Simone Weber
(1859-1945)
He was born in Denno, was prior of the church of San Martino in Trento: he worked intensively as a populariser and historian, part of the catholic movement that began to spread during those years together with Celestino Endrici and Guido de Gentili: these were the years when the social doctrines by Leone II were spread and when the Catholics succeeded in gaining public. Thus the catholic press flourished, thanks also to Weber’s contributions (topics of regional history, local historical artistic research, archive discoveries) who was a coworker of different periodicals, among which “La voce cattolica” and “la Rivista Tridentina”, founded by catholic university students, of which he was later director.
After WWI Weber continued his work of historiographic popularisation and he was among the promoters of the Society of Historical Sciences Studies in Trentino.
The difficult post-war years and the coming of fascism saw a change in the historical studies in Trentino and also in Weber’s work, that had lost the key national function of the past years, when Trentino was Austrian.
Fascism left little space for action and expressionism and Weber could continue to collaborate with Vita Trentina, the only voice of Catholic press in Trentino that was admitted.
During the 1930s he wrote mainly on historical-artistic works.
Further reading:
G. Zorzi, A. Leonardi, A. Canavero (a cura di), Per il popolo trentino. Protagonisti del movimento cattolico a inizio Novecento, Trento, 2014.