was consolidated by Versailles. Following the Balfour Declaration, which promised a homeland for the Jews in Palestine by the British Foreign Secretary in November 1917, and the capture of Jerusalem from the Turks a few weeks later, Britain worked to gain the mandate for Palestine in the face of rival claims from both the French and the Italians.72 The Pope had welcomed the downfall of Ottoman rule in the Holy City, and even though St Peter’s remained silent in deference to Benedict’s policy of neutrality and impartiality, the bells of Rome’s other churches pealed in joyous celebration of the delivery of the Holy Land from the Moslem infidels. However, the British mandatory administration of Palestine turned out to be a disappointment, and there was much discontent in the Vatican with British policy in Palestine. The Vatican’s concerns in Palestine centred on two key issues, the Holy Places and the future of the Christian Arab communities in Palestine. On the question of the Holy Places, Benedict’s original concern, as expressed in his allocution of June 1921, was the fear that they might be ‘consigned to the charge of non-Christians’.73 Complicating this issue was the French determination to maintain their protectorate over the Holy Places and their consequent claim to liturgical honours, which were part and parcel of France’s contestation of the British acquisition of Palestine.74 Both the Vatican and the British believed that these had now lapsed due to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Italians were of the same opinion, for their own good reasons. While it was unable to prevent the continuation of the liturgical honours, the Vatican was able to elude the suffocating embrace of the protectorate once the Palestine mandate was granted to Britain. This also meant that Britain insisted on 72 Also some Belgian ambitions: Roger Aubert, ‘Les démarches du cardinal Mercier en vue de l’octroi à la Belgique d’un mandate sur le Palestine’, in Le Cardinal Mercier (1851–1926): un prélat d’avant-garde: publications du professeur Roger Aubert rassemblées à l’occasion de ses 80 ans, ed. by Luc Courtois, Jean-Pierre Hendrickx and Jean Pirotte (Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1994), pp. 281–327. 73 Benedict XV, Causa nobis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 13 (1921), pp. 281–89. 74 Pollard, The Papacy, p. 87.

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maintaining the status quo as far as the Holy Places were concerned, with an ultimate recourse to British courts in case of disputes among the clergy of the various Churches having a foothold in the Christian shrines. This was unsatisfactory for Benedict, and the Vatican lobbied vigorously against the proposals for the administration of the Holy Places which the British presented to the League of Nations.75 Benedict died before the question was settled in 1922. A related but arguably more serious concern of Benedict and Gasparri was what they saw as the inevitably detrimental effects of the Balfour Declaration, to wit, massive Jewish immigration into Palestine and, despite Balfour’s guarantees to the contrary, a consequent deterioration in the rights, status and well-being of the Arab, especially Christian Arab, communities.76 Despite continued assurances from the British government, and also from Zionist leaders such as Chaim Weizmann, events in Palestine before Benedict’s death were not reassuring.77 Waves of Jewish immigration changed the balance between the communities in Palestine. It also began to change the face of the country as Jewish entrepreneurs became involved in large-scale building projects. Coupled with Jewish immigration was a Protestant ‘invasion’, against which the Holy See protested vehemently in 1919 and 1920. Along with Malta, Palestine would remain one of the major issues in contention between the Holy See and Britain long after Benedict’s death.

8. Conclusions Despite the fierce domestic opposition to it, Britain quickly reaped the benefits of its new diplomatic relationship with the Holy See. During World War I, it was able to put the Entente case to the Vatican with new authority and follow the Austro-German intrigues there. After the Dublin Rising of Easter 1916, it also had the means to combat the very powerful Irish republican influences which were at work in Rome and elsewhere. It was also crucial to have the ear of the Pope and his Secretary of State in matters relating to other regions in the Empire that were of great importance to the British government, in particular Palestine and Malta. With some thirty million Catholics, and 70,000 Catholic missionaries, within its borders, as Rennell Rodd pointed out, the British Empire objectively needed diplomatic relations with the Head of the Catholic Church. The benefits of relations with Britain for Pope Benedict and Gasparri were also considerable. The arrival of a British envoy signalled the beginning of the end of the virtual diplomatic isolation in which Pius X and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, had left the Vatican in 1914. Britain now clearly recognized the influence which the Pope could exert during a war in which millions of Catholics were fighting on both sides. It was also useful to Benedict’s peace diplomacy to have a direct interlocutory relationship with Britain, the major Entente Power before America’s entry

75 De Dreuzy, The Holy See, pp. 247–48. 76 Pollard, The Papacy, pp. 89–90. 77 De Dreuzy, The Holy See, pp. 240–46.

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into the war in April 1917. Britain’s move was followed by the establishment of relations between the Vatican and two neutral powers, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and the re-establishment of relations with Portugal, Britain’s traditional ally. This was the beginning of a trend which would culminate after the war in the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with France, and the establishment of relations with the German Reich (the Weimar Republic). After the war, Britain became, by default, the world super power. Thus, when Benedict died in January 1922 the Vatican had diplomatic relations with all the great European powers, except for the USSR. In the longer term, just as the Foreign Office had recognized that good relations with the Vatican were important for the British Empire, so the Vatican realized that they ensured a great deal of leverage when issues arose about the Empire’s Catholic minorities and the missionary activities of Catholic clergy within British colonies and protectorates in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Oceania. Apart from the significant Catholic minority within the United Kingdom (now reduced to Great Britain and Northern Ireland) itself, there were Catholic minorities in Australia, New Zealand and Canada thanks to the Irish diaspora, and in the latter case a French-speaking community in Québec, plus Catholic majorities in the Irish Free State, still formally one of the self-governing dominions of the British Empire, and in the strategically important colonies of Gibraltar and Malta. The ‘Special Mission’ had clearly been intended by the Foreign Office as a very temporary arrangement. But the prolongation of World War I, the various problems that arose in the post-war period and, above all, the mutual recognition of the enduring utility to both sides of the relationship ensured that the British Mission became a permanent part of the Vatican’s diplomatic network.

9. Epilogue On 9 May 1923, King George V and Queen Mary made a full-scale state visit to the Vatican, only the second British sovereigns to do so.78 The Vatican used all its available resources to welcome the Head of the British Empire.79 At the end of a detailed description of the event, Odo Russell observed: The visit, an historical one which will not quickly be forgotten by those who were privileged to assist, can, I venture to think, be termed a complete success. Fanatics may continue to protest, but the two greatest sovereigns on earth have met all the same, and it is difficult to imagine anything but good resulting from the visit of their Majesties to the Vatican.80

78 Edward VII had made a state visit in 1903: see John F. Pollard, ‘A Court in Exile: The Vatican (1870–1929)’, The Court Historian, 12, 1 (2007), pp. 35–47 (p. 45). Edward, Prince of Wales, had made a private visit to the Vatican in 1917. 79 ASV, Sacri Palazzi Apostolici, Amministrazione, b. 146, protocollo XII, fasc. 8, Visita dei Sovrani della Gran Bretagna a S. S. il papa Pio XI, 9 May 1923. 80 Anglo-Vatican, ed. by Hachey, p. 44.

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Although the visit took place during the pontificate of his successor, Pius XI, the true architect of the visit, which was the culmination of a stream of visits by foreign heads of state and of governments after the end of the war, was Benedict XV. It was he and Gasparri who had made it possible by carefully fostering and developing the new relationship with Britain during the course of his brief reign.

Bibliography Aubert, Roger, ‘Les démarches du cardinal Mercier en vue de l’octroi à la Belgique d’un mandate sur le Palestine’, in Le Cardinal Mercier (1851–1926): un prélat d’avant-garde: publications du professeur Roger Aubert rassemblées à l’occasion de ses 80 ans, ed. by Luc Courtois, Jean-Pierre Hendrickx and Jean Pirotte (Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1994), pp. 281–327 Clark, Christopher, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914 (London: Penguin, 2013) De Marco, Vittorio, ‘L’intervento della Santa Sede a Versailles in favore delle missioni tedesche’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 65–82 Dreuzy, Agnes de, The Holy See and the Emergence of the Modern Middle East: Benedict XV’s Diplomacy in Greater Syria (1914–1922) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016) Gallagher, Charles R., ‘The Perils of Perception: British Catholics and Papal Neutrality (1914–1923)’, in The Papacy since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor, ed. by James Corkery and Thomas Worcester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 162–81 Garzia, Italo, La questione romana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981) Gregory, John Duncan, On the Edge of Diplomacy: Rambles and Reflections (1902–1928) (London: Hutchinson, 1928) Hachey, Thomas E., ed., Anglo-Vatican Relations 1914–1939: Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See (Boston: Hall, 1972) Hales, Edward E. Y., Revolution and Papacy (1769–1846) (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960) Keogh, Dermot, The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics (1919–1939) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Leslie, Shane, Cardinal Gasquet: A Memoir (London: Burns & Oates, 1953) Pollard, John F., ‘Anglo-Vatican Relations’, in Encyclopedia of the Vatican and the Papacy, ed. by Frank J. Coppa (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 28–31 Pollard, John F., ‘A Court in Exile: The Vatican (1870–1929)’, The Court Historian, 12, 1 (2007), pp. 35–47 Pollard, John F., ‘Leo XIII and the United States of America (1898–1903)’, in The Papacy in the New World Order: Vatican Diplomacy, Catholic Opinion and International Politics at the Time of Leo XIII (1878–1903), ed. by Vincent Viaene (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005), pp. 465–78

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Pollard, John F., The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Randall, Alec, Vatican Assignment (London: Heinemann, 1956) Rennell Rodd, James, Social and Diplomatic Memoirs (1902–1919), 3 vols (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1922–25), III (1925) Renzi, William A., ‘The Entente and the Vatican during the Period of Italian Neutrality’, The Historical Journal, 13, 3 (1970), pp. 491–508 [Reynolds, K. D.,] ‘Howard, Henry Fitzalan, 15th Duke of Norfolk’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 63 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), XXVIII, pp. 382–83 Robinson, John Martin, The Dukes of Norfolk: A Quincentennial History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Walsh, Michael J., The Westminster Cardinals: The Past and the Future (London: Burns & Oates, 2008)

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Benedict XV and Czechoslovakia

1.

The Realpolitik of Benedict XV: An Introduction

Until recently, little was known in historiography of the pontificate of Benedict XV. After the opening of the pontifical archives, scholars have almost unanimously recognized the Pope’s diplomatic abilities1 and the skill of his realpolitik, effected in particular by his Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, who was nominated to the post on 13 October 1914.2 The election of Benedict XV signalled a renewal of the approach of Leo XIII and of his Secretary of State Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro. In fact, at the end of his diplomatic studies in Rome, Giacomo Della Chiesa began his diplomatic career in the service of Rampolla, who in 1883 took him with him to the Nunciature in Madrid.3 Once he became pope, his first encyclical (Ad beatissimi of 1 November 1914) called for an end to disagreements and discord among Catholics, rejecting the climate of condemnation and suspicion that had marked the years of Pius X.4 His knowledge of the various ecclesiastic realities, his diplomatic experience and his awareness of the need to compromise with liberal governments and non-Catholics led Benedict to play an important role in the political, social, cultural and religious changes in the early twentieth-century world. His gifts emerged in the relations with various nations, in particular with Czechoslovakia, established thanks to the support of France, Great Britain and the United States, victors in World War I. The idea of the nation was born in the United States where numerous Slovak and Czech migrants, who were not happy with the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, lived. The Czechs were part of

1 John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. ­123–28. 2 Giuseppe De Marchi, Le nunziature apostoliche dal 1800 al 1956 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006), p. 14; Leone Fiorelli, Il cardinale Pietro Gasparri (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1960). 3 Enchiridion delle encicliche, ed. by Erminio Lora and Rita Simionati, 8 vols (Bologna: EDB, 1994–98), IV (1998), pp. 454–55. 4 Histoire du christianisme des origines à nos jours, ed. by Jean-Marie Mayeur and others, 14 vols (Paris: Desclée, 1990–2001), XII: Guerres mondiales et totalitarismes (1914–1958) (1990), pp. 13–18.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1201–1218 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118827

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Cisleithania, the Slovaks instead of Transleithania, where the Hungarians pursued their activities somewhat autonomously in relation to Vienna. Czechs and Slovaks thus were subject to two different legal systems. The Hungarians were traditional and feudal, the Austrians more modern, therefore with conflicting ideologies that significantly influenced the relationship between them.

2. The Political Formation of Slovaks and Czechs up to the Proclamation of Czechoslovakia The political formation in the United States began first among Slovaks, powerless to stop the Magyarization of the people that accompanied the transformation of the Kingdom of Hungary into a national state. Previously, on 26 May 1907, just after the approval of the so-called Albert Apponyi Law (which required elementary school teachers to teach solely in Hungarian), the emigrants formed the Slovenská liga v Amerike (Slovak League of America) composed of 60,000 members dedicated to defending Slovak interests.5 It was led by Albert Mamatey.6 On 8 July 1914, it published a condemnation of the trip of Count Mihályi Károlyi to America and then, on 10 September 1914, issued a Memorandum on the Injustice and on the Demands of the Slovaks, demanding administrative autonomy and the right to self-determination in Transleithania.7 During World War I, the League morally and financially supported the struggle for the separation of Slovakia from Hungary.8 Eight years after the Slovaks, the Czechs also formed their own political organization in the United States with the České národní sdružení (Czech National Association) founded in 1915. Once they had overcome their mistrust and suspicions, on 22 October 1915 the representatives of the two leagues met and signed the Cleveland Agreement, which provided the foundations for a common federal state of Czechs and Slovaks. The parties thus assumed the responsibility of detaching Bohemia and Slovakia from the Empire and uniting them in a federal and democratic government with cultural and political (of the government and parliament) autonomy for the partners, on the model of the United States. They were also committed to forming and financing armed groups to fight the Austro-Hungarian Empire alongside the Entente.9 In this 5 Jozef Paučo, 75 rokov Prvej Katolíckej Slovenskej Jednoty (Cleveland, OH: Prvá Katolícka Slovenská Jednota, 1965), pp. 65–70; Jozef Paučo, Štefan Furdek a slovenské prisťahovalectvo (Middletown, PA: Jednota, 1955), pp. 165–67; Ján Pankuch, Dejiny Clevelandských a Lakewoodských Slovákov (Cleveland, OH, n. pub., 1930), pp. 73–76; Slováci vo svete, ed. by František Bielik, 2 vols (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1980), II, pp. 110–11; Kronika Slovenska 2, ed. by Dušan Kováč (Bratislava: Fortuna Print, 1999), p. 31. 6 František Hrušovský, Slovenské dejiny, Turčiansky Svätý (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1940), p. 362; Slovenský biografický slovník, ed. by Eva Augustíniová, 6 vols (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1987–94), IV (1990), p. 55. His son, the American historian Victor S. Mamatey, is the author of a study on the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The United States and East Central Europe (1914–1918): A Study in Wilsonian Diplomacy and Propaganda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). 7 Paučo, 75 rokov, p. 118; Kronika Slovenska 2, ed. by Kováč, pp. 57, 60. 8 Hrušovský, Slovenské dejiny, p. 362. 9 Pankuch, Dejiny Clevelandských, pp. 116–19; Hrušovský, Slovenské dejiny, pp. 362–64.

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regard, a significant role was played by the Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik, who had emigrated to Paris in 1904 and had become a diplomat and a general in the French army. In 1915 he prepared a political plan for the creation of Czechoslovakia.10 His designs coincided with those of Professor Thomáš Garigue Masaryk of the University of Prague, who had formulated a project for detaching Bohemia from Austria in his memorandum Independent Bohemia in May 1914.11 At the end of 1915, Štefánik invited Masaryk to Paris and put him in contact with the French politicians. This led to the birth of the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris in February 1916, which became the principal centre of resistance to, and rebellion against, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. President Masaryk, Vice President Štefánik and Secretary Edvard Beneš worked for the creation of the new country and put together an army of volunteers to fight alongside the Entente. With the war still underway, France recognized the Council as the legitimate government of Czechoslovakia on 29 June 1918. This was followed by its recognition by Great Britain on 9 August, by the United States on 3 September and by Italy on 3 October.12 This official recognition was a great success for the cause of the secessionists and was also the outcome of Masaryk’s trip to the United States in April 1918, which assured the support of the emigrants. On 30 May 1918, the representatives of the two associations and of other organizations signed the Pittsburgh Agreement, which approved the programme of the formation of a common republican and democratic country with the promise of autonomy for the Slovaks.13 Masaryk signed the agreement on 14 November 1918, the day before he returned to Prague.14 Immediately prior to the meeting in Pittsburgh, the Slovak political representatives, divided into two factions according to their Catholic or Lutheran confession, met on 24 May 1918 at Liptovský Mikuláš and came to the decision to support the cause for independence, thanks also to the insistence on this on the part of the head of the Slovak People’s Party, Andrej Hlinka. During the meeting, Hlinka formulated a political programme for the Slovaks: ‘We are for the Czechoslovak political orientation. The thousand-year marriage between Slovaks and Hungarians has not gone well. We need to separate’.15 An important role in the creation of Czechoslovakia was played by the great demonstration of the unity of the peoples subject to the Viennese and Budapest

10 Dušan Kováč, ‘V rokoch prvej svetovej vojny: vznik Československa’, in Dejiny Slovenska, ed. by Dušan Čaplovič (Bratislava: AEP, 2000), p. 217. 11 Věra Olivová, Dějiny první republiky (Prague: Karolinum, 2000), pp. 16–17; Ľuboslav Hromják, ‘Slovenské autonomistické hnutie v rokoch 1918–1925’, Historický zborník, 20, 1 (2010), pp. 148–60 (p. 149). 12 Kováč, ‘V rokoch’, pp. 217–22. 13 Kováč, ‘V rokoch’, p. 222. 14 Konštantín Čulen, Pittsburghská dohoda (Bratislava: Kníhtlačiareň Andreja, 1937), pp. 195–202; Hrušovský, Slovenské dejiny, p. 368. 15 ‘Siamo per l’orientamento politico cecoslovacco. Il matrimonio millenario degli slovacchi con gli ungheresi non è andato bene. Dobbiamo lasciarci’; Ľuboslav Hromják, ‘Význam Andreja Hlinku v slovenských dejinách v kontexte jeho vzťahu so Svätou stolicou v rokoch 1907–1922’, in Národe môj, ed. by Róbert Letz and Pavol Stano (Bratislava: Gorila, 2015), pp. 75–106 (p. 85); Karol Anton Medvecký, Slovenský prevrat, 4 vols (Bratislava: Komenský, 1930–31), III (1930), p. 340.

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governments in Prague on 16–18 May 1918 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Czech National Theatre.16 The United States Ambassador to Switzerland, Pleasant Alexander Stovall, considered the event to be the first step on the path to the ‘long-awaited revolt of the oppressed peoples’ and suggested an American intervention on their behalf before the impetus to rebellion lost its vigour in the face of the inevitable government reaction. He also advised making contact with the leaders of the Slav emigration, in particular Masaryk. From Paris, Arthur Frazier reported that Beneš had told the Supreme Command of the Allied Forces that the demonstration in Prague had hailed the name of Wilson and how an appeal to him reinforced the centrifugal forces at the heart of the monarchy.17 An intervention with a wider resonance that emerged probably from the Department of State in Washington, DC, once it had received the approval of Wilson, was the public declaration, on 29 May 1918, of support by the United States for the nationalist aspirations of the Slavic peoples under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.18 To save the monarchy, Emperor Karl succumbed to pressure and on 16 October 1918 published his Imperial Manifesto, which called for the federalization of Cisleithania, but this came too late. The sovereign announced a rather vague programme of transformation of the monarchy into a federal state, which is evidence that the end was near. Among other things, the change in the imperial policy concerned only the peoples present in Cisleithania, while in Transleithania — where the situation was even tenser — matters remained unchanged.19 The Empire’s Foreign Minister Stephen Burián made a proposal to Wilson to negotiate with the United States about ending the war. Wilson replied on 18 October 1918 with a note stating that the future of the monarchy rested in the hands of the different peoples and not in those of the American President. On the same day, Masaryk sent the Washington Declaration, which proclaimed the independence of Czechoslovakia and presented the political programme that he had written, to the United States government; in it the Slovaks were included as a branch of the Czech nation. The declaration thus lacked the guarantee of Slovak autonomy included in the treaties of Cleveland and Pittsburgh.20 The change caused acute tensions because the Slovaks felt cheated. In August 1919, Hlinka and other members of the Slovak People’s Party therefore went to the peace conference in Paris to protest against Masaryk and submitted a memorandum asserting 16 Leo Valiani, La dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1966), pp. 405–06. 17 Angelo Ara, L’Austria-Ungheria nella politica americana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1973), pp. 145–46. 18 Mamatey, The United States, pp. 258–65. 19 Kováč, ‘V rokoch’, p. 223. 20 Kronika Slovenska 2, ed. by Kováč, p. 90. The ideology of the Czechoslovak nation was formulated by Edvard Beneš and Tomáš G. Masaryk. Even before the declaration of Czechoslovakia, Beneš had claimed that the Czechoslovaks were composed of seven million Czechs in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and three million Slovaks in Hungary; Edvard Beneš, Détruisez l’Austriche-Hongrie! Le martyre des Tchéco-Slovaques à travers l’histoire (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1916), p. 5. Masaryk interpreted the Treaty of Pittsburgh as having united Czechs with Slovaks, who were seen by him to be a part of the Czech nation; Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, The Making of a State: Memories and Observations 1914–1918 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1927), pp. 220–22.

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Slovak autonomy.21 On 27 October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian government sent a note to the United States government through Foreign Minister Gyula Andrássi accepting the peace conditions set forth by Wilson, i.e. the military and political surrender of the Empire. The next day, the text of the note was published during a demonstration in Prague and, taking advantage of the decreasing political power of Vienna, the Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed. The National Council in Prague approved the first law on the birth of Czechoslovakia.22 Meanwhile, on 30 October 1918, the Slovak politicians, not informed of the declaration of Czechoslovakia by the Czechs in Prague, met in Turčiansky Svätý Martin to establish the political programme of the Slovaks. They declared the separation of Slovakia from Hungary and the birth of Czechoslovakia and signed the Declaration of the Slovak Nation, claiming the right to self-determination by the Slovaks and the foundation of a new nation composed of Slovakia, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia.23

3. The Holy See and the Birth of Czechoslovakia It is interesting to observe Benedict XV’s realpolitik in the case of Czechoslovakia and in regard to the traditional relationship between the Holy See and the Habsburgs. While remaining neutral, he attempted to create a new European order based on the concept of peace as a work of justice in full harmony with natural law rather than as the outcome of positive law and the political and diplomatic agreements between the European powers. In his consistorial speech of 22 January 1915, the Pope expressed the idea of pontifical impartiality as follows: Nobody is ever permitted, for any reason, to act against justice, and we openly declare this, condemning with all our might all the violations of law wherever they are committed. […] However, to let pontifical authority interfere in the

21 Hromják, ‘Význam Andreja Hlinku’, p. 94; Juraj Krammer, Slovenské autonomistické hnutie v rokoch 1918–1929 (Bratislava: Slovenská Akadémia Vied, 1962), pp. 71–134; Karol Sidor, Andrej Hlinka (1864–1938) (Bratislava: Lúč, 1934), pp. 372–75; Ladislav Deák, ‘Cesta Andreja Hlinku do Paríža roku 1919’, in Andrej Hlinka a jeho miesto v slovenských dejinách, ed. by František Bielik and Štefan Borovský (Bratislava: DaVel pre Mestský úrad v Ružomberku, 1991), pp. 68–84 (p. 73); Martin Holák, ‘Cesta Andreja Hlinku do Paríža a jej vplyv na slovenskú politiku v rokoch 1919–1920’, Historický zborník, 17, 1 (2007), pp. 52–69; Hromják, ‘Slovenské autonomistické’, pp. 150–51. 22 Kronika Slovenska 2, ed. by Kováč, pp. 90–91. 23 Slováci pri budovaní základov Československej republiky, ed. by Róbert Letz (Bratislava: Literárne Informačné Centrum, 2013), pp. 13, 22; Martin Grečo, Martinská deklarácia (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1947); Martin Hronský, Slovensko pri zrode Československa (Bratislava: Pravda, 1987), pp. 281–305; Martinská deklarácia, ed. by Martin Hronský and Miroslav Pekník (Bratislava: Veda, 2008). Some historians claim that the proclamation of Czechoslovakia happened only on 30 October 1918, when the Slovaks confirmed their decision to enter into a common nation with the Czechs. See The Slovak Encyclopaedia, ed. by B. V. Boleček and Irene Slamka (New York: Slovak Academy, 1981), p. 77.

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disputes among those at war would not be appropriate or useful. The Roman pontiff must not take sides. He must embrace in charity all who are fighting.24 The Pope interceded with the warring powers for the exchange of prisoners who were no longer fit for military service and to improve the situation of their companions, besides that of those persecuted for political reasons, such as Karel Kramář from Bohemia who was condemned to death by the Austrians in 1916 for supporting Masaryk but who was saved by the pleas of the Pope and in 1918 became head of the first Czechoslovak government.25 Benedict, heir to the thought of Leo XIII and Rampolla, invited the European powers to engage in arbitration and disarmament, bearing in mind people’s aspirations and their right to self-determination, needless to say within the limits of the common good. It is enough to indicate the apostolic exhortation Allorché fummo chiamati of 28 July 1915, which recognized as just the aspirations of peoples for self-determination according to natural law, regardless of traditions and historical connections. At the same time, the Pope called for a just and lasting peace that would benefit more than one of the parties.26 The affirmation of self-determination was repeated in the famous Note of 1 August 191727 to the warring nations, including Austria-Hungary.28 The Emperor responded to the Pope with two documents. In the first, he accepted the principle of a peaceful regulation of disagreements and of gradual disarmament but did not mention ethnic issues. In the second, confidential, response, he rejected any concession to the peoples subject to Vienna. In his correspondence with the Apostolic Nuncio to Vienna, Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, the Pope said that the response was ‘pleasant in its form but rough in its substance’.29 Many did not understand or appreciate the 1 August Note and, more generally, the choice of impartiality. In the name of political loyalty or of claimed religious 24 Histoire du christianisme, ed. by Mayeur and others, XII, p. 306. 25 František Vnuk, Katolícka cirkev v 20. storočí na Slovensku a vo svete (Bratislava: Lúč, 2006), p. 127. 26 Benedict XV, Allorché fummo chiamati, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 7 (1915), pp. 365–77 [accessed 10 January 2019]; ‘Benedetto XV ai popoli ora belligeranti ed ai loro capi’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 3 (1915), pp. 257–60; Histoire du christianisme, ed. by Mayeur and others, XII, p. 308. 27 Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. See ‘La nota del Sommo Pontefice ai capi dei popoli belligeranti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 3 (1917), pp. 385–89; Angelo Martini, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV alle potenze belligeranti nell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 363–87; as well as various contribution in this volume. 28 Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960), p. 309. 29 ‘Bella nella forma ma cruda nella sostanza’; Giorgio Rumi, ‘Austria e Santa Sede: da Leone XIII a Benedetto XV, nella crisi dell’Impero’, in Storia religiosa dell’Austria, ed. by Ferdinando Citterio and Luciano Vaccaro (Milan: Centro Ambrosiano, 1997), pp. 506–07. For the correspondence between Benedict XV and Valfrè di Bonzo, see Benedict XV, Lettere ad un amico: Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, ed. by

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interests, they tried to justify the war and preferred Benedict not to ask for peace or support the peoples’ aspirations because by so doing he called into question the propaganda of the various countries. After the end of the hostilities, the Holy See was barred from the Versailles Conference but continued nevertheless to work in favour of Central Eastern Europe and the former Turkish Empire.30 The new European order imagined by the Pope was based on a vision of a society of nations as the fruit of a peace guaranteed by the fulfilment of justified national and social aspirations, with an openness to the traditional principle of ethnic and dynastic legitimacy. He acknowledged that nations were the new protagonists of history. In a climate marked by the collapse of empires, he found in Catholic activism in modern society an effective support for the Church in a secularized society. After the failure of the Manifesto of 16 October 1918, the individual peoples proclaimed their independence, and calls for deposing the Habsburgs increased.31 Thanks to its realpolitik, the Holy See had no particular difficulty in recognizing the independence of the new nations, as a dispatch of Gasparri on 8 November 1918 clarified.32 Between the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 191833 and the Emperor’s abdication on 12 November,34 Benedict recognized the new situation by asking Valfrè di Bonzo to establish relations with the new nations, including Czechoslovakia.35 In this way, Benedict XV acted in full accord with the teaching of Leo XIII, expressed in his encyclicals Immortale Dei (1885), Libertas praestantissimum (1888) and particularly Sapientiae christianae (1890).36 The principle was that in having as its main goal the sanctification of the world, the Church can neither restrict itself Giorgio Rumi (Milan: NED, 1992). On the correspondence between Benedict XV and Emperor Karl I, see Giorgio Rumi, ‘Corrispondenza fra Benedetto XV e Carlo d’Asburgo’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 19–47. 30 Alberto Torresani, Storia della Chiesa: dalla comunità di Gerusalemme a Benedetto XVI (Milan: Ares, 2011), p. 681; Enchiridion delle encicliche, ed. by Lora and Simionati, IV, p. 457. 31 Stephan Vajda, Felix Austria: eine Geschichte Österreichs (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1980), p. 574; Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire (1526–1918) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 497–516; Carlile Aylmer Macartney, The Habsburg Empire (1790–1918) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968), p. 810. 32 Ľuboslav Hromják, ‘Odraz diplomatických vzťahov medzi Svätou stolicou a Česko-Slovenskom v slovenskom katolíckom prostredí v rokoch 1918–1925 z pohľadu Vatikánu’, Historický zborník, 22, 2 (2011), pp. 45–65 (p. 46). 33 Vajda, Felix Austria, pp. 575–76; Ennio Di Nolfo, Storia delle relazioni internazionali dal 1918 ai nostri giorni (Rome: Laterza, 2008), p. 59. 34 Jean Bérenger, A History of the Habsburg Empire (1700–1918) (London: Longman, 1997), p. 296. 35 ‘Lettera del S. Padre al suo segretario di Stato’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 4 (1918), p. 343; A. Verček, ‘O modu vivendi medzi Sv. Stolicou a ČSR’, Duchovný pastier, 2 (1938), p. 33; Alena Gajanová, ‘O poměru Vatikánu k předmníchovské republice’, in Církve v našich dějinách, ed. by Bohumil Černý (Prague: Orbis, 1960), pp. 155–69; Ferdinand Peroutka, Budování státu, 4 vols (Prague: Lidové Noviny, 1991), I, p. 271; Ľuboslav Hromják, ‘La prima fase del Kulturkampf in Cecoslovacchia (1918–1920)’, in Una scuola di saggezza: conoscere la storia della Chiesa, ed. by Massimo Mancini (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2014), pp. 211–27 (p. 216). 36 The texts of the encyclicals can be found on the Vatican website, under Leo XIII [accessed 10 January 2019].

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to a fixed form of government or to a concrete political system nor condemn the participation of citizens in public life. It was essential, however, for governments to guarantee a respect for freedom and for ecclesiastical practices. Valfrè di Bonzo exercised a great deal of influence on this attitude.37 From the beginning of his diplomatic mission to Vienna in September 1916,38 he revealed that he had some doubts about the monarchical political system, in particular that of Hungary, which he considered feudal and authoritarian. Moreover, he believed that the state of secularization in society had progressed and openly criticized Josephinism and the increasing frequency of state interference in Church matters, especially in the nomination of bishops, who frequently appeared to be representatives of the government rather than of the Church. The Nuncio described the ecclesiastic dignitaries as aristocratic noblemen and politicians with no real ecclesiastic interests, who often neglected their pastoral duties, were absent from their dioceses, did not know their people and were incapable of gaining the trust of the clergy and the faithful. He said that Ján Černoch, the Primate of Hungary — who was originally a Slovak but had taken Hungarian citizenship and used the Hungarian name János Csernoch — was less capable than the others because he was too involved in politics and utterly faithful to the Hungarian cabinet of István Tisza.39 Consequently, Valfrè di Bonzo saw the fall of the monarchy as a chance for the Church to free itself of its right to pass laws and to establish better relations with the new nations, a perspective that Benedict XV made his own.

4. The Hungarian Episcopate Faced with the Collapse of the Monarchy and Vatican Policy From the previous account it is clear that the Pope’s realpolitik was not shared by the episcopate, who were loyal to the Imperial Court. The proclamation of Czechoslovakia brought forth worries about the future of the local church for a large sector of the clergy, particularly among the Hungarian bishops who had patriotic and Hungarian leanings. In a pastoral letter of 5 November 1918, Černoch asked the clergy of his diocese and all of Slovakia to remain faithful to the old Kingdom of Hungary and to fight for its territorial integrity. He called on the Slovaks to disobey the Prague government and warned the clergy that participation in the liberal and progressive Bohemian State would be a break not only from the Crown of St Stephen but also from the traditions and values of their fathers.40 However, most of the Slovak clergy stood by Hlinka, who criticized Černoch’s action as early as 9 November 1918.41 37 Benedict XV, Lettere. 38 De Marchi, Le nunziature, p. 50. 39 AES, Rapporti-Sessioni, 1919, no. 1225, stampa 1064. The report of Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri of 27 December 1918 is very interesting: see ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, b. 792. 40 Slovenský národný archív Bratislava, Osobný fond Andrej Hlinka, b. 21; Hromják, ‘Význam Andreja Hlinku’, p. 89. 41 Sidor, Andrej Hlinka, pp. 319–20.

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Meanwhile, the Hungarian bishops met on 20 November 1918 at Esztergom and committed themselves to maintaining the territorial and ecclesial integrity of Hungary. It was a pressing question because many dioceses were now traversed by the new state borders.42 Alexander Párvy, Bishop of Spiš, who was also at the meeting, was in Budapest when Czechoslovakia was established and never returned to his diocese.43 After the meeting, Černoch asked the Pope to act via diplomatic channels against the dismemberment of Hungary, arguing that the Slovaks had asked for autonomy, not separation. The Primate of Hungary sent many similar letters to the Holy See, but Gasparri ignored them and did not mention them during Wilson’s visit to the Vatican on 4 January 1919.44 The request from the Czechoslovak government to the Holy See for the expulsion of Hungarian bishops from the new nation and their replacement by new bishops nominated by the new government contributed to the Hungarian bishops’ protest. An analogous, if less frequent, situation also existed among the German bishops in Bohemia and Moravia. Thus, when Czechoslovakia was declared a state, Pavel Huyn, the Archbishop of Prague, did not return from a pastoral visit to Cheb and fled to Rome.45

5. The Hostility of the Czechoslovak Government to the Church and the Start of the Kulturkampf The Holy See did not support the Hungarian bishops and immediately began to negotiate with the Czechoslovak government. The Pope’s hopes, however, soon vanished with the beginning of the so-called Kulturkampf. The dissatisfaction with the monarchy shifted to the Catholic Church, which was presented by the government as an accomplice of the monarchy and an enemy of the Czech people. President Masaryk proclaimed the end of the theocracy and of revealed religion, which in his eyes should give way to democracy and the religion of humanism: ‘Rome should be judged and condemned by the Czechs. Vienna has fallen; Rome must also fall’.46 Moreover, the anti-Roman German Los-von-Rom-Bewegung (Away from Rome! Movement) found support among Czech intellectuals, who nourished the memory of Jan Hus as a national hero in an anti-Roman spirit. The state exaltation of Hus

42 Emília Hrabovec, Slovensko a Svätá stolica 1918–1927 vo svetle vatikánskych prameňov (Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského v Bratislavě, 2012), p. 26. 43 Ľuboslav Hromják, S výrazom lásky trvám (Spišské Podhradie: Nadácia Kňazského seminára biskupa Jána Vojtaššáka, 2015), p. 94. 44 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Vienna, b. 792; Hrabovec, Slovensko, p. 27. 45 Vnuk, Katolícka cirkev, p. 129. 46 ‘Roma deve essere dai cechi giudicata e condannata. È caduta Vienna, deve cadere anche Roma’. See Tomáš Garigue Masaryk, Cesta demokracie: soubor projevů za republiky, 2 vols (Prague: Čin, 1933), I; Tomáš Garigue Masaryk, Ideály humanitní (Prague: Melantrich, 1990), pp. 55–62; Tomáš Garigue Masaryk, Česká otázka: snahy a tužby národního osvobození (Prague: Svoboda, 1990), p. 186; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 46, fasc. 342, f. 25r.

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became a source of tension between the Holy See and Czechoslovakia.47 As Valfrè di Bonzo wrote to Gasparri on 8 December 1918: It seems that those who see themselves as great promoters of freedom and increased civilization have no other concern than to restrict as far as possible the freedom of the Church; they believe that the more civilized and advanced people become, the more the promoters will succeed in detaching them from the Church and from Catholic morality.48 Anti-Catholic demonstrations were quite frequent. For example, on 3 November 1918, the statue of Mary in Staroměstské Náměstí Square in Prague, a symbol of the victory of Catholicism in the Thirty Years’ War, was demolished. The demonstration, organized by the extreme left and by groups of rationalists in the Social Democratic Party, wanted to show the orientation of the new nation and was symbolic of the developing relations with the Church.49 The government of Prague promoted and financed the schism of the national Czechoslovak Church, founded in January 1920 and inspired by Czech patriotism and the ideals of Hus.50 It is enough to recall the words of Foreign Minister Beneš in a letter to the future Ambassador to the Holy See, Kamil Krofta: The justification and effectiveness of these claims of reform are indisputable from the state’s point of view. The democratized and nationalized church can never be as dangerous to the state as the church guided in an absolutist manner by a foreign power on the other side of the mountains.51

47 The youth association Sokol was created for this purpose. During the national meeting of the group in July 1920, preparations were made for the introduction of a national holiday in honor of Hus, which provoked tensions with Rome especially in 1925 when it was celebrated in Prague. The Holy See considered the ‘heretic festival’ (‘festa dell’eretico’) as an unfriendly act and obliged the Czechoslovak Apostolic Nuncio Francesco Marmaggi to leave Prague. The Czechoslovak government recalled its Ambassador to the Holy See Václav Pallier, bringing about a rupture in diplomatic relations. See ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 46, fasc. 352, ff. 32r–33r; AES, Cecoslovacchia, 1925, pos. 56, fasc. 55, f. 52; Ľuboslav Hromják, ‘Il Kulturkampf in Cecoslovacchia alla luce della lettera pastorale dei vescovi slovacchi del 1924’, in Santa Sede ed Europa centro-orientale tra le due guerre mondiali, ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2011), pp. 278–85. 48 ‘Si direbbe che coloro che si professano grandi propagatori della libertà e dell’incivilimento non abbiano altra preoccupazione che di coartare quanto più possono la libertà della Chiesa e credono che tanto più civile e progredito sarà il popolo quanto più essi giungeranno a staccarlo dalla Chiesa e dalla morale cattolica’; AES, Austria, pos. 1320, fasc. 519, ff. 34–37. 49 Hromják, ‘Odraz diplomatických’, pp. 46–47; Jaroslov Kadlec, Přehled českých církevních dějin, 2 vols (Prague: Zvon, 1991), II, p. 239; Peroutka, Budování státu, III, p. 893. It is true that this national church was not very popular (the official statistics of 1921 speak of 530,000 members), but it is also true that in the first years of Czechoslovakia 1,388,000 people abandoned the Catholic Church in Bohemia and Moravia. 50 Hromják, S výrazom lásky trvám, p. 90. 51 ‘La giustificazione e l’effettività di queste pretese riformiste sono dal punto di vista dello Stato senz’altro indiscutibili. La chiesa democratizzata e nazionalizzata non potrà mai essere così pericolosa per lo Stato come la chiesa assolutisticamente guidata da una potenza ultramontana e straniera’; Archiv Ministerství zahraničných věcí České republiky Praha, II/3, b. 31, February 1920.

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Regardless of the first symptoms of the Kulturkampf, in November 1918 Gasparri asked Valfrè di Bonzo to initiate the first contacts with the Prague government, and on 29 December 1918, he named him Apostolic Delegate to the countries emerging from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.52 On 25 January 1919, he ordered him to visit the Prime Minister and ‘make known to him his benevolence toward the new nation and his fervent trust that the government would support the religious interests of the people’.53 To achieve this, the Nuncio was in Prague from 25 February to 3 March 1919 to negotiate with the government. During a meeting on 26 February, Masaryk said that, broadly speaking, he was favourable to the proposal but postponed the discussion every time the Nuncio tried to go into detail. The Prime Minister criticized Austria, which had used religion for political ends, and promised the Catholic religion ‘highly extensive freedom, yet within the spheres controlled by the state’. However, the promise was not kept, and, because the state interfered numerous times in the affairs of the Church, the negotiations began only at the end of 1919. The Prime Minister’s indifference shocked the Nuncio.54 Masaryk and Beneš, the main designer of the Kulturkampf, had an ambiguous approach to the Holy See. On the one hand, they admitted the advantage of having diplomatic relations to pacify the Slovaks, who were traditionally loyal to Rome and disappointed by the conduct of the government. On the other hand, they did not want to bind themselves to standing agreements. Benedict XV thus stressed in his negotiations with Prague the loyalty of the Slovaks to the Holy See in order to gain at least the minimum concessions. On 21 January, before departing on his mission, Valfrè di Bonzo already demonstrated to Gasparri that Slovakia was a bridge between the Holy See and Prague and a barrier against the penetration of liberal and secular ideas into the country.55 In this sense, the Slovak clergy played a contrasting role under the guidance of Hlinka. On 28 November 1918, he gathered the clergy in Ružomberok to speak about local ecclesial matters without the interference of Prague. The meeting gave birth to the so-called Council of Slovak Priests (Kňazská rada), with Hlinka as president and the future Bishop of Spiš and Ján Vojtaššák as vice president. The objective of the Council was to stop the anti-Roman movement among the clergy and people and to carry out a moderate reform of the local church, consolidating ecclesiastical organization through negotiations with the Holy See.56 According to Valfrè di Bonzo, the Council’s requests were reasonable. In the aforementioned communication of 21 January 1919, he saw the ecclesiastic situation in Slovakia as serious, ‘also because the Slovak people, who are very attached to the Holy See, if it were well directed, could do much to impede attacks on Church

52 AES, Austria, pos. 1336, fasc. 529; Hromják, ‘Odraz diplomatických’, p. 52. 53 ‘Significargli sua paterna benevolenza verso nuovo Stato e sua viva fiducia che governo sia favorevole agli interessi religiosi di quelle popolazioni’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 25, fasc. 112, f. 31r. 54 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 12, fasc. 44, ff. 17r–42r; Hrabovec, Slovensko, p. 122. 55 AES, Slovacchia, pos. 1275, fasc. 511, f. 39v. 56 Sidor, Andrej Hlinka, pp. 320–21; Hromják, S výrazom lásky trvám, p. 91.

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rights. The bishops’ ministry is by now without hope, sterile’57 and the government of Prague refused to negotiate with them. The Nuncio characterized the Hungarian bishops in Slovakia in this way: The authority of the bishops suffers a good deal from this [situation]; they have been reduced almost to impotence. The episcopal ministry was prohibited, and some of them felt the need to renounce their dioceses spontaneously, which according to the Nuncio could have created conflict with the Hungarian government that claimed authority and thus the power to decide whether this [the resignation of the bishops] would be accepted or not. Slovakia was believed to have been definitively lost for Hungary.58 As he related in his report of 23 January 1919 to Gasparri, the position of the Hungarian bishops seemed to him extremely delicate: I do not think that they could by now hope to reacquire the love and the confidence of the Slovak clergy and people, who consider them instruments of magyarization, sent among them by the government of Budapest, and believe that they have had bear the effect of this religious policy for far too long.59 To rectify the situation, the Nuncio proposed nominating an apostolic delegate for the whole of Slovakia in the person of the Bishop of Košice, Augustín FischerColbrie. The choice showed the skill of the Vatican diplomacy: it could not offend either the government (which even during the Empire had nominated him Bishop of Košice) or the diocesan clergy (who held him in high esteem).60 On 25 January, Benedict XV approved the nomination;61 however, due to the orders of Beneš and the Plenipotentiary Minister for Slovakia, Vavro Šrobár, from 18 to 22 March 1919 three Hungarian bishops were expelled from Slovakia: Lászlo Báthy, Vicar General of Esztergom, Vilmos Batthyány of Nitra and Farkas Radnay of Banská Bystrica.62 As a result, the nomination of Fischer-Colbrie did not become effective and a new 57 ‘Anche perché popolo slovacco che è attaccatissimo S. Sede, se fosse ben diretto, potrebbe fare molto per impedire attentati contro diritti Chiesa. Ministero vescovi è ormai senza speranza sterile’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 25, fasc. 112, ff. 19v–20v. 58 ‘L’autorità dei vescovi ne soffriva assai, erano ridotti quasi all’impotenza, il ministero episcopale restava impedito e alcuni di loro si sentivano nella necessità di rinunziare spontaneamente alla diocesi, ciò che secondo il nunzio avrebbe potuto creare conflitto con il governo ungherese, che arrogava il patronato e quindi pretendeva di decidere se esse dovessero essere accettate oppure no. La Slovacchia riteneva come definitivamente perduta per l’Ungheria’; AES, Austria, 1918, pos. 1320, fasc. 519, f. 44r. 59 ‘Non credo che essi possano ormai sperare di poter riacquistare l’amore e la confidenza del clero e del popolo slovacco, che li considera come suoi strumenti di magiarizzazione, mandate in mezzo a loro dal governo di Budapest, e crede di aver dovuto sopportare troppo a lungo gli effetti di questa politica religiosa’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 25, fasc. 112, f. 24. 60 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 25, fasc. 112, f. 28. 61 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 25, fasc. 112, f. 31r. 62 Karol Anton Medvecký, Cirkevné pomery katolíckych Slovákov v niekdajšom Uhorsku (Ružomberok: Vlastným nákladom, 1920), p. 150; Hromják, S výrazom lásky trvám, p. 95; Hromják, ‘Odraz diplomatických’, p. 56.

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conflict arose between the Holy See and the government, which in that period also attempted to oblige the bishops in Bohemia and Moravia, since they were Germans or nobles, to resign.63 Gasparri protested at the decision, calling it an interference in the affairs of the Church, and because no canonical reason could justify it, he considered the dioceses in question to have been prohibited. On the basis of Canon 429 of the Code of Canon Law, he called for them to be administered by diocesan vicars.64 Given the scarce interest of the government in establishing official diplomatic relations with the Holy See and the unilateral way in which it intended to solve crucial issues regarding the Catholic Church (the nomination of bishops, the demarcation of dioceses, the administration of ecclesiastic property, etc.), the Pope decided to postpone the negotiations until more favourable times. In 1919, Prague passed laws that limited the liberty of the Church in the country. Among these was the Kanzelparagraph, which prohibited priests from engaging in politics from the pulpit. Any infraction of the law bore punitive consequences. The Prague Parliament indeed passed a series of anti-Catholic measures. In particular, on 19 March 1919, the law abolishing the immunity of the clergy and their obligation to render military service was passed. On 22 May 1919, divorce and the option of a civil marriage were legalized. Furthermore, on 26 March 1919, the socialist group in parliament wanted to abolish all religious holidays, replacing them with 1 May (Labour Day), 6 July (in honour of Hus) and 28 October (Czechoslovakian Independence Day).65

6. Towards the Normalization of Diplomatic Relations After the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain between Czechoslovakia and Austria on 10 September 1919, Czechoslovakia was officially recognized by the European powers, and on 24 September the first diplomatic relations with Rome were established at the request of the Pope.66 In October 1919, Clemente Micara was named the representative of the Holy See for religious affairs to the Czechoslovak bishops.67 The government on its part nominated Kamil Krofta, professor of history at Charles University in Prague, as its representative.68 Relations were still very formal and the negotiations, undertaken in 1920 due to the urgency of nominating new bishops,

63 Such as the Archbishop of Prague Pavel Huyn, the Archbishop of Olomouc Lev Skrbenský, the Bishop of Litoměřice Josef Gross and the Auxiliary Bishop of Brno Norbert Klein; see ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 19, fasc. 88, ff. 99r–106v. 64 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 28, fasc. 128, f. 30v. 65 Josef Šíma, Právo konkordátní a konkordáty po světové válce (Prague: Vlastní Náklad, 1934), p. 47. 66 Jaromír Machula, Vatikán a Československo (1938–1945) (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 1998), p. 12. 67 De Marchi, Le nunziature, p. 83. 68 On the life and the diplomatic mission of Krofta, see Jindřich Dejmek, Historik v čele diplomacie Kamil Krofta (Prague: Karolinum, 1998).

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were often slowed by government interference in this concern.69 On 22 March 1920, Krofta presented his credentials as Czechoslovak representative to the Holy See,70 and on 15 May of the same year diplomatic relations were officially inaugurated.71 The Treaty of Trianon, which established the border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, was signed in Versailles on 4 June 1920.72 The agreement was very important for resolving the problem of Church administration in Slovakia, which the Holy See sought to negotiate at the level of international law rather than as a temporary issue.73 The Hungarian government, however, approached the Holy See with the claim that the Treaty of Trianon should not be considered definitive. Its argument was based on a letter of 6 May 1920 in which the head of the French government, Alexandre Millerand, informed the Hungarian delegation that, should there be injustices in the application of the treaty, Hungary could approach the Council of the League of Nations.74 The treaty, ratified by the Hungarian Parliament, divided the dioceses of Esztergom, Košice and Rožňava between the two countries, paralysing pastoral and administrative activity there. The resolution of this impasse was one of the tasks of the first Apostolic Nuncio to Czechoslovakia, Clemente Micara, who arrived in Prague on 9 September 1920.75 On 19 December, Gasparri ordered him to refrain from proposing new diocesan boundaries until the national borders were definitively established.76 The primary attention of the Holy See focussed on another crucial issue: the nomination of bishops, over which the Czechoslovak government claimed the same patronal rights as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a claim which was rejected by Rome. When Beneš tried to impose the nomination of his candidate, Marián Blaha, using not very carefully veiled threats, Micara responded: ‘The Church has seen many other storms in its twenty centuries of existence than the one that now faces, and it will certainly last longer than the Czechoslovak Republic’.77 The dispute was solved during the consistory of 16 December 1920 when Benedict XV named the first three new Slovak bishops: Ján Vojtaššák of Spiš, Karol Kmeťko of Nitra and Marián Blaha of Banská Bystrica.78 They were ordained on 13 February 1921 in the old Episcopal See of Nitra.79

69 Kamil Krofta, Diplomatický deník 1919–1922 (Prague: Historiký Ústav, 2009), pp. 28–38, 51–52, 78–79, 85; Jiří Koníček, Modus vivendi v historii vztahů Svatého stolce a Československa (Olomouc: Společnost pro dialog církve a státu, 2004), p. 52; Hromják, ‘Odraz diplomatických’, p. 59. 70 Machula, Vatikán, p. 12. 71 De Marchi, Le nunziature, p. 83. 72 Di Nolfo, Storia delle relazioni, p. 59. 73 Hromják, ‘Odraz diplomatických’, p. 59. 74 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 25, fasc. 112, ff. 4r–5. 75 Machula, Vatikán, p. 13. 76 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Cecoslovacchia, b. 25, fasc. 112, f. 4v. 77 ‘La chiesa ha visto ben altre burrasche nei 20 secoli di storia che ha dinnanzi a sé, e certo durerà più della Repubblica cecoslovacca’; AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1920, pos. 1463, fasc. 591, ff. 24r–31v. 78 Hromják, S výrazom lásky trvám, pp. 110–11. 79 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1920, pos. 1462, fasc. 591, ff. 50r–52r; J. P. Kysucký, Pamätná kniha vysviacky slovenských biskupov (Trnava: Spolok sv. Vojtecha, 1921).

