Università Roma Tre

History of Europe and the Mediterranean
It intends to address the main critical and problematic nodes of modern history from a perspective aimed at enuclearizing original characters and identity processes of the European continent. Particular attention will be given to the philosophical-political and political-institutional peculiarities that were outlined in European states in the late 15th century and early 19th century. Starting with the English Revolutions of the 17th century and, later, with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, in fact, parliamentary democracy, secularization, religious tolerance and the recognition of human rights became traditionally not only the pivotal ideas on which the definition of "being European" lay, but real universal guiding principles to be exported and, if necessary, impose on the rest of the globe. But can we really coincide with the advent of European modernity with the beginnings of the process of secularization? What was the relationship between Christian churches and modernity? Which one between the Catholic Church and human rights since the century of Enlightenment?