Vescovi, clero e cura pastorale: Studi sulla diocesi di Parma alla fine dell’Ottocento (review)

Vescovi, clero e cura pastorale: Studi sulla diocesi di Parma alla fine dell'Ottocento. By Angelo Manfredi. [Analecta Gregoriana, Vol. 278. Series Facultatis Historiae Ecclesiasticae: sectio B, n. 37.] (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana. 1999. Pp. 774. $43.00.)

Since 1930 the Pontifical Gregorian University has published the Analecta Gregoriana, a series devoted to the research of professors and doctoral graduates. Don Angelo Manfredi of Lodi, born where the Po River divides "white" Lombardy from "red" Emilia, published number 278 in this series. It received the Bellarmine Prize for 1999.

Manfredi combed the Parma Diocesan Archives, the Vatican Secret Archives, and the State Central Archives for information on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this period Parma's laity first abandoned making their Easter duty, and then they stopped baptizing their children, marrying in church, and obtaining Christian burial. The "house of the people" and mutual aid societies replaced the parish. Socialism developed, and radicals oversaw the unrest which culminated in the great agrarian strike of 1908. Persons detached from their native hills did not immediately become attached to an urban, social fabric. The region's passage from a prevalently rural society to an industrial one was fatal for Christianity.

Denying "the end of Christianity" in Parma, Manfredi believed that historical perspective and new data through computerization would show that alienation from the Church was a very complex phenomenon. He devoted a chapter to diocesan seminaries, discussing how the social backgrounds, geographical origins, educational preparation, and piety of the clergy contributed to the crisis. Concerned about the economy and its effect on religion, he delved into how the state's laws on the liquidation of church property affected religiosity already in the 1860's. He probed the history of the diocese and its bishops, and researched episcopal pastorals and parish reports to the bishops. He concluded that religious practice was higher in the 1880's than in previous decades.

Parma's two bishops, Giovanni Andrea Miotti and Francesco Magani (1882-1907), provided contrasting leadership. Miotti was conciliatory toward Italian unification, but followed Pope Leo XIII's pastoral directives on Christian education in order to form new Catholic lay leadership. Magani was authoritarian and combative. He was willing to confront masons, socialists, and even moderate Catholics, opposing the establishment of legitimate parish-based enterprises like rural savings banks and sports clubs. He demanded control over all reforms in liturgy and hymnody, and threatened non-co-operative clergy with sanctions. In his last years, Magani's actions caught the attention of the Vatican, which entertained a proposal to retire him to Rome. Yet Manfredi's statistics show that Magani ordained 185 priests to Miotti's 119.

Through the use of the computer, the author ascertained the names of those excommunicated for buying former church property and the size and occupations of the Jewish community owning confiscated church lands. He was able to determine the extent of pastoral visits, the number of vocations among poor and rich, the consequences of obligatory military service on seminarians, the number of Freemason lodges, and the extent of anticlericalism in the newspapers.

The volume abounds in tables, graphs, and charts. Maps of the Diocese of Parma cover about ten pages. The index of personal names makes the volume user-friendly, and the index of geographical names is necessary to understand parish locations. Appendices of church documents in both Latin and Italian occupy forty pages, and the bibliography takes up another thirty pages.

Manfredi's work on the Church in Parma around 1900 looks definitive and has the feel of a reference book, but its real value was its challenging the conventional wisdom about its subject matter.

James J. Divita
Marian College of Indianapolis

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