Catholicism, Culture, Conversion: The History of the Jesuits in Albania (1841-1946) by Ines A. Murzaku (review)

Abstract

I38 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g Murzaku, Ines A. Catholicism, Culture, Conversion:The History of the Jesuits in Albania (1841-1946). Orientalia Christiana Analecta 277. Pontificio Istituto Orientale, Roma, 2006. 280 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography. Index. 25.00: $29.00 (paperback). Albanian history is one of the national histories of Europe least familiar to English speakers, and themodern ecclesiastical history ofAlbania is one of the more obscure corners of this history, a corner made even darker by the absence of a sizeable literature on the topic in languages other thanAlbanian. This volume, therefore,provides an important service to anyone interested in Balkan history and especially for students ofJesuit missions in theperiod after the restoration of the Society in 1814. Moreover, Ines A. Murzaku has drawn on rare archival material that gives us a window into the experiences and attitudes ofJesuits working inAlbania and the impressions they gained from their surroundings. Perhaps most interesting for the more general reader are the firsthand accounts of vendettas and blood feuds among the Albanian mountaineers, which the fathers strove to reduce, and the references to customs in rural Albanian society before the Communist era. Yet thisvolume has significant limitations. The author offers littleanalysis of thematerials she uses to tell the storyof theJesuit presence inAlbania for over a century, and the historical survey ends abrupdy without a concluding summary. The reader hoping to gain insights into life inAlbania during the First and Second World Wars will be disappointed. The immediate reason for this and other omissions, such as more details about relations between the Catholic Church and King Zog, or the way the Jesuits responded to Mussolini's occupation ofAlbania in 1939, isperhaps the limited nature of the surviving archival materials, much having been destroyed by theCommunists after 1945. The reader is left wondering, however, why other sources were not used to round out thispicture. Other omissions include, most noticeably, the absence of any concluding summary or synthesis of the author's research, or exploration of theJesuit politics beyond Albania that shaped the Society's approach to this remote and impoverished region. These lacunae make it much more difficult to place the frequently heroic efforts of these Jesuit missionaries and teachers in the larger contexts of the nineteenth and early twentieth-century society, or of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Albania. Relying on Jesuit generated documents, Murzaku has little critical to say about individualJesuits.We gain intriguingglimpses of a few rivalries between the fathers, and sense the ongoing tensions between Italian and native Albanian Jesuits, but the root causes of these conflicts are mostly obscured by the lack of specifics provided in these documents. The occasional bishop or foreign diplomat also comes in for criticism, but again the basis for this criticism is primarily drawn from frequently opaque Jesuit sources. In addi tion, although thebook contains rare and fascinating photos of theJesuits and people theyministered to, the absence of a map leaves the reader at times unable to appreciate the significance of thedistances or geographical obstacles that theJesuits confronted. However, by presenting straightforwardly and without analysis theJesuit perspective, Murzaku inadvertently gives us an insight into how these men reviews 139 saw themselves and their relations with others, including theChurch hierar chy,Muslims, Ottoman officials and diplomats; while this is of course an incomplete picture, it does contribute to our understanding of the broader question of Jesuit self-representation. Finally, two additional factors have clearly influenced the composition of thisbook. The firstis the destruction of theJesuit mission and persecution ofJesuits by theCommunist government. This sad chapter produced martyrs for the Society and cast the history of the Jesuits in a light that anticipates these sacrifices. The second factor is the return of the Society in 1991 following the fall of Communism. The return of theJesuits allows Murzaku to tell her story as one inwhich setbacks and martyrdom are at least potentially redeemed by the end of overt oppression and the resumption of theJesuits' mission. Yet asMurzaku documents amply, the story of theJesuits inAlbania is one of repeated expulsions followed by dogged effortsto return and rebuild. The history of theJesuits inAlbania is a narrative whose ultimate significance has yet to be determined. Murzaku's work helps us understand...