The Reception and Application of the Encyclical Pascendi. The Reports of the Diocesan Bishops and the Superiors of the Religious Orders until 1914

This volume presents the results of the international research project “The Reception and Application of the Encyclical Pascendi as Mirrored by the Reports of the Diocesan Bishops and the Superiors of the Religious Orders (1908-1914)”, which was carried out in cooperation between the Goethe University of Frankfurt, respectively the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, and the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice from 2013 until 2016. The project was funded by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The aim of the volume is to analyze the ‘practical implementation’ of the anti-modernist measures of Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi (September 8, 1907) in the Roman Catholic Church. For the first time, the reports on Modernism produced by bishops and religious orders – and scattered in the Roman archives – are studied and compared, offering the reader an international picture of the widespread effect of antimodernism until 1914 and, at least indirectly, of the general situation of the Catholic Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the same time, the various local interpretations and strategies come into focus, as well as the somewhat competition-driven inner-curial handling of the reports.