^{page 28 note 1} Gilson, Etienne, The Spirit of Thomism (New York, 1966), pp. 84–102Google Scholar; Mclnerny, Ralph M., Thomism in the Age of Renewal (Garden City, 1966), passim.Google Scholar

^{page 28 note 2} For examples see Acta Apostolicae Sedis, VI (1914), pp. 336–41, 383–86.Google Scholar

^{page 30 note 1} Sarto's, Bishop first address to his diocese typically refers to the importance of Thomistic philosophy. See his Prima lettera pastorale (Treviso, 1885), p. 27.Google Scholar

^{page 30 note 2} Giordani, Igino, Pio X, un prete di campagna (Turin, 1951), pp. 13–14Google Scholar; Marchesan, Angelo, Papa Pio X nella sua vita e nella sua parola (Rome, 1905), p. 87.Google Scholar Marchesan's volume is probably the only “authorized” biography of the Pope: it was written by his secretary. Pius X read and “corrected” the first draft.

^{page 30 note 3} The remark of De Maistre about Romantic philosophy applies to the Neo-Thomistic current as well: “Nous ne voulons pas la contrerévolution mais le contraire de la révolution.” Quoted in Karl Mannheim, Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology (New York, 1953), p. 80.Google Scholar

^{page 31 note 1} For some of the most significant historiographical reflections on Italian Neo-Thomism see Croce, Benedetto, “I neo in filosofial”, in: La Critica, XXXIX (1941), pp. 289–95Google Scholar; Gentile, Giovanni, “Neotomisti”, in Opera Omnia (Florence, 1957), XXXIIIGoogle Scholar, passim; Masnovo, Amato, “Il prof. G. Gentile e il Tomismo italiano dal 1850 al 1900”, in: Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, IV (1912), pp. 115–25, 260–69, 646–49Google Scholar; Masnovo, “Il neotomismo in Italia dopo il 1870”, ibid., XVI (1924), pp. 97–108; Masnovo, “Il significato storico del neotomismo”, ibid., XXXII (1940), pp. 17–30.

^{page 31 note 2} Leo, XIII, encyclical Aeterni Patris (Rome, 1927), pp. 61–63.Google Scholar

^{page 32 note 1} Leo, XIII, encyclical Rerum Novarum, in: Giordani, Igino (ed.), Le encicliche sociali dei papi da Pio IX a Pio XII (Rome, 1956), p. 209.Google Scholar

^{page 32 note 2} Aquinas, , Summa, , I/II, q. 66, and II/II, qq. 23–27Google Scholar; Leo, XIII, encyclical Graves de Communi, in: Le encicliche sociali dei papi, p. 232Google Scholar; Romano, L'Osservatore, September 13 and 17, 1905; Alfonso Capecelatro, Amiamo il popolo (Rome, 1912), pp. 5–6Google Scholar; Tedeschi, Giacomo Radini, Discorso tenuto nell'adunanza generale della Società di S. Vincenzo di Paoli (Piacenza, 1890), pp. 3–4Google Scholar; Fontaine, Julien, Le modernisme sociologique: décadence ou régéneration? (Paris, 1909), p. 468.Google Scholar Arguments presented by Fontaine will frequently reappear in this essay: his volume was apparently read by Pius X, who praised the author for his “profound theological and social understanding”. The papal letter to Fontaine, signed by Val, Cardinal Merry del, the papal Secretary of State, is in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, I (1909), p. 719.Google Scholar

^{page 32 note 3} Aquinas, , Summa, , II/II, qq. 31–33.Google Scholar

^{page 32 note 4} Spiazzi, Raimondo, “Il trattato teologico della carità”, in: Spiazzi, et al., Teologia e storia della carità (Rome, 1965), p. 178.Google Scholar This, as well as two other essays in the volume, Tullio Goffi, “La carità e l'elemosina”, and Carlo Messori, “La carità e la pubblica assistenza”, were helpful for my initial understanding of the problems involved in the theological principle of caritas.

