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Printer-Friendly ModeThirty-seven years and counting
October 1, 2007 —
History professor Thomas Renna may hold a position that many students might consider dull, but the text of Renna's life reads like an adventure novel.
Renna's first chapter was straight out of a Louis L'Amour novel. Though he was born in Pennsylvania, most of Renna's family lived in Italy, either in Naples (his father's hometown) or in a town by Perugia (his mother's hometown), and his family would travel there often throughout his childhood. Through so much exposure to Italian culture and language, Renna became fluent in that Italian.
After high school, Renna began the second chapter of his life in the Air Force. He enlisted at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1950s.
"I wanted to be a pilot, so I joined the Air Force," said Renna. "I quickly decided against being a pilot once I was in it, though. However, I did still like flying. So, I became an in-flight re-fueler on the old B-29s."
Deciding a military life wasn't quite the right career choice, Renna began to write the next chapter of his life at the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Being an in-flight re-fueler had gotten him interested in mathematics and he was going to pursue a career as a mathematician. Much to his disappointment though, Renna found that that career wasn't quite his calling.
"It was the only 'C' I got in college," he lamented. "I then took some history classes and the medieval age really sparked my interest. At the same time as I was taking the history classes, I was also taking a Latin language class and a French language class. Putting the three classes together, I thought that I might become a historian."
Two universities (Nebraska and Brown) and a PhD later, Renna became a professor at SVSU. He had to stray far from his Pennsylvania home because the education market was slimpickings.
"I had just gotten married and my wife - a French professor - and I were combing the job market looking for a suitable university with openings. SVSU came up because it had openings in each of our fields, and it really just seemed like a nice place to work," he explained.
Renna has taught at the University since 1970 and his passion for teaching has yet to cease.
"Some say that professors who focus largely on research do not make good teachers because they do not devote enough energy to the classroom. I disagree with that statement, especially for me," he said.
"I consider myself an historian and a professor. I try to bring my passion from my research into my classroom and teach the subject from a fresh approach."
Outside of the classroom, Renna leads a daunting professional life of research and writing.
"I study intellectual history - the history of ideas as opposed to the history of specific events," he explained. "It is the history of what the leaders of the time thought, which, in hindsight, is more important than how modern intellectuals view the old thoughts."
To be able to fully grasp his studies and delve deeper into research, Renna has learned several foreign languages. Although he only frequently speaks Italian, Renna also knows Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, and French. He says that he most often uses Latin, French, and Italian for deciphering texts.
The main focus of his research is church history and political thought, predominantly during the medieval ages.
Over the years, he has written four history books, 120 journal articles, and 140 reviews. Currently, he is researching the Avignon Papacy, an area of France where the Catholic Church was based in power through seven French popes.
His research has even taken him to the archives of the Vatican. He has been studying there for 25 years and typically goes every May through June and stays with family.
He says that using the Vatican libraries is necessary because much of the source material he uses in his research, such as manuscripts and letters, is kept there.
Renna studies alongside other scholars in the public libraries but is one of the few historians who have a pass to the secret archives of the Vatican.
Even though he has the passes and the years of experience, he still gets bogged down in paperwork while doing some of his research, reflecting the exacting standards the Vatican expects from visitng scholars. But for Renna, the chance to work in the historical capital of the church is more than worth the extra work.
"The amazing thing about working in the Vatican is that you get to see it," he said. "You don't just get a photocopy; you get the real thing."
The adventure novel that is Professor Renna's life continues on, not only with more research at the Vatican and a new book about the Avignon Papacy in the works, but also with the University and his unending passion for teaching.
