Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae, Tomus LVII: Achilles Ratti (1918-1921), Volumen 2 (1 VIII-11 XI 1918), ed. by Stanislaus Wilk, S.D.B (review)

136BOOK REVIEWS Thomist (reason). CathoUcism was certainly at the core of everything Chesterton eventuaUy stood for.Yet his fuU stature as a cultural figure—especiaUy the poUtical and social ideas he articulated—need to be more fuUy developed than Pearce has managed. Jay P. Corrin Boston University Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae^oraus LVII:Achilles Ratti (1918-1921),Volumen 2 (1 VIII- 1 1 XI 1918). Edited by StanislausWUk, S.D.B. (Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum. 1996. Pp. xü, 423.) This volume comprises the second installment Ln a project to publish the archival documents regarding the mission ofAchiUe Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, as nuncio to Poland in the initial years of that country's revival from more than a century of foreign rule at the end ofWorldWar I. (See the review ofVolume I ante, LXXXII [April, 1996] , 278-280.) It stands as the latest entry in an ambitious and useful series devoted to reproducing the papers of the papal nunciature in Poland since its initiation in the sixteenth century. Ratti ranks as the most significant oftheseVatican envoys toWarsaw, both for his subsequent elevation to the throne of St. Peter and the intrinsic interest of his busy and controversial three years in Poland at one ofthe most critical times in contemporary European history. OriginaUy named as apostoUc visitor to a PoUsh state created in 1916 as a sateUite of the Central Powers, this former prefect of the Vatican Library stayed on as nuncio to the fully independent Poland that emerged once the war ended in the coUapse of Germany and the Habsburg Empire. These pages assemble nearly two hundred documents from the last three months ofthe war, still in the first stage ofRatti's PoUsh residence.That amounts to roughly two items a day, and in fact some of them deal with trivialities and might have been permitted to continue slumbering in the archives with no loss to posterity. Still, Ratti found more man enough weighty matters to occupy his hours during these hectic weeks, as this coUection attests. NaturaUyhis primary concern was the condition of the CathoUc Church in the districts that made up the rump Poland set up by Berlin andVienna, then badly in need of restoration after lengthy persecution at the hands of Russia, and much of the correspondence centers on the attempt to resume normal ecclesiastical life. By necessity, he also accorded close attention to the nearby Russian revolution and civU war, which exposed the Church to the threat of Bolshevism even as it seemed to open tantaUzing possibilities for an eastward extension ofCathoUcism now that Orthodoxy no longer could rely on the political support of a tsardom. Overshadowing it aU, the World War reached its stormy conclusion at first an oddly distant presence in the seemingly calm Polish front, then an abrupt tempest BOOK REVIEWS137 that swept away the Central Powers and their protectorate, leaving a chaotic but free Poland in its wake. Nearly aU of these documents are gleaned from the recentiy opened Ratti papers in the Vatican Secret Archives, the bulk of them in ItaUan and Latin, the remainder in PoUsh, French, and German.The list of Ratti's eminent correspondents includes Pope Benedict XV; his Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri; the nuncio to Munich, Eugenio PaceUi, the future Pius XII; and the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon, as weU as the leading dignitaries of the PoUsh Church. Like the companion volumes in this series, this item is not intended for a wide audience, but scholars with a serious interest in Pius XI and modern PoUsh church history wUl find in it a wealth of information. Neal Pease University ofWisconsin-Milwaukee Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic: Religion and Politics in Salamanca , 1930-1936. By Mary Vincent. [Oxford Historical Monographs.] (New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. 1966. Pp. xiii, 286. $70.00.) This fresh new study of one of the most Catholic provinces in Spain during the Second Republic is composed of two different but related parts.The first half treats the structure and practice of Catholicism in Salamanca province, whUe the second half deals with politics in Salamanca—increasingly dominated by the CathoUc Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA)—during...