The Correspondence of Roland H. Bainton and Delio Cantimori 1932-1966: An Enduring Transatlantic Friendship between Two Historians of Religious Toleration (review)

Abstract

The Correspondence of Roland H. Bainton and Delio Cantimori 1932-1966: An Enduring Transatlantic Friendship between Two Historians of Religious Toleration. Edited by John Tedeschi. [Studi e testi per Ia storia della tolleranza in Europa nei secoli XVI-XVIII, 6.] (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore. 2002. Pp.xii, 313. euro29,00 paperback.) This beautifully produced and meticulously edited volume contains sixtyseven letters between Bainton and Cantimori. Apart from their correspondence they hardly knew each other. During the course of the thirty-three years of their friendship, they met only twice for a brief few hours. Cantimori, the younger of the two, opened the correspondence by congratulating Bainton on his book on Sebastian Castellio and telling him that he was working on riformatori italiani such as Bernardo Ochino and Lelio Socino. Bainton responded, and the exchange began. It was intermittent. Many letters have been lost. The correspondence ends sadly in 1966 with Bainton telling Cantimori of the death of his wife. Just a few months later Cantimori died unexpectedly from an accident in his home. As John Tedeschi observes in his excellent introduction, on most levels the two men could not have been more different. Bainton was outgoing and gregarious, a devout Christian, a fine speaker, a good stylist who wrote with seeming ease. Among his many publications was one that became almost a best-seller, Here I Stand, his biography of Luther. Cantimori was his opposite in all those respects. he produced only one monograph, on which his reputation was made, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (1939). When Harvard University Press attempted in the mid-1970's to publish an English translation, the project had to be abandoned at the galleys' stage because the nuances, subtleties and complexities of Cantimori's exposition could not be adequately rendered (p. 44). Two things bound these scholars together: their interest in the same historical figures and phenomena, viz., the Italian heretics or non-conformists of the sixteenth century and their place in the history of toleration, and, secondly, their own contrary stance to the status-quo. Bainton was a conscientious objector in World War I, and he consistently voted the Socialist ticket as a protest against the two major parties. Cantimori explained to Bainton in 1957 when he broke with the Communist Party that his actions did not mean he abandoned his conviction that Italy needed a profound change (p. 184). When Bainton earlier asked him why he was a Communist, he replied that the party was the only one in Italy that will not make a deal with the church (p. …