Numen 60 (2013) 649–675
brill.com/nu
Raffaele Pettazzoni from the Perspective
of the Anglophone Academy1
Bryan Rennie
Department of Religion, History, Philosophy and Classics
Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA 16172 USA
brennie@westminster.edu
Abstract
There should be no need to emphasize the significance of Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883–
1959) to historians of religions. However, there are only two books by Pettazzoni available in the English language: the monograph The All-knowing God (1956; original:
L’onniscienza di Dio, 1955) and an anthology of Essays on the History of Religions (1954),
which is “a collection of sundry writings on various subjects connected with the History
of Religions, which have been already published on different occasions in Italian and
foreign periodicals” (Pettazzoni 1954).2 Added to this is a tiny collection of articles in
English (in fact, the American Theological Libraries Association database references
only three). This seems to constitute a serious neglect of such a productive scholar,
who has been called an “exemplary historian of religions.” This paper will attempt to
assess the reception of the work of Raffaele Pettazzoni in the Anglophone Academy, to
question the adequacy and accuracy of that reception, and to indicate what might be
learned from it.
Keywords
Raffaele Pettazzoni, method and theory in the study of religion, history of religions,
philosophy of religion, Anglophone academy
1) I cannot begin without thanking those people without whom I could not have written this paper. First, Giovanni Casadio whose assistance has been especially indispensable, and who put me in touch with Mario Gandini and Domenico Accorinti, both of
whom provided immediate and very generous assistance. An anonymous reviewer for
Numen also made several extremely valuable suggestions. Ms. Connie Davis of McGill
Library at Westminster College worked tenaciously to put at my disposal even the most
obscure of publications. Finally, I thank my colleagues at Westminster, who graciously
awarded me the Ruth Watto scholarship to support my work.
2) From “Preface.” No page numbers.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013
DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341298
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Raffaele Pettazzoni — In English
It is not my task to assess either the work or the significance of Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883–1959) — that has been done in the past and was
continued in even greater detail by contributors to the 9th EASR/IAHR3
special conference in Messina in September of 2009 (the partial proceedings of which have been published: Casadio 2011). My specific task
is to consider the reception of the Italian historian of religions in the
academy of the English-speaking world, and I would also like to consider what might be learned from that reception: about Pettazzoni,
about the Anglophone academy, about the history of religions, and, possibly, about the future of the study of religions.
One thing that must be said about the Anglophone academy is that
it is emphatically Anglophone, and I will comment on that later. Thus I
concentrate entirely on publications by and about Pettazzoni that have
appeared in English and on assessments of the Italian scholar from
authors who represent that academy in some way. Thus I will ignore
some important contributions to the wider context, such as Natale
Spineto’s 1994 volume, Mircea Eliade-Raffaele Pettazzoni, L’histoire
des religions a-t-elle un sens? Correspondance 1926–1959, and consider
others, such as Michael Stausberg’s (2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2009) only
tangentially.
Considering that Pettazzoni was almost the first President of the
IAHR (I say “almost” because his predecessor, the actual first President
Gerardus van der Leeuw, died after less than a year in office), that he
“received wide international recognition on his election to the presidency” (Whaling 1984:262), and that he produced some fifteen significant works in the history of religions in his own language (some of
them multivolume), there is a surprising scarcity of such publications in
English. There are only two volumes of his work in English translation:
the collection Essays on the History of Religions (1954) and the monograph The All-knowing God: Researches into Early Religion and Culture
(1956, which is a translation of the 1955 L’onniscienza di Dio). Both of
these were translated by his Canadian friend and colleague, then at the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Herbert Jennings Rose. Rose was
3) European Association for the Study of Religions/International Association for the
History of Religions.
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unquestionably Pettazzoni’s primary translator into English, although
some fifty pages of I Misteri were translated by J. M. Unvala as “Persian
Mysteries” (1932) and F. A. Taylor translated Pettazzoni’s first article in
English, “The Chain of Arrows,” in Folklore 35 in 1924. Just as a point of
comparison, Mircea Eliade had at least fourteen translators of his French
works (Rosemary Sheed, Willard Trask, Philip Mairet, Stephen Corrin,
Charles Lam Markmann, J. M. Cohen, Derek Coltman, Alf Hiltebeitel
and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Frederica Adel, Catherine Spencer,
Fred H. Johnson, Jr., Teresa Lavender Fagan, and Elaine P. Halperin).
This is not so much a mark of the relative stature of the two scholars
but of the rapid expansion of the field after Pettazzoni’s day and of the
greater availability of translators of French as compared to Italian. As
early as 1927, Norman H. Baynes commented on Pettazzoni’s La religione di Zarathustra, saying, “it is a pity that there is no English translation of this fascinating study” (1927:275).4
Complementary to Pettazzoni’s two volumes in English are some fifteen articles: nine in journals and six appearing as chapters in anthologies (plus “Greetings” and “Address to Closing Section,” and a three page
consideration of “Some Parallels in the Historical Development of Religion,” in Proceedings of the 9th International Congress for the History of
Religions in Tokyo in 1958). Of the journal articles, only three, the 1937
publication in The Review of Religion,5 the 1955 publication in Numen,
and the essay in Diogenes that same year, can be said to be widely distributed, mainstream publications. Pettazzoni published six articles in
Numen in other languages, one in French, two in German, and three in
Italian. The other articles and book chapters tend to be in rather arcane
publications such as the Jubilee Congress of the Folklore Society or the
Dr. Modi Memorial Volume (both 1930). The most freely available book
chapters would be one in Mircea Eliade and Joseph Kitagawa’s 1959 edition6 and the anthologized reprints of “The Truth of Myth”7 from Essays
4) Emphasis original.
5) Columbia University Press, printed from 1939–1958.
6) This was an original article, which does not identify its translator but was translated from the Italian of Pettazzoni’s L’Essere celeste nelle credenze dei popoli primitive
(Rome, 1922). See Pettazzoni 1959:59, n.1.
7) Original Italian text (“Verità del mito”) published in Studi e Materiali di Storia delle
Religioni 21 (1947–1948:104–116).
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in the History of Religions in edited volumes by Alan Dundes (Sacred
Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth, 1984) and Robert Segal (Theories of Myth: Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Myth, 1996). Pettazzoni’s
essay on “The Formation of Monotheism” was also anthologized in the
first two editions of William Lessa and Evon Vogt’s Reader in Comparative Religion (1958 and 1965) but was omitted thereafter.
That’s it. Despite their potential importance, all there is in English of Pettazzoni’s work is one monograph, one collection of essays,
three mainstream journal articles, one widely available book chapter,
and twelve other essays in relatively obscure publications. The question before us here, however, is not how much there is by Pettazzoni
in English, but how he has been received in the Anglophone academy.
