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BRIEF NOTICES Giou,Antonella. Monumenti e oggetti d'arte nel Regno d'ltalia:Ilpatrimonio artístico degli enti religiosi soppressi tra riuso, tutela e dispersione. Inventario dei "Beni délie corporazioni religiose" 1860-1890. (Rome: Minist ère) per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio Centrale per i beni archivistici. 1997.Pp. iv, 317. Paperback.) This publication of the State Archives ofItaly describes and lists the works of art taken from religious corporations during the first thirty years of the Italian Kingdom. When the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia set out to unite the Italian states under its own leadership, it had already instituted a strongly anticlerical bias. A law championed by Urbano Rattazzi in 1855 led to the suppression of all reUgious communities not dedicated to preaching, education, or helping the sick. The "Rattazzi Law" was rooted in the Enlightenment mistrust of purely spiritual values (the intercessory prayer of cloistered nuns, for example), as weU as the desire to seize control of the artistic treasures and libraries in the churches and monasteries of depopulated religious communities. According to this statute, the possessions of any suppressed community became the properly of the state, to be administered by an "ecclesiastical fund" which "would pay pensions to the same dispossessed religious men and women and defray other expenses of worship. In Piedmont, this law resulted in the extinction of thirty-five orders, with 335 houses. As the wars of unification continued, this law was extended to those Italian provinces added to Piedmontese control by military conquest. Included were two provinces of the former Papal States, Umbria in December, I860, and the Marches in January, 1861. The Neapolitan provinces were added in February, 1861. By the end of 1877, enforcement spread to Sicily and the remaining provinces. Collectively, 4000 religious communities were closed down and their goods confiscated by the state. Gioli's book traces the entire process clearly, with good attention to detaU. The actual inventory of archival holdings takes up seventy-five pages, followed by an additional ten pages of the pertinent legislation. There are three useful indexes , employing reUgious congregations, names of persons, and names of 492 BRIEF notices493 places. This work could be a useful tool for those working in art history or monastic history. Leopold Glueckert, O.Carm. (Lewis University) McGlashan, M. Nona. O Days of Wind & Moon. (Santa Barbara: Fithian Press. 1997.Pp. 127. $10.95.) In an early landscape painting, Ming Huang'sJourney to Shu,human activity is the artist's pretext for his attempt to capture the mysteries of the natural world. The polarity of the brushwork entices the eye to travel the route of the Tang emperor. Bridges, waterfalls, and paviUons frame individual scenes requiring the viewer to stop and reflect on their significance. McGlashan has painted a landscape of her journey as a member of the Catholic Sisters of Social Service in China, 1946-1948. Written fifty years after her sojourn, and following her withdrawal from the community and the onset of blindness, her book is a meditation on the spirituality of the Chinese. She recalled seeing little arches, like gateways to houses. The builder, however, erected the arch to frame a pleasing scene, not to lead to a house. A microcosm of Chinese and American attempts to understand each other, McGlashan has painted a portrait of the polarities of service and superiority, attraction and repulsion , altruism and suspicion, ignorance and knowledge. Historical figures, activities of international agencies and Communists, inflation and black market, interaction with other religious communities and nationals appear as in a Chinese drama,which presumes familiarity with the story. Readers learn that the Sisters of Social Service originated in Hungary, expanded to California, China, and eventually Taiwan. The book, however, is not a history of the Sisters or the civil war. The author's characterization of her work as a "recoUection of how it was and how it seemed to me" and her purpose to present a "small segment of the total picture of China" aptly describe 0 Days of Wind & Moon. It is a work of memory and reflection and not the appUcation of historical method, despite the appended "Historical Perspective." Its philosophical perspective on her experience of Chinese culture and the...

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