Giuseppe Toniolo

Giuseppe Toniolo (born March 6, 1845 in Treviso , † October 7, 1918 in Pisa ) is considered one of the most important economic historians, economists and sociologists of Catholicism . As a historian he devoted himself to the economic history of Tuscany and the emergence of the social question , as a sociologist and economist to the questions of work, small businesses and social reforms. In doing so, he opposed materialism and viewed ethics and belief as the driving forces behind human and historical development. From 1883 until his death he was a professor at the University of Pisa .

In 2012 Giuseppe Toniolo was beatified .

Life

Giuseppe Toniolo was born in Treviso and baptized Sant'Andrea in the local church. His family belonged to the middle classes of the Veneto , his father was an engineer , whom the family followed to his place of employment and therefore moved several times. The young Toniolo attended various schools in Venice , including the Collegio di S. Caterina.

He then studied law at the University of Padua , u. a. at Fedele Lampertico and Angelo Messedaglia. In 1867 he completed his law degree, the following year he became assistant to the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Padua. In his time as assistant he dealt less and less with legal issues, but turned more and more to economic, sociological and historical questions. In 1873 he was appointed private lecturer for political economy .

In 1874 he was employed at the Istituto tecnico in Venice, then worked briefly in Padua and was appointed associate professor at the Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia in 1878 . In 1878 he married Maria Schiratti, who gave birth to seven children.

Eventually he moved to the University of Pisa as a full professor , where he taught political economy from 1883 until his death in 1918. One of his students in his first year in Pisa was Werner Sombart . In 1908 he began his main work in the field of sociology, the Trattato di economia sociale .

Church in Pieve di Soligo

Toniolo was buried in the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Pieve di Soligo .

A defining personality of Italian Catholicism

Giuseppe Toniolos inspired numerous upheavals in Italian Catholicism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century:

• in science:
  • In 1889 Toniolo founded the Unione Cattolica di studi sociali (Catholic Association for Social Studies) in Padua , of which he became president.
  • The Società Cattolica italiana per gli studi scientifici (Catholic Italian Society for Scientific Studies) was also established in the same year, not least thanks to his initiative.
  • In 1893 Toniolo, as the founding editor, published the first issue of the Rivista internazionale di scienze sociali e discipline ausiliarie (international journal for social sciences and related subjects ).
  • In 1896 he was one of the founding fathers of the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI), the association of Catholic students and academics.
• in social action: from 1904 he participated in the spread of the Azione Cattolica in Italy and abroad. In 1907 he was co-founder of the Settimana Sociale dei Cattolici Italiani (Social Week of Italian Catholics).
• in the Catholic labor movement: At Toniolo's suggestion, the first trade unions arose in Italy around the century .

In 1893 Pope Leo XIII issued , with whom Toniolo maintained personal contact, his groundbreaking encyclical Rerum Novarum , which took up many of Toniolo's concerns and strengthened his commitment to socially responsible Catholicism. Already at the beginning of the following year, Toniolo formulated the first Christian-democratic program based on Rerum Novarum in his Programma dei Cattolici di fronte al socialismo (Program of the Catholics in the face of socialism) of January 3, 1894, which explicitly demanded social and political changes directed against socialism. Toniolo rejected capitalism even more decisively than socialism . In 1900 Toniolo was one of the founders of the International Association for Statutory Workers Protection at the International Congress for Labor Protection in Paris .

The plan, at times cherished by some Italian bishops and many Catholic laypeople, to create a Catholic political party, similar to the German Center Party , was finally abandoned until further notice. As a result, Toniolo never became a party politician. Instead transferred Pope Pius X. him, along with Medolago Albani and Paolo Pericoli , the reorganization of political Catholicism in Italy by three to stalls structured Unioni as the encyclical Il fermo proposito had demanded of the 1905th He himself became president of the Unione Popolare (People's Union), the most important of them. The Unioni's task was to promote the return of the church to politics, formally separating it from the church organization. B. by the Unione Popolare also acting like an electoral association and bringing in its weight in the election campaign in favor of a certain candidate.

