Essays on Medieval
Mentality
(Saggi sulla mentalità medievale, Adytum, Lavarone, 2012; 150 pages). Available only in
Italian.
This book is an outline
of Western Christian world. It is not, however, a handbook on medieval history,
but an illustration of some main points of medieval men’s mentality. After many
years of researches in the medieval sources, the author (who published, among
other books, the first Italian edition of Charlemagne’s Letters and of the
Works of King Stephen of Hungary), expounds in this book, through many quotations
from original texts, aspects of medieval Christianity that are oft ignored: the
concept of commerce as rebellion against the order established by God, the
corruption of Papacy as a proof of its divine mission, the idea of devils as
bodily realities operating in daily life, the blood’s nobility as a theological
concept... A chapter concerning the influence of Apocalypse’s Book on medieval
men’s life and an Appendix on traditional Christian alimentary rules
(transmitted from the Church Fathers and the Old Councils), give to this book a
somewhat heterogeneous character, and the reader will undoubtedly discover in
it fascinating and odd realities, that we generally do not know but that are
the soul of the medieval world and, for many aspects, of traditional European
Christianity: a Christianity that is very different – radically different –
from the one that we see today in the Church.
Where to buy it (18 €): Libreria Universitaria, Libreria Fernandez
The other books of Dag Tessore
