The Myth of ‘Christian Rome’ and the Institute of Roman Studies: An Attempted Synthesis of Fascism and Catholicism

In recent years, numerous studies have examined the relationship between intellectuals and political power in fascist Italy, though none of them have analysed the activities of the Institute of Roman Studies in the context of the strong relationship established during fascism between cultural institutions and the regime, and specifically between the fascist ideology and the images and reinterpretation of the myth of romanità elaborated in the first half of the twentieth century. This lack of studies is even more surprising considering that, thanks to the support of some prominent political and cultural figures, ¹ during the 1920s, and especially in the 1930s, the Institute of Roman Studies gradually began to operate in synergy with the political culture and imperial ambitions of the fascist regime by establishing, driving and at times supporting its rhetoric of romanità and use of symbols and myths of the ‘Third Rome’. ² In the few studies that have been published, historiography has long regarded the activities of the Institute of Roman Studies with diverging views, featuring researche aimed at demonstrating either that it was not involved in the regime’s propaganda ³ or the institution’s total synergy with the fascist political culture. ⁴ Today the Institute of Roman Studies is regarded with a more nuanced approach, mainly highlighting that it was an institute close to the regime but not part of it, whose function was to spread a modern myth of Rome in a Catholic-fascist perspective. ⁵ Moreover, the myth of romanità itself is no longer simply considered as a propaganda tool: it is interpreted as a unifying ideological theme, as the cornerstone of the ideological and symbolical fascist world since its origins, its ‘essence’, ⁶ capable of putting into practice the ambitions and desires of the fascists, of incorporating the fascist regime into Italy’s national history and – a key aspect of this study – acting as both the middle ground and a reason for disagreement with the Catholic Church. ⁷ This last aspect is particularly interesting, given that Emilio Gentile recently spoke of syncretism with regards to the relationship between the Catholic Church and the fascist political religion, which was developed through the myth of romanità. ⁸ After all, the ‘holy’ role of Rome had been acknowledged in article 1 paragraph 2 of the Lateran Pacts, where the Church represented the spirit of this myth and the regime embodied the political power able to once again impose the myth in politics and society. ⁹ Spreading this myth in a ‘Catholic-fascist’ perspective and instilling it in Italians’ mindset ‘was one of the main duties of the Institute of Roman Studies’. ¹⁰

Based on these considerations, studying the activities of the Institute of Roman Studies provides a very interesting perspective to look at the larger historiographical problem of the relationship between the fascist regime and the Catholic world, and the relationship between fascists and Catholics with regards to the ideologization of politics, mass politics, the development of political religions and national myths, by also considering ‘the deep processes of transformation of collective consciousness’ and ‘the nationalization process of Italians’. ¹¹ Furthermore, in his recent book Contro Cesare, Emilio Gentile, who some years ago highlighted the secondary role of Catholicism in determining the culture of the regime, ¹² argued that fascism and the Church were essentially two separate and opposite systems that continuously competed with each other to gain control over Italians’ consciousness and influence the nationalization model of Italians to their own advantage. ¹³ According to the Italian scholar, many European Christian circles quickly understood fascism’s true totalitarian and anti-Christian nature: like Nazism and Communism, it soon appeared to be the extreme manifestation of the modern Antichrist that deifies man and the State, against which it was necessary to fight a war that would become an apocalyptical clash of civilizations due to the religious nature of totalitarianism. ¹⁴

Therefore, if the myth of romanità was one of the key aspects of the complex relationship between fascism and Catholicism, the Institute of Roman Studies can definitely be considered as one of the ideal places to examine this relationship.

The Institute of Roman Studies was founded in 1925 ¹⁵ by Carlo Galassi Paluzzi, a connoisseur of ‘Romanness’ or romanità, close to moderate clerical circles and an active member of the Fides Romana group. Born in Naples in 1893, he came from a self-taught educational background based in Rome, where he mainly focused on art history. In the first postwar period, he began to work on organizing cultural activities, both in terms of the possibility of creating new cultural institutions and developing tools for scholars. Therefore, he started to work with Roman Catholic newspaper Corriere d’Italia on reorganizing and managing museums, supervising an ‘Inventory of existing paintings in Rome’ and creating a few book series on Roman art. These were all initiatives that aimed at releasing the history of Rome from the ivory tower of academic and mono-disciplinary studies in order to bring it to a wider audience, who needed to be educated on the universal values of their civilization. ¹⁶ His cultural background was marked by that singular political and cultural climate of ‘various nationalism’ which was common in Italy in the early twentieth century. This had been a common nationalist literary feeling spread among Italian intellectuals and universities since the Aduwa defeat in 1896, the celebrations for the 50th anniversary for the country’s unification and the war in Libya, both in 1911, and the Great War. ¹⁷ . This climate had allowed on the one hand, the rediscovery of the original character of Rome and the Latin world as a reaction to the strong pro-Hellenic approach of late nineteenth century German scholars of classical studies, ¹⁸ and on the other, it gave ancient history an original political role: the magnificence of ancient Rome no longer represented the ideals of liberty and progress, ¹⁹ but the roots of a broader history of Italy and the idea of a glorious imperial past that justified its present ambitions of greatness. ²⁰ This context had led intellectuals to perceive themselves as civil and political players and consider themselves – in the words of George L. Mosse – the harbingers of a new age and the last custodians of society’s true values. They believed these values had to be spread among the masses, transcending the reality of the decadent, materialistic and alienating liberal bourgeois society, in order to rediscover the mystical sense of the nation’s spiritual unity. ²¹ As well argued by Zeev Sternhell, these intellectuals elaborated and promoted a view of life, namely a worldview, whose purpose was to carry out a ‘conservative revolution’ in order to lay the foundations of a new modernity, different and opposite to the Enlightenment and bourgeois one. ²² Since his youth, Galassi Paluzzi had been deeply influenced by this worldview, along with the antimodern Catholic political thought, the myth of medieval Christianity and of romanità.

