"Rerum novarum": Écriture, contenu et réception d'une encyclique (review)

BOOK REVIEWS437 443-457). Since the documentation collected has arisen from the various offices which produced it, the conceptual framework of the present study is based on the organizational structure of the Holy See or central government of the Roman Catholic Church. The present guide is the result of a project undertaken by archivists and historians affiliated with the University of Michigan, at the request of the prefect of the ASV, to facilitate the use of the papal archives by English-speaking scholars . Utilizing modern computer database technology, it provides information on a standardized format on the available documentation produced by the Holy See. In its pages one finds the printout of the database compiled. The guide follows the bureaucratic structure of the Holy See established by Sixtus V (1 585- 1 590), and provides a sevenfold division: Part I: College of Cardinals; Part II: Papal Court; Part III: Roman Curia (including Congregations, Offices, and Tribunals ); Part IV: Apostolic Nunciatures, Internunciatures, and Delegations (from Albania to Zaire); Part V: Papal States (which includes sections on General Administration and Territory under French Occupation, 1809-1814); Part VI: Permanent Commissions; and finally Part VII: Miscellaneous Official Materials and Separate Collections (which includes the family papers of a number of prominent individuals including some popes). The Introduction (pp. xv-xxxiv) provides useful historical insights into the origins, organization, and development of the archives, as well as a brief history of the various agencies producing the documents, placing the subsequent guide in perspective. This is followed by an equally useful section appropriately titled "How to Use This Book" (pp. xxxv-xl), which offers additional advice on how to utilize the wealth of material found in the guide, while listing the four standard guides to the Vatican Archives. A far more complete bibliography is provided in the bibliographical database (pp. 459-503), followed by an Index of Agency Names (pp. 505-521), another of Series Titles (pp. 523-540), and finally a Chronological Index (pp. 541-588). This work will be essential for all English-speaking scholars who plan to do research in the Vatican Archives. It would have made the life of this reviewer much easier—when the Vatican Archives were first opened for the pontificate of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878)— and I rushed to Rome to utilize this important repository. Frank J. Coppa St.John's University, New York "Rerum novarum":Écriture, contenu et réception d'une encyclique. Actes du colloque international organisé par l'École française de Rome et le Greco n° 2 du CNRS (Rome, 18-20 avril 1991). [Collection de l'École française de Rome,Volume 232.] (Rome: École française de Rome. 1997. Pp. 711.) These papers, some slightly updated from their original presentation, are grouped according to a scheme that attends centrally to the very text of Rerum 438BOOK REVIEWS Novarum in three respects: its formation or composition (nine essays), its content or how it was understood by its first readers (nine more), and its reception or realizations over a single,first, generation. French and Italian settings are privileged , though not to the exclusion of Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, French Canada, the Anglo-Saxon world, and Belgium,1 each of which is the object of at least one brief contribution. Two essays are in English, two in Spanish, one in German, and the rest in French and Italian. Most essays are rich with bibliographical information otherwise likely to be known only to regional specialists . The volume has a full index of persons and authors and handy resumes of the single contributions in index-card format. Andrea Riccardi describes the mythic proportions which Rerum Novarum has assumed, beginning with Quadragesimo Anno of 1931. Pius XI called it a Magna Charta and also applied to it (in QA 22) an image from Is. 1 1:21, "an ensign raised among the nations." Giuseppe Maria Viscardi (p. 617) suggests that a scene in Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest (1936), where an older priest reminisces about the galvanizing effect Rerum Novarum had on him when it appeared, insinuated itself into the minds of historians as a sort of working hypothesis . This could result in a judgment of...