Università Roma Tre

After addressing the main issues relating to the political-religious, cultural and social structures arising from the break-up of Christian unity in the early sixteenth century, the course aims to deepen the topic of justice in Christian thought of the 16th and 17th centuries. How did Catholic culture and Protestant culture address and solve key concepts such as justice, revenge, forgiveness, death penalty? A major part of the course will be devoted to the "show" of the death penalty in Early Modern Europe: the Christianization of death as a penalty, the death of the criminal as an atonement of sins and a chance for regeneration for the whole community, the offering of divine forgiveness to the condemned to death for the sake of soul salvation.

Elena Bonora, La Controriforma, Roma-Bari, Laterza
Luise Schorn Schütte, La Riforma protestante, Bologna, Il Mulino
Adriano Prosperi, Delitto e perdono. La pena di morte nell’orizzonte mentale dell’Europa cristiana. XIV-XVIII secolo, Torino, Einaudi.