DOSSOLOGIA - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. IV, p. 1097

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

DOSSOLOGIA. - Parola greca, da δόξα = gloria e λόγος = discorso, che indica una formula liturgica per glorificare o Dio (come spesso accade nella S. Scrittura e con una frase che quasi sempre contiene la parola δόξα) o Cristo (e questa in forme svariatissime ricorrenti frequentemente in tutta la letteratura primitiva cristiana [Rom. 9, 5; Apoc. 5, 12 ecc.]), o la S.ma Trinità (e fra queste si distinguono la d. minore o Gloria Patri, che già nel sec. IV si aggiungeva alla fine dei Salmi, la d. maggiore o Gloria in excelsis della Messa e la d. delle strofe finali degli inni).

Spesso la d. non è che la parafrasi in versi del Gloria Patri; altre volte ha la forma di supplica, secondo quanto si è chiesto nel corso dell'Inno. Molte volte la conclusione è propria, poiché la d. è legata al contenuto particolare dell'Inno, ciò che avviene, ad es., nel tempo pasquale.

Le feste di Cristo hanno una d. di speciale forma cristologico-trinitaria, in quanto ricorda il fatto commemorato e poi fa menzione delle altre due persone della Trinità. A volte poi la d. è esclusivamente cristologica. La d. propria si usa negli Inni dello stesso metro in tutte le ore nei giorni di festa e dell'ottava.

Bruno L. N. Cittadella, I due Dossi, Ferrara 1870; W. C. Zwanziger, D. Dossi, Lipsia 1911; H. Mendelssohn, in Thieme-Becker, IX, pp. 497-500; id., Das Werk des Dossi, Monaco 1914; Venturi, IX, III; R. Longhi, Officina ferrarese, Roma 1934, pp. 135-51; B. Berenson, I pittori italiani del Rinascimento, Milano 1936, pp. 238-39; E. Tietze Conrat, Treo Dossi, puzzles etc., in Gazzette de Beaux Arts, Nuova York 1948, pp. 129-36.

Alberto Neppi

The feasts of Christ have a *doxology* of a special Christological-Trinitarian form, inasmuch as it frequently recalls the word *δόξα* either of Christ (in the most varied forms recurring frequently throughout early Christian literature [Rom 9:5; Rev 5:12, etc.]) or of the Most Holy Trinity (among which are distinguished the minor doxology or *Gloria Patri*, which was already added at the end of the Psalms in the 4th century, the major doxology or *Gloria in excelsis* of the Mass, and the doxology of the final strophes of hymns).

Often the doxology is nothing more than a versified paraphrase of the *Gloria Patri*; at other times it takes the form of a supplication, according to what has been requested in the course of the hymn. Many times the conclusion is proper, since the doxology is tied to the particular content of the hymn, which occurs, for example, in the Paschal season.

Article illustration — (Int. Alinari)
Dosso – *The Holy Family* by GIOVANNI – Rome, Capitoline Pinacotheca.

saying, his stay in the army, however, was not long. Indeed, shortly afterward he began to dedicate himself entirely to literature.

His first novel, *Poor Folk*, found a favorable reception with the critic Belinsky, who nonetheless misunderstood its meaning. In St. Petersburg he became acquainted with progressive circles; and, as a frequent visitor to the circle of Butaševič-Petraševskij, which was broadly oriented toward the utopian socialism of C. Fourier, in 1849 he was arrested along with other young men. Some of these, including D. himself, were condemned to death: the execution, however, was suspended at the last moment and the death sentence commuted to four years of hard labor in Siberia. His imprisonment brought him close to the people and estranged him from the Europeanizing and progressive ideas of his youth. In 1857 he married a widow, who died in 1864. In 1859 he was finally able to settle in St. Petersburg, where he wrote *the fruit of his tragic prison experience* – *Memoirs from the House of the Dead* (1861–62). This was followed by *Humiliated and Insulted* (1862) and *Notes from Underground* (1863). Increasingly, the writer’s mind turned toward an attempt to reconcile Slavophilism and Westernism (“a reconciliation of civilization with the popular principle, a synthesis of the Russian educated class with the forces of the popular classes, a synthesis of all the ideas developed individually in the various countries of Europe into an idea of universal humanity”). This direction was finally fully developed by D. in his famous 1880 speech on Pushkin, with an ever more pronounced religious accent.

