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The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 139-140



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Book Review

Per la storia del Pontificio Istituto Orientale:
Saggi sull'istituzione, i suoi uomini e l'Oriente Cristiano


Per la storia del Pontificio Istituto Orientale: Saggi sull'istituzione, i suoi uomini e l'Oriente Cristiano. By Vincenzo Poggi, S.J. [Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 263.] (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale. 2000. Pp. 448. Paperback.)

This volume of the Orientalia Christiana Analecta (263) is a collection of previously published materials on the foundation of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome; on the development of its specialties in Oriental liturgy, Syriac patrology, Eastern Christian spirituality, the history of the Council of Florence, Eastern Catholic canon law, and Eastern Christian archaeology; and on the staff of the Institute that made these developments possible.

When Benedict XV founded the Institute on October 15, 1917, he built upon the work of Leo XIII for the Christian East and created a new Congregation and a new institute of studies that would work solely on the questions of the Eastern Churches. Father Antoine Delpuch ran the Institute in its first academic year with the title of acting president while the ultimate responsibility for the Institute lay in the hands of Cardinal Niccolo Marini, the cardinal secretary of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches. The first faculty consisted of distinguished professors taken from the diocesan clergy, the Assumptionists, the Benedictines, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits. On September 14, 1922, Pius XI entrusted the Institute to the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit General Ledochowski placed Michel d'Herbigny, S.J., as head of the Institute. His interesting career was treated in Antoine Wenger's Rome-Moscou (Paris, 1987). In June, 1924, d'Herbigny announced that Pius XI wished that there be a chair for the study of Islamic institutions at the Institute and former Muslim Father Paul Mulla (Mehemet Ali Mulla Zade) was called upon and taught at the Institute for thirty-five years. For years the Institute consisted of only one department, Oriental Ecclesiastical Studies, with three branches, theological, liturgical-canonical, and historical. In 1963 the Pontifical Gregorian University became the means for granting academic degrees in Eastern Canon Law until in 1971 a separate department of Eastern Canon Law, the only one in the world, was created at the Institute.

Some eminent pioneers of Eastern Christian studies could be found on the faculty listings. Guillaume de Jerphanion, S.J., contributed a five-volume work on the rock-churches of Cappadocia and opened a new chapter in Christian archaeology. Irenee Hausherr, S.J., proposed that the spiritual solutions that the [End Page 139] Eastern ascetics and monks discovered for the problems of incessant prayer, obedience, and the discernment of spirits could be applied as substantially correct models for the contemporary world. Liturgical scholarship continues to blossom at the Institute under the watchful eyes of Father Robert Taft, S.J., and Miguel Arranz, S.J., whose predecessors included such scholars as Ildefonso Schuster, O.S.B., Jean-Michel Hanssens, S.J., Alfons Raes, S.J. (later prefect of the Vatican Library), and Juan Mateos, S.J. Georg Hofman, S.J., contributed breakthrough historical studies on ecclesiology. Joseph Gill, S.J., garnered praise for his work on the Council of Florence, which appeared originally in English in 1959. Wilhelm de Vries, S.J. (1904-1997), though he drew fire for his criticism of papal policies on Eastern Church reunification in his book Rome and the Patriarchates of the East, was recently praised posthumously by Cardinal Achille Silvestrini for his pioneering work in ecumenism.

Although a collection of this sort inevitably involves repetition, as the author and compiler confesses in his preface, Father Poggi has succeeded in creating a useful volume. Not only will institutional historians find these materials pertinent, but also archivists will be pleased with the bibliographic treatment of manuscript collections, particularly the Slavic manuscript collection (which has been digitized recently by the Mormon archival interests). Although one might argue about the pertinence of a few of these articles, the...

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