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II Vescovo di Trento Giovanni Nepomuceno de Tschiderer e la situazione della Chiesa in Austria e nel Tirolo nel corso della prima meta del secolo XIX. By Josef Grisar. Translated from the Latin by Elio Gottardi. [Istituto di Scienze Religiose in Trento, series major, (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna. 1997. Pp. xxi, 375. Lire 65.000.)
This work had an unusual genesis. When during the 1930's the beatification of Johann Nepomuk von Tschiderer, Bishop of Trent (1834-1860), was under discussion at Rome, the objection was raised that he had supported the Josephinist state-church system then prevalent in Austria, and had indeed cooperated with it. Given the long-standing Papal hostility toward Josephinism, this would have been a serious obstacle to his beatification. To answer this objection, the Diocese of Trent called upon the noted historian Father Josef Grisar. He published the results of his research in 1936 in a Latin version essentially intended for internal use; it remained largely unknown to the scholarly community at large. After Tschiderer was at length beatified in 1995, the Istituto di Scienze Religiose in Trent decided to bring the work to a larger audience, and this slightly abridged Italian version is the result.
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