Scientific work and writings

Giuseppe Toniolo's most important works (with the greatest effect) are:

• Dei remoti fattori della potenza economica di Firenze nel Medio Evo (On the indirect factors of the economic power of Florence in the Middle Ages), 1889
• Il programma dei cattolici di fronte al socialismo (The program of Catholics in the face of socialism), 1894
• Il concetto cristiano della democrazia (The Christian Concept of Democracy), 1897
• L'Odierno problema sociologico (today's sociological problem), 1905
• Trattato di Economia sociale (treatise on social economy), 3 volumes, 1908–1921

Toniolo published numerous other works focusing on work, fair wages and the distribution of wealth:

• Economia delle piccole industrie (Economy of Small Industries), 1874
• Varie forme di rimunerazione del lavoro (Different forms of remuneration for work), 1875
• Lezioni sulla distribuzione della ricchezza (Lectures on the Distribution of Wealth), 1878
• Legge normal del salario (Basic Laws of Wages ), first published in two episodes in 1878/1879 in the journal Giornale degli Economisti ; later editions under the title Il Salario (The Wages).

Giuseppe Toniolo established his reputation as an economic historian primarily through works from the years 1881 to 1893. These include:

• Scolastica ed Umanesimo nelle dottrine economiche al tempo del Rinascimento in Toscana (lecture at the opening of the academic year 1886/1887 at the University of Pisa)
• Storia dell'economia sociale in Toscana nel medio evo
  • Vol. 1: ?? La ?? vita civile-politica (1890)
  • Vol. 2: La ?? vita economica (1891)
• La storia come disciplina ausiliaria delle scienze sociali (1890)
• La genesi storica dell'odierna crisi sociale-economica (1893)

In these books he pleaded - as a conclusion from his historical research - to resolve the social question in class relationships for a return to the values ​​of justice and charity , in obedience to the Magisterium of the Church, which in his view could not be wrong. He outlined a corporate model of society and economy that differed sharply from the corporate elements of the ideology of later Italian fascism , insofar as Toniolo's corporatism was pluralistic.

From 1893, his journalistic activities again focused on solving the social question:

• Programma sintetico di scienza sociale economica (1893)
• L'economia capitalistica moderna nella sua funzione e nei suoi effetti (1894)
• Per la storia del movimento cooperativo (1895)
• La protezione internazionale dei lavoratori (1900)
• Provvedimenti sociali popolari (1902)
• Le dottrine socialistiche nell'antichità classica e nel Medioevo (1899)
• Il socialismo nella storia della civiltà (1902)
• Il supremo problema della sociologia (1903)
• Le premesse filosofiche e la sociologia contemporanea (1909).

In addition to these monographs, Toniolo wrote more than 400 essays on economics, economic history and political science as well as more than 100 articles on ecclesiastical, political and social issues of the time.

Aftermath

As early as 1919, a group led by Father Agostino Gemelli planned to found a Catholic university to promote culture and religious education in the spirit of the Catholic Church. In 1920 the Istituto Giuseppe Toniolo di Studi Superiori was established , a first step towards a Catholic university. In 1921 the institute was recognized by the Ministry of Education and approved by Pope Benedict XV. she received the ecclesiastical status of a university. State recognition as a university took place on October 2, 1925 under the name Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore .

Two foundations cherish the memory of Giuseppe Toniolo and work in the spirit of his work:

• In Verona there is the Fondazione Giuseppe Toniolo (Giuseppe Toniolo Foundation). It is located in the San Fermo Monastery, which dates back to the 13th century. She represents Catholic social teaching and has been publishing the magazine La Società (The Society) since 1991 , which is published in Italian and Polish. The foundation maintains the Centro di Cultura e Sviluppo (Center for Culture and Development) in Verona , which is affiliated to the Catholic University of Milan .
• The Fondazione di Studi Tonioliani (Foundation for Toniolo Studies), based in Pisa, is primarily dedicated to his scientific work and its impetus for current debates . She gives u. a. his collected works and three journals on Toniolo's fields of work: Studi Economici e Sociali (focus: social issues), Il Pensiro Economico Moderno (focus: economics) and Nuova Economia e Storia (focus: economic history).

