Adriano Prosperi

Storia di Bologna

Bologna, 1709. Un fosco caso di infanticidio come crocevia di un acceso dibattito in cui principî teologici, morali e scientifici si scontrano intorno all'essenza della vita e alla natura dell'anima. Questa storia pone un problema moralmente inquietante, tale che chi la considera non può minimamente godere della distanza temporale come della riva sicura da cui si guarda un naufragio lontano. La vita di una donna si intreccia qui con quella del figlio da lei concepito, partorito e ucciso. La vita e la morte del figlio derivano da lei e su di lei reagiscono in un legame indissolubile, di cui è parte essenziale la violenza fatta e subita.

storia di un infanticidio

Dare l'anima

storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua setta

L'eresia del Libro grande

L'eresia del libro grande. Storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua setta

Nicholas Terpstra

Stefania Pastore

This volume explores how the relationship between confraternaties and the clergy negotiated the boundaries of religious space in the late medieval and early modern periods

Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities

Faith's Boundaries

A provocative analysis of how Christianity helped legitimize the death penalty in early modern Europe, then throughout the Christian world, by turning execution into a great cathartic public ritual and the condemned into a Christ-like figure who accepts death to save humanity. The public execution of criminals has been a common practice ever since ancient times. In this wide-ranging investigation of the death penalty in Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, noted Italian historian Adriano Prosperi identifies a crucial period when legal concepts of vengeance and justice merged with Christian beliefs in repentance and forgiveness. Crime and Forgiveness begins with late antiquity but comes into sharp focus in fourteenth-century Italy, with the work of the Confraternities of Mercy, which offered Christian comfort to the condemned and were for centuries responsible for burying the dead. Under the brotherhoods’ influence, the ritual of public execution became Christianized, and the doomed person became a symbol of the fallen human condition. Because the time of death was known, this “ideal” sinner could be comforted and prepared for the next life through confession and repentance. In return, the community bearing witness to the execution offered forgiveness and a Christian burial. No longer facing eternal condemnation, the criminal in turn publicly forgave the executioner, and the death provided a moral lesson to the community. Over time, as the practice of Christian comfort spread across Europe, it offered political authorities an opportunity to legitimize the death penalty and encode into law the right to kill and exact vengeance. But the contradictions created by Christianity’s central role in executions did not dissipate, and squaring the emotions and values surrounding state-sanctioned executions was not simple, then or now.

Christianizing Execution in Medieval Europe

Crime and Forgiveness

The public execution of criminals has been a common practice since ancient times. Adriano Prosperi identifies a crucial period when concepts of vengeance and justice merged with Christian beliefs in repentance and forgiveness, to eventually give political authorities a moral rationale for encoding the death penalty into law.

A history of "justice" and its iconography, that gives a full account of the ways that justice has been described, portrayed and imagined through the centuries, and how it looks like today.

Adriano Prosperi

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