All Will Be Well

by Larry Smith

Love surrounds us, among friends and in families, and in countless kindnesses. Continue Reading »

15 May 2020

Italy in Crisis

by Christopher Caldwell

With just over 120,000 people, Bergamo, northeast of Milan, is not a particularly populous city, and it is short of priests, like almost every other city in the Catholic West. Yet in the second week of March alone, six priests died of coronavirus in Bergamo, and five more died the week after. By . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2020

Venice Afloat

by Catesby Leigh

An observer of a Spenglerian bent might just write Venice off, taking the floods that afflict the city with increasing frequency as the finishing touches on a long-running spectacle of political, economic, and cultural decline. That decline, spanning half a millennium, has by now reduced the city to . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2020

Matteo Salvini and the Bishops

by Kishore Jayabalan

Keeping religion and politics separate is nearly impossible. Continue Reading »

3 Jun 2019

Italy Challenges the
Postwar Order

by Alessandra Bocchi

Italy’s new government represents the most radical challenge yet to the order that has dominated Europe since World War II. Continue Reading »

2 Jun 2018

Capitalism vs. Tradition in Italy

by Alessandra Bocchi

In Italy, liberal orthodoxy is being challenged in the name of tradition. Continue Reading »

18 May 2018

Italy’s Rebellion

by Alessandra Bocchi

Identity, tradition, and religion have new prominence in Italy after the recent election. Continue Reading »

22 Mar 2018

Jokers and “Xenophobes”

by John Waters

Italy's fastest-growing political movement, Lega, may end up leading the country’s next government.  Continue Reading »

7 Mar 2018

The Other Assisi

by Matthew Milliner

It turned out there was no need to condemn Sigismondo to hell—his own defeats brought him to his knees. The Tempio Malatestiano, moreover, is now an active church, and people are trickling in for Saturday confession. Our group stops for discussion, and we concede a reluctant parallel with our own American Sigismondo, and then we imagine the ruins of a bankrupt Trump hotel, its deserted lobby the setting for a humble Mass. Continue Reading »

13 Jun 2016

The Thirty Years’ War in Italy

by Brian Hoefling

One could be forgiven for thinking that Gregory Hanlon’s The Hero of Italy: Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, his Soldiers, and his Subjects in the Thirty Years’ War is titled backwards. The peevish, heavyset Duke of Parma, a minor French ally in the war against the Habsburgs, is certainly the protagonist of Hanlon’s book, but this is neither a biography nor a particularly compelling case for his heroism. Rather, it is an examination of Parma’s two years in the war, and its effects on the broad swath of people under Odoardo’s rule, command, or occupation. Continue Reading »

8 Oct 2014