Andrew L. Ouellette, MA: “The Christ-Haunted World of

The Christ-Haunted World of Ignazio Silone’s Abruzzo Trilogy & The Question of Scandal as a Force for Religious Change Andrew L. Ouellette, MA

Can scandal be a force of religious change? If Saint Thomas Aquinas’ definition of scandal is correct—as “something less rightly done or said, that occasions another’s spiritual downfall”1 —then scandal can absolutely bring about religious change; but a change that would cause a deformation rather than a transformation. Can we however separate the sin of scandal from a type of scandal that causes men, women, or institutions to change for the good? If the crucified Christ is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” according to the apostle Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth (1 Cor 1:23), could not ideas from outside the boundaries of religious orthodoxy give benefit to both the individual believer and the worshipping community?

Introduction

The purpose of this paper will be to discuss the writings and thought of the Italian novelist and political thinker Ignazio Silone and to assess whether or not the ideas of a writer who referred to himself as “a Socialist without a Party, a Christian without a Church” can serve as a benefit in the Christian understanding of the nature of man and his destiny as best defined in Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”2 This will be done in three parts. First, because Silone is not as well known in English-speaking world today, I will provide a brief biographical sketch that will be necessary in better understanding Silone’s thought as it is expressed in his writings. Second, this paper will particularly examine the characters and themes of his celebrated Abruzzo Trilogy to posit that Silone’s understanding of human nature and the person’s activity in the world as something “Christ-haunted” in which he cannot seem to ever fully remove religion from his being. Lastly, Silone’s thought will be assessed

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (ST), II-II, q. 43, a. 1, (New York: Benzinger Brothers, Inc). 2 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 22 (cited from Austin Flannery (ed), Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, (Collegville: Liturgical Press, 1996).

from perspective of the Catholic intellectual tradition—particularly with the help of Augustine, Aquinas, and Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement—in an effort to show clearly that his writings, while scandalous at first glance, can enrich the Christian understanding of the human person’s necessity for community, the religious nature of man, and the possibility of suffering being redemptive.

A Brief Biography

Secondino Tranquilli was born in 1900 into a rural family in Pescina, a small town situated within the heart of the mountainous and rugged terrain of the Abruzzo region of southern Italy. Twenty-three years later in prison, Tranquilii would shed the name of his birth and metamorphosize into Ignazio Silone. Taking his cognomen from Quintus Poppaedius Silo—a revolutionary who successfully fought against Rome in 90 B.C. —Silone placed himself on the side of those in history who stood in opposition to tyranny and oppression. Being imprisoned in Spain, Silone chose for his first name the saint of Loyola widely known for his importance in the history of the Spanish Counter-Reformation: Ignazio. One however might also wonder whether or not Ignazio Silone had in mind the early Christian martyr Ignatius of Antioch who—a prisoner himself and on his way to be mauled by wild beasts—wrote in his Letter to the Romans, “I am going through the pangs of being born.”3

In 1915, the inhabitants of Pescina were struck with tragedy when the 6.7-magnitude Avezzano earthquake affected the small town and its poor infrastructure. Out of the thirty-five hundred people who died (in a town whose population numbered around five thousand) were many of Silone’s family including his mother—his father having died four years prior. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Silone (only fifteen at the time) encountered horrors of human depravity such as spouses letting trapped partners die to receive financial gain, relatives stealing from relatives, and acts of cowardice including the local bishop fleeing the scene of wreckage. Robert Coles commented on this last act writing, “He [Silone] had, of course, been reared in the Catholic Church, but now began to see its not rare intimacy with corrupt, if not evil, ‘principalities and powers’ (cf. Eph 6:12).”4

3 Ignatius of Antioch, Epistola ad Romanos, 5. cited from Cyril Richardson, (ed), Early Christian Fathers (Library of Christian Classics, New York: Touchstone). 4 Robert Coles, “Silone’s Religious Humanism,” Harvard Diary: Reflections on the Sacred and the Secular, Vol 1. New York: Crossroads (Obtained from: New Oxford Review, https://www.newoxfordreview.org/documents/silones-religious-humanism/, July 27, 2020).