Therefore, it is no coincidence that, according to its Charter, the aim of the Institute of Roman Studies was to promote new studies that would awake Italians’ ‘historical sense of the function Rome had in the unfolding of civilization across the world’. ²³ Its goal was to highlight the original nature of ancient Rome and Christian Rome’s culture and preserve it from the continuous attacks of modernity and anti-Roman ideologies, such as the Reformation, German criticism, the Protestant spirit, individualism, positivism, liberalism, Social Democracy and communism ²⁴ – a perspective shared by most Catholic political circles. ²⁵

These views were part of a climate of ‘national Catholicism’ spread by moderate fascists, ex-nationalists, ex-liberals and Roman ecclesiastical circles. ²⁶ This climate was further fuelled by the political repercussions of Pius XI’s Quas primas encyclical and by some interpretations that contextualized the doctrine of the social reign of Christ in Italy’s political situation, ²⁷ turning it both into the element that brought lay Catholics together and the element to revive and rebuild Christian civilization. ²⁸ The climate resulting from the signing of the Lateran Pacts gave momentum to the projects of the Institute of Roman Studies, whose presence in the Italian cultural life was steadily growing, above all during the 1930s. Indeed with the Lateran Pacts, the myth of ‘Catholic Italy’ took on a new and mass dimension, and became a ‘national-Catholic ideology’. This myth had its roots in the idea that ‘Rome was “sacred” for the Church and Italy, in the fact that St. Francis and Dante had been identified as ‘Forefathers of the Nation’, in the rhetoric about the age of city-states and the Christian Middle Ages, both summed up in the myth of the ‘Carroccio’. Not without contradictions, this myth also exalted ‘Renascence’ as a Catholic phenomenon – the case of Papini represents a typical example – and attributed a national, Latin and anti-Germanic value to the Counter-Reformation’. It also drew on ‘the controversy about the Risorgimento and neo-Guelphism, both highlighting the Catholic nature of national ambitions in the nineteenth century and rediscovering anti-liberal tendencies’. Finally, the myth of ‘Catholic Italy’ ended by ‘underlining the role of Catholicism in the expansion of Italian civilization across the world, thanks to the missions and the presence of the Church in the Middle East, above all in Palestine’. ²⁹

In conjunction with the key role that the myth of Rome had taken on in the fascist regime ³⁰ and with the rapprochement between the regime and Catholicism, ³¹ the Institute of Roman Studies proved to be particularly useful thanks to its particular Catholic and national-fascist tendencies. Indeed, on the one hand Catholics, who de facto had become an internal component of fascism, ³² could condition its initiatives in an attempt to influence the regime from the inside. ³³ . On the other hand, the Institute could be crucial for the goals of the fascist ruling class in terms of accelerating its action to nationalize and to ‘fascistize’ the Church, presenting the Holy See as the result of the eternal spirit of Rome – thereby depicting the Church as the link between the starting point of the country’s historical development, the Roman Empire, and the point of arrival, fascism. ³⁴ . The Institute could also be useful to better define fascism’s idea of empire from an ideological point of view. This did not just refer to an idea of geographical expansion, in line with nationalists’ aspirations, but aimed at creating and ‘spreading the light of a new civilization across the world’. ³⁵

The activity of the Institute of Roman Studies was therefore incorporated into the systematic strategy of fascistization of cultural institutions, especially those focusing on historical matters, which started with the 10th anniversary of the March of Rome. ³⁶ Moreover, it received considerable support from politics ³⁷ and Mussolini, ³⁸ also in terms of funding. An analysis of the Institute of Roman Studies’ annual budget shows that in just a few years public funding increased from 30,000 lire a year in 1927 to 1 million in 1938 and reached 2.8 m in 1942 and 1943, despite the participation in the war. ³⁹ In addition to this, in order to spread its ideological message the Institute began to be increasingly involved in initiatives held by the Ministry of Press and Propaganda ⁴⁰ and in 1934 started to significantly extend its sphere of action by setting up sections both in Italy’s main towns and in some European capitals. ⁴¹

In this new climate, the first initiative that revealed the syncretic ideological tendency of the Institute of Roman Studies was the organization of the Exhibition on nineteenth century Rome held in 1932. It exalted the Church as a bulwark against the deviations of modernity, such as liberalism, evolutionism, materialism and ‘political faiths without a religious faith’, obviously overlooking the Church’s hostility towards the country’s unification. ⁴² This was an interpretation that was acknowledged only at that time, thanks to fascism, which rejected ‘the rot of the past century’. ⁴³ In 1933, the invitation made to the Archbishop of Milan Ildefonso Schuster to give the opening lecture of the ‘Corsi Superiori di Studi Romani’ on Rome and romanità ⁴⁴ showed that Galassi Paluzzi – like various Catholic circles, especially those close to the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica ⁴⁵ – aimed at imposing the prominent role of the Holy See, presenting Italy as a Catholic and fascist nation and reconsidering the universal civilizing role of Christian Rome over the centuries: no longer just the successor of the pagan one, but a Christian Rome that engulfed pagan Rome, ⁴⁶ a Christian Rome that completed and enhanced the imperial role of ancient Rome, spreading its message across the world, to all races and all countries:

Rome did not end with the Empire – argued Galassi Paluzzi – … Namely, during the 16th and 17th century, Rome had a great imperial function, by also overcoming the majestic boundaries attained by the ancient Empire during the Christian reconquest. ⁴⁷

Precisely in 1933, a series of lectures called The Holy Years began at the Institute on the occasion of the celebration of the Redemption Jubilee, ⁴⁸ exceptionally proclaimed by Pius XI to celebrate the 1900th anniversary of Christ’s Crucifixion. The lectures glorified the work of past popes, namely the work of Gregory XIII and the Counter-Reformation. Emphasis was also placed on the current spiritual climate of harmony between politics and religion, as shown by the fact that the Jubilee held in 1933 coincided with the 10th anniversary of the fascist revolution. ⁴⁹ According to these lectures, this climate reflected what Boniface VIII had foreseen during the first jubilee ⁵⁰ and put an end forever to the crisis that began in the eighteenth century. ⁵¹ These initiatives revived and ideologized the myth of medieval Christianity in a fascist perspective by drawing on the ideas and images produced by Catholic intransigence against the ‘pernicious fruits’ of modern civilization. ⁵² They were also the result of a heterogeneous set of palingenetic and messianic expectations that originated from the ‘modernist’ climate well described by Roger Griffin: Jesus Christ’s mission on Earth had now been fulfilled through the intercession of the duce. ⁵³

