In 1999 John Pollard, then of Anglia Polytechnic, later of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, published Benedict XV: the unknown pope. As Giulia Grossi and Federico Ruozzi point out in consecutive essays in this volume, the title had been used before – by Fernand Hayward in his 1955 biography Un Pape méconnu. Hayward's biography led to a conference in Spoleto in 1963, and now Pollard's book also appears to have spawned a conference – to which he contributed – in Bologna in November 2016. I say ‘appears’ because almost the only sign of this being the product of a conference is the publication in the first volume of an essay entitled ‘An inaugural address’, delivered by the Holy See's Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. In it he dwells, not surprisingly, on the distinguished role played by Giacomo Della Chiesa in the dicastery over which the cardinal now presides. If they were indeed the papers presented in Bologna, something which is not alluded to explicitly, then it was very well organised. There is little overlap or repetition, and the contributors seem to have read each other's papers before publication. In all there are some ninety essayists, and it must surely have been challenging to bring together so many contributions. That the two handsome volumes, presented in a slip case, contain 1129 pages of text is not the whole story, for each page is in double columns, and each essay is followed by endnotes, occasionally taking up almost as much space, though in smaller type, as the essay itself.

The texts are presented in four – not very helpful – parts, each ‘part’ being further subdivided into sections with rather more informative titles. Thus in volume i, part i, we have ‘Origin and formation’, ‘Leo xiii’s diplomat’, ‘The Bolognese bishopric’, ‘The start of the pontificate’, ‘Ideas of war, ideas of peace’, ‘Intervention and neutrality in Italy’, ‘The diplomacy of aid’, ‘The note of 1917’. Part ii is headed ‘Problems’, and contains essays on ‘Missions’, ‘The downsizing [ridimensionamento] of antimodernism’, ‘The vision of the people of Israel’, ‘Between unionism and ecumenism’ and ‘Theological questions and devotional practices’. Volume ii opens with a part headed ‘Relations’, meaning relations with states: sections include France, Italy, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine, then ‘other European nations’ – which encompasses the British Empire – followed by ‘Countries outside Europe’. The final part is devoted to Benedict xv’s legacy, including a section on ‘Benedict xv’s men’, one of whom is Edmund Aloysius Walsh sj, the founder of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. As its author remarks, ‘Walsh is a fairly common surname’ (p. 970), an observation with which this reviewer can but agree. The next section considers the peace treaties which brought the Great War to an end, the London Pact of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles, from both of which despite its best efforts the Holy See was excluded. The penultimate section is entitled ‘Post mortem’, and includes an essay on the conclave which elected Benedict's successor, Pius xi, and a bibliographical piece on biographies of Benedict composed during the pontificate of Pope Pius. There is a final chapter entitled ‘Benedict's moment’ which, given the impressive size of this publication, might well be thought to have arrived.

Although there is only a modest amount of unavoidable repetition in this collection, certain themes emerge, one of which is nationalism, discussed expressly in the contribution of Cinzia Sulas (pp. 644–54) but a fairly regular topic elsewhere. Most Italian bishops, it is pointed out, though not Della Chiesa as archbishop of Bologna, were eager to demonstrate their patriotism in the 1911–12 war between Italy and Libya – as it is described, though more correctly it was a war with Turkey. Given the poor state of relations between the Holy See and the kingdom of Italy, it is perhaps not surprising that the Italian hierarchy, or most of it, was determined to show its allegiance to the monarchy. During the Great War nationalism became even more of an issue for the pope after he made his appeal for peace in 1917 in the face of the ‘senseless slaughter’ – the ‘inutile strage’ of the book's subtitle. It was difficult for the Holy See to transmit the Note to the belligerent powers because of the paucity of diplomatic links that it had been able to maintain, as Cardinal Parolin and others remark. Britain (re-)established diplomatic relations when war broke out, fearing the influence on the Vatican of Berlin and Vienna. As Pollard comments, this reopening of diplomatic ties was regarded by the British Foreign Office as successful, and not only was it never afterwards abandoned but, he argues, the experience led to other countries being eager to make, or remake, their own links with the Holy See in the aftermath of the war. The Note itself, however, was not so successful. It was regarded by the French as excessively pro-German, and by the Germans as inopportune. Most of the German bishops as a consequence refused to associate themselves with the pope's peace points: only the Jesuit journal Stimmen der Zeit was prepared to publish it in full. George v told the Italian ambassador that he thought the pope had sided with the socialists (cf. p. 340). Even after the war nationalism created problems for Benedict as he attempted to encourage the creation of an indigenous clergy in missionary territories under the control of Propaganda Fide – some 60 per cent of whose seminarians, as Pollard points out, were British subjects.

There is an international cast of contributors, but a list with their academic affiliations would have been useful. Many of the essays have been translated from English, French or German, making this a distinctly, if not excessively, Italian publication. Reading ‘The Church in wartime, the faith under siege’ by Frédéric Gugelot, translated from English, one would not imagine, apart from a passing mention of Cardinal Bourne and one ‘Charles Palter’ – in the endnotes and index called Platter, vere Charles Plater sj – that Britain had been a participant in the Great War, or that the impact of the war on both Roman Catholicism and on the Church of England had been thoroughly researched.

One cannot help thinking that had the essays been left in the language in which they were written, then the money thereby saved might have been spent on producing a more satisfactory index. The one with which the readers are presented is of proper names only, restricting, I would suggest, the book's usefulness. None the less this is an important publication, and no historian of the first couple of decades of the twentieth-century Church can afford to ignore what is to be found in it not just on papal diplomacy but on ecumenism, relations with the Jews and other matters. It is a rich resource.