Pouring Jewish Water Into Fascist Wine

Untold Stories of (Catholic) Jews from the Archive of Mussolini's Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-90-04-21670-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 157, 392 Seiten, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 254 mm, Gewicht: 816 g

Reihe: Studies in the History of Christian Traditions

All documents published in the present book come from the private archive of the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, a key figure in Church-State relations during the entire period of the Fascist regime, 1922–43. Even though the forty-four stories of this volume constitute just a proverbial drop in the ocean, they are quite representative for a number of reasons. First of all, the authors of the petitions come from various regions of Italy: from Venice and Trieste to Milan and Turin, from Genoa to Florence, Rome, and Naples, from Tripoli to Addis Abeba. Some of the authors were born and grew up outside Italy, either within Sephardic or Ashkenazi culture. They represent different social classes, including the aristocratic families of Finzi Contini, Lumbroso, or Ottolenghi, although most of them were middle-class urban professionals, typically physicians, lawyers, army officers, or journalists. Some of them were low-profile citizens; many others were prominent figures in Italian science, culture, and politics. Their cases show a vast range of persecutions that resulted from the implementation of the racial laws: loss of citizenship, residence permit, job, property, and servants; non-recognition of marriage or baptism; non-recognition of military or civil merits toward the homeland and the Fascist regime; legal inequality within mixed families; dire economic situation; and emotional distress.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in the history of Jesuits, of Catholicism and its relation to Judaism, of Italian fascism, and of racial laws.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Maryks, Robert Aleksander

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Allatini Giulia
2. Berger Eugenio
3. Campagnano Angelo
4. Cava Umberto
5. Cavalieri Ferdinando
6. Della Rocca Mario
7. Donati Antigono
8. Fanno Marco
9. Finzi Giulio
10. Foa Raimondo
11. Forti Alberto
12. Forti(s) Gino
13. Gallico Isacco Ernesto
14. Giordana Giordano
15. Guetta Elio
16. Hirsch Giuseppe
17. Iona Ippolito
18. Israeli Paolo
19. Lattes Bruno
20. Levi Mario Emanuele
21. Liuzzi Gabriella
22. Lombroso Enrico
23. Lumbroso Besso Lia
24. Melli Ida Tiziana
25. Melli Roberto
26. Migliau Bellina
27. Milla Angelo
28. Milla Edoardo
29. Modena Marcello
30. Orvieto Angiolo
31. Ottolenghi Carlo
32. Paggi Mario
33. Parasol Feliks Ryszard
34. Pereyra de Leon Giorgio
35. Prister Renzo
36. Salmon Massimo
37. Scazzocchio Graziano
38. Seppilli Giuseppe
39. Sinigaglia Giorgio
40. Sonino Guido
41. Sonnino Flavio
42. Uzielli Paolo
43. Zacutti Giulia
44. Zacutti Tullio
Appendix One
Appendix Two
Bibliography
Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1: Photograph of Tacchi Venturi performing religious services [TV 1.jpg]
Fig. 2: Postcard with the sculpture “Juda’s Betrayal” [TV 5.jpg and TV 6.jpg]
Fig. 3: Portrait of Margherita Grassini Sarfatti with her daughter Fiammetta by Emil Przepiórski [final sarfatti.jpg]
Fig. 4: Letter of Eugenio Boggiano-Pico to Pietro Tacchi Venturi (22 April 1938) [TV 28 2103.jpg]
Fig. 5: Letter of Guido Guidi Buffarini to Tacchi Venturi (December 1938) [TV 28 2170 1.jpg]
Fig. 6: Letter of Domenico Tardini to Tacchi Venturi (29 November 1938) [TV 28 2170.jpg]
Fig. 7: Letter of Domenico Tardini to Tacchi Venturi (15 October 1938) [TV 28 2153 1.jpg and TV 28 2153 2.jpg]
Fig. 8: Letter of Card. Pacelli to Tacchi Venturi (10 January 1939) [TV 28 2188.jpg]
Fig. 9: Letter of Tacchi Venturi to Benito Mussolini (3 October 1938) [TV 28 2153 3.jpg and TV 28 2153 4.jpg]
Fig. 10: Portrait of Pietro Tacchi Venturi [venturi final.jpg]
Fig. 11: Typed application letter for “discrimination” of Ferdinando Cavalieri (9 December 1938) [TV 28 2191a 1.jpg]
Fig. 12: Typed résumé of Mario Emanuele Levi with a recommendation letter of Arturo Ciano [TV 30 2303 1.jpg]
Fig. 13: Fascist National Party identification card of Baroness Lia Lumbroso Besso [TV 28 2231.jpg]
Fig. 14: Letter of Tacchi Venturi to Card. Eugenio Pacelli (6 January 1939) [TV 28 2166.jpg]
Fig. 15: Catechumenate Certificate issued to Ida Tiziana Melli by the Bishop Curia of Padua (7 October 1938) [TV 28 2191a 6.jpg]
Fig. 16: Roberto Melli, Autoritratto con guanto bianco
Fig. 17: Handwritten résumé of Roberto Melli [TV 28 2172 1.jpg]
Fig. 18: Portrait of Angiolo Orvieto [final orvieto.jpg]
Fig. 19: Letter of Giovanni Battista Montini to Tacchi Venturi (28 November 1938) [TV 28 2167.jpg]
Fig. 20: Typed application letter for “discrimination” of the Scazzocchio brothers (3 December 1938) [TV 28 2180 1.jpg]

