Quiet place of study with a view of St Peter's
Since the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI almost 10 years ago, there has been a recurring debate about whether historical precedents and canon law considerations should be used to establish guidelines on how to regulate the resignation of a pope, as Pope Francis believes this may well happen again in the future (though not necessarily in 'his' future - he added), to the extent that it could become habitual.
The director of the Jerusalem Institute of the Görres Society, Gustav Kühnel, who sadly passed away far too early, is the author, together with his wife Bianca, of a beautiful volume on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which was built by Emperor Constantine. In the preface, Gustav's efforts to restore the Crusader-period mosaics are acknowledged - not his only contribution to the Holy Land. Gustav Kühnel died in 2009, in the 100th year of the existence of the Jerusalem Institute, which had been founded in 1909 on the initiative of Johann Peter Kirsch and whose anniversary unfortunately passed uncelebrated.
Dr. Tamara Scheer, a private lecturer at the Institute of Eastern European History at the University of Vienna, has presented a comprehensive study on language diversity in the Austro-Hungarian army from 1867 to 1918. It goes back to her habilitation thesis. Scheer holds the Venia Legendi for Modern and Contemporary History. In January 2020, she organised the conference at RIGG "Between crowns and nations: The Central European Priests' Colleges in Rome from the Risorgimento to the Second World War", the contributions to which have since been published in the Römische Quartalschrift.
After the conference on the 200th birthday of the Christian archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi took place in Rome only in February, the conference proceedings are already available. The contributions move off the beaten track and shed completely new light on the great scholar within the European archaeological culture of the 19th century. The 25 contributions deal with archaeological as well as historical aspects and draw largely on archival sources. Görresian contributors are: Chiara Cecalupo, Massimiliano Ghilardi, Stefan Heid, Aleksandra Medennikova, Philippe Pergola, Ingo Schaaf and Elena Turchi.
content and aquisition Presentation of the volume
The 2019 doctoral thesis submitted to art historian Prof. Dr. Christian Hecht in Erlangen by former RIGG assistant Dr. Teresa Lohr is already available for pre-order. The book "The Church of Santa Maria della Pietà at the Campo Santo Teutonico between Historicism and the Second Vatican Council" works through all the source material and offers all the historical photographs of the church interior before the demolition of the historical art furnishings in the 1970s. The study thus complements the work of Andreas Tönnemann and Ursula Verena Fischer Pace from 1988 on the present church. Lohr's work, which will be available in print in May, is the 69th supplement volume of the Römische Quartalschrift.
The book edited by Yvonne Dohna Schlobitten, Claudia Bertling Biaggini and Claudia Cierivia on the Raphael conference held at RIGG in November 2020 is now available from the publishing house Schnell und Steiner or in bookshops.
The historian Dr Filip Malesevic (Université de Fribourg - CH) published not only a very handsome book entitled "Inventing the Council inside the Apostolic Library", but also a second one, the revised print version of his doctoral thesis "Cardinal Cesare Baronio and the Curia Ceremonial of the Post-Tridentine Papacy", which was supervised by Volker Reinhardt, among others, at the turn of the year 2021/2022 at De Gruyter.
Thanks to courageous friends, the two volumes finally made it to Rome (to the PIAC): The catalogue "Der Untergang des Römisches Reiches" (The Fall of the Roman Empire), which is much more than a mere catalogue of the exhibited objects, and the volume accompanying the exhibition in the Museum am Dom Trier "Im Zeichen des Kreuzes" (In the Sign of the Cross), edited by Markus Groß-Morgen, also a catalogue including introductory essays. The exhibition took place in the second half of 2022 and was hosted by the Dommuseum, the Rheinisches Landesmuseum and the Stadtmuseum Simeonstift. The two catalogues were soon out of print.
Hot off the press is now a booklet about the Irish priest Hugh O'Flaherty (1898-1963) who helped over 6,000 vulnerable and persecuted people in Rome during the Nazi occupation of Rome from September 1943 to June 1944. O'Flaherty had lived at the German priests' college on Campo Santo since 1938 and directed the aid missions from his room. Thomas Kieslinger and Stefan Heid reconstruct the conditions at Campo Santo at that time, also with the help of unpublished photos. An English and Italian edition are being planned.
Historical liturgical research on the Latin rites is experiencing a renaissance in the English-speaking world. This is also reflected in the latest publication by the London church historian Uwe Michael Lang: his 445-page study "The Roman Mass. From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform" (Cambridge University Press).
Römisches Institut der Görres-Gesellschaft
