In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Notes and Comments

Vatican Exhibition in San Marino

In the State Museum of the Republic of San Marino, the Vatican Museums are presenting the exhibition "The Man, the Face, the Mystery." The works on display from the Vatican collections document how artists from antiquity until today have represented human facial features in an attempt to represent the soul. The medieval and modern sections feature many depictions of Christ and the saints. The last section of the exhibition is dedicated to the "Holy Face" of Jesus Christ and includes a copy of the "acheiropoieta" from the Lateran and of the "Veronica" from the Pontifical Sacristy, the painting Sainte Face of George Rouault, and works of several twentieth-century artists.

Ratzinger Prize

The Ratzinger Prize, founded in March of this year by the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation and funded in part by the royalties from Pope Benedict XVI's books and by private donations, was presented to three writers for excellence in theological scholarship. Manlio Simonetti, an eighty-five-year-old Italian layman who is an expert on ancient Christian literature and theology, was one of the first winners of this prize, valued at $70,000.

Libraries and Archives

The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana is in discussions with the Library of Congress and UNESCO to create the World Digital Library that aims to collect on a single site those rare or unique documents that tell the history of the world's cultures. The Vatican Library also is participating in a project to reconstitute virtually the ancient library of the monastery of Lorsch by allowing 142 manuscripts in its Palatini collection to be digitized. It is participating as well in the project of the Chinese National Committee for the Compilation of Qing History to digitize some 1300 items for a total of 100,000 folios that deal with Chinese history from the seventeenth to early-twentieth centuries and are preserved in the Vatican Library.

Daughters of Charity New Province of St. Louise USA Archives to Be Located in Emmitsburg, Maryland

Four North American provinces of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul merged on July 31, 2011, and formed the Province of St. Louise USA with administrative offices located in St. Louis, Missouri. The archival collections [End Page 883] of the former provinces (Albany, New York; Emmitsburg, Maryland; Evansville, Indiana; and St. Louis, Missouri) will be consolidated in a new 20,000-square-foot facility located within the former St. Joseph's Provincial House, in Emmitsburg. The new archives also will house records of the Province of St. Louise. The facility will include a state-of-the-art repository, exhibit areas, and a research and reading room. Part of a multiphase construction project now underway, the archives is expected to be ready for transfer of records in late summer 2012, with opening anticipated in 2013. The committee planning the new archives is chaired by Sister Margaret John Kelly, D.C.; members include archivists John Diefenderfer; Lois Martin; Sister Betty Ann McNeil, D.C.; and Carole Prietto. For more information, contact Sister McNeil, the archivist, at mcneilsrba@doc.org, or visit the Web site thedaughtersofcharity.org.

Conferences and Lectures

On October 6-8, 2011, a Maryknoll Centennial Symposium under the title "Church in Mission: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" will be held at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. It will explore new perspectives of faith from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. For more information, contact Greg Darr at gdarr@maryknoll.org.

On October 12, 2011, a symposium will be held to evaluate the book of Paolo Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino: Un'epoca della storia della Chiesa [Storia, 42] (Brescia, 2010). The speakers include Prodi, Maria Teresa Fattori, Giuseppe Ruggeri, Fabio Milana, and Patrizio Foresta. For more information, visit the Web site www.fscire.it.

On March 8-10, 2012, the eighteenth biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies will take place in Sarasota, Florida. The program committee invites 250-word abstracts of proposed twenty-minute papers on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, and religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Interdisciplinary work is particularly appropriate to the conference's broad historical and disciplinary scope. Planned...

pdf

Share