Thanks to the growing involvement of top prelates in the country’s cultural life and to the widespread anti-Nazi feeling, ⁵⁴ the Institute of Roman Studies was carrying out a key role in the process of ideological syncretism supported by the regime and the Vatican, even though they both pursued antithetical goals. ⁵⁵ From an ideological point of view, it became the main entity where the transformation of the clerical-fascist ideology occurred. During the 1930s, the clerical-fascist ideology, or rather the clerical-fascist state of mind, reinforced the converging and collusive attitude towards the fascist ideology it had in the 1920s and took on a different meaning marked by a true identification and synthesis between the theological Creed and support for fascism. The resulting conception was less pragmatic than the previous one and psychologically much more elaborate: a clerical version of fascism that represented the pure vision of the national revolution and rationalized it in an apparently homogeneous and unified Christian vision. ⁵⁶

The cultural mission of the Institute of Roman Studies reached its highest point in 1935, when it held three series of lectures at the ‘Corsi Superiori di Studi Romani’ entitled Rome where Christ is Roman, Rome as a centre of missionary life and The Romanità of the Saints. Held mostly by cardinals, they presented an idea of romanità regarded as a ‘universal mission in the name of Catholicism, in a clear attempt to Christianize the fascist empire in terms of peace and civilization’. ⁵⁷ When introducing the initiatives, Galassi Paluzzi said that the lectures aimed at reviving ‘the sense of union that happily exists between Church and the State, between Homeland and Faith and the sense of immortal universality of Rome’. ⁵⁸ They were crucial both for the fascist regime, which agreed to broadcast the lectures on the radio, and by the Holy See, which promoted the involvement of its most influential cardinals (most of them were members of Vatican government) and published all the conferences in the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano (which was the unofficial voice of the Pope).

The conferences started when the Ethiopian war was fully underway with the lecture held by cardinal Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. In general they presented an interpretation of the universal myth of Rome in a missionary perspective, in terms of Latin-Catholic civilization and spiritual imperialism. The lectures focused on the decisive role played by the Catholic Church over the centuries, as not only it had received the legacy of ancient imperial Rome, but it had also developed its providential mission, presenting Rome as the ‘unfailing beacon of faith and moral truth’. ⁵⁹ A mission fulfilled through everyday work with its constant presence in society – a matter revived by the Council of Trent ⁶⁰ – through religious institutions, ⁶¹ educating young people, ⁶² the martyrs and missionaries who still brought the voice of Rome in the twentieth century even where it was rejected and persecuted. ⁶³ According to Monsignor Celso Costantini, secretary of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide, Christian Rome had overcome the limited boundaries of the ancient Empire and ‘conquered the barbarian conqueror’, spreading the Latin civilization across the world, turning it into catholicity, ⁶⁴ and became the beacon of civilization. ⁶⁵ This approach was common to the themes chosen for the lectures about the Romanità of Saints ⁶⁶ and Rome as a centre of missionary life. ⁶⁷ They magnified the work carried out by missionaries and Christian saints in preserving and spreading Christian faith across the world, starting precisely from Africa, ‘where Italy was now going back to’. ⁶⁸ In many respects, this was done in a way that tried to establish a ‘connection between the missionary work and colonialism in the name of Rome’s Christian civilization’. ⁶⁹ The arguments advanced in these lectures were a perfect reflection of the period of greatest convergence between fascism and Catholicism and the religious overtones given by many Catholic circles to the Ethiopian conquest. ⁷⁰ Under the influence of the fascist regime’s totalitarian pressure, these arguments also reflected the ideologization of religious language, which had now assumed a military character in Italian Catholics, and the very strong connection between homeland and faith ⁷¹ (for example in the homily held in 1935 by the Archbishop of Milan, Ildefonso Schuster, during the anniversary of the March of Rome). ⁷² However, this connection, cemented by the idea of Rome, had as a first requirement ‘the ideological primacy of Sacred Rome’. ⁷³ . Cardinal Pacelli clearly stated that Rome had become a beacon of civilization, as in its soil and in its catacombs popes, priests and believers had excavated and cemented ‘the foundations of a new Rome and a new Empire, whose flag will be the labarum of the Nazarene’s Cross’. ⁷⁴

As a result, also the conquest of Ethiopia needed to be interpreted from a Christian perspective:

An Empire that abolishes slavery – stated Galassi Paluzzi –, that redeems the poor, that brings civilization, that, in accordance with the will of its Creator, aims at connecting the losers with the winners, that gives the fields of a profitable labour to people who followed God’s commandment and multiplied itself and grew, has the necessary requirements to be the holiest and right thing, to become the most important expression of human fraternal solidarity, as it assigns to the strongest, to the most expert, to the most skilful the task of using their strength to elevate the poor, who would not be able to find the strength to elevate themselves on their own, to a higher level of morality and civil life.When an Empire is founded in this way by its Creator, it is really and always worthy of being called Roman Empire. ⁷⁵

This kind of speech ⁷⁶ is a perfect example showing that the Ethiopian war has determined a gradual transformation in the ‘national-Catholic ideology’: the growing identification of the idea of nation with the fascist political religion ⁷⁷ had indeed contributed to spreading typically fascist tones, models, myths and symbols in many Catholic circles ⁷⁸ and marked the transition to the stage of ‘fascist Catholicism’ or ‘Catholic fascism’. ⁷⁹

The attempt of these series of lectures to catholicize fascism (they were held again every year up until 1944) ⁸⁰ was compensated and in some respects balanced by other initiatives of the Institute of Roman Studies, which, on the one hand, tended to introduce explicit references to the fascist myths of romanità in the interpretation regarding the civilizing mission of Catholicism, ⁸¹ and, on the other hand, to exalt the importance of ancient Rome and its reincarnation in fascist Italy. For instance, it is worth briefly mentioning the series of lectures called Africa Romana, ⁸² which drew quite a few analogies between the past and the present Empire, ⁸³ or the launch of the series of 30 books Storia di Roma ⁸⁴ and namely the publication of the book written by Giulio Giannelli on the Punic Wars. The historian drew a clear analogy between the victory of Rome on Carthage and the return of the Empire ‘on the fateful hills of Rome’. ⁸⁵