I recognize that this is a difficult task, a full response to which would
require much more time than I have so far been able to spend on it.
Investigations could be conducted into the responses of Anglophone
scholars to Pettazzoni’s less available and untranslated work and this
requires delving into all sorts of publications, unpublished lecture
notes, and personal correspondences. This has largely already been
done in the biography of Pettazzoni by Mario Gandini. This is a very
extensive intellectual biography of the scholar of religion. Published in
Strada Maestra, the quarterly journal of the library in Pettazzoni’s home
town, between 1989 and 2009,8 and is an immensely useful resource to
any future considerations of Pettazzoni. As an entirely Italian work it
is beyond my current remit but it contributed enormously to the bibliographic index of this article. Giovanni Casadio (2009) has published,
in English, the correspondence between Pettazzoni and Arthur Darby
Nock (twenty letters from 1936–1953) in the Romanian journal Archaeus
and this includes a topical discussion of paradigm distinction and dialogue occurring between the Italian and Anglophone academies in the
global context. The publication of the correspondence between Pettazzoni and Rose, undertaken by Domenico Accorinti (2009) is also of considerable significance in this respect. Finally, however, it might remain
an impossible task to determine his reception in the Anglophone world,
since the academy of the “Anglosphere” cannot effectively be isolated
8) Available in Italian online at http://www.raffaelepettazzoni.it (accessed 3 January
2013).
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from the rest of the world. All that I can hope is that my present modest
labors may prove both informative and a useful propaedeutic to those
who would pursue such questions further.
With that caveat, I can say that the initial Anglophone reception of
Pettazzoni’s work was overwhelmingly positive. His untranslated works
were favorably reviewed in English by Robert Ranulph Marett, Arthur
Berriedale Keith, Arthur Darby Nock, and Moses Gaster, among ­others.
The anonymous reviewer of Le origini dei Kabiri in the Journal of Hellenic Studies in 1909 considered it “a very careful discussion of the literary and monumental evidence,” which “is quite indispensable as a
collection of material” (Anon. 1909:377). R. R. Marett said of La religione
primitive in Sardegna that “no reader of this book, whatever way he may
lean in regard to these questions of ultimate theory, will derive anything but profit from a treatise conceived in so judicious and temperate
a spirit” (Marett 1912:391). A. B. Keith, although more critical, agreed that
Pettazzoni’s La Religione di Zarathustra nella Storia religiosa dell’ Iran
was a “clear and interesting sketch of the position of Zoroastrianism in
the religious history of Iran [and that] recognition must be accorded to
the value of his discussion and to his command of the literature” (Keith
1921:279, 280). Louis Gray thought Pettazzoni “a student of comparative
religion of the finest and sanest type” (Gray 1922:87).
The two volumes in English translation, upon which I will concentrate,
appeared in 1954 and 1956 and their reviews (all that I have been able to
locate) appeared between 1955 and 1957, that is, shortly before Pettazzoni’s death. Although the anonymous reviewer of The All-­Knowing God
in The Times Literary Supplement of 21 September 1956 thought that “an
apparent over-confidence in the security of his evidence is perhaps the
one just criticism against this volume and the anthropological school
that it so admirably represents” (Anon. 1956).9 Nonetheless, that same
author goes on to say that
the standard of factual accuracy is abnormally high . . . Of course, there are generalizations that seem too simple . . . But the book as a whole is of a massive erudition. If, in spite of this, its results are ever regarded with a certain skepticism, it
will be amongst those who distrust the encyclopedic approach and who believe
9) No page numbers.
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that anthropology cannot become an exact science until it has been more closely
aligned with philology and with archeology. (Anon. 1956)10
The influential British scholar of religion, Samuel G. F. Brandon, wrote
in his review of the same volume,
Professor Pettazzoni is able to make the important point that the idea of omniscience was not originally the product of reasoning about the abstract notion
of deity. It was rather the result of conceiving of the divine in anthropomorphic
terms . . . [among other things this] refutes the famous theory . . . of a primal monotheism. (Brandon 1956a:72)
The reference is, of course, to Father Wilhelm Schmidt’s Urmonotheismus. Brandon recognizes Pettazzoni’s “great learning and amazing thoroughness,” which is a “memorial of a long life which has been devoted
to diligent research into all manner of aspects of religious faith and
practices in all ages and in all parts of the world” (ibid.). He continues
that “as an instance of what may be achieved in this field of study by
a carefully controlled comparative reference, Professor Pettazzoni’s
treatment . . . is instructive” (ibid.:73) even though he believes,
It would be comparatively easy for the expert in any particular field into which
Professor Pettazzoni enters to raise objection on special points (e.g. there would be
several points for dispute in his interpretation of the ancient Egyptian evidence).
However, to do so would be both ungenerous and to mistake the significance of his
work. Thus, without endorsing every instance which he cites in support of his thesis, it may fairly be said that professor Pettazzoni does present a most impressive
case for believing that “behind the one omniscient God of a monotheistic religion
we glimpse the figure of the omniscient chief God of a polytheism.” (Ibid., quoting
Pettazzoni 1956:437)
Brandon also mentions Pettazzoni’s “devoted research and careful
­reflection upon its findings” and calls his scholarship “sober and learned.”
In his review in the Manchester Guardian he concludes, “­Professor
­Pettazzoni’s achievement here is of the greatest value” (1956b:4).
One of the most critical reviews at that time, in the Classical Review of
1956, came from M. J. Boyd of Queen’s University Belfast, who is one of
10) No page numbers.
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655
those authors whom Brandon called an “expert in a particular field” who
can “raise objection on special points.” Boyd certainly does so regarding Pettazzoni’s interpretation of the classics in Essays on the History
of Religions. He points out that “Pettazzoni has constituted himself the
defender of the worshipers of Bacchus. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm
leads him into rash and careless statement” (1956:141). The statement in
question is the claim that “one of the first pages of the history of religion
in Italy is written in blood” (Pettazzoni 1954:203), to which Boyd objects
because “religion had a long history in Italy before 186 BC” when the
bloody Bacchanalia in question took place (Boyd 1956:141). This does
seem a relatively trivial objection, hinging as it does on whether or not
the Bacchanalia of 186 bce constitutes “one of the first pages of the history of religion in Italy.” Similarly, Boyd is critical of the “many misprints
and occasional awkwardnesses and inelegancies of expression,” which
he describes in some detail although admitting, “this is, perhaps, to carp”
(ibid.). Boyd does not mention that the text is translated, and so such
awkwardnesses and inelegancies of expression are not necessarily the
fault of Pettazzoni. Nonetheless, even Boyd recognizes that the essay,
“Regnator omnivm devs” is “a convincing interpretation” and concludes,
“the volume is a stimulating collection of papers, a fitting tribute by the
publishers to their learned and distinguished author” (ibid.).
