Kevin Madigan, a specialist in medieval Christianity, shifts to modern history, analyzing the Catholic campaign against Protestants and Anglo-American missionaries in Fascist Italy under Pius XI (1922–1939).

Madigan begins by mapping the Protestant presence in Italy from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Despite its diversity – including Waldensians, Methodists, Baptists, Adventists, and Pentecostals – Protestantism remained numerically marginal. The 1881 census recorded 62,000 Protestants in a population of 29 million, far outnumbered by 76,560 Catholic priests. By the early 1900s, Protestant numbers doubled due to socially focused missionary strategies and returning emigrants who had converted abroad, particularly in America. The book’s core examines the Catholic hierarchy’s reaction to this expansion.

One of the key figures in the early relationship between Fascism and Pius XI was the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, who, in 1927, published Il Pericolo Protestante, portraying Protestants as anti-Catholic, anti-Italian, and anti-Fascist. This text – as Madigan discovered – was based on an earlier report by Filippo Maria Tinti, an ambiguous figure employed by the police in Bari. Special concern was directed at the Methodist Church and the YMCA, perceived as foreign interference. The Vatican was particularly offended by the Protestant view of Italy as a mission field, likening it to an “indigenous African region” in need of civilization.

The 1929 Concordat was followed by a law recognizing Protestants as culti ammessi (“permitted denominations”). Protestant activity intensified. Already in 1930, Pius XI had commissioned reports on Protestant expansion, confirming its growth, particularly among returning emigrants and former Catholic priests who had become Protestant ministers. The 1931 census showed that the number of Protestants had risen to over 200,000, prompting firm Catholic denunciations of proselytism, which was legally forbidden. Leading this new phase of restrictions was the first Apostolic Nuncio to Italy, Francesco Borgongini-Duca, who convinced Interior Undersecretary Guido Buffarini-Guidi to impose a strict interpretation of the culti ammessi law, culminating in the 1935 decree banning Pentecostal communities – officially revoked only in 1955.

To illustrate the complexity of the religious situation, Madigan revisits the well-known case of the 1927 conversion of peasants in Villa San Sebastiano, Abruzzo, to British Methodism. Using new documents, he provides a clearer analysis of this episode’s political, social, and religious dynamics.

Madigan ultimately portrays the Vatican’s anti-Protestant campaign as a failure and highlights the differing priorities of Pius XI and Mussolini. While the Pope saw Protestantism as a severe threat to Catholic unity and a violation of the Concordat’s spirit, Mussolini had little interest in suppressing Protestants and often sought to avoid unnecessarily antagonizing Protestant nations like Britain. Madigan sees this as the last major Counter-Reformation effort in Italy, asserting – perhaps too optimistically – that systematic repression ended with Fascism.

The Popes against the Protestants is an innovative and well-researched book. Madigan’s research is particularly important in shedding light on the Catholic Church’s relationship with the state during the interwar years, leveraging the new documents and evidence he skillfully unearthed. However, because it is an important book, reading it is frustrating due to numerous typographical errors.

Despite Madigan acknowledging Yale University Press editors’ work, the editing was clearly a major failure on the publisher’s part. Some errors are minor, like dating the Baptist journal Bilychnis to 1901 instead of 1911 (p. 30), but others reveal a severe lack of editorial oversight. For instance, describing Trentino-Alto Adige as a “traditional Waldensian stronghold” (p. 94) is a serious inaccuracy that any Italian scholar in religious studies would have immediately spotted. Spelling errors abound: Grosetto instead of Grosseto (pp. 173, 175), Aresso instead of Arezzo (p. 175), Abbruzzi instead of Abruzzi (p. 173), and San Giacomo degli Schiavini instead of San Giacomo degli Schiavoni (pp. 177, 185). Even Sabaudian is mistakenly written as Sapaudian (p. 3).

Inconsistent capitalization appears frequently: l’italia (p. 325), Sant’alfonso (p. 337), and Ermanno amicucci (p. 318). Some surnames are also miswritten, such as Selvaggiano instead of Selvaggiani (p. 176). The spellchecker has occasionally transformed the article i into a capital letter (e.g., pp. 288, 303).

Errors extend to book titles, affecting both capitalization and italics, particularly for Italian titles. Araldo della Verità appears as Araldo dell Verità (p. 237), Testi e studi is miswritten as testi estudi (p. 314), and Laura Demofonti’s Italian article is inexplicably translated into English (p. 317). The phrase Ed è protestante (“And he is Protestant”) is incorrectly rendered as Ed e protestante (“And and Protestant”) (p. 347). The capitalization of German titles – such as those by Reuter, Locher, and Köhler – also appears random.

I acknowledge that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Italian spelling was more fluid, but some strange renderings suggest poor transcription: lotto instead of lotta (p. 70), setti instead of sette (p. 75), in dimunizione instead of in diminuzione (p. 171), sacerdoti apostate instead of sacerdoti apostati (p. 281), Echo instead of Eco (p. 25), and cassette instead of casette (p. 125). A footnote even contains both schiere volanto (incorrect) and schiere volanti (correct) just a few lines apart (footnote 22, p. 307). The sentence Soriano Fedele a la Re should likely read Soriano fedele al Re (p. 154). A precise comparison with original manuscripts would be necessary, but if such peculiarities reflect an early 20th-century usage or a contemporary mistake, a sic would have clarified that the error was in the original.

These are only a fraction of the typos I found. In my academic career, I have never fixated on minor errors in book reviews, following the rule that one should not do to others what one would not want done to oneself (and I myself am not a good proofreader). However, the sheer number of mistakes signals a systemic problem: declining peer-review and editorial standards, even at major publishers, which are squandering their credibility. Yale University Press clearly failed to conduct rigorous proofreading. For a book that relies so heavily on Italian sources, they should have recruited an editor knowledgeable in Italian. I imagine (and, given the mass of mistakes, I hope) that they did not even ask an Italian scholar to do the peer review. This reveals a parochial approach on the publisher’s part. Managing a book that addresses a cross-cultural narrative without a native scholar reviewing it has created an unnecessarily embarrassing situation for a serious scholar like Kevin Madigan. One might have expected better from Yale University Press. Much better.