Zet Forward Transcripts

00;00;01;15 - 00;00;22;17
Sarah E Ponichtera
Hello and welcome to Zet Forward a podcast celebrating individuals who are involved with projects that benefit Seton Hall University and the world around us. My name is Sarah Pinnock. Tara and I am proud to welcome and introduce our guest for today, Professor William J. Connell. Professor Connell is Seton Hall's La Motta Chair of Italian Studies and specializes in medieval and early modern intellectual history.

00;00;22;19 - 00;00;42;29
Sarah E Ponichtera
He is the founding director of the Alberta Italian Studies Institute and has published widely and received many awards for his research, including a Fulbright and a Carnegie Fellowship. And as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. To start off, I'd like to give listeners a visual of what this volume looks like. It looks like an old light colored book with a blank cover.

00;00;43;02 - 00;01;07;21
Sarah E Ponichtera
It is bound in vellum or finely prepared animal skin, and the text inside is handwritten. This is not a published book. It is a handwritten copy of a text that was itself never published. As Professor Carnival discussed, there is no author, no title page. Deciphering what this text actually is required a reader not only with the skills to read the 16th century Italian script, but the broad familiarity with Italian history and literature of this period.

00;01;07;23 - 00;01;18;16
Sarah E Ponichtera
To be able to place this text in its historical context, fortunately, it found this reader and Professor O'Connell. So without any further ado. Professor O'Connell, what is the significance of this book to the history of the church?

00;01;18;18 - 00;02;00;08
William J Connell
Oh, well, first of all, thank you, Sarah, for inviting me and for arranging this. Thank you. As director of Seton Hall, Special Collections for having received this really valuable, exciting manuscript into Seton Hall's library. It's a I guess the most important thing is that this is the very first history of the church from the Time of the Apostles and Saint Peter all the way through till the time of the writer in 15 or 1541.

00;02;00;11 - 00;02;27;20
William J Connell
The first history of the church covering all that span that was written by a member, all of the earlier purchase histories of the church from the three hundreds on to the 1500s were written by priests. And this is the first history written by a layman. And I think it can be called quite legitimately, the first modern history of the of the church.

00;02;27;22 - 00;03;03;25
William J Connell
And in particular, then for the Catholic Church, because it continues on through the separation of of Roman Catholicism and Orthodox. It's also important because it includes a it concludes with a radical proposal for the reform of the church. It's an internal reform that's proposed. Donaghadee was a Catholic. The author, Donato Donati, and I'll describe him known, but he was a Catholic.

00;03;03;27 - 00;03;40;06
William J Connell
He did not support and oppose the Lutheran Reformation, the Protestant break with the unity of the church. But he thought that the Roman church needed to reform itself. And he proposed a more radical reform than was being proposed by others in the church at the time. He proposed that that the church limit the powers of the papacy, that the pope should become a ceremonial figure.

00;03;40;08 - 00;04;18;21
William J Connell
You might think of of the role of the British monarch, for instance, that the the powers of the church should be, which he thought were important and should be preserved, but they should be exercised by a virtuous college of cardinals who would function like a Senate passing measures by majority vote debating measures openly, no secret ballots. And he he wanted Bishop to be elected locally by the clergy and people each dyas.

00;04;18;23 - 00;04;32;22
William J Connell
It's a radical change, very utopian, very different from what the church would then adopt in its serious reform that took place at the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563.

00;04;32;25 - 00;04;37;06
Sarah E Ponichtera
Wow. So how did you happen to find this book?

00;04;37;09 - 00;05;03;10
William J Connell
Oh, it's great. I a a friend likened it to a an Indiana Jones story. Not really on that order. And none of the the personal danger that that would exist. But but really was by chance. I happened to be invited to Salerno on the coast, south coast of Italy, south of Naples, to present a book that I had published.

00;05;03;12 - 00;05;30;26
William J Connell
And I noticed that there was a ferry that went up to the city of Amalfi, which is legendary to the north of Salerno. And so I and I'd always wanted to go to mount to Amalfi. So I took the ferry, I hiked up, I saw the cathedral, hiked above the town. I had a wonderful lunch and went back to the ferry landing and discovered that the ferry wouldn't be coming back until for another half hour.