Regarding the elegancy of the expression of the volume, another
prestigious reviewer, Lord Raglan (FitzRoy Richard Somerset, 4th Baron
Raglan, 1885–1964), on the contrary thought that “Professor Rose’s translation reads excellently” (1955:63), as did most of the reviewers who
mention the style of the translation. Furthermore, Raglan was “moved
to admiration for [Pettazzoni’s] learning and ingenuity” (ibid.:62).
Another reviewer, classicist and historian of religions, Erland Ehnmark,
likewise criticized Pettazzoni for the minutiae of his readings of the
classics (1956:466), but nonetheless felt that after Pettazzoni “the theory
of Urmonotheismus . . . is refuted in a very effective manner” (ibid.:465).
In the Review of Religion Martin P. Nilsson considers the articles in
Essays on the History of Religions to “show the author’s breadth of interests, his scholarship, circumspectness, and sound judgment” (1956:164).
Nilsson points out that Pettazzoni’s “method [in L’onniscienza di Dio]
is an example of the union of historical research and phenomenology
which [Pettazzoni] asked for in one of the essays” (ibid.:165). Nilsson’s
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review is, in part, a review of the earlier Italian publication, which he
considers “the most important contribution to the discussion of the
High God problem” (ibid.:166).
On the topic of the High God, Samuel H. Hooke’s review considers
The All-Knowing God “beyond doubt a really good book, worthy to rank
with the great collections of earlier days” (1957:184). Hooke wrote that
Pettazzoni
rightly insists on the necessity of dealing with the problem of the relation of the
Supreme Being to a particular type of culture on a ‘rigorously exact historical
basis’. Hence his book marks an important advance on those methods of approach
which were dominated either by purely linguistic considerations . . . or by theological interests. (Ibid.:184)
He quotes Pettazzoni to the effect that “the idea of the Supreme
Being . . . is a concrete historical formation which takes different
shapes . . . according to the cultural environment in which it appears”
(ibid.; Pettazzoni 1956:433–434). Such a historicizing initiative has been
recognized of other “scholars in various fields intent on restoring history to the history of their fields . . . All oppose the ahistorical practices
of persons professing to be historians of their disciplines” (Segal 1989:2).
Robert Segal, who made that remark, lists John G. A. Pocock, John
Dunn, George Stocking, Robert Alun Jones, Thomas Kuhn, Ernst Hans
Gombrich, Alasdair MacIntyre, Herbert Butterfield, and Robin George
Collingwood. It seems that he could have included Raffaele Pettazzoni
among those scholars “intent on restoring history to the history of their
fields.”
The well-known American anthropologist William A. Lessa considered The All-Knowing God to be “a major contribution to the field of
comparative religion” and seemed convinced by Pettazzoni’s argument
that “the attribute of omniscience is not inherent in the monotheistic
idea of God, nor in that of a supreme being, nor that of deity in ­general”
(1957:358). As was briefly mentioned above, in the first two editions of
their widely popular Reader in Comparative Religion, Lessa and his coeditor, Evon Z. Vogt, included Pettazzoni’s essay on “The Formation of
Monotheism” from Essays in the History of Religions (1958:40–46 and
1965:34–39) with an appreciative introduction, calling it “an alternative and simple explanation of the origin of monotheism” (1958:40) and
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summarizing Pettazzoni’s argument with apparent approval. It is notable, however, that Pettazzoni’s essay is absent from the third edition
of 1972. His contribution is simply omitted and no further mention of
him is made. No less a scholar than R. J. Zwi Werblowsky calls the book
(­Pettazzoni 1956)
a really important and exemplary study on divine attributes. Important because
it marshals an enormous amount of material and practically covers the whole
globe inch by inch. Exemplary because it shows how a ‘comparative religionist’
tackles such a problem without theological or metaphysical strings and categories.
(1956:123)
In agreement with Pettazzoni, Werblowsky insists that “a proper understanding of the particular and well-defined ideological complex which
makes up the figure of YHVH automatically disposes of such scholarly ‘discoveries’ as e.g. that divine omniscience first appears with the
­Prophets or that the sky as YHVH’s abode is post-exilic” (ibid.:124).
In the Chicago Journal of Religion, Joseph Kitagawa was less flattering about the Essays on the History of Religions. He thought “the
general essays [to be] very uneven in quality. Pettazzoni seems to be
more at home in evaluating other scholars’ theories on ‘The Formation
of Monotheism,’ ‘The Truth of Myth,’ and ‘Myths of Beginnings and
Creation-Myths’ than in formulating his own theoretical framework”
(1957:125–126). Actually, Kitagawa’s conclusion seems questionable
in light of the fact that Pettazzoni’s essay on “The Truth of Myth,” was
later deemed original enough to be anthologized several times, becoming his most published work in English. Kitagawa also concluded that
“the result is nothing new” concerning Pettazzoni’s article “East and
West” and one wonders if perhaps the reception of this article suffered
from the ten-year delay between its initial publication in Italian in 1945
and the publication of its English translation in 1955. Be that as it may,
­Kitagawa was also aware that
Pettazzoni is uneasy about the current trend, which seems to split the science of
religion into two compartments, one historical and the other phenomenological. He is convinced that “the only way of escape from these dangers is to apply
constantly to history.” He [Pettazzoni] asks: “Are they [historical and phenomenological studies] not rather in reality simply two interdependent instruments
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of the same science, two forms of the science of religion, whose composite unity
corresponds to that of its subject, that is to say of religion, in its two distinct
components, interior experience and exterior manifestations?” (Ibid.:126, quoting
Pettazzoni 1954:218)
So Kitagawa, too, whatever his reservations, recognized Pettazzoni’s
emphasis on accurate and reliable historiography and a two-pronged
approach to the study of religion and his final assessment, as we will
see, was favorable.
Finally, in contemporaneous reviews of Pettazzoni from the Anglophone academy, I must mention the productive and influential scholar
Edwin O. James, professor of history and philosophy of religion at the
universities of Leeds and then London, who was the only writer of
whom I know to review both volumes. James also wrote an obituary
(1960). James’ description of phenomenology in his review of Essays on
the History of Religions is interesting:
What is called “Phenomenology” by continental scholars in this field, is the investigation of the structure and significance of religious phenomena independently
of their place in a particular cultural setting at a particular time. The material is
collected from all ages, states of culture and parts of the world regardless of chronology, environment, function in society, or validity. It is considered wholly as it is
presented to the mind, and so restricts itself to pure description without making
any attempt to pass judgment on what “appears” . . . What is called phenomenology depends on a study of history for its material, and is conditioned by the results
of historical research, as Professor Pettazzoni recognizes. So rightly he contends
that the two approaches are really complementary aspects of one single discipline.