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7. Conclusions The case of Czechoslovakia shows how practical the political action of Benedict XV was and how great his diplomatic skill. It is no accident that the historian and Austrian Ambassador to the Holy See, Ludwig von Pastor, claimed that the apostolic nunciatures in Czechoslovakia and in France were the most difficult posts for Vatican diplomats.80 The Pope managed, on the one hand, to initiate diplomatic relations without making excessive concessions to the government and, on the other, to defend the rights of the Church through the clergy and Hlinka’s party, thus maintaining the freedom of the Holy See in the nomination of bishops. Moreover, following in the footsteps of Leo XIII, he restored the prestige of the Apostolic See by increasing pontifical representation throughout the world, and not only in Czechoslovakia.

Bibliography Ara, Angelo, L’Austria-Ungheria nella politica americana durante la prima guerra mondiale (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1973) Augustíniová, Eva, ed., Slovenský biografický slovník, 6 vols (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1987–94), IV (1990) Benedict XV, Lettere ad un amico: Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Milan: NED, 1992) Beneš, Edvard, Détruisez l’Austriche-Hongrie! Le martyre des Tchéco-Slovaques à travers l’histoire (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1916) Bérenger, Jean, A History of the Habsburg Empire (1700–1918) (London: Longman, 1997) Bielik, František, ed., Slováci vo svete, 2 vols (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1980), II Boleček, B. V., and Irene Slamka, eds, The Slovak Encyclopaedia (New York: Slovak Academy, 1981) Čulen, Konštantín, Pittsburghská dohoda (Bratislava: Kníhtlačiareň Andreja, 1937) De Marchi, Giuseppe, Le nunziature apostoliche dal 1800 al 1956 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006) Deák, Ladislav, ‘Cesta Andreja Hlinku do Paríža roku 1919’, in Andrej Hlinka a jeho miesto v slovenských dejinách, ed. by František Bielik and Štefan Borovský (Bratislava: DaVel pre Mestský úrad v Ružomberku, 1991), pp. 68–84 Dejmek, Jindřich, Historik v čele diplomacie Kamil Krofta (Prague: Karolinum, 1998) Di Nolfo, Ennio, Storia delle relazioni internazionali dal 1918 ai nostri giorni (Rome: Laterza, 2008) Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, Österreich und der Vatikan, 1846–1918, 2 vols (Graz: Styria, 1958–60), II: Die Pontifikate Pius’ X. und Benedikts XV. (1903–1918) (1960) Fiorelli, Leone, Il cardinale Pietro Gasparri (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1960)

80 Emília Hrabovec, ‘Snahy o cirkevnoprávne osamostatnenie Slovenska 1918–1928’, in Renovatio spiritualis, ed. by Jozef M. Rydlo (Bratislava: Lúč, 2003), pp. 93–116 (p. 93).

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Gajanová, Alena, ‘O poměru Vatikánu k předmníchovské republice’, in Církve v našich dějinách, ed. by Bohumil Černý (Prague: Orbis, 1960), pp. 155–69 Grečo, Martin, Martinská deklarácia (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1947) Holák Martin, ‘Cesta Andreja Hlinku do Paríža a jej vplyv na slovenskú politiku v rokoch 1919–1920’, Historický zborník, 17, 1 (2007), pp. 52–69 Hrabovec, Emília, Slovensko a Svätá stolica 1918–1927 vo svetle vatikánskych prameňov (Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského v Bratislavě, 2012) Hrabovec, Emília, ‘Snahy o cirkevnoprávne osamostatnenie Slovenska 1918–1928’, in Renovatio spiritualis, ed. by Jozef M. Rydlo (Bratislava: Lúč, 2003), pp. 93–116 Hromják, Ľuboslav, ‘Il Kulturkampf in Cecoslovacchia alla luce della lettera pastorale dei vescovi slovacchi del 1924’, in Santa Sede ed Europa centro-orientale tra le due guerre mondiali, ed. by Massimiliano Valente (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2011), pp. 278–85 Hromják, Ľuboslav, ‘Odraz diplomatických vzťahov medzi Svätou stolicou a ČeskoSlovenskom v slovenskom katolíckom prostredí v rokoch 1918–1925 z pohľadu Vatikánu’, Historický zborník, 22, 2 (2011), pp. 45–65 Hromják, Ľuboslav, ‘La prima fase del Kulturkampf in Cecoslovacchia (1918–1920)’, in Una scuola di saggezza: conoscere la storia della Chiesa, ed. by Massimo Mancini (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2014), pp. 211–27 Hromják, Ľuboslav, S výrazom lásky trvám (Spišské Podhradie: Nadácia Kňazského seminára biskupa Jána Vojtaššáka, 2015) Hromják, Ľuboslav, ‘Slovenské autonomistické hnutie v rokoch 1918–1925’, Historický zborník, 20, 1 (2010), pp. 148–60 Hromják, Ľuboslav, ‘Význam Andreja Hlinku v slovenských dejinách v kontexte jeho vzťahu so Svätou stolicou v rokoch 1907–1922’, in Národe môj, ed. by Róbert Letz and Pavol Stano (Bratislava: Gorila, 2015), pp. 75–106 Hronský, Martin, and Miroslav Pekník, eds, Martinská deklarácia, ed. by (Bratislava: Veda, 2008) Hronský, Martin, Slovensko pri zrode Československa (Bratislava: Pravda, 1987) Hrušovský, František, Slovenské dejiny, Turčiansky Svätý (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 1940) Kadlec, Jaroslov, Přehled českých církevních dějin, 2 vols (Prague: Zvon, 1991), II Kann, Robert A., A History of the Habsburg Empire (1526–1918) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1974) Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Koníček, Jiří, Modus vivendi v historii vztahů Svatého stolce a Československa (Olomouc: Společnost pro dialog církve a státu, 2004) Kováč, Dušan, ed., Kronika Slovenska 2 (Bratislava: Fortuna Print, 1999) Kováč, Dušan, ‘V rokoch prvej svetovej vojny: vznik Československa’, in Dejiny Slovenska, ed. by Dušan Čaplovič (Bratislava: AEP, 2000), p. 217 Krammer, Juraj, Slovenské autonomistické hnutie v rokoch 1918–1929 (Bratislava: Slovenská Akadémia Vied, 1962) Krofta, Kamil, Diplomatický deník 1919–1922 (Prague: Historiký Ústav, 2009) Kysucký, J. P., Pamätná kniha vysviacky slovenských biskupov (Trnava: Spolok sv. Vojtecha, 1921)

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Letz, Róbert, ed., Slováci pri budovaní základov Československej republiky (Bratislava: Literárne Informačné Centrum, 2013) Lora, Erminio, and Rita Simionati, eds, Enchiridion delle encicliche, 8 vols (Bologna: EDB, 1994–98), IV (1998), pp. 454–55 Macartney, Carlile Aylmer, The Habsburg Empire (1790–1918) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968) Machula, Jaromír, Vatikán a Československo (1938–1945) (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 1998) Mamatey, Victor S., The United States and East Central Europe (1914–1918): A Study in Wilsonian Diplomacy and Propaganda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957) Martini, Angelo, ‘La nota di Benedetto XV alle potenze belligeranti nell’agosto 1917’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 363–87 Masaryk, Tomáš Garigue, Česká otázka: snahy a tužby národního osvobození (Prague: Svoboda, 1990) Masaryk, Tomáš Garigue, Cesta demokracie: soubor projevů za republiky, 2 vols (Prague: Čin, 1933), I Masaryk, Tomáš Garigue, Ideály humanitní (Prague: Melantrich, 1990) Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, The Making of a State: Memories and Observations 1914–1918 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1927) Mayeur, Jean-Marie, and others, eds, Histoire du christianisme des origines à nos jours, 14 vols (Paris: Desclée, 1990–2001), XII: Guerres mondiales et totalitarismes (1914–1958) (1990) Medvecký, Karol Anton, Cirkevné pomery katolíckych Slovákov v niekdajšom Uhorsku (Ružomberok: Vlastným nákladom, 1920) Medvecký, Karol Anton, Slovenský prevrat, 4 vols (Bratislava: Komenský, 1930–31), III (1930) Olivová, Věra, Dějiny první republiky (Prague: Karolinum, 2000) Pankuch, Ján, Dejiny Clevelandských a Lakewoodských Slovákov (Cleveland, OH, 1930) Paučo, Jozef, 75 rokov Prvej Katolíckej Slovenskej Jednoty (Cleveland, OH: Prvá Katolícka Slovenská Jednota, 1965) Paučo, Jozef, Štefan Furdek a slovenské prisťahovalectvo (Middletown, PA: Jednota, 1955) Peroutka, Ferdinand, Budování státu, 4 vols (Prague: Lidové Noviny, 1991), I Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Rumi, Giorgio, ‘Austria e Santa Sede: da Leone XIII a Benedetto XV, nella crisi dell’Impero’, in Storia religiosa dell’Austria, ed. by Ferdinando Citterio and Luciano Vaccaro (Milan: Centro Ambrosiano, 1997), pp. 506–07 Rumi, Giorgio, ‘Corrispondenza fra Benedetto XV e Carlo d’Asburgo’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 19–47 Sidor, Karol, Andrej Hlinka (1864–1938) (Bratislava: Lúč, 1934) Šíma, Josef, Právo konkordátní a konkordáty po světové válce (Prague: Vlastní Náklad, 1934) Torresani, Alberto, Storia della Chiesa: dalla comunità di Gerusalemme a Benedetto XVI (Milan: Ares, 2011)

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Vajda, Stephan, Felix Austria: eine Geschichte Österreichs (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1980) Valiani, Leo, La dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1966) Verček, A., ‘O modu vivendi medzi Sv. Stolicou a ČSR’, Duchovný pastier, 2 (1938), p. 33 Vnuk, František, Katolícka cirkev v 20. storočí na Slovensku a vo svete (Bratislava: Lúč, 2006)

Roberto Morozzo della Rocca

Benedict XV and Poland

1.

The Holy See in Support of Polish Rebirth

The relations between the Holy See and Poland1 during the years of Benedict XV were influenced in the first place by the fact that the Catholic presence in Eastern Europe was overwhelmingly Polish, and thus Rome, in regard to Eastern European affairs, in principle supported Polish interests. This basic orientation did not mean that Rome therefore always agreed with the activity and desires of the Poles. On the contrary, relations with the Polish Church are complex and dialectical, even more so after its thorough restructuring once freedom had been regained. The Polish bishops’ rediscovered self-assurance meant that they were less dependent on Rome. Nor did the Holy See look favourably on Polish nationalism or Polonism: it was explainable until 1918 when it concerned the support of the resurrection of Poland as a national entity, but afterwards Rome wanted from Warsaw attitudes that were less war-like towards the surrounding peoples, some of them Catholic (for the most part, such as the Lithuanians or the western Ukrainians, then called Ruthenians, or partly, for example, the Germans in contested Silesia). It is beyond dispute that the Holy See supported Polish political rebirth. It was its primary interest, given the very poor relationship, nurtured by confessional rivalry, with the Empire of the Tsar, which intended to assert itself as Moscow, the Third Rome,2 and also given the Holy See’s lack of sympathy with the Germanic world in its north-eastern reaches (the Hohenzollern pursued the Germanization of the Polish





1 The pontificate of Benedict XV lasted from 1914 to 1922; independent Poland was reborn in 1918, with borders that were not well defined and which wars, conflicts and referendums defined in the following years after harsh conflicts with Ukrainians, Russians, Lithuanians, Germans and Czechoslovaks. However, it was normal in the Vatican, as in many European governments, to speak of Poland as a historic entity even before 1918, even though the territory inhabited by Poles had been divided among the three empires of the tsars, the Germans and the Austrians for over a century. 2 See Antoine Wenger, Rome et Moscou (1900–1950) (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1987); Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); Andrea Riccardi, Il Vaticano e Mosca (1940–1990) (Rome: Laterza, 1992); Laura Pettinaroli, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1219–1233 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118828

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territory with the understanding that Germanisierung ist Protestantisierung, particularly in the face of the nationalist Catholicism of the Poles). In the brief Peace Note of 1 August 1917, Benedict XV expressly referred to the Polish issue when he asked the governments of the belligerent peoples to agree to establish ‘the foundations for a just and lasting peace’. The Pope wrote, among other things, that a ‘spirit of equity and justice’ should ‘direct the examination’ of all of the ‘territorial and political questions, notably those concerning Armenia, the Balkan States and the territories composing the ancient Kingdom of Poland, for which especially its noble historical traditions and sufferings which it has undergone, particularly during the present war, ought rightly to enlist the sympathies of the nations’.3 This was not an explicit request for independence, for obvious diplomatic reasons. The three nations which had divided eighteenth-century Poland still existed and were the main players in the current war. However, the Note represented a strong, unequivocal stance: Poland was close to the heart of Benedict XV because it had suffered a serious case of international injustice.4 The fate of Poland was dear to the Pope and the Holy See both because it maintained the faith of a Catholic people in a part of the European continent seen as exposed to the expansive cravings of Orthodoxy and Protestantism and because a clear and intolerable historic injustice needed to be righted. Moreover, Giacomo Della Chiesa, well able to take a secular and political view of things, personally disliked both Germany, for its Prussian militarism, and Russia, for its autocratic regime. He was better disposed towards the Habsburg world and French society, where he saw more noble and civil traditions operating. During the war, the Holy See was engaged in trying to alleviate the sufferings of the Polish people which had soon found itself almost completely under German control. It also tried to furnish it with a regular donation of provisions to alleviate the food-supply problems. It was not Russia but England that was opposed to this out of





3 ‘I capisaldi di una pace giusta e duratura’; ‘spirito di equità e di giustizia’; ‘dirigere l’esame’; ‘questioni territoriali e politiche, nominatamente quelle relative all’assetto dell’Armenia, degli Stati balcanici e dei paese formanti parte dell’antico Regno di Polonia, al quale in particolare le sue nobili tradizioni storiche e le sofferenze sopportate, specialmente durante l’attuale guerra, debbono giustamente conciliare le simpatie delle nazioni’; Benedict XV, Dès le début, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 9 (1917), pp. 417–23 [accessed 10 January 2019]; an English version can be found in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII, ed. by Harry C. Koenig (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 229–32. 4 Secretary of State Gasparri, in laying the groundwork for the Peace Note, wrote to Nuncio Pacelli on 4 July 1917, alluding to a peace conference in which the governments would have to proceed in the way hoped for by Benedict XV, with the same language as in the imminent Note, but with some further emphasis: ‘The conference must equally decide the political aspect of Poland, for which reason its noble historical traditions and sufferings which it has undergone for more than a century, especially the exceptionally grave ones endured during the present war, ought rightly to enlist the sympathies of the nations’ (‘egualmente la conferenza dovrà decidere dell’aspetto politico della Polonia, alla quale le sue nobili tradizioni storiche e le sofferenze di oltre un secolo non che quelle eccezionalmente gravi sopportate durante l’attuale guerra devono giustamente conciliare le simpatie delle nazioni’); AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1917, b. 216.

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fear that the provisions would serve the occupying German forces.5 The fact that the Poles were divided, fighting in part for the Entente and in part for the Central Powers, did not trouble the Holy See, which remained neutral during the war. Poland was divided among various governments and it was known that both the Polish troops faithful to Józef Piłsudski, allied with the Germans, and those faithful to Roman Dmowski, allied with the French and the Russians, were sacrificing themselves for the same objective, the rebirth of the nation. On 15 October 1918, Benedict XV was finally able to show the Holy See’s concern for Poland’s struggle for independence, issuing a public letter to the Archbishop of Warsaw Aleksander Kakowski. Among other things, the letter expressed the Pope’s political attitude towards the by now former Russian Empire: We now offer more ardent prayers that Poland, having regained its full independence, will take its place among the nations and continue its history as a civil and Christian nation as soon as possible. At the same time, we also pray that the other nations who had been subject to Russia, including the non-Catholic ones, be given the ability to decide their own fate and thus develop and prosper according to their own talents and particular resources.6 Baron Carlo Monti, informal Italian ambassador to the Holy See during World War I and an old friend of Giacomo Della Chiesa, recorded in his diary the feelings of the Pope and his Secretary of State towards Poland as it was starting a new life after the end of the world war. On 27 October 1918, after an audience with Benedict, Monti noted: ‘The Pope seems to have great hopes for Poland as a bastion against Russia and against Germany’.7 As noted above, this was a judgement resulting from both confessional and political motivations. A few days later, on 5 November, Monti had a conversation with the Secretary of State, which he relates in this way: Speaking of Poland and its miraculous rebirth, [Gasparri] told me an anecdote. At the fall of Napoleon in 1815, a high-ranking Pole went to Pitt, who then governed England, asking for the reconstitution of the Kingdom of Poland. Pitt responded:





5 On the humanitarian activity of the Holy See during World War I, see Alberto Monticone, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200; Alberto Monticone, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella Grande Guerra, 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013); Gabriele Paolini, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008). 6 ‘Noi facciamo i voti più ardenti che quanto prima, restituita alla sua piena indipendenza, essa [la Polonia] riprenda il suo posto nel contesto degli Stati, e continui la sua storia di nazione civile e cristiana; ed auguriamo in pari tempo a tutte le altre nazionalità, anche non cattoliche, già soggette alla Russia, che sia loro dato di decidere della propria sorte e svilupparsi e prosperare secondo il loro genio e le loro risorse particolari’; the text of the letter is in La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 4 (1918), pp. 430–31. 7 ‘Il papa sembra fondar grandi speranze sulla Polonia come baluardo contro la Russia e contro la Germania’; Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), II, p. 390.

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‘But how could that be possible? Poland is by now dead and buried, and standing guard at its tomb are three ferocious and powerful guardians: Russia, Austria and Prussia!!!’. After a span of a little more than a century, the three guardians have fallen or have almost fallen. I said that Lithuania cannot remain alone and should unite itself to Poland, but will it do so given the antagonism, or rather hostility, between the two countries? The Poles are good Catholics, devoted to the Holy See and Catholicism, but are a little crazy, and even in that country there is a fair amount of Freemasonry. He has much hope in the work of Mgr Ratti, and the Holy See has made it clear that it would be open to elevating the Archbishop of Warsaw to a cardinal if this will maintain Poland’s bond to Catholicism better so that the German Lutheran propaganda can be better stemmed. He admits the possibility, put forward by myself, that Mgr Ratti, Apostolic Delegate, will be the first Nuncio in Poland.8 The passage says a great deal: the Vatican satisfaction with the reconstitution of independent Poland after a weighty oppression; the theme of unity between the Polish and Lithuanian peoples, both Catholic — expressed by Monti — which soon would be the order of the day in Vatican diplomatic aims; the idea that the Poles are not very rational and hardly predictable (‘a bit crazy’), freely expressed by Monti without fear that he would be contradicted by Gasparri; the hopes placed by the Holy See in Achille Ratti, who had recently been sent to Warsaw.

2. Diplomatic Recognition Once the war was over, the Holy See proceeded cautiously in the recognition of the new nations of Eastern Europe, regularly putting it off until one of the great powers had acted first. This was also true of Poland. The Holy See did not diverge from this general rule and awaited the recognition of at least a couple of powers before changing the rank of its informal representative to Warsaw, Ratti, who for months had been considered by Polish public opinion Vatican Ambassador, even if he denied being so. On 6 June 1919, the Apostolic Visitor became Nuncio and Dean



8 ‘Parlando della Polonia e del miracoloso suo risorgimento, mi narra un aneddoto. Alla caduta di Napoleone nel 1815, un alto personaggio polacco si recò da Pitt, che allora governava l’Inghilterra, chiedendo la ricostituzione del regno di Polonia. Pitt rispose: “ma come ciò è possibile? La Polonia è oramai morta e sepolta e alla guardia del sepolcro stanno tre feroci e potenti guardiani: Russia, Austria e Prussia!!!”. Alla distanza di poco più di un secolo, i tre guardiani sono caduti o quasi. Dico che la Lituania non può star sola e dovrebbe unirsi alla Polonia; ma lo farà dato l’antagonismo, anzi l’inimicizia dei due Stati? I polacchi sono buoni cattolici, devoti alla S. Sede e al cattolicesimo, ma sono un po’ matti, e poi anche là vi è molta massoneria. Spera molto nell’opera di mons. Ratti e la S. Sede ha fatto intendere che sarebbe disposta a elevare al cardinalato l’arcivescovo di Varsavia, appunto per mantener maggiormente legata al cattolicesimo la Polonia e per poter meglio arginare la propaganda luterana germanica. Ammette la possibilità da me affacciata, che mons. Ratti, delegato apostolico, sia il primo nunzio in Polonia’; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, pp. 391–92.

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of the newly born diplomatic corps at the Belvedere Palace.9 The temporal delay in diplomatic recognition did not signify a lack of consideration for Poland. It was merely an observation of a strict custom in Vatican diplomacy. The various seasons in Polish historical research have produced conflicting evaluations of the Vatican attitude towards the national question, but the known documentation does not allow for misunderstandings. From the moment in which the Central Powers fell and the dismemberment of the multinational Habsburg organism was no longer a taboo for the war-time pontifical impartiality, Rome applauded the Polish path to independence. In the past, the Holy See had energetically defended the Polish cause before the warring powers, but it had not explicitly indicated the possibility of re-establishing an independent Polish nation. There was the possibility that the Central Powers might not lose the war or that during peace negotiations they might be allowed to maintain their dominion in Eastern Europe as compensation for concessions in the West. Similarly, the so-called Austrian solution to the Polish issue was considered by Rome the best outcome (this meant a union of Poland with the Habsburg Crown in a kind of federation). With the rebirth of the Polish nation at the end of 1918, the Holy See immediately tried to establish favoured relations. Even though the nomination of Ratti as nuncio was not immediate, Poland knew that it could count on Rome for its existence. France and the Holy See were in effect international partners on whom reborn Poland could better count in its first steps in freedom. However, the Polish-Vatican relations, in the long and tormented post-war years, were not always easy although Rome undoubtedly supported Warsaw. In August 1920, the fact that Ratti remained in the Polish capital when it was under siege by the Bolsheviks while almost all of the diplomatic corps had fled west was a very strong symbolic expression of this support. However, the Vatican attachment to Poland was not blind and passive. There were causes of friction with the Polish Church that irritated Rome. The Polish bishops tended to see in the Holy See an annoying rival in the relationship between Church and state, which they wanted to manage on their own. Instead of the concordat proposed by Gasparri and Ratti, they wanted a direct understanding between the episcopal conference and the government. Rome’s greatest preoccupation, however, was not ecclesiastic: the fierce nationalism of the Poles, with the consequent military actions, disturbed Rome and gave those in the apostolic palaces a rather negative image of the Polish people, whom they considered frenzied and warmongering beyond measure. Polish patriotism in itself was not condemned by Rome. On the contrary, it was considered a positive force in fostering unity in the new country, strengthening it in the face of internal struggles between

9 There exists a vast literature on Ratti’s mission to Warsaw. I have described this in Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Achille Ratti und Polen (1918–1921)’, in Der Heilige Stuhl in den internationalen Beziehungen (1870–1939), ed. by Jörg Zedler (Munich: Utz, 2010), pp. 249–84. Notable is the later publishing in the Collectanea Archivi Vaticani, in 2013 and 2015, of the diaries of Achille Ratti in two volumes. The first was edited by Sergio Pagano and Gianni Venditti, on the period when he was Apostolic Visitor (1918–19); the second was edited by Gianni Venditti on the period when he was Apostolic Nuncio (1919–20).

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people and parties. Yet nationalism, or Polonism, hostility towards the neighbouring peoples and the rash pride of the Poles were all seen to threaten to damage peace and Catholicism seriously. In truth, the Holy See was not unfavourable to a larger Poland, expanding in the East to include a greater number of Catholics lost in the Russian diaspora, but this Polish expansion should not come at the expense of the peace of the whole region. It was not easy to reconcile the two issues. A greater Poland could be born only of the force of arms, given that in Versailles most of the powers had decided not to define the eastern borders. Further, a greater Poland would have meant sacrificing the national aspirations of Lithuanians and western Ukrainians, who were also both Catholic peoples dear to the Holy See.

3. Ratti and Polonism Be that as it may, the Vatican’s standpoint on Poland was clarified in the spring of 1919, and Ratti better understood then the difference between Polish patriotism and Polish nationalism. Ratti was appointed to Poland on 25 April 1918, in the role of Apostolic Visitor, but in point of fact a fully entitled representative of the Holy See. He was initially enthusiastic about the triumphal welcome and the religious, civil and military honours accorded him throughout the country during his first visits to the churches, sanctuaries, institutions, cities and districts. However, from the beginning of 1919, he began to criticize the strong bond between religion and Polonism. There developed in him a disillusioned consideration for the nationalistic struggles that arose around the eastern borders, where Polish Catholics, Lithuanians, who were also Catholic, Western Ukrainians (Galician Ruthenians, Greek-Catholics) and Germans, who were Lutheran but also in part Catholic, battled among themselves despite their religious affinities. For two more years, until the last day of his mission to Warsaw, Ratti continued to praise the resolved and unblemished Catholic faith of the Poles, but he saw clearly the unbreakable bonds with the other Polish faith, their faith in the nation. When he met people, he asked himself each time whether they were Catholic first or Polish first. Later, in Rome, where Ratti’s reports were the primary source of information about Poland, from 1919 an awareness grew of the risks of Polonism for the peace and stability of Eastern Europe, and the disputes between the Poles and the surrounding peoples were not seen with an eye that automatically favoured Warsaw. The Holy See intervened many times to moderate Polish nationalism. Among other things, it was feared that the Poles would put the existence of their own nation in danger by rashly provoking conflict with all their neighbours, from the Russians to the Germans, and from the Lithuanians to the Ukrainians. The conciliatory work of the Holy See between the Polish people and their neighbours was incomprehensible to the government and the Polish press, who could not understand why Rome would not accept in toto the actions of one of the most Catholic nations in the world. Certainly, the Holy See put great stock in its relationship with Poland and worked to consolidate in every way the independence of the new country. Without aligning

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himself with any one party in the Sejm, Ratti worked hard to create peace among the Poles, while in accord with his Roman superiors he worked quickly to restructure the Polish Church with a series of hierarchical nominations and the creation of two cardinals. Meanwhile, Benedict XV did not hesitate to declare the affection of the Apostolic See for Poland. Polish nationalism, however, considered an enemy of Poland itself, was for Rome a sort of gangrene for which it attempted to find a means to combat or at least to tame. As already noted, the war between Poles and Bolsheviks in 1920 was emblematic of the care and at the same time the apprehension with which Rome looked at Poland. Piłsudski had in mind the reconstitution of the ancient and great Polish-Lithuanian nation which would include the western parts of Ukraine. He launched an attack in April, easily reaching Kiev. The Bolsheviks put up hardly any resistance, deceiving the Poles. Then, the Russian counteroffensive began from the north and quickly entered the historical territory of Poland. At the beginning of August, Warsaw was under siege, but the Poles managed with supreme force to drive the enemy back during the so-called Battle of Vistula. The armistice signified a return to the pre-war conditions. The Holy See followed the military operations with anxiety. The rapid Polish advance and the taking of Kiev made some Roman clergy happy, but not those in Benedict’s closest circle.10 It was imagined that a great Catholic power would be born that would dominate Eastern Europe. Further, in Rome, Russia was seen as a historic enemy, even though this antagonism was on a different scale from the ancient hate that Warsaw nourished against Russia. No official encouragement was given to Piłsudski, however, for his actions; on the contrary, Ratti urged him to assume a peaceful approach. In Rome, one did not speak of gesta Dei per Polonos. Then the Polish defeat occurred. While Warsaw took up its defence, Benedict called for public prayers from Catholics throughout the world for the salvation of Poland in order that Europe, now ‘bled dry’, would not once again fall into ‘the horrors of new wars’.11 The Pope’s tone was calmer than that of the two Polish cardinals, of Poznan and Warsaw, who had appealed to him a month earlier precisely to call the entire world to pray for Poland. Kakowski and Dalbor, however, had used apocalyptic language: ‘Should [Poland] be defeated by the Bolsheviks, scourge will fall on the whole world and the whole world will be inundated with a new flood of killings, hate, fire and outrageous blasphemies against the Cross’.12 10 As an example of the pro-Polish feelings in Vatican circles in that period, see ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose straniere’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 71, 4 (1920), pp. 86–96, in which the Polish reasons for the war are explained (in particular it observes that the great powers had not established the eastern borders of Poland in Versailles and thus they left the issue to solve itself). Specifically, in regard to the pro-Polish attitudes of the Jesuits, led by a Polish Superior General, Włodzimierz Ledóchowski, both La Civiltà Cattolica and the papers in the Vatican Archives, with the letters and opinions of their authoritative exponents, leave little doubt about their support for Poland. 11 ‘Dissanguata’; ‘gli orrori di nuove guerre’; Benedict XV to the Cardinal Vicar Basilio Pompilj, 5 August 1920 (see ‘Al Signor Cardinale Basilio Pompilj’, L’Osservatore Romano, 8 August 1920). 12 ‘Se soccomberà nello scontro con i bolscevichi, su tutto il mondo sarà il flagello e tutto il mondo sarà inondato da un nuovo diluvio di uccisioni, di odio, di fuoco e di blasfemo oltraggio della Croce’; AES, Russia-Polonia, b. 616, Kakowski and Dalbor to Benedict XV, 2 July 1920.

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On the eve of the so-called Miracle of Vistula, or rather the Polish victory, the Holy See took stock of all that had happened and called on the Poles for prudence and moderation. The Pope was critical of Polish warmongering. Their nation was to be saved, but they had to stop actively seeking to engage all the neighbouring peoples in conflict. L’Osservatore Romano brusquely highlighted how the Vatican support for a Catholic nation like Poland had always been by advice for moderation: ‘The Holy See, from the moment in which Poland became a nation again, has never ceased to exhort it to moderation in the desire for, or even in the acceptance of, lands inhabited by a majority of people from other nations; the exhortations were repeated many times both in Rome and in Warsaw’.13 Poland’s victory did not change its attitude, and on 26 August Gasparri telegraphed Ratti to inform him that rumours were circulating in Rome that the Polish government wanted to impose upon the now broken Russians ‘exorbitant peace conditions’. Gasparri wrote that the Pope wanted Ratti to act in order to ‘suggest, politely, moderation and prudence’ to the Polish people, adding that the security of their newly developing country was at stake.14 The Polish press had an idea of these reservations of the Holy See and, at the end of August, reported them together with a tailor-made denial: the aim was to show that these rumours were unfounded and that Rome fully supported the Warsaw government. Ratti, who had acted discretely, felt then that he had to reiterate the Holy See’s point of view and held that, among other things, the inexistent denial might ‘harm possible relations between the Holy See and Soviet Russia’. He began to state publicly that ‘he had no positive news’ but that, in any case, he considered ‘the line of peace and moderation that has always been followed, proclaimed and even urged by the Holy See to be well-known’.15 In the end, in September, Benedict wanted to address the Polish people directly. In a letter to the nation’s episcopate, after giving his congratulations for the escape from the Bolshevik danger, the Pope expressed a plea that was also a reprimand: ‘We are sure that they [the Polish people] know that they should be led by those noble principles of Christian moderation that We have continually taught and that only these principles can extinguish the hate among peoples’.16 Rome did not want to exceed issuing these kinds of pleas. The Vatican officials, who were thinking in universal and global terms, were aware of the risk that Catholicism 13 ‘La S. Sede dal giorno in cui la Polonia risorse a vita nazionale non ha cessato mai di esortarla a moderazione nel volere od anche nell’accettare territori abitati in maggioranza da altre nazionalità; esortazioni più volte ripetute sia in Roma che a Varsavia’; ‘Il Vaticano e la Polonia’, L’Osservatore Romano, 14 August 1920. 14 ‘Esorbitanti condizioni di pace’; ‘suggerire, in via del tutto riservata, moderazione e prudenza’; AES, Russia-Polonia, b. 616, Gasparri to Ratti, 26 August 1920. 15 ‘Di nulla sapere di positivo’; ‘notoria la linea di pace e di moderazione sempre seguita e proclamata nonché raccomandata dalla S. Sede’; AES, Russia-Polonia, b. 573, Ratti to Bonaventura Cerretti, 5 September 1920. 16 ‘Noi siamo sicuri che esso saprà ognora ispirarsi a quei nobili principia di cristiana moderazione, che Noi abbiamo costantemente inculcati e che soli possono estinguere gli odi fra i popoli’; AES, RussiaPolonia, b. 616, Benedict XV to the Polish cardinals and bishops, 8 September 1920 (letter transmitted by Gasparri to Ratti on 23 September 1920).

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in the East might become identified with Polonism. Nevertheless, the distinction between religion and nation in the Polish case was not energetically restated. Poland was dear to them; it was considered a country of martyrs and a faithful bastion of the Roman faith and, therefore, they did not want to create public conflict with it. Ratti continually pointed out the susceptibility and sensitivity of the Poles. Why risk serious fractures in the relationship when Poland, with its tens of millions of Catholics, constituted substantially the greatest locus of Catholicism in Eastern Europe? Nonetheless, the Holy See could not avoid a deterioration in the relationship with Poland due to a series of diplomatic incidents and misunderstandings that were inevitably reported in the Polish press. The repeated Roman recommendations for moderation were soon ignored by the Poles. The occupation of Vilnius by General Żeligowski occurred while the Vatican was working together with the English — protectors of the Lithuanians — to find a peaceful solution to the Polish-Lithuanian controversy over the possession of the city.17 On 28 September 1920, Ratti had written to Gasparri satisfied that he saw in the Polish government a ‘disposition for restraint and moderation’ regarding the issue.18 In the following days, the Nuncio continued to work for peace between Poles and Lithuanians with the goal, in concert with Rome, of a federation between the two. Żeligowski’s surprise attack — organized by Piłsudski — came two days after the Polish-Lithuanian Suwałki Treaty of 7 October 1920, which had constituted a kind of armistice between them. Ratti felt the insult to the Lithuanians to be a betrayal of the assurances that the Warsaw government had made to him and a rejection of the Vatican’s request for a peaceful and reasonable solution to the territorial problems.

4. The Silesian Issue The issue of Upper Silesia in 1920–21, however, created the greatest problems between the Holy See and Poland, eliminating any residual illusion that Ratti had of being able to influence the ruling class in Warsaw. The issue clearly revealed the limits of the accord between the Holy See and a Poland whose nationalism prevailed over traditional religious fidelity. In 1920 a referendum to decide whether parts of Upper Silesia should belong to Poland or to Germany was organized. In order to take seriously the desire of the Poles who wanted to counterbalance the authority of the Silesian Archbishop, German Cardinal Adolf Bertram of Breslau, Ratti was named by the Holy See as the High Ecclesial Commissioner for the regions that would vote in the referendum.19 With the decree of 15 November 1920, Bertram, acting without Ratti’s knowledge but 17 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, b. 193, Ratti to Gasparri, 28 September 1920. 18 ‘Disposizione a longanimità e moderazione’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, b. 193, Ratti to Gasparri, 28 September 1920. 19 On Ratti and the affair of Upper Silesia, see Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, ‘Achille Ratti e la Polonia (1918–1921)’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 95–122.

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deliberately presuming that the Holy See had been notified about, and agreed to, his action, prohibited clergy who were not from his diocese to engage in any political activity and allowed only the diocesan clergy to comment publicly on political issues. Since 80 per cent of the diocesan clergy were German, as opposed to a percentage of lay Poles well over 20 per cent, this created an advantage for the promotion of the German cause in the referendum. The Polish reaction towards Ratti and the Holy See was very harsh. It threatened to break off diplomatic relations between Poland and the Vatican with the consequent expulsion of Ratti and the withdrawal of the Polish Ambassador in Rome. Rumours reached Warsaw that Ratti’s mother was German. Bertram alone was responsible for this crisis, but the Holy See could not state this publicly because doing so would have made it seem that it was biased in the other sense, i.e., anti-German. Gasparri accused Bertram in private and proceeded to replace Ratti with the chargé d’affaires in Vienna, Mgr Ogno Serra, as Commissioner for the referendum. Ratti had become unacceptable to the Polish faction. He observed a rigorous silence on the issue while the Poles, poisoned by what had happened, blamed him for Bertram’s action. Bishops Sapieha and Teodorowicz were particularly infuriated and not only condemned the actions of Ratti but also were upset with Gasparri, complaining to the Pope about the ‘duplicity and contradictions in his instructions relative to the Upper Silesia referendum’.20 This received a bitter reply from the Secretary of State to the Archbishop of Kraków. We can infer what Benedict XV thought of the Silesian affair from a handwritten sympathy note that he sent to Ratti on 6 January 1921: Dear Monsignor, I send you warm greetings in exchange for your greetings to me. Your letter, however, was covered with a veil of sadness, not for personal motives — I in fact admired your ability to see in a spiritual manner even very earthly events — but for motives that are, I would say, almost officially obligatory. Unfortunately, it is true that your situation has become delicate and difficult. I would never have thought that the Poles would have a character so fickle that it surpasses that of the French. Perhaps this occurred because they were no longer used to governing. They show that they are suspicious of excess and particularly diffident towards the Holy See, which has done so much for them. I thus understand the pain you are in, but I believe that you should not take this too badly because you are ‘under the breastplate of your pure intention’. I still hope that time will disperse the clouds because Deus et dies are the best comfort. In any case, even if some no longer appreciate you, you can count on our esteem and good will. May God bless everyone.21

20 ‘Doppiezze e contraddizioni nelle sue istruzioni relative al plebiscito dell’Alta Slesia’; this is what Gasparri reported to Ratti in a dispatch on 12 April 1921, with an attached letter from Gasparri to Sapieha (ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, b. 194). 21 ‘Caro Monsignore, ricambio di cuore gli auguri da Lei fattimi. La sua lettera era però ricoperta di un velo di mestizia, non per motivi personali — ché anzi ho ammirato la sua facilità di spiritualizzare anche avvenimenti troppo terreni — ma per motivi direi quasi d’ufficio. Purtroppo è vero che la sua situazione è divenuta delicata e difficile: non avrei mai creduto che i polacchi avessero un carattere

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Ratti wrote of these comforting words from the Pope on 26 January to a dear friend, General Alberto De Marinis, who was following the Upper Silesia affair for the Italian government: I do not have enough words to thank you for your latest letter that was so good and so kind in times that are so troubled and so unpleasing […]. Things have — at least for now — calmed down a little. Hazards of the job, as they say back home, but these are hazards that are better not encountered. They are, however, not without great advantages in the experience of people and things: an experience not always welcome, but always useful and valuable at any moment in life […]. Now also the provisions taken and given by the Holy See indicate well enough who was responsible and where they can be found. If personal satisfaction were enough where goodness and common interests are at stake, I could only congratulate myself on what has happened because a greater or more explicit satisfaction I could not have, nor could ever have expected, from a higher level than what has been given to me in this circumstance.22 Warsaw’s polemics against the Vatican in the Upper Silesia affair had not yet fully ceased, and in the spring of 1921 they flared up again over a visit to Benedict XV by Metropolitan Sheptytsky, a kind of ethnarch among Ukrainian Catholics. The visit was followed by a pontifical letter in response that Benedict sent him in which he blessed the Ukrainian people, saying that they were a people who ‘perhaps more than any other has experienced the horrors of the terrible war’ and consecrated them as a missionary people in the hope of a conversion of the Russian East to Catholicism (a mission that the Polish people thought was exclusively their own). The letter veiled the existence of a Ukrainian nation. Feeling that their position as the people

così leggiero da superare quello dei francesi. Forse ciò accadde perché non erano più abituati a governare. Si mostrano sospettosi all’eccesso e particolarmente diffidenti verso la S. Sede che pure ha fatto tanto per essi. Comprendo perciò le sue pene del momento, ma credo che Ella non debba impressionarsi troppo perché “sotto l’usbergo del sentirsi puro”. Spero ancora che il tempo dissiperà le nubi, perché Deus et dies sono i migliori conforti: ad ogni modo, anche se qualche uomo mostrasse di non apprezzarla più, Ella conti sopra la stima e la benevolenza nostra. Il Signore li benedica tutti’; a copy of the letter of Benedict XV is in ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, b. 204. 22 ‘Non ho parole che bastino per ringraziarLa dell’ultima Sua così buona e così gentile in momenti così torbidi e così poco piacevoli […]. Le cose si sono — almeno fino a nuovo avviso — un poco pacificate. Incerti del mestiere, come si dice laggiù nel Bel Paese; incerti che sarebbe meglio non incontrare; ma che non sono senza grandi vantaggi di esperienza di uomini e di cose: esperienza non sempre grata, ma sempre utile e preziosa in qualunque momento della vita […]. Ora anche le disposizioni prese e date dalla S. Sede indicano abbastanza di chi la responsabilità è stata e dove va cercata. Se la soddisfazione personale bastasse ove sono in giuoco il bene e l’interesse comune, non avrei che a congratularmi di quanto è avvenuto, perché più piene soddisfazioni né più esplicite potevo e potrò mai aspettare, né da più alta parte che quelle concessemi in questa circostanza’; the letter is in the correspondence between Ratti and the Italian General conserved in ACS, Carte De Marinis. This set of correspondence has been already evaluated by Angelo Tamborra, ‘Benedetto XV e i problemi nazionali e religiosi dell’Europa orientale’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 855–84.

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most victimized by the war had not been acknowledged (or even as if they had been accused of causing the suffering of the Ukrainians) and divested of their role as the protector of the Catholic faith in the East, the Polish bishops protested violently to the Vatican, where the Polish Ambassador was replaced.23 The Warsaw newspapers spoke of the ‘interference of the Vatican’ in favour of the Ukrainian separatists in Poland, complaining that Poland had not, in the previous centuries, engaged in a religious reform to have, like the Protestants, an independent national church. They jested ironically that the Vatican’s purchase of Lithuanians and Ukrainians, defending them against the Poles, would certainly not compensate for the possible loss of Poland should it separate itself from the Rome that had betrayed it.24 As Angelo Tamborra noted in 1961: The concern for objectivity by the representative of the Holy See, his duty to consider and evaluate the true and permanent interests of Catholicism and of the Church beyond contingent political controversies with the aim of a lasting peace made the more extreme Polish groups increasingly intolerant, and they thus gained the upper hand. Basically, they claimed that they represented the centuries-old tradition of wanting to be considered the ‘outpost’, or the strongest and almost exclusive representatives, of Catholicism in the Eastern lands, and felt that it was virtually inconceivable that the representative of the Pope should not completely embrace their point of view. [… Ratti], as a result of his statements, felt the diffidence and even the hostility of the governing circles, especially of the military, increase around him. Strongly embittered, particularly after the events in Lithuania that he had tried to impede with all his might, after the events in Galicia and, finally, on account of the unjust attacks on him by the Poles and Germans in the areas of the referendum, Mgr Ratti saw the failure of all his work of conciliation regarding the national conflicts that had erupted. In the end, he, the papal Nuncio to Catholic Poland, almost became a persona non grata.25

23 Morozzo della Rocca, Le nazioni, pp. 298–99. The letter of Benedetto XV to Sheptytsky was dated 24 February 1921. 24 According to Przeglad Wieczorny, the newspaper that supported Piłsudski, on 9 June 1921, in tones that were in any case analogous to that of many other news sources. 25 ‘Lo scrupolo di obiettività del rappresentante della S. Sede, il suo impegno nel considerare e far valere gli interessi veri e permanenti del cattolicesimo e della Chiesa al di là delle controversie politiche contingenti e in vista di una pacificazione durevole rendono sempre più insofferenti i circoli più estremisti polacchi, che prendono poi il sopravvento. In fondo, essi — nel ricollegarsi alla secolare tradizione di voler essere considerati gli “avamposti” o i rappresentanti più forti e quasi esclusivi del cattolicesimo nelle terre dell’est — finiscono per ritenere come quasi inconcepibile che il rappresentante del pontefice possa non accettare interamente il loro punto di vista. [… Ratti] per i suoi interventi sente crescere intorno a sé la diffidenza e persino l’ostilità degli ambienti dirigenti, specie dei militari. Fortemente amareggiato, soprattutto dopo gli avvenimenti in Lituania che aveva cercato di parare con tute le sue forze, per gli accadimenti in Galizia e, infine, per gli ingiusti attacchi che gli giungevano da polacchi e da tedeschi nelle zone sottoposte a plebiscito, mons. Ratti sente fallire tutta la sua opera di conciliazione nei contrasti nazionali scatenati. Finirà persino, egli, il nunzio papale nella Polonia cattolica, con essere quasi una persona “non grata”’; Tamborra, ‘Benedetto XV’, pp. 870–72.

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5. Ratti Leaves Warsaw In such an atmosphere, Ratti’s mission in Warsaw could not be accomplished. The Nuncio left Poland at the beginning of 1921, ‘not redeemed in the eyes of the public opinion nor in the judgement of the bishops’, as his friend August Hlond, future Primate of Poland, observed.26 In the three years of his mission in the East, Ratti experienced, and reported to Rome, the contradictions of Poland, a country at times dominated and dominator, destroyed and destroyer, martyr and transgressor. It was a country that wanted to base itself in the purest Catholicism to the point that it defended itself in exclusively religious terms (suffice it to recall Poland ‘Christ of Nations’ by Mickiewicz or the Poland of Towiański, ‘martyr like Christ, crucified like Christ, destined to resurrection like Christ’). It was, however, a country that was intolerant of a Catholicism different from its own when confessed by peoples who challenged the defence of the Polish nation. Ratti understood the Poland the fighter, struggling for its life, with the complex of being surrounded and divided. He understood the historical drama of Poland, strategically exposed to invasion, division, attempts at destruction, forced emigration (ethnic cleansing, as we would say today). However, this Poland, clearly a ‘martyr’, during Ratti’s time was also the nation that wanted to re-establish its empire in the lands between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, no longer being the tolerant and peace-loving ‘Polish Commonwealth’ of the beginning of the modern era, given that Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Belarusians in the aftermath of World War I did not want to find themselves subject to Warsaw, not even in the federation model proposed by Piłsudski. It was thus a country replete with contradictions, with an old, aristocratic civilization but also marked by vindictive and deceitful impulses, as if history owed it abundant compensation. The final report on Ratti’s mission, written by his secretary Ermenegildo Pellegrinetti, crowns the three years’ work in Poland of the future Pope in this way: It seems clear how many problems and how many hurdles the Nunciature of Poland encountered at every step. It was a world full of conflicting interests. Races, religions, nationalities, languages, traditions, parties, rites all created a tangled mess. To this should be added the almost morbid irritability of this people at certain moments, its worry that the greatness of Poland has not been sufficiently recognized or that Germans or Ukrainians or Lithuanians were placed ahead of them, the suspicious nature of certain circles, the ability to believe the most unsubstantial rumours, the lack in many of any secrecy or discretion, the lack of experience of a public life, as well as that over-excitability that is a worldwide phenomenon after the Great War. In this circumstance, it is understandable that a nuncio can maintain his popularity and avoid misunderstandings and contradictions with difficulty. It seems that some consider the nuncio more a representative of Poland 26 ‘Non riabilitato nell’opinione pubblica e nemmeno nel giudizio dell’episcopato’; the judgement was reported by Giovanni Genocchi in a letter dated 15 June 1921 (transcription in AES, Russia-Polonia, b. 540).

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to the Holy Father than the representative of the Holy Father to Poland and its government; he is destined to uphold the immortal interests of the religion more than the interests and programs of political parties and nations.27 In is not surprising that, at the end of July, the Polish bishops received a severe letter from Benedict XV that recalled the affection of the St Peter’s See for Poland and then affirmed the fundamental principle of Vatican conduct: Our love and our care for your nation, dear sons and venerable brothers, only has one limit, that defined by duty and justice. When peoples find themselves in a conflict of interests, the Supreme Pontiff, common Father of the faithful, must remain perfectly impartial; he must not take sides, either for one or for the other.28 This principle was applied in the Silesian case, although people ‘with bad intentions’ protested. In the Italian draft manuscript, one can read first written then crossed out, that the Pope could not ‘privilege the temporal interests of a nation, even though they be dear to his heart, to the detriment of others’.29 Benedict’s letter thus warned the Polish bishops to stay out of politics and to avoid ‘putting the authority of their ministry at the service of political interests’. The original text, which was then crossed out, was stronger and suggested which idea Giacomo Della Chiesa had formed of the passionate Polish emotions: ‘They must not, as ministers of God, enter into the political field, placing their holy ecclesiastic ministry behind political agitation and exciting the political passions of the people, especially a people so excitable’.30 The

27 ‘Appare chiaro quanti problemi e quanti scogli incontra ad ogni passo la nunziatura di Polonia. È tutto un mondo di cozzanti interessi. Razze religioni nazionalità lingue tradizioni partiti riti creano un viluppo indistricabile. Se si aggiunge l’irritabilità quasi morbosa di questa gente in certi momenti, la sua preoccupazione che non si tenga abbastanza conto della grandezza della Polonia o che si presti maggior fede a tedeschi o ucraini o lituani, la sospettosità di certi ambienti, la facilità di credere alle voci più insussistenti, la mancanza in parecchi di segreto e di discrezione, l’inesperienza della vita pubblica, nonché quella sovreccitazione di spiriti che è fenomeno mondiale dopo la grande guerra, si comprenderà che un nunzio difficilmente può mantenere la popolarità ed evitare malintesi e contraddizioni. Parrebbe che certuni considerino il nunzio più come un rappresentante della Polonia presso il S. Padre, che il rappresentante del S. Padre presso la Polonia e il suo governo, destinato a sostenere gl’interessi immortali della religione più che gli interessi e i programmi dei partiti politici e nazionali’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Varsavia, b. 193, ‘relazione generale’ of Ermenegildo Pellegrinetti to Gasparri, 1–8 July 1921. 28 ‘Il nostro amore e la nostra premura verso la vostra nazione, cari figli e venerabili fratelli, non ha che un limite, quello tracciato dal dovere e dalla giustizia. Quando i popoli si trovano in conflitto d’interessi, il Sovrano Pontefice, Padre comune dei fedeli, deve restare perfettamente imparziale a loro riguardo; non deve prendere partito né per gli uni né per gli altri’; AES, Russia-Polonia, b. 635, Lettre de S. S. Benoît XV aux évêques polonais (copy). 29 ‘Male intenzionati’; ‘favorire gli interessi temporali di una nazione, sia pur carissima al suo cuore, a detrimento di altre’; text of the Italian draft in AES, Russia-Polonia, b. 635. 30 ‘Mettere l’autorità del loro ministero al servizio di interessi politici’; ‘non debbono come ministri di Dio invadere il campo politico, posponendo alla agitazione politica il santo ministero ecclesiastico, eccitando le passioni politiche del popolo, specialmente di un popolo così eccitabile’; AES, RussiaPolonia, b. 635.

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letter concluded with an invitation to the Polish clergy to be charitable towards ‘their priestly brothers even though they may be of different opinions in political matters, of a foreign nation or of a different cult’.31

Bibliography Koenig, Harry C., ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943) Monticone, Alberto, La croce e il filo spinato: tra prigionieri e internati civili nella Grande Guerra, 1914–1918 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013) Monticone, Alberto, ‘Il pontificato di Benedetto XV’, in La Chiesa e la società industriale (1878–1922), ed. by Elio Guerriero and Annibale Zambarbieri, 2 vols (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni Paoline, 1990), I, pp. 155–200 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Achille Ratti e la Polonia (1918–1921)’, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI: actes du colloque (Rome, 15–18 mars 1989) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 95–122 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, ‘Achille Ratti und Polen (1918–1921)’, in Der Heilige Stuhl in den internationalen Beziehungen (1870–1939), ed. by Jörg Zedler (Munich: Utz, 2010), pp. 249–84 Morozzo della Rocca, Roberto, Le nazioni non muoiono: Russia rivoluzionaria, Polonia indipendente e Santa Sede (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992) Paolini, Gabriele, Offensive di pace: la Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale (Florence: Polistampa, 2008) Pettinaroli, Laura, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Riccardi, Andrea, Il Vaticano e Mosca (1940–1990) (Rome: Laterza, 1992) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Tamborra, Angelo, ‘Benedetto XV e i problemi nazionali e religiosi dell’Europa orientale’, in Benedetto XV, i cattolici e la prima guerra mondiale: atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Spoleto nei giorni 7–9 settembre 1962, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963), pp. 855–84 Wenger, Antoine, Rome et Moscou (1900–1950) (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1987)

31 ‘Fratelli nel sacerdozio, fossero pure, questi, di differente opinione in materia politica, di nazionalità straniera o di rito differente’; AES, Russia-Polonia, b. 635.