00;05;30;27 - 00;06;01;23
William J Connell
So I wandered into a shop, a kind of antique shop, the sort that they have for tourists. And this store in in coastal towns like Amalfi. You know, there are pieces of porcelain, Metallica, watercolors, old prints on the wall, things you can put in a suitcase and take home. And in the back, there were some old books, some of them leather bound.

00;06;01;26 - 00;06;33;29
William J Connell
And I wandered back there and something book happened and know a lot about manuscript book. And there I found, to my surprise, among these books or manuscript, that is a books that had been written by hand, two of them from the 1500s, one from the 1600s and one from the 1800s. I was amazed. I know something about what books cost.

00;06;33;29 - 00;06;57;15
William J Connell
I asked the owner what they were and how much he wanted. He said that they had been purchased by his father and he'd inherited the store. He would give them to me for €500 each. And I knew that that was a bargain. And so I bought them and I bought them for the Seton Hall Library, which reimburse me upon my return.

00;06;57;18 - 00;07;17;22
William J Connell
And it was in studying these books that I found. Then this this particular is the most is the most valuable of the of the very interesting four manuscript books. It's called De la Repubblica Ecclesiastical. That's Italian for on the Republic of the Church.

00;07;17;24 - 00;07;24;16
Sarah E Ponichtera
Wow. How do you think this manuscript ended up in that far flung bookstore?

00;07;24;18 - 00;07;55;03
William J Connell
Yeah, well, it certainly the father had purchased it almost certainly at auction. And there were stamps and book plates in the volumes. They all seemed to come from what was the same collection circa the well by the late 1800s, early 1900s. All four books had belonged to the collection of a of a Florentine bookseller who had a shop on one of the main streets.

00;07;55;10 - 00;08;34;19
William J Connell
And the shop closed in the 1980s. So that's how they they got onto the private market. And before that, there were two book plates, book plates and two of them that I was able to trace to inventories of the Guadagnino family of Florence, who had one, had the largest private library in Florence in the 1700s. So they had a so which was a relief actually, because one worries that books might have been stolen from from churches or private libraries or public libraries, rather, And these had had always been owned publicly.

00;08;34;21 - 00;09;24;07
William J Connell
Then looking more closely, the manuscript said that it was written by MDG by M, and I figured out with some research and having read the texts carefully, that MDGs stood for Messer, a title that sort of like Sir or Lord, we think of even the word Mr. Messer So not that the person's name, but then DG stood for Donatello Gianotti, one of the leading humanists of 16th century Italy, who who, according to a letter published in the late sixties by a former by a teacher of mine at the University of California.

00;09;24;10 - 00;10;08;19
William J Connell
There's the mention of that he was writing a book on the The Ecclesiastical Republic and the Republic of the Church. And so that nailed down the author. And knowing that even more exciting in the ambrosia Library of Milan, there are the notes of Mr. Genovese Brind, Vincenzo Pinelli that I actually show him taking notes on the texts. There are four pages of of handwritten notes that summarize what he was finding and reading in these very books.

00;10;08;22 - 00;10;23;25
William J Connell
So these this, this manuscript that's now at Seton Hall almost certainly belonged to John Vincenzo Pinelli, who was the most famous bibliophile in Italy in the late 1500s.

00;10;23;27 - 00;10;37;13
Sarah E Ponichtera
But it's an incredible story of detective work. Wow. So while Giant Gianotti was writing this, what was going on in the world? Can you describe some of the historical context that he was writing in?

00;10;37;15 - 00;11;28;09
William J Connell
Yeah, I mean, most importantly, the the Lutheran Reformation began in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses against the doctrine of indulgences to the door of the Chapel Church in Vincent Bergamo. In the next years, the controversy exploded, and by 1541, when Gianotti was writing a good portion of of Germany and also other parts of of of Europe, the Netherlands, France had gone over to Switzerland to different forms of Protestantism challenging the idea of papal primacy.

00;11;28;11 - 00;12;11;12
William J Connell
And I read a rearranging and reforming the mass and how it was said, including giving communion in two kinds that as with bread and with wine and challenging various elements of of of what had become traditional doctrine within the church. And over the course of the Middle Ages, I. So that's going on. And even as he was writing, there was a last attempt to get the theologians on both sides to agree at a famous colloquy in Wrath is Bone there.