(1956:55)
James describes The All-Knowing God as “a volume which cannot fail
to be of very considerable interest for students of the history of religion, anthropologists and folklorists . . . Starting from the assumption
that religion is an aspect of culture, organically related to the culture
in which it arises and functions” (1957:306). He continues, “whatever
may be said about some of the generalizations in this illuminating volume, it is a work of mature scholarship and great learning embodying
an inquiry conducted over a very long period with exemplary care for
accuracy in the record of the valuable data collected with persistent
skill” (ibid.:306–307).
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Since it appeared in English in Diogenes in 1955 and was a review
of several of Pettazzoni’s works, the review essay by Eliade may also
be mentioned at this point. Eliade considered Pettazzoni, along with,
and to some extent more than, Martin P. Nilsson, to be the exemplary
(although not the perfect) historian of religions (1955). Eliade’s essay
remains the only attempt in the 1950s to introduce the whole, or a large
part, of Pettazzoni’s Italian work to an English readership. The extent of
Pettazzoni’s influence on Eliade can be loosely judged from the fact that
Eliade cites the older scholar some fifty times in his Patterns in Comparative Religion (1958, the English translation of the 1949 Traité d’Histoire
des Religions). That is not to say that the two men never disagreed,11 but
that is tangential to the focus of this paper.
After the initial round of appreciative reviews in the late 1950s
(and, of course, the eulogies following his death in 1959), references to
­Pettazzoni are found in the great majority of English-language works
on the history or the study of religions. Entries on him can be found in,
for example, Eliade’s The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (1969);
Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History (1975); Olof Pettersson
and Hans Ǻkerberg, Interpreting Religious Phenomena: Studies with
Reference to the Phenomenology of Religion (1981); Frank Whaling (ed.),
Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion (1984); Walter Capps,
Religious Studies, the Making of a Discipline (1995); Peter Connolly (ed.),
Approaches to the Study of Religion (1999); Jacques Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion (1973); John Hinnells (ed.) The
Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion (2005); and a very helpful article by Michael Stausberg in Horst Junginger’s edited volume, The
Study of Religion under the Impact of Fascism (2008a). Stausberg makes
other very informative references in his three-part series on “The Study
of Religion(s) in Western Europe” (2007, 2008b, 2009). There are also
helpful entries in the first and second editions of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion (1987 and 2005) by Ugo Bianchi and Mario Gandini
respectively. It is impossible to adequately summarize in brief all of this
material. Suffice it to mention here just a few key points. First, some
idea of the relative stature of Pettazzoni for the Anglophone audience
11) Marcello Massenzio points to some serious disagreements between the two
(2005:213), but I find myself in disagreement with him in some respects. In my opinion
he underestimates Pettazzoni’s influence on the Romanian scholar.
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can be derived from the fact that Eric Sharpe mentions Pettazzoni only
five times as compared to Claas Jouco Bleeker (7), Geo Widengren (7),
Samuel George Frederick Brandon (8), Edwin O. James (8), Jacques
Waardenburg (8), Åke Hultkranz (9), Cornelis Petrus Tiele (12), Pierre
Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye (13), James George Frazer (13), Mircea
Eliade (14), Robert Ranulph Marett (14), Gerardus van der Leeuw (15),
Rudolf Otto (15), Andrew Lang (18), Edward Burnett Tylor (20), Nathan
Söderblom (22), and Friedrich Max Müller (29). However, it is also worthy of note that according to Eliade, Pettazzoni was “brought up under
the pervasive influence of Croce’s historicism . . . [and so] viewed religion as a purely historical phenomenon . . . He rightly insists on the historicity of every religious creation” (1969:29). Sharpe corroborates this,
saying that those scholars influenced by Pettazzoni were “exponents of
exact scholarship and the strictest historical method” (1986:185 n.24).
In the original 1984 two-volume edition of his work, Frank ­Whaling
spoke appreciatively of Pettazzoni in his informative chapter on “Comparative Approaches” (although this does appear to be exclusively
based on Pettazzoni 1954). However, in the second, single-volume edition of 1995, Whaling’s article is omitted and the single mention made of
­Pettazzoni is by Ursula King who mentions him only in passing as being
president of the IAHR (1995:61), advocating a historical-­comparative
method (ibid.:95), and speaking of the science of religion as an integrated approach that can “overcome the inherent tension between the
history and phenomenology of religion” (ibid.:137).
Walter Capps’ section on “Raffaele Pettazzoni: Religious Belief among
Primitive Peoples,” is more helpful and points out that “Pettazzoni
charged Schmidt [in Der Ursprung der Gottesidee] with working with
a highly developed, Westernized, Christianized conception of deity,
transferring this conception back to earliest historical times” (1995:90).
As Capps points out, Pettazzoni exercised “an approach to the subject
matter that insists that all elements of religion be placed and treated in
cultural contexts. What may appear on the surface to be the same or
similar frequently turns out to be decidedly different when the distinctiveness of the context is acknowledged” (ibid.:93). Thus Capps appreciated Pettazzoni as being opposed to the ethnocentric transference of
one’s own conceptions and values onto one’s subject, which runs counter to James’ assessment of continental phenomenology of religion.
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It can be seen that, for the most part, despite a diminishing interest, even these later Anglophone writers remain appreciative of Pettazzoni’s emphasis on the historical context and development of religious
ideas and his conclusions that the natural sources of divine attributes
and all other religious ideas implies a progression, a “logic,” to the
mythic discourse as opposed to either “a priori” (Pettazzoni 1956:445) or
revealed ideas. They recognize that he stood for precise historical scholarship complemented by a phenomenological approach although they
appear to have only slight familiarity with his actual work. Someone
with a greater familiarity, Marcello Massenzio, goes so far as to claim
that “­Pettazzoni’s long and laborious scientific effort at resolving by
synthesis the two positions laid the foundations for a new discipline”
(2005:211), and Silvia Mancini states that Pettazzoni “was, indeed, the
first who successfully tried to reconcile the necessity of a truly historical
knowledge of civilizations with the holistic and systemic procedures of
cultural and social anthropology” (2007:282). “He began with the historicization of the concept of ‘God’ such as it appears in monotheism . . . He
then applied the same procedure to the concept of ‘sin’ and to the concept of ‘mystery’ associated with religious experience.” He discovered
that “these structures of meaning are typical of the Christian religion
and belong to it exclusively” (ibid.:291).
