The Oxford History of Italy
Holmes, George
by modern science, history, and philosophy. The articles devoted to the liturgy are also generally well done. The treatment of the Christian God is left in unintegrated form in two...
...the Renaissance (1250-1600...
...It is a real challenge to tell the full story of Italy well because the striking clarity of her cultural achievements is matched by the confusing complexity of her hisCommonweal 3 6 April 10, 1998 tory...
...Both were strongly rooted movements in the Italian world . . . . " He points to the Florentines Dante, Marsilio Ficino, and Michelangelo, and to the Venetians Giovanni Bellini and Titian as further examples of the "divided thoughtworld, classical and Christian at the same time," of Italian Renaissance culture...
...The articles on Church and State and on Religious Freedom nearly ignore the church's official practice and teaching from the Middle Ages to the Second Vatican Council...
...The history of Italy shows the contrary: a deep, perhaps unavoidable regard for history, and a lived confrontation and amalgamation of two cultures that are anything but relativistic concerning questions of beauty and truth: classical antiquity and Christianity...
...Saint Petersburg, for example, was largely the work of Italian architects...
...the Risorginlento (1796-1870...
...As the editor George Holmes puts it: "Of all European countries Italy has been the one with the richest and most varied cultural life, the result of the fact that there have been so many separate centers of art and thought, independent enough to preserve their own individuality...
...The book ends with the debate unresolved: Petrarch was still attached tu his love poetry and his desire for fame, and yet deeply worried that the monastic life, as t tolmes puts it, was the true purpose of humanity...
...the Middle Ages (400-1250...
...and 1945-94...
...Political fragmentation contributed to artistic achievement, but would have been unable to do so were it not for another element of prime importance in the history of Italy: the interplay among conflicting inherited cultures...
...The church is treated in many scattered articles, which often fall short of Vatican II and of the Catechism on several issues...
...Holmes goes on to observe that in the Secretum, Petrarch "gave a picture of the underlying dilemma which was to run unsolved through the whole of Renaissance culture: I tow to reconcile the worldly purposes based on literary humanism derived from pagan Rome with the Christian self-denial and devotion to heaven preached by the religious orders...
...These chapters exemplify both the depth of thinking and lucidity of narrative this book attains...
...i Robert E. Proctor is a profess( I of Italian at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut...
...for example, the article "Jesus Christ, Life of" discusses the mysteries of his life, with scant reference to his time, place, culture, or teachings or to the latest wave of interest in the historical Jesus and the theological questions it raises...
...What kind of home can this be, especially for those not of Italian origin...
...Michael Loyola University Chicago _9 MASTERS DEGREE PROGRAMS DiviNitY, PASTORAL STUDIES, RELIGIOUS EDUCAHO/V, AND M.A.PAS~ORXL COUNSELING _9 I N DIVIDUALIZED SABBATICALS * FORMATION PROGRAM _9 INSTITUTO HISPANO "WORKSHOPS LOYOLA ~,p~.~.y UNIVla;RSITY CHICAGO For further information, call or write: IPS, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO 6525 N. SHERIDAN ROAD CHICAGO, IL 60626 773-508-2320, 800-424-1238 ~,~v 773-508-2319 http://www.luc.edu/depts/ips Commonweal 3 7 April 10, 1998 Mallett describes and analyzes these changes with masterly clarity in his essay on "Politics and Society 1250-1600...
...Many cross-references and a lengthy index will often help the reader supply for any want of completeness or accuracy in individual articles, although the admittedly unconventional character of the index does not make it very userfriendIy...
...Italians in all the arts attained new levels of craftsmanship and virtuosity, and began to work throughout Europe...
...Stuart Woolf's chapter on "Italy 16001796," followed by Robert Oresko's companion essay "Culture in the Age of Baroque and Rococo," provide further answers to Italy's cultural predominance...
...the regional dimensions of episcopacy and collegiality are underplayed...
...Composed of twelve chapters by as many different you can trust...
...If this is what you are looking for in an encyclopedia, this is, as the dust jacket promises, "a resource GOING HOME Robert E. Proctor he architect Charles Moore once said to my brother, also an architect, that "going to Italy is like going home...
...The essays that cover the Renaissance through the Baroque and Rococo periods discuss the particuIar genius of ItaIJan culture, including the ways in which it was exported to other countries...
...Prizes in Organ Performance and Choral Conducting are available for qualified applicants...
...While three articles covering nine columns are devoted to Faith, less than one coIumn each was thought to suffice for Hope and Charity...
...I tolmes argues that the problem of harmonizing the two was insoluble, but that the very tension, coming from the immense power of each tradition, created works of art--statues, paintings, poems, and churches--that made the Italian Renaissance one of the greatest creative periods in human history...
...The chapters follow the fairly standard divisions of Italian history: classical antiquity beginning with Augustus...
