RACCOLTA

An Italian word meaning collection or gathering. It is frequently used in canonical language to signify a collection of documents regarding a particular subject, such as religious, pastors, schools, or the like. It was used in this sense in the title of the 1898 official collection of the now extinct Congregation of Indulgences and Sacred Relics, as it had been in the earliest modern private prototype of such a work, the Raccolta di orazione e pie opere per le quali sono state concesse dai Sommi Pontefici le SS Indulgenze, composed by Telesforo Galli, a consultor of the Congregation of Indulgences in 1807. Two new editions published by Aloysius Prinzivalli, substitute secretary of the congregation, were specially approved by a decree of Dec. 15, 1854, and it was this collection that was translated into English by Ambrose St. John of the Birmingham Oratory, with approval by Cardinal Wiseman Oct. 23, 1856, in virtue of a faculty conceded to him by Pius IX on Feb. 3, 1856. The translation was entitled The Raccolta.

Soon thereafter, however, the congregation itself published an authentic collection, (June 3, 1877). This was in Italian and had the same long title as the original work of Galli, as also did the official authentic collections of 1886 and 1898. The Jesuits at Woodstock made a translation of the first official collection of 1877 with permission of the congregation contained in a letter of Cardinal Oreglia, prefect of the Congregation, guaranteeing the fidelity of the translation. It also used the title Raccolta.

Later official Italian collections (in Latin) were called Collectio Precum Piorumque Operum and were translated in later editions of the Oratory Raccolta, still retaining the Italian name. A revised collection called Preces et Pia Opera Indulgentiis Ditata was promulgated by the Apostolic Penitentiary by order of Pius XI on Dec. 31, 1937. It was translated into English by Joseph P. Christopher and Charles E. Spence and published by Benziger Brothers in 1943. This, too, retained the Italian name "raccolta" as did the edition of 1957, which contained the translations of the "Enchiridion Indulgentiarum" first promulgated by the Sacred Penitentiary on Jan. 30, 1950, by command of Pius XII, but reformed and promulgated anew on March 3, 1952.

[m. t. smith/eds.]