More recently, Michael Stausberg has observed that Pettazzoni
“clearly stands out as one of the towering figures of the history of the history of religions in the 20th century” (2008a:365). Stausberg thought it
almost unimaginable that the history of religions “as a non-confessional
academic discipline” could have come into existence in Italy without
Pettazzoni (ibid.:366). However, Stausberg, Massenzio, and Mancini
(whose positions should not otherwise be equated), although their articles on Pettazzoni were published in English, are not representative of
the British or American academy since they were neither educated nor
employed there. Kees Bolle and Joseph Kitagawa, although not native
Anglophones, may perhaps be seen as somewhat more representative
in that they pursued graduate research and held long-term positions
in the United States. In his 1987 monograph on the history of religions,
Kitagawa counts Pettazzoni as “one of the most articulate” among those
who have “given serious attention to the relationship between the historical and the systematic dimensions of the discipline,” in fact, Kitagawa
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tells us that in Japan Pettazzoni is “usually regarded as the spokesman
for the historical dimension of the History of Religions” (1987:304). He
emphasizes Pettazzoni’s recognition that “unless the phenomenological inquiry constantly checks its understanding with historical inquiries” it is liable to serious errors in interpretation. Kitagawa concludes
that “Pettazzoni was persuaded that the relationship between historical and systematic inquiries must be reciprocal and mutually independent” and was “one of the towering figures in the discipline in our time”
(ibid.:305).
Bolle’s assessment of Pettazzoni, given in his The Enticement of Religion, is almost entirely favorable and should be cited at length.
The rise of Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883–1959) was one of the most remarkable phenomena on the religio-historical scene in the twentieth century. He was the principal architect of the history of religions in Italy. This achievement is substantial.
Italy was one of the last major countries of Europe to accept the field. . . . [Pettazzoni] is the only historian of religions who can be said to have formed a
“school” . . . The secret of Pettazzoni’s talent was his vision for all facets of life that
related to any topic at hand, as well as the gigantic scope of subjects he dealt with.
(2002:280–281)
Referring to Karen Armstrong’s A History of God (1994), Bolle laments
that “the great Italian historian of religions Raffaele Pettazzoni studied the subject thoroughly, but the name of Pettazzoni does not even
appear in this work on monotheism” (2002:273). Bolle returns to the disagreement between Pettazzoni and Schmidt and concludes,
Pettazzoni worked in his own precise and wide-ranging comparative historical fashion on high god images and myths. Schmidt’s . . . ­thesis that the earliest
­hunting-and-gathering peoples of the earth were monotheists had to suffer for its
lack of substance under Pettazzoni’s onslaught. He convincingly demonstrated
that what we can begin to identify a “monotheism” always originates in the
supremacy one god attains in an assembly of gods. Historically, such is the beginning of ­Yahweh . . . It is not difficult to see that religio-historically Pettazzoni was
right. (Ibid.:282)
Finally, Bolle describes Michel Foucault’s position as being, “All that
there is — the traditional subject of all philosophy — is turned into an
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663
interminable puzzle,” and he adds, “This is serious philosophy, too! ”12 But
interestingly for the topic at hand, he continues, “it seems like a theory
that might have accompanied the practice that Pettazzoni engaged in.
Pettazzoni ceaselessly searched for the settings and relations in the religions of the world; he corrected himself; he never accepted any understanding of a religion as conclusive” (ibid.:300). Bolle seems to have
had the advantage of reading Pettazzoni in more than just English. He
certainly cites Pettazzoni’s work on “the mystery religions, and some
volumes on the confession of sins . . . the most embracing collection of
myths of all the continents,” as well as his extensive oeuvre on monotheism, neither of which were translated into English (ibid.:281).
More immediately representative of the exclusively Anglophone
response are George Alfred James (1995), Russell McCutcheon (1997),
Donald Wiebe (1999), Seth Kunin (2003), Robert Segal (2005), and Douglas Allen (2005). According to G. A. James,
Pettazzoni contends that for all of phenomenology’s superiority over purely historical, purely ethnological, purely philological researches which systematically
evade the peculiar nature of religious data, it does not follow that the history of
religion, as Pettazzoni conceives it, has nothing to contribute to an inquiry into
the meaning of religious phenomena. Historical development can hardly be considered negligible to the interpretation of historical religious phenomena, even
when these data are systematically arranged . . . Pettazzoni endorses a close alliance between the history and phenomenology of religion and leaves the phenomenology of Husserl quite out of the picture. (1995:15)
But despite such statements and the earlier appreciation of Pettazzoni’s
emphasis on the historical nature of the data his emphasis on phenomenology is used to a powerful, if misleading, effect by Russell McCutcheon. McCutcheon accurately quotes Pettazzoni as saying,
Religious phenomenology has nothing to do with the historical development of religion . . . it sets itself above all to separate out the different structures from the multiplicity of religious phenomena. The structure, and it alone, can help us to find out
the meaning of religious phenomena, independently of their position in time and
space and their attachment to a given cultural environment . . . Phenomenology
12) Emphasis original.
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does not hesitate to stand forth as a science sui generis, essentially different
from the history of religion “die Religionsphänomenologie ist nicht Religionsgeschichte”, to quote van der Leeuw again. (1997:35, quoting Pettazzoni 1954:217)
However, McCutcheon takes this as showing Pettazzoni’s essentialism
and subjectivism and as “an undefendable assertion regarding a fundamentally distinct and socially autonomous aspect of human experience
(namely religious experience)” (1997:35). Thus the historical thrust of
Pettazzoni’s work is entirely ignored, as is the fact that on the immediately following page Pettazzoni expresses his disagreement with this
sentiment (and with van der Leeuw), asking,
Are they [the history and phenomenology of religion] not in reality simply two
interdependent instruments of the same science, two forms of the science of religion whose composite unity corresponds to that of its subject . . . in its two distinct
components, interior experience and exterior manifestations? (1954:218)
This is a rhetorical question and Pettazzoni’s answer is clearly affirmative. He recognizes the obvious truth that to restrict the study of religion
to nothing but internal subjectivity would undoubtedly render it utterly
unworkable, and this he does not do. In fact, Massenzio characterizes
the Italian school of religion under Pettazzoni’s influence as those who
“make religion objective, analyzing it at a distance . . . without any subjective implications” (2005:209). I think that might go too far — to deny
any subjectivity and focus solely on the “exterior manifestations” is
surely too far in the other direction and risks falling into hard-line behaviorism. However, it does seem that Anglophone scholars contemporary
with Pettazzoni were appropriately aware that Pettazzoni’s scholarship was doing something not at all done by Anglophone scholars: his
history-of-religions approach to both monotheism and the confession of
sins being cases in point. Some of the lack of a proper understanding of
Pettazzoni’s scholarship in the present Anglophone academy may thus
be interpreted as a lack of recollection and continuity between different
phases of the academy itself, apparently determined by an ideological
agenda rather than a careful consideration of the text, and not simply a
problem of the availability of translations.
