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Jesuit Pulp Fiction: The Serial Novels of Antonio Bresciani in La Civilta Cattolica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Oliver Logan
Oliver Logan*
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Extract

The successful and highly authoritative Jesuit opinion-journal La Civiltà Cattolica was founded in 1850 to assert Catholic values in the face of ‘the Revolution’, an allegedly nefarious process that had begun with the Revolution of 1789 and was seen by the Jesuit writers as continuing with the 1848 revolution in Italy and the ongoing Risorgimento movement; this called the temporal power of the papacy into question and also entailed wider issues of secularization. For these writers, the periodical press was a dangerous new force and the only way to combat it effectively was on its own ground. The serial novels which ran in the fortnightly journal from 1850 until 1927 were evidendy written in the belief that the devil should not be left with all the most gripping yarns. The dangers to morality posed by romantic novels were constantly emphasized in the journal’s own fiction. The dominant tone of this fiction was polemical. The villains represented the forces of Jacobinism, the secret societies of the early Risorgimento, and Freemasonry. Conspiracy was a constant theme. Indeed, the leitmotifs of anti-Jesuit polemic depicting the Society of Jesus as an occult conspiratorial organization were in turn deployed by the Jesuit writers against Freemasonry. In the present study, however, the emphasis will be primarily on what the works of Antonio Bresciani (1798–1862), the pioneer Jesuit novelist between 1850 and 1861, had to say about Christian life and values. This, in fact, has most relevance to the genre of the romantic novel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 48: The Church and Literature , 2012 , pp. 385 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2012

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References

1 La Civiltà Cattolica [hereafter: CC] was published fortnightly, normally in 4 volumes a year in 18 series from April 1850 until 1903, but designated simply by year thereafter. Until 1933 articles and instalments of novels in the journal were anonymous. However, most novels and many collections of thematically connected articles were eventually published in book form under the author’s name. On the periodical generally, see Logan, Oliver, ‘A Journal: La Civiltà Cattolica from Pius IX to Pius XII’, in Swanson, R. N., ed., The Church and the Book, SCH 38 (Woodbridge, 2004), 375–85 Google Scholar.

2 On similar dangers posed by the theatre, see Anon., ‘Del teatro italiano’, CC ser. 2, 5 (1854), 257–77.

3 Cf. Cubitt, Geoffrey, The Jesuit Myth: Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth Century France (Oxford, 1983), 182–96, 295–314 Google Scholar; Burke, Peter, ‘The Black Legend of the Jesuits: An Essay in the History of Social Stereotypes’, in Christianity and Community in the West: Essays for John Bossy, ed. Ditchfield, Simon (Aldershot, 2001), 165–82 Google Scholar; in this volume, John Wolffe, ‘The Jesuit as Villain in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction’, 307–19.

4 Logan, ‘A journal’, 376, 378–9.

5 De Rosa, Gabriele, II movimento cattolico in Italia. Dalla Restaurazione all’età giolittiana, 5th edn (Rome, 1979), 7–85 Google Scholar.

6 DBI, s.n. ‘Bresciani Borsa, Antonio’.

7 Bresciani, Antonio, Opere, 17 vols (Turin, 1865-9)Google Scholar. On Bresciani’s writings, mainly from a sociologizing Gramscian perspective, see di Ricco, Alessandra, ‘Padre Bresciani: populismo e reazione’, Studi storici 22 (1981), 832–58 Google Scholar.

8 Bresciani, Antonio, ‘Del Romanticismo italiano rispetto alle lettere, alla religione, alla politica e alla morale’, Opere, 2: 331–82 Google Scholar.

9 Bresciani, ‘Lorenzo’ [see n. 15 below], CC ser. 3, 3 (1856), 148–58.

10 Especially relevant here is [Giuseppe Calvetti], ‘Dell’educazione dell’uomo e della donna’, CC ser. 2, 7 (1854), 491–505; ser. 2, 8 (1854), 25–35.

