Born in Parma (16.07.1966) where he completed his secondary
and music education, Luigi Canetti registered for the Medieval
History programme at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of
Bologna in 1985. There he attended the courses of Ovidio Capitani,
Antonio Carile, Lucio Gambi, Carlo Ginzburg, Alba Maria Orselli,
Ezio Raimondi. On July 10th, 1990 he graduated with Honours and
received the Right for Publication (advisor: Prof. Alba Maria
Orselli, Full Professor of History of Christianity). The publishing
house Pàtron (Bologna) released his dissertation in 1993
(«Gloriosa civitas». Culto dei santi e società
cittadina a Piacenza nel Medioevo ).
In January 1991 he was awarded a doctoral grant in Medieval
History (History of the Ecclesiastical Institutions) at the
Catholic University of the Sacro Cuore of (Doctorate
Directors: Pietro Zerbi and Giorgio Picasso). On September 16th,
1994 he defended his thesis at the Istituto Storico Italiano per il
Medio Evo. His dissertation was then published by the Centro
Italiano Studi sull'Alto Medioevo of Spoleto and the Società
Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino of Florence
(L'invenzione della memoria. Il culto e l'immagine di
Domenico nella storia dei primi frati Predicatori, «Biblioteca
di Medioevo Latino», 19). In June 1997 his book was mentioned among
the four finalists in the historical and literary category for the
Mario Nola Award (Premio Mario Nola) of the Accademia Nazionale dei
Lincei (board members: Tullio Gregory, Arnaldo Pizzorusso, Vittorio
Mathieu).
In October 1994 he was the recipient of a post-doctoral
fellowship in Medieval History for a project on "Bodies and Relics
between Antiquity and the Middle Ages" at the Department of
Palaeography and Medieval Studies of the University of Bologna.
This research was then published as Frammenti di eternità. Corpi
e reliquie tra Antichità e Medioevo, Roma, Viella, 2002
(«Sacro/santo», n. s. 6).
In November 1999 he obtained the academic position of Research
Associate in History of Ancient and Medieval Christianity at the
Faculty of Conservation of the Cultural Heritage of the University
of Bologna, seat of Ravenna.
In May 2006 he qualified as Associate Professor in History of
Christianity and of the Churches (M-STO/07 Storia del cristianesimo
e delle chiese) at the Faculty of Conservation of the Cultural
Heritage of the University of Bologna, seat of Ravenna. From
October 1st, 2006 he has filled the position of Associate Professor
in History of Christianity (Storia del Cristianesimo) at the
Faculty of Conservation of the Cultural Heritage of the University
of Bologna, seat of Ravenna.
Since February 1, 2016 he has been appointed Full Professor in History of Christianity and of the Churches at the Departement of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna, Ravenna Campus.
Since 2 May 2018 he is Head of the Department of Culturale Heritage of the University of Bologna, Ravenna Campus. From 2 May 2018 he took office as Director of the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna - Ravenna Campus; reelected in February 2021 and in office for the second term (2021-2024) from May 3, 2021.
From 3 May 2021 he took office as a member of the Academic Senate of the University of Bologna (elected representative of the Department Directors, area 5 - Humanities)
His research range from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle
Age (4th to 14th centuries) and mostly concern urban history, cult
of saints, hagiography, biography, cultural memory, ecclesiastical
institutions, mendicant orders, the relationship between clerical
and folkloric cultures, rituals and patterns of symbolic
communication through images and "semiophors". Using the evidence
of bodies, rituals, literary texts and images in particular, lately
he has focussed on the representational modes and codes of the
relationships between the visible and invisible realms. His
methodology goes beyond the traditional ideological conflict
between Christianity and alternative or complementary forms of
rationality, and it is based on comparative analyses that centre on
hypotheses of semiotic and anthropological modelling of the major
historical-religious dynamics (gift and sacrifice, priesthood and
royalty, rituals and belief, miracle and vision, health and
salvation, illness and healing, etc.). In his last work (Il
passero spennato. Riti, agiografia e memoria dal Tardoantico
al Medioevo, Spoleto, Fondazione CISAM, 2007; Impronte di
gloria. Effigie e ornamento nell'Europa cristiana, Roma,
Carocci, 2012) he has proposed and examined several innovative
approaches to the historical-semantic study of the discourses and
practices revolving around the sacred as well as of the ritual
staging of the ornamenta ecclesiae (relics, reliquaries,
images, liturgical objects) in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
In this groundbreaking book he has suggested the factual
integration of different languages, which were traditionally
autonomous and, in some cases, even extraneous one to another
(archaeology, semiotics, cultural anthropology, literary history,
religious history, visual history).