The attempt to attain a steady dialectical synthesis between fascism and Catholicism was not so immediate and in some cases was actually a cause for friction. Indeed, the lecture given by Monsignor Francesco Borgongini Duca (papal nuncio at the Royal Court of Italy) held as part of the series about Rome where Christ is Roman explicitly stated the primacy of Christian Rome, which had been just mentioned by Cardinal Pacelli in his lecture. The papal nuncio argued that the universal mission of Christianity was not at all derived from the imperial idea of Roman civilization and he stressed how Catholicism had never relied on the Roman Empire, on an Empire that was ‘limited to only one ethnic group’ and ‘held up by a swarm of spears’. Between these two worldviews there had been ‘the greatest war’, which ended with the victory of Christian Rome: the completely ‘universal and eternal’ Rome, which had withstood the corrosive force of time and space, would also overcome the governments that at the time acclaimed the atheist State, the ‘lay Caesar, Chief of religion’, the national church ‘serving one flag, paid by a sovereign, with ethnic prejudices or class interests’ – a clear reference to communism and National Socialism. ⁸⁶ Another cause for friction arose in 1937 when the book on Risorgimento, part of the Storia di Roma series, was assigned to Martire. His appointment prompted fierce criticism – especially from Federzoni, Grazioli and Ceccarelli – with regards to the excessive ‘clericalism’ of the author, ⁸⁷ to the extent that Galassi Paluzzi replaced him with Alberto Maria Ghisalberti, a scholar close to the nationalist historiographical interpretation. ⁸⁸

The progressive worsening of the relationships between the fascist regime and the Holy See deteriorated after the publication of the Mit Brennender Sorge encyclical. ⁸⁹ Published at the same time the Divini Redemptoris and Firmissimam Constantiam encyclicals were released, it considered Nazism an equally dangerous enemy for Christianity, on a par with communism and Mexican anticlericalism. ⁹⁰ However, their publication, which de facto aimed at giving a warning sign to the fascist foreign policy, determined a further strengthening of the ‘conciliatory’ ideological tendency of the Institute of Roman Studies. After all, only part of the episcopacy agreed with the Pope’s view on Nazi dictatorship. ⁹¹ So, with the Italian regime’s ideological rapprochement towards Nazism, Galassi Paluzzi asked the scholars working with the Institute to use more caution and moderation in the tones used towards Nazi Germany, though this ‘piece of advice’ was not always followed. Galassi Paluzzi’s advice to Emilio Bodrero was quite explanatory in this sense, as he invited him ‘to moderate his anti-Germanic attack, after all well justified, given that the relationship with Germany had changed’, as he stated in his essay on the celebration of the 2000th anniversary of Horatio’s birth. ⁹² Despite the request, the former nationalist philosopher, married to a Jewish woman who converted to Catholicism, did not change his scornful view of the National Socialist ideology. After comparing the precepts contained in Horatio’s Carmen Saeculare to Mussolini’s fascist programme, in an evident attempt to come to a Catholic-fascist synthesis, Bodrero argued that this poem, together with Virgil’s Aeneid, had established:

Romanità as the immortal essence of the only possible civilization. The root of every great human ideal is Rome and not the poor tale of Aryanism trying to bring back mankind to prehistoric barbarism, Rome and the sublime reality of its continuous and well documented history of thirty centuries of civilization and not the vague and pathetic theory of a comical and pitiful ecstasy of mad people. Today the Germans disavow it, together with all its sacredness. ⁹³

The simultaneous opening, on 23 September 1937, of the Augustan Exhibition on Romanità and the Exhibition on the Fascist Revolution seemed to still conceal the first clashes that arose in the ideological synthesis apparently achieved with the Ethiopian war. ⁹⁴ Indeed, the Augustan Exhibition, dominated by the figure of the Roman Emperor as a Prince of Peace capable of spreading classical civilization, ended with the triumph of Christianity. ⁹⁵ This meant that fascism’s civilizing mission was ‘closely associated with the evangelizing role of the Church and the figure of Augustus overlapped with “the mask of Constantine”’. ⁹⁶ Indeed, in the last room – as Monsignor Constantini stated in a lecture held at the Institute – ‘the dusk of paganism met and blended with the dawn of Christianity’, which brought a new light to ancient Rome’s civilizing mission. ⁹⁷

However, a tendency to show Christianity in an aggressive light began to appear in 1937: it had triumphed over the Roman Empire and had imposed itself on Western society. ⁹⁸ The meaning was clear: by reminding the fascist regime that the Catholic Church was the only true world power, it was giving fascism a sort of warning in order to turn it into the secular arm of Christianity to reconquer modernity. ⁹⁹ The war in Spain was considered from this perspective, as a crusade against Bolshevism and modern society. ¹⁰⁰ These interpretations were also presented indirectly during the second and third series of lectures about ‘Christian Rome’, which again focused on the Church’s missionary action and on its universal nature. ¹⁰¹ On that occasion, it was argued that a conquest pursued ‘not with the golden eagle of Trajan, but with the labarum of Constantine’ was more effective. ¹⁰² Moreover, Tacchi Venturi stated that the geographical extension of the Rome of the Caesars seemed almost insignificant when compared with the grandeur achieved by Christian Rome over the centuries. Unlike empires that had long disappeared, it ‘lasted, continues to last and will last, unchanged in its doctrine and its morals, smiling at those who predict it will die’. ¹⁰³ Monsignor Domenico Tardini, one of the figures closest to the Pope and who had shown a critical approach towards fascist politics since 1935, even brought back to light the myth of catacombs, providing additional militant overtones to the idea of a new Christian order ‘with no limits of time and space, with no distinction of peoples and races’. ¹⁰⁴ Nuncio Borgongini Duca glorified the ‘army of Roman heroes’, whose martyrdom had started against the barbarians and had known no respite yet and indeed continued in Mexico and in the heart of Europe. ¹⁰⁵ Through their criticism against modernity and Protestantism, some lectures also carried more or less explicit anti-communist and anti-Nazi overtones, in an attempt to show the differences of these regimes in relation to fascism, in that the latter had taken up the civilizing mission of Rome ¹⁰⁶ and had turned imperial, Catholic and fascist Italy into a bulwark of Western Christian civilization, far from both the ‘exclusivism of race and nation’ and ‘humanitarian internationalism’. ¹⁰⁷ Nazi paganism and the persecution of Catholics in Mexico, Spain and the USSR had also led, among others, the Institute of Roman Studies – especially with regards to initiatives that clearly depicted a militant and aggressive image of the Church – to formulate interpretations according to which Italy, or rather the ‘myth of Catholic Italy’, became the prototype of the ‘myth of Christian civilization’ of which the ‘fascist nation could become the bulwark’. ¹⁰⁸

