Critical comprehension of the basic stages of Christianity's expansion throughout two millennia, from first-century Palestine to the diversity of Mediterranean, European, and global contexts in modern and contemporary times, as well as the heuristic, hermeneutical, and methodological issues they raise.
Course Prerequisites
While not required, basic knowledge of European, Mediterranean, and non-European history - especially religious history - is encouraged.
Teaching Methods
Lecturer-led introductions to specific issues, contexts, and themes are consistently interwoven with collective reading and discussion - actively engaging students - of sources particularly significant to the historical periods of Christian history under examination.
Assessment Methods
Oral exam. Students attending classes will take notes from lectures and read a selection of chapters from the textbook that closely resemble the course's structure and contents. Non-attending students will complete a comprehensive and detailed study of two volumes of their choosing from the four volumes of the textbook.
Texts
Storia del cristianesimo, direzione scientifica di Emanuela Prinzivalli, 4 voll., Roma, Carocci, 2023.
Contents
Within the limited amount of 36 hours, the course seeks to investigate a particular dynamic in the history of Christianity: the Christian expansion - seen as both necessary and irrepressible - across the world. Along a two-thousand-year chronological line, selected episodes of the Christian expansion will be examined through the testimonies of its protagonists and the methodological and historiographical issues posed by their historical study. Three issues in particular will be discussed: 1. The way the promoters of the Christian expansion view their own community and themselves (self-consciousness); 2. the way in which Christians narrate and problematize the need to spread their faith beyond the geographical and cultural boundaries from which they originate; 3. the critical issues which the Christian tradition, beginning with its own religious and intellectual legacy, addresses when interacting with distinct cultures and traditions, particularly the Jewish and the Islamic ones.
Course Language
Italian
More information
Italian translations of the sources chosen and discussed in class, taken from the textbook and other materials - published or unpublished - provided by the lecturer, will be available.