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION
The aim of this book is to offer the reader a critical edition of the petitions in their original Italian language that (Catholic) Jews residing in Italy submitted to the Fascist General Administration for Demography and Race (Demorazza) in order either to be “discriminated,” i.e., not subjected to various provisions of Mussolini’s racial laws of 1938, or “Aryanized,” i.e., be considered not of “the Jewish race,” as defined by the convoluted and inconsistent Fascist anti-Semitic legislation. To put it briefly and simply for the purposes of this introduction, anyone born of parents who both were of “the Jewish race,” even though professing a religion other than Judaism, was deemed to be Jewish. Consequently, the racial laws affected not only those Italians who considered themselves Jewish, whether secular or religious, but also a significant number of Catholics whose ancestors had been Jewish, as the majority of the cases contained in this volume show. In the documents of the time they were referred to as “Jews by race, Catholics by faith,” or “Christian Jews,” or “converted Jews,” or “baptized Jews,” or—more frequently—“Catholic Jews.” In the historiography on the subject, the latter are often dubbed “of Jewish descent” to distinguish them from “actual Jews.” According to the census that was conducted by the Fascist authorities in August of 1938, Jews “by descent” numbered ca. 2,600 and “actual Jews” ca. 46,656 (37,241 Italians and 9,415 foreigners), or 1 per thousand of the country’s entire population. By the time of the promulgation of the racial laws, one Jew out of three took a spouse of a different religion, a Catholic in most cases. Indeed, according to the census there were ca. 7,000 non-Jewish children who were born to “racially” mixed marriages.
All documents published in the present book come from the private archive of the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, a key figure in Church-State relations during the entire period of the Fascist regime, 1922–43. Before presenting the 44 stories of (Catholic) Jews that follow, it will be helpful to provide first a biographical sketch of the intriguing and controversial figure of Tacchi Venturi, so that the reading of the 70-year-old archival documents be done within a historical context of the period that is confined by two important parts of Italian history between the wars: the so-called “Roman Question” and “Jewish Question,” in which this Fascist Jesuit was one of the most important protagonists. The following biographical sketch, far from being exhaustive, yet based on heretofore unknown archival material, should give the reader a better understanding of the reasons why this Jesuit became such a controversial and notorious a figure, not only to his contemporaries but also to historians who published on Italian Fascism, and why the documents published in this volume ended up in his archive.
[Fig. 1: Photograph of Tacchi Venturi performing religious services [TV 1.jpg]. The fascist official Roberto Farinacci poked at the Jesuit priest, arguing that “honest clergy does not like this mixture of sacred and profane in the same man religious, who seems too fervent a fixer.”]

Pietro Tacchi Venturi was born to Antonio Tacchi Venturi and Orsola Ceselli in San Severino Marche on 12 August 1861—“the memorable year in the history of Italy for the proclamation of the reign of Vittorio Emanuele II,” as the Jesuit wrote in the beginning of his memoir that he began to compose many decades later. His highlighting of this synchrony is significant, for it determined Tacchi Venturi’s negative interpretation of the role the Risorgimento played in its relation to the papacy, an interpretation that he inherited from his father; it also determined his profound antipathy toward “the spirit of laicism” that, in his view, characterized the post-1870 regime. Indeed, Tacchi Venturi described his father as “a Guelph of pure blood,” or a convinced supporter of the authority of the pope aga

Über Autor(innen)

Maryks, Robert Aleksander
Robert A. Maryks, Ph.D. (2006) in History, Fordham University, is Associate Professor of History at Bronx CC of the City University of New York. He has published extensvily on the history of Jesuits, inlcuding Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism (Ashgate, 2008) and The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Brill, 2009).

Robert A. Maryks, Ph.D. (2006) in History, Fordham University, is Associate Professor of History at Bronx CC of the City University of New York. He has published extensvily on the history of Jesuits, inlcuding Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism (Ashgate, 2008) and The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Brill, 2009).