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Reviewed by:
  • Storia delle Chiese di Sicilia
  • Frank J. Coppa
Storia delle Chiese di Sicilia. Edited by Gaetano Zito. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2009. Pp. 766. €37,00. ISBN 978-8-820-98171-6.)

This massive and scholarly volume on the history of the Church in Sicily provides information and insights on the institution's development and activities from its arrival and dispersion on the island to the third millennium. It is a historical as well as a theological account whose reconstruction of events pays particular attention to the impact and influence of political and military events that swept over the island and influenced its ecclesiastical development. It is competently edited by Gaetano Zito, a priest of the Archdiocese of Catania; instructor of church history at the Studio Teological San Paolo, over which he presides; and vice president of the Ecclesiastical Archival Association. These responsibilities, interests, and attributes are reflected in Zito's wide array of past presentations and publications, including those on the martyrdom of St. Vitus—believed to have been born in Sicily—and a study of St. Agatha of Catania.

In the foreword of the present volume (pp. 7-11), Zito explains that while collaborating on a three-volume work on the dioceses of Italy (2007-08), the participants recognized the need for a separate examination of the churches of Sicily, whose structure would parallel that of the Italian study. Indeed, before turning to the Sicilian Church, there is a short historical note on the Italian dioceses (pp. 13-26), written by Emanuele Boaga, which serves as a transition from Italian to Sicilian ecclesiastical developments. This is followed by Zito's wide-ranging narrative account of church developments in Sicily over the centuries within the broader context of political, social, economic, and national events (pp. 27-165). This is the section that will prove to be most accessible for the general reader.

The volume combines a broad range of events with much narrower concerns and developments. The material catalogued in the series of appendices that follow Zito's narrative, for example, will undoubtedly appeal primarily to specialists. One such appendix lists the male monasteries and convents in 1650, providing information on their location, the order to which they belonged, and their foundation (pp. 169-217). Another focuses on Carmelite convents in Sicily from the 1200s to 2008 (pp. 219-29), while a third contains the male religious institutes on the island in 2005 and their location (pp. 240-57).Very likely, the list of Sicilian saints and Sicilians who have been beatified (pp. 238-39) will be of greater interest to the general public than the material found in the other appendices.

The final section of the volume, which concentrates on the eighteen dioceses of Sicily, encompasses the greater part of the work—some 500 pages rich in detail. This section has entries on Acireale, Agrigento, Caltagirone, Caltanisetta, Catania, Cefalù, Mazara del Vallo, Messina, Monreale, Nicosia, Noto, Palermo, Patti, Piana degli Albanesi, Piazza Armerina, Ragusa, Siracusa, and Trapani. Individual specialists compiled these; Zito has drafted the [End Page 758] accounts on Catania and Nicosia. These entries more or less follow the general guidelines established by the editor and vary in length from that on Palermo of more than eighty pages (pp. 579-663) to the less than twenty pages on Trapani (pp. 747-63). It would have been helpful if the editor had included a conclusion summarizing the findings in the eighteen dioceses and a comparative analysis of developments therein, a useful addition for both specialist and general reader.

Frank J. Coppa
St. John's University, NY
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