The 5th National Congress of Roman Studies on The Mission of the Empire of Rome held in May 1938 was an accurate representation of the interpretative path that had been followed up to that moment. It provided an exact description of the Roman Empire primarily based on the notions of ‘absorption’, ‘fusion’ and ‘peace’. ¹⁰⁹ The Roman Empire brought together different peoples both spiritually and politically, without a forced ‘denationalization’, and created a truly ‘universal’ civilization. ¹¹⁰ For example, this ‘attraction’ and ‘fusion’ was evident in Roman law, which was ‘a well blended mix of Roman laws and provincial customs’. ¹¹¹ It was precisely Christianity – it was argued – that had enabled Rome to become ‘truly eternal and universal’ by merging the Roman civil universalism with the Christian religious one. ¹¹² Moreover, the Church had allowed ‘to carry forward the idea, the tradition, the awareness, the survival of Imperial Rome’ even after the State had been split into a number of smaller states, thereby achieving ‘the progressive civilization of the barbarian peoples’. The Church played a crucial role and this became immediately evident with the Longobards: despite the fact that they were ‘the roughest’ among the barbarians, ‘they were also enveloped and attracted’ by Rome’s appeal. They ‘welcomed’ its religious faith and ‘gave up the heresy they had brought with them from the East’ ¹¹³ – a clear reference to Nazi Germany, which, like its forefathers, should have been absorbed and driven by Catholic and fascist Rome.

Not even the promulgation of the racial laws in 1938 weakened the glorification of the myth of Christian Rome. The lectures on ‘Christian Rome’ went on regularly and in the meantime two additional series of lectures were held, the first one on the relationship between Rome and Judaism and again held by a clergyman, the abbot Giuseppe Ricciotti, ¹¹⁴ and the second one on racism. They had the clear intention of showing the true meaning of Italian racism and opposing the biological view of the journal La Difesa della Razza. Immediately after the publication of the famous Manifesto of Italian racism, Galassi Paluzzi took action and asked some advice at the members of the Institute’s Steering Committee he was closest to, such as Carlo Cecchelli, who suggested holding some lectures to formulate the current idea of Italian racism ‘on the well defined basis of romanità’ and show ‘the noble character of the race’ based on the Latin meaning of ‘da nobili arias padri’. ¹¹⁵ Urged by Bottai ¹¹⁶ and in line with the ambivalences existing among Italian Catholics about racism, ¹¹⁷ already in August 1938 Galassi Paluzzi expressed his favour towards a spiritual racism that showed the constant superiority of the Latin genius and civilization ¹¹⁸ in Roman Law, in architecture, in the Latin language and in Renaissance, which were all typical expressions of the ‘Roman descent’ (and not race) in which – as Pericle Ducati meaningfully argued in the series of lectures on Rome and the race issue – the physical element is ‘something that depends on the spiritual nature’, meaning that Italian peoples had become Roman thanks to the extension of the right to citizenship and the spread of civilization: ‘In Rome the issue of race actually became an issue of citizenship’ and as the empire grew when they came in contact with other peoples, ‘spiritual qualities prevailed on physical characteristics’, which in the end ‘were of no importance’. ¹¹⁹ In the series of lectures on racism, the notions of people, genius and civilization were preferred to the biological notion of race, because – as Cecchelli argued – they added the whole weight and ‘prestige of a tradition’. ¹²⁰ Finally, it was argued that the strength of the Roman genius did not depend on its purity, but on its unique ability to merge, to find a synthesis, to reabsorb and to transform several tendencies. ¹²¹

Like most of the Catholic world, ¹²² as the international situation worsened and with the gradual rapprochement to Germany, the totalitarian quickening and with fascism clearly taking shape as a political religion, a strong feeling emerged inside the Institute of Roman Studies about the possibility that the Italian regime was moving away from the political line followed up until then. The lectures on ‘Christian Rome’ tried to heal the rift between Pope Pius XI and the fascist regime, ¹²³ though they actually showed the growing concern regarding the direction taken by fascism. The lectures reduced the tone of the warlike language, which had marked the years between 1935 and 1938 and drew on pacifism, as well as on missionary ¹²⁴ and charitable patriotism, ¹²⁵ in line with the new meaning attributed to the idea of Rome by the newly-elected Pope Pius XII as a spiritual crusade to pursue peace. ¹²⁶ Despite these signs of uneasiness, these lectures seemed to be a more or less intentional attempt to bring the fascist regime and the duce back on the path of Catholic restoration. As part of this context, it is necessary to mention the lectures held in 1939 by cardinal Domenico Jorio, prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Sacraments, and Monsignor Alfredo Ottaviani, secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Speaking about ecumenical councils, cardinal Jorio reasserted the idea of Christianity as a unique universal empire, in opposition to Nazism and communism. It is worth noting that, in a section of the speech that was deleted by Galassi Paluzzi in the copy due to be published, Jorio argued that:

against the new attacks from the East or the North, the Catholic Church is the only institution that embodies internationality … hence its resistance against any historical reversal, against instinctive and barbaric returns, which are a constant threat for more ancient and more complete Nations like ours. ¹²⁷

During his lecture held in December, when Europe was already at war, on the one hand Monsignor Ottaviani brought back the idea of collaboration between the State and the Church that had been established by the Lateran Pacts in 1929 and, on the other hand, proposed that governments look for a pacific rapprochement among European States to create the conditions that would pave the way for a new Munich Agreement. ¹²⁸ These appeals, along with other appeals with similar intentions, ¹²⁹ were common to many Catholic circles ¹³⁰ and aimed at magnifying the Church’s universal nature, which opposed nationalism in any shape or form. For instance, on 20 January 1939, the Jesuit Father Mario Barbera openly condemned the nationalist ideology, stating that the universal imperialism of Christian Rome was not a ‘form of uniformity that destroyed several national characters and cultures, but a brotherhood of souls in a common superior doctrine’, which preserved ‘the superior unity in diversity’. ¹³¹ The books of the Roma Mater series written by Paribeni had a similar goal. Indeed, they aimed at catholicizing the family policies of Augustus ¹³² and the values of the Roman Empire, which brought peace, freedom, justice and welfare to all. ¹³³ In the Storia di Roma series Nicola Turchi went a step further, defining Augustus such as a conservative, who built the foundations of Rome’s imperial greatness by restoring its ancient religion and the pax romana. ¹³⁴