beatification

In 1933 representatives of the FUCI wrote to Gabriele Vettori, Archbishop of Pisa , and Eugenio Beccegato, Bishop of the Diocese of Vittorio Veneto , asking the bishops to examine the sanctity of Toniolo's life. Since June 14, 1971, when Pope Paul VI. Appreciating his services, he was considered Servus Dei , a servant of God . This marks the first step in the canonicalization process. The Azione Cattolica Italiana carried out his beatification . In 2006, the Congregation for Beatification confirmed the inexplicable recovery of a young entrepreneur in Pieve di Soligo as a miracle of healing , so that on April 29, 2012, Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi was beatified in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls .

literature

• Achille Ardigò: Toniolo. Il primato della riforma sociale . Cappelli, Bologna 1978.
• Laura Cerasi: Pedagogy e antipedagogie della nazione. Istituzioni e politiche culturali nel Novecento italiano . La Scuola, Brescia 2012. ISBN 978-88-350-3058-4 .
• Gianfranco Legitimo: Sociologi cattolici italiani: De Maistre, Taparelli, Toniolo . Volpe, Rome 1963.
• Federico Marconcini: Profilo di Giuseppe Toniolo economista . Vita e pensiero, Milan 1930.
• Daniele Menozzi (ed.): Giuseppe Toniolo. Società e cultura tra Ottocento e Novecento . Morcelliana, Brescia 2014. ISBN 978-88-372-2804-0 (= special issue of the journal Humanitas. Rivista mensile di cultura , ISSN  0018-7461 , vol. 69 (2014), issue 1).
• Cinzio Violante : Il significato dell'opera storiografica di G. Toniolo nell'età di Leone XIII . In: Giuseppe Rossini (ed.): Aspetti della cultura cattolica nell'età di Leone XIII . Rome 1961, pp. 707-769.

Remarks

1. ↑ Gabriella Marcucci Fanello: Storia della FUCI Edizioni Studium, Rome 1971.
2. ↑ Maria Cristina Giuntella: La FUCI tra modernismo, partito popolare e fascismo . Edizioni Studium, Rome 2000. ISBN 88-382-3858-8 .
3. ^ Rudolf Lill : History of Italy from the 16th century to the beginnings of fascism . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1980. ISBN 3-534-06746-0 . P. 233.
4. ^ Rudolf Lill: History of Italy from the 16th century to the beginnings of fascism . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1980. p. 232.
5. ^ Lichtenberger, André , Congrès internationale pour la protection légale des travailleurs. Tenu à Paris au musèe social, No. 8, aout, 1900, pp. 261–296.
6. ^ Rudolf Lill: History of Italy from the 16th century to the beginnings of fascism . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1980. p. 247.
7. ↑ Christopher Seton-Watson: Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 1870-1925 . New York 1967, pp. 274f.
8. ↑ Laura Cerasi: Il corporativismo "normal". Giuseppe Toniolo, tra medievalismo, laburismo cattolico e riforma dello Stato . In: Daniele Menozzi (ed.): Giuseppe Toniolo. Società e cultura tra Ottocento e Novecento . Morcelliana, Brescia 2014. pp. 82-103.
9. ↑ Overview in the holdings of the Fondazione di Studi Tonioliani .
10. ^ Fondazione Giuseppe Toniolo , accessed on October 20, 2014.
11. ↑ Fondazione di Studi Tonioliani , accessed October 20, 2014.
12. ^ Beatification of a scientist . Vatican Radio website. Retrieved April 29, 2012.

Web links

• Biography ( Memento of May 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) - Website of the Azione Cattolica, archive.org
• Giuseppe Toniolo - biography
• Giuseppe Toniolo - short biography on the website of the Fondazione di Studi Tonioliani
• Fondazione "Giuseppe Toniolo" in Verona