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Alberto Belletti

The Irish War of Independence

1. Introduction During the years when Ireland rebelled against British domination, the curia of Benedict XV was the target of several pressures: two lobbies, in the full sense of the term, developed in the Roman ecclesiastic corridors, as has been shown by certain scholars, particularly Dermot Keogh1 and Gianni La Bella.2 One of them, centred around the English Cardinal Gasquet,3 was hostile to the Irish independence movement, while the other, led by Mgr Hagan,4 Rector of the Pontifical Irish College, supported independence. The sources available to us present a Pope who was not only extremely prudent but who was also insecure and troubled about both his own pastoral duty and the political appropriateness of his action. On the one hand, Benedict XV did not want to irritate the United Kingdom, with whom the Holy See had initiated diplomatic relations in those very years; on the other, he knew very well that however devoted they may have been as Catholics, in no way were the Irish about to permit any pontifical interference that conflicted with their patriotism. The Pope had learnt this lesson several years earlier when he was working with Cardinal Rampolla who dealt with the Irish situation when he became Secretary of State in 1887. In those years, the island was racked by strong political and social tensions, and the Holy Office, pressurized by Leo XIII and by Rampolla, had condemned some forms of protest utilized by the Irish as immoral.5

1 Dermot Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 2 Gianni La Bella, Santa Sede e questione irlandese, 1916–1922 (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1996). 3 Shane Leslie, Cardinal Gasquet: A Memoir (London: Burns and Oates, 1953). 4 Patrick Long, ‘Hagan, John’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), IV, pp. 353–54. 5 Alberto Belletti, Chiesa Cattolica e nazionalismo irlandese: Leone XIII, l’episcopato gaelico e il leader protestante Charles Stewart Parnell (Rome: Aracne, 2014), pp. 147–88; Emmet Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland, 1886–1888 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1978), pp. 197–313; Ambrose MacAulay, The Holy See, British Policy and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland (1885–1893) (Dublin: Four Courts, 2002), pp. 172–210.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1235–1248 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118829

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Irish public opinion had, however, rebelled against this decision, and the press had accused the Holy See of acting on behalf of the interests of England; even the episcopate responded coldly to the measures. It was one of the moments of greatest tension in the history of the relationship between the Holy See and Ireland, after which Leo XIII and his Secretary of State no longer dared to interfere in the affairs of the island, at least not so overtly. This episode, in any case, remained impressed on the Irish memory, and during the years of the rebellion, the independents on various occasions were afraid that the Pope would condemn them. In effect, rumours often circulated in ecclesiastical circles that a papal condemnation was imminent, probably because Cardinal Merry del Val, Secretary of the Holy Office, effectively wanted a step to be taken in this direction,6 an act that was never, however, effected by Benedict XV. During the war of independence, an Irishman speaking to Mgr Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, told him this anecdote: a man was walking in the countryside when he was attacked by a bear. He climbed a tree and from there pleaded: ‘Lord, if you cannot help me, at least do not help the bear’. This, he explained, was the prayer that the Irish people addressed to the Pope: if he could not help them, he should at least not help the British Empire.7 Benedict XV, as we shall see, was able to grant this prayer. Without causing offence to the United Kingdom, which indeed continued to maintain diplomatic relations with the Holy See, he managed to follow a course that did not wholly displease the Irish independents, either.

2. First Contacts between the Irish Independents and the Holy See On 24 April 1916, a group of Irish independents revolted, beginning the so-called Easter Rising.8 Many were taken by surprise, but Benedict XV already knew many things.



6 Cardinal Merry del Val, like Cardinal De Lai, in regard to the Irish issue, also had a different vision from that of the Pope and Gasparri: see John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999), pp. 152–55. 7 AES, pos. 239, fasc. 134, Bonzano to Gasparri, 23 March 1921. 8 Max Caulfield, The Easter Rebellion (London: Gill and MacMillan, 1965); Charles Duff, Six Days to Shake an Empire (London: Curtis Books, 1966); Michael T. Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising (Stroud: Sutton, 1999); Keith Jeffery, The GPO and the Easter Rising (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006); Diarmuid Lynch, The I. R. B. and the 1916 Insurrection, ed. by Florence O’Donoghue (Cork: Mercier Press, 1957); Fearghal McGarry, The Rising Ireland: Easter 1916 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Roger McHugh, Dublin, 1916 (Dublin: Arlington Books, 1966); Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916, ed. by Francis X. Martin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967); The Making of 1916: Studies in the History of the Rising, ed. by Kevin B. Nowlan (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1969); Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London: Allen Lane, 2005); Clair Wills, Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

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During the first days of April, in fact, Count Plunkett,9 a Catholic and father of one of the leaders of the revolt, probably hoping to obtain ecclesiastic legitimacy, spoke to the Pope during an audience about the imminent insurrection.10 We do not know exactly what Benedict’s reaction to the news was. He may have thought that he was speaking to a liar, which is quite likely since the Count spoke of 80,000 men armed and ready for action, a figure clearly out of all proportion to reality (the paramilitary groups from which the rebels were recruited consisted of fewer than 15,000 people, of whom only a part took part in the rebellion).11 Be that as it may, the Pope asked whether Mgr Walsh,12 Archbishop of Dublin, was aware of what was being prepared and, on receiving a negative reply, encouraged Plunkett to inform the Archbishop as soon as possible. Evidently, Benedict thought that the local episcopate would be better able to evaluate how to respond than he would.13 The rebels, however, probably feared that the Archbishop of Dublin might do something to neutralize their manoeuvre because Plunkett tried to contact him only after the rebellion had begun.14 The British forces rapidly squashed the revolt, but in the following months the nationalist sentiments of many Irish, most of whom had not approved of the rebellion, became more radical. Home Rule, the creation of an Irish parliament with limited powers, had been the objective pursued until then by a large part of the population but it was soon felt to be insufficient. There were several reasons for this, the main one being the repression that had been exercised by the authorities. Another factor was the very strong opposition in Ireland, even in church circles, to a bill that would expand the practice of compulsory enlistment in Ireland. In the end, the proposal that Home Rule would be granted but that the counties of Northern Ireland would remain under direct British control gained support. During the general elections in the autumn of 1918, the overwhelming majority of Irish constituencies were won by Sinn Féin, a radical nationalistic movement founded a few years before by Arthur Griffith15 and which in 1917 had elected as

9 D. R. O’Connor Lysaght, ‘Plunkett, Count George Noble’, in Dictionary, ed. by McGuire and Quinn, VIII, pp. 178–79. 10 Jérôme Aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland 1914–1918: War and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003), pp. 79–89. 11 Maureen Wall, ‘The Background to the Rising, from 1914 to the Issue of the Countermanding Order on Easter Saturday 1916’, in The Making of 1916, ed. by Nowlan, pp. 157–97. 12 Thomas J. Morrissey, William J. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, 1841–1921 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000); Patrick J. Walsh, William J. Walsh: Archbishop of Dublin (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1928). 13 Aan de Wiel argues, instead, that the Pope, who was substantially pro-German, was not wholly displeased by the imminent Irish revolt. For this reason, he did not want to make a move to stop the rebels’ plans (Aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church, pp. 79–89). This is, however, a reading of the situation with which I do not agree: there was very little time and the war was in progress; given this, it would have been difficult for the Pope to take any action. 14 Morrissey, William J. Walsh, pp. 282–83. 15 In regard to Arthur Griffith and the party he founded, see, among others, Richard P. Davis, Arthur Griffith and Non–Violent Sinn Féin (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1974); Sean Ó Lúing, ‘Arthur Griffith and Sinn Féin’, in Leaders and Men, ed. by Martin, pp. 55–66; Maurizio Giuseppe Montagna, Arthur Griffith e la trasformazione del nazionalismo irlandese (Lugano: ADV, 1995).

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chairman prime minister Éamon de Valera,16 the most influential of the rebels of 1916 who had not been executed during the rebellion.17 The party also owed its success to the support guaranteed by some of the clergy, such as Mgr Walsh and Mgr O’Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick,18 despite the hostility of others like Cardinal Logue, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland,19 who besides his doubts in regard to Sinn Féin personally disliked de Valera.20 The members of parliament elected for Sinn Féin, as promised during the campaign, refused to take up their posts in Westminster. They met in Dublin as the Irish Parliament (Dáil Éireann), proclaimed the Republic of Ireland and elected as president de Valera, who was at that time in gaol. Almost simultaneously, armed conflict erupted all over the country between the English forces and the men of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).21 The provisional government considered it important to give itself an air of legitimacy and credibility at the national and international level. It was quickly decided to open a channel of dialogue with the Holy See. On 19 March 1919, Mgr Cerretti, Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, while on a trip to the United States, met some Irishmen led by Patrick McCartan,22 a member of the Dáil and the representative of the provisional government to the United States.23 McCartan spoke of rumours of an imminent papal condemnation similar to that announced by Leo XIII, but Cerretti immediately interrupted him, ‘The past’ he said ‘I grant you all the past’, adding that McCartan could use his name to deny any truth in the rumours. It is not possible to think that Cerretti expressed himself in such a convincing manner without knowing the intentions of the Pope. It is very likely, therefore, that Benedict had already chosen the path of prudence in the early weeks of 1919. McCartan also lamented the fact that, while the Holy See had quickly recognized the Polish Republic, there had still not been any recognition of the Republic of Ireland. Moreover, in the following months, the Irish nationalists complained many times

16 Tim Pat Coogan, Eamon De Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); Owen Dudley Edwards, Éamon de Valera (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1987); Anthony J. Jordan, De Valera Eamon 1882–1975: Irish Catholic Visionary (Dublin: Westport Books, 2010). 17 He was also, in fact, condemned to death, but the sentence was never carried out. He was born in the United States and thus it was feared that his execution might cause a diplomatic incident. 18 Thomas J. Morrissey, Bishop Edward Thomas O’Dwyer of Limerick, 1842–1917 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2003). 19 John Privilege, Michael Logue and the Catholic Church in Ireland, 1879–1925 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). 20 David W. Miller, Church, State, and Nation in Ireland, 1898–1921 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973), p. 400. 21 In regard to the war for Irish independence, see, among others, Terror in Ireland, 1916–1923, ed. by David Fitzpatrick (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2012), and Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). 22 Marie Coleman, ‘McCartan, Patrick’, in Dictionary, ed. by McGuire and Quinn, V, pp. 773–74. 23 The meeting was described by McCartan himself in Patrick McCartan, With De Valera in America (New York: Brentano, 1932), pp. 101–02.

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that in Vatican circles there was more sympathy for the affairs of other oppressed countries than for Ireland, and the Polish example is what came up most frequently.24 Cerretti in any case stalled for time, saying that the Holy See had not received any formal request to recognize the Irish Republic, but when McCartan said that such a request was imminent, he advised him to consult the Rector of the Pontifical Irish College before taking such a step. Only a few weeks later, Cerretti had the opportunity in Paris to meet a more authoritative Irish representative, the future President of the Republic, Sean T. O’Kelly,25 speaker of the Dáil. He had been sent to Paris on the occasion of the Peace Conference, in the vain attempt to secure a discussion of the Irish situation, while Cerretti was in the French capital to present some pontifical requests to the Conference. The two met on 15 June; the meeting was mainly about what had been previously discussed with McCartan,26 but while he did not make a good impression on Cerretti,27 O’Kelly managed to establish a good relationship with Cerretti of which he was able to make use in the future.

3. The Silence of Benedict XV In the following months, the Irish situation rapidly degenerated. The IRA held the British forces at bay, and the British government, in an attempt to retake control of the situation, sent in troops that had just come back from World War I. These troops, trained for combat rather than policing and accustomed to life in the trenches, often resorted to unprecedented violence against the civilian population. The Church obviously found itself involved: there were priests who decidedly stood on the side of the independents (for example, when he escaped from prison, de Valera hid in a seminary), while throughout the world the Irish community, which often identified itself with the Catholic Church, actively sought news about what was happening in their mother country.28 24 On this topic, La Bella speaks of a ‘Polish complex’ (‘complesso polacco’) (La Bella, Santa Sede, p. 84). The Irish were probably not completely wrong. The importance of Poland in the Vatican geo-political vision is well known. There was a strong desire for that Catholic country to experience a rebirth. In Rome, however, there were probably many who were not displeased by the fact that the British Empire had a ‘Catholic lung’. For many decades there had not been any religious discrimination in Ireland, while its belonging to the United Kingdom guaranteed the presence of a substantial Catholic representation in the Westminster Parliament. 25 Patrick Maume, ‘O’Kelly, Seán Thomas (Ó Ceallaigh, Seán Tomás)’, in Dictionary, ed. by McGuire and Quinn, VII, pp. 615–19. 26 O’Kelly also complained about the poor coverage of Ireland in the Vatican press: see Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops, pp. 31–36. 27 Moreover, a few days after the meeting McCartan sent Cerretti a letter of protest, complaining of a declaration by him to the American press on the Irish situation. The tone and contents of the letter irritated the prelate, who indeed does not appear to have answered: see ASV, Spogli Cerretti, b. 1, nota di McCartan, 19 April 1919. 28 For example, in March 1920, after the complaints of Catholics of non-Irish origin, the Archbishop of New York, Patrick J. Hayes, had to forbid his priests to use the pulpit to speak of the situation in their home country; ASV, Spogli Cerretti, b. 1, Hayes to Cerretti, 2 March 1920.

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Many issues were brought to the attention of the Holy See, but we know with certainty that in 1920 Benedict XV had to take care personally of three matters: the dispute concerning the beatification of Oliver Plunkett, the arrest of Daniel Mannix and Terence MacSwiney’s hunger strike. The Archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunkett, had been put to death in the seventeenth century, during the anti-Catholic persecutions by the English,29 and his beatification was obviously favoured by the independents. Yet, a few weeks before the ceremony, rumours began to circulate that the Pope, on that occasion, would publicly condemn the Irish rebellion. The American press reported the news, and on 8 April, Bonzano was visited by de Valera, who was in the United States seeking support and funding. The President of the self-declared republic managed to make a good impression on the Apostolic Delegate, who, writing to Gasparri, argued that, in his opinion, such a condemnation would have a bad effect on American Catholics.30 A few weeks later, a petition31 arrived in Rome that was signed by 150 Irish priests resident in the United States, who, in a threatening tone, warned Benedict to be careful about what he would say, reminding him that the millions of Catholics of Irish origin living in the United States wanted an independent Ireland. If, as the press believed, the Pope wanted to use the beatification of Plunkett as an occasion to speak about the Irish situation, they reminded him that Ireland now had a legitimate and democratically elected government and that any statement that did not take this fact into account would be harmful to American Catholicism. The Irish worries were soon relieved in Rome, where O’Kelly arrived for the ceremony. Thanks to the actions of Cerretti, Benedict XV agreed to receive a representative of the self-proclaimed republic and gave him an audience on 12 May 1920. O’Kelly arrived at the appointment with a memorandum that affirmed the right of Ireland to self-governance and stressed the damage that the Church would suffer if the Pope showed the same hostility towards Ireland that Leo XIII had. According to O’Kelly’s memoirs, Benedict, while sympathetic to the Irish cause, condemned the terrorist methods of the IRA, which practised ambushes and promoted the assassination of English officials, saying, ‘Ireland has every right to its independence; Ireland has every right to fight for its independence, but, remember my words, choose with prudence the methods that you use’.32 These words were not used during the beatification ceremony, which became a propagandist triumph for the self-proclaimed Irish Republic. At the end of the ceremony, O’Kelly was surrounded by enthusiastic Irish seminarians to whom he gave a short speech from his car. Some days later, just as the French delegate did on

29 Raymond Murray, ‘Plunkett, St Oliver’, in Dictionary, ed. by McGuire and Quinn, VIII, pp. 191–93. 30 ASV, Delegazione negli Stati Uniti d’America, pos. V (affari esteri), fasc. 83, Irlanda: movimento per l’indipendenza, Bonzano to Gasparri, 15 April 1920. 31 AES, Inghilterra, pos. 239, fasc. 127. 32 ‘L’Irlanda ha ogni diritto alla sua indipendenza, l’Irlanda ha ogni diritto a lottare per la sua indipendenza ma, si ricordi le mie parole, scegliete con prudenza i metodi che utilizzate’; National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh Papers, MS 27,694, Typescript account of Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh’s visit to the Vatican and audience with the Pope, 1920.

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the occasion of the beatification of Joan of Arc, O’Kelly organized a reception to which he invited many Irish clergy or clergy with an Irish background who were in Rome, including Cardinal O’Connell, Archbishop of Boston, and Cardinal Logue, Primate of Ireland, who came despite his own doubts about Sinn Féin. The event, which hosted about 600 people, reached its acme when all the guests, together with the prelates, priests and seminarians, sang The Soldier’s Song, a nationalist piece of music and the current Irish national anthem.33 A sensational case was the arrest of the Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix,34 an Irishman who had been a supporter of independence from the beginning of the revolution and who had become the point of reference for many emigrants. In 1920, he had to go to Rome, intending to take advantage of the journey to visit Ireland. He decided to travel via the United States, where he met de Valera, his friend from his days in Ireland.35 The two of them began to agitate the Irish community in the United States. In the summer of 1920, the Archbishop set sail for Ireland from New York, but the British navy intercepted his ship and made him disembark in England, where he was retained for several months. He was not imprisoned but was not allowed to visit Ireland or the English cities where most of the Irish in England lived. The Pope was disconcerted when he learned of this.36 In response, however, while many sectors of the Catholic world strongly protested at the arrest, the Holy See maintained its silence, waiting for the situation to develop. The hunger strike of the Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney,37 under arrest by the British authorities, is also interesting. It was soon reported that many priests and bishops, Mannix among them, had visited MacSwiney, encouraging him to persevere. A true theological debate ensued: was his protest to be considered an attempt at suicide? In that case, no priest should encourage him. The British authorities, who feared MacSwiney’s death, asked Gasquet38 to try to obtain a papal condemnation of the hunger strike.

33 Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops, p. 44. 34 Walter A. Ebsworth, Archbishop Mannix (Armadale, VIC: H. H. Stephenson, 1977); Michael Gilchrist, Daniel Mannix: Wit and Wisdom (North Melbourne, VIC: Freedom, 2004); Colm Kiernan, Daniel Mannix and Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984); Frank Murphy, Daniel Mannix: Archbishop of Melbourne 1917–1963 (Melbourne: Advocate Press, 1948); Bartholomew A. Santamaria, Archbishop Mannix: His Contribution to the Art of Public Leadership in Australia (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1978). 35 Patrick Mannix, The Belligerent Prelate: An Alliance between Archbishop Daniel Mannix and Eamon de Valera (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013). 36 On 18 August, from the moment that Hagan was in India, the Pope met his Vice Rector Mgr Curran, asking him for news of the Archbishop and advice on what could be done. The Vice Rector did not feel that he was in a position to give this advice; National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh Papers, MS 27,712/3 Typescript memoirs of Mgr Michael J. Curran 1913–21. 37 Moirin Chavasse, Terence MacSwiney (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds, 1961); Francis J. Costello, Enduring the Most: The Life and Death of Terence MacSwiney (Dingle: Brandon, 1995). 38 AES, Inghilterra, pos. 270, fasc. 151, Gasquet to Cerretti, 21 September 1920 (copy).

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The Pope was of a divided mind concerning the request. He sought advice from his collaborators, but the theologians consulted did not agree in their opinions.39 For their part, the Irish bishops quickly assumed a stand, collegially declaring that a hunger strike is not suicide.40 MacSwiney died on 25 October, with the Holy See having said nothing. In the archives of the Secretariat of State, there is a draft of a letter prepared for an unknown prelate who was to be ordered in the name of the Pope to admonish MacSwiney to end what the letter called an equivalent to suicide.41 It is not clear whether the letter was ever sent. According to Moirin Chavasse, who wrote a biography of MacSwiney, after much hesitation, the Pope decided to remain silent, leaving the matter to be decided between MacSwiney and his confessor.42

4. Benedict XV’s Letter to Cardinal Logue Between 1919 and 1920, Benedict XV thus preferred to remain silent, but in about the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921, the idea arose that the Pope should in some way make his voice heard. However, it was only in the spring of 1921 that Benedict intervened, after many events had occurred and requests made. In October 1920, the Irish episcopate approved a resolution concerning the Irish situation, heartily condemning the repressive British policy. In the following month, Mgr Hagan, returning from a trip to Ireland, presented a memorandum on the situation in the island to the Roman curia.43 He also condemned British oppression and emphasized how the great majority of Irish by now wanted independence. Hagan then highlighted how some people criticized the Holy See which, despite speaking with sympathy and compassion about the situations in Belgium, Poland and Armenia, did not have anything to say about Ireland. Most of the clergy and the people understood the delicate position of the Holy See and would accept its neutrality, but should the British win, their frustration might perhaps rouse hostility. These were the standpoints of the Irish, but those of the British were clearly different. In December, in fact, Gasparri had asked Count John Francis Charles de Salis, British representative to the Holy See, whether the Vatican could help to bring about peace in Ireland. The Count telegraphed London for instructions, receiving in response a letter from the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Sir Eyre Crawe, which he forwarded to the Secretary of State.44 The Undersecretary wrote that in England there was displeasure

39 See the ACDF, SO, Dubia Varia 1921, n. 7. 40 Morrissey, William J. Walsh, p. 337. 41 The draft is cited and partly translated in La Bella, Santa Sede, p. 128. 42 Chavasse cites in this regard the testimony of an anonymous Irish prelate (Chavasse, Terence MacSwiney, pp. 158–62); moreover, at the front of the file on the issue, conserved in the ACDF, there is a note stating ‘to be revisited on a better occasion’, SO, Dubia Varia 1921, n. 7. 43 AES, Inghilterra, pos. 239, fasc. 130, memorandum of Hagan, 10 November 1920. 44 A copy of this letter, dated 23 December 1920 and translated into Italian, can be found attached to AES, Rapporti delle sessioni, sessione 1238, Promemoria a stampa 1080, January 1921, pp. 26–28.

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about the silence of the Pope, and consequently many questioned the purpose of maintaining diplomatic relations with the Holy See. According to Crawe, it would have been better if the Pope had condemned the murder and prohibited the clergy to take part in politics, at least until the end of the violence. Gasparri must, however, have realized that such an action, rather than bringing about peace, would have appeared to be in support of the British government. It was no accident that the Secretary of State told de Salis that any condemnation of the violence of the independence movement would have to also condemn the violence of the government.45 In January 1921, during a session of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, the cardinal members discussed the Irish situation, wondering whether and how the Holy See could intervene.46 Some, in particular Merry del Val, criticized the tactic of prudence exercised up to that moment and argued that the Pope could not remain silent. He reminded the others that the independents using terrorist methods found priests ready to absolve them, if not to encourage them. On the other hand, the cardinals, including Merry del Val and Gasquet, agreed that any condemnation of the methods of the IRA would require a condemnation of the violence of the governing forces. Gasparri in any case defended the current tactic of silence, reminding the others that the episcopate of Ireland also supported it.47 At the end of the meeting, it was proposed that the Primate of Ireland be contacted, asking him to send a public address that would give the Pope the opportunity to express himself on the situation in Ireland. This idea, however, was never implemented, probably because Benedict XV did not think that it was the right step, and also due to the increased estrangement in the relationship between the Holy See and the Irish episcopate that ensued in the following weeks. On 1 December 1920, in fact, L’Osservatore Romano48 had reported that Cardinal Logue, in his pastoral letter for Advent, had condemned the violence of the Irish independents, omitting, however, to add that he also used very strong words against the British troops. This was no small gaffe: the pastoral letter had been followed by the Bloody Sunday of 21 November, during which forty-one people were killed. Some of the victims were assassinated by men of the IRA, but others were killed by the retaliation of the Crown forces, which raided a match at the Dublin stadium and opened fire on the crowd.49 45 AES, Rapporti delle sessioni, sessione 1238, congregazione particolare of 13 January 1921. 46 AES, Rapporti delle sessioni, sessione 1238, congregazione particolare of 13 January 1921. 47 Moreover, all the cardinals knew that a badly prepared pronouncement would offend the Irish. During the meeting, the affair of Mgr Cohalan, Bishop of Cork, was in fact recalled. In December he had decreed that those who had taken a life were subject to excommunication. The Bishop had not distinguished between rebels and government forces, but the independents did not accept his pronouncement, and Mgr Cohalan was strongly criticized both in Ireland and in the United States (Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops, pp. 58–63). 48 ‘Gli avvenimenti in Irlanda: le ragioni della giustizia e della umanità’, L’Osservatore Romano, 1 December 1920. 49 See the essays by Jane Leonard, ‘“English Dogs” or “Poor Devils”? The Dead of Bloody Sunday Morning’, and Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Counting Terror: Bloody Sunday and the Dead of the Irish Revolution’, in Terror in Ireland, ed. by Fitzpatrick, pp. 102–40 and 141–57.

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The Irish press attacked L’Osservatore Romano, and Logue rapidly wrote a letter of protest to the editor. A few days later, the paper published a brief correction,50 which, however, did not receive any recognition in Ireland, while, presumably after the discussion in the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, rumours of an imminent papal condemnation of the rebellion once again began to circulate. In the Roman curia, it was not at first understood just how badly the article in L’Osservatore Romano had been received in Ireland,51 but in February a letter arrived from Mgr O’Doherty, Bishop of Clonfert, written in the name of the Irish episcopate.52 He complained about L’Osservatore Romano in very strong tones and used very harsh words for the English violence. He let the Holy See know the consequences of any condemnation of the Irish independence movement, given the great number of Catholics of Irish origin disseminated throughout the world. A few days later, Mgr Clune, Archbishop of Perth in Australia, a native of Ireland, met the Pope; afterwards, the interpreter said that he had been embarrassed because he had had to explain to the Pope what the Archbishop was saying.53 Then, in March, Bonzano wrote to Gasparri54 about his meeting with some members of the American Irish community who said that they had learned from anonymous but trustworthy sources of an imminent papal condemnation of the rebellion. The Apostolic Delegate said that he had placated them, but in any case repeated his opposition to any such pronouncement, underlining the adverse effect that this would have on the American Church and adding that such a position would not be received in Ireland ‘with the proper reverence’;55 it would, rather, benefit the more radical factions. This was the situation when Mannix came to Rome. The government very probably permitted him to leave England in the hope that the Pope would make him see reason, but when he arrived in Rome, it was the Pope who, on the contrary, wanted advice on how to smooth over the differences with the Irish episcopate. In the course of their meeting, the idea took shape of a papal donation to the Irish White Cross, an association dedicated to assisting victims of the conflict, accompanied by a letter to the Primate of Ireland, who was one of its promoters.56 Mannix, together with Hagan and Cerretti, worked on the draft of the document, which was made public in May 1921 and was widely discussed in Ireland. In it, the Pope spoke of his sympathy for Ireland and his concern for the victims of the conflict, writing: In the public dispute that has erupted among you, the Apostolic See, as in other similar cases, has decided to maintain its neutrality, and it has constantly acted 50 ‘In Irlanda’, L’Osservatore Romano, 19 December 1921. 51 One easily sees this idea by reading the minutes of the special congregation of 13 January 1921 (AES, Rapporti delle sessioni, sessione 1238). 52 AICR, Hagan Papers, anno 1921, n. 45, O’Doherty to Hagan, 1 February 1921. The letter, translated, was sent to the Roman curia (a copy is found in AES, Inghilterra, pos. 234, fasc. 133). 53 Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops, pp. 65–67. 54 AES, Inghilterra, pos. 239, fasc. 134, Bonzano to Gasparri, 23 March 1921. 55 AES, Inghilterra, pos. 239, fasc. 134, Bonzano to Gasparri, 23 March 1921. 56 Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops, pp. 69–71; AICR, Hagan Papers, anno 1921, n. 185, memorandum of Dr Mannix’s visit to Rome, 4 April 1921.

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in this manner up until now, being prudent. However, even in keeping with this rule, in no way do we exempt ourselves from hoping and desiring (and in that sense we implore and beseech the opposing parties) that the fury of this conflict be placated as soon as possible and that a lasting and sincere peace of souls replace such a great outburst of hate.57 These were important words: the Pope did not speak of rebellion but of conflict and called for peace on both sides,58 putting them both implicitly on the same level. Furthermore, in reiterating his neutrality, Benedict implied that he did not intend to act against the Irish independence movement. On the other hand, the letter was also acceptable to the British authorities: the idea to start peace talks with the rebels in those weeks was strengthening.

5. Conclusions On 11 July 1921, a truce was signed between the government and the independents, and in October negotiations for peace were begun. A few weeks later, in December 1921, the parties reached a controversial agreement in which Ireland, with the exception of the seven counties in the North, would gain its independence while remaining within the Commonwealth with the status of a dominion, taking the name of the Irish Free State.59 The agreement, after much discussion, was ratified by the Dáil in January 1922. In October, the Pope, probably encouraged by Gasquet and the pro-English faction, had sent a telegram to King George V, wishing for the success of the negotiations,60 but the action was not appreciated in Ireland. One of the reasons for the displeasure was that a similar telegram was not sent to the independents. When the treaty was ratified, the Pope thus telegraphed the King, the Dáil and the Primate, praising the agreement.61

57 ‘Nella pubblica contesa che presso di voi si è scatenata, la Sede Apostolica, come in altri casi del genere, ha deciso di conservare la neutralità e così si comportò costantemente prima d’ora, secondo prudenza; tuttavia, pur seguendo tale regola, per nulla Ci esimiamo dall’augurarCi e dal desiderare (e in tal senso imploriamo e scongiuriamo le parti avverse) che quanto prima si plachi il furore di codesto conflitto, e che una stabile e sincera pace degli animi succeda ad una così grande esplosione di odio’; Benedict XV, Ubi primum (27 April 1921), Acta Apostolica Sedis, 13 (1921), pp. 256–58 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 58 This action coincided, moreover, with what had been recommended by the moderate nationalist Thomas Patrick Gill, whom the Secretary of State had asked to produce a memorandum on the situation. Gill had shown how any condemnation of the violence would have been badly received by the Irish public, as had happened under Leo XIII. He recommended, instead, that the Holy See address itself to both parties, pleading for peace. See AES, Inghilterra, pos. 239, fasc. 132, promemoria Irlanda: situazione politica ( January 1921); and, in the same archive, the letters from Gill to Gasparri (17 January 1921) and to Cerretti (17 January 1921). 59 In 1949, the Irish Free State became a full republic, abandoning the Commonwealth. 60 La Bella, Santa Sede, p. 194. 61 Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops, p. 83.

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Benedict XV died a few days later, probably hoping that the Irish issue had been solved. The signed agreement, however, was not destined to bring peace to Ireland. Many independents, not accepting the compromise, took up arms against the new Irish Free State and started a bloody civil war which after a year saw the victory of the supporters of the treaty. One of the first ‘official’ recognitions of the existence of an Irish state, that of the Holy See, came on the occasion of the death of Benedict XV. In the Acta Apostolicae Sedis,62 among the telegrams of condolences for the death of the pontiff, those of the representatives of the Irish Free State were published together with those of the representatives of other nations.

Bibliography Aan de Wiel, Jérôme, The Catholic Church in Ireland 1914–1918: War and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003), pp. 79–89 Belletti, Alberto, Chiesa Cattolica e nazionalismo irlandese: Leone XIII, l’episcopato gaelico e il leader protestante Charles Stewart Parnell (Rome: Aracne, 2014) Caulfield, Max, The Easter Rebellion (London: Gill and MacMillan, 1965) Chavasse, Moirin, Terence MacSwiney (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds, 1961) Coleman, Marie, ‘McCartan, Patrick’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), V, pp. 773–74 Coogan, Tim Pat, Eamon De Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland (New York: HarperCollins, 1995) Costello, Francis J., Enduring the Most: The Life and Death of Terence MacSwiney (Dingle: Brandon, 1995) Davis, Richard P., Arthur Griffith and Non–Violent Sinn Féin (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1974) Duff, Charles, Six Days to Shake an Empire (London: Curtis Books, 1966) Ebsworth, Walter A., Archbishop Mannix (Armadale, VIC: H. H. Stephenson, 1977) Edwards, Owen Dudley, Éamon de Valera (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1987) Fitzpatrick, David, ed., Terror in Ireland, 1916–1923 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2012) Foy, Michael T., and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising (Stroud: Sutton, 1999) Gilchrist, Michael, Daniel Mannix: Wit and Wisdom (North Melbourne, VIC: Freedom, 2004) Hopkinson, Michael, The Irish War of Independence (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002) Jeffery, Keith, The GPO and the Easter Rising (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006) Jordan, Anthony J., De Valera Eamon 1882–1975: Irish Catholic Visionary (Dublin: Westport Books, 2010) Keogh, Dermot, The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) Kiernan, Colm, Daniel Mannix and Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984)

62 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 14 (1922), p. 83.

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La Bella, Gianni, Santa Sede e questione irlandese, 1916–1922 (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1996) Larkin, Emmet, The Roman Catholic Church and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland, 1886–1888 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1978) Leonard, Jane, ‘“English Dogs” or “Poor Devils”? The Dead of Bloody Sunday Morning’, in Terror in Ireland, 1916–1923, ed. by David Fitzpatrick (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2012), pp. 102–40 Leslie, Shane, Cardinal Gasquet: A Memoir (London: Burns and Oates, 1953) Long, Patrick, ‘Hagan, John’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), IV, pp. 353–54 Lynch, Diarmuid, The I. R. B. and the 1916 Insurrection, ed. by Florence O’Donoghue (Cork: Mercier Press, 1957) Lysaght, D. R. O’Connor, ‘Plunkett, Count George Noble’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), VIII, pp. 178–79 MacAulay, Ambrose, The Holy See, British Policy and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland (1885–1893) (Dublin: Four Courts, 2002) Mannix, Patrick, The Belligerent Prelate: An Alliance between Archbishop Daniel Mannix and Eamon de Valera (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013) Martin, Francis X., ed., Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967) Maume, Patrick, ‘O’Kelly, Seán Thomas (Ó Ceallaigh, Seán Tomás)’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), VII, pp. 615–19 McCartan, Patrick, With De Valera in America (New York: Brentano, 1932) McGarry, Fearghal, The Rising Ireland: Easter 1916 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) McHugh, Roger, Dublin, 1916 (Dublin: Arlington Books, 1966) Miller, David W., Church, State, and Nation in Ireland, 1898–1921 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973) Montagna, Maurizio Giuseppe, Arthur Griffith e la trasformazione del nazionalismo irlandese (Lugano: ADV, 1995) Morrissey, Thomas J., Bishop Edward Thomas O’Dwyer of Limerick, 1842–1917 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2003) Morrissey, Thomas J., William J. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, 1841–1921 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000) Murphy, Frank, Daniel Mannix: Archbishop of Melbourne 1917–1963 (Melbourne: Advocate Press, 1948) Murray, Raymond, ‘Plunkett, St Oliver’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), VIII, pp. 191–93 Nowlan, Kevin B., ed., The Making of 1916: Studies in the History of the Rising (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1969) Ó Lúing, Sean, ‘Arthur Griffith and Sinn Féin’, in Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916, ed. by Francis X. Martin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 55–66

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O’Halpin, Eunan, ‘Counting Terror: Bloody Sunday and the Dead of the Irish Revolution’, in Terror in Ireland, 1916–1923, ed. by David Fitzpatrick (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2012), pp. 141–57 Pollard, John F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Chapman, 1999) Privilege, John, Michael Logue and the Catholic Church in Ireland, 1879–1925 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009) Santamaria, Bartholomew A., Archbishop Mannix: His Contribution to the Art of Public Leadership in Australia (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1978) Townshend, Charles, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London: Allen Lane, 2005) Wall, Maureen, ‘The Background to the Rising, from 1914 to the Issue of the Countermanding Order on Easter Saturday 1916’, The Making of 1916: Studies in the History of the Rising, ed. by Kevin B. Nowlan (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1969), pp. 157–97 Walsh, Patrick J., William J. Walsh: Archbishop of Dublin (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1928) Wills, Clair, Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009)

Igor Salmič

Benedict XV and Yugoslavia (1914–22)

1. Introduction A more organic presentation of the relationship between Benedict XV and the Yugoslav nation can be given only from 1 December 1918 when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed. It was a multinational country that took the official and better known name of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. For this reason, the period of World War I (1914–18) presents a totally unique complexity. The Croat and Slovene territory still belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as did that of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks), which had belonged to the Ottoman Empire until 1908, although Austria-Hungary occupied and administered it after the Congress of Berlin of 1878. The Serbian territory already obtained a certain autonomy from the Turks in 1817 and became an independent kingdom in 1882. Similarly, Montenegro declared itself an autonomous principality in 1852 and became an independent kingdom in 1910. Macedonia remained under the Ottoman Empire until the outset of the Balkan Wars in 1912–13, after which it was almost completely annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia. After the Great War, all these territories formed the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The present contribution aims to briefly illustrate some relevant events and aspects of the relationship between Benedict XV and the political and religious Yugoslav authorities during and after World War I.

2. Some Salient Moments during World War I (1914–18) In the pre-war period, during the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878–1903) and Pius X (1903–14), we can already find a very rich documentation in the Vatican archives on the Yugoslav issue. This confirms the interests of Leo XIII in the Orthodox

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1249–1264 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118830

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world and the Balkans, with which he tried to initiate a better structured dialogue.1 Montenegro was one of the first Orthodox countries with which negotiations for a concordat were opened. After it was agreed on in 1886,2 it became a model for other negotiations with the Orthodox world. Some years earlier, in 1881, the Holy See had already signed an agreement with the Austro-Hungarian Empire that accorded diocesan status to the apostolic vicariates of Bosnia and Herzegovina.3 Perhaps the best known case was the Concordat with the Kingdom of Serbia, signed four days before the incident in Sarajevo, on 24 June 1914.4 It is worthwhile looking at this in greater depth.

3. The Holy See and the Kingdom of Serbia In the Relazioni presentate al S. P. Benedetto XV sulla situazione delle nazioni (Papers Presented to the Holy Father Benedict XV on the Situation of the Nations) at the beginning of his pontificate, ample space was dedicated to the Kingdom of Serbia, with special attention to the negotiations for the Concordat.5 While the successor to Pius X, who died on 20 August 1914, was being chosen in Rome, Crown Prince Aleksandar Karađorđrević, who had fled Belgrade due to the Austrian invasion, was ready to sign the Concordat with the Holy See in Valjevo











1 On this, see Andreas Gottsmann, ‘Konkordat oder Kultusprotektorat? Die Donaumonarchie und die diplomatischen Aktivitäten des Hl. Stuhls in Südosteuropa 1878–1914’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 48 (2006), pp. 409–64; Rita Tolomeo, La Santa Sede e il mondo danubiano-balcanico: problemi nazionali e religiosi (1875–1921) (Rome: La Fenice, 1996). 2 The text of the agreement between the Holy See and the Principality of Montenegro can be found in Raccolta di concordati su materie ecclesiastiche tra la Santa Sede e le autorità civili, ed. by Angelo Mercati, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1954), I, pp. 1048–50. On the negotiations and the ratification of the agreement, see Andreas Gottsmann, ‘Papst Leo XIII. und die “jugoslawische” Versuchung: Montenegro, San Girolamo und die südslawische Frage in der Diplomatie des Hl. Stuhls’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 49 (2007), pp. 457–510; Francesco Caccamo, ‘La politica orientale della Santa Sede e il concordato con il Montenegro del 1886’, in Ubi neque aerugo neque tinea demolitur: studi in onore di Luigi Pellegrini per i suoi settanta anni, ed. by Maria Grazia del Fuoco (Naples: Liguori, 2006), pp. 55–83. 3 The text of the agreement between the Holy See and the Austro-Hungarian Empire for Bosnia and Herzegovina can be found in Raccolta, ed. by Mercati, I, pp. 1014–15. On the negotiations and the signing of it, see Petar Vrankić, Religion und Politik in Bosnien und der Herzegowina (1878–1918) (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1998), pp. 411–74. 4 The text of the Concordat between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Serbia can be found in Raccolta, ed. by Mercati, I, pp. 1100–03. On the negotiations and the signing of the Concordat, see Gottsmann, ‘Konkordat oder Kultusprotektorat?’, pp. 434–64; Rita Tolomeo, ‘Le relazioni serbo-vaticane dal congresso di Berlino alla prima guerra mondiale’, in Il Papato e l’Europa, ed. by Gabriele De Rosa and Giorgio Cracco (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2001), pp. 341–80; Dragoljub Živojinović, Vatikan, Srbija i stvaranje jugoslovenske države (1914–1920) (Belgrade: Nolit Beograd, 1980), pp. 13–47. 5 AES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1914, pos. 1310, fasc. 452, ff. 185r–194r. For the text of the Concordat, see, ff. 195r–204r in the same collection.

B e n e d i ct  XV and Y u go slavi a

on 25 August 1914,6 after the parliament had ratified it in its last session before the outbreak of war (26 July 1914).7 The principal reason for the agreement on, and rapid ratification of, the Concordat was the desire to put an end to the Austrian protectorate on Serbian soil. It was seen by many as a political rather than a religious move. Other motivations were also involved, such as the possibility of using old Slavonic in the liturgy and the fact that the Concordat seemed to be an investment in the future, presenting the image of a tolerant country and attracting other Slavic people in the South who remained in the monarchy for the formation of a great Yugoslav nation. At least this is how the Serbian Prime Minister, Nicola Pašić,8 and the Benedictine Pierre Bastien,9 Apostolic Vicar to Bosnia and Herzegovina, expressed it. Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State, understood this reason of the Serbian government in June 1914, a few days before the Concordat was signed.10 The central role in the negotiations was played by the Vatican diplomat, Eugenio Pacelli, who was then Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Unlike the Serbian government, the Vatican wanted to slow down ‘by various delaying techniques’11 the exchange of ratifications in deference to the Austro-Hungarian government which, in wanting to maintain a certain influence through the religious protectorate, certainly did not look favourably on the Serbian-Vatican agreement. A rich file on the Serbian Concordat is preserved in the Vatican archives, from which one can discern a certain embarrassment on the part of the Holy See, which neither wanted to fall out of favour with the Viennese government nor could refrain



6 The text of the Concordat was ratified in a solemn proclamation by Crown Prince Aleksandar: ‘We have seen and examined the said Concordat, have approved it, and approve it. We declare that it is accepted, ratified and confirmed, and we promise that it will be fully observed. In faith We have signed the present letters of ratification and have affixed our national seal to them. Given at Valjevo on 25 August one thousand nine hundred fourteen. Alexandre’ (‘Nous ayant vu et examiné le dit Concordat l’avons approuvé et approuvons. Déclarons qu’il est accepté, ratifié et confirmé et promettons qu’il sera inviolablement observé. En foi de quoi Nous avons signé les présentes lettres de ratification et y avons fait apposer Notre sceau d’État. Donné à Valjevo, le 25 Août mil neuf cent quatorze. Alexandre’); AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1913–15, pos. 1056, fasc. 455, f. 13. 7 Živojinović, Vatikan, Srbija, p. 43. 8 Živojinović, Vatikan, Srbija, p. 19. 9 Gottsmann, ‘Konkordat oder Kultusprotektorat?’, p. 459. 10 See the minutes of the cardinals’ meeting at the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs on 7 June 1914: ‘Gasparri observed that Serbia’s principal aim in establishing the Concordat was to attract the Slavs who were subject to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to itself, thus removing any obstacle that might arise from religion and showing how the Kingdom of Serbia had established cordial relations with the Holy See and offered to Catholics guarantees of full liberty and well-being’ (‘Gasparri osserva che lo scopo principale della Serbia nel conchiudere il Concordato è quello di attrarre a sé gli Slavi soggetti all’Impero austro-ungarico e togliere per ciò qualunque ostacolo che potrebbe derivare dal lato religioso, mostrando come il Regno di Serbia è in cordiali rapporti colla S. Sede e offre ai cattolici garanzie di piena libertà e benessere’); Massimiliano Valente, ‘I rapporti tra Santa Sede e Serbia nella Prima guerra mondiale’, in ‘Inutile strage’: i cattolici e la Santa Sede nella Prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Lorenzo Botrugno (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2016), pp. 493–513 (p. 496). 11 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1913–15, pos. 1056, fasc. 455, f. 31r, Gasparri to Scapinelli di Leguigno, 11 March 1915.

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from the duties explicitly and solemnly assumed in the signing of the Concordat.12 In order to find a way to meet the needs of Austria-Hungary, the Secretary of State decided to mark the signing of the treaty with no solemnity and not to accept an extraordinary delegate and plenipotentiary minister from Serbia before the end of the war, limiting itself to allowing a simple informal agent to take care of the steps necessary for the execution of the Concordat.13 The exchange of ratifications finally occurred on 20 March 1915 and, according to Gasparri’s instructions, was neither announced in L’Osservatore Romano nor in other Catholic papers.14 This had significant repercussions, even in the historical accounts, which still overlook the ratification. The application of the Concordat was also a concern for the Roman curia. It is thus not surprising that the issue appeared in the instructions to the Nuncio in Vienna, Valfrè di Bonzo, written in the autumn of 1916.15 Regardless, the Concordat never went into effect due to the events of the war. After the war, the topic of the document and its validity in the new Yugoslav Kingdom became rather pressing. Only in 1922 was it decided to begin negotiations for a new concordat, thus abandoning the idea that the Serbian one could be extended to include the whole Yugoslav territory, as certain politicians and jurists would have preferred. We shall return to this lively debate below. Other than the ratification of the Concordat, the relations between Belgrade and the Holy See during the war remained limited to humanitarian actions, as Massimiliano Valente has highlighted in his recent study based on the Vatican documentation.16 According to him, the diplomacy of the Holy See concerning aid and the Pope personally made efforts in various fields. Of these, the proposal for the exchange of 12 ‘After this, the Holy See does not see how it can refuse the exchange in question without shirking the duties that it has explicitly and solemnly assumed and without provoking serious reprisals which would make the situation of Catholics in Serbia even more difficult. I do not doubt that the AustroHungarian government will recognize the reasonableness of such motives and believe that the Holy See, having verbally agreed to the ratification of the Concordat, has not already ratified it out of a lack of respect for the government, with which, rather, it avidly desires always to maintain the most cordial relations; the only reason for the delay is that it is involved in other commitments which it cannot avoid’ (‘Dopo di che la S. Sede non vede come potrebbe rifiutarsi allo scambio in questione senza mancare agli impegni, esplicitamente e solennemente assunti, e senza provocare gravi rappresaglie, le quali renderebbero ancor più difficile la situazione dei cattolici in Serbia. Non dubito che il governo austro-ungarico vorrà riconoscere la ragionevolezza di tali motivi e credere che la S. Sede, se consente alla ratifica del concordato in parola, non lo fa già per mancanza di riguardo verso il governo medesimo, col quale anzi, desidera vivamente di mantenere sempre le più cordiali relazioni, ma unicamente perché stretta da indeclinabili impegni’); AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1913–15, pos. 1056, fasc. 455, ff. 31v–32v. 13 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1913–15, pos. 1056, fasc. 455, f. 38, Gasparri to Scapinelli di Leguigno, 17 March 1915 (encrypted). 14 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1913–15, pos. 1056, fasc. 455, f. 51, Gasparri to Scapinelli di Leguigno, 22 March 1915 (encrypted). 15 For the instructions, formulated in twenty points, see AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1916, pos. 1118, fasc. 473, ff. 7–78 (draft), cited by Andreas Gottsmann, ‘Die Wiener Nuntiatur und Kaiser Karl’, in Karl I. (IV.), der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Donaumonarchie, ed. by Andreas Gottsmann (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007), pp. 93–118 (p. 98). 16 Valente, ‘I rapporti’, pp. 504–12.

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prisoners of war no longer fit for service, the intervention on behalf of the Serbian civilians deported into Austria-Hungary, the concern evoked for the Serbs in dire stress due to their hunger and a plan to support the American Red Cross are at least worth mentioning. The Pope expressed particular concern for the Serbian children deported to Broumov in Bohemia when he pleaded with the Austro-Hungarian authorities to move them to neutral countries, such as Denmark.17 In the Note of 1917, when speaking of the rights of the Balkan countries, Benedict preferred neither to mention Serbia by name nor propose a way to solve the Yugoslav issue, recommending that the powers at war maintain a spirit of equity and justice in the face of any kind of exaggerated nationalism.18 The Serbian government took the side of the powers that did not look kindly on the papal suggestion, judging it too beneficial to the Central Powers. Some politicians, indeed, were disappointed at the lack of a more direct appeal for Yugoslavia, such as those he had made for Belgium, Poland and Armenia.19 The Serbian Envoy to the Holy See, Mihailo Gavrilović, was not of this opinion and held that the accusation was unfounded because what was relevant to Serbia was implicitly admitted in the Note.20 Beyond these differences, the Serbian hopes rested on the so-called Corfu Declaration of 20 July 1917,21 which foresaw the establishment of an independent nation as a kingdom under the Karađorđević dynasty. Broadly speaking, this declaration was implemented by the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the war, from which Serbia and the Entente emerged victorious. On the whole, we can agree with Valente that the different contexts of the relations between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Serbia during World War I show ‘a discrete degree of relationship’ between them.22

4. The Holy See and the Southern Slavic Area of the Danubian Monarchy The Holy See kept track of the issues in Slovenian, Croatian and Bosnian territory during the war through the Nunciature in Vienna, run first by Raffaele Scapinelli di Leguigno (1912–16) and then by Teodoro Valfrè di Bonzo (1916–19). Valfrè di Bonzo was asked to pay special attention to the political and ecclesiastical situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to the aforementioned Serbian Concordat, to the care for prisoners and to some bishops who were held to be too nationalistic.23 Until the end of 1916, the Holy See felt that the future of the Catholic Church in Central Europe

17 Valente, ‘I rapporti’, pp. 510–11. 18 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 1 (1917), p. 423. 19 Živojinović, Vatikan, Srbija, p. 243. 20 Valente, ‘I rapporti’, p. 509. 21 The original text is in Jugoslavija 1918–1988: tematska zbirka dokumenata, ed. by Branko Petranović and Momčilo Zečević, 2nd edn (Belgrade: Izdavačka radna organizacija ‘Rad’, 1988), pp. 66–68. 22 Valente, ‘I rapporti’, p. 512. 23 Gottsmann, ‘Die Wiener Nuntiatur’, pp. 97–112.