^{page 33 note 1} My presentation of this relationship as a symbiosis originated in a discussion not related to the era of Pius X in Schorske, Carl, “The Idea of the City in European Thought”, in: Schorske, et al. , The Historian and the City (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 95–114.Google Scholar See also Dal-Gal, (ed.), Insegnamenti di San Pio X (Bari, 1957), pp. 73–76Google Scholar; X, Pius, encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus, in: Civiltà Cattolica, Eighteenth Series, XII (1903), pp. 144ff.Google Scholar; encyclical Il Fermo Proposito, in: Le encicliche sociali dei papi, pp. 241, 248; Albani, Stanislao Medolago, Le classi dirigenti nella società (Bergamo, 1883), passim.Google Scholar

^{page 33 note 2} Pius, X, encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus, loc. cit., p. 147Google Scholar; motu proprio Fin dalla prima, in: Civiltà Cattolica, LV (1904), I, p. 5; L'Osservatore Romano, April 18, 1912; Tedeschi, Radini, Discorso tenuto, p. 6Google Scholar; Carlo, Eugenio Di, La filosofia giuridica e politica di San Tommaso d'Aquino (Palermo, 1945), p. 105Google Scholar; Olgiati, Francesco, “La politica di S. Pio X e il conservatorismo”, in: Vita e Pensiero, XXXVII (1954), pp. 531ff.Google Scholar

^{page 33 note 3} Aquinas, Summa, II/II, q. 32. Another parallel Thomistic concept is that of the productive and socially useful development of the wealth one possesses. See Vito, Francesco, “Trasformazioni economiche e dottrina sociale cattolica”, in: Vito, (ed.), I nuovi termini della questione sociale e l'enciclica Mater et Magistra (Milan, 1962), p. 28.Google Scholar

^{page 33 note 4} Aquinas, Summa, II/II, qq. 31–32; Monetti, Giulio, Problemi varii di sociologia generale (Bergamo, 1913), II, p. 118.Google Scholar Arguments presented by Monetti will frequently appear in this essay. Their special importance for the study of official Catholic social doctrine lies not only in the fact that Monetti was the instructor of sociology at the Scuola Sociale of Bergamo, a kind of Catholic university, training the cadre of Catholic Action. We also have the evidence of a papal letter showing that Pius X, who read Monetti's volumes, found them “doc-trinally sound and of indispensable utility” (Azione Sociale, 11 1913, pp. 197–98Google Scholar; the Azione Sociale was a monthly published by the Unione Economi-co-Sociale, the organization that coordinated Catholic social action, including labor unions).

^{page 34 note 1} Leo XIII, encyclical Graves de Communi, loc. cit., p. 228. For a detailed discussion of the organic analogy in Leo's encyclicals see Camp, Richard L., The Papal Ideology of Social Reform (Leyden, 1968), pp. 29ff.Google Scholar; Tedeschi, Giacomo Radini, M., San Giorgioe la questione operaia (Genoa, 1890), p. 7Google Scholar; Fontaine, , Le modernisme sociologique, pp. 139ff.Google Scholar

^{page 34 note 2} Aquinas' treatment of “justice” in Summa, II/II, qq. 58 and 61, may have given the lead: it stressed the social dependence of the parts on the whole.

^{page 34 note 3} For examples see Toniolo, Giuseppe, “L'Unione cattolica per gli studi sociali”, first published in 1893, reprinted in Opera Omnia (Vatican City, 1951), Fourth Series, III, p. 75;Google Scholar Toniolo, Lettere (Vatican City, 1953), III, pp. 220, 305.

^{page 34 note 4} Pius X, motu proprio Fin dalla Prima, loc. cit., pp. 4–5.

^{page 35 note 1} Chiesa, F. F., L'Unione Popolare spiegata ai contadini (Alba, 1908), p. 9Google Scholar; Capecelatro, Amiamo il popolo, p. 3; Azione Sociale, January 1907, p. 108; August 1908, p. 482.

^{page 35 note 2} X, Pius, Lettere raccolte da Nello Vian (Rome, 1954), pp. 259–60Google Scholar; Rosa, Gabriele De, Storia del movimento cattolico in Italia (Bari, 1966), pp. 336ff.Google Scholar; Pratesi, P., “Luci e ombre nella sociologia di Toniolo”, in: Rassegna di politica e di storia, I (1955)Google Scholar, passim; Taviani, Paolo Emilio, “Il concetto di democrazia cristiana in Giuseppe Toniolo”, in: Civitas, New Series, VI (1955), passim.Google Scholar

^{page 35 note 3} Leo XIII, encyclical Graves de Communi, loc. cit., p. 235; Pius X, encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus, loc. cit., p. 146; encyclical Il Fermo Proposito, loc. cit., p. 245; encyclical Iucunda Sane, in: Civiltà Cattolica, LV (1904), II, p. 22.

^{page 36 note 1} L'Osservatore Romano, April 6, 1910; Allarme, ! (handbill of the Unione Popolare, the organization directing Italian Catholic propaganda), No 31 (1910)Google Scholar; Azione Sociale, June 1909, pp. 145ff.

^{page 36 note 2} Salvatore Talamo, Il cristianesimo e il lavoro manuale (Rome, n.d.), pp. 6ff.; Toniolo, Lettere, III, pp. 61, 97, 147–48.

