A true philological, sarcastic and self-mocking "detective story." The proposition at the heart of this book, born in the pre-electronic age, is more relevant than ever: the "slow reading" of a text can, and should, be intertwined with the very fast wandering in the invisible spaces of the net.
This searching interpretation of past and present addresses fundamental questions about the fall of the Roman Empire. Why did ancient culture, once so strong and rich, come to an end? Was it destroyed by weaknesses inherent in its nature? Or were mistakes made that could have been avoided—was there a point at which Greco-Roman society took a wrong turn? And in what ways is modern society different?
From the Introduction
What were the living conditions of land workers in the Italian countryside in the 19th century? Pierre Bourdieu coined for peasants the definition of "object class," which inevitably comes up in this book. It expresses their subalternity in the European history of the past centuries.
Spartacus (109?–71 BCE), the slave who rebelled against Rome, has been a source of endless fascination, the subject of myth-making in his own time, and of movie-making in ours. Hard facts about the man have always yielded to romanticized tales and mystifications. In this riveting, compact account, Aldo Schiavone rescues Spartacus from the murky regions of legend and brings him squarely into the arena of serious history.
The biography of Pontius Pilate is the crucial dramatic point of intersection between Christian memory as preserved in the Gospels, Jewish history and Roman imperial history.
It includes an episode of unparalleled importance in the history of the West – the death of Jesus. Pilate is the only historical figure whom Christian tradition records as having had a long dialogue with Jesus. He appears to have uttered and listened to words, made and witnessed gestures, that have accompanied us for two thousand years.
The presence of the Church in modern Italy was perceived in terms not only of political power but also of the conquest of consciences. The purpose of this volume is to reconstruct the forms and timing of the assertion of Catholic hegemony in Italy after the breakup of European religious unity. Was it only a process of reaction, of "counter-reformation," or the advance of a wave longer than that stirred by Luther's preaching?
This book explains not who the Jesuits were, but how their awareness of having become Jesuits was constructed.
In the age opened by the Second Vatican Council and marked by the epochal stocktaking of its history and perspectives that the Catholic Church initiated with the great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Council of Trent appears at the same time close and remote. On the one hand, it recalls the age of the wars of religion; on the other, with its solemn reaffirmation of Catholic identity, it appears as the starting point of a consolidation and renewal of the Church, an essential premise of subsequent developments.
Justice Blindfolded gives an overview of the history of “justice” and its iconography through the centuries. Justice has been portrayed as a woman with scales, or holding a sword, or, since the fifteenth century, with her eyes bandaged. This last symbol contains the idea that justice is both impartial and blind, reminding indirectly of the bandaged Christ on the cross, a central figure in the Christian idea of fairness and forgiveness.