00;12;11;19 - 00;13;00;16
William J Connell
To everyone's surprise, Melanchthon, who was the chief theologian of the Lutherans and and Johannes Eck and Gaspar Catharina on the side of the Catholics, agreed on the doctrine of justification by faith, which was considered to be the the not the core of the theological controversy, whether a person is saved by receiving the gift of faith from God, or whether the works that a person does of charity, assisting neighbors works to benefit the church are also going to get you into heaven.

00;13;00;18 - 00;13;42;18
William J Connell
They agreed that faith was needed. But once word got back to Rome and to Luther, both the Pope, Paul, the third and Luther himself thought that this compromise was that a surrender on principle. So the idea that there could be doctrinal reconciliation was was was really not it seemed like it just wasn't going to happen. The push now began for reform of the Administrative Practices Church, not the theology theological doctrine, but rather how the church is administered.

00;13;42;20 - 00;14;26;07
William J Connell
I heard the pope have some power, and it was recognized that there had been that there had developed within the Roman church practices concerning wealth benefits, money paid by the faithful and fees paid for indulgences for taking over church benefits, the things that really were identified and recognized even by those who who were involved in them as practices that were were were not many called corrupt, and at least then many called simply not correct and needed to be.

00;14;26;10 - 00;14;59;20
William J Connell
So that's that's going on. And then in addition, fortunately himself who came from Florence, there's a question of of global politics of of not church politics, but of secular politics in that the power of the APS Spa, Hapsburg monarch Charles the Fifth had expanded enormously. I think about this Charles the fifth, who was the ruler of a young man.

00;14;59;20 - 00;15;47;07
William J Connell
He first came to rule that the Netherlands. I inherits the Kingdom of Spain from Ferdinand de Belt. He is elected Holy Roman Emperor, meaning that he controlled Central Europe, Germany, but also the Kingdom of Bohemia and in modern day Czechoslovakia, Hungary, really a remarkable expanse in Europe. And while Charles was ruler, Cortez conquered Mexico. Pizarro conquered Peru. And you have the first global global empire under Charles, the fifth in Italy.

00;15;47;09 - 00;16;20;22
William J Connell
He controlled Milan. He took over the Duchy of Milan and northern Italy, and he was king of Sicily, king of Naples and king of Sardinia. Donato Janata came from the Republic of and he had devoted his earlier career to preserving the independence of Lawrence under Republican rule. That is that is not under the rule of a prince or a monarch.

00;16;20;25 - 00;16;57;13
William J Connell
He was opposed to the Medici family, which had tried to rule for quite a while. But he thought that a republic that is government by by committees of all of might who could bring different perspectives to important political debate, who could learn from one another, was the best kind. And he he thought that the church needed to take advantage of that rather than be under the control of a single ruler.

00;16;57;15 - 00;17;35;29
William J Connell
And he pointed to a series of what are sometimes who are men, who are sometimes called the the bad popes, the worst popes. Alexander the six, the Borgia pope was poisoned, had many, many children, many mistresses even. And and then Julius, the second who donned armor to lead an army against the city of Bologna, a pope, Pope Leo the 10th who allowed the Lutheran break to occur.

00;17;36;02 - 00;18;06;02
William J Connell
Who who's also a a luxurious man who preferred hunting to do to, but who actually being in Rome and overseeing mass and liturgy who is And then Clement the seventh under whom the sack of Rome hurt. So he thought that the papal monarchy was itself to blame for a lot of the problem or so in this world, afraid of Charles the fifth.

00;18;06;05 - 00;18;33;25
William J Connell
I sadly disappointed by the Pope's I. I generally saw the church as being the vehicle for retaining an independent state, a place of refuge for people afraid of the Habsburgs. And Charles, if I place or for a republic to be but to be restored.

00;18;33;27 - 00;18;42;05
Sarah E Ponichtera
Wow. So he's really bringing together these two worlds of the doctrinal debates that are happening and the political.

00;18;42;07 - 00;19;42;12
William J Connell
Yeah. Environment. Yeah. He sees them actually coming together. The doctrinal debates, I bother him. I he writes in his history it's a history of of the eastern church as well as the West. He thinks that the it was the doctrinal debates in the eastern Roman Empire, the debates over Arianism versus Trinitarian Christianity, debates over the the the two natures of Christ as opposed one nature that these heresies and then the disputes, the factions were to blame ultimately for the defeat of the of the eastern Roman Empire and the the the the take and the spread of of Islam in the east which he saw as a a more, let's say, more more having a more

00;19;42;12 - 00;20;26;17
William J Connell
unified message. And he noted that the peoples that had been initially conquered by by Islam and by Muslims converted willingly to it. So he he saw this as a, um, as a as actually Bret for or for Catholic Christians. But he, but he saw it was a weakness of Christianity in the East that permitted that to happen. So he wanted a strong Catholicism that would that that that was that would fend off the Turk the major threat the Italian peninsula and in Western Europe 1500.

