B026268 - HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

Italian

The lessons will highlight the plurality of the ancient and medieval Christian world, lighting the many "souls" of Christianity. The focus of the course will therefore be on the cultural paradigms and the systems of Christianization adopted in the ancient and medieval world by evangelizers and missionaries: from the pagan vici of the Mediterranean area, to the British Isles and the Nordic Lands, to the Slavic and Russian East, considering also Nestorian missions to the Far East.

Adriana Destro, Mauro Pesce, Il racconto e la scrittura. Introduzione alla lettura dei Vangeli, Roma, Carocci, 2014
Storia del Cristianesimo vol. 1, L’età antica (secoli I-VII), a cura di E. Prinzivalli, Roma, Carocci, 2015 (the chapters indicated during the lessons)
Storia del cristianesimo, vol. 2: Il medioevo (VIII-XV sec.), a cura di M. Benedetti, Roma, Carocci, 2017 (the chapters indicated during the lessons)

1. creating a historical overview of the most important themes of ancient and medieval Christianity;
2 learning to study religious phenomena from a historical-critical point of view;
3. learning to read and to interpret the primary sources related to the Christian religious system;
4. understanding and dealing with methodologies and problems specifically related to the study of pre-modern religious systems;
5 encouraging the development of analytical skills that allow the quality of the research of specialists in the discipline to be evaluated.

none

lessons

Materials (papers, articles, books and sources) used and commented during the course are available for students in Moodle platform and are not mandatory for the final exam but recommended

The exam is oral for all students, even those who do not attend lectures and exchange students (Erasmus and other programmes) The test consists of questions on the following specific topics:
- Knowledge of the history of the Ancient and Medieval Christian religious system;
- Knowledge of the historical phenomena ;
- Ability to use appropriately the terminology of the discipline.
Students must demonstrate sufficient knowledge in all three parts to pass the exam. The marks obtained in the three parts are totalled to yield the final mark.

Mission lands: the universitary course will investigate the process of Christianization of the ancient and medieval world, devoting a preliminary and particular attention to the Gospels and to the definition of the biblical canon. The lessons will highlight the plurality of the ancient and medieval Christian world, giving body to the many "souls" of Christianity of those historical periods, also showing their fruitful interactions with Judaism, especially during the most ancient times. The numerous cultural matrices and the equally numerous practices of ancient Christianity will be adequately treated, introducing the student into a complex, varied and absolutely non-univocal historical context. The focus of the course will therefore be on the cultural paradigms and systems of Christianization adopted in the ancient and medieval world by evangelizers and missionaries: from the pagan vici of the Mediterranean area, to the British Isles and the Nordic lands, to the Slavic and Russian East, also considering the Nestorian missions to the Far East. The missionary and christianization operations will be treated for bringing out as much as possible the quality of interactions between groups of different cultural matrixes, showing the exchanges and loans (even involuntary) between different social communities and religious matrices