Making Italy Anglican: Why the Book of Common Prayer Was Translated into Italian (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology)

For almost three hundred years there were those in England who believed that an Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer could trigger radical change in the political and religious landscape of Italy. The aim was to present the text to the Italian religious and political elite, in keeping with the belief that the English liturgy embodied the essence of the Church of England. The beauty, harmony, and simplicity of the English liturgical text, rendered into Italian, was expected to demonstrate that the English Church came closest to the apostolic model. Beginning in the Venetian Republic and ending with the Italian Risorgimento, the leitmotif running through the various incarnations of this project was the promotion of top-down reform according to the model of the Church of England itself. These ventures mostly had little real impact on Italian history: as Roy Foster once wrote, "the most illuminating history is often written to show how people acted in the expectation of a future that never happened." This book presents one of those histories. Making Italy Anglican tells the story of a fruitless encounter that helps us better to understand both the self-perception of the Church of England's international role and the cross-cultural and religious relations between Britain and Italy. Stefano Villani shows how Italy, as the heart of Roman Catholicism, was--over a long period of time--the very center of the global ambitions of the Church of England. Cover 1 Making Italy Anglican 4 Series 5 Copyright 7 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 16 I.1 The Story of a Failure 16 I.2 The First Translations of the Book of Common Prayer 30 1. Paolo Sarpi, William Bedell, and the First Italian Translation of the Book of Common Prayer 38 1.1. Henry Wotton in Venice and the Interdict Crisis 38 1.2. After the Interdict: The Arrival of William Bedell in Venice (1607) 42 1.3. Giovanni Diodati and the Plans for a Protestant Congregation in Venice (September 1608) 43 1.4. Protestant Propaganda 45 1.5. The Translation of the Book of Common Prayer (1608) 47 1.6. The End of Wotton’s Mission 49 1.7. The Embassy of Dudley Carleton, the Return of Henry Wotton, the Flight of De Dominis, and the Publication of the History of the Council of Trent (1610–​1616) 52 1.8. “A Man May Live in an Infected City and Not Have the Plague”: The Church of England as a Middle Way 55 1.9. Sarpi, Micanzio, and the Church of England 58 2. In Search of Patronage: The Translation by Alessandro Amidei 64 2.1. An Abjuration 64 2.2. A Manuscript Translation of the Book of Common Prayer 69 3. The Italian Church of London 75 3.1. The History of the Italian Church of London from Florio to De Dominis (1550–​1622) 75 3.2. The Italian Church of London between 1639 and 1662 80 4. The First Italian Edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1685) 86 4.1. Edward Brown and Giovan Battista Cappello 86 4.2. Between Sarpi’s Memory and Protestant Propaganda 89 5. A Liturgical Use? 94 5.1. Attempts to Reconstruct the Italian Church of London at the End of the Seventeenth Century 94 5.2. The 1708 Re-​edition of the Libro delle Preghiere Publiche 96 6. Learning Italian: The 1733 Gordon and 1796 Montucci-​Valetti Editions 98 6.1. The 1733 Gordon Re-​edition 98 6.2. The 1796 Montucci-​Valetti Edition 100 6.3. The 1820 Rolandi and 1821 Bagster Editions 105 6.4. The Anglican Chaplaincies in Italy 110 7. The 1831 Nott Edition 118 7.1. George Frederick Nott and Italy 118 7.2. The 1831 Nott Edition 120 7.3. Sacerdote, Prete, Presbitero, or Ministro? 124 7.4. Malta and the Revision of Nott’s Translation 126 7.5. Nott’s Death (1841) 129 8. The Italian Editions of the Book of Common Prayer Published in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century 131 8.1. The 1841 Di Menna–​Evans Revision and the Birth of the Savonarolan Group in England 131 8.2. Malta as a Center of Anglican Propaganda 134 8.3. The First Italian War of Independence and Italian Emigration to London 137 8.4. “You will either be missionaries or nothing at all”: An Anglican Liturgy for the Waldenses 141 8.5. Twelve Years of Repression (1849–​1860) 147 8.6. An Italian-​Speaking Anglican Congregation in London 150 9. Anglicans, Episcopalians, and the Unification of Italy 154 9.1. The Anglo-​Continental Society, Its Work in Italy, and Camilleri’s Mission in 1860 154 9.2. The 1861 Camilleri Revision 159 9.3. The Work of the SPCK and the Anglo-​Continental Society after the Unification of Italy 161 9.4. An Italian-​Speaking Anglican Church in Sicily 165 9.5. The Old Catholic Movement and Enrico Campello’s National Catholic Church of Italy 167 10. The Book of Common Prayer for Immigrants in London and the United States 171 Conclusion 176 Appendix: Translations of the General Confession and the Preface 182 Abbreviations 188 Notes 192 List of the Italian Translations of the Book of Common Prayer 290 Index 296 For almost three hundred years there were those in England who believed that an Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer could trigger radical change in the political and religious landscape of Italy. The aim was to present the text to the Italian religious and political elite, in keeping with the belief that the English liturgy embodied the essence of the Church of England. The beauty, harmony, and simplicity of the English liturgical text, rendered into Italian, was expected to demonstrate that the English Church came closest to the apostolic model. Beginning in the Venetian Republic and ending with the Italian Risorgimento, the leitmotif running through the various incarnations of this project was the promotion of top-down reform according to the model of the Church of England itself.These ventures mostly had little real impact on Italian history: as Roy Foster once wrote, "the most illuminating history is often written to show how people acted in the expectation of a future that never happened." This book presents one of those histories. Making Italy Anglican tells the story of a fruitless encounter that helps us better to understand both the self-perception of the Church of England's international role and the cross-cultural and religious relations between Britain and Italy. Stefano Villani shows how Italy, as the heart of Roman Catholicism, was--over a long period of time--the very center of the global ambitions of the Church of England. Proporcionado por el ed.: "The first Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer was made in 1608 by William Bedell (the chaplain to James I's ambassador in Venice) with the help of Fulgenzio Micanzio and Paolo Sarpi. This translation was part of an English propaganda plan to instigate a schism in the Church of Venice, at a time of conflict between the court of Rome and the Venetian Republic. This chapter reconstructs the relationships between Sarpi and Micanzio and the English embassy in Venice. As far as we know, Bedell's translation remained a manuscript with no known copies extant" "The first Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer was made in 1608 by William Bedell (the chaplain to James I's ambassador in Venice) with the help of Fulgenzio Micanzio and Paolo Sarpi. This translation was part of an English propaganda plan to instigate a schism in the Church of Venice, at a time of conflict between the court of Rome and the Venetian Republic. This chapter reconstructs the relationships between Sarpi and Micanzio and the English embassy in Venice. As far as we know, Bedell's translation remained a manuscript with no known copies extant"-- Provided by publisher