With the outbreak of the war, the president of the Institute of Roman Studies went back to his nationalistic convictions – which had always been expressed in the publications and initiatives of the Institute – and welcomed war as pious, legitimate and necessary to defend Roman civilization. ¹³⁵ Since ‘the country was going through a great historical moment’, he thought that the Institute had to start some political activities supporting the war, because ‘the total war is fought in the field of science and culture, as well as in other fields’. ¹³⁶ In May 1941, in the presence of the king, Galassi Paluzzi argued that the Institute of Roman Studies had to become a ‘militia’ marching ‘in the battlefield that has been assigned to us so that the ancient and eternal truths of the Rome of the Caesars, of Christian Rome and of Savoyard and fascist Rome will triumph in the new world order’. ¹³⁷ Therefore, he decided to set up a series of propaganda initiatives, such as the Mare Nostrum series ¹³⁸ or the new cycle of lectures called Rome and the Mediterranean Sea, ¹³⁹ which did not fail to present Christianity’s crucial role as a custodian, guarantor and promoter of Roman civilization. ¹⁴⁰ Some lectures, furthermore, unburied the myth of Christian crusades, thereby abandoning the idea of the spiritual mission pursued by Augustus and Constantine, of the synthesis between classical and Christian Rome in order to embrace a view that showed Christianity in an aggressive light: although persecuted, it had triumphed over the Roman Empire and imposed itself on Western society. ¹⁴¹

This meant that the Institute founded by Galassi Paluzzi in many regards replicated a behaviour that was not uncommon for the Catholic attitude towards the fascist war and that some historians call ‘the undulatory line’ of Catholics. ¹⁴² This was based on the prospect of rebuilding Christianity and the struggle against its enemy number one, bolshevism. ¹⁴³ Thus, the Institute continued to alternate overtures towards positions that would be more accurate to define as ‘fascist’, as in the case of the lecture held by Mario Appelius on the notion of ‘New Order’, ¹⁴⁴ and more nuanced opinions, as in the case of the lecture held by Father Romeo Mezzanotte, who recalled the German saint Clemente Hofbauer, ¹⁴⁵ and even some clearly critical stances. However, these never came to question fascism or the regime, but only some of its internal positions and tendencies. Among these it is worth mentioning the lectures on Romanità and Germanism held by Guido Manacorda, ¹⁴⁶ who openly spoke of an antithesis between the Roman-Christian civilization and the German one, as the latter was considered to be imbued with ‘pantheism’ and ‘irrational-primitivistic connections’. ¹⁴⁷ Other criticisms appeared in some articles by Galassi Paluzzi published in the journal Roma, where he condemned the pagan biologism of Nazi ideology. ¹⁴⁸

Finally, the continuation of the series of lectures on Rome where Christ is Roman was an additional cause for increasing clashes with the regime, due to their evident attempt to exert a theological pressure on it. For instance, after vigorously attacking the war in 1939, ¹⁴⁹ Father Mariano Cordovani, Master of the Sacred Palaces and papal theologian, now argued that it was impossible to reduce and ‘to mortify’ Catholic universalism to any form of nationalism, stating that:

it was not the prestige of Rome, of Rome as the capital, that gave St. Peter the supremacy of jurisdiction over the entire Church, but the personal supremacy of St. Peter … was handed down to his successors on the Roman Chair … The concept of Roman Church does not refer to a national Church, but a universal Church, as, since it was based in Rome, it stretched over the centuries in terms of time and the whole Earth in terms of space. ¹⁵⁰

Based on these positions, it was clear that this series of lectures was becoming increasingly inconvenient for the regime. They were criticized by Pavolini, because they were not examined, censored and approved beforehand by the Ministry of Popular Culture, ¹⁵¹ which is why they stopped being broadcast on the radio in 1941. ¹⁵²

The difficult domestic and international situation, which worsened during the winter between 1942 and 1943, led to the decision to abandon the effort to find a synthesis between Catholic, nationalist and fascist ideologies. Now Christian Rome, with its myth and its values of order, peace and family, prevailed over the Rome of the Caesars and Mussolini’s Rome. Already at the end of 1941 it was evident that the failure of the war had triggered an irreversible change. This was clearly shown by the publication of two books, part of the Storia di Roma series, on the fall of the Roman Empire – as mentioned earlier, this was one of Galassi Paluzzi’s key initiatives. Written by two prominent Italian scholars of ancient history, Roberto Paribeni and Ottorino Bertolini, the books presented an image of ancient Rome in which now only the popes and religious powers tended to shine. Indeed, Paribeni’s book started off by criticizing historiography’s underestimation of the Late Empire’s history, as it was influenced by the concept of decadence. This had overshadowed ‘the most magnificent, the most amazing event that had been the most fruitful of consequences in the history of the world: the triumph of Christianity’. ¹⁵³ The book portrayed the decadence of the Roman Empire in a way that was reminiscent of the fall of the fascist regime. Paribeni condemned the fact that all the power was held in the Emperor’s hands and regarded it as something that had led deprived ‘ancient positions, such as senator, consul, praetor, tribunes of the people’ of all their power and had increased the range of action of ‘bureaucracy’, bringing about ‘an apathetic lack of interest for public affairs among the masses, who were only interested in their limited personal interests’. It also led to an increasingly ‘arbitrary and bizarre’ allocation of authority and political powers. The Emperor had become so ‘distant and invisible for the people’ to the extent that he became something ‘sacred’, ‘a symbol, an abstraction’. ¹⁵⁴ In this situation, worsened by the attacks of ‘the German barbarian horde’, only Christianity had kept the true Roman civilization alive, thanks to the actions of popes like Leone Magno, who – as argued by Paribeni, almost predicting the future role of Pius XII – ‘proved to be the only power capable of defending, as far as was possible, Rome and Italy’, which had both been abandoned by emperors to the forays of barbarians such as Attila and Genseric. ¹⁵⁵