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was closely bound to the survival of the Habsburg monarchy.24 However, the Pope soon realized that in order to promote Catholic interests he also needed to support the claims of the nations that sought greater independence, maintaining an attitude that was both prudent and, at the same time, realistic and pragmatic.25 Croats and Slovenes sought a greater mutual union being well aware of their limited importance compared to other nations of the Habsburg monarchy. One of the concrete results of their collaboration during the war was a little known memorandum called Riječka spomenica (Rijeka Memorandum), written in April 1915 and discovered a few years ago by Tomislav Mrkonjić.26 Some of the Croatian and Slovene clergy, together with some lay experts, decided to act secretly to assure Croatia and Slovenia a more favourable position after the upcoming peace treaties. The more prominent Church leaders were the Bishop of Krk, Anton Mahnič, and the Conventual Franciscan, Josip Milošević. The document recounts the history of the Croatian people and its profound adherence to the Catholic Church. Since the Holy See was the only refuge for the Croatian cause, it requested the Pope’s intervention in promoting the Croatian-Slovene union. Since the memorandum was written in the spring of 1915, there were still ample opportunities. Three of these are mentioned in the document: (1) in the case of Austrian victory, the monarchy would be restructured, and all the Croatian territories would be united in a political entity, with the annexation of the Slovenian areas by the Croatian ones and the creation of a kingdom under the sceptre of the Austrian Empire; (2) In the case of Austrian defeat, a completely independent Croatia would unite Croats and Slovenes; (3) Should a Croatian-Slovene union in one kingdom prove impossible, a union between Croats and Slovenes could be accomplished in another structure. When the memorandum was delivered, the Pope promised to defend its proposals should he be invited to the future peace conference.27 Some points in the memorandum — at the time unknown to the public — reappeared two years later in the May Declaration (1917),28 when a group of Slovene and Croatian parliamentarians in Vienna proposed a union of all Slavs in the southern area of the monarchy obtaining a broad autonomy — following on the heels of the Kingdom of Hungary — and under the guidance of the Empire. This proposal, in fact, greatly resembled the first point in the Rijeka Memorandum. After further Austro-Hungarian defeats, the Slav requests increased, and gradually 24 Gottsmann, ‘Die Wiener Nuntiatur’, pp. 109–10. 25 Gottsmann, ‘Die Wiener Nuntiatur’, p. 110. 26 The document is located in the private archives of Father Bazilije Pandžić, in Zagreb. The memorandum was published for the first time by Tomislav Mrkonjić, ‘Hrvatski katolički pokret i “Riječka spomenica” iz travnja 1915: (Latinski koncept)’, in Hrvatski katolički pokret, zbornik radova s Međunarodnoga znanstvenog skupa održanog u Zagrebu i Krku od 29. do 31. ožujka 2001, ed. by Zlatko Matijević (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 2002), pp. 444–56. For a bilingual edition (Latin and Croatian), see Pilar, 4, 7–8 (2009), pp. 214–44. 27 Zlatko Matijević, ‘Tajna diplomatska aktivnost o. Joze Miloševića: Riječka spomenica’, in Posljednjih stotinu godina (1907–2007), ed. by Ljudevit Maračić, 2 vols (Zagreb: Veritas, 2008–09), II (2009), pp. 363–79. 28 The full text of the May Declaration can be found in Jugoslavija 1918–1988, ed. by Petranović and Zečević, pp. 83–84.

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the idea of a southern Slav union even without the monarchy took shape. Among such requests, the Corfu Declaration prevailed.29 A person with whom the Nunciature in Vienna was greatly concerned is worth briefly mentioning: the Bishop of Ljubljana Anton Bonaventura Jeglič, one of the most eminent prelates in the Empire and then in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The complete version of his diary was published for the first time in 2015, and it is fundamental for our knowledge of the religious and political situation, extending well beyond the boundaries of his diocese.30 He was denounced to the Holy See many times for his presumed nationalistic politics that were anti-Austrian.31 For example, in January 1918, he was accused of an anti-national attitude because he was too actively involved in the May Declaration. Furthermore, according to his detractors, he was increasingly supportive of the political current that preferred to cut political ties with the Habsburg monarchy. After being informed by a report of Valfrè di Bonzo,32 the Pope was irritated at the behaviour of the Bishop and ordered the Nuncio to chastise him severely and prevent him from any political activity.33 Jeglič was nonetheless allowed to present his defence: in the Vatican archives, in point of fact, are some of his letters, which are very long and written at the request of Valfrè di Bonzo.34 They explain in detail the circumstances and the problems of the Slovene People’s Party that had split and how he sought to maintain a political unity among Catholics in order to defend their principles. The Nuncio was very satisfied with Jeglič’s defence and even defined him an ‘excellent Bishop’:35 Benedict XV and Gasparri also warmly welcomed Jeglič’s explanation,36 and the issue was considered ad acta.37 The description of Jeglič provided by the Nuncio to Jugoslavia, Ermenegildo Pellegrinetti, is very interesting. In 1922, shortly after his arrival there, he wrote: Gifted with energy, a spirit of organization, a deep piety and heart-felt devotion to the Holy See, he can be considered today the best or among the best Yugoslav

29 The text of the Corfu Declaration can be found in Jugoslavija 1918–1988, ed. by Petranović and Zečević, pp. 535–38. 30 Jegličev dnevnik: znanstvenokritična izdaja, ed. by Marija Čipić Rehar and Blaž Otrin (Celje: Celjska Mohorjeva družba, 2015). 31 On this topic, Gottsmann published an article many years ago that is very interesting and also includes the transcript of Jeglič’s defence: Andreas Gottsmann, ‘Parteipolitik und katholische Kirche in der Donaumonarchie: das politische Engagement des Anton B. Jeglič und die Diplomatie des Hl. Stuhls’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 51 (2009), pp. 317–36. 32 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918, pos. 1263, fasc. 509, ff. 59r–60r, Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 6 January 1918. 33 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918, pos. 1263, fasc. 509, ff. 61r–62r, Gasparri to Valfrè di Bonzo, 16 January 1918 (draft). 34 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918, pos. 1263, fasc. 509, ff. 67r–73r, Jeglič to Benedict XV, 9 May 1918 (see also Gottsmann, ‘Parteipolitik’, pp. 329–35); AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918, pos. 1263, fasc. 509, ff. 79r–85r, Jeglič to Valfrè di Bonzo, 4 August 1918. 35 ‘Ottimo prelato’; AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918, pos. 1263, fasc. 509, f. 66r, Valfrè di Bonzo to Gasparri, 13 May 1918. 36 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918, pos. 1263, fasc. 509, f. 74, Gasparri to Valfrè di Bonzo, 30 June 1918. 37 AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918, pos. 1263, fasc. 509, f. 90, Gasparri to Valfrè di Bonzo, 1 October 1918.

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bishops. They reproach him for a nationalism that is at times too fervent, which in 1918 prevented him from discerning the dangers of certain situations well and the need for greater caution and guarantees for the Church, but I think that the events that then followed were a helpful lesson.38

5. Formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes As Valente has shown,39 the Holy See closely followed the Balkan events and the birth of the new Kingdom. In October 1918, in fact, while the peace talks were still underway, the Secretary of State already asked Bastien, who knew the area well, whether the new Yugoslav Kingdom that was planned by the countries of the Entente would be advantageous to the Catholic Church. In his response, evidently written before 1 December 1918, Bastien suggested two possible outcomes: a new kingdom headed by Serbia or an autonomous Yugoslav kingdom under the Austro-Hungarian Crown.40 To his mind, in the former case the Church would have nothing to gain but much to lose because it would fall under ‘schismatic’ Serbs who were not very friendly toward Catholics. The latter possibility seemed more favourable because in that case the Catholics would be more numerous (4.6 million) than the Orthodox (1.5 million).41 An important date that is rarely considered by historians is that of 29 October 1918, when Croats and Slovenes, after having formed a national committee, formally broke off relations with the Austro-Hungarian government and proclaimed the autonomous State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs.42 The survival of the new nation (not to be confused with the later Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) was exposed to great danger due to its relatively small geographical extension and international appreciation.43 Some scholars have spoken of a recognition by the Holy See on the basis of a letter of 8 November 1918 to the Nuncio in Vienna in which Benedict XV 38 ‘Dotato di energia, di spirito di organizzazione, di pietà profonda, di sentita devozione alla S. Sede, si può considerare attualmente come il migliore o fra i migliori dei vescovi jugoslavi. Gli rimproverano un nazionalismo qualche volta troppo acceso, che nel 1918 non gli fece scorgere bene i pericoli di certe situazioni e la necessità di migliori cautele e guarentigie per la Chiesa; ma credo che i fatti poi seguiti siano stati una salutare lezione’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Jugoslavia, b. 16, f. 10r, Pellegrinetti to Gasparri, 7 October 1922. 39 Massimiliano Valente, Diplomazia pontificia e Regno dei serbi, croati e sloveni (1918–1929) (Split: Filozofski fakultet u Splitu, Odsjek za povijest, 2012), pp. 17–161. 40 Valente, Diplomazia pontificia, pp. 18–19. See also Paolo Blasina, ‘Santa Sede e Regno dei serbi, croati e sloveni: dalla missione di dom Pierre Bastien al riconoscimento formale (1918–1919)’, Studi storici, 35, 3 (1994), pp. 773–809 (p. 774). 41 Valente, Diplomazia pontificia, pp. 20–21; Blasina, ‘Santa Sede’, p. 776. 42 The text of the proclamation of the autonomous nation can be found in Jugoslavija 1918–1988, ed. by Petranović and Zečević pp. 103–04. 43 Ilaria Montanar, Il vescovo lavantino Ivan Jožef Tomažič (1876–1949) tra il declino dell’Impero austroungarico e l’avvento del comunismo in Jugoslavia (Rome: CLV, 2007), p. 58; Jurij Perovšek, ‘V zaželjeni deželi’: slovenska izkušnja s Kraljevino SHS/Jugoslavijo 1918–1941 (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2009), pp. 20–24.

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expressed his desire to ‘put himself on friendly terms with the diverse nations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that have now become independent countries’.44 The document shows an openness, albeit a prudent one, in regard to nations and countries emerging from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Having said that, the recognition of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs should be understood in a very broad sense and not formally, because to recognize a political change constituted a pragmatic procedure in Vatican diplomatic practice. This nation of a majority of Catholics did not exist for very long and vanished after only thirty-three days with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.45 Bastien’s Yugoslav mission lasted just over five months (from the end of November 1918 to mid-May 1919) and his reports had a great impact on the less than favourable opinion of the Secretary of State towards the new Kingdom. Bastien had a harsh opinion of the Serbs (‘the schismatics […] inspire little trust, […] they have in their heart hatred for the Roman Church’)46 and did not hesitate to criticize even Catholics and bishops, whose nationalism had blinded them to the point where they were intoxicated by the union with Serbia without considering the dangers to the Church’s interests.47 It is not surprising, therefore, that before the peace conference in Paris Gasparri confided in Baron Carlo Monti, the Italian government’s chargé d’affaires to the Holy See, that Yugoslavia should not have been recognized and that Slovenes, Croats and Serbs should have remained separate.48 In an interview that he conceded to the French paper Le Petit Parisien in 1919, the Cardinal mentioned the possibility of giving Croats and Slovenes a certain autonomy ‘for example in a republican form’, showing in this way the doubts of the Holy See, which saw the Catholics in Yugoslavia in an inferior position compared to the Orthodox.49 Gasparri was even more explicit in his memoirs (1930), deploring the favouritism towards Serbia at the Paris conference despite its presumed responsibility for the crime in Sarajevo that started the war. In his opinion, Yugoslavia was nothing more than an agglomeration of peoples hardly on friendly terms with the Serbian government.50

44 ‘Porsi in amichevoli rapporti con le diverse nazioni dell’impero austro-ungarico che ora si sono costituite in Stati indipendenti’; Benedetto XV to Gasparri, 8 November 1918, cited in Valente, Diplomazia pontificia, p. 23. 45 For the address of the National Committee of Zagreb to Crown Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević and his response, see Jugoslavija 1918–1988, ed. by Petranović and Zečevic, pp. 135–38. 46 ‘Gli scismatici […] ispirano poca fiducia; […] hanno nel cuore l’odio della Chiesa romana’; AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918–21, pos. 1448, fasc. 584, f. 4v, Bastien to Gasparri, 29 July 1919. Cited in Valente, Diplomazia pontificia, p. 60; Blasina, ‘Santa Sede’, p. 801. 47 Blasina, ‘Santa Sede’, p. 792. The author cites as his source an encoded message from Bastien to Gasparri on 14 March 1919. The numbering of the collections was different at the time of his research (AES, Austria 690). 48 Antonio Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), II, p. 421. 49 ‘De forme par exemple républicaine’; Blasina, ‘Santa Sede’, p. 791. 50 Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite), ed. by Giovanni Spadolini, 2nd edn (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973), pp. 226–27.

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For its part, Belgrade wanted to gain the favour of the Holy See immediately. Thus, on 8 January 1919, Minister Lujo Bakotić, former Secretary of the Serbian Legation to the Holy See from 1917, officially sent to Gasparri the official proclamation of the new Kingdom.51 Gasparri was very reserved in his response, restricting himself to ‘acknowledging to Your Excellency reception of the interesting Note’.52 We must not, however, only blame his unfriendly attitude towards the Serbian nation but also assert that the issue (i.e. the independence of the Kingdom and its borders) was still to be solved at the peace conference in Paris. In the following months, the relationship between Belgrade and the Holy See markedly deteriorated with the nomination of some bishops. Since the bilateral relations were not yet official, the Secretary of State did not feel obliged to ask the Yugoslav government for its clearance before nominating Antun Akšamović to Djakovo. The situation was placated when the Holy See turned to the government to ask whether there were any objections to Akšamović from a political perspective, not because it was obliged to ask but because it wanted to show respect for the Kingdom and avoid any possible cause of discord.53 The improved relationship and the developments at the peace conference moved the Holy See to reconsider its official recognition. After some formal obstacles, on 6 November 1919 Gasparri sent Bakotić a note in which he formally recognized the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The document expressed the Holy See’s pleasure at the government’s decision to continue the relations that Serbia had established with it and the certainty that the full liberty that had been given to the Catholic Church would also produce in the new Kingdom ‘the most abundant fruits of prosperity’.54 In regard to the recognition, there is the very interesting testimony of Baron Monti, who asked Benedict XV the reasons for the recognition of the Yugoslav Kingdom: ‘His Holiness responded that by now all the other countries had recognized it and thus there was no reason why the Holy See should not do the same, even though it did not hold much fondness for Serbia’.55 It should be immediately noted that, although Bastien’s reports had no small influence on Gasparri’s opinion, they were not the only source of the information that arrived on the Pope’s desk. The Catholic bishops also were another valuable channel of information. As we have seen, Bastien used very harsh words to describe their nationalism and their submission to the Serbian element, but what actions 51 AJ, Poslanstvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije pri Svetoj Stolici (372), fasc. 1, [map 5], ff. n.n., Bakotić to Gasparri, 8 January 1919 (draft). See Valente, Diplomazia pontificia, p. 32. 52 ‘Accuser à V. E. réception de l’intéressante Note’; AJ, Poslanstvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije pri Svetoj Stolici (372), fasc. 1, [map 5], ff. n.n., Gasparri to Bakotić, 18 January 1919. 53 Blasina, ‘Santa Sede’, pp. 798–99; Živojinović, Vatikan, Srbija, pp. 394–97; Nikola Žutić, Kraljevina Jugoslavija i Vatikan: odnos jugoslovenske države i rimske crkve 1918–1935 (Belgrade: Maštel Commerce, 1994), pp. 123–30. 54 ‘I più copiosi frutti di prosperità’; AJ, Poslanstvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije pri Svetoj Stolici (372), fasc. 1, [map 5], ff. n.n., Gasparri to Bakotić, 6 November 1919. See Valente, Diplomazia pontificia, p. 72. 55 ‘Sua Santità mi risponde che ormai lo avevano riconosciuto tutti gli altri governi e che quindi, non vi era ragione perché la S. Sede non facesse altrettanto, per quanto le sue simpatie per la Serbia non siano molte’; AJ, Poslanstvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije pri Svetoj Stolici (372), fasc. 1, [map 5], ff. n.n., Gasparri to Bakotić, 6 November 1919; Scottà, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’, II, pp. 505–06.

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did they take in these early years? During 1919, some bishops went to Rome seeking the support of the Pope for the Yugoslav cause. The first of these was the Bishop of Spalato, Juraj Carić, who arrived in Rome at the end of January 1919, before heading for the peace conference in Paris.56 On the occasion of his visit to the Vatican, he gave the Pope a brief report on the new Yugoslav nation.57 The aforementioned Jeglič was one of the most diligent and optimistic bishops and met the Pope many times, starting from August 1919. On that occasion, he presented to the Pope the political and religious situation in Yugoslavia, assuring him that the Catholics did not fear being overcome by Serbism.58 During the meeting, Jeglič confirmed to the Pope the existence of prejudices and accusations against the Holy See, mentioning the case of Akšamović, but at the same time he was able to convince himself that the Pope was not so averse to the new nation as the authorities in Belgrade often reported. Instead, Jeglič noted in his diary the words of Benedict who said that he was open to recognizing the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the re-establishment of peace and the definition of the borders.59 Comparing the reports of Monti and Jeglič, a significant difference can be detected in the Pope’s response; Jeglič in fact presents it more positively. During the same meeting, Benedict XV and Jeglič also discussed the Serbian Concordat, which the bishop had asked to be extended to include all the Yugoslav territory. The Pope gave a hesitant approval to the proposal, stating that it would, however, have to be discussed after the peace conference.60 The debate concerning the Serbian Concordat was resumed with vigour after the consistorial speech In hac quidem of 21 November 1921.61 Here, Benedict declared that the new political entities that emerged from World War I could not make use of concordats established with nations that had ceased to exist due to the war or which had been substantially changed by it; neither could territories incorporated into new nations presume the continued validity of pre-existing concordats.62 The breadth of the declaration allowed for diverse interpretations. Some members of the Yugoslav government,

56 AJ, Ministarstvo inostranih poslova, Političko odeljenje (334), pos. 66, fasc. 27, ff. 272r–273r, Bakotić to Trumbić, 2 February 1919 (draft); and f. 274r, Trumbić to Bakotić, 5 February 1919. 57 These reports are contained in AES, Austria-Ungheria, 1918–19, pos. 1277, fasc. 511, ff. 80–85. 58 Blasina, ‘Santa Sede’, p. 806; Živojinović, Vatikan, Srbija, pp. 388–95; Žutić, Kraljevina Jugoslavija, pp. 19–21. 59 28 August 1919: the Holy Father ‘will recognize our kingdom when peace is established and the boundaries are fixed’ (‘Naše kraljestvo bodo [sveti oče] radi priznali koj, ko se napravi mir in mu bodo določene meje’); Jegličev dnevnik, ed. by Čipić Rehar and Otrin, p. 785. 60 The discussion of the Serbian concordat does not appear in Jeglič’s diary, but it is reported in the newspaper Slovenec, in which the Bishop published an article on his return from Rome (Anton Bonaventura Jeglič, ‘v Rimu’, Slovenec, 30 August 1919, p. 1). 61 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 13, 14 (1921), pp. 521–24. 62 The papal speech was prepared by the Special Congregation of Cardinals on 8 November 1921: ‘Because of what is said here it seems that it can be surely declared that the Austrian Concordat no longer is valid, not only because of its rejection in 1870 but also because of the collapse of the Empire with which it was established’ (‘dal fin qui detto sembra che si possa sicuramente dichiarare che il concordato austriaco non ha più valore, non solo per la denunzia avvenutane nel 1870, ma anche

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led by Pašić, held that the Concordat of 1914 was automatically extended to the whole territory of the new realm, on the heels of other international agreements.63 This reasoning allowed them to have a juridical basis to ask for the nihil obstat for the episcopal nominations in all of the Yugoslav territories. Gasparri, on his part, doubted the survival of the Serbian Concordat and considered it valid only for the Serbian territory. For a concordat for the whole Kingdom, he was of the opinion that a new agreement was needed.64 The Yugoslav Minister to the Holy See, Bakotić, was also of the same opinion. In the end he managed to convince the government in Belgrade to introduce negotiations for a new concordat.65 In the instructions given to Pellegrinetti in June 1922, the Secretary of State raised the need for an agreement that guaranteed the free exercise of the Catholic religion and other rights of the Church, not only for the old Serbian territory but for the whole Kingdom.66 With the aim of achieving a satisfactory agreement, as many scenarios as possible were entertained. The Nuncio, in fact, was asked to study the issue diligently, ‘where it would be possible to conclude a new concordat with Yugoslavia, if the opportunity is taken to define the matter, or, if the concordat cannot be established, to propose your considerations of the issue to the Holy See in due time’.67 In an indirect way, the Holy See and the Secretary of State thus preferred a new concordat. The issue already, on the other hand, ‘was on the table’. Thus Pellegrinetti, during his first meeting with Foreign Minister Ninčić as soon as he arrived in Belgrade in July 1922, negotiated for the creation of a ‘commission to study the concordat’.68

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per l’estinzione dell’impero con cui venne stipulato’); AES, Rapporti delle Sessioni, 1921, sessione 1243, stampa 1085, Stati succeduti all’Impero austro-ungarico — Circa il concordato austriaco e il Regio Patronato ungherese, 8 November 1921, Relazione, p. 9. AJ, Poslanstvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije pri Svetoj Stolici (372), fasc. 20, [map 1/I], ff. n.n., Pašić to Bakotić, 8 November 1921; Žutić, Kraljevina Jugoslavija, p. 175. AJ, Poslanstvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije pri Svetoj Stolici (372), fasc. 1, [map 9], ff. n.n., Gasparri to Bakotić, 6 June 1919; Živojinović, Vatikan, Srbija, p. 397. See also the instructions that Pellegrinetti received before he left for Belgrade: ‘You may also question the survival of said concordat, now that the recent events have established that the juridical status of the Serbian nation that contracted with the Holy See has been profoundly transformed; now the old Kingdom of Serbia no longer exists, only the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ (‘si può anche mettere in dubbio la sussistenza del detto concordato, ora che i recenti avvenimenti hanno fatto sì che la personalità giuridica dello Stato serbo contraente con la S. Sede si è profondamente trasformata, sussistendo ora non più il vecchio Regno di Serbia, ma il nuovo Regno dei Serbi Croati e Sloveni’); ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Jugoslavia, b. 2, f. 87v, Istruzioni per Pellegrinetti, June 1922. AJ, Poslanstvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije pri Svetoj Stolici (372), fasc. 20, [map 1/I], ff. n.n., Bakotić to Pašić, 10 November 1921 (draft); Žutić, Kraljevina Jugoslavija, p. 175. The letter of the Foreign Minister of 25 September 1922, in which he fully endorsed the opinion of Bakotić, is cited in the first Concordat draft by the restricted committee of 25 October 1922 (ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Jugoslavia, b. 8, f. 57). ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Jugoslavia, b. 2, ff. 87v–88r, Istruzioni per Pellegrinetti, June 1922. ‘Ove sia possibile concludere un concordato con la Jugoslavia, se ne prenda occasione per definire la cosa, o, se il concordato non potrà concludersi, proponga a tempo opportuno alla S. Sede le sue considerazioni in merito’; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Jugoslavia, b. 2, f. 93r. ‘Commissione per lo studio del concordato’; AES, Jugoslavia, pos. 9, fasc. 12, f. 37, Pellegrinetti to Gasparri, 12 July 1922.

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One of the particularly delicate questions that Benedict XV had to tackle was the situation of the Slav minority in the territory occupied by Italian troops, which after the Treaty of Rapallo69 of 12 November 1920 officially became part of Italy. One of the first targets was the Bishop of Trieste, Andrej Karlin; the Italian authorities asked the Pope to remove him, and he resigned in November 1919.70 Jeglič noted in his diary that this greatly diminished the esteem of the Pope in the eyes of the Slovene people.71 When Jeglič was in Rome again in March of 1920, he gave the Pope a memorandum in support of his fellow Slovenes under the Italian regime.72 After the Treaty of Rapallo, in December 1920, Bishop Bauer and Bishop Jeglič addressed another petition to the Pope, asking for the institution of a diocese for Yugoslavians resident in Italy and the recitation of prayers in the Slavic language in their churches,73 but the request could not be granted due to the strong opposition of the Italian authorities. Many other memos, composed by the bishops and their collaborators, were sent to the Pope to ask for the protection of Slavs ‘persecuted’ by the Italian assimilation during the 1920s and 1930s.74 The dismissal of bishops Karlin (1919) and Fogar (1936) in Trieste and Sedej in Gorizia (1931) were held by many to be proof of the submission of Vatican policy to the aims of Italian irredentism.75

6. Conclusions The themes chosen to present the relationship between Benedict XV, the Roman curia and the Yugoslav territory during and after World War I have certainly not exhausted a topic that is so complex. It is enough to consider, for example, the Catholic political

69 The text of the Treaty can be found in Documenti per la storia dei rapporti fra l’Italia e la Jugoslavia, ed. by Amedeo Giannini (Rome: Istituto per l’Europa Orientale, 1934), pp. 36–41; Jugoslavija 1918–1988, ed. by Petranović and Zečević, pp. 169–72. 70 The documentation of the Karlin case can be found in I territori del confine orientale italiano nelle lettere dei vescovi alla Santa Sede (1918–1922), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Trieste: Lint, 1994), pp. 163–254. See also the contributions of France M. Dolinar, ‘Andrej Karlin v rimskih dokumentih’, and Branko Marušič, ‘Zadnje tržaško leto škofa Andreja Karlina’, in Karlinov simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1996), pp. 71–83 and 145–54. 71 3 November 1919: ‘The pope’s reputation among the Slovenes will suffer. God have mercy on us’ (‘Ugled papežev bo pri Slovencih trpel. Bog se nas usmili’); Jegličev dnevnik, ed. by Čipić Rehar and Otrin, p. 788. 72 See his diary entry for 12 March 1920; Jegličev dnevnik, ed. by Čipić Rehar and Otrin, p. 803. 73 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura di Jugoslavia, b. 1, f. 224, Bauer and Jeglič to Benedict XV, 19 December 1920; France M. Dolinar, ‘Jeglič in cerkvenopolitična vprašanja po letu 1918’, in Jegličev simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1991), pp. 318–19. 74 For some of the memos, written by Father Jakob Ukmar, see France M. Dolinar, ‘Ukmarjeve spomenice osrednjemu cerkvenemu vodstvu v Rim’, in Ukmarjev simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 2006), pp. 97–114. 75 Žutić, Kraljevina Jugoslavija, pp. 26, 112, 184; Viktor Novak, Magnum Crimen: pola vijeka klerikalizma u Hrvatskoj (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Hrvatske, 1948), pp. 317–92; Milica Kacin Wohinz, ‘Sedej v dokumentih italijanskih oblasti’, in Sedejev simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1988), pp. 261–62; Dolinar, ‘Andrej Karlin’, p. 74; Dolinar, ‘Ukmarjeve spomenice’, pp. 100–06.

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parties, the difficult issue of Rijeka, the Vidovdan Constitution of 1921, the debate about the use of Old Slavonic in the liturgy, the national minorities in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and so on. Benedict XV closely followed the Yugoslav affair, as the Note of 1917 clearly, albeit implicitly, shows. Catholic Croats and Slovenes put much hope in him, seeing him as the defender of their religious and national rights and sending him many memos during and after the Great War. In some cases, they were disappointed, convinced that the Pope, for example, could have more effectively opposed the anti-Slav policies of the local authorities in the lands that became part of Italy after the war. Benedict was not enthusiastic about the formation of the Yugoslav Kingdom in 1918 because the Catholics were in a minority in the new national entity, but he assumed a pragmatic approach and set up diplomatic relations with Belgrade, smoothing the path towards a new concordat. He thereby prepared the way for his successor Pius XI, who achieved the signing (1935) but not the ratification of the bilateral agreement. This was an evident sign of the tensions among the diverse national and religious groups that characterized the brief existence of the Yugoslav Kingdom.

Bibliography Blasina, Paolo, ‘Santa Sede e Regno dei serbi, croati e sloveni: dalla missione di dom Pierre Bastien al riconoscimento formale (1918–1919)’, Studi storici, 35, 3 (1994), pp. 773–809 Caccamo, Francesco, ‘La politica orientale della Santa Sede e il concordato con il Montenegro del 1886’, in Ubi neque aerugo neque tinea demolitur: studi in onore di Luigi Pellegrini per i suoi settanta anni, ed. by Maria Grazia del Fuoco (Naples: Liguori, 2006), pp. 55–83 Čipić Rehar, Marija, and Blaž Otrin, eds, Jegličev dnevnik: znanstvenokritična izdaja (Celje: Celjska Mohorjeva družba, 2015) Dolinar, France M., ‘Andrej Karlin v rimskih dokumentih’, in Karlinov simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1996), pp. 71–83 Dolinar, France M., ‘Jeglič in cerkvenopolitična vprašanja po letu 1918’, in Jegličev simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1991), pp. 318–19 Dolinar, France M., ‘Ukmarjeve spomenice osrednjemu cerkvenemu vodstvu v Rim’, in Ukmarjev simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 2006), pp. 97–114 Giannini, Amedeo, ed., Documenti per la storia dei rapporti fra l’Italia e la Jugoslavia (Rome: Istituto per l’Europa Orientale, 1934) Gottsmann, Andreas, ‘Konkordat oder Kultusprotektorat? Die Donaumonarchie und die diplomatischen Aktivitäten des Hl. Stuhls in Südosteuropa 1878–1914’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 48 (2006), pp. 409–64 Gottsmann, Andreas, ‘Papst Leo XIII. und die “jugoslawische” Versuchung: Montenegro, San Girolamo und die südslawische Frage in der Diplomatie des Hl. Stuhls’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 49 (2007), pp. 457–510

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Gottsmann, Andreas, ‘Parteipolitik und katholische Kirche in der Donaumonarchie: das politische Engagement des Anton B. Jeglič und die Diplomatie des Hl. Stuhls’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 51 (2009), pp. 317–36 Gottsmann, Andreas, ‘Die Wiener Nuntiatur und Kaiser Karl’, in Karl I. (IV.), der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Donaumonarchie, ed. by Andreas Gottsmann (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007), pp. 93–118 I territori del confine orientale italiano nelle lettere dei vescovi alla Santa Sede (1918–1922), ed. by Antonio Scottà (Trieste: Lint, 1994) Kacin Wohinz, Milica, ‘Sedej v dokumentih italijanskih oblasti’, in Sedejev simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1988), pp. 261–62 Marušič, Branko, ‘Zadnje tržaško leto škofa Andreja Karlina’, in Karlinov simpozij v Rimu, ed. by Edo Škulj (Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1996), pp. 145–54 Matijević, Zlatko, ‘Tajna diplomatska aktivnost o. Joze Miloševića: Riječka spomenica’, in Posljednjih stotinu godina (1907–2007), ed. by Ljudevit Maračić, 2 vols (Zagreb: Veritas, 2008–09), II (2009), pp. 363–79 Mercati, Andrea, ed., Raccolta di concordati su materie ecclesiastiche tra la Santa Sede e le autorità civili, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1954), I Montanar, Ilaria, Il vescovo lavantino Ivan Jožef Tomažič (1876–1949) tra il declino dell’Impero austro-ungarico e l’avvento del comunismo in Jugoslavia (Rome: CLV, 2007) Mrkonjić, Tomislav, ‘Hrvatski katolički pokret i “Riječka spomenica” iz travnja 1915: (Latinski koncept)’, in Hrvatski katolički pokret, zbornik radova s Međunarodnoga znanstvenog skupa održanog u Zagrebu i Krku od 29. do 31. ožujka 2001, ed. by Zlatko Matijević (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 2002), pp. 444–56 Novak, Viktor, Magnum Crimen: pola vijeka klerikalizma u Hrvatskoj (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Hrvatske, 1948) Perovšek, Jurij, ‘V zaželjeni deželi’: slovenska izkušnja s Kraljevino SHS/Jugoslavijo 1918–1941 (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2009) Petranović, Branko, and Momčilo Zečević, eds, Jugoslavija 1918–1988: tematska zbirka dokumenata, 2nd edn (Belgrade: Izdavačka radna organizacija ‘Rad’, 1988) Scottà, Antonio, ‘La conciliazione ufficiosa’: diario del barone Carlo Monti ‘incaricato d’affari’ del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914–1922), 2 vols (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) Spadolini, Giovanni, ed., Il cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana (con brani delle memorie inedite), 2nd edn (Florence: Le Monnier, 1973) Tolomeo, Rita, ‘Le relazioni serbo-vaticane dal congresso di Berlino alla prima guerra mondiale’, in Il Papato e l’Europa, ed. by Gabriele De Rosa and Giorgio Cracco (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2001), pp. 341–80 Tolomeo, Rita, La Santa Sede e il mondo danubiano-balcanico: problemi nazionali e religiosi (1875–1921) (Rome: La Fenice, 1996) Valente, Massimiliano, Diplomazia pontificia e Regno dei serbi, croati e sloveni (1918–1929) (Split: Filozofski fakultet u Splitu, Odsjek za povijest, 2012) Valente, Massimiliano, ‘I rapporti tra Santa Sede e Serbia nella Prima guerra mondiale’, in ‘Inutile strage’: i cattolici e la Santa Sede nella Prima guerra mondiale, ed. by Lorenzo Botrugno (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2016), pp. 493–513

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Vrankić, Petar, Religion und Politik in Bosnien und der Herzegowina (1878–1918) (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1998) Živojinović, Dragoljub, Vatikan, Srbija i stvaranje jugoslovenske države (1914–1920) (Belgrade: Nolit Beograd, 1980) Žutić, Nikola, Kraljevina Jugoslavija i Vatikan: odnos jugoslovenske države i rimske crkve 1918–1935 (Belgrade: Maštel Commerce, 1994)

Milla Bergström and Suvi Rytty

Finland and the Catholic Church during the Pontificate of Benedict XV

The political map of Europe changed drastically as the result of the Great War that Pope Benedict XV had described as a ‘useless slaughter’ in his Peace Note of August 1917. The Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German and Russian empires ceased to exist, several nations regained their former independence, and many new states were created. The first of these new states was Finland, which celebrated its centenary of independence in 2017. By combining archival material, newspaper articles, general overviews of Finland’s history, works that survey Finland’s past with a narrower thematic focus and the historiography of the Catholic Church in Finland, this contribution concentrates on two events that were of great importance both to the Finnish Republic and to the Finnish Catholics during the pontificate of Benedict XV, namely, the recognition of Finnish independence by the Holy See and the ‘nationalization’ of the Catholic Church in Finland.

1.

The Holy See Recognizes the Independence of Finland

From the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Finnish peninsula was an integral part of the Kingdom of Sweden. For centuries, wars and the following peace treaties between Sweden and Russia drew a line between East and West that ran through Finland. The last armed conflict between the Kingdom of Sweden and Russia, the Finnish War (1808–09), began a new period in the history of Finland.1 In 1809, Sweden ceded the whole of Finland to Russia, and Finland became a separately administered area in the Russian Empire. For most of the nineteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Finland enjoyed an extensive autonomy that offered a framework for peaceful internal development and became ‘a state

1 On Finland as part of the Kingdom of Sweden and on the Finnish War, see Jason Edward Lavery, The History of Finland (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), pp. 31–48, 51–52; Henrik Meinander, A History of Finland (London: Hurst, 2011), pp. 8–73.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1265–1281 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118831

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within a state’.2 The outbreak of the Great War came as rather a surprise to the Finns in August 1914, even though Russia had already begun to strengthen the coastal defences and to install a chain of military bases in Southern Finland. On the last day of July 1914, a state of war was declared in Finland. Finland remained, however, on the sidelines partly due to its geographical distance from the battlefields, and partly because the male population of Finland was not mobilized.3 Despite the periods of oppression (1899–1905 and 1908–17),4 the overall political climate in Finland was that of solidarity with the Russian Empire during the Great War, and the Finns hoped that their loyalty would be rewarded in due course.5 Initially, the idea of improving the position of Finland, or even secession from the Russian Empire, was at the time merely a dream within narrow, mainly academic circles.6 The February Revolution, which resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the end of the Russian Empire, essentially altered the future of the Grand Duchy of Finland. On 20 March 1917, the Russian Provisional Government issued a manifesto in which Finland was promised internal independence through the restoration of the constitutional freedoms abrogated in 1908. This favourable development raised hopes of extending Finnish self-determination with respect to Russia. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in the October Revolution, the Finnish Senate did not recognize their authority as the supreme power in Finland.

2 Meinander, A History, p. 77. Finland had its own laws, Secretary of State (from 1811), administration, Diet (from 1863), civil service, conscripted army (1878–1903), the Bank of Finland (established in 1812), monetary unit (Finnish markka, introduced in 1860), culture, official languages (Finnish and Swedish), educational system and Church (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland). See Pekka Kalevi Hamalainen, In Time of Storm: Revolution, Civil War, and the Ethnolinguistic Issue in Finland (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1979), p. 6; Aila Lauha, Suomen kirkon ulkomaansuhteet ja ekumeeninen osallistuminen, 1917–1922 (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1990), p. 24; Max Engman, ‘Finns and Swedes in Finland’, in Ethnicity and Nation Building in the Nordic World, ed. by Sven Tägil (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), pp. 179–216 (pp. 183–84); Meinander, A History, pp. 76–79, 84, 86, 98. Orthodox Russia allowed the Lutheran Church to remain the official church of Finland. The persecutions of Protestants that were carried out in the Baltic countries after the mid-nineteenth century were not extended to Finland; Lauha, Suomen kirkon, pp. 27–28. On the Grand Duchy of Finland, see Lavery, The History, pp. 51–84; Meinander, A History, pp. 75–123. On the national awakening and the nationalist movement in Finland, see Engman, ‘Finns and Swedes’, pp. 185–88; Meinander, A History, pp. 87–92. 3 Juhani Paasivirta, Finland and Europe: The Early Years of Independence, 1917–1939 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1988), p. 11; Lauha, Suomen kirkon, p. 56; Meinander, A History, p. 121. 4 On the ‘Age of Oppression’, see Seppo Zetterberg, Finland after 1917 (Helsinki: Otava, 1995), pp. 8–14; Lavery, The History, pp. 73–78; Meinander, A History, pp. 117–21. 5 Lauha, Suomen kirkon, p. 56; Lavery, The History, p. 82. 6 In November 1914, the Finnish press published the Russian government’s secret programme (the Great Russification Programme) which intended to ensure the full absorption of Finland into the Russian Empire. The disappointment with Russia encouraged Finnish activists, especially university students, to begin preparations for an armed uprising in Finland. In 1915, academics in Helsinki set up an extensive but secret enlistment network. Close to 2000 young Finnish volunteers were transported via Sweden to Germany, where they were formed into the Royal Prussian 27th Jäger Battalion. The Jägers fought in the ranks of the German army, and most of them returned into Finland in 1918; Lauha, Suomen kirkon, pp. 57–58; Zetterberg, Finland after 1917, pp. 13–14; Meinander, A History, p. 121.

finland and the catholic church during the pontificate of benedict xv

On 15 November 1917, parliament proclaimed itself the holder of supreme power in Finland and chose an ‘Independence Senate’. Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, the most prominent figure in the legal battle that led to Finland’s separation from Russia, was nominated the speaker of the Senate. On 4 December, the Senate under Svinhufvud presented a proposal for a new form of government to parliament.7 The bill was accompanied by Svinhufvud’s speech concerning Finland’s independence: The people of Finland have […] taken their fate in their own hands: a step both justified and demanded by present conditions. The people of Finland feel deeply that they cannot fulfil their national duty and their universal human obligations without a complete sovereignty. The century-old desire for freedom awaits fulfilment now. The People of Finland has to step forward as an independent nation among the other nations in the world. […] The Finnish people believe that the free Russian people and its constitutive National Assembly don’t want to prevent Finland’s aspiration to enter the multitude of the free and independent nations. At the same time the People of Finland dare to hope that the other nations of the world recognize that, with their full independence and freedom, the People of Finland can do their best in fulfilment of those purposes that will win them an independent position amongst the people of the civilized world.8 Two days later, on 6 December 1917, parliament approved Svinhufvud’s proposal as the official declaration of Finnish independence.9 Following the declaration of independence, the government sent requests for recognition of Finnish independence to several foreign states. All the requests were essentially similar, and they were forwarded through each country’s consular representatives in Helsinki or their legations in Petrograd. In addition, separate delegations were dispatched to present a more formal request for recognition.10 One of these delegations was sent to Great Britain, France, Spain and Italy. The members of the delegation were Consul Eugen Wolff, the politician and journalist Rudolf Holsti and Procurator Lorenzo Kihlman. Tancred Borenius, a Finnish art historian working in England, acted as secretary to the diplomatic mission. The delegates arrived in

7 Paasivirta, Finland and Europe, p. 109; Zetterberg, Finland after 1917, pp. 15–19; Lavery, The History, p. 84. In Finland, public opinion on the events of the October Revolution was sharply divided between the right and left. Several questions related to the Bolshevik seizure of power caused wide disagreement; Paasivirta, Finland and Europe, pp. 100–06; Lavery, The History, p. 84. 8 Svinhufvud’s speech was published by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. See Suomen itsenäisyyden tunnustaminen: asiakirjakokoelma, ed. by Aaro Pakaslahti (Helsinki: Söderström, 1937), pp. 2–3. For the English translation, see [accessed 10 January 2019]. 9 Paasivirta, Finland and Europe, p. 110; Zetterberg, Finland after 1917, p. 19; Lavery, The History, p. 84. 10 Lorenzo Kihlman, ‘Några personliga minnen från åren 1904–1919’, in Hågkomster och livsintryck: finländska minnen av 28 författare, ed. by Sven Thulin (Uppsala: Lindblads, 1935), pp. 62–83 (pp. 75–76); Paasivirta, Finland and Europe, pp. 110–11. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic recognized Finnish independence on 4 January 1918, and on the same day Sweden, France and Germany awarded their official recognition. The other Nordic countries, Norway and Denmark, recognized the Finnish independence a week later, on 10 January.

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London in mid-January 1918. The British government was willing to accord a de facto recognition of Finland but wanted to wait for the outcome of Russia’s continuing domestic conflict before giving its de jure recognition. The mission to Paris proved to be easier than that to London. Since France had already recognized the independence of Finland before the delegation’s arrival, the delegation’s task was only to express deep gratitude on behalf of the Finnish government. The delegates managed to effect their mission successfully in Madrid, too: Spain recognized Finland’s independence on 21 February 1918.11 As the delegation was also due to go to Italy, it had sent a telegram from London to Helsinki requesting the government’s permission to seek Benedict XV’s recognition of the Finnish independence.12 The Holy See was traditionally cautious about recognizing new states. The Vatican’s attitude towards Finnish independence was, however, determined by essentially pragmatic considerations: the Russian Empire had collapsed, the belligerent parties were relatively unanimous in regard to recognizing Finland and Benedict XV wanted ‘to establish friendly relations with all “the various nationalities […] who constituted themselves into independent states”’.13 Hence, during preliminary discussions with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, the Finnish delegates were told that the Holy See would recognize Finland’s independence during Benedict XV’s audience on 2 March 1918.14 The details of the audience became known to the Finnish public through Lorenzo Kihlman’s published memoirs. ‘I had received the Vatican mission with mixed feelings’, Kihlman began his story. Like the great majority of Finns, Kihlman was Lutheran, and his knowledge of the Catholic Church was mainly based on the Lutheran teaching on Catholicism, newspaper articles and other, mainly anti-Catholic, writings about Catholicism; until the 1930s, it was barely possible for an inhabitant of a Protestant country to find objective literature on Catholicism.15 Therefore, Kihlman had heard and read about ‘Rome’s defects and blunders, its intolerance, inquisitions and the 11 UMA, Suomen itsenäisyys, Holsti, Kihlman and Wolff to the British Consulate in Helsinki, 24 January 1918; Kihlman, ‘Några personliga’, pp. 76–77. Great Britain recognized Finland’s independence on 6 May 1919. 12 UMA, Suomen itsenäisyys, Wolff to Svinhufvud, 18 January 1918, and Svinhufvud to Wolff, 23 January 1918; Kihlman, ‘Några personliga’, p. 76; Pekka Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin: Suomen ja Vatikaanikaupungin valtion välisten suhteiden kehitys vuodesta 1918 vuoteen 1968 (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1997), p. 16. 13 John F. Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 83; Laura Pettinaroli, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015), p. 271. 14 Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 16–17. 15 Ainur Elmgren, ‘The Jesuit Stereotype: An Image of the Universal Enemy in Finnish Nationalism’, in European Anti-Catholicism in a Comparative and Transnational Perspective, ed. by Yvonne Maria Werner and Jonas Harvard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), pp. 191–207 (p. 195). Apart from Elmgren’s article, there exist no systematic, in-depth studies on anti-Catholicism in Finland. The subject has been touched upon in Lauha, Suomen kirkon, pp. 340–42, 356; Aila Lauha, Suomen kirkon kansainväliset suhteet 1923–1925 (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1993), pp. 39–40; Aila Lauha, ‘Teologinen aikakauskirja sotien välisenä aikana 1917–1939’, Teologinen Aikakauskirja, 102 (1997), pp. 452–79 (p. 457).

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sale of indulgences’. On the other hand, he acknowledged that the Lutherans had all too often failed to award recognition to the Catholic Church for the monasteries that had cultivated the arts and sciences and provided relief to the poor and sick in the Middle Ages.16 Another reason that contributed to Kihlman’s doubts was the protocol for papal audiences, with which the Finns were not familiar or accustomed to. His preoccupations, however, proved to be unnecessary. The audience proceeded well and was less formal than Kihlman had dared to hope. The Finnish delegates gave the pontiff an account of Finland’s long struggle for freedom and an exposition of the events which had given the country ‘a legal and moral right to finally throw off the Russian yoke’. The delegates also awarded recognition to Benedict XV for his efforts to mediate between the warring states and to help the prisoners of war of both sides. Finally, the delegation expressed, on behalf of the Finnish government, the desire that Finland enter into direct relations with the Holy See.17 In his reply to the delegation’s speech, Benedict XV said that the Holy See had followed with sympathy Finland’s longstanding and legitimate struggle for the preservation of its autonomy. The pontiff was deeply moved by the fact that the young Finnish State acknowledged the moral influence and importance of the Roman Catholic Church. Hence, ‘without hesitation and without reservation, with feelings of joy […], the Holy See greeted Finland among the sovereign states’.18 After the audience, the Finnish delegation was invited to visit the papal library. Since the official part of the audience was over, the conversation between the pontiff and the delegates had a noticeably more personal touch, as Procurator Kihlman later recalled. They talked about Finland, its nature and people, as well as about Rome’s ancient buildings and monuments. When Kihlman mentioned that he had visited Rome for the first time in 1881, Benedict XV wanted to hear his impressions of the changes the city had undergone since then. Instead of seeking to evade the question, Kihlman said quite bluntly that Rome had been ‘exposed to vandalism’. The Altare della Patria and the Palace of Justice were, in his opinion, good examples of this kind of vandalism, and to Kihlman’s relief, the Pope agreed with him. Before leaving the Vatican, the delegates also met Gasparri, who later that same day paid a reciprocal visit to the Finns at the Grand Hotel. During their conversation, Gasparri asked the delegates whether they knew the person who had been waiting for his turn when the Cardinal Secretary of State had received the Finnish delegation in audience. When they responded negatively to this, the visibly pleased Cardinal said: ‘Well, it was the Ambassador of the mighty Russia, who was obliged to wait, while preference was given to the delegates of the little Finland’.19

16 Kihlman, ‘Några personliga’, p. 78. 17 Diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Finland were established in 1942; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 85–93; a summary in Italian can be found on pp. 312–26. 18 Kihlman, ‘Några personliga’, pp. 78–81; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 17. 19 Kihlman, ‘Några personliga’, pp. 81–83. Salo tells the same anecdote. He, however, connects the event to the papal audience; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 17–18.

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2. The ‘Nationalization’ of the Catholic Church in Finland In the 1520s, when Finland was still part of the Swedish Kingdom, King Gustav Vasa introduced the Reformation into his realm.20 From that time, the main religion in Finland has been Lutheranism, and the Finns had no right to convert to Catholicism until 1869. During the period of Russian rule (1809–1917), there were only two small Catholic parishes in Finland: in Vyborg and Helsinki, both established mainly for Polish soldiers serving in the Russian army. The parish of Vyborg had been established in 1799, and the church dedicated to Saint Hyacinth had been consecrated in 1802. The parish of Vyborg was overseen by Dominicans, who had come to Finland as military chaplains, and it extended over the entire Grand Duchy of Finland at least until the beginning of the twentieth century. The parish of Helsinki was established in 1856, and the first permanent church in Helsinki (St Henry’s) was completed in 1860 and consecrated in September 1904.21 Since the Catholic parishes in Finland were subordinate to the Russian Archdiocese of Mohilev, and since the clergy and most of the parishioners in Finland were foreigners from Poland, Lithuania or other parts of the Russian Empire, Catholicism in Finland was of a distinctly Russian or Slavic nature.22 In the early 1900s the number of Finnish parishioners started to grow, and the first indigenous clerics in the modern era, Wilfrid von Christierson23 and Adolf

20 King Gustav Vasa had no intention of changing religious customs or the teaching of the Church, nor did he attempt to push through any formal break with Rome. The King’s decisions and actions were above all financially and politically motivated. At the Diet of Västerås in 1527, he enforced a complete confiscation of the extensive properties of the Catholic Church in order to balance the national budget. In addition, the independence and political influence and privileges of the Catholic bishops were diminished drastically. See Mirkka Lappalainen, Susimessu: 1590-luvun sisällissota Ruotsissa ja Suomessa (Helsinki: Siltala, 2009), pp. 18, 23–24; Meinander, A History, pp. 22–24. In 1540, the estates made King Gustav Vasa, who had no real understanding of Lutheran theology, the supreme head of the Church in the Swedish Kingdom. The alliance between Crown and altar was also strengthened with the 1686 Church Law that made membership in the Lutheran Church a condition for residing in the Kingdom; Lavery, The History, pp. 39–40. 21 Von Christierson to Dehon, 4 February 1907, in Kirjeenvaihto 1907–1921 Leo Dehonin ja Wilfrid von Christiersonin välillä: Pyhän Sydämen veljeskunnan tulo Suomeen, ed. by Paul Verschuren (Helsinki: Katolinen kirkko Suomessa, 1999), pp. 28–32; Carling to Ratti, 21 July 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, 60 vols (Rome: Institutum historicum Polonicum, 1990–), LVII/5 (1999), p. 323; Kalevi Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica: Katolinen kirkko Suomessa 1700-luvulta 1980-luvulle (Helsinki: Studium Catholicum, 1989), pp. 22–23, 26–27, 29–30, 37–39; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 20–21. 22 Von Christierson to Dehon, 23 February 1907, in Kirjeenvaihto, ed. by Verschuren, pp. 34–35; Carling to Ratti, 21 July 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/5, p. 323; Usko Voitto Jalo Setälä, ‘Kirkollispoliittisia kysymyksiä itsenäisen Suomen diplomatiassa’, in Oman ajan historia ja politiikan tutkimus, ed. by Lauri Hyvämäki and others (Helsinki: Otava, 1967), pp. 160–182 (p. 168); Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 22–23, 82. 23 Wilfrid von Christierson was born in Vaasa. His father Axel von Christierson was a Finnish-born sea captain, and his mother, Anna Winifred O’Flanagan, was Irish. Wilfrid’s mother tongue was English, but the family also spoke Swedish at home and with their friends. Von Christierson had been baptized in the Lutheran faith, but he converted to Catholicism in 1896. Two years later he began his

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Carling,24 were ordained to priesthood. They shared the same dream: to ‘nationalize’ the Catholic Church in Finland by detaching it from the Russian Archdiocese of Mohilev and increasing the number of Finnish parishioners by spreading the Catholic faith among the Finns.25 Their dream was influenced by the rising Finnish national ideology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Fennomania, and strengthened by the attempts of the Russian authorities to Russify Finland during the periods of oppression.26 Moreover, since the end of the nineteenth century, Finnish Catholics were increasingly dissatisfied with the Archdiocese of Mohilev due to its neglect of the Finnish parishes.27 The appointment of von Christierson as administrator of the parish of Helsinki in 1906 is said to have begun a new Catholic mission period in Finland. However, he needed help in his endeavour to revive the Catholic faith among the Finns. Von Christierson was by education and by principle very Western-oriented and he resented both Slavic culture and the domination of Poles in the Finnish parishes.28 Therefore, he turned his eyes to Western Europe and invited Father Leo Dehon to

24

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Catholic seminary studies at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, where he was ordained a priest in 1903. Father von Christierson was the parish priest in Helsinki during the years 1906–11; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 57–59. Adolf Carling was born in Helsinki. He was the oldest child of the smith Johannes Kalva and Birgitta (née Karppinen), who were Finnish-speaking, practising members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. In 1901, Carling began studying both Finno-Ugric languages and Slavic languages. He was particularly fascinated by the Polish language. Initially Carling listened to the preaching of the Polish parish priest Juliusz Rodziewicz and the liturgy from a purely philological point of view, but he gradually became interested in Catholicism itself. Carling was received into the Catholic Church in 1904. Two years later, he entered the Catholic seminary in Saint Petersburg, and in 1907 he began his studies at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome. In July 1911, Carling returned to Saint Petersburg and was ordained a priest in September. Carling was the parish priest in Vyborg during the years 1911–21; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 60–63, 92, 179. Von Christierson to Dehon, 4 February 1907 and 23 February 1907, in Kirjeenvaihto, ed. by Verschuren, pp. 28–30, 35–36; Carling to Ratti, 21 July 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/ 5, pp. 323–24; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 23, 65, 107; Kalevi Vuorela, Monsignore Adolf Carling: suomalainen pappi ja patriootti (Helsinki: Studium Catholicum, 1993), pp. 25, 35, 108, 111–12. Von Christierson to Dehon, 4 February 1907 and 23 February 1907, in Kirjeenvaihto, ed. by Verschuren, pp. 28–30, 35–36; Juhani Paasivirta, Suomi ja Eurooppa: autonomiakausi ja kansainväliset kriisit (1809–1914) (Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä, 1978), pp. 321–46; Vuorela, Monsignore Adolf Carling, pp. 17, 25, 35; Tuija Pulkkinen, ‘One Language, One Mind: The Nationalist Tradition in Finnish Political Culture’, in Europe’s Northern Frontier: Perspectives on Finland’s Western Identity, ed. by Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen ( Jyväskylä: PS-Kustannus, 1999), pp. 118–37 (pp. 130–33); Jyrki Loima, ‘Nationalism and the Orthodox Church in Finland (1895–1958)’, in Teuvo Laitila and Jyrki Loima, Nationalism and Orthodoxy: Two Thematic Studies on National Ideologies and their Interaction with the Church (Helsinki: Renvall Institute, 2004), pp. 93–203 (p. 96). UMA, Kirkko ja uskonto, Suomen roomalaiskatolinen kirkko (hereafter 44 K), Christierson’s memo, July 1918; von Christierson to Dehon, 4 February 1907 and 23 February 1907, in Kirjeenvaihto, ed. by Verschuren, pp. 28–30, 35–36; Carling to Ratti, 21 July 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/5, pp. 323–24; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 107. Von Christierson to Dehon, 4 February 1907 and 23 February 1907, in Kirjeenvaihto, ed. by Verschuren, pp. 28–30, 35–36; Kalevi Vuorela, Jeesuksen pyhän sydämen veljeskunta Suomessa 1907–2007 (Helsinki: Jeesuksen pyhän sydämen pappien veljeskunta, 2007), p. 15.

