Over the course of history, religious actors have experienced moments of presence and absence in the public space, and have assumed roles as persecutors and persecuted. Today, they play a crucial role in promoting dialogue between different faiths and in the development of the interreligious competences needed to live in a plural society. This research reconstructs the historical phases of interreligious dialogue and examines the European guidelines that encourage the integration of religious diversities in citizenship education. Furthermore, the volume analyses the statements of the Catholic Church and Islamic institutions on interreligious dialogue, as well as the educational practices for pluralism promoted by religious actors in Italy, Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bernadette Fraioli

Religioni, dialogo e cittadinanza in Europa

Firenze University Press 2025

Four centuries after his death, Girolamo Savonarola came back to be the subject of lively debates in the Nineteenth Century, a period during which publications on his figure multiplied. This revival was also evident in the artistic field, especially through the erection of monuments in his honor in some Italian cities.
In this text, the author analyzes, through the study of both archival and printed sources, the main characteristics of this phenomenon of Savonarolian readings, investigating the reasons that led the protagonists of the Risorgimento and the first years of unification of our country to study the Dominican friar so passionately and to draw inspiration from his life.

Rosa Matucci

Riforma e profezia

Firenze University Press 2025

This research aims to contribute to the study of the current of non-violence in Islam. A phenomenon often considered extraneous to the heritage of this religion, it nevertheless has several examples of commitment, among whom the Syrian preacher and theologian Ǧawdat Saʿīd (1931-2022) deserves particular attention. Central to our work is a reconstruction of his biographical profile as well as an analysis of the development of his theoretical framework over time. Initially a follower of the salafiyyah and then close to the Islamist movement, Saʿīd played a pioneering role in promoting non-violence as the sole modus operandi of an Islamic activism oriented towards the establishment of global peace and justice. Drawing on a social and anthropocentric reading of the Quran, Saʿīd aims to demonstrate that this is the true meaning of revelation and the purpose of the divine eschatological project.

Paola Pizzi

Le chemin d’Abel

Firenze University Press 2024

The book investigates the emergence in Italy between the 16th and 17th centuries of the so-called ‘Jesuitesses’, i.e. congregations of laywomen inspired by the spirituality of the Society of Jesus. Sources in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu show that in the early modern period various Jesuit spiritual directors helped many women, especially nobles, to set up communities without eclosure, dedicated to practices of spiritual improvement and educational activities similar to those of their confessors. In addition to providing a census of these congregations, the study examines the innovations of their forma vitae and analyzes the attitudes, at times supportive and at times oppositional, that territorial princes, bishops, Jesuit generals, the Holy Office, Roman congregations, and popes took towards the Jesuitesses.

Fabio Arlati

«A maggior gloria di Dio»

Firenze University Press 2024

The volume offers a new perspective for the study of the mendicant orders between the 13th and 14th centuries through the example of the Servites in central and northern Italy. The study, despite considering a so-called ‘minor’ order, has made it possible to analyse two essential issues for Western Europe’s late medieval history. The first concerns the transformations of religiosity between the 13th and 14th which saw the prominence of new social classes and institutions. The second concerns the urban expansion, the economic growth and the political-institutional and socio-cultural changes that characterised the cities of the time. The Servites were expression and later fine interpreters of these processes, becoming actors who were anything but marginal in the social context of late medieval Italy.

Emanuele Carletti

“Per lo buono istato de la città”

Firenze University Press, Firenze 2023

During the 19th Century, more than 2000 children of sub-Saharan origin were redeemed from slavery by missionaries and educated in Europe with the aim of sending them back to Africa as «indigenous missionaries». Yet, so far this phenomenon has found no place in historiography and collective memory.
Forgotten, perhaps, or removed. The so-called «moretti» were not mere anonymous satellites, orbiting around the European missionaries. Victims of the choices of others, but also protagonists according their own choices, they were real «agents of history».
This book is a first attempt to remove them from the peripheries of our narratives and to return them a place and a name. The archives show it clearly: African-Europeans are far from being just recent actors of European history.

Giacomo Ghedini

Da «selvaggi» a «moretti»

Firenze University Press, Firenze 2023