The discovery of several pontifical documents belonging to the monastery of S. Maria di Monticelli in Florence has made it possible to better reconstruct the politics adopted by the Popes and some members of the Curia, particularly by Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, towards the coenobium during the thirteenth century. Those sources also clearly show the specificity of the Florentine monastery, stemming from its strict adherence to the rule of the primeval monastery in Assisi. Our essay analyzes the sources and hypotheses concerning the probable sending to Monticelli of the so-called privilegium paupertatis. The comparative analysis of such documents also underlines the project to revive in Florence the characteristic communal life experience carried out by Clare in Assisi, and how her course of action regarding the absence of material goods was shared.
The mural painting of Three living and three dead (14th century) in the Sacro Speco (Subiaco) bears graffiti. Among the oldest (15th and 16th cent.), some are comments on the subject of the fresco and are similar to texts inscribed on paintings portraying the same scene in different places in Italy; other graffiti are signatures of visitors and pilgrims, often from northern and eastern Europe.
The Holy Face of Manoppello is a veil preserved since the 17th century in the Capuchin sanctuary of this small town. On this veil is imprinted the image of the face of Jesus. The first part of the research is dedicated to the study of the jurisdictional conflicts born in the 17th century regarding the possession of the veil and the control of the devotional practices that developed around it. The second part analyzes the evolution of promoting the devotion to the Holy Face. This research perspective was conducted through the study of some texts published during the Early Modern Age and the journal entitled «Il Volto Santo di Manoppello», published by the Capuchins starting in 1906. This point of view allows us to understand how the “sacred” does not constitute an immutable system of ritual functions and devotional practices, but, a dimension with a strong civil value, from which derives a legitimizing power on the social level.
At the beginning of the XVIII century the Waldensian Valleys of Piedmont became a destination for many British travelers (from England, Scotland and Ireland), both Anglican and Episcopalian. On the outskirts of the European Grand Tour and in a period of British missionary expansion, they looked for the rests of the pure Church of Christ, still faithful to the Apostolic principles, that has been survived against the corruption caused by Rationalism, Socinianism and Papism, in the edge of the Alps, between Protestant Europe and Italian Catholicism. Their experiences, strongly based on classical, biblical and romantic literary models, generated several travel accounts which contributed to create the “Waldensian world”, marked by Alpine landscape, characters and myths, capable of influencing readers in their homeland and even the Waldensians.
Our article aims to contextualize the «koinonía» meetings held in Rome by Ernesto Buonaiuti at the residence of the Guadagnini family from the end of 1919 to the first months of 1920. The meetings were devoted to reading and commenting the Pauline epistles. Arturo Carlo Jemolo, who attended those meetings, wrote down Buonaiuti’s explanations. Our article, which includes an unabridged publication of Jemolo’s annotations, analyses the historical and interpretative questions issued by Buonaiuti with regard to St. Paul’s letters.
During all his life Pius XII payed a special attention to his writings, in particular the speeches, the most personal side of the papal teaching. The assistants hold those papers in sacred veneration, but the documents later suffered heavy damages and losses, so that there is no draft of some of the most famous speeches. This is the case of the 1942 Christmas Radio Address, known for the allusion to anti-Jewish persecutions: in the past this speech was confused with the draft of the 1942 Christmas Allocution to the Sacred College, but the two documents are very different. Now, after the opening of Holy See’s archives for the pontificate of Pius XII, we found one final draft of this Radio Address, recording the latest adjustments by Pope Pacelli: a witness of the difficult drafting of some lines, in particular those concerning persecutions.
These unpublished letters of Clemente Rebora have been found in almost their entirety in the Rosminian Archives in Stresa. Belonging to the period following Rebora’s conversion, they reveal his priestly soul, even regarding mostly ordinary subjects, and his most authentic dimension. It is confirmed, therefore, the necessity of a unitarian view about Rebora’s life and literary production: there are no such things as ‘before’ and ‘after’ his conversion, but two faces of the same human and poetical experience.
Cécile Caby, Autoportrait d’un moine en humaniste. Girolamo Aliotti (1412-1480) (Michele Lodone); “Ad stellam”. Il Libro d’Oltramare di Niccolò da Poggibonsi e altri resoconti di pellegrinaggio in Terra Santa fra Medioevo ed Età moderna. Atti della giornata di studi (Milano, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, 5 dicembre 2017), a cura di Edoardo Barbieri. Premessa di Kathryn Blair Moore (Samuele Giombi); Gli Italiani e la Bibbia nella prima età moderna. Leggere, interpretare, riscrivere, a cura di Erminia Ardissino - Élise Boillet (Samuele Giombi); Carteggio Ceriani-Mercati, 1893-1907, introduzione, edizione e annotazioni a cura di Cesare Pasini, con la collaborazione di Massimo Rodella (Paolo Vian)
Le giovanni donne sempre più lontane, i giovani in solitaria ricerca, il dovere degli adulti di mettersi in ascolto: Paola Bignardi racconta il libro-inchiesta "Dio, dove sei?".