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send members of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (SCJ) to Finland, which was effected during the years 1907–10. Furthermore, four French sisters arrived in Helsinki in 1908 to run the parish school and children’s home there. The work of the priests of the SCJ and the French sisters was complicated by the suspicion of the Russian authorities towards Catholicism and all Western influence, typical of the Slavophilia and Pan-Slavism of the time in Imperial Russia.29 With personal appeals to the Holy See and through Dehon’s contacts in the Vatican, von Christierson pressed for the separation of Finland from the Archdiocese of Mohilev and the establishment of a separate apostolic prefecture. In spite of these efforts, the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs decided in April 1908 that Finland could not be separated from Mohilev because Finland was part of Russia, and the Holy See could not afford to antagonize the Russian government with which it already had tense relations.30 However, in 1909, the priests of the SCJ received authorization to work as missionaries directly under the Holy See.31 The first mission period in Finland came to an end in 1911, when Russian authorities deported the members of the SCJ and forced the French sisters to leave the country. Due to the complaints of the Polish parishioners, von Christierson was also dismissed from his post.32 In May 1917, both indigenous priests, von Christierson and Carling, who had been appointed the parish priest in Vyborg in 1911, sent a plea through the Greek Catholic Archbishop, Andrei Sheptytsky of Lviv, to the Holy See, asking for the separation of the Finnish parishes from the Archdiocese of Mohilev and the establishment of an apostolic prefecture or an apostolic vicariate directly subject to the Holy See.33 This was the Finnish government’s wish, too, because the newly gained sovereignty of the nation no longer permitted the Catholic Church in Finland to be part of a foreign diocese. Establishing the status of Finnish Catholics, even though their number was small,34 was also considered important owing to the worldwide political importance 29 Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 65, 71–77; Vuorela, Jeesuksen pyhän, pp. 13–33. On Slavophilia and Pan-Slavism see Paasivirta, Suomi ja Eurooppa, pp. 306–10; Jyrki Loima, Myytit, uskomukset ja kansa: johdanto moderniin nationalismiin Suomessa 1809–1918 (Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 2006), pp. 135–49. 30 Von Christierson to Dehon, 4 October 1907; Dehon to von Christierson, 16 October 1907, 4 November 1907, 29 December 1907, 17 January 1908, 18 January 1908; Dehon to von Christierson, 31 January 1908, in Kirjeenvaihto, ed. by Verschuren, pp. 59–63, 72–75; Pettinaroli, La politique russe, pp. 219–20. 31 Dehon to von Christierson, 22 April 1908, in Kirjeenvaihto, ed. by Verschuren, pp. 101–02; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 76. According to Pettinaroli, it seems as though the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs wanted to create the basis of a missionary organization in Finland without establishing an apostolic prefecture or passing the affairs of Finland to Propaganda Fide; Pettinaroli, La politique russe, p. 220. 32 UMA, 44 K, Christierson’s memo, July 1918; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 65, 69–71, 74, 76–77. 33 Setälä, ‘Kirkollispoliittisia’, p. 169; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 107; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 21; Pettinaroli, La politique russe, p. 389. 34 According to the official statistics, there were only 606 Catholics in Finland in 1917; see Suomen tilastollinen vuosikirja 1919, ed. by Tilastollinen päätoimisto (Helsinki: Tilastollinen päätoimisto, 1920), p. 54. In reality, the number was greater due to the Polish soldiers serving in the Russian army and the Russian summer house settlement in the Karelian Isthmus; Loima, Myytit, p. 127. Moreover,

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of the Holy See, from which the young republic wished to receive sympathy and support.35 The attitude of the Holy See towards Finland’s endeavours was positive from the very outset. In March 1918, the Holy See recognized Finnish independence, and, during his conversation with the Finnish delegates, Gasparri mentioned the possibility that the Holy See might send its representative to Finland.36 In fact, in December 1918, Gasparri informed the Apostolic Visitor in Warsaw, Achille Ratti, that the Holy See had decided to send him as Pontifical Representative to Finland. The main purpose of the visit would be ‘to negotiate with the Finnish government about the establishment of either a diocese (detached from Mohilev and directly subject to the Holy See) or an apostolic vicariate’, besides discussing the legal status of the Catholic Church in the new Republic of Finland.37 Ratti immediately began to organize his visit to Finland. His initial intention was to sail from Gdańsk to Helsinki, but the chaotic situation in Warsaw thwarted his plan.38 Ratti knew that the Finnish government had already expected him to arrive in Finland in the autumn of 1918. Therefore, he felt it necessary to inform the government about the reasons for the delay of his visit. He also asked whether the government could offer its help in order to facilitate his journey.39 Since the frontier between Finland and Russia was closed in January 1919, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl Enckell, recommended another route in order to reach Helsinki, that is, via Warsaw, Berlin and Stockholm. The Minister had already taken the liberty of instructing the Finnish legation in Berlin to validate a passport for Ratti and to aid him in every possible way.40 In the meantime, however, Gasparri advised Ratti to delay the departure because he was needed in Poland. When the Ministry for Foreign Affairs had heard nothing from Ratti by the end of March 1919, it sent telegrams both to Ratti (via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland) and to the Holy See (via the Finnish legation in London) asking about Ratti’s plans concerning his visit to Finland. Ratti assured the Finnish

35

36 37 38 39

40

the Polish and Russian refugees during World War I temporarily raised the number of Catholics in Helsinki alone to approximately 3000. After the war, the number of Catholics dropped; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 80–81. Setälä, ‘Kirkollispoliittisia’, pp. 168–69; Usko Voitto Jalo Setälä, ‘Katolisen kirkon ja Suomen kansallistuvan ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan välisistä suhteista’, Suomen kirkkohistoriallisen seuran vuosikirja, 58–59 (1968–69), pp. 235–43 (p. 238); Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 107–08; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 21. Setälä, ‘Kirkollispoliittisia’, p. 169; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 108. Gasparri to Ratti, 10, 11, and 16 December 1918, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/3 (1997), pp. 123–24, 126–27, 136; Pettinaroli, La politique russe, p. 389. Ratti to Gasparri, 30 December 1918, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/3, pp. 204–05. Fiedler to the Department of State (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of Poland), 28 October 1918, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/2 (1996), p. 385; Gasparri to Ratti, 10 and 11 December 1918, and Ratti to Soininen, 4 January 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/3, pp. 123–24, 126–27, 244; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 22. Enckell to Ratti, 20 and 22 January 1919 and Ratti to Gasparri, 23 January 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/3, pp. 313, 319–21.

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government that he would begin his journey ‘as soon as possible’.41 His visit, however, never took place. When it became clear that it would be necessary to travel halfway across Europe to reach Finland, and that the visit would take almost two months all told, Gasparri came to the conclusion that it was better to send someone else to Finland.42 While still waiting for Ratti to arrive in Finland, Carling and von Christierson had grown impatient. They were both of the opinion that the negotiations with the Holy See had to be hastened but since they lobbied for their own linguistic political interests, they were unable to cooperate. Finnish-speaking Carling, who was considered ‘a fanatic Finn’43 even by some of his parishioners, aimed to improve the status of the Finnish language, while Swedish-speaking von Christierson favoured Swedish and the Swedish-speaking parishioners who constituted the majority of Catholics in Helsinki.44 This controversy was part of a larger question about the position and the relative strength of Finnish (the language of the common people) and Swedish (the language of the upper class) in Finnish society,45 which became the target of political disputes from the nineteenth century and was intensified after independence.46 Thus, instead of a joint effort, Carling and von Christierson acted separately, opposing each other’s initiatives at the same time.47 Carling had begun to suspect that the Holy See did not comprehend well enough the difficulties from which the Finnish Catholic priests and parishioners suffered. Therefore, in July 1919, he wrote to Ratti a letter in which he expressed his wish that the Nuncio would persuade the Vatican to take ‘immediate action’ in order to solve the problems of the Catholic Church in Finland. According to Carling, the fact that the Holy See had not yet sent its representative to Finland might be interpreted

41 Gasparri to Ratti, 18 February 1919; Ratti to Gasparri, 24 February 1919; Ehrnrooth to Ratti, 26 March 1919; Ratti to Enckell, 27 March 1919; Gasparri to Ratti, 4 April 1919; Ratti to Enckell, 6 April 1919; Ratti to Gasparri, 7 April 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/4 (1998), pp. 69–70, 90, 213–14, 222, 265–66, 273–75, 277. 42 Ratti to Gasparri, 24 May 1919, and Gasparri to Ratti, 30 June 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/4, pp. 99–100, 231–32; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 23; Pettinaroli, La politique russe, p. 390. 43 Setälä, Katolisen, p. 237. 44 Setälä, ‘Kirkollispoliittisia’, p. 168; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 108–09, 112. 45 From the beginning of the fourteenth century, peasant farmers from the over-populated areas of Sweden had migrated to the thinly populated coastal regions of the Gulf of Finland and Ostrobothnia. The immigration from Sweden had given rise to a permanent Swedish-speaking settlement all along the coast. The Swedish language had also been the language of administration, law and high culture, which was an important reason why it had become so well established in Finland. When the Vyborg Governorate was joined to the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland as the Vyborg Province in 1812, the Finnish-speaking Finns became the dominant majority (approximately 87 per cent) and the Swedish-speaking Finns a minority group, consisting of both the upper-class and the common people. The Finnish and Swedish speakers developed a common sense of national patriotism, but they also produced a narrower ethno-linguistic nationalism of their own; Hamalainen, In Time of Storm, p. 6; Engman, ‘Finns and Swedes’, pp. 179, 181–82; Meinander, A History, pp. 8–9. 46 Engman, ‘Finns and Swedes’, pp. 179–209; Pulkkinen, ‘One Language’, pp. 118–19, 130–31. 47 Setälä, ‘Kirkollispoliittisia’, p. 168; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 108–09; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 21.

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by the Finns as the Holy Father’s lack of interest in the country’s government and Catholics. Some might even come to the conclusion that Benedict XV considered it ‘indifferent whether or not there were Catholics in Finland’.48 For this reason, the visit of a pontifical representative was indispensable. Carling was sure that the arrival of the representative would please the whole country, and ‘all the protestants (except perhaps the pastors) would be content’. The visit might, then, lead to many conversions.49 In his letter of response to the Finnish priest, Ratti said that the Vatican was well aware of the past and present conditions of Catholics in Finland. He assured him that in the past months, both the Holy See and its representative in Poland had taken every possible step to come to the aid and comfort of the Finnish Catholics. Hence, the Holy See certainly had not forgotten and neglected the Finnish priests and parishioners ‘who were bearing and holding on high the flame of the Catholic faith’.50 Von Christierson, in turn, tried to convince the Finnish government that he was the most suitable person to negotiate with the Holy See about the ecclesiastic affairs of the Catholic Church in Finland. In April 1918, he had already approached the Head of the Department for Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Eemil Nestor Setälä, requesting the government’s authorization to travel to the Vatican as a representative of Finland, but Setälä had rejected his request. The change in government a year later proved fortunate for von Christierson. In September 1919, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Rudolf Holsti granted him permission to negotiate with the Holy See for the establishment of an apostolic vicariate and about the ecclesiastical affairs of the Catholic Church in Finland.51 Von Christierson’s visit to the Vatican was kept so secret that not even the Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Mikael Soininen, Setälä or Carling knew about it beforehand. When Holsti’s decision to send von Christierson to Rome became public knowledge, Carling was offended and suspected that von Christierson would only pursue his own interests in the Vatican. Therefore, Carling travelled as a private person to Warsaw to discuss the Finnish situation with Ratti in October 1919.52 In Finland, Holsti’s decision generated a bitter dispute between Soininen, Setälä and Holsti, and the daily newspapers offered them a forum to present their views. Although the headlines drew the readers’ attention to the Roman Catholic Church in Finland, the dispute concerned above all the share of responsibilities between the Ministry of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The controversy also stemmed from party politics, and for the same reason, the press became involved in the debate. For example, Uusi Suomi, which published articles

48 Carling to Ratti, 21 July 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/5, p. 324; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 108. 49 Carling to Ratti, 4 October 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/6 (2000), p. 329. Carling was convinced that Finland could become ‘Greater Finland’ only with the help of the Catholic religion. ‘Greater Finland’ was a nationalist idea that emphasized the territorial expansion of Finland. On Carling’s plans to convert all the Finno-Ugric peoples, see Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 25–26. 50 Ratti to Carling, 21 August 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/6, pp. 93–94. 51 Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 108–09; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 26–27. 52 Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 109; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 27, 35–36.

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written by Setälä, blamed the leading Swedish-language newspaper in Finland, Hufvudstadsbladet, for supporting von Christierson’s views, while Helsingin Sanomat highlighted Holsti’s standpoint.53 While the Finnish politicians were exchanging reciprocal accusations, the Holy See resolved the question about the Catholic Church in Finland. In December 1919, Gasparri informed the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs that Pope Benedict XV was willing to separate Finland from the Archdiocese of Mohilev and to elevate it directly to an apostolic vicariate, led by a bishop, instead of creating an apostolic prefecture, which would have been the normal procedure. The Apostolic Vicariate of Finland was officially established on 8 June 1920, and Finland belonged thereby to the jurisdiction of Propaganda Fide.54 Thus Finland became enmeshed in the new missionary policy of Benedict XV and, later, of Pius XI, of which one characteristic feature was the increase in the number of apostolic prefectures and vicariates.55 The establishment of a strong organization of a Catholic mission in Finland corresponded to the Holy See’s idea that Finland was an outpost of European culture and therefore deserved to be supported. This idea was influenced by the Eastern policy of the Holy See that strove to counteract the spread of communism by strengthening the position of the Catholic Church in the new nation states founded after the dissolution of Russia. On the question of establishing the apostolic vicariate, the missionary policy of the Holy See and the national interests of Finland agreed with each other.56 As far as the apostolic vicar of Finland was concerned, the Holy See had to decide whether to appoint one of the Finnish clerics to the post or to entrust the administration to someone else. At the end of 1919, Gasparri had asked Ratti to provide 53 UMA, 44 K, The Political Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to President K. J. Ståhlberg, 7 February 1920; ‘Suomen roomalais-katolinen kirkko’, Uusi Suomi, 13 January 1920, p. 5; ‘Romerskkatolska kyrkan i Finland’, Hufvudstadsbladet, 18 January 1920, p. 8; ‘Romersk-katolska kyrkan i Finland’, Hufvudstadsbladet, 20 January 1920, p. 4; ‘Roomalais-katolinen kirkko Suomessa’, Uusi Suomi, 21 January 1920, p. 5; Eemil Nestor Setälä, ‘Suomen roomalais-katolinen kirkko juonittelun esineenä’, Uusi Suomi, 3 February 1920, p. 4; Eemil Nestor Setälä, ‘Suomen roomalais-katolinen kirkko juonittelun esineenä II’, Uusi Suomi, 5 February 1920, p. 8; ‘Suomen roomalais-katolisen kirkon asiain järjestäminen’, Helsingin Sanomat, 7 February 1920, p. 4; ‘Romersk-katolska kyrkan i Finland’, Hufvudstadsbladet, 9 February 1920, p. 4; Mikael Soininen, ‘Roomalais-katolisen kirkon asiasta’, Helsingin Sanomat, 8 February 1920, p. 11; Eemil Nestor Setälä, ‘Suomen roomalais-katolinen kirkko vieläkin’, Uusi Suomi, 10 February 1920, p. 7; Rudolf Holsti, ‘Suomen roomalais-katolisen kirkon asiain järjestäminen’, Helsingin Sanomat, 10 February 1920, p. 5; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 109; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 30. 54 UMA, 44 K, Gasparri to Holsti, 15 December 1919; Gasparri to Holsti, 15 December 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/7 (2000), pp. 262–63; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 109; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 30; Pettinaroli, La politique russe, p. 390. 55 Claude Prudhomme, ‘Le cardinal Van Rossum et la politique missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Benoît XV et Pie XI (1918–1932)’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 123–41 (pp. 123, 128). 56 Suvi Rytty, ‘Between Religious and Nationalistic Interests: The Missionary Actions of Propaganda Fide in Protestant Finland, 1920–1924’, in The Holy See’s Foreign Policies in Inter-War Europe, ed. by Milla Bergström and Kirsi Salonen (Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Church History, 2016), pp. 133–64 (p. 142).

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information about von Christierson’s current ecclesiastic position, since he had been dismissed from his post as the administrator of the parish of Helsinki in 1911. Ratti formed his opinion on von Christierson on the grounds of his conversations with several people, among whom Carling and the Metropolitan Archbishop of Mohilev, Eduard von der Ropp. According to the Nuncio, the news about von Christierson did not inspire confidence. The legitimate administrator of the parish of Helsinki was Father Severin Turosienski,57 whereas von Christierson was the parish vicar. Nonetheless, von Christierson claimed to be the sole true priest in Finland. He had constituted a kind of a parish around a small chapel in Helsinki, and this community comprised some fifty people, mainly women. In the light of all this information, Ratti considered it to have been rather inopportune for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to have sent precisely von Christierson to Rome to negotiate with the Holy See.58 Carling, for his part, was known for his vast knowledge of languages (at least Finnish, Swedish, Italian and Polish), for his lengthy studies in Rome and for his several years’ experience of pastoral care in Finland. On the other hand, his haughty attitude towards the Swedish-speaking citizens was known to everyone. Furthermore, the Catholic Church in Finland suffered greatly from the constant disputes between Carling and von Christierson.59 Since the appointment of either Carling or von Christierson would very likely lead to even more profound conflicts, the Holy See came to the conclusion that the only way to ‘guarantee a better future for the Catholic Church in those regions’ was to entrust the administration of the Apostolic Vicariate in Finland to a priest from the SCJ, from the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer or from the Missionaries of the Company of Mary.60 On 15 December 1919, in the same letter in which he announced the establishment of the Apostolic Vicariate of Finland, Gasparri informed the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Holy See’s plan ‘to ensure the continuity and the regularity of religious service and spiritual assistance’ in the Apostolic Vicariate by appointing a priest belonging to a religious order as the administrator. Gasparri assured him that whatever the nationality or the religious order of the future apostolic vicar might be, the person chosen by the Holy See would always be perfectly loyal to the Finnish government and would be exclusively concerned with the religious well-being of the Catholics in Finland.61

57 On Turosienski as the administrator of the parish of Helsinki in 1911–20, see Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 77–82. 58 Gasparri to Ratti, 26 June 1919, and Ratti to Gasparri, 14 July 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/5, pp. 215, 291–92; Ratti to Gasparri, 4 November 1919, and Ratti to Gasparri, 31 December 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/7, pp. 14–15, 254–55. 59 UMA, Ulkoasiainministeriö ja Suomen diplomaattinen edustus ulkomailla, Kaupallinen edustusto Berliinissä, kansio 2, Holma to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 November 1920; Turosienski to Ratti, 14 November 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/6, pp. 223–24; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 109–11; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 32. 60 Gasparri to Ratti, 31 December 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/7, p. 261; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 109; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 27–28. 61 UMA, 44 K, Gasparri to Holsti, 15 December 1919; Gasparri to Holsti, 15 December 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/7, pp. 262–63; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 109; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 29.

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Gasparri’s letter raised severe objections within both the Finnish government and the press. In its letter of reply to the Vatican, the government expressed its gratitude to the Holy See for the decision to establish an apostolic vicariate, an act which the government considered to be ‘a proof of the Holy Father’s friendship’ towards Finland. However, the government pointed out that the current laws in Finland did not admit the work of ‘orders of monks’ in the country, and that it was uncertain whether the Religious Freedom Act, which was being prepared, would be passed in a form that admitted it. The problem could be solved, however, if the Holy See was willing to appoint someone approved by the Finnish government, preferably either Carling or von Christierson.62 The aspiration of the Finnish government to interfere in the nomination process was much frowned upon in the Vatican. In 1918, the Finnish delegation that had requested the Holy See’s recognition of Finland had told the pontiff that there existed complete freedom of religion in Finland. Now, however, the Finnish government was clearly restricting the activities of the Catholic Church there and, at the same time, offending the rights of the Holy See by attempting to make the appointment of the apostolic vicar subject to the government’s approval. Consequently, Gasparri did not even deign to answer the Finnish government.63 It took another year before the Holy See reached its decision concerning the administration of the newly established Apostolic Vicariate of Finland. In July 1920, the Holy See had sent the Bishop of ’s-Hertogenbosch, Arnold Diepen, on an apostolic visit to Finland. During this visit, Diepen had met, among others, the Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Professor Lauri Ingman. Ingman had told him that the Finnish government had not taken a categorically negative stance towards the possibility that the Catholic Church in Finland would be administered by a foreigner. The government had also discussed the issue of religious orders and had come to the conclusion that there was, in fact, a difference between the ‘orders of monks’ and the ‘new religious orders’. Therefore, the 1799 law that prohibited members of orders of monks to enter the country did not apply to the members of the current religious orders.64 Since the Finnish government was finally compliant, the Holy See decided to send members of the SCJ to Finland. They had already worked in Finland in 1907–11, and Father Leo Dehon had expressed the willingness of the religious congregation to continue its work in the country. According to Dehon, the most suitable person for the post of apostolic administrator would be the Dutch-born

62 UMA, 44 K, The Political Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to President K. J. Ståhlberg, 7 February 1920; Holsti to Gummerus [?], 9 February 1920; von Christierson to Erich, 28 March 1920. ‘Romersk-katolska kyrkan i Finland’, Hufvudstadsbladet, 7 February 1920, p. 4; ‘Suomen roomalaiskatolinen kirkko’, Helsingin Sanomat, 7 February 1920, p. 4; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 109; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 29. 63 UMA, 44 K, von Christierson to Holsti, 28 February 1920; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 109; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 29. 64 Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 109–10, 112; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, pp. 29, 31. When Bishop Diepen returned to Rome, he apparently had recommended to Propaganda Fide that Carling be appointed as administrator.

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Johannes Michael Buckx, who had worked in the parish of Vyborg in 1909–11. Pope Benedict XV was of the same opinion, and on 20 March 1921, Buckx was appointed Apostolic Administrator in Finland. Two years later, on 23 May 1923, the Holy See appointed Buckx as Apostolic Vicar of Finland, and Cardinal Willem van Rossum consecrated him Titular Bishop of Doliche, in the Cathedral of St Henry in Helsinki on 15 August 1923. Thereby the Catholic Church in Finland obtained its first Catholic bishop since the time of the Reformation.65 When Benedict XV died in January 1922, a solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated in the Cathedral of St Henry. The Mass was attended by high-ranking state officials, including the President of the Republic of Finland, Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, the speaker of the Parliament of Finland, several ministers, the Mayor of Helsinki, representatives for the administration of the University of Helsinki and the diplomatic corps.66 Benedict XV’s death also received coverage in the Finnish newspapers. In addition to providing biographical information on the late pontiff, the newspapers praised Benedict XV for his efforts to restore peace and to mitigate the suffering of the unfortunate victims of the Great War. His death thus meant ‘a huge loss for the humanity’. The newspapers described Benedict XV as a highly intelligent, pleasant and well-educated person, ‘who had accomplished so many victories [during his reign] that one could even talk about a general rise and progress of the Catholic Church in the whole world’. Unquestionably his greatest victory had been the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with France in 1921. However, in Finland Benedict XV would be best remembered for awarding the recognition of Finnish independence without hesitation.67 As the Finnish delegate Lorenzo Kihlman later recalled, ‘Finland had a sympathetic friend in Pope Benedict XV’.68

Bibliography Elmgren, Ainur, ‘The Jesuit Stereotype: An Image of the Universal Enemy in Finnish Nationalism’, in European Anti-Catholicism in a Comparative and Transnational Perspective, ed. by Yvonne Maria Werner and Jonas Harvard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), pp. 191–207 Engman, Max, ‘Finns and Swedes in Finland’, in Ethnicity and Nation Building in the Nordic World, ed. by Sven Tägil (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), pp. 179–216 Hamalainen, Pekka Kalevi, In Time of Storm: Revolution, Civil War, and the Ethnolinguistic Issue in Finland (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1979)

65 Gasparri to Ratti, 18 February 1919, in Acta nuntiaturae Polonae, LVII/4, pp. 69–70; Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, pp. 15, 109, 111–12, 117; Salo, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin, p. 36. 66 Vuorela, Finlandia Catholica, p. 116. 67 ‘Ulkomailta: Paavi Benedictus XV’, Helsingin Sanomat, 22 January 1922, p. 7; ‘Paavi Benedictus XV kuollut’, Uusi Suomi, 22 January 1922, p. 1; ‘Benedictus XV’, Helsingin Sanomat, 7 February 1922, p. 6. 68 Kihlman, ‘Några personliga’, p. 81.

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Kihlman, Lorenzo, ‘Några personliga minnen från åren 1904–1919’, in Hågkomster och livsintryck: finländska minnen av 28 författare, ed. by Sven Thulin (Uppsala: Lindblads, 1935), pp. 62–83 Lappalainen, Mirkka, Susimessu: 1590-luvun sisällissota Ruotsissa ja Suomessa (Helsinki: Siltala, 2009) Lauha, Aila, Suomen kirkon kansainväliset suhteet 1923–1925 (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1993) Lauha, Aila, Suomen kirkon ulkomaansuhteet ja ekumeeninen osallistuminen, 1917–1922 (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1990) Lauha, Aila, ‘Teologinen aikakauskirja sotien välisenä aikana 1917–1939’, Teologinen Aikakauskirja, 102 (1997), pp. 452–79 Lavery, Jason Edward, The History of Finland (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006) Loima, Jyrki, Myytit, uskomukset ja kansa: johdanto moderniin nationalismiin Suomessa 1809–1918 (Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 2006) Loima, Jyrki, ‘Nationalism and the Orthodox Church in Finland (1895–1958)’, in Teuvo Laitila and Jyrki Loima, Nationalism and Orthodoxy: Two Thematic Studies on National Ideologies and their Interaction with the Church (Helsinki: Renvall Institute, 2004), pp. 93–203 Meinander, Henrik, A History of Finland (London: Hurst, 2011) Paasivirta, Juhani, Finland and Europe: The Early Years of Independence, 1917–1939 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1988) Paasivirta, Juhani, Suomi ja Eurooppa: autonomiakausi ja kansainväliset kriisit (1809–1914) (Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä, 1978) Pakaslahti, Aaro, ed., Suomen itsenäisyyden tunnustaminen: asiakirjakokoelma (Helsinki: Söderström, 1937) For the English translation, see Pettinaroli, Laura, La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905–1939) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Pollard, John F., The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism (1914–1958) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Prudhomme, Claude, ‘Le cardinal Van Rossum et la politique missionnaire du SaintSiège sous Benoît XV et Pie XI (1918–1932)’, in Life with a Mission: Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum C. Ss. R. (1854–1932), ed. by Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk (= Trajecta: religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden, 19–20 (2010–11)), pp. 123–41 Pulkkinen, Tuija, ‘One Language, One Mind: The Nationalist Tradition in Finnish Political Culture’, in Europe’s Northern Frontier: Perspectives on Finland’s Western Identity, ed. by Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen ( Jyväskylä: PS-Kustannus, 1999), pp. 118–37 Rytty, Suvi, ‘Between Religious and Nationalistic Interests: The Missionary Actions of Propaganda Fide in Protestant Finland, 1920–1924’, in The Holy See’s Foreign Policies in Inter-War Europe, ed. by Milla Bergström and Kirsi Salonen (Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Church History, 2016), pp. 133–64 Salo, Pekka, Suomi ja Pyhä istuin: Suomen ja Vatikaanikaupungin valtion välisten suhteiden kehitys vuodesta 1918 vuoteen 1968 (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1997)

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Setälä, Usko Voitto Jalo, ‘Katolisen kirkon ja Suomen kansallistuvan ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan välisistä suhteista’, Suomen kirkkohistoriallisen seuran vuosikirja, 58–59 (1968–69), pp. 235–43 Setälä, Usko Voitto Jalo, ‘Kirkollispoliittisia kysymyksiä itsenäisen Suomen diplomatiassa’, in Oman ajan historia ja politiikan tutkimus, ed. by Lauri Hyvämäki and others (Helsinki: Otava, 1967), pp. 160–182 Tilastollinen päätoimisto, ed., Suomen tilastollinen vuosikirja 1919 (Helsinki: Tilastollinen päätoimisto, 1920) Verschuren, Paul, ed., Kirjeenvaihto 1907–1921 Leo Dehonin ja Wilfrid von Christiersonin välillä: Pyhän Sydämen veljeskunnan tulo Suomeen (Helsinki: Katolinen kirkko Suomessa, 1999) Vuorela, Kalevi, Finlandia Catholica: Katolinen Kirkko Suomessa 1700-luvulta 1980-luvulle (Helsinki: Studium Catholicum, 1989) Vuorela, Kalevi, Jeesuksen pyhän sydämen veljeskunta Suomessa 1907–2007 (Helsinki: Jeesuksen pyhän sydämen pappien veljeskunta, 2007) Vuorela, Kalevi, Monsignore Adolf Carling: suomalainen pappi ja patriootti (Helsinki: Studium Catholicum, 1993) Zetterberg, Seppo, Finland after 1917 (Helsinki: Otava, 1995)

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Appeals to Wilson to Avoid the United States’ Entry into War

1.

The United States and Germany in the ‘Submarine War’

The positive response of the majority of American1 Roman Catholics to the nation’s mobilization in 1917 and its commitment to the European conflict was considered a sign of patriotic zeal. At the same time, their participation in the war effort would lead the American Roman Catholics to re-establish the bond with their Church’s internationalist tradition, a trend initiated by the Holy See at the end of the nineteenth century.2 At the beginning of the war, in his encyclical Ad beatissimi of 1 November 1914, Benedict XV implicitly stated that justice and charity, which must govern peace, have their basis in the unity of humanity as children of God. By forgetting this family bond and shared divine origin, human beings tend to engage in war, thus making mutual trust practically impossible. By going a step further than his predecessors, Benedict began, however, to distance himself from the theory of ‘just war’, considered ‘historically outmoded and theologically inadequate’.3 The principle of charity found in the Gospels, he claimed, applied both to nations and individuals, since the former were simply groups of the latter. These principles guided his stance throughout the war. In the beginning, he maintained a position of strict neutrality. In actual fact, during the war, that neutrality was often interpreted by the warring nations as tacit support of the other side. This was why Joseph Joblin wrote that Benedict’s appeal to the Church’s universal mission was often ignored by local churches: ‘each local church linked “its” national cause to that of the Church and the enemy’s cause with evil and the downfall of Catholicism’.4

1 In this article by America is meant the United States of America, not the entire continent. 2 James Hennessey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 272. 3 Ronald G. Musto, The Catholic Peace Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986), p. 171. 4 ‘Chaque Église locale assimila “sa” cause nationale avec celle de l’Église, celle de l’ennemi avec le mal et la perte du catholicisme’; Joseph Joblin, L’Église et la guerre: conscience, violence, pouvoir (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1988), p. 227.

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1285–1311 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118832

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In this regard, Raymond Ledru argued that the Note of 1 August 1917 was received negatively by most of the warring countries.5 The only alternative was, therefore, to return to fundaments of negotiation that had already been attempted by the different heads of state, in particular by President Wilson as emerges from his speech to the Senate on 22 January 1917. In any case, the Pope was often accused by the Allies of favouring Germany and of practising political opportunism regarding the delicate Roman Question. Benedict XV’s ideas marked a decisive turning point in the Holy See’s attitude towards armed conflicts. In truth, at that time, even though the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, James Gibbons, publicly defended him, Benedict’s approach did not induce Catholics to question the principle which held that each citizen needed to back his/her country’s decision to go to war if that war was ‘just’. The American entry into the European conflict in 1917 seemed to meet this criterion. The United States responded as a last resort following a series of events, including the sinking of the Lusitania, which made neutrality impossible. German submarines represented, according to President Wilson, a ‘challenge to all mankind’. In his speech asking Congress to declare war, he presented US intervention as a crusade (‘the world must be made safe for democracy’) and rejected any claim to territorial conquest.6 Gibbons’s was not, therefore, the easiest of roles to have to play back then. With the Archbishop of Boston, William O’Connell, and the Archbishop of New York, John Farley, he was the third of the three American cardinals who took part in the 1914 conclave. Described by a secret network of anti-modernists as an ‘old-style liberal American’, Gibbons was the most eminent member of the American Catholic hierarchy. It was his job to relay, faithfully, Benedict XV’s messages calling for conciliation and moderation to the government of his country. President Wilson was not partial to Catholics, and the Pope’s declarations were often interpreted as supportive of the enemy.7 Moreover, in the eyes of the nation, American Catholics continued to be seen as a community of immigrants. As far as the European conflict was concerned, the Americans of Irish and German origin, constituting the majority of United States Catholics, favoured neutrality, the former because of their conflictual relationship with Great Britain, the latter due to a feeling of solidarity with the country of their ancestors.8 This attitude tended to call the patriotism of the Catholic community as a whole into question.





5 Raymond Ledru, Les catholiques américains et la guerre au XXe siècle (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2000), p. 42. 6 Woodrow Wilson, ‘Joint Address to Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Germany’, in Documents of American History, ed. by Henry Steele Commager, 2 vols (New York: Prentice Hall, 1967), II, p. 129 [accessed 10 January 2019]. 7 Luigi Bruti Liberati, ‘Santa Sede e Stati Uniti negli anni della Grande Guerra’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 129–50. 8 In this regard, see Matteo Sanfilippo, L’affermazione del cattolicesimo nel Nord America: élite, emigranti e chiesa cattolica negli Stati Uniti e in Canada (1750–1920) (Viterbo: Sette città, 2003); Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, 3 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986–96), I (1986).

a p p e a l s to w i l s o n to avo i d t h e u n i t e d stat e s’ e nt ry i nto war

As an example of this, on 24 May 1915, the Apostolic Delegate Giovanni Bonzano, a crucial figure who acted as the conduit of the intense correspondence between Gibbons and the Holy See, was interviewed by a local paper during a visit to Wilmington, DE. He was quoted as saying, ‘I deeply regret that Italy had gotten into the European war because the outcome of war is always uncertain and because it draws bloodshed and leaves disaster in its wake’. He recalled the civic duty of Catholics who were asked to be good citizens, faithful to both the Church and to the country in which they lived: We believe that every person must be loyal to the civil government and the flag of the country of which he is a citizen, and any who are not cannot be good Catholics. This applies not only to the native born but also to those who make their home in a country of their adoption.9 Gerald P. Fogarty wrote that any attempt to convince Wilson to support Benedict’s peace proposal proved difficult, above all in the light of the American government’s strong suspicion that the Pope tended to favour the Central Powers.10 That was the reason why, in April 1917, in the name of the American hierarchy, Gibbons did not hesitate to reaffirm the loyalty of Catholics to the nation: In the present emergency it behoves every American citizen to do his duty, and to uphold the hands of the President […]. The primary duty of a citizen is loyalty to country. This loyalty is manifested more by acts than by words.11 Hence, it was Gibbons’ task to transmit the Pope’s messages of peace. While maintaining an independent position, he supported Wilson’s attempts at mediation, but, after the Lusitania episode of 7 May 1915, he urged Americans not to travel on ships belonging to the belligerents. In August, he followed the instructions of Secretary of State, Gasparri, and brought the reassurances offered by Germany that they would not attack passenger ships of belligerent nations without warning to Wilson’s attention. On 5 May 1915, when the The New York Herald reported that Kaiser Wilhelm II, having heard what was being planned for the Lusitania, had written to a public figure advising him not to allow his son to board that ship, Wilson addressed a courteous protest to the German government, asking Germany to admit having carried out the



9 Albert O. H. Grier, ‘Italy at War Regretted by Mgr Bonzano: Highest Catholic Prelate in America So Expressed Himself While Here: Urges Peace and Good Citizenship’, Every Evening (Wilmington, DE), 24 May 1915, pp. 1–2. The article relates: ‘The war, even before Italy became a factor, was a matter of deep concern to the Catholic Church, of which Mgr Bonzano is the highest official representative in this country, in view of the fact that people of that faith are to be found throughout the war zone, the church being especially strong in Germany and Austria, which now have become enemies of Italy. However, the Vatican proposes maintaining strict neutrality’. In the same issue, also on the front page, an article refers to the hopes that the United States may find a way to peace: ‘Wilson Hopes We May Show World Path of Peace: Invites South and Central Americas to Join with Us Against War: Speech is Given Ringing Applause. Makes Significant Declaration to Delegates to Pan-American Financial Conference’. 10 Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1982), p. 209. 11 John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1834–1921) (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co., 1952), p. 239.

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attack and to guarantee immunity from submarine action to American citizens. The German response recurred to a delaying tactic and hypothesized that the Lusitania was not a merchant vessel at all but an auxiliary English cruiser, transporting troops and munitions and armed with hidden cannons. Wilson, this time resolutely, replied to their note of response delivered at the end of May, stating that the German government was ‘misinformed’ regarding the nature of the Lusitania, adding that had it been equipped for offensive purposes, the United States would not have given it ‘clearance as a merchantman’. The President then added: Whatever be the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, and that men, women and children were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare.12 In commenting on the United States’ note to Germany, L’Osservatore Romano wrote: There is no reason to suppose that the note necessarily leads to war. Such an eventuality would not be possible except in the case of repeated attacks upon the lives and property of American citizens. It is the prevailing opinion that Germany’s refusal to grant reparations for the sinking of the Lusitania may lead to the breakdown of diplomatic relations, but hostilities will only be precipitated in the case of an act of war by Germany.13 In May 1916, La Civiltà Cattolica, reporting on the controversy over submarine warfare, wrote: ‘In recent weeks, black clouds have been gathering on the political horizon between the United States and Germany, which seem to threaten more than a diplomatic storm’.14 12 Robert Lansing, ‘The Secretary of State ad interim to the Ambassador in Germany (Gerard)’, 9 June 1915 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose straniere’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 3 (1915), p. 126. The strained tone used in the note seems to indicate a rupture in diplomatic relations. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, who supported peace, resigned from his post, refusing to endorse an act that might put peace at risk. The note did not exclude an attempt at compromise and a possibly friendly solution that would be in the interest of both parties. While awaiting the resolution from Berlin, news spread that Emperor Wilhelm II had awarded the commander of the submarine that sank the Lusitania the decoration of the Order of Merit. 13 ‘Non vi è alcuna ragione di supporre che la nota conduca necessariamente alla guerra; una tale eventualità non sarà possibile che nel caso si ripetessero attacchi contro le vite e i beni dei cittadini americani. È opinione prevalente che il rifiuto da parte della Germania di accordare riparazioni per l’affondamento del Lusitania potrà condurre alla rottura delle relazioni diplomatiche, ma le ostilità non saranno precipitate che nel caso di un atto bellicoso da parte della Germania’; ‘La Nota degli Stati Uniti alla Germania’, L’Osservatore Romano, 13 June 1915, p. 2. 14 ‘Nelle scorse settimane, nere nubi si erano venute addensando all’orizzonte politico tra gli Stati Uniti e la Germania e parevano minacciare più che una bufera diplomatica’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose straniere’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 2 (1916), p. 499.

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In some official notes, therefore, Wilson expressed his indignation against the German government, which obdurately refused to acknowledge the sinking as an illegal act. In a note to Count Bernstorff, German Ambassador to Washington, the US Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, made it clear that the American government could not admit Germany’s right to sink merchant ships without warning, even if they were armed, while it recognized the right to arm merchant ships solely for defensive purposes. Since the number of ships sunk by German submarines increased, causing victims regardless of nationality (the cases of the Englishman, the Manchester Engineer and the Sussex), the American government presented Berlin with a new note, on 18 April 1916, sharper in tone than usual: If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of submarines without regard to what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether. This action the Government of the United States contemplates with the greatest reluctance but feels constrained to take in behalf of humanity and the rights of neutral nations.15

2. Cardinal Gasparri’s Appeal Following the sinking of the Lusitania, the English Cardinal Francis Gasquet appealed to the Holy Father for him to protest again, and condemn, Germany’s war tactics. In the letter sent from his residence at San Callisto in Trastevere, Rome, the Cardinal invoked the intervention of the ‘Supreme Guardian of Christian morality’.16 In his opinion, the coldly calculated murder that the torpedoing of the Lusitania was, had cost 1500 civilian lives, women and children mostly, and provoked a cry of indignation throughout the world. While the Italian press denounced the ‘barbarously cowardly’ act as loathsome, the brief note from the Vatican’s official mouthpiece merely expressed lukewarm condemnation, using expressions such as ‘our deepest regret’, while its conclusion was limited to deploring the ‘methods of modern warfare’. In Gasquet’s opinion, it appeared that the Vatican newspaper sought also to accuse another nation (namely England) of resorting to similar methods. He sustained that

15 Robert Lansing, ‘The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Germany (Gerard)’, 18 April 1916 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose straniere’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 67, 2 (1916), p. 501. 16 ‘Guardiano supremo della morale cristiana’; AES, Germania-Inghilterra 1915, pos. 1322, fasc. 481, ff. 3–4.

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the fact that any authority might remain silent in cases like this was tantamount to tacit consent to violation of the law. At the end of the letter, Gasquet expressed his fears regarding the future of Catholic morality in the light of the fact that, in the press, the leader of the German Catholic party, Matthias Erzberger, defended the ‘principle of the legitimacy of collective murder, without being reproached by authorities’.17 Two days later, on 12 May 1915, Benedict XV responded with a letter in his own hand, informing Gasquet that it had been deemed necessary to submit the question he had raised regarding the opportunity of protesting to one of the most ‘learned’ consultors of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. To this letter, at the request of the Secretary of State, he added the written opinion in question, ‘in confidence’. The consultor’s opinion surprised and pained Gasquet, who did not believe it possible. We read in his reply to the Holy Father, ‘that a deed so unheard of and horrendous might have found almost an advocate in the sacred Congregation for Ecclesiastical Affairs, that I would never have believed possible and it fills my heart with such an intense sorrow that I cannot find the words to express it’. At the end of the consultor’s assessment of the issue we read, in actual fact, that If the Lusitania, as the English say, was neither armed nor had aboard weapons and ammunition, its torpedoing would be an extremely serious and sorrowful episode of the war that Germany, with its submarines, carries out against the Anglo-French flag and would be against all the laws of war, like the torpedoing of other merchant and fishing boats, etc., which are highly condemnable by the Holy See. But even in that case we must not forget that submarine warfare is Germany’s answer to the Anglo-French blockade. If the blockade were only intended to impede weapons and ammunition or the materials needed to produce those from entering Austria-Hungary and Germany, there would be nothing to object to. But everyone knows, because it has been publicly repeated by Anglo-French statesmen, that the blockade is intended to starve Germany and Austria-Hungary. Now, is it lawful to starve two nations that together number 120 million inhabitants, of whom around 100 million are non-combatants and perfectly harmless, ill, elderly, children, women, pregnant women, breast-feeding women with infants, including a considerable number of prisoners from their own countries? […] If it is not lawful to bomb a defenceless and harmless village, how can it be lawful to starve 100 million defenceless and harmless inhabitants? Admittedly, German submarine warfare against Anglo-French ships that are

17 ‘Barbaramente codardo’; ‘il nostro profondo rimpianto’; ‘metodi della guerra moderna’; ‘principio della legittimità dell’assassinio collettivo, senza essere rimproverato dall’autorità’. Erzberger’s positions are amply illustrated in the reports on ‘the unlimited submarine warfare’ that the German Member of Parliament sent the Nuncio in Munich, Pacelli, with the request that their contents be conveyed to Gasparri. There are two documents: ‘La guerra subacquea illimitata: la carestia di cereali e di materie grezze nei paesi dell’Intesa’ (10 February 1917) and ‘La guerra subacquea illimitata: la guerra dei sommergibili e le prospettive della flotta mercantile inglese’ (13 February 1917): see AES, Germania, pos. 1631, fasc. 855, ff. 57–78.

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neither armed nor carrying war contraband would be a barbarous response to a barbarous proposition and the Holy See, condemning the response, should also say something about the proposition. Is it appropriate for the Holy See to come down on all the belligerent nations in that way? I do not believe so.18 The consultor, therefore, did not think it appropriate for the Holy See to protest publicly against the torpedoing of the Lusitania because it was not certain that the transatlantic ship was unarmed and that is was not carrying weapons or munitions, as the English maintained. He also believed that while allowing for such a hypothesis, it was possible that England’s behaviour deserved more or less the same criticism as that against Germany and held that a double condemnation would have caused the Holy See a certain degree of trouble.

18 ‘Il barbaro siluramento della [sic] Lusitania avesse potuto trovare in questa consulta un membro che più o meno lo scusasse’; ‘Se il Lusitania, come dicono gli Inglesi, né era armato né aveva a bordo armi e munizioni, il suo siluramento sarebbe un episodio gravissimo e dolorosissimo della guerra che la Germania con i suoi sottomarini fa alla bandiera anglo-francese e sarebbe contrario a tutte le leggi sulla guerra come lo è il siluramento di altri bastimenti mercantili, pescherecci, etc. altamente condannabile dalla S. Sede. Però anche in questo caso non deve dimenticarsi che la guerra dei sottomarini è la risposta della Germania al blocus anglo-francese. Se il blocus tendesse soltanto a impedire l’introduzione in Austria-Ungheria e Germania delle armi e munizioni o di materie necessarie alla fabbricazione delle medesime, non vi sarebbe nulla a ridire, ma tutti sanno, poiché è stato ripetuto pubblicamente da uomini di Stato anglofrancesi, che il blocus tende inoltre ad affamare la Germania e l’Austria-Ungheria. Ora, affamare due nazioni che contano insieme 120 milioni di abitanti, dei quali circa 100 milioni non combattenti e perfettamente inoffensivi, malati, vecchi, fanciulli, donne, donne incinte, donne lattanti, compreso un numero considerevole di prigionieri della propria nazione, è lecito? […] Se non è lecito bombardare un villaggio indifeso e inoffensivo, come può esser lecito affamare 100 milioni di abitanti indifesi e inoffensivi? Il che ammesso, la guerra dei sottomarini tedeschi contro vapori anglofrancesi che non sono armati né portano contrabbando di guerra, sarebbe una risposta barbara a una proposizione barbara; e la S. Sede condannando la risposta dovrebbe pur dire qualche cosa della proposizione. Ne conviene che la S. Sede si metta così sul dorso tutte le nazioni belligeranti? Io non lo credo’; AES, Germania-Inghilterra 1915, pos. 1322, fasc. 481, ff. 5–6. He concluded: ‘It is certain, however, that in the current monstrous war laws have been more or less violated on all sides; we easily admit that they have been principally violated by the Germans. Thus, the Holy See could condemn these violations in a public statement, for example, during the next consistorial address, and call on the warring powers to observe the laws of warfare. This was done in the last consistorial address, but repetita iuvant, much more so that, after the last consistory, violations of the laws have also been repeated and many times seriously. But I do not think it is prudent to enter into the details, condemning this or that particular violation committed by this or that power, something that the Holy See cannot do unless it is certain both in right and fact and the certainty of the fact is not confirmed by only one of the parties and denied by the other’ (‘È certo, però, che nella mostruosa guerra attuale le leggi sono state violate più o meno in ogni parte, ammettiamo facilmente che siano state violate principalmente dai tedeschi. Quindi la S. Sede in un atto pubblico, per esempio nella prossima allocuzione concistoriale, potrebbe riprovare queste violazioni ed esortare i belligeranti all’osservanza delle leggi sulla guerra. Lo ha fatto nell’ultima allocuzione concistoriale, ma repetita juvant, tanto più che anche le violazioni delle leggi dopo l’ultimo concistoro sono state ripetute e più volte gravemente. Ma io non riterrei prudente entrar nei dettagli, condannando tale o tale violazione, commessa da tale o tale belligerante, ciò la S. Sede non può fare se non quando è certo tanto il diritto quanto il fatto e la certezza del fatto non si ha dalla sola affermazione di una parte, negando l’altro’).

