Page 3 - HISTORICO_SPIRITUAL

The return to the “spiritual sources” of religious Institutes
recommended by “Perfectae Caritatis” (No. 2), gave rise to a new
edition of Volumes I-VI for two reasons:

1. because the copies of the first edition (“Spiritual Writings”
1904. “Life of B. Capitanio” 1905. “Life of M. V. Gerosa” 1910) were since

long out of stock, and so, many communities were left without;

2. because Fr Mazza, one of the most accurate scholars on
the Foundresses and on the first sixty years of the Institute,
remains, in particular concerning the figure, spirituality and
apostolic activity of Bartolomea, the most reliable and rich
source, especially because he deliberately made it a point to let

documentary evidence speak for itself («Bartolomea’s Spiritual
Writings», Processes for the Beatification and friends’
manuscripts still available at the Archives of the Generalate) by
quoting abundantly from such sources.

I have to point out that the contents of the “Spiritual
Writings” vol. I and vol. III of the Foundress and precisely the
volume of the “Letters” and that of “Notes and practices of life-of-
perfection”, prove to be quite certain that they are authentic. The
original scripts are still preserved of the whole of the former and
of a large part of the latter.

Serious doubts are, instead, cast on the authenticity of
“Spiritual Writings” vol. II. It would take some serious research-
work (a good topic of a thesis for higher studies) to check how
much of it was original and how much had been taken from a
large supply of manuals of piety and devotion very much in use in
the nineteenth century.
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NOTE prepared in 1968 for the anastatic reprinting of the six volumes of
Mazza.