^{page 36 note 3} The episode is told in the “authorized” biography of Pius X: Marchesan, Papa Pio X, p. 404.

^{page 37 note 1} de'Bianchi, Achille Sassoli, La questione sociale nelle campagne (Acquapendente, 1922), pp. 15–18.Google Scholar The volume records a speech made by the Marchese Sassoli de'Bianchi at a Catholic congress in 1879. The speech, it appears, acted as a catalyst in forming the social ideas of the leaders of Italian Catholic Action. Their biographies mention that the Marchese's arguments were decisive in forming the intellectual outlooks of Medolago Albani and Nicolo Rezzara, two of the top leaders of the Unione Economico-Sociale: Stanislao Medolago Albani, Due campioni dell'azione cattolica bergamasca: Prof. Comm. Rezzara, Nicolo, Prof. Cav. Giambattista Caironi (Bergamo, 1916), pp. 8ff.Google Scholar; Casoli, Alfonso, Un campione della causa cattolica: il Conte Stanislao Medolago Albani (Acquapendente, 1922), pp. 10ffGoogle Scholar. Sassoli de'Bianchi's speech was reprinted in 1922, as the first in a series of Catholic propaganda pamphlets. The editor told in the foreword that “the passing of time did not effect the eternal actuality of this speech”. Here is a passage from it: “We have to become convinced that every landed estate is like a little state, that within its confines the landowner is a little prince, who, in order to preserve the legitimacy of his power, has the duty to assure the well-being of his dependents.” Elsewhere the Marchese mentions the employees of the landowner as his “subjects”.

^{page 37 note 2} Cantono, Alessandro, Le Università popolari e la democrazia (Rome, 1902), passim.Google Scholar

^{page 37 note 3} Bonomelli, Geremia, La Chiesa e i tempi nuovi (Cremona, 1906), p. 28.Google Scholar

^{page 38 note 1} Bert, G. B., “E i sott'ufficiali dove sono?”, in: Settimana Sociale, 06 24, 1911, p. 201.Google Scholar

^{page 38 note 2} Capecelatro, Alfonso, La Povertà, l'lndustria e il Sapere in relazione al Cris-tianesimo (Rome, 1908), p. 22.Google Scholar Catholic social thought assigned to the family a central role in the life of society. Catholic sociologists, like Toniolo, were so much concerned with the family that their whole understanding of society – nothing but a large family for them – revolved around analogies based upon it. One of these analogies was the “mixed” union, which presumably approximated the organic cooperation, necessary solidarity and mutual dependence among the members of the family. See Pico, Antonio Boggiano (at one time the President of the Unione Popolare), “L'attualità del pensiero di Giuseppe Toniolo”, in: Pico, Boggiano et al. , Per una coscienza sociale (Rome, 1943), p. 58.Google Scholar

^{page 38 note 3} Marchesan, , Papa Pio X, p. 404.Google Scholar

^{page 39 note 1} L'Osservatore Romano, April 6, 1910.

^{page 39 note 2} L'Osservatore Romano, October 30, 1910; Rosa, De, Storia del movimento cattolico, pp. 526ff.Google Scholar; Scoppola, Pietro, Dal neoguelfismo alla Democrazia Cristiana (Rome, 1957), pp. 111ff.Google Scholar

^{page 39 note 3} L'Osservatore Romano, November 11, 12 and 14, 1910.

^{page 40 note 1} The text of the relevant resolutions adopted by the Congress of Modena is printed in Azione Sociale, November 1910, pp. 196ff. See also L'Osservatore Romano, November 18, 1910.

^{page 40 note 2} Rezzara, who as the rapporteur of the Unione Economico-Sociale had to face the revolt of the angry young activists, already sounded the retreat at the Congress. Answering his critics at the end of the debate, he said that the “mixed organizations must remain abandoned for the time being, but they must not be forgotten, like the torch that must never be extinquished” (L'Osservatore Romano, 11 12, 1910).Google Scholar Rezzara's chief, Medolago Albani, still did not put the torch out in 1914. In May of that year in a circular sent to the member organizations of the Unione he still listed the “mixed” type as a possible organizational form for labor (Azione Sociale, 05 1914, pp. 93–94).Google Scholar But his words were hardly more than an attempt to please his master, Pius X, whose favored idea, the “mixed” union, was by then largely abandoned in organizational practice. It was a mirage from times long past that kept the imagination of conservative Catholics captive with the concept of “mixed” unions. When they defended the idea of “mixed” organizations they inevitably referred to the medieval guilds that supposedly united the padroni and the workers in a con-flictless cooperation based on the principles of Christianity. A nostalgia for this utopia is apparent even in Monetti's volumes published as late as 1913. He still insists that the “mixed” organizations should be preferred by Catholics “where they are possible”. But he concedes that in large-scale modern industry, that tends to take the form of Società Anonima, property of shareholders, there is need for a separate representation and organization for the capitalists and the workers. Besides, Monetti says, in many places it is impossible to organize “mixed” unions because the padroni are not interested in them. See his Problemi varii, I, pp. 108–28; relevant arguments also in Azione Sociale, November 1910, pp. 183ff.; January 1911, pp. 1ff.; Leroy, H. J., Le clergé et les oeuvres sociales (Paris, n.d.), p. 14Google Scholar (Leroy's volume was translated into Italian and sold by the Unione Popolare).

