Nunzio in una terra di frontiera: Achille Ratti, poi Pio XI in Polonia (1918–1921) = Nuncjusz na ziemiach pogranicza: Achilles Ratti, późniejszy Pius XI, w Polsce (1918–1921) ed. by Quirino Alessandro Bortolato and Mirosław Lenart (review)

Pope Pius XI (reigning 1922–1939) is known as the interwar pope and held the Church’s highest position during one of the most politically fraught periods of the modern era. Italy experienced a rise in fascism but not before Ratti had concluded an agreement with Italy in 1929 ending the long stalemate existing since the Risorgimento. The rise of communism in Russia produced hardships for Pius’ Church as did the great political turmoil in Mexico, which often expressed itself as openly anticlerical, in the form of murders. The 1930s featured the rise of Nazism and along with it, Antisemitism. But Ratti had important training for such events beginning in the summer of 1918 when he was appointed papal nuncio in Poland, a position he held until 1921. It was a critical time for Poland and its eventual independence. He befriended Marshall Jozef Piłsudski (explored in an interesting and important contribution by Marek Kornat), but many Polish clergy distrusted him, an aspect of his mission that is slightly overlooked in this otherwise fine collaborative work. The decision by Polish and Italian scholars to devote a monograph to this period in Ratti’s life was a good one. The thirteen articles written or translated into both Polish and Italian address this period in Ratti’s career as it relates to Poland and his mission. For example, there is Tadeusz Krawcyzk’s lengthy and comprehensive article on the attitude of Polish society to Ratti, even if much of the work deals with the attitudes of the various spheres of the Polish Church (as opposed to society as such). As well, Piotr Gorecki offers an informative synthesis from a variety of sources about Ratti’s role in Silesia during his office of nuncio.

On the topic of sources, this work is strong in its use of original materials, mainly in the form of official papal writings. At least half of the contributions employ such first-hand documents in a meaningful way. For example, Dominik Zamiatala discusses the views of Ratti found in journals and newspapers. In terms of the secondary literature, with a few exceptions, most authors confine themselves to Italian sources in the case of Italian scholars and Polish ones for the Polish writers, which, at times, results in dated bibliographies, and thus a dated story line, such as Bernard Ardura’s opening overview chapter. Surprisingly, this book lacks the recently published (2013) work by Emma Fattorini, Diplomazia senza eserciti: le relazioni internazionali della chiesa di Pio XI, which is devoted to diplomacy between the wars and employs Ratti’s letters. This omission is emblematic of the book’s weakness more broadly: there is no real attempt by many of the writers to engage with the historiography or the larger, important events mentioned at the outset of this review. Quirino Bortolato’s chapter on Ratti, the alpinist, and Jan Kopiec’s contribution on the reintroduction of the papal nunciature in Poland are both very interesting but based largely on the recently published secondary literature, which appear to cover these topics more thoroughly. In Gianni Venditti’s case, his previously published book-length work on Ratti’s diary is whittled down to just over seven pages of summary on his feelings on the resurrection of Poland.

The most interesting contributions deal with Ratti’s experience in Poland and how it affected or impinged upon larger areas, such as the post-World War I Church, as in the case of the brief chapter by Gianpaolo Romanato, or...