Despite the evident disagreement between Pettazzoni and van der
Leeuw, Donald Wiebe presents Pettazzoni as simply a representative
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665
of van der Leeuw’s position and as focusing on “the meaning of what
happened” (quoting Pettazzoni 1954:217). Wiebe argues that this kind of
phenomenology has subverted the scientific study of religion because
of “questions of meaning that go beyond the scholarly scientific mandate” (1999:175). This ignores the fact that Pettazzoni went beyond van
der Leeuw — Massenzio points out that Pettazzoni was able “to correlate two apparently irreconcilable schools of thought: that of . . . van
der Leeuw, and the historicism of [Benedetto] Croce” (2005:211).13 Furthermore, Wiebe’s denial of any applicability of the concept of meaning
(etc.) threatens to render the whole of semiotics irrelevant.
Seth Kunin finds Pettazzoni’s position to be similar to that of Kitagawa in their division of religionswissenschaft into two complementary
forms, the structural (“equivalent to the phenomenological approach,”
2003:129) and the historical. Pettazzoni,
rather than primarily analysing phenomena using a typological or morphological
model . . . focuses on the contextualized historical developments. . . . Phenomenology provides an additional element to the analysis that cannot be provided by the
historian, that is the meaning of the phenomena outside the geographic or historical contexts. (Ibid.:129)
So, while appreciating the relevance of investigating the meaning of
religious phenomena, Kunin maintains Pettazzoni’s primary focus on
historical analysis.
Robert Segal, however, who was Kunin’s successor at the University
of Aberdeen, lists Pettazzoni along with Müller, Tiele, van der Leeuw,
Joachim Wach, and Eliade as all “adherents” of a theory which “deem[s]
the origin and function of religion distinctively religious: the need that
religion arises to fulfill is for god. There really is but one theory of religion from religious studies . . . religion arises to provide contact with
god” (2005:51). This is not only an inaccurate homogenization of a varied group of scholars but is also entirely out of keeping with Pettazzoni’s
historical contextualization and naturalism.
13) This reconciliation was not without difficulty: Giovanni Casadio points out that
Croce was “the butt of [Pettazzoni’s] polemical comment” in a 1925 article in Studi
e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 1:152–154 (Casadio 2005:224, n.1) and Ugo Bianchi
points out that “difficulties arose immediately with the representatives of Italian ‘storicismo’ (B. Croce, et al.)” (1991:259).
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It would not, however, be correct to conclude that the majority of
recent Anglophone responses have been so tendentious. Douglas Allen
appreciates the importance of the complementarity for which Pettazzoni calls, but states only that “scholars such as the Italian historian of
religions, Raffaele Pettazzoni, view phenomenology and history as two
complementary aspects of the integral science of religion. Phenomenology provides a deeper understanding of the religious meaning of the
historical data” (2005:191).14 Meanwhile Allen cites as “major phenomenologists,” Scheler, Kristensen, Otto, van der Leeuw, Bleeker, Eliade,
and Smart — but not Pettazzoni.
Some Tentative Conclusions
Pettazzoni himself may have finally concentrated too heavily on history.
Unlike later assessments, D. W. Gundry commented that Pettazzoni’s
“method is, of course, historical and scientific, not theological or philosophical” (1957:44). As we have seen, such concentration has in the end
done Pettazzoni little good in the Anglophone academy — he is still
repeatedly dismissed as overly essentialist and subjectivist (and, therefore, as insufficiently historical) by many recent scholars. Had Pettazzoni
been more attentive to the philosophical one of his “two interdependent
instruments” perhaps he might have realized that the desire to uncover
the meaning of religious phenomena would have been better served by
a study of the semantics and semiotics of the cultures he studied, rather
than by an appeal to some new and poorly elaborated “phenomenology
of religion.” If so, he might have been able to elaborate this side of his
discipline more explicitly and in a way that was not so easily dismissed.
However, it must be said that a scholar of such “massive erudition” in
the ethnography and anthropology of religion could hardly be expected
to keep fully informed of philosophical disciplines that were only just
developing in his day. It is unfortunate that occasional calls for closer
attention to semantics, such as Hans Penner’s passionate and wellargued “The Problem of Semantics in the Study of Religion” have con14) Both Bianchi 1991 and Widengren 1971 consider this “complementarity” or “inbetweenness” (“between positivism and historicism” and “entre philologie et phenomenologie”) characteristic of Pettazzoni’s work.
B. Rennie / Numen 60 (2013) 649–675
667
tinued to be largely ignored (1975). Hopefully we will eventually learn
from this mistake. As Bolle pointed out, “the reluctance of philosophers
to look at religious data and the reluctance of historians and philologists
to pay attention to sound reasoning both lead us astray” (2002:273).
Also, the Anglophone academy may appear to be somewhat too
Anglophone. The only two modern languages one finds widely represented are French and German, presumably for reasons of geographical proximity and political and economic influence. In the 1920s Louis
Gray, for example, deemed it necessary to translate Pettazzoni’s Italian
for the benefit of his audience, whereas he was content to leave other
sources in their original French (1922:89–90). Other nationalities seem
to follow this same pattern. For example, Religions of Mankind: Today
and Yesterday, by Swedes Helmer Ringgren and Åke V. Ström lists only
works in English, French, and German in its “Suggestions for Further
Reading” (1967:422–426) and thus omits any reference to Pettazzoni.
This narrowness of focus is manifested and reinforced in other ways.
For example, there did not seem to have been any influential Italian
historians of religions who immigrated into the United Kingdom or the
United States, even around the time of the Second World War when
immigration into the US was so active. Compare this to, for example,
Wach, Eliade, or Müller. It may be time to redress the balance by a concerted effort to translate into English significant past works from languages other than French and German.
Regarding Anglophone history of religions, it seems to me that the
most striking observation to be made about this consideration of our
reception of Raffaele Pettazzoni is of a discipline that has significantly
failed to retain its initial appreciation of his most general message. That
is, the study of religion must unavoidably be both historical and philosophical (on this, see Rennie 2012). Pettazzoni called for a complementary phenomenology and history, and this call has gone largely unheeded.
Despite the fact that Pettazzoni was initially recognized as pressing for
a rigorous historiography, he is now rejected as essentialist and grouped
rather uncritically with Eliade, who most often suffers from accusations
of “ahistoricism.” It seems that any “philosophical” concessions in the
“historical” study of religion simply will not be tolerated, or, as Massenzio
puts it, “the trend in religious studies is increasingly to limit the speculative dimension in favour of the purely descriptive side” (2005:210).