The novel *Crime and Punishment* (1865–66) greatly contributed to the universality of his fame. In 1867 he remarried and, pursued by creditors and often in poor health (he also suffered from epilepsy), left Russia with his new wife. He lived abroad for four years (from April 1867 to July 1871). He was an avid gambler. While abroad he wrote *The Gambler*, *The Idiot* (1869), *A Gentle Creature*, and *The Possessed* (1870 ff.). After returning to Russia he published *The Adolescent* (1875) and *The Brothers Karamazov* (1878–80), a novel conceived as part of a larger work. He also resumed his journalistic activity and began publishing, continuing until his death, *A Writer’s Diary*. Returning to St. Petersburg, D. died there. While some Russian critics have regarded him as a mystical revealer of a great ideal typically Russian and Slavic, others have misunderstood him as an “artist of chaos.” Universally admired for his profound introspection into the human soul in both good and evil, recent Italian criticism has recognized in him a great classic.

D.’s main problems are God and man. He is tormented by the problem of God’s existence and atheism (cf. the dialectic and psychology of the hero of *Crime and Punishment*, Raskolnikov, of the heroes of *The Possessed*, Kirillov and Stavrogin, of Ivan Karamazov, etc.). Starting, like Gogol, from an analysis of the Russian man, of Russian political and social life, he goes on to scrutinize man in general and humanity. D. studies man not only in his conscious life but also in his subconscious, man between good and evil, in the duality of his existence that faces the choice between faith and atheism, between God and himself, between total unity and inner isolation. For D., as a Christian, the alternative is clear: either man-God (cf. Nietzsche’s Superman) or God-man Christ. According to D., all merely natural attempts to organize society according to preconceived plans are in vain, given man’s irrational nature, which seeks to assert its freedom without limit, even through destruction and chaos. Hence his aversion to socialism, to the Catholic Church, and especially to the papacy, which would agree in creating a uniform de-Christianized society dominated by force and purely external authority (a “hive,” a “palace of crystal,” a “henhouse”). Yet in waging such a struggle against “the harmony of the world” (cf. Ivan Karamazov) and against the Catholic Church, he does not see that he is indirectly rebelling against God, the author of such an order. Thus, although purely natural humanism reaches its peak and crisis in him—which consists in the realization that pure humanity destroys itself, commits suicide, unless it is enlightened from above, regenerated, redeemed by Christ—he remains incapable of refuting and entirely overcoming II.
In his Slavophile messianism D. shows very close ties with Ivan Kireevsky and with Khomyakov. From Gogol he took various inspirations in his early tales, especially in *Poor Folk* and *The Double*. Close was D.’s friendship with the young Solovyov (from 1873 onward) and their communion of ideas (this is reflected, e.g., in the application of the three temptations of Christ to the history of Catholicism in Solovyov’s *Lectures on Godmanhood* and in D.’s *Legend of the Grand Inquisitor*; cf. also the idea of Godmanhood in Solovyov with the man-God and God-man in D.). From him was inspired the so-called “Russian Renaissance” at the beginning of the 20th century, at whose center stood V. Ivanov, N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, P. Florensky, etc. From D. especially derives the Russian current of existentialism, of which the principal representatives were N. Berdyaev and Lev Shestov. He also exercised notable influence on modernist Russian soteriology (especially that taught by M. Tareev, Metropolitan Anthony [Khrapovitsky], N. Berdyaev, N. Arseniev, and others).

II. D. FROM THE CATHOLIC POINT OF VIEW. — Personally D. had a deep faith and felt Christ intimately. He saw Christ at the center of the whole world (“Christocentrism”). For him Christ is all love, meekness, gentleness, freedom; he excludes from Christ, as from the Church, everything that is authoritarian and juridical. In the mystery of the Redemption he emphasizes exclusively Christ’s example and His psychologically conscious regenerative influence (passing over in silence the objective aspect). D.’s Christianity is one-sided, too ideal, abstract, and not without a certain sentimental accent. There are traces of paganism (e.g., the cult of the earth mother). His Christianity is decidedly national.

(from E. Lo Gatto, *Storia della letteratura russa*, Florence 1922, pl. 57) Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich – Page of the autograph manuscript of *The Possessed* with drawings by the author. His service in the army, however, was not long. Indeed, soon after he began to devote himself entirely to literature.