^{page 41 note 1} Azione Sociale, November 1912, pp. XXIX(sic!)ff.; March 1913, p. 56; L'Osservatore Romano, January 16, 1913.

^{page 41 note 2} Monetti, , Problemi varii, II, pp. 118–25.Google Scholar

^{page 41 note 3} X, Pius, encyclical Pieni l'Animo, in: Civiltà Cattolica, LVII (1906), III, p. 392.Google Scholar Pius' very first encyclical, E Supremi Apostolatus (loc. cit., pp. 129–49), voiced a strong opposition to class struggle. And his probably last public utterance, a speech to a Consistory in May 1914, returned to the subject. In this speech the condemnation of class conflict became the sternest: the old Pontiff, who foresaw the coming of a worldwide conflagration, now presented the image of conflict among classes growing into a frightful deluge of hatred, a conflict among nations (Azione Sociale, Mav 1914, pp. 85–88).

^{page 41 note 4} L'Osservatore Romano, May 13, July 15 and 18,1906; October 18 and 23, 1907.

^{page 42 note 1} L'Osservatore Romano, May 10, 11 and 16, 1906.

^{page 42 note 2} The wording is that of Toniolo, the leading Catholic sociologist of the era, and also the most important leader of Italian Catholic Action. See his “L'Unione cattolica per gli studi sociali”, loc. cit., p. 89. But the terminology appears in Monetti also: Problemi varii, II, pp. 97–98.

^{page 43 note 1} G. Molteni, who seems to have been the specialist the Azione Sociale employed to write on the problems of strikes, showed a change of mind about strikes within a remarkably short time. In October 1907 he appears to have taken the viewpoint of the capitalists, objected to strikes and presented the workers' “impulsiveness” and “ignorance” as the primary causes of strikes. But a few months later, in January of 1908, he seems to have become resigned to strikes, which he then considered the “essential, the principal weapon of the workers in pursuing their democratic claims”. He stated that strikes were “often” “legitimate, even necessary—and argued that their pastoral mission obligated priests to become “interested” in them (Azione Sociale, January, May, October and November-December 1907; January-February and May 1908; November 1911; March 1913).

^{page 43 note 2} L'Osservatore Romano, April 14, 1912.

^{page 44 note 1} Albani, Medolago, Le classi dirigenti, passim; Antonio Boggiano Pico, L'im-portanza degli studi economici nella cultura e nell'azione del clero (Rome, 1901)Google Scholar, passim; Avolio, Gennaro, I cattolici di fronte a'mali sociali (Naples, 1895), passim.Google Scholar

^{page 44 note 2} L'Osservatore Romano, February 21, 1912.

^{page 44 note 3} Imberciadori, I., L'Unione Popolare fra i cattolici d'Italia (Rome, 1909), p. 90.Google Scholar

^{page 45 note 1} L'Osservatore Romano, September 21, 1905; also February 21, 1912.

^{page 45 note 2} When he was only a few years away from his election to the papal throne, Cardinal Sarto told a gathering of Catholic sociologists that the “substitution of official alms for private alms amounts to the destruction of Christianity, and it is an attempt on the principle of property […] If aid comes [to the poor] through laws, and alms are not motivated by the heart, because they not free any more, they lose their merit before God. The tie of love that alone can unite the poor and rich is broken and poverty becomes a function, an office, a public occupation.” Quoted in Dal-Gal (ed.), Insegnamenti di San Pio X, pp. 73–76.

^{page 45 note 3} Talamo, Salvatore, La questione sociale e i cattolici (Rome, 1896), p. 39;Google ScholarCapecelatro, , Amiamo il popolo, pp. 19–21, 30–31Google Scholar; La Povertà, p. 18; La Quistione Sociale e il Cristianesimo (Rome, 1907), p. 20.Google Scholar Cardinal Capecelatro, one of the most prolific and popular among the Catholic writers of the era, was especially emphatic in pointing out the need for the intervention of public authorities in the solution of the Social Question. He went as far as to suggest that Italy should set an example for other nations by establishing within the government a “Ministry of Beneficence and Labor”.