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Finally, Anglophone historians of religions may also pay too little
attention in general to our disciplinary forebears. Philosophers do not
neglect previous generations of discourse, but are careful to absorb and
preserve what is of use from each generation to save themselves from
making the same mistakes twice or repeating work that has be already
done. It may be the case that Italian storia delle religioni has benefitted
from having a smaller and more constrained group of forebears and so
something closer to a singular paradigm. Certainly, had more Anglophone historians of religions paid more accurate attention to Pettazzoni
it would be obvious that we have long had enough evidence to explain
religion as a natural phenomenon. The aforementioned “logic” of the
mythic discourse and its historical contextual derivation shows not only
the natural source of religious behavior but also shows it as effectively
meeting natural needs. This is not breaking news to those who have
been paying attention to past scholarship, nor does it discredit religion
in any way except in its most unthinking and literalist forms.
References
Raffaele Pettazzoni: Bibliography in English
Books
Pettazoni, Raffaele. 1954. Essays on the History of Religions, trans. H. J. Rose (from several languages). Leiden: E. J. Brill, reprinted in 1967. Essays on the History of Religions includes:
“The Formation of Monotheism.” Also published in Lessa and Vogt, 1958:40–46
and 1965:34–39.
“Confession of Sins and the Classics.” Harvard Theological Review 30(1), 1937:1–14.
“The Truth of Myth.” Originally published in Italian as “Verità del mito.” In Studi
e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 21, 1947–1948:104–116. Also published in Alan
Dundes (ed.), Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, 98–109, and in Robert Segal (ed.), Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Myth, New York: Garland, 1996, 313–325.
“ ‘History’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in the Science of Religion.” Also published in
Waardenburg 1999:639–642.
———. 1956. The All-knowing God: Researches into Early Religion and Culture, trans. H. J.
Rose. London: Methuen, reprinted in New York: Arno Press, 1978. (L’onniscienza di
Dio. Turin: Edizioni Scientifiche Einaudi, 1955).
B. Rennie / Numen 60 (2013) 649–675
669
Articles (Omitting Those Included in Essays on the History of Religions)
Pettazzoni, Raffaele. 1924. “The Chain of Arrows: the Diffusion of a Mythical Motif.”
Folklore 35:151–165.
———. 1932. “Persian Mysteries.” Journal of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute 20:151–
206.
———. 1936. “The Sexual Element in the Confession of Sins.” Synthesis 1:127–133.
———. 1936–1937. “A Functional View of Religions.” Review of Religion 1(3):225–237.
———. 1946. “The Pagan Origins of the Three-headed Representation of the Christian
Trinity.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 9:135–151.
———. 1949. “The Gaulish Three-faced God on Planetary Vases.” Journal of Celtic Studies 1(1):35–46.
———. 1954a. “Pre-Aryan and Vedic Antecedents of the Polycephalous Shiva.” Studia
Indologica Internationalia 1:1–6. Poona and Paris: Centre for International Indological Research.
———. 1955. “On the Attributes of God.” Numen 2(1):1–27.
———. 1955. “The Spirit of Paganism.” Diogenes: A Quarterly of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies (Chicago) 9:1–7.
Book Chapters
Pettazzoni, Raffaele. 1925. “Ahura Mazda, the Knowing Lord.” In Indo-Iranian Studies, Being Commemorative Papers Contributed by European, American and Indian
Scholars in Honour of Schams-ul-Ullema Dastur Darab Peshotan Sanjana, London:
Kegan Paul, Trübner & Co. / Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 149–161.
———. 1930a. “Confession of Sins in Primitive Religions.” Jubilee Congress of the Folklore Society, London, 176–181.
———. 1930b. “Confession of Sins in Zoroastrian Religion.” In Jivanji Jamshedji Modi
(ed.), Dr Modi Memorial Volume, Bombay: Fort Printing Press, 437–441.
———. 1934. “Confession of Sins among Primitive Peoples.” Congrès International Sciences Anthropologiques et Ethnologiques, London, 294–295.
———. 1936. “Confession of Sins in Hittite Religion.” In Bruno Schindler (ed.), Occident
and Orient: Gaster Anniversary Volume, London: Taylor’s Foreign Press, 467–471.
———. 1958a. “Greetings.” In Proceedings of the 9th International Congress for the History of Religions, Tokyo-Kyoto: Maruzen, 827–831.
———. 1958b. “Some Parallels in the Historical Development of Religion.” In Proceedings of the 9th International Congress for the History of Religions, Tokyo-Kyoto:
Maruzen, 773–776.
——— 1958c. “Address to Closing Section.” In Proceedings of the 9th International Congress for the History of Religions, Tokyo-Kyoto: Maruzen, 846–847.
———. 1959. “The Supreme Being: Phenomenological Structure and Historical Development.” In Mircea Eliade and Joseph M. Kitagawa (eds.), The History of Religions:
Essays in Methodology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 59–66. Reprinted in
Chicago (1962, 1966, 1969, 1970, 1973, 1974, and 1980) and Ann Arbor (2002).
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English-language Reviews of Pettazzoni’s Work
(Works by Pettazzoni are arranged in chronological order, with an indented list of
reviews following each of these works.)
Pettazzoni, Raffaele. 1908. Le origini dei Kabiri nelle isole del Mar Tracio. Memorie della
Reale Accademia dei Lincei.
Anonymous. 1909. Journal of Hellenic Studies 29:377.
———. 1912. La religione primitive in Sardegna. Piacenza.
Marett, Robert Ranulph. 1912. Folklore 23(3):389–391.
———. 1920. La religione di Zarathustra. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli Editore.
Keith, Arthur Berriedale. 1921. The Journal of Hellenic Studies 41:279–280.
Gray, Louis H. 1922. “Some Recent Studies on the Iranian Religions.” Harvard Theological Review 15(1):87–92.
———. 1921. La religione nella Grecia antica fino ad Alessandro. Bologna: Nicola Zani­
chelli Editore.
Baynes, Norman H. 1921. The Journal of Hellenic Studies 41(2):292–293.
Rose, Herbert J. 1921–1922. The Year’s Work in Classical Studies 15:47–58. Rose also
reviewed this volume when it was reprinted in 1953. In The Journal of Hellenic
Studies 74 (1954):242 = The Classical Review 69 (1955): 113–114.
———. 1922. Dio. Formazione e sviluppo del monoteismo nella storia delle religioni,
vol. I: L’essere celeste nelle credenze dei popoli primitivi. Roma: Società Editrice
Athenaeum.
Webster, Hutton. 1923. The American Journal of Sociology 28(5):610–612.
Hartland, Edwin S. 1923. Folklore 34:94–96.
———. 1924. I misteri. Saggio di una teoria storico-religiosa. Bologna: Nicola Z
­ anichelli.