...The Oxford History of Italy offers some answers to that question...
...the relation between the Catholic church and other Christian churches is not addressed (the council's famous statement that the church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic church is ignored...
...The treatment of the Christian God is left in unintegrated form in two articles, one largely philosophical ("God") and the other theological ("Trinity...
...For example, the idea of the one church as the communion of the many churches hardly appears...
...There were of course other reasons for the particular importance of Italy in the cultural history of Europe: the long ancient history of civilized life from the Etruscans and Greek settlers onwards, the legacy of Rome to the medieval world...
...When looking for help on topics such as Love, Mass, Mortal Sin, Natural Law, Teresa of Avila, and Thomas Aquinas, it is frustrating to find the word "passim...
...Italy's attraction today may be due in large measure to our unacknowledged longing for spiritual roots and certainties, and our intuition that beauty and truth are indeed related...
...You will not often find here much indication that other ways of ordering or stating Catholic doctrine, or even for reading and interpreting the tradition, Vatican II, the Catechism, and the magisterium of the present pope, and the contemporary situation, are poss i b l e - a n d trustworthy, f3 The Reverend Joseph A. Komonchak holds the Johrl and Gertrude Hubbard Chair in Religious Stltdies at The Catholic University of America...
...1915-45...
...Once again Italian culture, as it had in Roman times, became the common heritage of Europe...
...THE INSTITUTE OF SACRED MUSIC AT YALE UNIVERSITY A Cross-Disciplinary Center for Music, Liturgy and the Related Arts "Common ground f o r musicians and ministers, f o r scholars and practitioners" Degrees Offered through t h e Yale School o f Music Master of Music 17~ Artist Diploma Master of Musical Arts 17~ Doctor o f Musical Arts Degrees Offered through Yale Divinity School Master of Arts in Religion r Master of Divinity Master of Sacred Theology Dual and Joint Degrees also are offered through the two schools...
...Those of us who make regular pilgrimages to Italy may feel the t r u t h of Moore's observation, but do we understand it...
...With the exception of the chapters on classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, which would be improved by more depth and better focus, the volume as a whole succeeds surprisingly well in creating a unified narrative...
...All in all, one might say that this volume reads Vatican II and, indeed, the whole doctrinal tradition in the light of the Catechism, the Catechism in the light of the teachings of John Paul II, and John Paul II in the light of certain perceptions of what is most needed in the United States today to oppose the "confusion, controversy, and dissent" which the editor thinks the Catechism was chiefly designed to address...
...it is characterized by greater political fragmentation...
...the Age of Baroque and Rococo (t6001796...
...The vindication of hierarchy and authority is a regular theme, with dissent the subject of an often oversimplified treatment in nineteen different places...
...It is impossible to imagine Italy without the backing of layer upon layer of ancient culture, which makes it quite different from other parts of Western Europe and gave Italian society an extra sophistication...
...These "Forgotten Centuries" of foreign domination, economic crises, the Counter Reformation, and the Enlightenment were also centuries of important public and private artistic patronage...
...authors, most of whom teach in British universities, the volume covers the story of Italy from the reign of the Emperor Augustus to 1994, when the coalition government headed by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi collapsed...
...and the periods 1870-1915...
...With only two exceptions, each historical period is covered by two chapters, one devoted to politics and society, the other to culture...
...The many articles on Jesus Christ are examples of what we used to call dogmatic theology, with few bows to history, ancient or modern...
...The Renaissance spans the rise of independent communes and later city-states in northern and central Italy, the consolidation of the papacy, and the rise of large kingdoms in the south, all to be transformed again when the kings of France and Spain turned Italy into a battleground for their own armies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries...
...the article on membership in the church ignores the most important element in the council's description of full incorporation...
...Around 1347 Petrarch wrote the Secrelum, a dialogue between Saint Augustine, who argues that this life is merely a preparation for death, and Francis (Petrarch), who speaks of his attachment to earthly glory...
...Address inquiries to: Office of Admissions, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 4o9 Prospect St., New Haven, CF o65II PHONE (203) 432-5r80 FAX (203) 432-529 6 E-MAII, ruth.lackstrom@yale.edu WEBSrrE http://www.yale.edu/ism Commonweal 3 8 April 10, 1998...
...Postmodernism has been characterized in part as ethical and cultural relativism, linked to a disregard for the past...
...All Institute students are awarded partial or full tuition scholarships...
...The cultural complement to Mallett's piece, George t tolmes's chapter on "Renaissance Culture," explains why the Italian Renaissance remains one of the high points of human creativity and why going to Italy is like going home...
...That history is not only longer and richer than most other nations possess...
...It is especially good at both highlighting the interplay among economics, politics, and culture during particular eras, and linking all the periods through the interrelated themes of politics and artistic creativity...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 7