11 Antonio Bresciani, ‘L’Ebreo di Verona’ [hereafter: ‘L’Ebreo’], serialized in CC 1–6 (1850–1); also Opere, vols 6–7.

12 Antonio Bresciani, ‘Della Repubblica Romana: Appendice all’Ebreo di Verona’ [hereafter: ‘Repubblica’], serialized in CC 6–11 (1851–2), including parts entitled ‘Il giubileo della Repubblica Romana’, CC 7 (1851), 559–79, and ‘Don Alessandro il mansionario’, CC 8 (1852), 50–71; also Opere, vols 8–9.

13 Bresciani, Antonio, ‘Lionello’, serialized in CC 8–10 (1852)Google Scholar.

14 Idem, ‘Ubaldo ed Irene’, serialized in CC ser. 2, 1–8 (1853–4).

15 Idem, ‘Lorenzo o il coscritto’, serialized in CC ser. 3, 1–3 (1856); also in Opere, vol. 12.

16 Idem, ‘Don Giovanni o il benefattore occulto’, serialized in CC ser. 3, 3–4 (1856); also in Opere, vol. 12.

17 Idem, ‘La Contessa Matilda di Canossa e Iolanda di Groningen’, serialized in CC ser. 3, 7–11 (1857–8); also in Opere, vol. 13. On Henry’s upbringing, see CC ser. 3, 10 (1858), 31–6.

18 Idem, ‘Edmondo o dei costumi del popolo romano’, serialized in CC ser. 4, 1–4 (1859); also in Opere, vol. 14.

19 ‘Cronaca 12–26 febbraio’, ‘Cronaca 26 febbraio - 12 marzo’, CC ser. 4, 1 (1859), 587–8, 741–2.

20 Antonio Bresciani, ‘La casa di ghiaccio o il cacciatore di Vincennes’, serialized in CC ser. 4, 5–8 (1860); also in Opere, vol. 14.

21 Coulombe, Charles A., The Pope’s Legion: The Multinational Fighting Force that Defended the Vatican (Basingstoke, 2008)Google Scholar.

22 Antonio Bresciani, ‘Olderico ovvero il Zuavo pontificio. Racconto del 1860’, serialized in CC ser. 4, 9–12 (1861); also in Opere, vol. 16.

23 Harrison, Carol E., ‘Zouave Stories: Gender, Catholic Spirituality, and French Responses to the Roman Question’, JMH 79 (2007), 274–305 Google Scholar.

24 Viaene, Vincent, ‘Gladiators of Expiation: The Cult of the Martyrs in the Catholic Revival of the Nineteenth Century’, in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy, eds, Retribution, Repentance and Reconciliation, SCH 40 (Woodbridge, 2004), 301–16 Google Scholar.

25 Anon., ‘Un romanzo storico di genere nuovo’, serialized in CC ser. 3, 1–3 (1856). Note also the journal’s sympathetic review of Newman’s Callista: CC ser. 3, 3 (1856), 675–82.

26 Bresciani, , ‘Olderico’, CC ser. 4, 9 (1861), 413 Google Scholar.

27 A classic statement of the distinction is St François de Sales, Traité de l’amour de Dieu, bk 1, ch. 5.

28 For condensed statements, see Bresciani, ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 8 (1854), 402–3; CC ser. 2, 12 (1855), 643–8.

29 Notably in ‘L’Ebreo’ and ‘Repubblica’.

30 Bresciani, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 3 (1850), 310.

31 Idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC (1851), 59–60, 282–97; ‘Repubblica’, CC 11 (1852), 623–5, 630–4, 639–41; ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 6 (1854), 54–64, 276–7, 607; ‘Lorenzo’, CC ser. 3, 2 (1856), 427–8, 503–11, 634–6; ‘Matilda’, CC ser. 3, 9 (1858), 62–4.

32 Idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 7 (1851), 178–80; ‘Repubblica’, CC 11, 620–1; ‘Matilda’, CC ser. 3, 7 (1857), 305–6, 534–6.