Two years later, Silone became a member of the Italian Socialist Party eventually becoming leader of the party. His political ideologies shifted when at the age of twenty-one—he helped found the Communist Part of Italy and worked with comrades such as Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti. It was during this time that his only surviving sibling and fellow communist—Romolo—was arrested and died in prison in 1931; an event that would haunt Silone with guilt for the rest of his life.5 Silone’s prominence in Italian communism in the 1920s saw a turning point following his role as a delegate at the Fifteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party in Moscow. This congress, during which both Stalin’s movement to consolidate power against Trotsky and rule over the Soviet state, and the widespread cruelty “all justified by an ideology that claimed historical and moral immunity for itself,”6 left Silone embittered with communism. It was in Switzerland, to avoid Mussolini’s fascist Italy, that Silone shifted from political activist to novelist; first publishing Fontamara in German (1933), followed by Bread & Wine (1937) and The Seed Beneath the Snow (1941), forming what eventually would eventually be called The Abruzzo Trilogy. Fontamara and Bread & Wine were, in particular, widely popular around the world (Fontamara specifically was translated into twenty-seven languages and sold around two million copies by the year 2000) —especially in the 1930s that witnessed the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of World War II.7 After the liberation of Italy in 1943, the Allied forces printed and distributed tens of thousands of copies of both Fontamara and Bread & Wine. At the time of his death in 1978, Silone had penned nine novels, at least six political essays, and works of poetry and theatre. He received numerous awards over the course of his literary career, including the Premio Campiello (1968), the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society (1969), and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1971), and was nominated ten times for the Nobel Prize.8

5 One can argue that Berado Viola—the protagonist in Fontamara who dies in prison under the Fascist regime—is a literary Romolo Tranquilli. “And here surely Silone was trying to expiate what he felt was his own complicity in his brother’s martyrdom.” (Stanislao Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 114). 6 Coles, “Silone’s Religious Humanism,” Harvard Diary. 7 “Since the publication of Fontamara coincided with the Nazi seizure of power, many German refugees found it in their hands as they passed through Switzerland, fleeing Hitler’s regime. By the winter of 1933–34, the book had already made its way onto the Nazi blacklist: ‘to be confiscated even in bookstores and household searches’” (Pugliese. Bitter Spring. p. 118). 8 For the sake of time in presenting this paper, I have omitted the controversies surrounding Silone’s political work (particularly his role as a Fascist informant from 1919-1930) due to the enormous complexities surrounding Silone’s own personal life during that time along with his political connections. 108

It is not an exaggeration that even a cursory reading of the Abruzzo Trilogy presents one with a landscape of human existence deeply saturated with religion and—in particular—Roman Catholic Christianity. An understanding of the twentieth-century Catholicism of Silone’s time is fundamental in fully grasping the plight of the cafoni (poor agrarian class) in his novels. The faith of the cafoni is one that is intimately united to their agrarian lifestyle. Ember Days that mark the four seasons of the year by prayer, fasting and penance, Corpus Christi processions, and novenas to a town’s patron are just a few examples of a life richly layered with religious sentiment and expression. While the faith of the simple-minded and poorly educated9 cafoni can surely be criticized for its dependence on superstition, hagiographical tales, and a view of divine providence that depicts God’s actions as malicious and arbitrary, it is wrong to suggest that this is the totality of their religious ethos. If one were to read Silone’s works and only focus on the words and actions of the poor peasant class, one might conclude that Silone’s view of religion follows the popular Marxist statement that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” This however would be an unfair criticism for it neglects the religious plight of protagonists in his trilogy such as Berardo Viola of Fontamara or Pietro Spina disguised as the priest Don Paolo Spada in Bread & Wine. Silone’s heroes are constantly haunted by Christ to such an extent that it might be better to conclude that Silone’s religious view complements the Catechism of the Catholic Church statement that “man is by nature and vocation a religious being.”10 Stanislao Pugliese, Silone’s posthumous biographer in English, comments on this inescapability of religion when he writes:

Silone and his main protagonists are not so much searching for a hidden God as being hounded by the Lord. A doggedly persistent deity haunts Silone and his characters, seeking them out in desolate landscapes and humble farmhouses, donkey stalls, and empty churches.11

Truly one could argue that Silone and his protagonists – particularly Pietro Spina (of whom Silone is most evidently present) – are

9 These characterizations are frequently made by Silone himself in his criticism of an Italian rural class whose complacency in suffering debilitates any attempt of political uprising. 10 Libereria Editrice Vaticana, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 44 (Washington DC: USCCB. 11 Pugliese. Bitter Spring, p 7).

like the man in Francis Thompson’s famous poem who attempts to flee from the Hound of Heaven, but ends up turning to Him to hear these words:

“Rise, clasp My hand, and come!” Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”12

