La Chiesa nella storia by Giuseppe Alberigo (review)

BOOK REVIEWS613 With his excursion into modern Spanish Carmelite history, Velasco treats briefly a number of topics not widely known outside the Carmelite order, e.g., the devastation of the male and female Carmelite houses and the martyrdom of fifty-seven friars and four nuns during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 (pp. 390—393). For a somewhat longer and more detailed coverage of this devastating episode in the modern history of religious persecution, see Joachim Smet, The Carmelites: AHistory oftheBrothers ofOurLady ofMount Carmel, Vol. 4: The Modern Period, 1750-1950 (Darien, Illinois: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1985), pp. 223-233. The three volumes of Velasco's history of the Carmelite provinces in Spain as well as his condensed manual contain at the end of each volume (unpaginated ) a collection of photographs of Carmelite architectural remains, plans, religious decorations, and in some instances notable Carmelite men and women. Anyone who has tried to supply such illustrative material for historical texts will appreciate Velasco's tireless dedication to giving his readers a sense of immediacy with Carmelite life as it has been lived in Spain with its many variations since the thirteenth century. The Institute of Carmelite Studies and the Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos are to be commended for allowingVelasco so much scope for his unbelievably extensive research into Iberian Carmelitana . Keith J. Egan Saint Mary's College Notre Dame, Indiana La Chiesa nella storia. By Giuseppe Alberigo. [Biblioteca di cultura religiosa, 51] (Brescia: Paideia Editrice. 1988. Pp. 335. Lire 35,000 paperback.) The author is director of the Istituto di Scienze Religiose in Bologna and editor of the historico-theological review Cristianesimo nella storia, a periodical of outstanding scholarly import also in consideration of interests associated with the Transalpine schools of theology. The present book is fundamentally a history of ecclesiology in the second Christian millennium, that is, from the Late Middle Ages to Vatican Council H, so that a subtitle indicating the chronological boundaries would have been in order. This volume contrasts vividly and sharply the ecclesiastical trends originating in the pontificate ofJohn XXIII and the council with the major lines of the preceding ages. Professor Alberigo, who has been teaching these matters for several decades in the University of Bologna and is a co-editor of the Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta (latest edition: Bologna, 1991), has produced a substantial number of thoroughly articulate studies on historico-theological issues of the councils and especially on ecclesiology from the Council of Florence (1431-1445) to Vatican Council II. The present work deserves to be treasured by both Catholic and Protestant theologians and professors of 614 BOOK REVIEWS ecclesiology. It is difficult to resist the temptation to underline his points regarding the re-evaluation of the universal priesthood of the people of God and the reappraisal of the sensusfidelium. Yet a sort of pessimism, often too polemically pungent, with regard to the entire ecclesiology of bygone ages deserves further criticism; indeed, expressions such as "regime sinodale," "antico regime di comunione," "cristianesimo occidentale," "cattolicesimo romano," "obbligatorietà sociale del cristianesimó" (social mandatory status of Christianity) suggest caution, since they promote a theological construction of thought often cleverly political and quite contradictory of the ecumenical and irenical spirit otherwise continually recommended. Ecumenical respect for Protestant tenets or organizational elements of the Eastern Churches may not always require so much rigor in criticizing facets of Western Christianity or of the Roman tradition. The re-evaluation of the pontificate ofJohn XXIII goes, it seems, beyond the proper limits, as we read that "above all, then, the pleasure of and need for historical research were rediscovered" (p. 7), as if these had been forgotten after the Council of Trent. One must regret that with Alberigo's criticism of "Roman Catholicism" in the sense ofwhat is dominated by the Papacy (today's word is "The Vatican") no attention is paid to the critical work of the Roman historical school; I mean principally the school of the Vatican Library, the Vatican Archives, and the documentary art collections in the historical research prompted, with Theodor Mommsen, in the monumental contributions of Giovanni Battista De Rossi, Ludwig von Pastor, Achille Ratti, and Giovanni Mercati. The meager appreciation of Ambrogio Traversari, with the...