Customer Reviews

Controversial Concordats: The Vatican's Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler

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Truly an outstanding reference for anyone interested in this time frame and subject matter. The inclusion of the Napoleonic Concordat gives a much needed historical perspective as to why the Church pursued concordats through the twentieth century. The other part can be understood by reading Kertzer's Prisoner of the Vatican.

What intrigued me was the European version of "separation of church and state." While we as Americans employ it for protection of individual rights to freely exercise our beliefs, they employed it for state/totalitarian control over their conquered many. It's a battle of church versus conqueror. Concordats became the Church's way of losing the battle, but surviving the war.

Good overview by several noted scholars of the Vatican's political relationship with powerful dictators of influential European states, ranging from Napoleon and France to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The concordat was a Vatican document used from the 12th century until the 20th century, culminating during the interwar years, and now somewhat outmoded since the death of Pius XII in 1958 and the changes of the Vatican II Council thereafter focusing more on the spiritual rather than the temporal aspects of the Vatican's role in the world.

every word in this book is the truth