As Silone was exiled from the political parties in which he played a prominent role as leader and influencer, so too did he consider himself to be exiled from the institutional Church that was seen (by him) as flawed and corrupted by wealth, power, and political influence. His fascination with the life of Christ, however, was something that stayed with him throughout his life and his writings. Jesus was, for Silone, the ultimate man of “utter goodness as it shone upon a world saturated by evil…a confident light shed upon a tenacious darkness.”13 Silone’s understanding of Christ shone through Pietro Spina in Bread & Wine and The Seed Beneath the Snow in ways that draw comparison to Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin in The Idiot who embodies “the Christian ideal of love that humanity can reach in its present form”14 but nonetheless faces his own interior battles and contradictions. This image of the altruistic Christ, along with his socialist political ideals, shaped his ecclesiology into an egalitarian community devoid of any play for power, status, or wealth. These ideals framed Silone’s understanding of himself as “a Socialist without a Party, a Christian without a Church.”15 The somewhat utopian ideals of Silone’s Christianity, however, are almost nowhere found in The Abruzzo Trilogy. The realities of sin (as something personal yet always social) and oppression shape the image of Christ, not so much as the resurrected Lord in his glorified body, but as he stood bloody and bruised before Pontius Pilate for the redemption of the world.

12 Francis, Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven”, ln. 176–182. This notion of being “haunted by God” is also made evident in The Seed Beneath the Snow in which a character whose family dies in an earthquake says, ‘I turned my back on Him once and for all after the earthquake. But sometimes I have the feeling that He’s running after me.’” Ignazio Silone, The Seed Beneath the Snow, (Providence: Cluny Media, p. 260). 13 Coles, “Silone’s Religious Humanism.” 14 Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years (1865-1871) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 317. 15 Interview in L’Express, Paris, January 23, 1961 (source found in Pugliese. Bitter Spring. p. 7).

Pugliese is correct when he asserts the permanency of Good Friday in the hearts of poor believers: “For Silone, the promise of Christianity as embodied in the Easter Resurrection has not come to pass. Instead, for the peasants of southern Italy—indeed, for peasants and workers around the world—it is, he insisted, still— and always—Good Friday.”16

One might consider Silone’s use of strong religious imagery to bring out the depravity of evil deeds and to remind the reader of both the reality of sin and the need for a “savior.” Reading Fontamara, one is taken aback with horror upon reading how Fascist forces come to the small village—while most of the men of the town are away—and rape the women. Silone writes of these women as martyrs who are being viciously abused out of hatred for their social status rather than hatred for their faith. When one woman in particular—Maria Grazia—is raped by five militiamen, Silone writes how she is forced down in a cruciform position and that, “When the first man had finished, his place was taken by another, and her martyrdom began all over again.”17 The militiamen end up fleeing Fontamara in panic after hearing the church bells ring and see a beautiful women standing at the top of the bell tower (who they assume that is the Virgin Mary). While not necessarily the Mother of God, Elvia is quite evidently Silone’s Marian figure in the story. The townspeople thought of her as such for her “modest and reserved nature,”18 and she is bound by love to Berardo Viola, the protagonist whose ultimately sacrifices himself for the cause of freedom—leading to his own “redemption” and the possibility of “redemption” for the cafoni. Just as the Mary (the New Eve) is united to Jesus (the New Adam) in the work of redemption, uniting her own maternal sorrows and sufferings with the sufferings of the Savior of the World (com-passion), so too does Elvira offer and unite her own sufferings for Berardo. In fact, it is through her sole prayer on a pilgrimage that Berardo is able to finally live (and die) for others and for something greater than himself. She says, “Holy Mother of God, I only ask of you one thing: that you intercede for the salvation of Berardo. In return I offer you the only poor thing that I possess, that is, my life. I offer it to you without hesitation, without qualification, and without regret.”19 Her prayer was granted as she returned home from her pilgrimage and died around the time of Berardo’s own acceptance of martyrdom in a Roman prison.