00;20;26;20 - 00;20;35;04
Sarah E Ponichtera
But sounds like he's really coming to this from the perspective of a loyalist. He thinks that this is going to make the church stronger and it's going to defend it from internal and external threat.

00;20;35;07 - 00;21;46;08
William J Connell
Yes, that's quite true. There was a slogan present in church, the debates about the church from the 1300s, all the reform in ad and of member reform in head and limb, that is with that as being the head being the papacy by but loyal Catholics subscribing to the need to and and yet the most important official reform plan drawn up under the instructions of Paul third involve changing the regulations or holding church offices that you should not be able to be the priesthood holder of more than two or three benefits to churches, dioceses or bishopric, etc. that you should only have one, but you had to live in your diocese.

00;21;46;12 - 00;22;09;08
William J Connell
Okay, all good reforms are not be liked these. But he thought they weren't reforms in members. So the reform in the head would be reducing the Pope to a ceremonial role by putting the College of Cardinals at the head of the church. And then for the members to have the bishops elected locally by the clergy. And people think of that.

00;22;09;10 - 00;22;14;09
William J Connell
You know, there are people who would like that today.

00;22;14;12 - 00;22;33;04
Sarah E Ponichtera
It is quite radical, even though he's coming from this this internal reform perspective. So you described how. Janaki, how you discovered how do you not he was the author of this text. Did he write this alone or was it a collaborative process?

00;22;33;06 - 00;23;06;22
William J Connell
He he did. He wrote it at the at the invitation at the request of his patron, Cardinal Nicolo Rodolphe, who was a Florentine and like be himself. Dorothy had already written a book on Venice that he published at the the request of Rodolphe, but he had written a book on the Republic of Florence dedicated to art, and he was living with Rodolphe.

00;23;06;24 - 00;23;35;09
William J Connell
The two of them spent hours together. A friend, uh, describes. They were like Brother Florentines. Both learned it all. Be very, very wealthy man with very large paper. Uh, he has. He had poor eyesight, so probably read Chinatown. My author. Our author here, read to the art. Uh, so he wrote this book at the request of the Cardinal.

00;23;35;11 - 00;24;21;12
William J Connell
The research was almost certain that if he were and he was himself an excellent writer, but the ideas were almost certainly bounced off of the. And the book ends with this radical proposal. Uh, Rodolphe himself was a republic from Florence, I believe, or Florentine Republic. And this is. It's the ending of the book by the concluding chapter after 18 urges resolved by himself.

00;24;21;14 - 00;25;03;09
William J Connell
Uh, as someone likely and eligible to become pope to initiate these reforms. I cannot. This says that anyone who becomes pope is almost immediately tempted by the immense power in his hands. But you can't are a man of such virtue that you're the only one I can imagine surrendering your power in order to effect this form. And later, this would become a possibility.

00;25;03;11 - 00;25;30;19
William J Connell
Let me tell the story. May I? And in 1550, the Pope, Paul, the third died. And there was a conclave in Rome to choose the next pope. The conclave met in the Sistine Chapel. Imagine if sense of of what this is like. I and the cardinals all had stalls with cuts where they where they would sleep and eat.

00;25;30;21 - 00;25;54;17
William J Connell
I Rodolphe was went to the conclave and his conclave missed, which would be to say his campaign manager was none other than Donato Gianotti, his dear friend who was like a brother, the man who proposed turning the church into a republic. Also, it's important to realize this book was a secret between the two of them. No one else that we know had read it.

00;25;54;20 - 00;26;29;22
William J Connell
So the proposal, this radical proposal was not something that was known to the other cardinals in conclave. Well, the first candidate, Cardinal poll from England, who was favored to win because he had the support of Charles the fifth was one vote short of being elected when he declared. On principle, I shall not vote for myself. God would have.

00;26;29;24 - 00;27;01;22
William J Connell
Whereupon he began losing support. And he was not elected. And then a bunch of French cardinals arrived from France, and the French were opposed to the Emperor Charles, the Fifth and opposed to Paul. And they liked our Dolphy. And of all of the cardinals supported by the King, the one who was most acceptable to the emperor Charles. The fifth was none other than Niccolo.

