Pietro Spina was Don Benedetto’s best pupil as a boy, and he remains his best pupil as a man because he has never given over his love of learning, and he never depends upon other people for his thinking. Even though he left the church, he never discarded his belief that an open and liberal mind was the true meaning of his faith. Thus he is a true son of his teacher, for the old priest exemplifies virtues that have gone underground, not the least of which is the love of wisdom. Don Benedetto is our reminder that the spirit is nourished by the life of the mind. And when the mind atrophies through disuse–from the grinding tedium of daily life, from the constant fear of police reprisal, from the incremental corruption that comes with material comfort–then no confession or communion can repair the soul, if it can even find it. Bread and Wine proclaims [Ignazio] Silone’s deepest conviction that independent thought is a condition for genuine freedom. No legitimate government can take away your mind, and no political party can force you to parrot their dogmas.
Barry Menikoff, Afterword (2005) to Signet Classics edition of Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine, 276