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The British Cardinal’s letter, therefore, reveals his disappointment with the consultor’s considerations, which he did not believe were the result of careful examination, but a reproposal of the ‘slanderous calumnies’ widespread amongst the Germans. No one in Germany believes that the Lusitania was armed. The press over there limits itself to a nice kind of reasoning; if it were not, it could have been. Instead, after the threat made in America before the ship departed, a hypothesis of its being armed is absurd. So the desire to make the passengers responsible for their tragic death, as the report from Berlin holds, almost seems like — sit venia verbis — a cynical joke!19

3. Gasparri’s ‘Instructions’ On 10 June 1915, in an encrypted telegram, Gasparri gave instructions to the Apostolic Delegate on how to proceed should diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany break down: In the eventuality of a breakdown in diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany and the consequent impossibility for them to deal directly with receiving and distributing the food and other assistance sent to the Belgian

19 ‘Nessuno in Germania crede che la Lusitania fosse armata. Già la stampa di colà si limita al bel ragionamento; se non l’era, lo poteva essere. Anzi, dopo la minaccia fatta in America prima della partenza della nave, l’ipotesi dell’armamento è assurda. Quindi il voler rendere i passeggeri responsabili della loro tragica morte, come lo fa pure il rapporto di Berlino, mi sembra quasi — sit venia verbis — una cinica burla!’; AES, Germania-Inghilterra 1915, pos. 1322, fasc. 481, ff. 20–21. Cardinal Gasquet concluded: ‘So, the very commendable consultor proposes that the Holy See speak a word that, while criticizing these latest excesses, could make it be believed that England’s blockade, according to commonly agreed-to principles, deserves more or less the same criticism. The impression produced among the Allies would be very harmful, much more than Rome’s silence. A similar equality in fact would seem to justify the German position, as the consultor does in the end, at least in an equivalent way. I can no longer hide my deep-rooted conviction that the greater German nation, which is inspired by Nietzschean criteria, has been able to order such coldly calculated collective assassinations so cruelly executed. It is painful, yes, but up to a certain point, given these anti-Christian criteria, it is not overly surprising. But that a deed so unheard of and horrendous might have found almost an advocate in the Sacred Congregation of Ecclesiastical Affairs, that I would never have believed possible and it fills my heart with such an intense sorrow that I cannot find the words to express it’ (‘Onde, se come lo propone il sullodato Consultore, la S. Sede dicesse una parola che, pur biasimando questi ultimi eccessi, potesse far credere che il blocus quale, secondo i principii comunemente ammessi, fa l’Inghilterra sia compreso più o meno nello stesso biasimo, l’impressione prodotta tra gli alleati sarebbe penosissima, assai più del silenzio di Roma. Un simile pareggiamento infatti sembrerebbe dare retta alla tesi tedesca, come del resto lo fa il Consultore, almeno in un modo equivalente. Non posso più nascondere il fondo del mio pensiero che lo Stato maggiore tedesco, il quale s’ispira a criteri nietzschiani abbia potuto ordinare degli assassinii collettivi così freddamente calcolati e così crudelmente eseguiti, è doloroso sì, ma fino a un certo punto, dati questi criteri anticristiani, non sorprende troppo; ma che un fatto così inaudito e orrendo abbia potuto trovare quasi un avvocato nella S. congregazione degli Affari ecclesiastici questo non l’avrei mai creduto possibile e riempie il mio cuore di un dolore così intenso che non trovo parole per esprimerlo’).

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population in the Belgian territories occupied by the Germans, the Holy See would be available and pleased to entrust the Nuncio in Brussels with that charitable work. Should this occur, therefore, please make this availability of the Holy See known to President Wilson without delay through Cardinal Gibbons.20 Two months later, on 28 August 1915, Gasparri charged Bonzano with the task of making an important communication concerning the sinking of the Arabic: Ask Cardinal Gibbons, with the utmost confidentiality, to inform President Wilson that the Holy See immediately advised Germany to amicably settle the issue of the sinking of the Arabic as quickly as possible and that they refrain from other such sinkings, and trusts that such advice will be followed.21 The Apostolic Delegate executed the order and, the following day, transmitted the English translation of Gasparri’s telegram. On 2 September, Bonzano informed Gasparri that his communiqué had been brought to Wilson’s attention and that the President had expressed ‘great satisfaction’, and asked Gibbons to thank the Holy Father. He added that the President and the Cardinal would be in favour of publishing the news if the Holy See and Germany permitted it. He therefore awaited instructions on the matter.22 Further instructions arrived on 6 September, forbidding diffusion of the news. ‘The Holy See presently considers any notification regarding Cardinal Gibbons’s visit to President Wilson inappropriate’.23 Bonzano immediately communicated the pontiff ’s decision to Gibbons, as always, forwarding the English translation of the encrypted telegram which had arrived from Rome, but this time he took the liberty of emphasizing that the matter needed to be kept absolutely silent, adding in his own hand: ‘From this, Your Eminence will see that it is the express desire of the Holy Father that absolute secrecy be maintained on this subject’.24

20 ‘Nell’eventualità rottura rapporti diplomatici tra Stati Uniti e Germania e conseguente impossibilità per i primi continuare a occuparsi direttamente, nei territori del Belgio occupati dai tedeschi, ricevimento e distribuzione viveri ad altri soccorsi inviati popolazioni belghe. S. Sede sarebbe disposta e lieta incaricare tale opera caritatevole nunzio Bruxelles. Qualora perciò detta eventualità si verificasse, V. S. I. per mezzo cardinale Gibbons faccia conoscere senza ritardo presidente Wilson questa disposizione S. Sede’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 16. 21 ‘Interesso V. S. I. pregare cardinale Gibbons informi in modo strettamente riservato presidente Wilson che S. Sede consigliò subito Germania regolare al più presto amichevolmente questione affondamento Arabic ed astenersi da altri simili affondamenti, e nutre fiducia che tale consiglio sarà seguito’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 64. 22 ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 68. 23 ‘S. Sede ritiene inopportuna presentemente qualsiasi pubblicazione su visita card. Gibbons al presidente Wilson’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 69. 24 ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 70. The following day, 8 September 1915, Gibbons acknowledged that he had received the communication regarding his visit to the President and gave assurances that he would maintain secrecy as the Holy See wished.

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His concerns stemmed from the fact that the Apostolic Delegate recognized that Gibbons’s character was not exactly inclined to confidentiality or secrecy. According to Bonzano, Gibbons, in fact, enjoyed a ‘deserved’ popularity among Americans, which pleased him and which he seemed unwilling to renounce despite his advanced age. On 7 September, he wrote to the Secretary of State a long letter regarding the Cardinal’s visit to the American President, expressing his concerns: The fuss that is being made in the newspapers these days concerning His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons’s visit to President Wilson has forced me to explain to his eminence that about which, out of sensitive regard for the Cardinal, I have remained silent until now. In accordance with the instructions Your Eminence sent to me in the encoded telegrams of 13 and 20 May, I hastened to ask Cardinal Gibbons to contact this American government, which, as I had the honour of immediately telegraphing to Your Eminence, obtained a successful outcome. On those occasions, in truth the Cardinal had not gone in person to the White House but had limited himself to sending Your Eminence’s question to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the time, Mr Bryan, through a priest in the city. Some time ago, to my great surprise, I came to learn that His Eminence, finding himself at lunch with some professors of the Catholic University, told them, not without a certain self-satisfaction, of the steps taken with Mr Bryan on behalf of the Holy See and of the favours that had been obtained.25 Following this, on 28 August, when I received by proxy Your Eminence’s encoded telegram, I was in doubt about whether to transmit it through Cardinal Gibbons. However, in the end I followed the instructions transmitted in the telegram itself and wrote urgently to the Cardinal, asking him to treat the communique to be given to the President with the utmost confidentiality. Two days later, I read in the newspapers that Cardinal Gibbons was to be received in an audience by the President on the second of this month at 2:00 p.m. The audience took place on that day and at the time announced. At about 3:00 that very afternoon, the Cardinal came to me, radiant with joy at the splendid welcome he had received and highly satisfied with how the President had accepted the notice communicated to him, for which 25 ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 43. On 13 July 1915, Bonzano sent Gasparri a work by Bryan (‘alla cui gentilezza in modo speciale dobbiamo i piccoli favori chiesti dall’E. V. Rev.ma’; ‘to whose kindness we are particularly indebted for the small favours requested by Your Eminence’) who resigned because of differences with the presidency on the second American note to Germany. The piece mentioned referred to was William Jennings Bryan, ‘The Causeless War’ and Its Lessons for Us (Lincoln, NE: n. pub., 1915), which the author wished brought to the Pope’s attention. One passage, in particular, appears emblematic of Bryan’s vision: ‘Christian nations need to read again Christ’s prayer upon the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. All the participants in this war have sinned enough to make them anxious to exhibit that forgiving spirit which is the measure of the forgiveness which can be claimed. When can peace be restored? Any time now, if the participants are really weary of this war and ready for it to end. If any nation is not ready, let its ruler state in clear, distinct, and definite terms the conditions upon which it is willing to agree to peace; then if an agreement is not reached, the blame for the continuance of the war will be upon those who make unreasonable demands’; Bryan, ‘The Causeless War’, p. 11.

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the Cardinal, at his own request, had been authorized to thank the Holy Father. Moreover, the Cardinal told me that, on leaving the audience, he had encountered journalists who wanted to know the purpose of the visit and had told them that he had gone to take the President a message from the Pope. And, because they insisted on knowing whether the message contained a proposal for peace, he supposedly added: ‘If you want to believe that it is a message of peace, you are free to do so’. […] The Cardinal had barely left when the newspapers were already appearing with large headlines in enormous block capitals: ‘Cardinal Gibbons sent by Pope to President with message of peace!’. The press of all colours has continued using the same tones, making all kinds of imaginable or possible hypotheses. Fortunately, the day before yesterday, the papers announced that the Vatican had denied that Cardinal Gibbons had received a message of peace for the President. The Cardinal was immediately interviewed by journalists and, while reticent about the nature of the message, he confirmed that he had presented Mr Wilson with a message from the Holy Father and that he was waiting for the authorization to publish it any day in the near future. However, it is to be believed that Your Eminence’s encoded telegram dated yesterday, which I have already communicated to the Cardinal, has removed that ambition and illusion from him. At least, I hope so, but I am almost certain that, by this time, he will have informed the four or five priests who live with him at the cathedral of everything and it would not surprise me if something were to come to light. From all this it seems to me that I can conclude that perhaps it is not prudent to entrust the over 80-year-old Cardinal with delicate missives, and that they must be sent in safer ways. I think the best way is to write directly to the President and to his Secretary of State and to have them deliver the messages to the American secretary of the Delegation. […] Moreover, I hold no illusions concerning the warm reception that the President gave the Cardinal. Presidential elections will be held next year, and the President, who has lost a lot of ground in his re-election campaign, is trying to make friends. The Austro-Hungarian/German element is against him due to his increased favouritism towards England, and many Catholics and all honest persons in every party disapprove of his disastrous policy towards Mexico. In such circumstances, it seemed better to him to welcome the Cardinal warmly in order to make him and all Catholics forget the rather impolite manner in which he, at the beginning of his government, had received the very same Cardinal Gibbons, His Eminence Farley, Mgr Ireland, several other bishops and representatives of the Holy See.26

26 ‘La gazzarra che in questi giorni si va facendo dai giornali intorno alla visita dell’E.mo sig. card. Gibbons al sig. presidente Wilson, mi costringe a manifestare all’E. V. Rev.ma cosa, che per delicati riguardi verso il sullodato cardinale, ho taciuto finora. In conformità alle istruzioni datemi da V. E. coi telegrammi cifrati del 13 e 20 maggio u.s., io mi affrettai a pregare l’E.mo Gibbons di fare presso questo governo americano pratiche che, come ebbi l’onore di telegrafare subito a V. E., ebbero esito felice. In quelle occasioni, il cardinale veramente non erasi recato in persona alla Casa Bianca, ma si era limitato a trasmettere al segretario di Stato per gli affari esteri, allora Sig. Bryan, la domanda di V. E., per mezzo di un sacerdote di questa città. Qualche tempo fa, con mia grande sorpresa, venni

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Bonzano’s concerns and fears were sustained by the great uproar raised by the journalistic ‘incident’ that occurred in June, which forced the Holy See to deny completely what Louis Latapie, a French journalist for La Liberté to whom the pontiff had granted an interview, had written.

a sapere che S. E., trovandosi a pranzo con professori nell’Università cattolica, narrò loro, non senza compiacenza, i passi fatti presso il sig. Bryan, a nome della S. Sede, e i favori ottenuti. In seguito a ciò, quando il 28 agosto p.p. ricevetti il telegramma cifrato di V. E., stetti in forse se comunicarlo per il tramite dell’E.mo Gibbons. Finii, però, col seguire le istruzioni contenute nel telegramma stesso, e scrissi di urgenza al cardinale, pregandolo di incaricarsi della nota comunicazione da farsi al presidente in modo strettamente riservato. Due giorni dopo, lessi nei giornali che il cardinale Gibbons sarebbe stato ricevuto in udienza dal presidente il 2 corrente alle 2 pomeridiane. L’udienza ebbe luogo nel giorno e nell’ora annunziati, a circa le 3 dello stesso pomeriggio, il cardinale venne da me raggiante di contentezza per la bella accoglienza ricevuta e per la viva soddisfazione con cui il presidente aveva accolta la notizia comunicatagli, per la quale lo stesso cardinale, dietro Sua richiesta, era stato autorizzato a ringraziare il S. Padre. Il cardinale mi disse inoltre di avere incontrato, uscendo dall’udienza, i giornalisti che volevano conoscere lo scopo della visita e di avere detto loro che era andato a portare al presidente un messaggio del papa. E siccome essi insistevano per sapere se il messaggio contenesse proposte di pace, egli avrebbe soggiunto: se voi volete credere che sia un messaggio di pace, siete liberi di crederlo. […] Era appena partito il cardinale che già uscivano i giornali con grandi titoli a caratteri cubitali. Il cardinale Gibbons inviato dal papa al presidente con un messaggio di pace! Su questa intonazione, la stampa di ogni colore ha continuato a fare in questi giorni tutte le ipotesi immaginabili e possibili. Fortunatamente, l’altro ieri i giornali annunziarono avere il Vaticano smentito che l’E.mo Gibbons avesse ricevuto un messaggio di pace per il presidente. Il cardinale fu subito intervistato dai giornalisti e, pur mostrandosi reticente circa la natura del messaggio, confermò che egli aveva presentato al sig. Wilson un messaggio del S. Padre e che attendeva a giorni l’autorizzazione per pubblicarlo. Ma è da ritenere che il telegramma cifrato di V. E., in data di ieri, che ho già comunicato al cardinale, gli toglierà qualunque velleità e illusione. Almeno così spero, ma sono quasi certo che a quest’ora egli avrà messo al corrente d’ogni cosa i 4 o 5 preti che convivono con lui alla cattedrale e non mi farei meraviglia se qualche cosa venisse a trapelare. Di tutto ciò, mi pare di poter conchiudere che non è forse prudente l’affidare al più che ottuagenario cardinale ambasciate delicate e che bisognerà farle per vie più sicure. Io penso che il miglior modo sia quello di scrivere direttamente al presidente e al suo segretario di Stato e far consegnare loro le lettere dal segretario americano della Delegazione. […] Del resto, io non mi illudo molto per la buona accoglienza fatta dal presidente al cardinale. L’anno venturo ci saranno le elezioni presidenziali e il presidente, che ha perduto molto terreno per la rielezione, cerca di farsi degli amici. L’elemento tedesco austro-ungarico gli è avverso per il suo cresciuto favoritismo verso l’Inghilterra, molti cattolici e tutti gli onesti di ogni partito disapprovano la sua disastrosa politica verso il Messico. In tali condizioni, non gli sembrò vero di accogliere bene il cardinale e far dimenticare a lui e a tutti i cattolici il modo poco cortese, con cui al principio del suo governo egli aveva ricevuto lo stesso cardinale Gibbons, l’E.mo Farley, mons. Ireland, parecchi altri vescovi e il rappresentante della S. Sede’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 29. Gasparri did not insist on using Gibbons and replied as follows: ‘I have received Your Very Illustrious and Reverend Sir’s report dated 7 September and the one designated with no. 18452 relative to the visit made by His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons to this President Wilson. I am informed of the just observations that you have expressed to me in this regard and I will not fail to keep them in mind in due course’ (‘Mi è pervenuto il rapporto della S. V. Ill.ma e Rev.ma, datato 7 settembre e distinto col N. 18452, relativo alla visita fatta dall’Em.mo sig. card. Gibbons a codesto presidente Wilson. Resto inteso delle giuste osservazioni che Ella mi espone al riguardo e che io non mancherò di tener presenti a tempo opportuno’).

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The Washington Post picked up the news on 29 June,27 and ran a headline claiming ‘Vatican Decries War Interview: Charges Falsity and Invention of Grave Assertion by Louis Latapie’. This came in the wake of an article that the Corriere d’Italia, which had been granted an interview by the Secretary of State, had published the previous day with Gasparri’s disavowal. In point of fact, it was a long note, taken entirely from La Civiltà Cattolica, from which the essential part is provided here: Leaving aside that Mr Latapie has invented not a few, very serious allegations out of thin air, what he has done is what often happens to journalists reporting a conversation. A sentence makes an impression, and they reproduce it without considering that that sentence, detached from the broader context of the discourse, perhaps does not faithfully reproduce the thought or, even worse, distorts it entirely, which is what usually happens, particularly if the journalist, as in the case of Mr Latapie, has to speak about things that he does not know well. The Secretary of State touched on some salient points, the subject of the French journalist’s unfounded assertions, which had caused the Holy See some ‘deplorable indiscretions’ and the fact that he declared that he ‘would have the honour of being the last journalist that the Holy Father would receive during the war’. In particular, regarding the Lusitania, the Cardinal affirmed: The Holy Father deplored the sinking of the large transatlantic ship. If he could not express himself more directly it was because he was faced with questions of fact that he could not solve, which some on one side affirm and others deny. According to Mr Latapie, the Holy Father is believed to have then added: ‘Do you think that a blockade that is crushing two empires, that is condemning millions of innocents to starvation, is inspired by humane sentiments?’. Whatever words the Holy Father used, it is certain that he meant by them to ascertain his interlocutor’s opinion, not to pronounce judgement against the legitimacy of the blockade.28

27 The article was entitled: ‘Pope Makes Thoughts Clear to Minimise “Disastrous Impression” Created by Article’, The Washington Post, 29 June 1915. 28 ‘Lasciando da parte che il sig. Latapie ha inventato di sana pianta non poche e assai gravi asserzioni, a lui è accaduto ciò che suole spesso accadere ai giornalisti che riferiscono una conversazione. Una frase fa loro impressione; essi la riproducono senza riflettere che quella frase, staccata da tutto il contenuto del discorso, forse, non riproduce fedelmente il pensiero, o anche, quel che è peggio ancora, lo svisa completamente, ciò suole accadere specialmente se il giornalista, com’è il caso del sig. Latapie, deve parlare di cose che egli non conosce bene’; ‘deplorevoli indiscrezioni’; ‘avrà l’onore di essere stato l’ultimo giornalista ricevuto dal S. Padre durante la guerra’; ‘Il S. Padre ha deplorato lo affondamento del grande transatlantico. Se non poté pronunziarsi più direttamente, si fu perché trovavasi di fronte a questioni di fatto che Egli non poteva risolvere, mentre gli uni da una parte affermano e gli altri negano. Secondo il sig. Latapie, il S. Padre avrebbe poi aggiunto: “credete voi che il blocco che stringe due imperi, che condanna alla fame milioni di esseri innocenti si inspiri a sentimenti umani?”. Quali che siano state le parole usate dal S. Padre, certo si è che Egli intendeva con esse conoscere quale fosse l’opinione del suo interlocutore e non già pronunziarsi contro la legittimità del blocco’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: cose romane’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 66, 3 (1915), pp. 236–38.

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4. The Reaction of the International Press to Benedict XV’s Message to Wilson The ‘fuss’ that Bonzano referred to in his letter to Gasparri arose from the incessant international press campaign, which was sometimes pessimistic and even insulting with respect to Gibbons’s mission to the White House and the contents of the letter he had taken to Wilson. In the first two days of September, the American newspaper Star published two articles entitled: ‘Cardinal to see President’29 and ‘Cardinal Gibbons, an Envoy of Pope, makes Peace Plea’.30 In reporting that Gibbons, accompanied by Mgr Russell, Rector of St Patrick’s Church, had been entertained by the President for about half an hour, the newspaper referred to his declaration to the journalists who were waiting for him: It is true that the Pope gave me a message for President Wilson, and I delivered it, but I cannot discuss it for publication. The settlement of the question at issue between Germany and the United States has brought the possibility of peace nearer. I expressed to the President, most decidedly, my great gratification at the advantageous conclusion of the discussions with Germany. On 3 September, The Evening Star wrote that Wilson remained silent about the peace proposal and that the time of good intentions sill seemed remote.31 In an article entitled ‘Le Pape et la paix’, the newspaper Le Siècle posited a basic question and accused the Holy See of repeated German favouritism: What is the papal message that Cardinal Gibbons has just given to Mr Wilson? We do not know anything about it except that Benedict XV is assumed to be urging the President of the United States to throw himself between the belligerents, to encourage them to cease hostilities in order to discuss the conditions for peace together. A strange request, to say the least, given the unfortunately passive nature of the Roman pontiff, who could not spare a word to anathematize German barbarism while gasping Belgium and murdered Reims called out to him. But it is precisely the Pope’s repeatedly attested German favouritism that lends particular

29 ‘Cardinal to See President: Conference Tomorrow, but Its Object Is Not Made Known’, Star, 1 September 1915. 30 The title, in its entirety, reads: ‘Cardinal Gibbons, an Envoy of Pope, Makes Peace Plea: Calls at White House to Deliver a Message from the Holy See: It thought an Appeal for Action by Neutrals: Regarded as Unlikely U. S. Will Move until Invited by Some Belligerents Power: No Details Made Public’, Star, 2 September 1915. On 5 September, the paper’s headline ran: ‘Pope Puts Trust in President Wilson: Believes Executive, at Present, Is Man Most Fit to Further Peace. Cardinal’s Call Deemed Big Step in Ending War’. 31 ‘President is Silent on Peace Proposal: Opportune Time to Offer Good Offices Seems Yet to Be Distant: Vatican Suggestion Is Not Allies Desire: Represents Austrian-German Sentiment Only, It Is Said: Entente Powers Might Resent Mediation’, Evening Star, 5 September 1915.

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interest to Cardinal Gibbons’s mission and upon which the newspapers are insisting this morning.32 The French correspondent for the Times in Washington wrote: Cardinal Gibbons’s visit to the White House to discuss peace may not quite attract the kind of attention that the Germans hoped for. Nearly everyone proclaims that the message given to the President is of German inspiration. Many French newspapers disputed that peace was the topic of the Cardinal’s visit. Le Figaro, in an article emblematically titled ‘Un démenti’, declared: The Cardinal certainly went to see the President of the United States and perhaps gave him a message from the Pope, but he told us that, if there was a message, the pontifical document had nothing to do with the question of peace in Europe. Cardinal Gibbons reportedly went to the White House to confer with the President in accordance with instructions he had received from Rome some time earlier and which he had been prevented from carrying out. However, the instructions, we have been assured, did not concern the cessation of hostilities. If the Cardinal and the President discussed the world situation, as was telegraphed from New York, they did so only after having dealt with the purely American questions that had motivated the Cardinal’s visit.33 On the other hand, Catholic newspapers spoke of a message of peace. La Libre Parole wrote that Gibbons’s peaceful talk with Wilson honoured the pontiff ’s generous sentiments and showed that the father of the faithful was always ready to seek the means for restoring peace to the world. That having been said, the meeting obviously could not lead to any result, at least in the immediate future. There was reason to 32 ‘Qu’est-ce que ce message papal que le cardinal Gibbons vient de remettre à M. Wilson? On n’en sait rien, sinon que Benoît XV adjurerait le président des États-Unis de se jeter entre les belligérants, de les inciter à cesser les hostilités afin de discuter en commun les conditions de la paix. Adjuration pour le moins étrange, étant donnée la fâcheuse passive du pontife de Rome, qui n’a pas su trouver un mot pour anathématiser la barbarie allemande, alors que la Belgique pantelante et Reims assassinée en appelaient à lui. Mais c’est précisément le progermanisme du pape, réitérativement attesté, qui prête à la mission du cardinal Gibbons un intérêt tout particulier et sur lequel ce matin les journaux insistent’; ‘Le Pape et la paix’, Le Siècle, 6 September 1915. The same article also reproduces the notice of the French correspondent for the Times in Washington: ‘la visite du cardinal Gibbons à la Maison Blanche pour y traiter de la paix attire l’attention mais pas tout à fait la sorte d’attention que les Allemands auraient aimée. Presque tout le monde proclame que le message remis au président est d’inspiration germanique’. 33 ‘Or le cardinal est certes allé voir le président des États-Unis et lui a peut-être remis un message du pape, mail il nous est affirmé que si message il y avait, ce document pontifical ne traitait pas de la question de la paix en Europe. Le cardinal Gibbons se serait en effet rendu à la Maison Blanche pour conférer avec le président conformément à des instructions qu’il avait reçues de Rome depuis quelque temps déjà et qu’il avait été jusqu’ici empêche d’exécuter. Mais ces instructions ne portaient point, on nous l’assure, de bonne source sur la cessation des hostilités. Et si le cardinal et le président se sont entretenus de la situation mondiale, comme on le télégraphie de New York, ils ne l’ont fait qu’après avoir traité des questions purement américaines qui avaient motivé la visite du cardinal’; ‘La démarche du cardinal Gibbons: pas de message’, Le Figaro, 5 September 1915.

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believe that the Holy See, better than anyone else, harboured no illusions about it. It was well known that circumstances did not allow the Allies to see anything but a war lasting to the bitter end. Only Germany and its allies could wish for peace, if ever they found themselves in circumstances that were not sufficiently favourable to victory.34 Le Gaulois did not go so far as to imagine collusion between the Holy See and Berlin, but it did not doubt the nature of Gibbons’s request. The Pope continued to carry out his historical and spiritual mission. Obviously, the Vatican does not speak up in the hope that it will be heard. It must be remembered, however, that it has a long-term policy; it prepares for the future. In our opinion, Benedict XV’s message to Cardinal Gibbons is a manifestation of this slow, tenacious and constant work that, by preparing a moral alliance with the great overseas Protestant democracy, will lend greater weight to its intervention in the peace negotiations should it ever become necessary to have recourse to arbitration. In itself, therefore, the Pope’s attempt is not unusual. On the other hand, it is questionable whether the government in Berlin, warned by means of the information at its disposal, did not consider that it would be advisable to adopt a conciliatory attitude towards the government in Washington beforehand.35 Le Journal linked the nature of Gibbons’s involvement to an act of German diplomacy. Without doubting the generosity of the Pope’s intentions, it was surprised by the strange coincidence between this ‘démarche’ taken by the Holy See and Germany’s new attitude towards the United States: It is an indisputable fact that neither England nor Russia nor France can, in the current circumstances, pay the slightest attention to pacifist illusions. The same cannot be said of Germany. For some time now, it has been expressing the desire to, as one crudely says, pull a ‘Charlemagne’. It has succeeded on the Eastern front with a number of ‘wins’, but it will no longer risk a maravedí on the Western front. It is only half convinced of its luck. In any case, the advantage of immediate action is so great that everything is being done to slow it down. Unfortunately for our opponents, one does not leave the game of war as one

34 ‘Le Pape et la paix’. 35 ‘Le Vatican, évidemment, n’élève pas la voix avec l’espoir qu’elle sera entendue; il faut se souvenir, toutefois, que sa politique est à longue échéance; elle prépare l’avenir. Le message de Benoît XV au cardinal Gibbons est à nos yeux une manifestation de ce travail lent, tenace et constant qui préparant une alliance morale avec la grande démocratie protestante d’outremer, donnera plus de poids à son intervention dans les négociations de paix, si jamais il devenait nécessaire d’avoir recours à un arbitrage. La tentative du pape n’a donc rien en soi d’anormal: par contre il est permis de se demander si le gouvernement de Berlin, averti par les moyens d’information dont il dispose, n’a pas estimé qu’il serait politique d’adopter auparavant une attitude conciliante vis-à-vis du gouvernement de Washington’; ‘Nouvelle manœuvre allemande’, Le Gaulois, 5 September 1915. See also, René d’Aral, ‘L’Allemagne et la paix: la démarche du cardinal Gibbons, une manœuvre allemande, l’Amérique se méfie’, Le Gaulois, 5 September 1915.

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might a baccarat table. We have to reach the point where both partners agree to liquidate. All Germany’s conniving could not bring that about. That is what President Wilson, a very wise man, could not have failed to point out to his interlocutor.36 Socialist-inspired newspapers, such as Le Radical, L’Homme Enchaîné and L’Humanité, did not comment on the Pope’s message, while La Bataille Syndicaliste, like the American press, noted the unusual nature of the involvement: Indeed, one cannot fail to be struck by the coincidence between this approach by Benedict XV and Germany’s most recent manoeuvres in the United States. Count Bernstorff ’s conciliatory communiqué on the subject of submarine warfare is, without a doubt, the groundwork for obtaining America’s involvement on the issues of the freedom of the seas and a cessation in hostilities. On the other hand, it was made clear to Washington that the Pope’s message was such that one was permitted to assume that the Central Powers would not oppose a proposal along those lines […]. So, after several already quite unequivocal demonstrations, Benedict XV’s actively pro-German stance has yet again been revealed.37 All the newspapers saw a connection between the concessions concerning submarine warfare and the efforts made by the Germans, with the Pope’s mediation, to prepare an opening for peace. The New York Herald wrote that the German Embassy in Washington never ceased to suggest that the President’s victory in the submarine war had strengthened his position in the eyes of the world and turned him into a mediator.38

36 ‘C’est un fait incontestable que ni l’Angleterre, ni la Russie, ni la France ne peuvent, dans les circonstances présentes, prêter la moindre attention aux illusion pacifiques. On n’en peut dire autant de l’Allemagne. Il y a beau temps qu’elle manifeste le désir de faire, comme on dit vulgairement “charlemagne”. Elle a réussi sur le plateau oriental un certain nombre de “banco”, mais elle n’ose plus risquer un maravédis sur le plateau occidental. Elle n’a qu’une demi-confiance en sa chance. En tout cas, l’avantage d’une réalisation immédiate est si grand que tout est mis en œuvre pour la lenter [sic]. Malheureusement pour nos adversaires, on ne quitte pas le jeu de la guerre comme une table de baccarat. Il faut aller jusqu’au moment où les deux partenaires s’accordent à liquider. Toutes les intrigues germaniques ne peuvent faire que ce moment soit arrivé. C’est que le président Wilson, home fort avisé, n’aura pas manqué de faire remarquer à son vénérable interlocuteur’; ‘La démarche du Cardinal Gibbons’, Le Journal, 5 September 1915. 37 ‘On ne peut pas, en effet, ne pas être frappé de la coïncidence qu’il y a entre cette démarche de Benoît XV et les plus récentes manœuvres allemandes aux États-Unis. La communication conciliante du comte Bernstorff au sujet de la guerre sous-marine est, à n’en rien pas douter, un amorçage tendant à obtenir l’intervention de l’Amérique sur la question de la liberté des mers et celle de la cessation des hostilités. D’autre part, on laisse clairement entendre à Washington que ce message du pape est tel qu’on est autorisé à supposer que les empires du Centre ne s’opposeraient pas à une proposition formulée dans ce sens […]. Voilà donc, après plusieurs manifestations d’ailleurs assez peu équivoques, une fois de plus démontrée la germanophilie active de Benoît XV’; ‘La démarche du cardinal Gibbons’, La Bataille Syndicaliste, 5 September 1915. 38 D’Aral, ‘L’Allemagne et la paix’.

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On 5 May 1916, Benedict XV felt that he should intervene with a new message addressed to Wilson because there was a risk that the situation would precipitate, and the United States would become involved in the conflict: We pray Your Excellency to suspend your decision regarding submarines in Germany, for which we foresee the possibility of a peaceful solution and count on You that no accident may occur that might destroy Our efforts. We are sending the same telegram to His Majesty, the Emperor of Germany.39 After a few days, Wilson replied to Benedict XV with a letter that the Apostolic Delegate requested through the President’s Secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, and which he translated. More than in other exchanges between the Holy See and the American President, the tone of the letter reveals a certain intolerance with what was perceived as the pontiff ’s interference: I greatly appreciate the friendly sentiment of broad humanity that prompted your personal communication to me concerning the questions that have arisen between this country and Germany. I am gratified to say that before the receipt of your message the discussion had already entered upon a stage of satisfactory understanding.40 The reaction of the American press was immediate. The daily Star wrote: ‘Pope Sends a Message to President Wilson: Fearful of a Rupture’. It is clear, one reads, that the message reflected the Pope’s apprehension regarding a break between Germany and

39 ‘Preghiamo V. E. di sospendere la Sua decisione in merito alla questione dei sottomarini con la Germania, di cui noi prevediamo la possibilità di una soluzione pacifica e contiamo su di Lei perché non si verifichi alcun incidente che possa distruggere i Nostri sforzi. Inviamo lo stesso telegramma a Sua Maestà l’imperatore di Germania’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 95. Gasparri sent Bonzano the Holy Father’s encoded message for Wilson with a note: ‘This telegram is to be personally delivered immediately by either Yourself or Cardinal Gibbons, provided that You ask Cardinal Gibbons that he also insist upon complete secrecy, so that he might obtain the President’s adherence’ (‘Questo telegramma sia subito rimesso personalmente da V. S. I. o dal card. Gibbons, secondo che V. S. I. preghi il card. Gibbons di insistere egli pure con tutta segretezza presso Presidente, affine di ottenere sua adesione’). A handwritten letter from Gasparri to Bonzano on 10 May added: ‘The Holy Father wishes the telegram to the President and its contents to be kept absolutely secret’ (‘S. Padre desidera che telegramma al Presidente e argomento contenuto restino assolutamente segreti’); ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 96. Bonzano’s response to Gasparri on 12 May was the following: ‘Your Eminence’s coded messages: five given and ten received. Orders executed, secrecy faithfully observed. I await the president’s response. For other communications I pray Your Eminence to authorize me to choose the best method, since it is impossible for Cardinal Gibbons or myself to avoid publicity when going to White House’ (‘Cifrati V. E. data cinque e dieci ricevuti. Ordini eseguiti, segreto fedelmente osservato. Attendo risposta presidente. Per altre comunicazioni pregherei V. E. autorizzarmi scegliere mezzi, essendo impossibile per card. Gibbons e per me evitare pubblicità, andando Casa Bianca’); ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 97. 40 Draft of President Wilson’s reply to Pope Benedict XV of 15 May 1916 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also, ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a, f. 107.

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the United States. Benedict XV truly nurtured the hope that the United States would be the means of bringing peace back to Europe.41 A headline of The Washington Post read: ‘Pope Delays Peace Step until Invited: Rome Believes Bonzano Conferred with President at Letter’s Suggestion’. The Pope would not initiate any peace initiative unless formally requested to do so by either a neutral country or a belligerent power. If Bonzano had delivered a peace message during his visit to the White House, it was only to sound out the President’s point of view. Benedict XV would not have acted unless invited to do so by Wilson. His Holiness is most anxious to avoid anything that may be construed by either side in the world war as an act of partiality. In spite of rumours to the contrary, he sent no messages to the Kaiser during the recent German-American crisis and in no way interfered with the negotiations then in progress. It is pointed out that Mgr Bonzano refrained from visiting the White House until after President Wilson had made decision on the German note.42

5. Marchetti Selvaggiani’s ‘Mission’ to Bern If truth be told, in August 1915, a few days before sending Bonzano his ‘instructions’, Gasparri had sent a telegram to Mgr Andreas Franz Frühwirth, Apostolic Pro-Nuncio in Bavaria, and to Mgr Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, auditor of the Nunciature in Bavaria: We know from a reliable source that President Wilson does not want to enter into war with Germany, but events could induce him to do so. Germany must find a way to settle amicably the sinking of the Arabic and refrain from other similar sinkings, at least for several months, during which we have reason to believe that important events will come to pass. Please speak of this immediately to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and urge him to act on the matter with the German government.43 Marchetti Selvaggiani went to Bern the following day and brought the matter to the attention of Baron Gisbert von Romberg, the German Minister to the Swiss

41 ‘Pope Sends a Message to President Wilson: Fearful of a Rupture’, Star, 6 May 1916. In the same issue, another article referred to the pontiff ’s commitment to keeping the United States out of the conflict: ‘President Answers Message of the Pope: Tells Pontiff He Is Doing Everything Consistent with Honour to Keep United States Out of War’. 42 John H. Hearley, ‘Pope Delays Peace Step until Invited: Rome Believes Bonzano Conferred with President at Letter’s Suggestion’, The Washington Post, 14 May 1916. In the document, Frühwirth signed with the name Franz. 43 ‘Sappiamo da fonte attendibile che presidente Wilson non vorrebbe guerra con Germania, ma potrebbe esservi indotto dagli avvenimenti. È necessario che Germania regoli al più presto amichevolmente affondamento Arabic e si astenga da altri simili affondamenti, almeno per vari mesi nei quali abbiamo motivo di credere che matureranno avvenimenti importanti. V. S. parli subito di tutto ciò con cotesto ministro Esteri, esortandolo ad agire in proposito presso governo tedesco’; AES, Germania 1915–20, pos. 1582–84, fasc. 837, f. 54.

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federal government. Romberg telegraphed the text to Berlin,44 while the Nuncio to Bavaria replied to Gasparri in a letter dated 27 August. He carried out his orders, speaking to the representative of the Foreign Minister, who was absent, and with Count Hertling, President of the Bavarian Council of Ministers. The latter would have ensured the best arrangements for implementing the Holy See’s ‘most noble’ wishes; nevertheless, no definitive response could be given because there was still no official report from the competent authorities regarding the sinking of the Arabic, nor was it believed that the submarine’s commander had violated his government’s orders.45 In 1916, Marchetti Selvaggiani was again involved. On 29 April, Gasparri ordered him to read the accompanying telegram carefully and to travel at once to Cologne to see Cardinal Hartmann and ask him to confer immediately and personally with the Kaiser. In addition, he was to inform the Secretariat of State, still from Cologne, in a telegram recounting the Kaiser’s response, then with another from Bern, of an encrypted report of the entire mission.46 Gasparri notified Hartmann of the task entrusted to Marchetti Selvaggiani, which consisted in informing him of the ‘Holy See’s views on a matter of capital importance’. He asked him to work towards the best outcome of the matter in question.47 The information of which the Archbishop of Cologne was to notify the Emperor was the following: Alarmed by Russia’s victories in Turkey, France and England would like to prevent the occupation of Constantinople and therefore would undertake the commitment not to attack Bulgaria for its assistance to Turkey. This attitude would create a serious tension between France and England, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, leading, perhaps, to the end of the war. Ask the Emperor whether he agrees to Bulgarian assistance being sent to Constantinople if the Allies do not move from Thessaloniki. If so, the Emperor should warn Turkey and Bulgaria, while the Holy See will procure a definitive commitment from the Allies.48 A telegram from Marchetti Selvaggiani to Gasparri on 6 May disclosed that the Kaiser would let the pontiff know his decision as soon as he had consulted his ministers. On that very same day, Marchetti Selvaggiani sent the Secretary of State an encoded 44 45 46 47

AES, Germania 1915–20, pos. 1582–84, fasc. 837, f. 55. AES, Germania 1915–20, pos. 1582–84, fasc. 837, f. 56. AES, Germania 1916–18, pos. 1631, fasc. 855, f. 14. ‘Vedute della S. Sede in un affare di capitale importanza’; AES, Germania 1916–18, pos. 1631, fasc. 855, f. 16. 48 ‘Francia e Inghilterra, allarmate per le vittorie russe in Turchia, vorrebbero impedire l’occupazione di Costantinopoli e perciò prenderebbero l’impegno di non attaccare la Bulgaria nel suo aiuto per la Turchia. Da questo atteggiamento seguirebbe una grave tensione tra Francia-Inghilterra da una parte e Russia, dall’altra, e con ciò, forse, la fine della guerra. Si chiede all’imperatore se è d’accordo coll’aiuto della Bulgaria inviato a Costantinopoli senza che gli alleati si muovano da Salonicco. Nel caso affermativo, l’imperatore dovrebbe avvertire Turchia e Bulgaria, mentre la S. Sede procurerebbe un impegno definitivo da parte degli Alleati’; AES, Germania 1916–18, pos. 1631, fasc. 855, f. 5.

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message stating that at the audience granted to Cardinal Hartmann, the Kaiser had thanked the Holy Father for his interest. He was convinced that Turkey would not lose Constantinople and, moreover, would not look on Bulgarian troops favourably. At the same time, aware of the enemies’ preparations for a general offensive, he feared that the proposal was an Allied trap.49 From the Kaiser’s response to the Pope, it would seem that the project had been appreciated and that its execution depended on formal reassurances of its success: The friendly involvement was received with grateful interest. Any measure that, without harming its own allies’ interest, is likely to demolish Russia’s hopes for success in Asia Minor and thus to hasten the end of the war will be supported.50 The day before, in a telegram to Gasparri, Marchetti Selvaggiani had given notification that ‘the Kaiser, “provided that his friends’ interests are preserved”, is willing to accept the pontiff ’s proposal’.51 In October 1916, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg sent Wilson a letter asking him to intervene in order to end the European war. In taking this step, the Chancellor added that the American President would have to act in concert with the Pope, the King of Spain and other neutral European countries. Wilson’s response, arriving only after his re-election, took the form of a message to the belligerents, the scope of which was essentially a request for clear indications regarding the goals informing the two blocs. On 12 December 1916, Germany presented a note co-signed by its allies asking the Entente to open peace talks and resulting in a message from Wilson dated 18 December. On 21 December, Gibbons released a statement to The Evening Mail that constituted the first comment on the war since Germany had advanced its peace proposal. The Cardinal declared that he was happy that the response to the German Chancellor had not closed the door: A ray of hope foreshadowing a new era in Europe. He has left open the door sufficiently to enable the German Chancellor to make more definite statements of the attitude of his government so far as peace terms are concerned. We have come to the new phase of this war. The period of negotiation, finally but certainly, has been reached. […] It would be a humane act for all the countries to agree now to a truce. Let it be entered into immediately.52

49 AES, Germania 1916–18, pos. 1631, fasc. 855, f. 20. 50 ‘Le amichevoli partecipazioni sono state ricevute con grato interesse. Si appoggerà qualunque misura che, senza ferire gli interessi dei propri alleati, è atta a demolire le speranze della Russia circa un successo nell’Asia minore, e così accelerare la fine della guerra’; AES, Germania 1916–18, pos. 1631, fasc. 855, f. 8; the Emperor’s response was attached to Mgr Marchetti Selvaggiani’s report on 10 May 1916. 51 ‘L’imperatore “purché siano salvi interessi suoi amici” è disposto ad accettare la proposta pontificia’; AES, Germania 1916–18, pos. 1631, fasc. 855, f. 10. 52 ‘Time for Peace Is Here Says Cardinal Gibbons’, The Evening Mail, 21 December 1916.

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As soon as he was informed of the Central Powers’ peace proposal, Gasparri instructed the Apostolic Delegate in Washington to ‘strongly urge this government to insist on accepting the negotiations and not to be discouraged by eventual refusals’.53 At the beginning of January 1917, Bonzano confirmed the fact that he had sent the pontifical message to Lansing: ‘The response was as desired, adding that, of course, they also foresaw refusals from the beginning. The steps that President Wilson is taking and has taken seem to confirm the good intentions he expressed in the reply he gave me’.54

6. The United States’ Response to the Note of 1 August 1917 On 22 January 1917, Wilson delivered his well-known ‘peace without victory’ speech to the Senate. The peace he proposed was one based on the principles of equality between nations, the self-determination of peoples, freedom of the seas and restrictions on armaments. The President added that he was, perhaps, the only person in a position of high authority capable of speaking freely and of acting as spokesperson for that ‘silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear’.55 A few days after Wilson’s speech, on 31 January 1917, the German Ambassador announced resumption of undifferentiated submarine warfare against merchant ships belonging even to neutral countries. At that point, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. The German reaction was illustrated in a substantial report by Erzberger on the issue of ‘unlimited submarine warfare’, which affirmed that Wilson’s appeal to the neutral powers was a political failure and that Germany, firmly decided and ready for any eventuality, was also fighting for the neutral nations with an unshakable faith in their victory.56 The issues of international law and claims made by the neutral powers that even the merchant ships of the belligerent powers be left untouched, besides the American theory of neutral law in the Anglo-German mercantile war, were also addressed.

53 ‘Esortasse vivamente cotesto governo a insistere per accettazione delle trattative non scoraggiandosi innanzi possibili rifiuti’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a/1, f. 136. 54 ‘La risposta fu nel senso desiderato, aggiungendo che naturalmente anch’essi da principio prevedevano dei rifiuti. I passi che ha fatto e sta facendo il presidente Wilson sembrano confermare il buon proposito nella datami risposta’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63a/1, f. 137. 55 Woodrow Wilson, ‘Address of the President of the United States to the Senate, January 1917’, in The Woodrow Wilson Reader, ed. by Frances Farmer (New York: Oceana Publications, 1956), pp. 153–61 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also, Bruti Liberati, ‘Santa Sede e Stati Uniti’, p. 137. 56 AES, Germania 1916–18, pos. 1631, fasc. 856, ff. 36–56.

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The United States’ response to the pontifical Note, communicated by Lansing on 27 August 1917, contained the deep, almost spiritual motivations that justified the United States’ entry into the war: Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal of his Holiness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. Our response must be based upon the stern facts, and upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be repeated, and it must be a matter of very sober judgment what will insure us against it. His Holiness in substance proposes that we return to the status quo ante bellum, and that then there will be a general condonation […]. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the current power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles of international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier, either of law or of mercy; swept up a whole continent in a tide of blood — not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked, but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. […] To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by His Holiness the Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy; would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the German people, who are its instruments […]. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settlement and accommodation? […] The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves suffered all things in this war, which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of governments — the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful — their equal right to freedom and security and self-government and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world — the German people of course included, if they will accept equality and not seek domination. […] We can not take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidences of the will and purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of

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small nations, if made with the German Government, no man, no nation could now depend on. We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Empires. God grant that it may be given soon, and in a way to restore the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possibility of a covenanted peace!57 On 10 August 1917, a few months after the United States entered the war, Gasparri wrote to Bonzano regarding the concrete proposals contained in the pontifical document sent to the heads of the belligerent nations, so he might bring them to Gibbons’s attention: (1) The simultaneous and reciprocal reduction of armaments and the institution of arbitration; (2) the freedom and common use of the seas; (3) an entire and mutual condonation of the damages and costs of war, except in some cases (with tacit allusion to Belgium); (4) the mutual restitution of currently occupied territories, consequently of Belgium and the French Provinces, on the one hand, and of the German colonies, on the other; (5) as for territorial questions, for example between Italy and Austria, between Germany and France, they are to be effected by means of conciliatory dispositions and bearing in mind the peoples’ aspirations. The same is to apply to other territorial and political issues, particularly those pertaining to Armenia, the Balkan States and Poland.58 An extremely relevant and delicate phase in the relations between the United States and the Holy See began. American Catholics had given their full support to the war effort in the name of a deeply-felt sentiment of patriotism. The new message from the Pope once again brought Gibbons, spokesperson for the American Church and appointed — at Wilson’s request — President of the National Catholic War Council, face-to-face with the long-standing problem of a ‘double fidelity’ to the Pope and to a civil authority. In an exchange of letters with Wilson, the Cardinal wrote that the American people, guided by the teachings of Christianity, had no choice but to follow the pathway of obedience and devotion to their own country.59 57 Robert Lansing, ‘President Wilson’s Reply to the Pope’s Peace Note, August 27, 1917’, in Documents and Statements Relating to Peace Proposals & War Aims (December 1916–November 1918) (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1919), pp. 50–52 [accessed 10 January 2019]. See also, AES, Stati Ecclesiastici 1914–18, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, ff. 231–35. 58 ‘1. Diminuzione simultanea e reciproca armamenti ed istituzione arbitrato; 2. Libertà e comunanza dei mari; 3. Intera reciproca condonazione danni e spese guerra, salvo costi speciali (con tacita allusione Belgio); 4. Restituzione reciproca territori attualmente occupati, conseguentemente del Belgio e delle Province francesi da una parte, e delle Colonie tedesche, dall’altra; 5. Come alle questioni territoriali, per esempio, tra Italia e Austria, tra Germania e Francia, da farsi con disposizioni concilianti e tenendo conto aspirazioni popoli. Così parimenti delle altre questioni territoriali e politiche specialmente relative Armenia, Stati balcanici e Polonia’; AES, Stati Ecclesiastici 1914–18, pos. 1317, fasc. 470, f. 217. 59 AES, America, pos. 217, fasc. 114, ff. 44–46. On 19 October 1917, Gibbons sent Mgr Bonaventura Cerretti, Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a copy of his correspondence with Wilson on the position of Catholics in the circumstances of war at the time. The opening of his letter to

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Gibbons appears very cautious in his support of the Note, fearing that any form of enthusiasm might resemble an act of disloyalty towards the President and believing that the moment chosen by Benedict XV was rather inopportune. In replying to Bonzano, who had requested him to intervene with the American government,60 the Cardinal emphasized the fact that ‘the present moment is particularly delicate and, unfortunately, there are more than a few hostile critics’,61 attaching the text of an interview given on 15 August: I would consider it premature to express a formal opinion on the Holy Father’s document before I see the text. Every reasonable citizen will recognize that the Pope is moved by noble, humane and disinterested motives and that, therefore, his suggestions deserve to be received with the attention and profound respect due to every document emanating from such an august and noble source.62 In May 1918, the St Louis correspondent for La Civiltà Cattolica took a clear stand, defending the American Congress’ decision to enter into war with Germany and proudly claiming that US Catholics were staunchly patriotic: ‘From that Good Friday on 6 April of last year, 1917, up to the present day, we have all shown ourselves to be one thing alone: Americans’.63 He recalled the unswerving steadfastness observed by Wilson who had established a strict neutrality that was faithfully observed although more than a few Americans, including Roosevelt himself, had pressed for immediate entry into the war after the violation of Belgium’s neutrality. The sinking of the Lusitania outraged the American people, but the situation never arrived at a declaration of war because it was hoped that such a cruel act would be recognized by the German authorities as an error or as excessive. Two months later, the Arabic and then the Hesperian were sunk, causing the death of American citizens, ‘victims of our nation’s patience towards Germany’. Following the sinking of the Sussex, the United States met with a conciliatory response from Germany,

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Wilson on 6 October reads: ‘In these days of the gravest problems which have ever weighed upon our American Government, our thoughts go out to the Chief executive, warmed by a heartfelt sympathy for the heavy burdens of office which he must bear, and freighted with the unwavering determination of loyal citizens to stand by him in his every effort to bring success to our arms, and to achieve those ideals of justice and humanity which compelled our entrance into the war’. In his reply on 9 October, Wilson, in a friendly and affectionate tone, expressed great appreciation for the work that the Cardinal was doing with the Council he was presiding over; AES, America, pos. 217, fasc. 114, f. 47. ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63b, f. 41. ‘Il momento presente è particolarmente delicato per gli interessi della religione e sfortunatamente i critici ostili non sono pochi’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63b, f. 42. ‘Riterrei prematuro esprimere un’opinione formale riguardo al documento del S. Padre prima di vederne il testo. Ogni cittadino ragionevole riconoscerà che il papa è mosso da motivi nobili, umani e disinteressati e che pertanto i suoi suggerimenti meritano di essere accolti con l’attenzione e il profondo rispetto dovuti a ogni documento che emana da una fonte così augusta’; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica negli Stati Uniti, tit. V, Affari esteri, 63b, f. 45. ‘Da quel Venerdì Santo, 6 aprile dell’anno scorso 1917, sino al presente giorno noi tutti ci siamo dimostrati una sola cosa: americani’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: Stati Uniti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 4 (1918), pp. 265–70.

