"Pouring Jewish Water into Fascist Wine": Untold Stories of (Catholic) Jews from the Archive of Mussolini's Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi by Robert Aleksander Maryks (review)

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI made available to scholars documents from the Vatican Secret Archives for the period of Pius XI's pontificate (1922-1939). Among the most contentious issues for Italian historians was the Vatican's position and role regarding the racial legislation introduced by Mussolini during the fall of 1938. Two important books on this subject, based upon the new documentation, have been published in the past three years: Giovanni Sale, Le Leggi razziali in Italia e il vaticano; and Valerio De Cesaris, Vaticano, fascismo e questione razziale. Beyond these monographs, countless journal articles and newspaper features have appeared as well, in large part because of the seemingly stark contrast between the fierce opposition to the racial laws on the part of Pius XI and the compliant attitude assumed by his successor Eugenio Pacelli/Pius XII. Related to his opposition to antisemitism, Pius XI had two other major concerns, one political, the other theological. The first had to do with Mussolini's violation (vulnus) of the 1929 Lateran Accords guaranteeing the Church full autonomy in matters concerning family relations and marriage. The second concern was that severing the Hebraic roots of Catholicism risked the possibility of transforming the universal faith into a Rome-based national religion dominated by Fascism—or even of opening the door to the German-inspired Aryan Jesus concept.

Despite the common view of the Vatican as a unified, hierarchical institution, there were deep divisions at the highest levels relating to Pius XI's position on antisemitism and his uncompromising opposition to Mussolini. Head of the Jesuit Order Wlodzimierz Ledóchowski, by virtually all accounts a committed antisemite, upon learning of Pius XI's intentions vis-à-vis the racial laws, remarked that the Pope had gone mad. Pius XI took neither Ledóchowski nor Pacelli into his confidence when he asked the young American cleric John La Farge to write an encyclical condemning racism (Humani generis unitas). That document was finished by the time of Pius XI's death, but was immediately suppressed by Pacelli once the latter became pope.

Italian scholarship on Fascist racial laws and the Vatican has yet to find ample resonance in America. David Kertzer has a book forthcoming on the subject; it almost certainly will be far more critical towards the Vatican than anything that has appeared in Italy. Robert Aleksander Maryks' important book, "Pouring Jewish Water into Fascist Wine," is therefore especially timely. The primary aim of this volume is to offer readers a critical edition of petitions made to the Fascist government mostly by converted Italian Jews, for either "discrimination" or "aryanization" (the former shielded mainly "Catholic Jews" from some of the harsher provisions of the racial legislation; the latter meant that the individual would no longer be considered "of the Jewish race"). Of the thousands of such petitions, Maryks reproduces forty-four in both the original Italian and English translation, and provides some background information on each case. Conceding that these petitions constitute "just a proverbial drop in the ocean," he alludes to no criteria governing his selection of files, though Maryks assures us they are broadly representative. It would appear that this is indeed the case, though only specialists would be able to go beyond a rather diffuse, impressionistic sense of who the petitioners were, using more precise details concerning each individual's family status, political affiliations, Fascist associations, etc., to place them in context.

A more important contribution, in my view, is the author's biographical sketch of the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, in whose private archives the petitions were found. The documents had been sent to him by various Church officials throughout Italy, and he in turn forwarded them to the government with his comments and recommendations. Though Tacchi Venturi was...