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  • Sant’Anselmo in Rome: College and University. From the Beginnings to the Present Dayby Pius Engelbert, O.S.B.
  • Joel Rippinger O.S.B.
Sant’Anselmo in Rome: College and University. From the Beginnings to the Present Day. By Pius Engelbert, O.S.B. Translated by Henry O’Shea, O.S.B. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 319. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-8146-3713-5.)

Pius Engelbert, former abbot of Gerleve Abbey and longtime professor of ecclesiastical history at the Pontifical Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo, has rendered a service in writing this book. Liturgical Press also merits gratitude from the reader for providing Henry Shea’s translation of the German original and packaging it in a durable, elegant edition. The work was first published in 1988 for the centennial observance of Sant’Anselmo and was given an update in 2012.

Capable historian that he is, Engelbert situates the origin of Sant’Anselmo in the context of the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII. He adroitly uses the founding charter of 1887 to point out the pope’s desire to see Sant’Anselmo serve as an ecumenical lifeline to the Eastern Churches, even as it was to provide for an appropriately Benedictine school of higher studies. All of this coincided with the intent of Leo XIII to centralize the organization of the Benedictine Confederation under the auspices of the Vatican. The first years of the project were precarious ones, and this is where the author provides some valuable research. Property for the buildings of the school was purchased only in 1890, on Rome’s Aventine Hill, a site that had roots of monasticism going back to Cluny and early abbeys of the twelfth century. Professors and students, after spending several years in various sites in Rome, moved into the residence on the Aventine in October 1896.

It is striking for the American reader to see that some of the most avid supporters of this venture were from the United States. In particular, Abbot Boniface Wimmer of St. Vincent’s in Pennsylvania saw the prospect of an international school and community as the renewed vision of his own house of St. Elizabeth in Rome, established several decades earlier. St. Vincent’s would soon send two professors, three students, and a generous financial donation for the new Sant’Anselmo. The American presence at Sant’Anselmo in these early years is notable. Adalbert Miller of St. Vincent was the prefect of studies and the first prior. Thomas Weikert of St. Meinrad, appointed one of the first members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, was an instructor. Unfortunately, both of these men died suddenly in 1906. Another American, Patrick Cummins of Conception Abbey, was named rector in 1920 and provided five years of leadership. His confrere at Conception Abbey, Augustine Bachofen, was a renowned professor in that same era.

The dominant shape of the administration and faculty in the early years at Sant’Anselmo, however, was German. This was especially through the Beuronese Congregation. The first two abbot primates, Hildebrand de Hemptinne and Fidelis von Stozingen, were Beuronese. The Beuronese also contributed the core of lay brothers who helped in the maintenance of the school in its formative years. This German presence was to grow even in the face of the challenges of World War I and World War II. The only time in its history when the entire academic [End Page 632]life ceased to exist were the years 1915–18 as a result of the war. Even as the fledgling entity was facing its challenges from world events, Engelbert notes the emergence of a number of questions that were to recur throughout Sant’Anselmo’s history: the need to recruit a sizable number of professors from monasteries to staff the faculty, the need to provide a model of monastic observance and formation for the younger monks of the House, and the need to find a mode of governance that best suited the institution.

For Engelbert, the decades of the 1930s and 1950s were seen as a type of golden age. Enrollment increased, and influential professors held sway. He rightly points out how indispensable the financial donations of the American...

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