00;27;01;24 - 00;27;14;27
William J Connell
And so it looked like he would be elected and this Republican pope would be there, although people didn't know that he was a Republican when suddenly he fell.

00;27;14;27 - 00;27;16;14
Sarah E Ponichtera
Ill.

00;27;16;16 - 00;27;40;18
William J Connell
And he had to leave the Sistine Chapel and began recovering. It was seen by excellent doctors in Rome, by the and it was announced that he would return. Whereupon the chairman, the man presiding at the conclave, said that when he came back, he would win by two votes. And suddenly he died before returning.

00;27;40;20 - 00;27;41;24
Sarah E Ponichtera
Oh, no.

00;27;41;26 - 00;28;19;27
William J Connell
So word went around. Poisoned by the all of the cardinals went on poison alert. The conclave lists and attendance world will leave. So just the cardinals themselves remained in the Sistine Chapel. And the best surgeon, a best known surgeon available in Rome, would performed many, many human dissections. I was called in to perform an autopsy on Cardinal Dolphy and his written description exists, and it describes his liver as being black is his bowels is having this putrid smell.

00;28;19;29 - 00;28;52;01
William J Connell
And he declared with no uncertain terms that this was a. And so the cardinals now, without attendants fearing poisoning, quickly resolved on a compromise. Candidate Julius the third, who was not an especially effective pope and this chance of the church being reformed as a republic evaporate.

00;28;52;04 - 00;29;03;01
Sarah E Ponichtera
Oh, it was so close. I can't believe it. That's amazing. It's really an act of of there. Yeah.

00;29;03;03 - 00;29;14;27
William J Connell
The author went on. He was immediately hired by a French cardinal and went to the service of that cardinal where he began persecuting process of Protestants in France. So he was. He was pro Catholic.

00;29;14;29 - 00;29;24;14
Sarah E Ponichtera
A happy ending for him, too. I got. Oh. So how do you think this work will change our understanding of Junot Diaz, The Thinker?

00;29;24;20 - 00;29;52;20
William J Connell
Oh, it changes our thinking of Junot, the dramatic. He was known and has been known for for hundreds of years as the writer of a book on Venice and as the writer Lawrence Since that book was published in the 1700s. Both of those Republic were seen. The Florentine one was seen as failing because it was taken over by the Medici family and became a monarchy.

00;29;52;20 - 00;30;28;22
William J Connell
That is a principle under the Grand Duke Grand Ducal family of the of the Medici. And there were four years memories of the Republic as a great time. But. But John Gotti was imagined as being nostalgic for that old failed public. Venice was seen as exceptional. It's a maritime republic difficult to conquer because it's out in the water, you know, And commercial republic.

00;30;28;24 - 00;30;54;02
William J Connell
And it's seen as as, again, exceptional, not a model for a Europe that was now being taken over by our monarchy. Think of Charles the fifth, for instance, but also the France of of of of Louis. The 14th is around the corner. Louis the 13th under Charles under Richelieu and then Louis the 14th under Mazarin is right around the corner.

00;30;54;02 - 00;31;44;25
William J Connell
So there's a move historically towards absolute monarchy. Okay. And John, what is seen as a man who was nostalgic for a lost past. Here, this book projects him right into the religious debates and controversies of the 16th century. And rather than a man who cared only about politics and was attached to a a model of politics that was passé, we see him trying to engage a world that, uh, that Europe is is fighting for tooth and nail in the whole 16th century.

00;31;44;28 - 00;32;16;27
William J Connell
And his ideas for a reform of the church and head and members would have resonance at the Council of Trent for that. I there was a heated discussion in the last session about at the last ceding of the of the council about the role of bishops with plans drawn up specifically for the election of bishops in their own dioceses, rather than being appointed by a king or by pope outside.

00;32;17;00 - 00;32;55;06
William J Connell
But he had ideas that that would have legs and but would not result in the reforms that he wished but are still with us. Even today, we have what's called the Synodal movement in Germany, which is trying to have bishops involve the laymen and the clergy of their dioceses that practices doctrine. I and not in sort of veiled in partial rebellion from or distancing from, let's say, the idea of absolute papal thought.

