The article focuses on the role played by Father Agostino Gemelli during the first world war, when he was not only active as a medical officer and the director of a Psychophysical Laboratory annexed to the Military Headquarters, but was also engaged in an unorthodox form of patriotic and political propaganda. The study of the articles and pamphlets that he published in the war years points to a peculiar stance, not always in accordance with the opinions prevalent in the catholic world. This singularity is rooted in Gemelli’s biography and in his medical training in the University of Pavia; it also reflects his determination to participate in a renewal of Italian intellectual and moral habits in a direction only partially consistent with the Vatican’s official views. His activism caused worry and suspicion in high places, and his approach aroused fears of doctrinal deviation: this danger was not new to the man who had experienced a strong attraction to modernist opinions after his earlier conversion.
Il contributo analizza il ruolo di padre Agostino Gemelli nella Grande Guerra, come capitano medico e direttore di un laboratorio di psicofisiologia presso il Comando Supremo e come ideatore di forme di propaganda patriottica e religiosa, rispetto alle quali le autorità militari hanno avuto atteggiamenti non univoci. L’esame di articoli ed opuscoli pubblicati da Gemelli durante il conflitto fa emergere una posizione peculiare, solo in parte riconducibile agli orientamenti prevalenti nel mondo cattolico. Alle origini di tale differenza vi sono il percorso biografico del francescano e la formazione medica che ha ricevuto nell’Università pavese, nonché la sua volontà di contribuire fattivamente al rinnovamento italiano. Come dimostra la documentazione analizzata, le posizioni di Gemelli rispecchiavano solo parzialmente le disposizioni del Vaticano, dove non mancarono preoccupazioni per l’attivismo gemelliano e per un approccio che – si temeva – poteva aprire il fianco a derive dottrinali, un pericolo, questo, non nuovo per Gemelli, che subito dopo la conversione aveva dovuto far fronte a una significativa fascinazione filo-modernista.
Bocci, M., Agostino Gemelli e la prima guerra mondiale, <<ARCHIVIO STORICO LOMBARDO>>, 2015; CXLI (N/A): 79-101 [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/70218]
Agostino Gemelli e la prima guerra mondiale
Bocci, Maria
2015
Abstract
The article focuses on the role played by Father Agostino Gemelli during the first world war, when he was not only active as a medical officer and the director of a Psychophysical Laboratory annexed to the Military Headquarters, but was also engaged in an unorthodox form of patriotic and political propaganda. The study of the articles and pamphlets that he published in the war years points to a peculiar stance, not always in accordance with the opinions prevalent in the catholic world. This singularity is rooted in Gemelli’s biography and in his medical training in the University of Pavia; it also reflects his determination to participate in a renewal of Italian intellectual and moral habits in a direction only partially consistent with the Vatican’s official views. His activism caused worry and suspicion in high places, and his approach aroused fears of doctrinal deviation: this danger was not new to the man who had experienced a strong attraction to modernist opinions after his earlier conversion.
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