Anti-Protestant ideology and anti-Protestant policy: a (complicated) point of convergence between Catholic Church and Italian State during the Fascist regime

Journal title ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA
Author/s Paolo Zanini
Publishing Year 2023 Issue 2023/302 Language Italian
Pages 16 P. 159-174 File size 144 KB
DOI 10.3280/IC2023-302007
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

This literature review aims to analyse the historiographical debate on the anti-Protestant cam- paigns promoted by Italian Catholicism during Fascism, and to highlight how they profound- ly influenced the regime’s policy towards the Protestant denominations. This is a relevant de- bate, which had its first turning point in the 1970s, and has been considerably enriched since the latter half of the 1990s. After retracing the main lines of development of the historio- graphical debate, the review examines the ideological and historical aspects of the Catholic anti-Protestant polemic, pointing out the role it played in determining the Holy See’s relation- ship with Fascism. The analysis also focuses on the regime’s policy towards minority reli- gions, the tactical and contingent aspects of which are revealed, as well as the absence of any in-depth reflection on the issue of religious freedom.

Keywords: Anti-Protestantism, Catholic Church, Religious freedom, State-Church relations, Historiographical debate, Fascist Italy

Paolo Zanini, Antiprotestantesimo e prassi antievangeliche: un (contrastato) punto di convergenza tra Chiesa e Stato nell’Italia fascista in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 302/2023, pp 159-174, DOI: 10.3280/IC2023-302007