00;32;55;09 - 00;33;02;24
William J Connell
So it makes Gianotti a more relevant, more exciting figure rather than one simply writing about the past.

00;33;02;26 - 00;33;09;27
Sarah E Ponichtera
Well, and on the broader view, how does it change our understanding of church history?

00;33;09;29 - 00;33;49;28
William J Connell
Yeah, you know, it's a church history is, as I said, it was written by by priests all the way down till the 1500s. I try not to seize doctrine as being something that causes difficult division disputes among learned men who have a differing opinions, which are then voted on and decided by majority rule in the councils of the church, he says, rather than the councils, establishing divine truth is what the councils said selves they were doing.

00;33;50;01 - 00;34;37;09
William J Connell
So there's a kind of skeptical, distant approach, or it's the church he accepts. The councils is very important. It's just he doesn't see them as establishing divine. Instead, what they're doing is necessarily ending a device disagreement, which is also an important role for I. He is using his he's the first person in the writing of church history to seriously study the acts of the church and to use a biographical source called the Libra Pontiff.

00;34;37;09 - 00;35;14;00
William J Connell
Nicholas That is the the book of Popes that have been written over the centuries with biographies of the popes, beginning with Saint Peter on down through the the 15th century. He compares the sources. He is not afraid to proclaim documents I forged. And he's generally right in his in his approach. So there's a kind of skepticism. But in the interest of truth, not not in the interest of dogma or propaganda.

00;35;14;02 - 00;35;45;20
William J Connell
So it's a that's why I call this the first modern history of the church. I these this scientific approach interest on truth, comparing documents, looking for forgeries, being aware of them is something that the church historians still now value very, very highly. And Catholic historians as much as Protestant historians. But it's it's the way it's the way history is done now.

00;35;45;20 - 00;36;01;14
William J Connell
And he, I think, is the is the first to embark in on that on that in that in that model just to to to write the history of the church in that.

00;36;01;17 - 00;36;19;04
Sarah E Ponichtera
It's exciting like to think about it in this time period because it seems so radically new even though this is the way it the the approach we sort of assume will be taken today. But the departure from one that just focuses on question of doctrine to one that brings in all of these of tools of scholarship now.

00;36;19;06 - 00;36;57;24
William J Connell
Right. And so considering that, then it remains interesting that the book never was published. It was only shown to a very few friends. And why it's maybe not an accident that in 1542, the year after this was written, the Roman Inquisition was established under Paul, the third, and it would have become dangerous to advocate reducing the power of the papacy with a living pope in charge who wanted to have all of that authority.

00;36;57;26 - 00;37;35;08
William J Connell
And so. So the book remained remained secret. Wow. And and the Inquisition, of course. Later, later in his life, Gianotti rewrote the book. He translated it into Latin. He took out things that he thought would be possibly offensive to the authorities. He did not advocate the turning of the church into a republic. He said that the pope's in the end, at the end of the 16th century, particularly like Pius the Fifth had done, we're doing a good job.

00;37;35;10 - 00;38;20;01
William J Connell
And he dedicated the book to Pius the Fifth. And and and submitted it then to the congregation of the index which worked together with the Inquisition to approve books. But even there it this revise the book now written in Latin praising the popes, praising the papal monarchy. I was rejected because there were too many passages limit that indicated times in the past when the power of the papacy was limited or I in which times when emperors had taken precedence of popes.

00;38;20;04 - 00;38;32;14
William J Connell
And and so but the historical method was deemed too dangerous by the congregation of the index, which read the book in the 1570.

00;38;32;17 - 00;38;44;27
Sarah E Ponichtera
Wow. It's sort of amazing coming from our perspective, looking back on this from a perspective of centuries later, that things could have changed so radically within half of his lifetime, like 20, 30 years.

00;38;45;00 - 00;39;27;02
William J Connell
Yes. So I, I, I, I've done a lot of work on Machiavelli and a letter that I published recently written by a Florentine monk describing Machiavelli and his relation to the church. I tells of friends that, you know, Machiavelli lived in a different time. Things were freer You could British size and yokes and and make fun of church priests.

00;39;27;09 - 00;39;32;16
William J Connell
Dominican oh four but 1570s. Oh, no.

00;39;32;19 - 00;39;38;12
Sarah E Ponichtera
Oh, wow. Wow.