If Paribeni’s words already sounded like a strong accusation against the fascist regime and its German ally, Bertolini’s book was even more explicit in describing the Roman and German antithesis. He accused the German barbarian peoples of having broken Italy’s unity, whilst at the same time their invasions turned the Church, starting from Gregory I, into the core of Rome’s ‘revenge’ and the bulwark of romanità and the Italian nation. ¹⁵⁶ Bertolini provided a long, detailed list of events in which the papal authority had surpassed and defeated the aims of the Longobard kings, still considered extraneous by the Italian population. ¹⁵⁷

A final, extreme attempt to reach an ideological synthesis can be identified in the lecture held in 1942 by Giuseppe Bottai, ¹⁵⁸ the Minister of National Education, on St. Benedict. According to Bottai, St. Benedict imposed an ‘order’ on the whole of Western society, by means of a ‘true social education’ that balanced work, meditation and education, giving everyone the principles of a true sense of community and Christian family values, as opposed to any form of individualism. These principles – stated the minister – had been revived by the fascist regime and included in the Charter of Work and in the Charter of School. ¹⁵⁹

However, probably due to the urging in Pius XII’s Christmas radio message broadcast in 1942, the break-off from the regime was completed in 1943. The foundation of the Steering Committee for Christian Rome in January 1943 was a clear sign in this sense. ¹⁶⁰ Composed of members very close to the Vatican, ¹⁶¹ it required the presence of an official officer of the Holy See, Monsignor Celso Costantini, who believed that the Committee’s activity had to become ‘a work of apostolate’. ¹⁶² The Committee set itself the objective of ‘coordinating all the initiatives of the Institute related to the Christian aspect of civilization’ in order to ensure they all had the same well structured purpose and guarantee ‘a well defined Catholic doctrinal background’. ¹⁶³

In this climate, similar to what was happening within society and in some fringes of the fascist ruling class, ¹⁶⁴ Pius XII became an increasingly important point of reference. The relations between him and Galassi Paluzzi became closer, like the relations between the Vatican hierarchy and some fascist leaders. ¹⁶⁵ Pius XII’s role was magnified both in the series of lectures called Rome where Christ is Roman ¹⁶⁶ and in some publications. ¹⁶⁷ This meant that also the Institute of Roman Studies took part in creating Pius XII’s myth, which was in clear contrast with the myth of the duce: during his Episcopal Jubilee, the Pope ‘became the symbol of peace’ and ‘embodied the image of the Church looking to the future through the tragedy of war’. ¹⁶⁸

Christian Rome fully established its primacy after the fall of the regime on 25 July 1943, when the Church became the only authority and institution the population could turn to. The Pope, who was also referred to as ‘defensor urbis’, became the true guardian of an Institute that opposed Nazism and fascism’s extremist attitude. ¹⁶⁹ In the last meeting of the Steering Committee as the president of the Institute of Roman Studies on 19 June 1944, Galassi Paluzzi held a speech in which he skilfully summed up the long way his institute had gone, thanking the Holy See and the Pope for their interest in the activities of an Institute that had tried to clarify the ‘immense contribution that ancient and Christian romanità had given and could still give to every true progress of civilized life’. ¹⁷⁰

This article retraces only a small portion of the numerous initiatives promoted by the Institute of Roman Studies and its relationship with the political and religious world. Galassi Paluzzi and his colleagues tried hard to find a point of contact, so that the Institute could become a mediator between Catholics and the fascist political religion. It was highly regarded by the Vatican as both a cultural and political negotiator with the regime. ¹⁷¹ For instance, it is worth mentioning the increasingly crucial role of Bottai, who became the real political point of reference of the Institute of Roman Studies during the second half of the 1930s. Bottai was also increasingly regarded by Catholics as the potential leader of a pro-Catholic turning point of the regime and subsequently as a possible solution to the crisis affecting country. ¹⁷² Furthermore, the Institute of Roman Studies represented a place to exchange ideas within the Catholic world itself and within its various areas of opinion. ¹⁷³ As a result, it brought its contribution to the complex interweaving and overlapping of cultures and myths built around the various ideas of the Italian nation and the blend between religious faith and totalitarian political religions. Galassi Paluzzi long tried to merge the three Romes in a stable and durable way, but he ended up being involved in the disputes between the fascist regime and the Vatican as they locked horns. While for the former the Institute was another tool to support its totalitarian cultural policy, for the latter it was a matter of preparing and leading the making of a new Christian order. This meant that the role of the Institute went hand in hand with the new public prominence given by the papacy of Pius XI, often in manifest opposition with the regime, ¹⁷⁴ to Catholic organizations and religious events, which had now acquired a new mass dimension. ¹⁷⁵ In brief, the Institute found itself in the middle of that ‘sort of formal embrace in which each party [fascism and the Holy See] hoped it would have been able to engulf, to absorb the other’, ¹⁷⁶ that is in the middle ‘of an ambitious attempt of totalitarian transformation of Italian Catholicism to which the Church responded with an equally ambitious effort to catholicize the nation’. ¹⁷⁷ Still, for a long time for many Italians this attempt to achieve a ‘conciliatory synthesis’ represented the real mission and the right path that Mussolini’s regime should have followed: it appeared as the best political vehicle to achieve a palingenetic project designed to defend and promote religious objectives and interests. ¹⁷⁸

This view was fuelled by the fascist ideology itself, based on the belief that fascism was an epoch-making phenomenon, a new beginning, a new and alternative modernism that revived a new sense of transcendence. ¹⁷⁹ The idea of the regime as a vehicle for attaining religious objectives had been suggested by the social doctrine of Christ, which, in contrast with liberal and communist theories, ‘was a means through which many Catholic circles were actually able to adhere to the political tendencies of the authoritarian right and supported its policies’ far beyond the official condemnation of the pagan worship of the state in 1937 contained in the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical. ¹⁸⁰ Indeed, Galassi Paluzzi considered the fascist regime as an excellent political solution for Italy and capable of leading the crusade of the Latin and Catholic West against the barbarian, pagan, atheist East and North, which had to be civilized by Rome so that they would serve the Catholic and fascist cause.