“M.M.” 1924. The Italian Mail, May 15–22:9.
Nock, Arthur Darby. 1924. Journal of Hellenic Studies 44:289–290.
Gaster, Moses. 1925. Folklore 36:194–195.
———. 1929a. La confessione dei peccati, Parte prima: Primitivi-America antica­Giappone-Cina-Brahmanesimo-Giainismo-Buddhismo. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli
Editore.
“W. P. Y.” 1929. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 61(4):943–944.
Rose, Herbert J. Folklore 40:396–397.
———. 1929b. La mitologia giapponese secondo il I libro del Kojiki. Prefazione, introduzione e note di Raffaele Pettazzoni. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli Editore.
“W. P. Y.” 1929. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 61(4):943–944.
———. 1931. La Confession des Péches, Première partie, vol. I. Primitifs-Amérique ancienne, trans. R. Monnot. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Blom, Frans. 1935. Maya Research 2:89–90.
———. 1931. La Confession des Péchés, Première partie, vol. II. Japon-Chine-­BrahmanismeJaïnisme-Bouddhisme, trans. R. Monot. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Schneider, Herbert W. 1936–1937. Review of Religion 1:50–57. (Schneider reviews
both vols. I and II.)
B. Rennie / Numen 60 (2013) 649–675
671
———. 1936. La confessione dei peccati, vols. I–III. Bologna: Officina Grafica A. Cacciari.
Rose, Herbert J. 1936. Classical Review 50:145.
Tritton, Arhur S. 1938. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 70(1):93.
Nock, Arthur D. 1939. Gnomon 15:18–23.
———. 1948. Miti e Leggende, I: Africa-Australia. Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice
Torinese.
Fagg, William. 1950. Man 50:112.
Nilsson, Martin P. 1950. Erasmus 3:110–111.
Rose, Herbert J. 1950. Folklore 61:107.
———. 1955. Miti e Leggende, III: America Settentrionale. Torino, Unione TipograficoEditrice Torinese.
Rose, Herbert J. 1956. Folklore 67:58.
———. 1956. The Proceedings of the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society 5:140.
Rotunda, Dominic P. 1954. Journal of American Folklore 67(265):322–324.
Utley, Francis L. 1955. American Anthropologist 57(4):903–905.
———. 1954. Essays on the History of Religions.
Boyd, M. J. 1956. Classical Review 6(2):139–141.
Ehnmark, Erland. 1956. Gnomon 28:465–466.
James, Edwin O. 1956. Folklore 67:54–55.
Kitagawa, Joseph Mitsuo. 1957. Journal of Religion 37(1):125–126.
Nilsson, Martin P. 1956. Review of Religion 20:164–166.
Lord Raglan. 1955. Man 55:62–63.
———. 1955. L’onniscienza di Dio. Torino: Edizioni Scientifiche Einaudi.
Nilsson, Martin P. 1956. Review of Religion 20:164–166.
———. 1956. The All-Knowing God.
Anonymous. 1956. British Book News, April (no page numbers).
Anonymous. 1956. The Times Literary Supplement, 21 September (no page numbers).
“Alcuin on the Latest Books.” 1956. “The Early Savage ‘Idea of God.’ ” The Catholic
Herald, 9 March:5.
Beechey, Katherine A. 1956. The Theosophist 77(9):200–202.
Brandon, Samuel G. F. 1956a. Hibbert Journal 55(1):71–73.
Brandon, Samuel G. F., 1956b. The Manchester Guardian, 20 March:4. (Brandon
also reviews The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. Joseph Campbell
(ed.), Routledge and Kegan Paul).
Gundry, D. W. 1957. Man 57:44.
Hooke, Samuel H. 1957. Antiquity 31(123):183–184.
James, Edwin O. 1957. Folklore 68(1):306–307.
Jeffery, Arthur. 1957. Review of Religion 21:170–172.
Lessa, William A. 1957. American Anthropologist 59:358.
Levy, G. R. 1957. Journal of Hellenic Studies 77(1):164–165.
McClenaghan. C. L. 1957. Dublin Magazine 32, April–June:40–41.
Rose, Herbert J. 1956. “Some Recent Books.” The Proceedings of the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society Journal 5(3):139–142. (Rose also reviews Pettazzoni’s
1953 Miti e Leggende, vol. III, America settentrionale; Robert Muth, 1954. Träger
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der Lebenskraft: Ausscheidungen des Organismus im Volksglauben der Antike; and
W. Deonna, 1955. Vols. I and II of The Collection Latomus).
Rosenthal, Erwin I. J. 1956. The Aryan Path 27(6):270–272.
Ross, Floyd H. 1957. The Personalist 38(3), July:294–295.
Werblowsky, Raphael J. Zwi. 1956. Journal of Jewish Studies 7:123–124.
White, Victor, O. P. 1958. Blackfriars 39(454), January:135–136.
———. 1959. Miti e leggende IV: America centrale e meridionale. Torino: Unione
Tipografico-Editrice Torinese.
Lessa, William A. 1959. American Anthropologist 61:1148–1149.
Works Including References to Pettazzoni
Accorinti, Domenico. 2009. “Il carteggio Raffaele Pettazzoni-Herbert Jennings Rose
(1927–1958).” Quaderni di Storia 35(69):155–197.
Allen, Douglas. 2005. “Phenomenology of Religion.” In John R. Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, London and New York: Routledge, 182–
207.
Anonymous. 2006. “Raffaele Pettazzoni.” In Wendy Doniger (consulting ed.), Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions, London and Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 853.
Baynes, Norman H. 1927. Israel Amongst the Nations. London: Student Christian
Movement.
Bianchi, Ugo. 1985. “Current Methodological Issues in the History of Religions.” In
Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa (ed.), The History of Religions: Retrospect and Prospect,
New York: MacMillan Publishing, 53–72.
———. 1987. “Raffaele Pettazzoni.” In Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Macmillan Encyclopedia
of Religion, vol 11., New York: Macmillan, 261–263.
———. 1991. “Between Positivism and Historicism: The Position of R. Pettazzoni.” In
Religionswissenschaft und Kulturkritik: Beiträge zur Konferenz, The History of Religions and Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890–1950),
Deutsche Vereinigung für Religionsgeschichte, Nederlands Genootschap van
Godsdiensthistorici, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 259–263.
Bianchi, Ugo, Claas Jouco Bleeker, and Alessandro Bausani (eds.). 1972. Problems and
Methods of the History of Religions. Leiden: Brill.
Bleeker, Claas Jouco. 1959. “The Phenomenological Method.” Numen 6(2):96–111.
Bolle, Kees W. 2002. The Enticement of Religion. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 273, 280–283, 300.
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