00;39;38;14 - 00;39;54;26
Sarah E Ponichtera
Well, this project seems like it has drawn on all of your skills of of research and putting all these disparate pieces together. Can you talk a little bit about what has changed about your research since you started out in your career?

00;39;54;29 - 00;40;32;03
William J Connell
Oh, since well, when when I began coming out of I came out of the University of California, Berkeley, with a doctorate in Renaissance history. And I, I was then very interested in social history, relations of patrons to clients, how political parties were formed, the view, the role of wealth of neighborhood marriages and creating alliances, citizens. So really a social historian, but also interested in political thought.

00;40;32;05 - 00;41;22;17
William J Connell
And I in I would say that this project has taken me, although I've written about religious history and religious practices, this has taken me much deeper into questions of Church of physiology, of how the church is organized and its history. It's also taken me back to lessons I learned at Berkeley with wonderful professors like Peter Brown and Stephan Kuttner and William Bosma and Randolph Stern, studying how the church evolved from the time of the Roman Empire and the first Christians down to down to the to modern the modern world.

00;41;22;19 - 00;41;41;22
William J Connell
So it's I think it's taking me deeper rather than in in a completely new direction. But certainly my work now does does address questions of of piety, religious practice in a deeper way.

00;41;41;24 - 00;41;55;21
Sarah E Ponichtera
That's great. A message for our our grad students here at Seton Hall that those courses that you take as a graduate student can go with you throughout your career. Continue to bear fruit. So what is your next project going to be about?

00;41;55;23 - 00;42;25;06
William J Connell
Oh, I have my my next I have a I have a small project of of publishing an edition of Machiavelli's Prince in Italy for an Italian publisher. The book was written in Italian, but with my This would be with by Machiavelli in Italian, but this would be with my introduction and commentary. There's more work to be done on Niccolo and sorry on Donato Gianotti.

00;42;25;09 - 00;42;50;19
William J Connell
I'm now organizing an international conference at the University of Lyon about Gianotti and with the goal really of presenting this text to the world, I There are other projects, but it becomes utopian to start to have to rattle them off. We'll see what I can get done in the next year.

00;42;50;21 - 00;42;54;26
Sarah E Ponichtera
Well, I'm excited that there'll be a conference that people will really be able to dig into this.

00;42;54;28 - 00;42;56;26
William J Connell
Thank you, sir.

00;42;56;28 - 00;42;58;15
Sarah E Ponichtera
So where can we find this book?

00;42;58;18 - 00;43;34;25
William J Connell
Well, it's in special collections, this collections that you yourself directed. But it's I have published now. And this is this is, for me, also very exciting. In May of this year, 2023, the leading academic publisher in Italy called Giulio and Audi in Turin published this book in a very prestigious series of crucial texts of Italian literature and philosophy and religion.

00;43;34;28 - 00;44;19;06
William J Connell
And it's at a good price, beautifully built and nicely bound with a rich commentary and a long introduction by yours truly. And I did a book tour in in June with presentations in Turin, in Florence, and in Rome that were well-attended and very exciting. So the the book can be purchased from Amazon dot i t and and also the an Audi website if you Google under my name or not, the I would be able to find it.

00;44;19;09 - 00;44;23;10
Sarah E Ponichtera
All right. Wonderful. And you're giving a talk on October 30th.

00;44;23;14 - 00;45;22;07
William J Connell
On October 30th here at Seton Hall University. We'll have a talk, a presentation. I'll speak on the discovery of the manuscript and say some of the things, repeat some of the things I've said in this in this podcast, I think. But our idea also, because I'll be speaking together with Monsignor Thomas Guarino of our school, of our Seminary and professor of of of theology about efforts for reform in the 20th and 21st century, beginning especially with the Vatican two, but continuing through to discussions now about the role of bishops and synods in contemporary Catholicism and so that's again, to get back to your question about how this changes our view of Gianotti, it makes him

00;45;22;07 - 00;45;31;06
William J Connell
someone who's relevant in a contemporary way that is wonderful for someone who wrote in 1541.

00;45;31;08 - 00;45;49;03
Sarah E Ponichtera
Fantastic. And that is in Bethany Hall, A at 6 p.m.. So thank you, Professor Connell, for joining us today. And thanks to our listeners for joining us at that forward. Please join us next time when we talk to someone else from the Seton Hall community about their work and how it benefits the world around us until we meet again.

00;45;49;04 - 00;45;49;27
Sarah E Ponichtera
All the best.