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along with the promise not to sink merchant ships without warning. It seemed that Wilson’s moderation had achieved a great victory for peace. However, on 31 January 1917, Germany withdrew its promise and promulgated an indiscriminate state of war. In February, it sank the Laconia and, immediately afterwards, struck the American ships Housatonic, Lyman M. Law, Vigilancia, City of Memphis, Illinois, Algonquin, Healdton and the Aztec, killing many citizens who ‘believed themselves to be protected by the American flag’. The reason maintained by the German government at the time was not that the ships were carrying weapons for the Entente, but the official excuse of the new submarine war. The St Louis correspondent wrote with great emphasis: We have come to participate in the great conflict without hatred […] without pride or military ambition […] and without greed or hope of financial advantages and territorial gains. We are fighting for the freedom of America and to defend the rights of our nation. We cannot consider that goal as having been achieved until Belgium is fully restored or as long as an irresponsible Prussian party continues to jeopardize world peace.64 With regard to the position of American Catholics, they loyally obeyed the decisions of their country’s government, although opponents of the American war policy insinuated that Catholics could not be loyal citizens because they obeyed the Pope. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), inspired by anarcho-syndicalism and revolution, identified Catholics as ‘subverters of civil society’ in some socialist newspapers: in the weekly Appeal to Reason in the Midwest, and the monthly The Masses, which was replaced by The Liberator and later by New Masses. The weekly The Jeffersonian went from violent attacks on the Catholic Church to opposition against the government when war broke out. The paper’s editor was Thomas Watson, previously a Democratic candidate for the vice-presidency in 1896, who, in his home state of Georgia, had proposed a bill (declared unconstitutional by that state’s Supreme Court) aimed at establishing an official inspection of religious houses so that Catholics might not benefit from specific exemptions, privileges or exceptions regarding military conscription.65 The pontifical Note, received with reverence by most Americans, resounded in the minds of Catholic and Protestants: That sweet melody resonated in an hour of sadness and shone like a star of hope in the impenetrable darkness. A message of peace was undoubtedly the most proper act of the One who, by right, worthily represents the true Prince of peace

64 ‘Noi siamo venuti a partecipare al grande conflitto senza odio […] senza orgoglio o ambizione militare […] senza cupidigia o speranza di vantaggi finanziari e di conquiste territoriali. Noi combattiamo per la libertà dell’America e per difendere i diritti della nostra nazione; e non possiamo considerare come raggiunto tale scopo sino a quando il Belgio non sia interamente restaurato e fintantoché un partito prussiano irresponsabile continuerà a tenere in pericolo la pace del mondo’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: Stati Uniti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 4 (1918), p. 266. 65 See Walter J. Brown, J. J. Brown and Thomas E. Watson: Georgia Politics, 1912–1928 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988).

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on earth […]. We Americans, all of us, feel more grateful to Benedict XV for his most noble attempt, and a very special sense of affectionate devotion to the successor of the beloved Pius X will remain in our souls even after the war because of his august word of peace that, if He had remained silent, even if proper at the time, could have seemed inopportune to some.66 The Catholic journal’s editorial staff disagreed with the standpoint of ‘sympathetic optimism’ taken by the American correspondent, specifying that such hopes were destined, at least in part, to be disproved by the consequences of the war and by the new attitude of the American President. The matter had already been addressed, in sceptical tones, in a previous article.67 The text accuses Wilson of not adhering to the principle of open diplomacy that he himself had advocated ‘as evidenced by his already numerous diplomatic improvisations, indeed even by his own speech here, which was kept top secret from everyone’. It continues, illustrating the analogy and convergence between his Fourteen Points and the cornerstones of the papal Note on disarmament and the freedom of the seas, in particular. However, the Pope was the first to touch on a point which also had a bearing on the financial sphere, proposing that the resources, not only of the present war but also those of an ‘armed peace’, be transferred from the military expenditure of the individual states to socio-economic reconstruction.68 As far as war damages and reparations were concerned, the Pope emphasized the sacrifice required for a ‘complete and reciprocal condonation’ on both sides, as the only way out. Wilson and Lloyd George dissimulated this point even if the former had strongly advocated it in his speech a year earlier, calling for ‘peace without indemnities or annexations’.69 La Civiltà Cattolica then concluded: ‘Everyone will join with us in vowing that the unexpected swings of the American President or Dictator do not implicitly tend to or directly succeed in disrupting the entire structure of present-day Europe’.70

66 ‘Risuonò quale dolce melodia in un’ora di tristezza, e brillò come una stella di speranza nell’oscurità impenetrabile. Un messaggio di pace era senza dubbio l’atto più proprio di Colui che di diritto e degnamente rappresenta in terra il vero Principe della pace […]. Noi americani, tutti, ci sentiamo più riconoscenti a Benedetto XV per il suo nobilissimo tentativo, e rimarrà nei nostri animi, anche dopo la guerra, un più particolare senso di affettuosa devozione al successore dell’amato Pio X, per la sua augusta parola di pace, che se Egli se ne fosse rimasto in silenzio, sebbene, giusto in quel momento, quella sua augusta parola poté sembrare ad alcuni inopportuna’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: Stati Uniti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 4 (1918), p. 269. 67 [Enrico Rosa,] ‘I discorsi degli statisti belligeranti e l’appello di pace del Papa’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 1 (1918), pp. 289–303. 68 ‘Come ne sono prova quelle sue già numerose improvvisate diplomatiche, anzi questo suo stesso discorso, tenuto fino all’ultimo segretissimo a tutti’; ‘pace armata’; the Note was reproduced in French and Italian in La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 3 (1917), pp. 385–92. 69 ‘Una intera e reciproca condonazione’; ‘pace senza indennità e senza annessioni’; La Civiltà Cattolica, 68, 3 (1917), pp. 296–99. 70 ‘Tutti si uniranno con noi a far voti che le mutazioni inattese del Presidente o Dittatore americano non tendano implicitamente e non riescano direttamente a una mira disgregatrice di tutta la presente compagine europea’; ‘Cronaca contemporanea: Stati Uniti’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 69, 4 (1918), p. 270.

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In March 1918, the Apostolic Delegate, who had always thought that Gibbons’s conduct lacked prudence, sent Gasparri a copy of an article published by the Cardinal in the American Jesuit magazine entitled ‘The War Policy and the Pope’, which was copied by all the press. The text contained a public defence and encomium of Benedict XV’s activities during the war years. It recalled the pontiff ’s individual action in favour of a lasting peace, guided not by selfish interests but by his dedication to the cause of a suffering and bleeding humanity. The Pope’s efforts were the result of a lengthy, constant work, culminating in the Note that, despite the criticism it provoked, was considered a monument to universal love, prudent diplomacy and the strict impartiality of the Vicar of Christ.71

Bibliography Brown, Walter J., J. J. Brown and Thomas E. Watson: Georgia Politics, 1912–1928 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988) Bruti Liberati, Luigi, ‘Santa Sede e Stati Uniti negli anni della Grande Guerra’, in Benedetto XV e la pace, 1918, ed. by Giorgio Rumi (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), pp. 129–50 Bryan, William Jennings, ‘The Causeless War’ and Its Lessons for Us (Lincoln, NE: n. pub., 1915) Ellis, John Tracy, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1834–1921) (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co., 1952) Fogarty, Gerald P., The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1982) Hennessey, James, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) Joblin, Joseph, L’Église et la guerre: conscience, violence, pouvoir (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1988) Ledru, Raymond, Les catholiques américains et la guerre au XXe siècle (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2000) Marty, Martin E., Modern American Religion, 3 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986–96), I (1986) Musto, Ronald G., The Catholic Peace Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986) Sanfilippo, Matteo, L’affermazione del cattolicesimo nel Nord America: élite, emigranti e chiesa cattolica negli Stati Uniti e in Canada (1750–1920) (Viterbo: Sette città, 2003)

71 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Guerra 1914–18, rubr. 244, fasc. 130, ff. 214–15.

Paolo Valvo

Benedict XV and the Mexican Revolution

1.

Church and Revolution in Mexico at the Beginning of Benedict’s Pontificate

During the first half of the pontificate of Benedict XV the developments of the revolutionary process in Mexico that began in 1910 inevitably overlapped with those of World War I. The path to revolution began with the rebellion led by Francisco Indalecio Madero against the dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz, which had already lasted for many decades. The new situation required a re-envisioning of the Holy See’s relationship to Mexico in certain areas (especially in the dramatic conflict between the Church and the state). This was different from what occurred in the 1920s when Mexico became to a certain extent more central to the concerns of the curia. The unstable political situation of the country and, at times, the Vatican’s difficulty in receiving reliable information from abroad contributed to this. The evolution of the Mexican Church was in any case the object of increasing preoccupation on the part of the Holy See, especially after the coup of February 1913, which brought Madero’s revolutionary government to a violent end. On the one hand, if the clash between the Church and anti-clerical liberalism had been endemic to the whole of the nation’s history from the moment of its independence,1 on the other, the participation in the political manoeuvres leading up to the coup by Archbishop José Mora y del Río of Mexico City and other important members of the Partido Católico Nacional (Catholic National Party),2 which was



1 Among the most recent works on this theme, see: Riccardo Cannelli, Nazione cattolica e Stato laico: il conflitto politico-religioso in Messico dall’indipendenza alla rivoluzione (1821–1914) (Milan: Guerini, 2002); Marta Eugenia García Ugarte, Poder político y religioso: México siglo XIX, 2 vols (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2010); José Luis Soberanes Fernández, Una aproximación al constitucionalismo liberal mexicano (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2015), pp. 65–126. 2 The report written by the Apostolic Delegate Tommaso Pio Boggiani at the end of his mission in Mexico explicitly accused the Archbishop and the leaders of the Partido Católico Nacional with complicity in the coup: ‘Regarding the action of this Party, I have sent frequent and detailed reports to the Secretariat of State. That which I feared, however, has taken place. The best hopes have vanished because the governing officials hold sentiments that are too profoundly liberal, because of the jealousies and of the consequent divisions that have arisen within the Party itself, along with a

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1313–1327 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118833

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born in 1911 and initially allied to the Madero revolution, offered to the vast world of Mexican anti-clericalism a valuable argument to justify their struggle against the Catholic Church as a whole, and can thus be seen as a decisive strategic error.3 The later participation of some members of the Catholic party in the government of General Victoriano Huerta, who led the coup, only aggravated the situation. The defeat of Huerta in August 1914 opened a new season of conflict within the anti-Huerta forces, who were then divided between the constitucionalista army of the Governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza and the union of the forces of Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa in the north of the country with the campesiño army of Emiliano Zapata in the south. If the men of Villa and especially of Zapata were not guilty of hostile acts against the Church,4 Carranza’s troops, on the contrary, repeatedly manifested a radical hatred that turned into a general persecution of the clergy and sacrilegious acts, such as the profanation of churches or ‘executions’ of sacred lack of a true Catholic spirit in some of the heads of the Party, and finally the lack of sage and prudent leadership by Mgr Mora, Archbishop of Mexico, virtual head of the Party itself. He, along with some of the Party leaders, have taken an active part in, and have contributed financially to, the revolution that brought down the government of President Madero and so necessarily lost the moral authority and prestige that Catholic principles, loyally professed and rigorously observed, would have given the Party’ (‘circa l’azione di questo Partito ho trasmesso frequenti e dettagliati rapporti alla segreteria di Stato. Quello però che io temevo avvenne. Le migliori speranze svanirono a causa del sentimento troppo profondamente liberale dei governanti, a causa delle gelosie e delle conseguenti divisioni sorte nel Partito stesso, nonché della mancanza di spirito veramente cattolico in alcuni dei capi e infine della mancanza di savia e prudente direzione in mons. Mora, arcivescovo di Mexico, capo virtuale del Partito stesso. Questi, con alcuni dei capi del Partito, prese attiva parte e concorse pecuniariamente alla rivoluzione che abbatté il governo del presidente Madero, e si perdette così necessariamente quella forza morale e quel prestigio, che i principii cattolici, lealmente professati ed esattamente osservati, avrebbero dato al Partito’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1914, rubr. 251, fasc. 11, Boggiani to Merry del Val, 12 February 1914. 3 Cannelli, Nazione cattolica, pp. 225–49. See in this regard also Jean Meyer, La Cristiada: el conflicto entre la Iglesia y el Estado 1926–1929, 10th edn (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1988), p. 66 and Roberto Blancarte, ‘Recent Changes in Church–State Relations in Mexico: An Historical Approach’, Journal of Church and State, 35, 4 (1993), pp. 781–805 (pp. 790–92). 4 Massimo De Giuseppe, ‘La revolución escindida y el fantasma de Zapata: “Católicos” e “indigenas” entre guerra y paz’, in Otras miradas de las revoluciones mexicanas (1810–1910), ed. by Hilda Iparraguirre, Massimo De Giuseppe and Ana Maria González Luna (Mexico: Juan Pablos, 2015), pp. 201–43. Also, according to Mora y del Río, ‘Zapata is not anti-religious, as everyone knows; the clergy in his territory have enjoyed freedom and have exercised influence, such that they have prevented with prayers that certain evils happen to the inhabitants of their parishes’ (‘Zapata no es antirreligioso, como todos sabemos, pues los curas en su territorio han disfrutado de libertad y han ejercido influencia, tanto que han impedido con ruegos que se causen algunos males a los habitantes de sus parroquias’). In regard to Villa, according to the Archbishop, he ‘gives certain guarantees, even though we do not have much confidence in him because of his previous actions and also because of the company he keeps’ (‘da algunas garantías, aunque no tenemos gran confianza en él, por sus antecedentes y también por algunos que andan con él’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 8, Mora y del Río to Orozco y Jiménez, 10 December 1914. The Apostolic Delegate to Washington, DC, Giovanni Bonzano, had a different opinion. According to him, in Mexico, with the exception of Huerta’s supporters, all the factions struggling for power were full of ‘enemies and persecutors of the Church’ (‘nemici e persecutori della Chiesa’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Bonzano to Ferrata, 5 October 1914.

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images.5 To these episodes were added the introduction in almost all Mexican states of laws strongly limiting the exercise of religion, stipulating, for example, the maximum number of priests authorized to carry out pastoral functions.6 The anti-clerical struggle culminated in the expulsion, from the end of 1914, of some of the clergy and the episcopate, who were constrained to take refuge mainly in the United States.7 In some cases, the separation from their dioceses was a decision made by the bishops themselves as a temporary measure for reasons of prudence, at least so they thought. Few left the American continent; among the latter were the Archbishop of Guadalajara, Francisco Orozco y Jiménez, who went to Rome in the autumn of 1914 and returned there many times up until the beginning of 1916 before he eventually moved to the United States. In Rome, the prelate often acted as intermediary between the Mexican bishops and the Holy See, given that there was no pontifical representative in loco8 since at the end of January 1914 the Apostolic Delegation to Mexico City had been closed and the Delegate, Tommaso Pio Boggiani, had been requested to return to Rome.9 Very probably, his sudden return was tied to his relationship, which had by then become unsustainable, with the Archbishop of Mexico City, who in the

5 A letter sent to the Pope by the Bishop of Tulancingo offers a dramatic witness of all of this; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 8, Herrera y Piña to Benedict XV, 6 October 1914. 6 Meyer, La Cristiada, pp. 71–89. 7 Laura O’Dogherty Madrazo, ‘El episcopado mexicano en el exilio (1914–1921)’, in Otras miradas, ed. by Iparraguirre, De Giuseppe and González Luna, pp. 257–82. For an analysis of the phenomenon of religious emigration from Mexico to the United States in the 1920s, see Julia Young, Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles and Refugees of the Cristero War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 8 On 1 January 1916, for example, the Archbishop sent Benedict XV a memorandum in the name of the entire episcopate. In the document, Orozco y Jiménez intended first of all to deny the accusation that the bishops — in particular Mora y del Río — had participated in the coup against Madero; secondly, in examining the state of the Church and its Catholic social outreach, the Archbishop posed some questions to the Pope. Orozco asked, in particular, whether or not the bishops, given the general situation of the country, were to exert pressure on Catholics to continue their commitment to the work of Catholic action and political activity (AES, Messico, pos. 755, fasc. 130, Orozco y Jiménez to Benedict XV, 1 January 1916). The Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Eugenio Pacelli, responded affirmatively to these questions, nonetheless inviting the bishops to moderation and prudence in order not to give the impression that the bishops intended to take part in the political struggle (AES, Messico, pos. 755, fasc. 132, Pacelli to Orozco y Jiménez, 19 January 1916). 9 ‘On behalf of the Holy Father and in agreement with the Sacred Consistorial Congregation, I am sharing with Your Most Illustrious Lordship the information that His Holiness, reserving you for other another destination, judges that the time has come to end your mission in Mexico. Your Most Illustrious Lordship will give custody of the archive to some priest or the superior of some institute of absolute security and trust, and in leaving you will bring with you the code book and any other delicate papers that you think appropriate, along with the report, if possible’ (‘Per incarico del S. Padre e di accordo colla S. Congregazione Concistoriale, partecipo a V. S. I. che S. S. riservandole altra destinazione giudica venuto il momento di mettere termine alla di Lei missione in Mexico. V. S. I. affidi la custodia dell’archivio a qualche ecclesiastico o superiore di qualche istituto religioso di assoluta fiducia e sicurezza e partendo Ella porti seco il cifrario e qualche altra carta delicata che credesse opportuno, e possibilmente anche il resoconto’); ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica del Messico, b. 28, fasc. 93, Merry del Val to Boggiani, 25 January 1914.

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preceding months had frequently sent complaints about the Apostolic Delegate to the Vatican.10 Boggiani, for his part, in his frequent reports to the Secretary of State, had denounced the recklessness with which Mora y del Río had administered the patrimony of the archdiocese.11

2. The Holy See and the Mexican Church during the Revolution The pontificate of Giacomo Della Chiesa (1914–22) thus practically coincides entirely with the period in which the Holy See did not have a representative on Mexican soil. Only at the end of 1921 did it become possible for a new apostolic delegate to be appointed to Mexico City; until then, the business of the Delegation in Mexico was handled by the Apostolic Delegate to Washington, Giovanni Bonzano.12 The closure of the Apostolic Delegation contributed to rendering the Vatican’s decision-making process somewhat fragmentary due to the frequent intervention of actors outside the

10 Mora y del Río wrote several letters about this to the Assessor of the Holy Office, Domenico Serafini (predecessor to Boggiani as Apostolic Delegate to Mexico in 1904) and to the Secretary of State Rafael Merry del Val. These letters can be consulted today at the Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de México, Fondo episcopal, Sección Secretaría Arzobispal, Serie Correspondencia, Caja 91, Expediente 24. Useful materials can also be found in the Vatican Archives that can help to reconstruct the tension between the Archbishop and the Delegate. On 23 November 1913, the Secretary of State told the Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation, Gaetano De Lai, that Mora y del Río ‘brought to the attention of the Holy See the recent behaviour towards him of Mgr Boggiani, Apostolic Delegate to Mexico’ (‘richiama l’attenzione della S. Sede sopra il contegno tenuto recentemente verso di lui da mons. Boggiani, Delegato Apostolico del Messico’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1913, rubr. 251, fasc. 14. For his part, Boggiani had previously affirmed that the Archbishop ‘had a very hostile attitude toward this Delegation’ (‘molto maldisposto contro questa Delegazione’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1913, rubr. 251, fasc. 14, Boggiani to Merry del Val, 15 October 1913. 11 The last time that he wrote was a few days before he was recalled to Rome. On 11 January 1914, Boggiani sent to the Private Secretary of Pius X Giovanni Bressan a personal letter for the Pope, in which he stated: ‘Most Blessed Father, because an issue has arisen since last August between this Apostolic Delegation and the Most Reverend Mgr Archbishop of this capital, and since it seems to me that this issue is now taking a rather serious turn, permit me to humbly beseech your Holiness to deign to review personally the report on this that I have sent to the Most Eminent Cardinal Secretary of State today’ (‘Beatissimo Padre, essendo sorta fin dal passato agosto una questione fra questa Delegazione Apostolica e il Rev.mo mons. arcivescovo di questa capitale, e sembrandomi che la questione predetta vada ora prendendo una piega piuttosto grave, mi permetto di supplicare umilmente la S. V. affinché voglia degnarsi di prendere personale conoscenza del rapporto che oggi stesso ho spedito in proposito all’E.mo Sig. Cardinale Segretario di Stato’); ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica del Messico, b. 28, fasc. 93, Boggiani to Pio X, 11 January 1914. With all probability, the report of which this document speaks is no. 124 of 10 January 1914 in which Boggiani explained in detail to Merry del Val the state of the financial disarray in which the Archdiocese of the Mexico City found itself; ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica del Messico, b. 27, fasc. 88, Boggiani to Merry del Val, 10 January 1914. 12 The Delegation in Mexico was temporarily given to Bonzano at the end of April 1915; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Gasparri to Bonzano, 27 April 1915.

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Secretariat of State and the Vatican diplomatic corps, such as the aforementioned Archbishop of Guadalajara. The absence of a Vatican representative in Mexico, and the presence in the territory of the United States of nearly all the exiled bishops, made the Apostolic Delegation in Washington a fundamental player in the relationship between the Holy See and the Mexican episcopate, as well as in diplomatic action on behalf of the persecuted Mexican Church. In these circumstances, the Holy See came to appreciate the mobilization of the North American Church, which became highly impressive in 1914. There were, in fact, many demonstrations of the solidarity of Catholics in the United States, from welcoming exiles and immigrants13 to attempts to influence public opinion and the government. Among the principal players in this sense were the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore James Gibbons, the Knights of Columbus, the Jesuits of the magazine America and Mgr Francis Clement Kelley, President of the Catholic Church Extension Society in Chicago.14 From 1914 and throughout 1915, the diplomatic strategy of the Holy See focussed on the attempt to link Carranza’s recognition by the United States (necessary for the stability of the Mexican government) to the guarantee of religious liberty for Catholics in Mexico. Important requests for this came from the Mexican bishops in exile,15 and the Secretary of State decided to turn to Gibbons during the summer of 1915;16 the latter said that he was convinced of President Wilson’s good will.17 However, a few weeks later, during the work of an inter-American conference that met in Washington to evaluate the possible recognition of the Mexican government, the Vatican undertook an action that involved a large part of the pontifical diplomatic network. At the beginning of October, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri ordered via telegraph the representatives of the Holy See in Brazil, Argentina and Chile to petition their respective governments to request that their representatives in Washington exert pressure for the introduction of ‘full religious liberty, as in the United States’.18 In the days that followed, the same message was sent by the Secretary

13 The phenomenon was particularly noticeable in the dioceses of San Antonio, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago and Oklahoma. 14 Jean Meyer, La cruzada por México: los católicos de Estados Unidos y la cuestión religiosa en México (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2008), pp. 27–35. 15 On 18 July 1915, the Archbishop of Guadalajara wrote in these terms to Cardinal Gasparri: ‘Since things are the way they are, these same most reverend bishops tell me to ask His Holiness to make a warm recommendation to the Most Eminent Cardinal Gibbons and the American episcopate to ask the American government to obtain, as it can, religious liberty in Mexico, as is practiced in the United States, without hateful exceptions for Catholics’ (‘essendo così le cose mi significano gli stessi rev.mi vescovi di pregare S. S. di fare una calda raccomandazione all’E.mo Sig. Cardinale Gibbons e all’episcopato americano, perché dimandino al governo americano che ottenga, come può farlo, la libertà religiosa in Messico, tale quale si ha in prattica [sic] negli Stati Uniti, senza eccezioni odiose pei cattolici’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Orozco y Jiménez to Gasparri, 18 July 1915. 16 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Gasparri to Gibbons, 4 August 1915. 17 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Gibbons to Gasparri, 4 September 1915. 18 ‘Piena libertà religiosa come negli Stati Uniti’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Gasparri to Aversa, Locatelli, and Vagni, 6 October 1915.

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of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Eugenio Pacelli, to the Secretary of the Special British Mission to the Holy See, John Duncan Gregory,19 and to the nuncios in Madrid, Munich and Vienna, who were asked to persuade the foreign ministers of these three countries to persuade the American government to move in this direction, too.20 The initiative, in the end, received only provisional responses from the respective foreign diplomats21 and did not gain the result desired. The de facto recognition of Carranza by the US government at the end of the Washington conference did not, however, contribute to the internal peace in Mexico, torn apart as it was by the various components of the revolutionary movement. Villa’s reaction was particularly brutal, manifesting itself first in the massacre of Santa Isabel, where in January 1916 sixteen US workers were killed on a train stopped by a gang of Villa supporters near Santa Isabel in the State of Chihuahua. This was followed by the raid on Columbus, NM, which brought about the deaths of another nineteen Americans. The US reaction was inevitable and resulted in sending 12,000 soldiers to Chihuahua led by General John L. Pershing.22 In the wake of the military invasion, which was concluded after a few months without completing its mission (the capture of Villa), the presence of the exiled Mexican bishops in the United States offered to the supporters of Carranza the motive for accusing the clergy of plotting against national independence. In this regard, the Archbishop of Morelia Leopoldo Ruiz y Flores and the Archbishop of Guadalajara, who had been consulted by Rome about the possibility of returning to their dioceses, denounced the presence of a media campaign designed to discredit the image of the episcopate in the eyes of the Vatican by means of accusing bishops of not caring about the fates of their flocks.23 The arguments adopted by the two

19 ‘The Holy See asks the English government, either directly with Carranza or with the government of the United States, to insist that Mexico establish full religious liberty, as in England and the United States’ (‘La S. Sede prega il governo inglese di insistere o direttamente presso Carranza o presso il governo degli Stati Uniti affinché al Messico sia assicurata una piena libertà religiosa, come nell’Inghilterra e negli Stati Uniti’); ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Pacelli to Gregory, 16 October 1915. 20 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Gasparri to Ragonesi, Frühwirth and Scapinelli di Leguigno, 27 October 1915. 21 ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura d’Argentina, b. 12, fasc. 102, Locatelli to Gasparri, 7 October 1915; ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura del Brasile, b. 138, fasc. 683, Aversa to Gasparri, 8 October 1915; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Ragonesi to Gasparri, n.d.; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1915, rubr. 251, fasc. 7, Scapinelli di Leguigno to Gasparri, 28 October 1915. 22 Friedrich Katz, La guerra secreta en México: Europa, Estados Unidos y la revolución mexicana, 2nd edn (México City: Era, 1998), pp. 351–53; John Mason Hart, ‘The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920)’, in The Oxford History of Mexico, ed. by William H. Beezley and Michael C. Meyer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 435–65. 23 See, for example, AES, Messico, pos. 762, fasc. 134, Ruiz y Flores to Bonzano, 27 June 1916. The accusations against the bishops in some cases were entangled in the difficult relationships between the diocesan ordinaries in exile and their respective episcopal vicars, as seems evident in the case of Mexico City, where Archbishop Mora y del Río and his Vicar Antonio Paredes (notoriously on good terms with the Mexican government) engaged in a harsh long-distance confrontation that involved

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archbishops to explain their remaining in exile were accepted by the Holy See,24 which had not concealed its preoccupation concerning the prolonged absence of the bishops from the country. Be that as it may, the accusations resurfaced in later months, when another episode contributed to disturbing the waters of Mexican Catholicism further. At the end of 1916, a self-styled Neapolitan priest named Genaro Riendo made himself known in Mexico City, presenting himself as the ‘Apostolic Nuncio to Mexico’.25 During his brief stay in the city, Riendo claimed that he was authorized by the Holy See to reform the Mexican Church and banish those members of the clergy who were more interested in politics than in their own mission.26 Among his other declarations — also reported in the American press27 — Riendo did not hesitate to attack the anti-patriotic attitude of the bishops taking refuge in the United

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27

the Secretariat of State and the Consistorial Congregation. See Juan González Morfín, ‘Antonio de J. Paredes y el régimen carrancista: entre el colaboracionismo y el cisma’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 24 (2015), pp. 329–51; O’Dogherty Madrazo, El episcopado, pp. 259–60 and 268–70. On this, see AES, Messico, pos. 762, fasc. 134, Gasparri to Orozco y Jiménez, 10 September 1916. Massimo De Giuseppe, ‘Missionari e religiosi italiani in Messico tra porfiriato e rivoluzione: documenti dal vicariato apostolico della Baja California’, RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di storia dell’Europa mediterranea, 7 (2011), pp. 193–230 (p. 198). He himself confirmed this in a letter that is conserved in copy in the Archive of the Apostolic Delegation in the Antilles: ‘Unfortunately, the Mexican clergy, with rare exceptions, is an embarrassment for the Church and for the country. For this reason it is necessary and indispensable to separate as soon as possible the corrupt members who, with their lack of prudence and their political games, have brought many evils on the Roman Catholic Church’ (‘desgraciadamente el clero mexicano, con raras excepciones, es una verguenza para la Iglesia y para la Patria, y por eso se hace necesario e indispensable segregar lo más pronto posible los miembros corrompidos que con sus imprudencias y politiquerías, tantos males han acarreado a la Iglesia católica romana’). The document, dated 17 November 1916, is signed ‘Genaro Riendo Future Pope of the National Catholic Church’ (‘Genaro Riendo Futuro Papa de la Iglesia Católica Nacional’); ASV, Archivio della Delegazione Apostolica nelle Antille, b. 18. For example, The New York Times dedicated the following report to the issue: ‘With the arrival in Mexico City of Monsignor G. Riendo, a Spaniard, who calls himself Papal Nuncio to Mexico, a schism has occurred among Mexican Catholics. Riendo refuses to recognize Canon Paredes, who has been the head of the Mexican Church since Archbishop Mora y del Rio left the republic. Paredes repudiates Riendo’s orders, and members of the clergy are split into two factions. Riendo declared he had been authorized by Rome to reform the Mexican Church and eliminate the bad elements who were more interested in mixing in politics than complying with their sacred mission. The majority of priests say Riendo is an intruder, and they will refuse to do what he orders. A number of cablegrams have been sent to Rome regarding the state of the Mexican Church, and asking for instructions to solve the problem. The schism caused many priests to speak about refusing to recognize the Pope’s authority and to advocate the establishment in this country of a purely national church that will not be subordinate to Vatican. The priests are discussing the plan to hold a council and elect a prelate to govern the Mexican Church. Riendo said today that he favoured the Constitutionalist Government, and that before coming to Mexico he visited Washington, where he conferred with President Wilson, to whom he spoke regarding the unpatriotic attitude of Archbishop Mora and other Mexican prelates, now refugees in the United States, who, with Cardinal Gibbons’s assistance, are said to be trying to get the United States to intervene in Mexico’; ‘Schism in Mexican Church: Spaniard, Calling Himself Papal Nuncio, Causes Serious Split’, The New York Times, 26 November 1916. I thank Juan González Morfín for bringing this article to my attention.

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States, who according to him were plotting with Gibbons to pressurize the US into taking action against Mexico once again. The Holy See was less concerned about the actions of Riendo, who after having signed himself in various documents the ‘future Pope of the National Catholic Church’ dropped out of sight, than about other rumours of an imminent parliamentary bill to decide on the creation of a National Mexican Church.28 The Vatican’s fears were further stoked by the news — sent by Bonzano at the end of January 1917 and later proven false — of the possible death penalty to be sentenced on the Archbishop of Guadalajara and the Bishop of Zacatecas, accused by a military tribunal of having conspired against Carranza.29 As soon as he was informed of the issue, Benedict XV telegraphed Wilson30 and the Mexican President,31 asking them to intervene to suspend the trial. Carranza personally replied to the Pope and denied the news, affirming that the military court had simply declared that the Bishop of Zacatecas had to leave Mexico once again.32 In effect, Mgr Miguel de la Mora was arrested on 4 January 1917 and was then accompanied to the US border. In order not to meet the same fate, after the closure of the churches in Guadalajara by Carranza supporters, Orozco y Jiménez had hidden in the mountainous areas of his diocese and from there continued to carry out his ministry, maintaining communications with the Holy See through informal intermediaries.33 Benedict spoke with approval of the courage demonstrated by the Archbishop of Guadalajara, but he could not avoid expressing anew his ‘concern for the abandonment and all kinds of difficulty’ experienced by the Mexican diocese.34 In the end, what happened to these two bishops confirmed the impossibility of the bishops’ re-entry into the country while the anti-clerical persecution continued.

3. The Querétaro Constitution Be that as it may, the ratifying of the new constitution on 5 February 1917 caused the religious tension to attain new heights. It was drawn up by the assembly that met in Querétaro in December 1916.35 In relation to the Mexican legislation of the second half of the nineteenth century — already significantly harmful to the libertas Ecclesiae in the eyes of Catholics —, the Querétaro Constitution represented a true

28 See for example, ‘La Iglesia nacional’, El Universal, 16 October 1916, now in Las relaciones Iglesia Estado en México 1916–1992, ed. by César Correa Enríquez, 3 vols (Mexico City: El Universal, 1992), I, pp. 1–4. See also AES, Messico, pos. 764, fasc. 136, Gasparri to Bonzano, 29 December 1916. 29 AES, Messico, pos. 768, fasc. 137, Bonzano to Gasparri, 26 January 1917. 30 AES, Messico, Benedict XV to Wilson, 26 January 1917. 31 AES, Messico, Benedict XV to Carranza, 27 January 1917. 32 AES, Messico, Carranza to Benedict XV, n.d. 33 Meyer, La Cristiada, pp. 102–03. 34 AES, Messico, pos. 768, fasc. 137, Gasparri to Orozco y Jiménez, 21 April 1917. 35 On this topic, which has by now received numerous studies, see José Luis Soberanes Fernández, Y la revolución se hizo constitución (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2016).

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qualitative leap, prohibiting the formation of religious orders (Art. 5), imposing the secularization of teaching (Art. 3), nationalizing Church property (Art. 27) and cancelling any juridical existence of ‘religious associations denominated as churches’, according to Art. 130, which further gave local governors the power to establish the maximum number of priests permitted in each state of the Federation. The reaction of the Mexican episcopate in exile assumed the form of a collective pastoral letter of protest, published in the United States on 24 February 1917. Benedict gave his support for this in his letter Exploratum vobis est of 15 June 1917. Besides approving of the composure of the bishops who, while repeating the traditional opposition of the Church to armed rebellion against the legitimate authority, declared that they could not accept an unjust law,36 the Pope announced that he wanted to say a special prayer for the Mexican people on the day celebrating the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe (12 December).37 In the same months, the Mexican bishops asked the Holy See to establish norms of behaviour concerning the fundamental new law, in particular for those Catholics who, holding positions in the government, had to swear by the text of the constitution.38 On this point, Gasparri asked the opinion of the former Apostolic Delegate (now Cardinal) Boggiani. He was of the opinion that the new constitution, despite significantly deteriorating the ecclesiastic legislation of the country, did not require per se a change in the practice followed until then by Catholic Mexicans, who, on the basis of a precedent approved by the Holy Office, could take an oath with a mental reservation.39 A year later, during which period the problem was not tackled 36 ‘In conformity with the doctrines of the Roman pontiffs, especially those contained in the encyclical Quod Apostolici muneris, and moved at the same time by patriotism, we find ourselves far from approving the armed rebellion against the legitimate authority, lest this passive submission to any government signify intellectual and voluntary approval of the laws that it issues that are anti-religious or unjust in other ways, and lest for this reason it is assumed that Catholics, our faithful, must give up the right that belongs to them as citizens to work legally and peacefully for the removal of the laws of the country, however much they may offend their conscience and their rights’ (‘Conforme con las doctrinas de los Romanos Pontífices, especialmente la contenida en la Encíclica Quod Apostolici muneris, y movidos también por el patriotismo, nos hallamos muy lejos de aprobar la rebelión armada contra la autoridad constituida, sin que esta sumisión pasiva a cualquier gobierno signifique aprobación intelectual y voluntaria a las leyes antirreligiosas o de otro modo injustas, que de él emanaren, y sin que por ella se pretenda que los católicos, nuestros fieles, deban privarse del derecho que les asiste como ciudadanos para trabajar legal y pacíficamente por borrar de las leyes patrias, cuanto lastime su conciencia y su derecho’); reported in Edgar Danés Rojas, Noticias del Edén: la Iglesia católica y la Constitución mexicana (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 2008), p. 379. 37 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 9, 8 (1917), pp. 376–77. 38 The requests sent to Rome by the Archbishop of Mexico City Mora y del Río are particularly revealing (AES, Messico, pos. 771, fasc. 139). 39 ‘Certainly the new Constitution is much worse than the previous one; but that one, with the so-called reform laws, was also very bad. It did not in any way recognize the rights of the Church and the freedom of worship, either. The new Constitution has explicitly drawn several consequences from the principles already promulgated in the preceding one and has added some vexing articles. Thus, Catholics who were employed in public offices previously had to deal with unjust laws to which they had to object; but it does not seem necessary to introduce a new norm, different from that used

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due to a lack of more precise information and to more urgent issues connected to the development of the world war, the question was put to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, which held a special session on 9 June 1918. At this meeting, all the cardinals agreed that an official papal declaration on the topic should be deferred to a more opportune time.40 In the diplomatic field, the promulgation of the new constitution was the object of careful consideration in the Secretariat of State. At first, Gasparri and Pacelli thought that they could use the good relationship between Germany and Mexico to convince Carranza to mitigate the religious persecution (now legally sanctioned by the constitution) through German diplomatic channels. The draft of a dispatch to be sent to the Nuncio in Munich, Giuseppe Aversa, dated 7 April 1917, highlighted in fact the possibility of evoking in this regard the good graces of the Imperial German Government, which (if it is true what is being said about the influence that they now hold over Mexico) would perhaps be able to approach the aforementioned General [Carranza] with the intent to bring to an end the persecution and soften the laws hostile to the Catholic Church, in the interests of the peace and prosperity of the troubled Republic.41 Nevertheless, in the face of an international conflict made even more destructive by the attempt orchestrated by Germany to involve Mexico against the United States in the Great War,42 an initiative of this kind with the German government would perhaps have exposed the Holy See to polemics and repercussions on the part of the Entente, which was engaged in conflict with the Central Powers. Beyond the sudden

when the old Constitution was in place, to protect their consciences, since there were very bad laws then and there are very bad laws now. The only difference is between more and less. If in the future it may be necessary to introduce some modification in this regard, it should be done with better knowledge of the situation’ (‘certamente la nuova Costituzione è molto peggiore della precedente; ma anche questa, con le leggi dette di Riforma, era pessima. Anch’essa non riconosceva affatto i diritti della Chiesa e la libertà del culto religioso. La nuova Costituzione ha tirato esplicitamente parecchie conseguenze dai principii già promulgati nella precedente ed ha aggiunto alcuni articoli vessatori. I cattolici quindi assunti a offici pubblici si trovano come prima di fronte a leggi inique che debbono protestare di osservare; ma non sembra necessaria una nuova norma diversa da quella usata quando vigeva l’antica Costituzione per salvare la loro coscienza, poiché si tratta di leggi pessime tanto prima che ora. La sola differenza è quella che corre fra il magis e il minus. Se in avvenire si trovasse necessario introdurre in proposito qualche modificazione, lo si potrà fare con maggior cognizione delle cose’); AES, Messico, pos. 771, fasc. 139, opinion of Card. Boggiani, n.d. 40 AES, Messico, Session Reports, Session 1220, Mexico, Politico-religious Situation, 9 June 1918. For an examination of the contents of the meeting, see Paolo Valvo, Pio XI e la Cristiada: fede, guerra e diplomazia in Messico (1926–1929) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2016), pp. 86–89. 41 ‘Sollecitare in proposito i buoni uffici dell’Imperiale Governo Tedesco, il quale (se è vero quanto si dice sull’influenza che attualmente esso esercita nelle cose del Messico) sarebbe forse in grado di agire presso il menzionato Generale all’intento di far cessare, nell’interesse stesso della tranquillità e della prosperità di quella travagliata Repubblica, la persecuzione e mitigare le leggi ostili alla Chiesa Cattolica’; AES, Messico, pos. 769, fasc. 137, Gasparri to Aversa, 7 April 1917 (draft of a dispatch). 42 Katz, La guerra secreta, pp. 401–38.

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death of Aversa (who, as is known, would be replaced by Pacelli), these considerations probably also caused the heads of the Vatican diplomacy to shelve the project, of which no further news is found either in the archives of the Secretariat of State or in those of the Nunciature in Munich.

4. The Last Years of the Pontificate: Towards a Religious Truce The successive developments in the religious situation in Mexico also reflected the effects of the evolution of the global geopolitical situation, as is shown by Carranza’s decision to promote, at the end of 1918, a constitutional reform proposal that comprehensively rewrote in a more moderate way Articles 3 and 130, which were essential to the relationship between the Church and the government.43 The end of the world war resulted in a decrease in the political and economic support of Mexico by Germany, exposing Mexico once again to the preponderant influence of the United States, which emerged from the war as the leading world power. This situation, from another perspective, lent new strength to the forces hostile to Carranza, such as those that supported Villa and Zapata, while within the constitucionalista alliance General Álvaro Obregón showed ever more clearly his intention to run for president of Mexico to succeed Carranza in 1920.44 For all of these reasons, the continuation of the battle against the Church appeared politically counterproductive to the Mexican President, also given the pressure exercised on the government of the United States by that sector of North American Catholic public opinion that favoured a military raid on Mexico. Against this background of the intermingling of the religious problem and the new global situation, another diplomatic initiative in support of the Mexican Church arose, promoted by the President of the Extension Society, Mgr Kelley. Kelley arrived in Rome in December 1918 and at the end of the following March went to Paris, where the work for the international peace conference was underway. There, conforming to a plan elaborated with the Vatican Secretariat of State, he tried to ensure that there would be a clause supporting religious liberty inserted into the treaty that was to establish the League of Nations.45 The Rector of the Institut catholique de Paris, 43 The project was published in the Diario Oficial: Organo del Gobierno Constitucional de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 21 November 1918. On this, see Peer Christopher Stanchina, Das Verhältnis von Staat und Kirche in Mexiko: seit der Revolution von 1910/1917 bis Heute (Munich: Beck, 1978), pp. 31–32. 44 Katz, La guerra secreta, pp. 593–607. 45 The text of the clause proposed by Kelley can be found included in a letter he sent to the American President Wilson, a copy of which is kept in the ASV: ‘The high contracting parties, having in mind the fact that violations of the rights of conscience and of worship, of suffrage, of expression and of investments made for the development of countries by foreigners, have been frequent causes of internal disorders which, directly and indirectly, encouraged international disputes and led to wars, agree on the principle that states forming part of this covenant, or later joining it, should ensure to all their citizens, as well as to foreigners residing within their limits, full and free exercise of their respective religions, with protection for the persons and property necessary for bringing

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Alfred Baudrillart, played a decisive role throughout the debate. During a trip to the United States in November 1918, he had already met Kelley in Chicago, together with the Archbishops of Yucatán, Morelia and Guadalajara. On that occasion, the Mexican bishops had asked Baudrillart to make sure that the situation of the Church would be addressed at the Paris conference, requiring, for example, the full re-establishment of religious peace as a condition for granting international loans to Mexico.46 The operation carried out by Kelley, however, did not produce the hoped-for effects.47 Independently of what happened in Paris, the gradual re-entry of the Mexican bishops into their dioceses and the climate of détente between the episcopacy and Carranza in any case helped both parties to arrive at a kind of religious truce in Mexico. This state of affairs, which certainly did not prevent problems in the relationship between the Church and the civil authorities from continuing at the local level, saw an important confirmation in the bishops’ decreased commitment to the hope for an American military intervention in Mexico, publicly demonstrated many times in 1919,48 and in Carranza’s decision to abstain from any intervention in the appointment of the new Archbishop of Puebla.49 Furthermore, the meetings of the President in February 1919 with the Protonotary Apostolic Alfred E. Burke — who was responsible for the Canadian branch of the Catholic Church Extension Society — seemed to introduce important developments. Burke was sent to Mexico by the Mexican archbishops resident in Chicago, who were aligned with Kelley, with the sole task of obtaining reliable information about the conditions of the Church in certain areas of the country. The Canadian prelate, however, did not adhere to the agreed instructions and tried to approach the Mexican political authorities directly. He managed to make his way to the President, towards whom he showed himself over-indebted, according to many conciliatory bishops. The activity of Burke, who claimed to have acted in concert with the Archbishop of Mexico City,50 greatly irritated the episcopate, whose members did not hesitate to rebut Burke’s declarations, which were at times very critical of them, in the press and to denounce his actions to the Vatican.51 Burke was able to explain his own perspective to the Secretariat

this freedom into effect as well as safety for foreign investments made in conformity with their laws at the time; liberty of the press; and freedom in such rights of suffrage as are guaranteed by their constitutions, customs or legislative enactments’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Spogli Curia, Cerretti Card. Bonaventura, b. 1A, fasc. 3, Kelley to Wilson, 31 March 1919. 46 The episode is recounted in Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, ed. by Paul Christophe, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), I (1994), p. 955. 47 Kelley played, in any case, only one important role at the Paris conference, however unforeseen, concerning the solution of the Roman Question: to arrange an important meeting between the Italian Prime Minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and the Secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Bonaventura Cerretti; Francesco Margiotta Broglio, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla Conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966), pp. 43–53. 48 Meyer, La Cristiada, pp. 109–10. 49 AES, Messico, pos. 805, fasc. 146, Mora y del Río to Gasparri, 13 October 1919. 50 O’Dogherty Madrazo, El episcopado mexicano, pp. 276–77. 51 See for example, AES, Messico, pos. 814, fasc. 147, Orozco y Jiménez to Cerretti, 28 July 1920.

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of State,52 who ordered him not to involve himself any further in Mexican political and ecclesiastic affairs.53 Burke’s actions occurred in a rather delicate political nexus, in which Carranza had decided to support the candidacy of Ignacio Bonillas in the presidential elections of 1920 against General Álvaro Obregón. The latter took up arms against Carranza on 23 April 1920. Carranza, being unable to combat the rebels effectively, fled the capital after two weeks to take refuge in Veracruz. During his flight, Carranza was, however, betrayed and assassinated in the village of San Antonio Tlaxcalantongo, during the night of 20–21 May 1920. However, the general situation that arose in the wake of the death of Carranza and of the assumption of the presidency ad interim by General Adolfo de la Huerta seemed to offer some hope that the Church might be able to exercise its activities with a greater margin of freedom than it had in the past. The need to preserve internal stability after years of civil war, in the face of the substantial international isolation of the country, favoured a more pragmatic attitude of the Mexican government in its relations with the Church, such as that which Carranza had expressed in his last months in power and which Obregón, elected president on 4 September 1920, also showed that he wanted to adopt.54 All this, however, in no way implied the government’s willingness to modify the anti-clerical provisions of the 1917 Constitution. Regardless of the apparently more peaceful political climate, 1921 marked the beginning of a new season of offences against the Church at the local level, from the bomb attacks that struck the Archbishopric of Mexico City and Guadalajara to the events in Morelia, where the closure of a Catholic boarding school and the profanation of an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe caused a demonstration that had to be dispersed by the police, leaving many dead.55 The gravest event at the symbolic level was undoubtedly the attack launched on the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe by a government worker, who on 14 November 1921 tried to blow up the sacred cloth bearing the image of the Virgen Morena.56 Leaving aside the internal situation, while Bonzano was in Washington testing the feelings of the new Harding administration in regard to the possibility of obtaining from Obregón guarantees of religious liberty in exchange for recognition by the United States (confirming in this way the strategic directive already adopted by the Vatican in 1915),57 the Mexican government agreed to allow the Holy See to send a new apostolic delegate to the country. After over seven years had passed since the 52 AES, Messico, pos. 818, fasc. 147, Burke to Cerretti, 22 December 1920. 53 AES, Messico, pos. 816, fasc. 147, Cerretti to Burke, 29 August 1920; AES, Messico, pos. 817, fasc. 147, Cerretti to Burke, 2 February 1921. 54 Robert E. Quirk, The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910–1929 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973), pp. 113–15; Meyer, La Cristiada, pp. 110–11; David Bailey, ¡Viva Cristo Rey! The Cristero Rebellion and the Church–State Conflict in Mexico (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1974), pp. 35–37; Stanchina, Das Verhältnis, pp. 32–35. 55 ‘Sangrientos sucesos en Morelia’, El Universal, 12 May 1921, now in Las relaciones Iglesia Estado en México 1916–1992, ed. by Correa Enríquez, I, pp. 47–52. 56 For a list of the events, see again Las relaciones Iglesia Estado en México 1916–1992, ed. by Correa Enríquez, I, pp. 57–72. 57 Valvo, Pio XI e la Cristiada, pp. 110–11.

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return to Rome of Boggiani, the Pope was once again able to have, in the person of Mgr Ernesto Filippi, a representative on Mexican soil, albeit not of a diplomatic nature.58 A few months before his death, Benedict XV was thus able to witness, at least partly, the success of the diplomatic activity that he and his collaborators had performed in favour of the Mexican Church during his pontificate. The ephemeral character of this success emerged in the following years (1923–26), when as many as three apostolic delegates were expelled or exiled from Mexico, at a time of increasing tension between the Church and the state that was destined to erupt in a bloody armed battle.59 The first months of Filippi’s stay in Mexico were in any case marked by an extremely cordial relationship with the President. Confirmation of this can be found in the exchange of letters between the Holy See and Obregón on the occasion of the election of Pius XI (6 February 1922).60 Writing to Gasparri about this, the Apostolic Delegate pointed out, quite emphatically: ‘In over a half-century, this is, perhaps, the first time that a president of Mexico has written directly to the Holy Father’.61

Bibliography Alejos Grau, Carmen-José, ‘Pío XI y Álvaro Obregón: relaciones a través de la Delegación Apostólica en México (1921–1923)’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 23 (2014), pp. 403–31 Bailey, David, ¡Viva Cristo Rey! The Cristero Rebellion and the Church–State Conflict in Mexico (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1974) Blancarte, Roberto, ‘Recent Changes in Church–State Relations in Mexico: An Historical Approach’, Journal of Church and State, 35, 4 (1993), pp. 781–805 Cannelli, Riccardo, Nazione cattolica e Stato laico: il conflitto politico-religioso in Messico dall’indipendenza alla rivoluzione (1821–1914) (Milan: Guerini, 2002) Christophe, Paul, ed., Les Carnets du cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 9 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1994–2003), I (1994) Correa Enríquez, César, ed., Las relaciones Iglesia Estado en México 1916–1992, 3 vols (Mexico City: El Universal, 1992), I Danés Rojas, Edgar, Noticias del Edén: la Iglesia católica y la Constitución mexicana (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 2008) De Giuseppe, Massimo, ‘Missionari e religiosi italiani in Messico tra porfiriato e rivoluzione: documenti dal vicariato apostolico della Baja California’, RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di storia dell’Europa mediterranea, 7 (2011), pp. 193–230

58 On the nomination of Filippi, see Valvo, Pio XI e la Cristiada, pp. 109–10. 59 Valvo, Pio XI e la Cristiada, pp. 123–255. 60 The correspondence was published together with other documents in Carmen-José Alejos Grau, ‘Pío XI y Álvaro Obregón: relaciones a través de la Delegación Apostólica en México (1921–1923)’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 23 (2014), pp. 403–31 (pp. 416–20). 61 ‘Da oltre mezzo secolo questa è, forse, la prima volta che un presidente del Messico scrive direttamente al S. Padre’; Alejos Grau, ‘Pío XI y Álvaro Obregón’, pp. 416–20.