Silone’s religious humanism is most strong in the two

16 Ibid. 17 Ignazio Silone, Fontamara, Providence: Cluny Media, p. 111–112 18 Ibid. p. 77. 19 Ibid. p. 184.

works that follow Fontamara: Bread & Wine and The Seed Beneath the Snow. The encounters that Pietro Spina has with the cafoni in Bread & Wine while disguised as the priest Don Paolo Spada reminds the reader of Christ walking among the people of Israel. Robert Coles writes:

The novel is, really, a series of scenes—Pietro’s encounters with the poor, the well-to-do, the pure of heart, the embittered, the disappointed: the full range of humanity. Even as Jesus walked among us, addressing our hopes and fears, our darker side and the brighter possibilities within us, Silone has his story’s central figure abandon political and economic abstractions (their attendant risk, so often, is ideological self-righteousness and arrogance) in favor of those small, concrete, pastoral moments which are so utterly redemptive. 20

No other character in Silone’s works best represents his or her creator than Pietro Spina. Like Silone, Spina is constantly haunted by questions of faith and the presence of God. In a meeting that can be likened to spiritual direction with his former grade school teacher, Don Benedetto (a priest whose somewhat less-than-traditional musings have left him on the blacklist of ecclesial authorities), Pietro Spina is reminded that “There is no salvation except putting one’s life in jeopardy.”21 This stress on laying down one’s life for others (cf. John 15:13) leads to the important theme of communion through sacrifice and self-offering that runs through the Trilogy. As Pietro Spina visits the parental home of one of his comrades who died in Fascist prison, one is struck by the evident eucharistic imagery in post-funeral reception. Being reminded that the Eucharist is traditionally understood to be memorial of Paschal Mystery in which Christ is truly and substantially present under the elements of bread and wine, we are moved at the scene of bread and wine being shared with all those in attendance and with the beggars who came to the door. It will be important to quote this passage at length to fully understand the depth of Silone’s thought:

Old Murica [the father of the deceased] stood at the head of the table, offering food and drink to the men around him.

20 Coles, “Silone’s Religious Humanism.” 21 Ignazio Silone, Bread & Wine (Providence: Cluny Media), 223.

“He helped me to sow, how, reap, thresh, and grind the corn of which this bread is made. Take it and eat, this is his bread.”

Others arrived. The father poured out wine and said, “He helped me to prune, spray, hoe, and gather the grapes of the vineyard from which this wine came. Drink, for this is his wine.” The men ate and drank, and some dipped their bread in their wine. Some beggars arrived. “Let them in,” the mother said. “They may have been sent to spy,” someone murmured. “Let them in We must take the risk. Many, giving food and drink to beggars, have fed Jesus without knowing it.” “Eat and drink,” the father said. … The men around the table ate and drank. “Bread is made of many grains of corn,” said Pietro, “so it means unity. Wine is made of many grapes, it means unity too. Unity of similar, equal, useful things. Hence truth and fraternity, things that go well together.” “The bread and wine of Holy Communion,” an older man said. “The what and the grapes that are trampled on. The body and the blood.”22

One could assert that just as Christ himself was taken, blessed, broken and given for the world, and how this four-fold action is re-presented—made present to us—at every Mass, so too for Silone is the life well-lived that is taken, blessed, broken, and given. This strong sense of the need for community in Silone’s thought found a home in both the socialistic principles he held and the religious sentiments that were always with him. Commenting on this interplay of socialism and religion in Silone’s insistence of the necessity of authentic community, Vanessa Cook writes:

Silone still found in socialism the grounds for redemption. Socialism, he deduced, presupposes democracy; democracy depends upon community; and community grows from the simplest human actions—caring for the sick, breaking bread, sharing wine. These gestures of love and compassion, Silone contended, also formed the fabric of

Christianity—not supernatural, institutional, or doctrinal Christianity, but a kind of sacred experience inherent in the practice of social solidarity. 23

Silone’s Christian Socialism as a Benefit to the Catholic Tradition

Is it possible for one to bring Silone’s thoughts into a greater harmony with the Catholic theological tradition? While clearly at odds with Catholic doctrine in several respects, is it not possible sift the wheat from the chaff (cf. Matthew 3:12) so as to serve as an aide in the Church’s own understanding of the human person? One most certainly cannot help sense an Augustinian strand in Silone’s thought of the God that can never leave man alone. It was Augustine himself who wrote, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”24 This movement of both God coming to man and man being drawn to God to fulfill his deepest longings and desires has love as its beginning and end; a love that should be carried over into a love for others. Love then, becomes the vehicle that moves one along the path of salvation. In Augustine’s famous work entitled Nature & Grace, he writes, “The beginning of love is the beginning of righteousness; progress in love is progress in righteousness. But it is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:5).”25 With this notion of sincere faith being a perquisite for authentic love, how should the Catholic Church, with its doctrines and dogmas, receive the writings and thought of someone like Ignazio Silone whose socialist beliefs were in some respects26

