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Chapter 16 History on Trial The Paschini Affair (1941–1979) 318 We have seen that in 1941, to mark the tricentennial of Galileo’s death, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences commissioned Pio Paschini to write a book on Galileo’s life and work and their historical background and significance. We have also seen that although in 1943 Paschini managed to make a small contribution to the silent rehabilitation of Galileo occasioned by that tricentennial , this book was not published until 1964.1 Now it is time to discuss the reasons for the delay, the reasons for the posthumous publication, and the controversy generated by such a publication.2 16.1 Silencing a Historian: Paschini’s Letters (1941–1946) Paschini was born in 1878 near Udine in the northeastern region of Italy. In 1900 he was ordained a priest,3 and in 1906 he started teaching Church history at the Udine Seminary.4 His scholarly focus was local Church history . After Pius X condemned sixty-five “modernist” propositions with the encyclical Lamentabili Sane Exitu in 1907,5 Paschini came under suspicion as a modernist sympathizer but did not get into serious trouble.6 In 1913, he was appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at the Roman Seminary (also known as the Lateran University), and he moved to Rome. Paschini earned the appointment over another candidate named Angelo Roncalli, who was under even greater suspicion of modernism;7 Roncalli later became Pope John XXIII. Paschini’s Roman appointment coincided with a reorganization of several Roman seminaries by Pius X. Among other things, the Roman Seminary was supposed to become a national institution. The pope personally chose Paschini, whom he admired for his integrity, scholarship, teaching ability, and orthodoxy; with regard to the latter, by that time Paschini had been able to convince his superiors that he was no modernist.8 When he moved to Rome, Paschini stopped using Latin and started lecturing in Italian in his classes, without disciplinary repercussions. He stayed away from Vatican politics and from careerism. He expanded his scholarly interests from local Udine topics to more general questions of sixteenthcentury Roman ecclesiastical history. In his historical approach, he stayed away from apologetics and fideism. He found little occasion for pastoral work, focusing instead on scholarship and study. He became a good and typical member of what one scholar has called the “holy Roman republic,”9 which included Protestant scholars such as Ludwig von Pastor. In 1919, Paschini took a leading role when the Roman Seminary began sponsoring and publishing a series of Lateran Lectures and the journal Lateranum. This practice, which was soon emulated by many Vatican schools, led to several advancements in his career. In 1932, he was appointed president of the Roman Seminary. During the academic year 1932–1933 he was appointed Privatdozent in modern history at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the (state) University of Rome, at a time when one member of the faculty council was the leading philosopher and Fascist sympathizer Giovanni Gentile.10 In 1937, Paschini became the Vatican representative to the International Commission on the Historical Sciences. And in 1941, he was invited to give a lecture inaugurating the new academic year and celebrating the tenth anniversary of the papal constitution Deus Scientiarum Dominus; the lecture, which was published in L’Osservatore Romano, was relatively progressive and raised some eyebrows.11 When Paschini was approached in November 1941 by the Pontifical Academy about writing a book on Galileo’s life and works, at first he refused since he felt the topic was outside his field. To be sure, the previous year Paschini had published Rome in the Renaissance, which was thoroughly documented and incisively argued and had been well received despite the fact that it was often critical of the Church of that time;12 and this work of ecclesiastical history overlapped chronologically and thematically with the projected Galilean work; but Paschini knew he had no scienti fic background. A revealing glimpse into his attitude is given by a letter he wrote to his friend Msgr. Giuseppe Vale on 4 December 1941, four days after his appointment to the project had been announced at the Academy meeting of 30 November: [175] You may have read in L’Osservatore of this past Monday about the assignment I have been given as regards the life of Galileo. It had been mentioned to me about a few weeks ago by Msgr. Mercati in the name of the Pontifical Academy...

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