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De Giuseppe, Massimo, ‘La revolución escindida y el fantasma de Zapata: “Católicos” e “indigenas” entre guerra y paz’, in Otras miradas de las revoluciones mexicanas (1810– 1910), ed. by Hilda Iparraguirre, Massimo De Giuseppe and Ana Maria González Luna (Mexico: Juan Pablos, 2015), pp. 201–43 García Ugarte, Marta Eugenia, Poder político y religioso: México siglo XIX, 2 vols (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2010) Hart, John Mason, ‘The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920)’, in The Oxford History of Mexico, ed. by William H. Beezley and Michael C. Meyer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 435–65 Katz, Friedrich, La guerra secreta en México: Europa, Estados Unidos y la revolución mexicana, 2nd edn (México City: Era, 1998) Margiotta Broglio, Francesco, Italia e Santa Sede dalla Grande Guerra alla Conciliazione: aspetti politici e giuridici (Bari: Laterza, 1966) Meyer, Jean, La Cristiada: el conflicto entre la Iglesia y el Estado 1926–1929, 10th edn (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1988) Meyer, Jean, La cruzada por México: los católicos de Estados Unidos y la cuestión religiosa en México (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2008) Morfín, Juan González, ‘Antonio de J. Paredes y el régimen carrancista: entre el colaboracionismo y el cisma’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 24 (2015), pp. 329–51 O’Dogherty Madrazo, Laura, ‘El episcopado mexicano en el exilio (1914–1921)’, in Otras miradas de las revoluciones mexicanas (1810–1910), ed. by Hilda Iparraguirre, Massimo De Giuseppe and Ana Maria González Luna (Mexico: Juan Pablos, 2015), pp. 257–82 Quirk, Robert E., The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910–1929 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973) Soberanes Fernández, José Luis, Una aproximación al constitucionalismo liberal mexicano (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2015) Soberanes Fernández, José Luis, Y la revolución se hizo constitución (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2016) Stanchina, Peer Christopher, Das Verhältnis von Staat und Kirche in Mexiko: seit der Revolution von 1910/1917 bis Heute (Munich: Beck, 1978) Valvo, Paolo, Pio XI e la Cristiada: fede, guerra e diplomazia in Messico (1926–1929) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2016) Young, Julia, Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles and Refugees of the Cristero War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

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The Holy See’s Relations with Brazil (1917–19)

1. Introduction The relations between the Holy See and Brazil during the pontificate of Benedict XV, in particular between 1917 and 1919, constitute a theme that has been overlooked, as is testified by the lack of specific studies in Brazilian historiography. Unlike other popes (Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII), Benedict XV rarely appears in books on the history of the Church in Brazil, and, when he does, he is remembered in connection to isolated facts or problems, such as the Code of Canon Law of 1917, his commitment to peace during the war, the creation of dioceses, the institution of religious orders and episcopal nominations, without any overall analysis of his pontificate or specifically its relationship to Brazil.1 In the face of this void in the literature on the topic, the issue can be approached not only through an examination of the documents in the Vatican archive but also thanks to the press of the time, which frequently mentioned this Pope, mainly in regard to his commitment to peace and, less often, in regard to his relationship to Brazil.2 After sketching the historical context of the Brazilian Church between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, I shall concentrate on the actions of Benedict XV that had most influence on the Catholicism, hierarchy and Church–state relationships in Brazil.





1 Maurício de Aquino, ‘Modernidade Republicana e diocesanização do catolicismo no Brasil: a construção do bispado de Botucatu no sertão paulista (1890–1923)’ (doctoral thesis, São Paulo State University, 2012); Riolando Azzi, ‘Início da Restauração Católica no Brasil (1920–1930)’, Revista Síntese, 10 (1977), pp. 61–89 and 11 (1977), pp. 73–101; Maurilio Cesar de Lima, Breve história da Igreja no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Loyola, 2001); Dilermando Ramos Vieira, O processo de Reforma e reorganização da Igreja no Brasil (1844–1926) (Aparecida: Editora Santuário, 2007). 2 The principal newspapers consulted were: Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), Correio Paulistano (São Paulo), A Pacotilha (Maranhão).

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1329–1339 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118834

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2. The Church in the First Decades of the Brazilian Republic The history of the Church in Brazil from the nineteenth to the first two decades of the twentieth century can be summarized by using some fundamental concepts: Ultramontane Reform/Romanization, Renaissance/Diocesization, Restoration. a) Ultramontane Reform/Romanization During the reign of Joseph I and of his minister the Marquis of Pombal (1750–77), an attempt at a regalist reform of the Church in Portugal and in its colonies was begun.3 In independent Brazil, a group of regalist priests, influenced by political liberalism, tried to reform the Church with the goal of increasing the independence of the ‘Brazilian Church’ from the Holy See.4 The reaction to this phenomenon came through another reform proposal, initiated during the 1840s and called by Brazilian historians ‘Romanization’ or ‘ultramontane reform’. These two concepts are not synonymous but reveal different ways of understanding the movement. In nineteenth-century Brazil, Catholicism had not yet incorporated the Tridentine Reform, and efforts made in that direction had been frustrated by the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Portuguese Empire in 1759. Most of the local clergy were poorly educated, while the beliefs of the people were a mixture of pre-Tridentine Catholicism and indigenous and African religiosity, to which scholars have referred in various ways, such as popular, colonial or luso-brasileiro Catholicism. The purpose of these terms was to indicate the existence of heterodox practices among the people, the relaxing of rules for the clergy (who often lived with concubines), and the interference of secular power in the administration of the Church through the practice of so-called padroado (‘patronage’) and regalismo (‘regalism’). The former was a bilateral agreement between the Church and the state affording mutual benefits, while the latter reflected unilateral actions taken by the state concerning the Church in an effort to reinforce and centralize its control in modern and contemporary times.5 Essentially, the concept of Romanization bases its interpretation on religiosity, proposing an understanding of history from below and highlighting a Europeanization of Brazilian Catholicism orchestrated by the Holy See.6 The category of Ultramontane

3 A ‘Época Pompalina’ no mundo luso-brasileiro, ed. by Francisco Falcon and Claudia Rodrigues (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2015); Ítalo Domingos Santirocchi, ‘Reformas da Igreja em contraposição, o pombalismo luso e o ultramontanismo brasileiro (séculos XVIII e XIX)’, Itinerantes. Revista de Historia y Religión, 5 (2015), pp. 65–90. 4 Françoise Jean de Oliveira Souza, ‘Do Altar a Tribuna: os padres na formação do Estado Nacional brasileiro (1823–1841)’ (doctoral thesis, Rio de Janeiro State University, 2010). 5 Alceu Kuhnen, As origens da Igreja no Brasil 1500 a 1552 (Bauru: EDUSC, 2005); Ítalo Domingos Santirocchi, Questão de Consciência: os ultramontanos no Brasil e o regalismo do Segundo Reinado (1948–1989) (Belo Horizonte: Fino Traço, 2015). 6 The term romanização had already appeared in the nineteenth century, in the translation into Portuguese of Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger’s Der Papst und das Concil by the important Brazilian political royalist Rui Barbosa (O Papa e o Concílio). In the 1950s and 1960s, the notion was

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Reform, for its part, focusses attention instead on the efforts of bishops and some of the clergy and laity to obtain a greater autonomy for the Church from the Brazilian imperial government, implementing important aspects of the Tridentine Reform, such as the reinforcement of the hierarchical autonomy, the frequency of the sacraments, the education of priests and obedience to the Pope.7 b) Renaissance/Diocesization Romanization and Ultramontanism are historical movements that began in the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth. However, with the end of the monarchy in Brazil in 1889 and the separation between the Church and state in 1890, the Church went through a period of reorganization that lasted until the beginning of the 1920s, called a ‘Catholic Renaissance’ by Dilermando Ramos Vieira and ‘Diocesization’ by Maurício de Aquino.8 While still remaining Ultramontanist, during these years, the Church tried to reorganize itself in Brazil, where until 1889 there were merely twelve dioceses. With a general approach to the state that accepted its secular nature, the Church tried to defend itself from its excesses, which might have turned into anti-clericalism.





taken up by American scholars studying Brazil, principally Roger Bastide, ‘Religion and the Church in Brazil’, in Brazil, Portrait of Half a Continent, ed. by T. Lynn Smith and Alexander Marchant (New York: Dryden Press, 1951); and Ralph Della Cava, Miracle at Joaseiro (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), translated into Portuguese by Maria Yedda Linhares as Milagre em Joaseiro (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1976). The systematization and diffusion of the concept began in 1973, when priests advocating liberation theology found themselves in conflict with the Holy See, and Brazil was under a military dictatorship. The members of the Comisión para el Estudio de la Historia de las Iglesias en América Latina y el Caribe (CEHI-LA) began writing the history of the Church in Brazil and publishing a series of articles in Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira edited by the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff. The principal formulators of the concept of the Romanization of the Brazilian Church were, among others, José Oscar Bezzo, Riolando Azzi and Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira. 7 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, some historians began to point out the limitations of the concept of Romanization, which privileges conflict and underestimates the effects of the actions and initiatives of the Holy See in the process of the reform of the Church in Brazil in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Leaving aside the dichotomy between the national church and the Holy See and attempting to study the church as a religious institution with a universal character, without forgetting the national and regional characteristics, these historians have tried to understand the historical conditions that favoured the development of ultramontanism in Brazil and its national and regional particularities. See Luciano Dutra Neto, ‘Das terras baixas da Holanda às montanhas de Minas’ (doctoral thesis, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, 2006); Vieira, O processo; Ítalo Domingos Santirocchi, ‘Os ultramontanos no Brasil e o regalismo do Segundo Império (1840–1889)’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2010); Aquino, ‘Modernidade Republicana’. 8 In reality, another concept exists, that of estadualização da organização eclesiástica, developed by the sociologist Sérgio Miceli in his book A Elite Eclesiástica Brasileira (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009). Aquino criticizes him, arguing that the use of diocesanização stands in contrast to that of estadualização, and calls attention to the fact that the actions of the Catholic bishops were responding, in the interests of the Church, to the context of the beginning of the Republic, as the official documents and the private correspondence in the Brazilian and Vatican archives indicate. His research tries to show the limitations of Miceli’s vision, which reduces the actions of the Church in Brazil to simple agreements with the oligarchy of the states of the Federation (Aquino, ‘Modernidade Republicana’, p. 25).

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At the same time, the hierarchy tried to initiate dialogues with the governments of the various states of the federation. In order to have an idea of the dimensions of this process, it is enough to note that compared to the twelve imperial dioceses, in 1922 there were thirteen archdioceses, thirty-nine dioceses, seven prelatures and three apostolic prefectures in the Brazilian Church. In the same way, numbers at the major seminaries tripled, from nine to twenty-seven.9 In the second decade of the century alone eighteen dioceses were created (in 1910 Aracaju, Corumbá, Montes Claros and Pelotas; in 1911 Santa Maria; in 1913 Barra, Caetité and Ilhéus; in 1914 Cajazeiras, Guiratinga and Crato; in 1915 Caratinga and Porto Nacional; in 1916 Guaxupé and Penedo; in 1918 Garanhuns, Luz and Nazaré) and Paraíba (1914), Fortaleza (1915) and Diamantina (1917) were elevated to archdioceses;10 eight during the pontificate of Benedict XV.

c) Restoration According to Riolando Azzi,11 the 1920s mark the beginning of the Catholic restoration. He bases this conslusion on two principles: a stronger presence of the Church in the public forum and an effective collaboration with the civil government. In particular, the episcopate sought a position of importance in society and was ready to cooperate with the government to guarantee the stability of the given order and respect for the authorities. This attitude was welcomed by the government, which saw in the Church an important supplementary aid in the containment of social and workers’ movements. The key moment in this process began with the appointment of Mgr Sebastião Leme as auxiliary to the Cardinal Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Joaquim Arcoverde de Albuquerque Cavalcanti.12 2.1.

Brazil during World War I

According to Vieira, the relationship between the Church and the state was already harmonious at the outbreak of World War I. At first, the war seemed to involve only the European countries; therefore, Brazil declared its neutrality.13 This initial situation permitted the missionaries from the warring nations to continue their work in Brazil without any preoccupations and thus to show their approval of the successes of their own nations openly. However, the war eventually called the missions into question, impeding or seriously preventing the movements and voyages of the missionaries when they had to cross the ocean.14 The neutral position of Brazil changed on 26 October 1917 when Brazil declared war on Germany, which had set up a naval blockade in the eastern area of the

9 Vieira, O processo, pp. 347, 427. 10 Lima, Breve história, pp. 155–56. 11 Azzi, ‘Início da Restauração’. 12 Azzi, ‘Início da Restauração’, p. 63. 13 Vieira, O processo, p. 375. 14 Vieira, O processo, pp. 375–76.

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Mediterranean and sunk some of its merchant ships, provoking the nationalism of the people and the Catholic hierarchy. According to Maurilio Cesar de Lima, in the course of the war, the government received enormous and spontaneous support from the Church through its pastoral letters and bulletins of bishops and parishes that were filled with words designed to spark patriotism in the people and support the military recruitment campaign.15 This position was officially confirmed by a collective letter by the bishops, published on 30 April 1917, which stated that the Church had to become involved: In the violent and bloody struggle of interests, let us be above all Brazilians, and as Brazilians let us extol the leaders of the nation, who have been both prominent and prudent, showing them the respect and obedience which we are obliged to show by right and by law.16 The document requested comprehension for German Catholics and religious orders that were victims of unjust discriminations, underlining, however, the need for priests to remain virtuous and cautious.17 However, in the face of the radicalization of nationalist feelings, Arcoverde took more drastic measures against the German clergy. In a circular of 10 November 1917, he decided in fact to replace all the German priests who exercised their ministry under his authority, performed public liturgies or held positions of responsibility. Furthermore, he forbade preaching in German and decreed the closure of German colleges and schools, incentivating the teaching of the national culture, history and geography.18 A similar attitude in relation to the clergy from the enemy nations was recommended by the Holy See through the Brazilian Nuncio Angelo Scarpini. Following these indications, bishops ordered the clergy from countries in war against the Entente not to leave their homes, to execute their hospital ministries and to renounce the running of schools. The objective was to avoid, or at least limit, incidents. In some states of the Federation, such as Pernambuco, it was reported that there had been attacks on clerics of German origin, and some of their houses had been set on fire. In November 1917, the Abbot of the Benedictines of Salvador de Bahia, the German Rupert Rudolph, asked the Nuncio in Rio de Janeiro whether he should let a Brazilian run the abbey. Scarpini quickly responded that he was not opposed to that decision, but in other dioceses it was not possible to renounce the German clergy because there were no other priests available to take their place.19

15 Lima, Breve história, p. 159. 16 ‘Na contenção violenta e sanguinária de interesses, sejamos Brasileiros e, como Brasileiros, prestigiemos os Diretores da Nação, que tão altivos quão prudentes se têm mostrado, ­dispensando-lhes o afeto e a obediência a que somos obrigados por direito e justiça’; Vieira, O processo, p. 376. 17 Vieira, O processo, p. 376. 18 Vieira, O processo, pp. 377–78. 19 Vieira, O processo, p. 378.

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In the end, Brazil did not participate in the military action. It set up a Naval Division for War Operations, and a squadron was sent to Europe. It arrived in Gibraltar on 10 November 1918 and on the following day received news of the signing of the armistice. In reality, even though it did not take part in the battles, Brazil was one of the countries that took part in the Versailles peace negotiations as one of the victors. The Church’s unreserved support for the Brazilian government’s decision to enter the war improved the relationships between the two powers. According to Vieira, During the government of President Epitácio Pessoa (1918–22), the socio-political atmosphere was so favourable that the vestiges of radical secularization gradually disappeared. For this reason, holy days, respected in practice, began to become official. It was Epitácio that made Christmas a holiday in the Brazilian calendar.20 2.2.

The 1917 Note and the Brazilian Press

About four months before Brazil’s declaration of war against Germany, Benedict XV wrote his celebrated Note of 1917 to the heads of the belligerent peoples, in which the expression ‘useless slaughter’ was used and became famous. The document was reported in the Brazilian press, but the famous phrase was not included in the report. The first news of the letter began to arrive on about 15 August 1917. The Jornal do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro21 wrote that during the previous night the Foreign Minister Nilo Peçanha had discussed with President Venceslau Brás the ‘peace proposal that His Holiness Pope Benedict XV had made to the warring nations’, adding that the government had also received a note on this topic from the Holy See. The newspaper then said, erroneously, that the letter had been published on 1 August, and it reported the details of the Pope’s peace proposals. The paper A Pacotilha in São Luis do Maranhão wrote about it for the first time on 17 September, citing an article by ‘an allied Catholic diplomat’ published in the Daily News. According to that diplomat, ‘the Pope did not seem to be a Germanophile, but the terrible features of the war have caused him to forget the particularly cruel way in which the Germans are proceeding’. It also reported that the Holy See did not trust Russia, and that the motivations for the letter were: (1) The desire to obtain a place at the peace conference, with the objective of discussing the question of the temporal power [of the Church]; (2) the fear of being separated from the Catholic German powers; (3) the fear of seeing the collapse of the Apostolic Austrian Empire.22

20 ‘No período do governo do Presidente Epitácio Pessoa (1918–1922), o ambiente sociopolítico encontrava-se tão alterado que um a um os resquícios do lacismo radical iam sendo eliminados. Por isso, os dias santos de guarda, respeitados na prática, começaram a ser oficializados, sendo o próprio Epitácio quem tornou o Natal feriado nacional’; Vieira, O processo, p. 379. 21 ‘Noticiário’, Jornal do Brasil, 15 August 1917, p. 5. 22 ‘O papa não parece germanófilo, mas o caráter terrível da guerra o teria feito esquecer a maneira particularmente cruel como os alemães procedem’; ‘1º o desejo de obter um lugar no congresso de paz, afim de poder levantar a questão do poder temporal; 2º o receito de que afastem dele as potências

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A certain diffidence toward Benedict XV also existed in Brazil, as certain newspapers show. However, in general the press reacted positively to the proposals of the Pope. The paper Correio Paulistano was one of the first to report on the Note, on 14 August 1917. The front-page article bore an eloquent title: ‘Pope Benedict XV Works for Peace’ (‘O papa Bento XV trabalha a favor da paz’). It reported that the Pope called on the heads of the warring nations to re-establish peace, declaring that they would expect the publication of the document with his proposals.23 On the front page of the 16 August 1917 issue, a series of articles on the pontifical initiative again appeared. The first, entitled ‘The Pope Envisions a Lasting Peace’ (‘O papa visa una paz duradoura’), took as its basis an editorial in the Corriere d’Italia of the previous day and concluded by affirming that ‘the supreme pontiff proposed the solution to all the issues that might be the source of future conflicts, besides the adoption of measures capable of eliminating the possibility of a new war’. Later, a series of articles on the positions of the United States and England followed. It concluded with the statement that the Pope had sent a letter to the government of Brazil and that the President would comment on it only after he had received it.24

3. Benedict XV and Brazil (1918–19) 3.1.

The Support for the Missions

According to Vieira, ‘the Brazilian republican government soon admitted what the Empire already knew: The Catholic missions were indispensable for maintaining the territorial integrity of the country and for “civilizing” the natives’.25 With the separation of Church and state in Brazil, Propaganda Fide gained full freedom to coordinate the missions. The number of religious orders rapidly increased: Salesians, Franciscans, Benedictines, Holy Ghost Fathers, Augustinian Recollects, Dominicans, Servites, Capuchins, Missionaries of the Precious Blood, Claretians, Norbertines, Marist Brothers, Camaldolese, Missionaries of La Salette, Trappists, Missionaries of the Holy Family, Christian Brothers, and so on. The Amazon was one of the most complicated regions for the spread of the faith and border control. The territory was divided by Propaganda Fide into prelatures nullius, with each one assigned to a particular religious order. The Prefecture of Alto Rio Negro, belonging to the State of Pará and bordering on other South American

católicas alemães; 3º o temor de ver ruir o império apostólico austríaco’; ‘Os motivos que levaram o Sumo Pontífice a pedir a paz’, A Pacotilha, 17 August 1917, p. 5. 23 ‘O papa Bento XV trabalha a favor da paz’, Correio Paulistano, 14 August 1917, p. 1. 24 ‘O sumo pontífice propõe a solução de todas as questões que poderiam ser o gérmen de um futuro conflito, assim como a adoção de medidas capazes de afastar a possibilidade de uma nova guerra’; ‘O papa visa uma paz duradoura’, Correio Paulistano, 16 August 1917, p. 1. 25 ‘Bem cedo o Governo republicano brasileiro admitiu o que nos tempos do Império já se sabia: as missões católicas eram indispensáveis para a manutenção da integridade territorial do país e para “civilizar” os índios’; Vieira, O processo, p. 380.

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countries, such as Colombia, Venezuela and British Guiana, was entrusted to the Salesians on 18 June 1914. The city of São Gabriel was chosen as the seat of the prefecture, and the first prefect was Lorenzo Giordano, who served until 1919, when he was replaced by Father Pietro Massa. Since it helped to maintain ‘national customs’ in the border regions, this mission was received with appreciation by the authorities of the federal government.26 Within the immense territory of the Amazon Rainforest, there was a state that was even more problematic, that of Acre, recently acquired from Bolivia in 1903. Under the pontificate of Benedict XV, the Holy See helped Mgr João Irineu Joffily, appointed Bishop of Manaus in December 1916, to organize the missions in that territory. He divided the state into two prelatures: Alto Juruá and Alto Taruacá, entrusted to the priests of the Holy Spirit, and Alto Acre and Alto Purus, entrusted to the Servites.27 Benedict XV also supported the restoration of old religious orders in a critical state or lacking: for example, the Mercedarians, who had returned to Brazil only in 1922 on request of the Pope and who were given the prelature of Bom Jesus do Gurguéia, in the State of Piauí. Two Spanish religious figures took up residence in the city of São Raimundo Nonato.28 However, nationalism and racism predominated in those times and created difficulties in the expansion of religious orders. Although Benedict XV encouraged ‘native vocations’, this was not accepted very well by the orders that had arrived from Europe. The Apostolic Nuncio Giuseppe Aversa, representative of the Holy See in Brazil from 1911 to 1916, lamented that the religious orders preferred to work in the big cities, contrary to the initial desires of the bishops. They focussed their work on the ‘upper class’, leaving the poor without care. Although there were some exceptions, most of the religious members did not even make the effort to learn Portuguese, revealing their disdain for the culture and customs of the people. This upset even Arcoverde, who maintained an attitude of distance and criticism towards the foreign religious figures. However, the most uncomfortable and tendentious attitude was the systematic rejection of all ‘non-white’ vocations.29 In this period, there was an increase in the percentage of whites among the Brazilian clergy, over which the religious orders had a great deal of influence. This was also a general tendency in society, given that the census of the time recorded that the majority of Brazilians called themselves white. 3.2.

The Church and the Workers

Catholic feelings for the tragedy and difficult conditions of the workers had already been manifest in Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum. In Brazil, Mgr Sebastião Leme promoted

26 Vieira, O processo, pp. 400–02. 27 Vieira, O processo, p. 408. 28 Vieira, O processo, p. 456. 29 Vieira, O processo, p. 458.

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the organization of Catholic workers as a means to improving the living conditions of the workers. The Bishop of Fortaleza, Manoel Gomes, did the same, while a Catholic Workers Centre was created in São Paulo. The Vincentians played an important role in this movement, principally by means of the Dutchman Guilherme Waessen,30 the organizer of the Catholic Workers Associations in different areas of Brazil, specifically in the State of Ceará, from 1917. These organizations had the full support of Benedict XV, of the Catholic hierarchy and of the Catholic press. On 11 June 1919, the Jornal do Brasil published the news of the election of the leaders of the Corporation of Catholic Workers in Brazil, which as one of its first acts sent a message of congratulations to Benedict XV for his efforts on behalf of peace in the world.31 3.3.

Benedict XV and President Epitácio Pessoa (1919–22)

As we have seen above, according to Azzi, 1920 marked the beginning of the Catholic restoration. The nomination of Leme as the auxiliary of Arcoverde in Rio de Janeiro represented the outset of this historic process, when the federal government and the Church renewed their relationship. The actions of this Bishop are presented as foundational and fundamental for the restoration; however, historians have not paid sufficient credit to the dialogue between Benedict XV and the President of the Brazilian Republic, Epitácio Pessoa. At the end of World War I, Pessoa was named head of the Brazilian delegation to the peace conference in Versailles. While he was acting in this capacity, the Brazilian President Rodrigues Alves died, and the Vice President called new elections. In 1919, although he was at the time in France, Pessoa was elected president and returned to Brazil in July to take up the post. During his return trip, he visited Belgium, Italy, Great Britain and the United States. In Rome, he was received by Benedict XV, with whom he had an ‘official’ meeting. After this encounter, the relations between Church and state in Brazil changed, to the point that it is not unreasonable to state that it may well have been this meeting that sparked the process called the Catholic restoration. O Jornal was one of the first to report the news of the President’s visit to the Pope, in an article dated 30 July 1919 entitled ‘The Pope Offers His Portrait to Dr Epitácio

30 Born in Holland in 1873, Guilherme Waessen went to live in Paris as a youth, and at the age of twenty-three was ordained a priest. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1898 in the company of his brother, João Waessen, who was also a priest. He was a Vincentian and lived as a missionary in the states of Bahia, Ceará and Minas Gerais. In Fortaleza, he was Rector of the diocesan seminary (Seminário da Prainha) from 1914 to 1917. He was Ecclesiastical Assistant to the St Joseph Association from its foundation to 1934, when he was transferred to the State of Pará. He organized charitable committees during the droughts in north-eastern Brazil, particularly during the drought of 1915. He worked in the Santa Casa da Misericórdia, where he visited the sick. He was for a long time priest of the Church of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios in Benfica. Together with Mgr Lustoso, he founded the House of the Child Jesus, which cared for unmarried mothers (Lima, Breve história, p. 123). 31 Jornal do Brasil, 11 June 1919, p. 9.

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Pessoa’ (‘O papa oferece o seu retrato ao Dr. Epitácio Pessoa’). The caption that accompanied the picture read: On this day, on which we have had the pleasure to meet personally His Excellency Dr Epitácio Pessoa, who has just been elected President of the Brazilian Republic, we offer our best wishes for his happiness, his family and all the Republic, whose interests have been entrusted to him.32 The Correio Paulistano also remarked on the visit in an article on 11 October 1919 entitled ‘Catholic Brazil: Demonstration of Affection to Cardinal Alcoverde’ (‘O Brasil Católico: manifestação de simpatia ao Cardeal Alcoverde’). It summarized the reason for Catholic Brazilians’ satisfaction: This demonstration summarizes the satisfaction of Catholics when they hear news that pleases them very much: the elevation of our Delegation to the Vatican to an Embassy; the elevation of the Apostolic Nunciature to first class; the welcome given by His Holiness to Mr Epitácio Pessoa and his family.33 On 26 February 1920, O Jornal referred to other results of the improved relationship between the office of the President of the Republic and the papacy. Benedict XV conferred the Cross of the Order of St Gregory on the Private Secretary of the President of the Brazilian Republic, Francisco Pessoa de Queiroz, and on Joaquim Gonçalves de Araújo, of the State of Minas Gerais.34 These reports are sufficient, it seems to me, to support the theory that the beginning of the Catholic restoration in Brazil originated from the meeting and relationship between Benedict XV and Pessoa.

4. Conclusion: The Forgotten Pope Benedict XV was continually in the pages of the newspapers. His actions for peace and his overtures to the presidency of the Republic after Pessoa’s visit did not pass unnoticed by the Brazilians. Nonetheless, Benedict seldom appears in the histories of the Church in Brazil. The figure of this pontiff and his relationship to that country undoubtedly deserve a rediscovery and an analytic reconstruction, beginning with the elements that this contribution has tried to bring to light.

32 ‘Neste dia em que tivemos o prazer de conhecer pessoalmente s. exc. o Dr. Epitácio Pessoa, que acaba de ser eleito presidente da República do Brasil, fazemos os melhores votos pela sua felicidade, da sua família e de toda a República cujos interesses lhe estão confiados’; ‘O papa oferece o seu retrato ao Dr. Epitácio Pessoa’, O Jornal, 30 July 1919, p. 4. 33 ‘Essa manifestação sintetiza a satisfação dos católicos diante das notícias que lhe são sobremaneira gratas, tais como sejam: a elevação da nossa legação junto ao Vaticano a embaixada; a elevação da nunciatura apostólica à primeira classe; a recepção feita por sua santidade o papa Bento XV ao sr. Epitácio Pessoa e família’; ‘O Brasil Católico: manifestação de simpatia ao Cardeal Alcoverde’, Correio Paulistano, 11 October 1919, p. 4. 34 ‘Cronica religiosa’, O Jornal, 26 February 1920, p. 4.

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Bibliography Aquino, Maurício de, ‘Modernidade Republicana e diocesanização do catolicismo no Brasil: a construção do bispado de Botucatu no sertão paulista (1890–1923)’ (doctoral thesis, São Paulo State University, 2012) Azzi, Riolando, ‘Início da Restauração Católica no Brasil (1920–1930)’, Revista Síntese, 10 (1977), pp. 61–89 Azzi, Riolando, ‘Início da Restauração Católica no Brasil (1920–1930)’, Revista Síntese, 11 (1977), pp. 73–101 Bastide, Roger, ‘Religion and the Church in Brazil’, in Brazil, Portrait of Half a Continent, ed. by T. Lynn Smith and Alexander Marchant (New York: Dryden Press, 1951) Della Cava, Ralph, Miracle at Joaseiro (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) de Oliveira Souza, Françoise Jean, ‘Do Altar a Tribuna: os padres na formação do Estado Nacional brasileiro (1823–1841)’ (doctoral thesis, Rio de Janeiro State University, 2010) Dutra Neto, Luciano, ‘Das terras baixas da Holanda às montanhas de Minas’ (doctoral thesis, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, 2006) Falcon, Francisco, and Claudia Rodrigues, eds, A ‘Época Pompalina’ no mundo lusobrasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2015) Kuhnen, Alceu, As origens da Igreja no Brasil 1500 a 1552 (Bauru: EDUSC, 2005) Lima, Maurilio Cesar de, Breve história da Igreja no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Loyola, 2001) Linhares, Maria Yedda, Milagre em Joaseiro (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1976) Miceli, Sérgio, A Elite Eclesiástica Brasileira (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009) Santirocchi, Ítalo Domingos, ‘Os ultramontanos no Brasil e o regalismo do Segundo Império (1840–1889)’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2010) Santirocchi, Ítalo Domingos, ‘Reformas da Igreja em contraposição, o pombalismo luso e o ultramontanismo brasileiro (séculos XVIII e XIX)’, Itinerantes. Revista de Historia y Religión, 5 (2015), pp. 65–90 Santirocchi, Ítalo Domingos, Questão de Consciência: os ultramontanos no Brasil e o regalismo do Segundo Reinado (1948–1989) (Belo Horizonte: Fino Traço, 2015) Vieira, Dilermando Ramos, O processo de Reforma e reorganização da Igreja no Brasil (1844–1926) (Aparecida: Editora Santuário, 2007)

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Japan on the Vatican’s Radar

1. Introduction Relations between the Holy See and Japan date back to the time of St Francis Xavier’s Jesuits, in particular to the pontificate of Paul V, when a delegation of Daimyō Date Masamune arrived in Rome in 1610. Japan had been on the Holy See’s horizon for three centuries when Benedict XV’s pontificate began, whose onomastic relationship to Benedict XIV would make one think rather of a connection to China. After missionaries and Kirishitans were condemned to death at the beginning of the Tokugawa Dynasty, Christianity continued but seemed to be out of sight. In 1868, however, Bishop Bernard Petitjean, a member of the Foreign Missions Society in Paris and Apostolic Vicar to Nagasaki, discovered groups of Christians who had passed down the faith of their ancestors, without any clergy. It seems that Pius IX was very moved when he heard this news. Such resistance to closing the door to Christianity gave rise to an almost mystic impulse on the part of the Pope just when Vatican I, which would include a number of bishops from East Asia, was in preparation. Furthermore, the reforms of the Meiji era, which were initiated in 1868 by Mutsuhito, were seen as a sign of Westernization, opening the path to religious freedom in the Constitution of 1890. Free from 1900 of all trade treaties with the great powers, Japan seemed to present all the historical, legal, even political, conditions for effecting a widespread conversion to Christianity. In this sense, its expansion into East Asia would assist the Christianization of the continent through the Westernization it carried with it. In November 1905, the Bishop of Portland, William O’Connell, acting as an Extraordinary Delegate of Pius X, was the first foreign diplomatic representative to travel to Japan. He was received with full honours, by both the Emperor and his court, following the victory over the Russians, which Secretary of State Merry del Val saw as a great turning point that obliged the Holy See to display its own support of the new emergent power. In that context, he suggested that the Jesuits return to Japan to form a new national elite. In its enthusiasm, the Holy See even established the regular hierarchy in Japan from 1891 and launched a project for university courses in Tokyo while, in 1908, the first Jesuits were returning to Japan. In 1885, Leo XIII had already personally congratulated Mutsuhito for the reforms that had been undertaken and suggested the possibility of establishing permanent

Benedict XV. A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918) dir. by A. Melloni, ed. by G. Cavagnini and G. Grossi Turnhout, Brepols, 2020, pp. 1341–1355 FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.STR-EB.5.118835

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relations of a diplomatic nature. In fact, nothing at the time prevented the Holy See from establishing a stable presence in Tokyo at the beginning of Benedict XV’s pontificate, and only the Japanese authorities still had to be convinced. The Western powers, particularly France, no longer had the means to interfere as they had done in particular in China. The pontifical investment in Japan, therefore, had two aims, missionary and diplomatic. It was also part of a view of regional and global equilibrium, given that the country constituted a true emergent power, like the United States. Consequently, it was totally logical for Propaganda Fide and the Secretariat of State to continue to strengthen a commitment towards Japan when Benedict XV became pope. From this point of view, there was a perfect continuity with the pontificate of Pius IX. In the context of the world war and its consequences, how did relations between the Holy See and the court of Tokyo develop? Did the stakes change? Did the longawaited easing of restrictions occur? And how did Japan see the role of the Holy See on the international stage? An emergent power in reality, and in the pontifical perspective, Japan above all constituted a missionary challenge in which the question of religious freedom, particularly of Shinto, played a role. It was the main objective of two extraordinary Vatican missions to Tokyo in 1916 and 1917. In its acts of mediation, in view of a white peace and the reconstruction of a world order, the Holy See also dealt with a number of regional issues linked to the missionary one, which engaged it diplomatically in favour of Japan, particularly in Paris in 1919. In order to settle the matter definitively, in November 1919, Rome succeeded in establishing in Tokyo its first permanent representation in East Asia.

2. Towards the Establishment of Permanent Relations Benedict XV decided to solicit the Japanese government again. Taking advantage of the coronation ceremonies for the new Emperor Taishō, he gave the Apostolic Delegate to the Philippines, Giuseppe Petrelli,1 the task of approaching the government in Tokyo with a new mission.2 Unlike the case of O’Connell, the Holy See wanted this visit to be of a public nature, given that the Secretary of State had the pontifical Envoy announced by the Archbishop of Tokyo, the head of the local bishops. This time, therefore, they went through the hierarchy instead of through the Japanese Ambassador in Paris. Petrelli was received by the new Emperor with the highest honours.3 After the court, it was the turn of the elite at the University of Tokyo, who offered him a collection of ancient Christian objects. Four years later, the Vatican returned



1 Born in 1873 in Marche, Petrelli studied and was ordained a priest in Rome; he was appointed Bishop of Lipa in the Philippines in 1910, Apostolic Delegate to the Philippines in 1915 and Apostolic Nuncio to Peru in 1921. 2 AMEP, 574 A, Tokyo, Compte rendu de la mission pour l’exercice 1915–16. 3 AMEP, 574 A, Tokyo, Compte rendu de la mission pour l’exercice 1915–16.

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the favour, sending a reproduction of the letter from the illustrious Daimyō4 from Oshu,5 Date Masamune, to Paul V, accompanied by other ‘gifts’.6



4 ‘The reception of the Special Envoy of Holy Father Benedict XV on the occasion of the crowning of the Emperor has been, as you know, an event for all of Japan. We shall be allowed to speak a few more words about his visit to Sendai, if only to pay tribute to Your Excellency, who has only listened to his condescending goodness to honour the Bishop of the northern diocese with his visit. The newspaper reporters thus have not heard this; yet, they should be thanked for having the idea to link the reason for this visit to an embassy sent to Rome by the Daimyō that ruled Sendai at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The city councillors have just celebrated the third centenary with the erection of a commemorative monument. A long inscription engraved on the stone recalls, in effect, that in 1614 Daimyō Date Masamune chose an officer of his house to take to the King of Spain a letter proposing the establishment of commercial relations between Sendai and Mexico, and another for Pope Paul V whom he asked for Franciscan missionaries to be sent, and also to deign to support the negotiations with the King of Spain. The embassy was led by Father Luis Sotelo, OFM. In short, Mgr Petrelli, having been informed of the kind of reception he would receive in Sendai, lent himself to it with the best of grace and, to pay honour to the programme, wanted to extend his stay among us for twenty-four hours. […] The visit of the Prefect, which was closely followed by that of the Mayor, was no less courteous, although of a different nature. Taking up a more general perspective, he was pleased to have the honour of greeting a representative of the papacy to whom the peoples are indebted for so many and such great benefits. He then expressed his admiration for the Holy See’s firm stability which had been maintained in the midst of the revolutions that had shaken Europe. Finally, speaking of Japan, he said that while it had made progress in material terms, it was still far behind from the moral perspective and that he hoped that his country would soon share in the beneficial influence of the papacy’ (‘La réception de l’envoyé spécial de S. S. Benoît XV à l’occasion du couronnement de l’Empereur a été comme on le sait un événement pour tout le Japon. Il nous sera bien permis de dire encore un mot de sa visite à Sendai ne serait-ce que pour rendre hommage à S. E. qui n’avait écouté que sa condescendante bonté pour honorer de sa visite l’évêque du diocèse du Nord. Les reporters des journaux n’avaient pas entendu ainsi la chose mais il faut les remercier quand même d’avoir eu l’idée de rattacher le motif de cette visite à une ambassade envoyée à Rome par le Daimyo qui régnait à Sendai au commencement du XVIIe s. Les édiles de notre ville venaient précisément d’en célébrer le 3ème centenaire par l’érection d’un monument commémoratif. Une longue inscription gravée sur la pierre, rappelle en effet qu’en 1614 le Daimyo Daté Masamuné [Masamune] choisit un officier de sa Maison pour porter au roi d’Espagne une lettre proposant d’établir des relations commerciales entre Sendai et le Mexique et une autre pour le Pape Paul V à qui il demandait l’envoi de missionnaires franciscains, puis aussi de daigner appuyer ses négociations auprès du roi d’Espagne. L’ambassade était conduite par le P. Louis Sotelo OFM. Bref Mgr Petrelli ayant été mis au courant du genre de réception qu’on lui ménageait à Sendai s’y prêta de la meilleure grâce et pour faire honneur au programme, il voulut bien prolonger de 24 heures son séjour au milieu de nous. […] La visite du préfet qui suivit de près celle de M. le Maire ne fut pas moins courtoise, quoique de caractère différent. Se plaçant à un point de vue plus général, il se félicita d’avoir l’honneur de saluer un représentant de la papauté à qui les peuples sont redevables de tant et de si grands bienfaits. Il exprima ensuite son admiration au sujet de la ferme stabilité du Saint-Siège qui s’est maintenue au milieu des révolutions qui ont bouleversé l’Europe. Enfin parlant du Japon, il dit que s’il avait progressé sous le rapport matériel, il restait bien en retard du côté moral et qu’il faisait des vœux pour que son pays ait bientôt part à l’influence bienfaisante de la Papauté’); AMEP, 575 A, Hakodate, Compte rendu de la mission pour l’exercice 1915–16. 5 Roland Jacques, Des nations à évangéliser: genèse de la mission catholique pour l’Extrême-Orient (Paris: Cerf, 2003), p. 351. 6 ‘It goes without saying that the handing over of these objects, which was done by my dear Vicar General, was almost an event. The Mayor and the Municipal Council were flattered and honoured, as is proven by an address to the Supreme Pontiff sent through His Excellency the Nuncio to Peru. The

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After the court and the intellectual elite, Petrelli visited other senior officials and government members. The recognition was highlighted by the fact that the Apostolic Delegate was received in the company of local bishops. The fascination with ‘courtesy’ was part of a series of commonplaces that led the Church to see Japanese culture as open to Westernization and a favourable foundation for evangelization, particularly through the elite.7 Be that as it may, it was evident that, since O’Connell’s visit in 1905, the history of the Holy See was better known, and the roots for relations between Rome and Japan, going back to the sixteenth century, were rediscovered. The symbolic acts performed by the papal Envoy were aimed at establishing, historically, relations between the Holy See and the court in Tokyo. The following year, a second, less official, visit by Petrelli took place, during which the issue of Shinto and religious freedom was dealt with in particular. From the very first visit, however, one of the most important elements in the negotiations, which had been occasioned by the letter of congratulations to Emperor Taishō, was the question of establishing permanent relations between the Holy See and Japan. On 10 May 1916, Petrelli wrote to Propaganda Fide8 that the great majority of missionaries and bishops were in favour of establishing pontifical representation in Japan. He also emphasized the important role played by Japan among its neighbours, adding that the Emperor and his government were amenable to the idea of a delegation. Finally, a permanent representative of the Pope could assist the bishops, instil an energy in Catholics and defend the Church’s interests in the Empire. The Marianist Ferdinand Spenner (Yokohama) then delivered a memorandum to Petrelli, dated 10 May 1916, on the concrete advantages of a possible apostolic delegation to be sent to Tokyo. The report was forwarded by the Delegate to the Secretariat of State on 8 June 1916 with a letter from Mgr Tiberghien on the opportunity of establishing it. These two documents completed Petrelli’s very general approach.9 Everything was sent to Propaganda Fide on 20 July since the Secretary of State wanted the opinion of Propaganda Fide’s Cardinal Prefect, Domenico Serafini.



main idea is that this gracious envoy creates a new bond of union between the Vatican and the city of Sendai. May the treaty of union enter one day into the supernatural phase and produce the sursum corda which crowned the scene of Jacob’s well! Si scieres Donum Dei!’ (‘Il va de soi que la remise de ces objets, qui a été faite par mon cher vicaire général, a eu presque le caractère d’un événement. M. le maire et le Conseil Municipal se sont montrés flattés et honorés, ainsi qu’en fait foi une adresse au Souverain Pontife envoyée par l’intermédiaire de S. E. le Nonce au Pérou. L’idée principale en est que ce gracieux envoi crée un nouveau trait d’union entre le Vatican et la ville de Sendai. Puisse le trait d’union entrer un jour dans la phase du surnaturel et produire le sursum corda qui couronna la scène du puits de Jacob! Si scires Donum Dei!’); AMEP, 575 A, Hakodate, Compte rendu de la mission, 1920–21. 7 ‘Politesse’; AMEP, 575 A, Hakodate, Compte rendu de la mission, 1920–21. 8 ACPF, NS, 1916, rubr. 131, vol. 579, f. 380, Delegación apostolica, Manila, I. F., N. 274, 10 May 1916. 9 AES, Asia, Giappone, 1918, pos. 21, fasc. 7, Per la libertà religiosa, Document communicated by Mgr J. Tiberghien; ACPF, NS, 1916, rubr. 131, vol. 579, ff. 379–81.

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In his report, Spenner affirmed that an apostolic delegate could apply Rome’s guidelines to contrast any hesitations of the local episcopate or the divisions at the heart of the missions. It might also help both to comply with pontifical procedure. At the same time, the Japanese government would doubtlessly listen to the apostolic delegate, the Pope’s representative, who, by his presence, would elevate the Japanese Empire to the same rank as the United States, which already had an apostolic delegation. Above all, it could deal with the issue of religious freedom that coincided with issue of Shinto’s being the national religion. Moreover, for Tiberghien Petrelli’s regular presence in Japan, awaiting the appointment of an apostolic delegate, would allow him to deal with the government on the matter of Shinto but also on the issues of relations between missionary institutions (essentially, between the Parisian Foreign Missions Society and the new institutions), Catholic teaching, charitable works and, lastly, the evangelization of Korea, Manchuria and the Island of Formosa (Taiwan), where ‘Catholics seem more suitable to convert the savage and cruel populations whom the Japanese have difficulty dominating’.10 For Spenner and Tiberghien, a single apostolic delegate was sufficient since their concerns were purely on the missionary level. However, the evangelization of regions and annexed lands, in reality implied extending the authority of the apostolic delegation along with that of the Empire. On the whole, the two ecclesiastics did not seem to assess adequately how far the fundamental question of religious freedom was tied to politics. Furthermore, to the documentation sent by Petrelli to the Secretariat of State it is necessary to add the French translation from Shinjiro Yamamoto of an appeal from a Japanese deputy to the Diet on the ‘esteem’ and ‘respect’ of religion and the government’s response. In the week of 21 December 1916, Gasparri received the Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Rome.11 On 17 August 1917, the Nuncio in Bern wrote to the Secretary of State12 that Count Pálffy, representative of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador in Switzerland, had reported that the Viennese Neue Freie Presse had published a long article explaining how, in all likelihood, the Holy See was negotiating to establish diplomatic relations with Japan. On 28 August, the Secretariat of State responded that it was a matter of an ‘unfounded’ rumour.13 However, even if diplomatic relations were not yet on the agenda, in the following year the constitution of a delegation was already outlined. Indeed, Shinjiro Yamamoto, who had been appointed Japan’s military attaché in Paris and entrusted with the task from the beginning of autumn of 1919 of negotiating the Shinto question with the Holy See on behalf of his government, on 10 November 1918 had already written a note in Tokyo on the ‘urgent necessity’ of sending an apostolic delegate to the Japanese capital.14 Reinforced by this lengthy

10 ‘Les catholiques semblent plus aptes à convertir les populations sauvages et cruelles que les Japonais ont peine à dominer’; ACPF, NS, 1916, rubr. 131, vol. 579, ff. 379–81. 11 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1916, rubr. 2, fasc. 1. 12 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1917, rubr. 254, fasc. 1. 13 ‘Privée de fondement’; ASV, Segreteria di Stato, 1917, rubr. 254, fasc. 1. 14 ‘Urgente nécessité’; AES, Asia, Giappone, 1919, pos. 88–92, fasc. 65, prot. 8160, Envoi d’un délégué apostolique permanent, proposition de M. Yamamoto, envoyée à la Propagande, DAJ, n. 15, 7 May 1920.

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report, he presented himself at the Vatican with Spenner, explaining the reasons why the choice was fully justified. At the beginning of 1919, however, the new Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda Fide, Willem van Rossum, had already responded positively to Shinjiro Yamamoto’s request.15 The content of this was fundamental. It was the last document in the dossier concerning the apostolic delegation to Tokyo. All the argumentation in his report hinged on national interests even if, at times, it seemed that the author merely hoped that Catholicism would prosper in Japan. According to Shinjiro Yamamoto, the presence of an apostolic delegate in Tokyo would put an end to a reciprocal lack of knowledge both at the Holy See and in Japan, the main cause of which was ‘distance’. What the Holy See did not seem to understand was the opinion formulated of Japanese Catholics, who were considered ‘anti-patriotic’ because they could not pay public honour in the sphere of ‘civil Shinto’, even if the author denounced that this was a violation of the principle of religious freedom affirmed in the Constitution of 1890. Since the bishops did not agree with the definition of civil Shinto, the Holy See might establish an official guideline. The entire discussion, however, went in the direction of the inculturation of Catholicism in Japan, that is to say, of disciplinary concessions, particularly concerning the ‘rites’ that would permit Catholics to submit to the directives of the Japanese government. From that perspective, the delegate could supply information on Catholicism to those in charge of establishing new laws and an office for religions. Nonetheless, the author did not hide the tendency of the Japanese authorities to deny Catholics autonomy. Above all, Shinjiro Yamamoto proceeded to offer a veiled apology for Japan’s providential vocation in the Far East, based on its role as regional power. Tokyo should be the seat of an apostolic delegation for the Far East: Beijing was not at the heart of the movements that were agitating the Far East; more than the Chinese, the Japanese nation possessed ‘the necessary qualities for becoming true apostles of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Far East, [it] has received a divine mission’ (‘les qualités nécessaires pour devenir les vrais apôtres de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ en Extrême-Orient, [il] a reçu mission divine’); France blocked the constitution of an apostolic delegation in Beijing and, in the end, the delegation in Manila did not suffice for the entire Far East; given the Holy See’s financial situation, it would be better, therefore, to transfer the delegation to Tokyo… The author even went so far as to suggest unifying the ceremonies and religious vocabulary in the Far East for Japan’s benefit, which would thus incorporate Korea and China. In an attached summary, Shinjiro Yamamoto stated that the constitution of a delegation would improve Japan’s situation with regard to the United States, or rather, strengthen its international prestige and would make it possible ‘to avoid

15 Bernward H. Willeke, ‘Die Propagandakongregation und die Erneuerung der japanischen Kirche (1800–1922)’, in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum: 350 anni a servizio delle missioni (1622–1972), ed. by Josef Metzler, 3 vols (Rome: Herder, 1972–76), III/1 (1975), pp. 541–58 (p. 557).

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the likely future conflict between these two great powers’ (‘d’éviter ainsi le futur conflit probable entres ces deux grandes puissances’). Finally, an apostolic delegation would facilitate a solution to the question of the German missions of Shandong and the Caroline, Marshall and Mariana Islands, a problem that had theoretically been solved at Versailles by Mgr Cerretti. From this point of view, the report drawn up by Shinjiro Yamamoto in November 1918 was intended to obtain the Holy See’s support for Japanese interests during the Peace Conference, especially in facing China and the United States. Everything concerning evangelization in Japan, therefore, made sense only if treated within the context of Japanese interests: control of the missionary institutes by a delegate who became the administration’s sole interlocutor, a situation that favoured a strengthening of the state’s control over religions with an affirmation of the Catholic values of submission to the established authorities and therefore of traditional Japanese values (the family, etc.) against atheism and Protestantism. It would thus open a war against Protestantism, which the Japanese identified with the United States, but also with the national resistance in Korea.16 Within that perspective, a Catholic elite would be formed by sending a clergy constituted by intellectuals, which would lend impetus to university teaching and to a Catholic press in Japan. In short, a delegate would build a Catholicism in the service of the increasing Japanese civilization and power in the world. Moreover, because Japan was already the most powerful entity in the region, the Church had no choice but to use it as a spearhead for its evangelization, as it had done with the Franks: gesta Dei per Francos. Japan, therefore, would be the ‘firstborn’ of the Church in the Far East. In reality, many ‘Japanese pagans’ had understood, in the light of the attitude of ‘eminent Catholics’, especially in France and Belgium during World War I, that Catholicism could be an instrument of national salvation.17 On 26 November 1919, the Holy See finally established an Apostolic Delegation in Japan, after Shinjiro Yamamoto had incessantly denounced the Archbishop of Tokyo’s impotence and incompetence in negotiations on the Catholic Church’s fundamental problems in Japan with the national authorities.

16 This point was explicitly developed during a conference with Christian publicists in March 1919 in Paris, within the context of the Korean independence movement, which had been harshly repressed by the Japanese authorities without any strong reaction on the part of the Catholic hierarchy. The Protestants, on the contrary, often supported the national resistance of the Koreans. See ACPF, NS, 1920, rubr. 131, vol. 666, f. 73, Conférence tenue par M. Yamamoto, capitaine de vaisseau de la marine japonaise, à une réunion des publicistes chrétiens, ayant eu lieu sous la présidence de M. René Bazin, 3 May 1919; and Kim Kyoung-Bin, ‘Les missions chrétiennes et la Corée (de la fin du XIXe au milieu du XXe siècle): une étude comparative des missions catholiques et protestantes en Corée’ (doctoral thesis, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, 1997). 17 ACPF, NS, 1920, rubr. 131, vol. 666, f. 73, Conférence tenue par M. Yamamoto, capitaine de vaisseau de la marine japonaise, à