23 Vanessa Cook, “Eighty Years Since Bread and Wine: Ignazio Silone’s Christian Socialism,” Dissent Magazine, May 6, 2016, dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/eightyyears-since-bread-wine-ignazio-silone-moral-christian-socialism. 24 Cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in Te. Augustine, Confessions I.i.1, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 25 Augustine, “Nature and Grace,” Selected Writings on Grace and Pelagianism, trans. Roland Teske, SJ (New York: New City Press) 84. 26 “In some respects,” because the claim can be made that Silone’s understanding socialism, always evolving throughout his life, ended in a form of democratic socialism or, more precisely, distributism that can be likened to many of the Christian Democratic political parties of Europe. “Democratic socialism managed to fit within the two existing models as a welcome counterweight to the radical liberal positions, which it developed and corrected. It also managed to appeal to various denominations. In England it became the political party of the Catholics, who had never felt at home among either the Protestant conservatives or the liberals. In Wilhelmine Germany, too, Catholic groups felt closer to democratic socialism than to the rigidly Prussian and Protestant conservative forces. In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.” Pope Benedict XVI, “Europe and its Discontents,” First Things, January 2006, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/01/ europe-and-its-discontents.

fundamentally at odds with the Church’s social doctrine?27 Can such a dialogue even be possible? This is not a new question. The Church throughout its two-thousand-year history has asked this question as she has moved from the patristic period into our post-modern world. When Christianity was still in its infancy, the Church utilized the philosophy of Greco-Roman paganism to better articulate the Christological and trinitarian mysteries of the faith. Over eight centuries prior to ours, the scholastic thinkers of the high medieval period argued over how or whether the Church can or should use the writings of Aristotle. Through the understanding of thinkers such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, who held that because all truth is one—in the sense that “although the essences or forms of things are many, yet the truth of the divine intellect is one”28 —there is a fundamental relationship between reason and faith that cannot be severed, and because of this, the Church can and should utilize the writings of those outside the visible boundaries of the Church provided that they are not against reason or faith.

To return to the question of Ignazio Silone, it will be helpful for us to answer the initial question of “scandal” in Silone’s writings through the insight of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Day, a journalist and a writer herself, was deeply impressed by Silone’s writings and would frequently distributed copies of Bread & Wine to those who volunteered at the various houses of hospitality and farms. Day, who actually met Ignazio Silone and his wife for dinner in Rome in 1967, understood that Silone, after his rejection of Communism, saw “The emphasis…now on the individual, who conveys the message, one man to another, of man’s dignity and capacity for greatness. And greatness means the overcoming of temptation and laying down of one’s life for one’s fellows, in other words, the victory of love over hatred and mistrust.”29 Day understood Silone’s ideas of the human person as being deeply rooted in Christian anthropology, and that his experiences of poverty, political oppression, and suffering could provide Christians with a renewed understanding of the power of grace to transform the individual, suffering as something have real redemptive value, and the need of a community that lives the Catholic principle of solidarity. Day writes, “I do know that his writings bring to us the Christian message and my

27 Pope Pius IX, Nostis et Nobiscum. Leo XIII, Diuturnum; Humanum Genus; Quoad Apostolici Muneris; Libertas Praetantissimum. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique. Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum. Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno. John XIII, Mater et Magistra. Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus. 28 Aquinas, ST I. q. 16 a. 6 29 Dorothy Day, “A Meeting with Ignazio Silone,” The Catholic Worker (January 1968), Print.

heart is warm with gratitude. Let us all pray for each other, that we may learn this profound truth, the way of the Cross which leads to joy and fulfillment and eventually to victory.”30 Rather than a reactionary reading of Silone that labels his writings as scandalous to pious ears, Day would desire that one should be grateful for his writings and allow them to benefit and enrich the faith.

While Aquinas will argue that scandal, as “something less rightly said or done” is always a sin, he makes sure to distinguish between passive scandal and active scandal. Active scandal “is always a sin in the person who gives scandal, since either what he does is a sin, or if it only have the appearance of sin, it should always be left undone out of that love for our neighbor which binds each one to be solicitous for his neighbor’s spiritual welfare; so that if he persist in doing it he acts against charity.” Passive scandal, however, can be “without sin on the part of the person whose action has occasioned the scandal, as for instance, when a person is scandalized at another’s good deed.”31 Perhaps this type of passive scandal is the scandal of the Cross that Paul writes as “a stumbling block to Jews and follow to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). If this is the case, one might argue that Silone’s Abruzzo Trilogy can be done in a way of passive scandal that is an attempt to move the hearts of believers to a greater desire for peace and justice in the world.

30 Ibid. 31 Aquinas, ST, II.II q. 43 a. 2.

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