The work and the initiatives of the Institute of Roman Studies show that some of Italy’s top intellectuals believed it was possible to create and spread a more conservative idea of fascism’s ideology, which was at the same time pro-Catholic and monarchist and capable of isolating radical fringes and persuading Mussolini himself. They were sure that the duce was the only one capable of controlling the Neopagan positions within his movement, not least because, after all, he was the man who advocated for the Lateran Pacts, the man sent by Providence. ¹⁸¹ This was a ‘state of mind’, not without contradictions, shared by a number of laymen and priests, ¹⁸² as well as by the various currents within fascism that, even during the war, were ready to merge, break apart, blend in again and reassemble in a different manner depending on events and circumstances. ¹⁸³ Moreover, in some periods, through a complex and bustling dialectical relation, this state of mind came close to and established more or less close relationships with the ideas and positions of European conservative right-wing movements ¹⁸⁴ in order to create a ‘Latin block’ of confessional and authoritarian states, which can be included under the accurate definition given by George L. Mosse of ‘clerical fascism’. ¹⁸⁵ This was an idea common to a number of differing cultural and political circles in Italy during the 1930s – ‘moderate’ fascists, former right-wing liberals and former nationalists – each of which focused on a specific aspect:

Against communism, Nazism, secular and Masonic democracies – argued Renato Moro – arose the idea of a ‘confessional path’, of a Catholic authoritarianism capable of carrying out a necessary anti-communist role without committing the excesses of Nazism. The key points of this idea were authority moderated by freedom, state control moderated by corporative independence and nationalism balanced by Catholic universalism. States such as the Austria of Seipel and Dollfuss, the Hungary of Horty, the Portugal of Salazar, the Brazil of Vargas were the model of this middle course. By ‘rejecting indifferentism and the worship of the state’, they showed they were inspired by the papal encyclicals. ¹⁸⁶

In conclusion, this shows that also the story of the Institute of Roman Studies briefly presented in this article can represent a position offering a small view of how, in parallel with the institutional clash between the Church and the regime, a dialectical and less confrontational interpretation of the relationships between Catholicism and fascism was spreading inside the top levels of the Vatican and among some Fascists, where – as argued by Renato Moro – the dispute took place ‘between pro-Catholicism and paganism’. ¹⁸⁷ It also proves that even during the war there were constantly changing attitudes and there was no clear cut between the two sides. In brief, in my opinion the Institute of Roman Studies represents a place where one can observe the encounter, the clash, the fusion and the deep and mutual influences between two typically modern phenomena produced by mass politics: the sacralization of politics ¹⁸⁸ and the politicization and ideologization of religion. ¹⁸⁹ Moreover, it illustrates some of the characteristics and the contradictions of the fascist ‘totalitarian experiment’, ¹⁹⁰ as well some of its limits, not in institutional or organizational terms but in terms of mentality, ¹⁹¹ in relation to the reception and interpretation among some Italian cultural circles, and also among the general public, of two differing and yet always interpreted as almost complementary models of nationalization of the elites and the masses; two models that were closely associated, often in a fluctuating way, up until 1942. Only at the end, when the situation seemed entirely compromised, the way out was sought outside the regime. ¹⁹² Only at that moment the two parallel models of ‘nationalization of Italians’, ¹⁹³ which according to many in the high ranks of the Vatican and some Italian intellectuals could still merge, took different directions once and for all. Therefore, Galassi Paluzzi firmly backed the process of ‘nationalization of Catholic masses’ by supporting the phenomenon of ‘politicization and ideologization of religion’ typical of the complex relationship between Catholicism and modernity, ¹⁹⁴ both a ‘result’ and ‘legacy’ that totalitarianisms had left to Christianity in the postwar years. ¹⁹⁵ This was a path common to many Catholics and laymen. The war triggered a slow and wave-like process of transformation in religious consciences that, thanks to the propagation of the social doctrine of Christ mentioned above, led to a deep crisis of sense and loyalty towards that mixture between Catholicism and fascism which had come to represent a widespread feeling of being Italian, as well as determining a perception of religion as a shelter. ¹⁹⁶

The speech held by Galassi Paluzzi at the last meeting of the Steering Committee perfectly represented the path followed by the Institute in its ‘conciliatory’ attempt. Despite its final failure, it was an extensive phenomenon in Italy during the period between the wars and can be rightfully included in the path taken by Italian conservatives and Catholics and, more in general, it represented the state of mind of many Italians. In the end, the ‘ideological battle’ for Rome had its winner. A victory clearly achieved first of all thanks to the Allies’ armies and the political suicide of an opponent that for a long time had been considered as an ally in the battle against anti-Christian modernity and also thanks to the strong presence of the Church in the country’s social fabric, especially after the institutional vacuum created by fascism’ crisis, the war and the surrender on 8 September. ¹⁹⁷

In December 1944, after Rome had been freed by the allies, the new Special Commissioner Quinto Tosatti – who replaced Galassi Paluzzi, too implicated with the regime – began the 19th academic year of the ‘Corsi Superiori di Studi Romani’ with a speech that accurately illustrated both the final outcome of a path that had showed the spreading and the triumph of a myth, that of ‘Christian Rome’, which was far from wearing out, and a new beginning. Tosatti exalted the role of Pius XII, comparing his action as ‘defensor urbis’ with that of ‘Pope Leo when he faced Attila’, ‘Pelagius who saved the relics of the Romans sheltered away inside the churches from the fury of Totila’s Goths’, ‘Gregory who stopped the Longobard barbarism at the gates of Rome’. According to Tosatti, the words pronounced by Pius XII in March 1944 – ‘Whoever attacks Rome would be guilty of matricide’ – had saved the Eternal City:

What the ancient consuls had done with a great mass murder – as the poet Alfano of Salerno had written to Gregory VII – you do by only using your speech: ‘With the flaming sword of St. Peter defeat again – and for the last time – the strength and the violence of the cruel barbarianism’ … At that moment many of us had the premonition that now Rome was safe from the new barbarians. ¹⁹⁸

Thus the ‘myth of Christian Rome’ was revitalized through this speech of the new Special Commissioner of the Institute of Roman Studies, under the principle of continuity, in an attempt both to spread again this myth with renovated vigour in post-fascist Italy and to further implement, through the initiatives of the Institute, the nationalization process of the Catholic masses.