93325 - Politics and Religion in the Modern Age (1)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course students will know the basic kinds of sources for reconstructing the complex interaction between religion and politics over the modern era. They will know how to use the main tools for picking up the drift of the historiographic debate, and thus be able to choose the updating tools best suited to their own skills and purposes. They will be able to illustrate the methods of heuristics, source analysis and historiography as to the relations between politics and religion, bearing in mind the different ways of analysing historical and cultural processes. Working independently and in an orderly fashion, they will have acquired self-criticism and an ability to learn from mingling with others.

Course contents

The course aims to provide an overview of religious transformations in early modern Western Europe, from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Particular attention is devoted to the relationship between politics and Christianity, through the study of the most significant texts of that period, but also through the analysis of the conflicts and the solutions adopted to discourage or favour coexistence between different confessions. A small part of the course is devoted to Christian expansion in colonial territories and to the relationship between politics and religion in the non-Christian world.

These are the topics the course deals with:

1. The Christian West: the medieval heritage;

2. The Iberian laboratory: from coexistence to exclusion;

3. Erasmus and Erasmianism;

4. The Italy of Savonarola and Machiavelli;

5. The Magisterial Reformation: Luther, Zwingli, Calvin;

6. The Radical Reformation and the English Solution;

7. The Tridentine Church and Reason of State;

8. Empire, France, the Netherlands: The Wars of Religion;

9. Eastern Europe;

10. From Bodin to the Interdict: political issues and confessional models

11. The Revolution of the Saints and Hobbes.

12. The origins of atheism. The Second Seventeenth Century;

13. The Eighteenth century: religion and the Enlightenment up to the Revolution;

14. Conversions and colonial empires.

15. Politics and religion in the non-Christian world.

Readings/Bibliography

All students, attending and non-attending, should prepare for the examination by reading the following texts:

Storia del cristianesimo, vol. 3: L’età moderna (secoli XVI-XVIII), a cura di Vincenzo Lavenia, Roma, Carocci 2015

Vincenzo Lavenia, Storia della Chiesa, vol. 3, L’età moderna, Bologna, Edb, 2020

They will also have to study one of the following texts:

Adriano Prosperi, Il seme dell’intolleranza: Granada 1492, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2011

Paolo Prodi, Il sovrano pontefice, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013

Donald Weinsten, Savonarola, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013

Emanuele Cutinelli Rendina, Chiesa e religione in Machiavelli, Pisa, IEP, 1998

Guido Dall’Olio, Martin Lutero, Carocci, Roma 2013

Alister McGrath, Calvino. Il riformatore e la sua influenza sulla cultura occidentale, Claudiana, Torino 2009

Mario Biagioni, Lucia Felici, La Riforma radicale nell’Europa del Cinquecento, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2012

Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, La Controriforma: Il mondo del rinnovamento cattolico (1540-1770), Il Mulino, Bologna 2001

Vittorio Frajese, Sarpi scettico, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993

Mark Greengrass, La cristianità in frantumi. Europa 1517-1648, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2017

Michael Walzer, La rivoluzione dei santi, Torino, Claudiana, 1996

Joseph Bergin, The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France, New Haven-London, Yale University Press, 2014.

Mario Rosa, Settecento religioso. Politica della Ragione e religione del cuore, Venezia, Marsilio, 1999

Daniele Menozzi, La Chiesa cattolica e la secolarizzazione, Einaudi, Torino 1993

Rudolf Schlögl, Fede e mondo moderno. La trasformazione del Cristianesimo europeo tra 1750 e 1850, ed. it. a cura di M. Cavarzere, New Digital Press, Palermo 2017

Non-attending students should add the following text to their reading:

John Bossy, L’Occidente cristiano 1400-1700, Einaudi, Torino 1990

Teaching methods

The teacher will use texts and images to get the students able to reading the sources and to understanding the representations in history. Any teaching materials will be made available online in the appropriate section of the University's website

Assessment methods

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered to be attending. The oral examination will take place in the exam sessions provided at the end of the course.To evaluate the exam, the teacher will take into account the student's ability to master the contents of the course, to understand the historical concepts, to orientate himself in the bibliography, to know how to read a source, to connect the informations acquired, to expose what he has learned in a synthetic way and with an appropriate language. The student who will meet these demands will have an excellent mark. The student who will simply repeat the informations acquired in a mnemonic way and with a language not entirely adequate will have a discreet evaluation. The student who will show that he knows the contents superficially and with some gaps, using an inappropriate language, will have a sufficient evaluation. The student unprepared and incapable of orientation in the subject will have a negative evaluation.

Instead of studying the texts adopted for the exam, attending students can choose to write a paper (max 30,000 characters) on a topic covered in this course. The evaluation of the essay will depend on its originality and its critical depth.

Teaching tools

Attendance of the course may also include participation in seminars promoted by the teacher and visits to archives and libraries to contact the sources on the subject kept in the city of Bologna and its surroundings. The Internet will be used to access sites that contain manuscript sources, images, texts and materials of interest.

Office hours

See the website of Vincenzo Lavenia