33 Idem, ‘Matilda’, CC ser. 3, 8 (1857), 179–81; ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser 2, 7 (1854), 372–93, 516–25, 639–50.

34 Idem, ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 11 (1855), 617–26.

35 Idem, ‘Repubblica’, CC 7, 178–80; ‘Lionello’, CC 8 (1852), 292–5.

36 Idem, ‘Olderico’, CC ser. 4, 11 (1861), 437–46.

37 Idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 6, 298; ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 6, 57–8, 168–9, 276; ser. 2, 12, 555, 566–7; ‘Matilda’, CC ser. 3, 9, 449–50.

38 Idem, ‘Lionello’, CC 8, 428, ‘Repubblica’, CC 11, 510–12, 521–4.

39 Notably in idem, ‘Ubaldo’.

40 Idem, ‘Lionello’, CC 8, 432–4; ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 12, 564–8, ‘Lorenzo’, CC ser. 3, 1 (1856), 31.

41 This is the major theme of ‘L’Ebreo’ and of ‘Lorenzo’, explicitly stated in the conclusion to the latter: CC ser. 3, 3 (1856), 158–62. Note also idem, ‘Lionello’, CC 9 (1852), 648–51.

42 Idem, ‘Lorenzo’, CC ser. 3, 2, 163; ‘Edmondo’, CC ser. 4, 3 (1859), 183–94.

43 Idem, ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 7, 38–45; ‘Lorenzo’, CC ser. 3, 2, 635–6; ser. 3, 3, 34–5; ‘Don Giovanni’, CC ser. 3, 4 (1856), 421–34, 670–2.

44 Idem, ‘Lorenzo’, ibid. 511–28; ‘Edmondo’, CC ser. 4, 4 (1859), 572–7.

45 Idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 3 (1850), 25–40, 126–7.

46 Idem, ‘Matilda’, CC ser. 3, 7, 51–66; ser. 3, 9, 552–3; ser. 3, 10 (1858), 691–5; ser. 3, 11 (1858), 43.

47 Idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 6, 163–7; ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 11, 626–31; ser. 2, 12, 402–4.

48 Idem, ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 7, 506–12 (on a Camaldolese hermitage in the Valle di Lanzo, Piedmont); ‘Don Giovanni’, CC ser. 3, 4, 658–68 (on St Benedict’s cave); ‘Matilda’, CC ser. 3, 7, 164–9 (on the rock of Canossa and its casde), and CC ser. 3, 8, 434–40, 447, 451–2 (on the mountains of the Trentino where Iolanda encounters a hermit); ‘Edmondo’, CC ser. 4, 4, 36–9 (on the rock and nuns’ school at Tor de’ Specchi outside Rome, as a symbol of ancient barbarism and the civilizing effects of Christianity).

49 For Vesuvius, see idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 1 (1850), 75–8; 2 (1850), 157–60; for the volcanic oracle-cave by Lake Nemi, see ‘Lionello’, CC 10 (1852), 493–5; for the oracle-cave in Val Pantena near Verona, see ‘Ubaldo’, CC ser. 2, 7, 23–9.

50 Idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 3, 25–7; CC 5 (1851), 530–3.

51 Idem, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 6, 42–59. This was very similar to English Protestant idealization of the Waldensians; see, in this volume, Mark Smith, ‘The Pastor Chief and other Stories: Waldensian Historical Fiction in the Nineteenth Century’, 296–307.

52 Bresciani, ‘L’Ebreo’, CC 5 (1851), 662–77.

53 There was still a marked contrast with the status-mobile heroes in the Methodist fiction described, in this volume, by Martin Wellings, ‘“Pulp Methodism” Revisited: The Literature and Significance of Silas and Joseph Hocking’, 361–72.

54 Anon., ‘Giovanni Giuseppe Franco S.I.’, CC, anno 59.4 (1908), 350–4.

55 G. G. Franco, ‘Donna antica e donna nuova: Scene di domani’, serialized in CC, anno 56.12 - anno 59.1 (1906–8).