^{page 46 note 1} X, Pius, encyclical Lacrimabili Statu Indorum, in: L'Osservatore Romano, 08 6, 1912.Google Scholar

^{page 46 note 2} O'Gara, James, Introduction to O'Gara (ed.), Layman, The in the Church, (New York, 1962), p. 9.Google Scholar

^{page 46 note 3} Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, I, ch. 15. See also Malagola, Achille, Le teorie politiche di San Tommaso d'Aquino (Bologna, 1912), pp. 63, 76–79, 80, 195Google Scholar; d'Entreves, Alessandro Passerin, La filosofia politica medioevale (Turin, 1934), pp. 109ff.Google Scholar; Carlo, Di, La filosofia giuridica, pp. 106ff.Google Scholar

^{page 47 note 1} As cited in Falcucci, Franca, “Lo stato nel pensiero di Giuseppe Toniolo”, Civitas, New Series, X (1959), p. 26.Google Scholar

^{page 47 note 2} Leo XIII, encyclical Rerum Novarum, loc. cit., pp. 195–96; Camp, , The Papal Ideology of Social Reform, pp. 138ff.Google Scholar

^{page 47 note 3} Aquinas, Summa, II/II, qq. 7, 32–33: Ryan, John A., “The Economic Philosophy of St. Thomas”, in: Brennan, Robert E. (ed.), Essays in Thomism (New York, 1942), p. 247.Google Scholar

^{page 48 note 1} Toniolo, Giuseppe, “La funzione della Giustizia e della carità nell'odierna crisi sociale”, first published in 1893, reprinted in Opera Omnia, Fourth Series, III, pp. 359–67.Google Scholar

^{page 48 note 2} The waning of Thomism in fact began earlier, probably with Aeterni Patris, the encyclical that made it an official doctrine of the Church. Monsignor Masnovo, the historian of Italian Neo-Thomism, who cannot be accused of either anti-Catholic or anti-Thomistic bias, testifies to this. Soon after 1880, he says, the Neo-Thomistic current that “gained in extension” began to “lose in profoundity”. Its newly gained popularity amounted to a vulgarization and fed into a superficiality in turn (Masnovo, “Il neotomismo”, loc. cit., p. 101). But one is tempted to ask, of course, if this is not the fate of every official doctrine? The waning of Neo-Thomism in Italy during the papacy of Pius X was shown by the fact that the Thomistic review Divus Thomas, published in Rome since 1880, folded up in 1905, apparently because the narrowing number of subscribers did not provide sufficient support for its survival. It was to be revived in 1909 under the personal guidance of Pius X in the form of the Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica. But the new review, at least during the era of Pius X, was characterized by an almost total lack of interest in the application of Thomism to social and political problems. Yet in spite of its apparent waning at the turn of the century, Neo-Thomism as a social philosophy survived among some Catholics, as Spiazzi et al., Teologia e storia della carità testifies. The volume, written in the 1960's, still insists on the validity of Thomistic social ideas (passim, particularly pp. 178, 419–21). The writers who contributed to the volume still seem to assume that the “poor” are to remain forever on the social landscape. The solution of the social problems involving the “poor” is framed up in terms of assistenza. The most important form of this “assistance”, the writers maintain, is private charity. Public assistance, one of the essayists says, is only to supplement private and church charity. Disregarding apparently the Thomistic tradition of the social responsibility of the state, this writer, Carlo Messori, argues that the social activity of the state should be limited to those problems that private and church charity cannot resolve. Like social and political conservatives in other countries, these Italian Catholic authors seem to fear that the welfare state would sooner or later turn into a totalitarian state. And this leads them into arguments that characterize the laissez-faire arguments of yesteryear, used against socialists by conservative liberals. Considering that it was born as a counter-ideology to liberalism, Neo-Thomism seems to have run a full circle.

^{page 49 note 1} Imberciadori, L'Unione Popolare, p. 34.

^{page 49 note 2} On Giolittian New Liberalism and the liberal-Catholic alliance see my “Giolitti's Reform Program, An Exercise in Equilibrium Politics”, in: Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVI (1971), pp. 637–53.Google Scholar Also related to the topics discussed in this paper are other two essays of mine: “Christian Democracy and Social Modernism in Italy during the Papacy of Pius X”, forthcoming in the March 1973 issue of Church History, and “Germania Doceat: the Volksverein, the Model for Italian Catholic Action (1905–1914)”, forthcoming in Catholic Historical Review.