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Ernesto Buonaiuti and Il programa dei modernisti Giacomo Losito1 The Composition of the Work and Reactions to its Publication O n 28 October 1907—nearly a month and a half after the appearance of Pascendi dominici gregis—an anonymous response to the encyclical was published at Rome as the Giornale d’Italia had announced it would be.2 Over the following twenty days all twelve hundred copies of Il programma dei modernisti were sold;3 the following year the work was also translated into French, English and German.4 On 31 October, l’Osservatore romano published a decree dated 29 October, from the Vicar of Rome—Cardinal Pietro Respighi (1843-1912)— announcing the pontifical excommunication of the text’s authors and forbidding, under pain of “mortal sin,” buying, selling or possessing it in his diocese. A week later the Civiltà cattolica would suggest the priest Ernesto Buonaiuti (1881-1946), a librarian serving the Congregation of the Visitation and director of the Rivista storico-critica di scienze teologische of Rome, as one of the probable authors of the Programma dei modernisti ribelli.5 71 1. Translated by C.J.T. Talar and Elizabeth Emery. 2. Il programma dei modernisti: riposta all’enciclica di Pio X Pascendi dominici gregis (Rome: Società Internazionale Scientifico-Religiosa Editrice, 1908 [sic]); cf. The Letter Preface of Guglielmo Quadrotto [sic] to the French translation of the Programma: Le Programme des modernistes: réplique a l’encyclique de Pie X “Pascendi Dominici gregis” (Paris: Nourry, 1908), v. Guglielmo Quadrotta was born in 1888 and died nearly a century later. He was a disciple of Ernesto Buonaiuti and also the Italian publisher of the Programma. A former seminarian, he made his career as a journalist and trade-unionist; he set about reconciling Christianity and socialism. 3. Cf. Letter from Buonaiuti to Houtin, 25 November 1907, in “Carteggio Buonaiuti-Houtin, in Fonti e documenti, 1 (Urbino: Istituto di Storia dell’Università di Urbino, 1972), 42. 4. The Programme of Modernism: a reply to the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, translated by George Tyrrell, with an introduction by A.L. Lilley (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1908); Programm der italienischen Modernisten: Eine Antwort auf d. Enzyklika Pascendi Dominici gregis (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1908). 5. Cf. Civiltà cattolica IV (1907): 385-404, especially 393-394. Recent historical studies have established that the response of Italian Modernists to Pascendi, particularly its philosophical and theological sections, was principally Buonaiuti’s work.6 Only the two chapters concerning exegesis were written by Umberto Fracassini,7 contacted by Buonaiuti after Francesco Mari’s8 withdrawal, since the latter had decided to publish separately theses more radical than Fracassini’s. But later, since Buonaiuti had fleshed out the exposition of the biblical problems, Fracassini did not want to recognize the pages of the Programma as his own thought.9 The outline of the work had been agreed upon by the two clerics along with the Barnabite Giovanni Semeria.10 However, not having been able to revise the final text of the work—so eager was Buonaiuti to bring the common enterprise to a swift conclusion—neither Fracassini nor Semeria recognized their true thoughts in the Programma’s pages.11 It is also necessary to recall that, in the agitation following the initial presentation of Pascendi in the newspapers on 16 September, Buonaiuti was upset by the encyclical ; he had regarded it as having assailed his deepest convictions and his hopes to 72 U.S. Catholic Historian 6. Cf. Letter from Buonaiuti to von Hugel (6 December 1907), cited by Lorenzo Bedeschi, “Il processo del Saint’Uffizio contro i modernisti romani” in Fonti e documenti 7 (Urbino: Istituto di Storia dell’Università di Urbino, 1978), 24n. 7. Umberto Fracassini (1862-1950). Like Buonaiuti a student at the Roman Pontifical Seminary, in 1903 named consultor of the Biblical Commission, but after Leo XIII’s death he was obliged to return to his diocese of Perugia, where he was named professor and eventually even Superior of the Seminary. In July of 1907 he was forced to relinquish his post following the apostolic visit to his seminary conducted the preceding year. He then retired with his brother, who was pastor of a...

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