2012 Programme
Event #7
Alessandro Barbero
How did women think in the Middle Ages? St. Catherine of Siena
For centuries, women did not have a public voice, unless they were queens. In the Middle Ages, few women were strong enough to force a male chauvinist society to listen to them and to let them free to live the way they chose, and those who did often paid a very high price. Catherine of Siena heard God’s voice and wanted to cry out to others what God dictated. The daughter of a craftsman with a large family, as a young girl Catherine obtained from her father a room of her own, where she would be free to wake, pray and do penance. In time she forced the Pope and the cardinals to hear her out by writing them harsh and reproachful letters. And the heads of the Church would bow in front of the young woman, who died at just 33 years of age, weakened by her constant fasting.
Alessandro Barbero is a historian and a writer and a tenured professor of Medieval History at Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale e Vercelli. He writes for La Stampa and Tuttolibri. He is a contributor on the television program Superquark and the shows Il tempo e la storia and a.C.d.C., broadcast by Rai Storia. His publications include: Benedette guerre. Crociate e jihad («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2009), Lepanto. La battaglia dei tre imperi («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2010), Donne, madonne, mercanti e cavalieri. Sei storie medievali («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2013), published by Laterza; Gli occhi di Venezia (Mondadori, 2011); Il divano di Istanbul (Sellerio, 2011); Dietro le quinte della Storia. La vita quotidiana attraverso il tempo, written with P. Angela (Rizzoli, 2012); Le Ateniesi (Mondadori, 2015); Costantino il vincitore (Salerno Editrice, 2016); Le parole del papa (2016) and Caporetto (2017), published by Laterza. Il divano di Istanbul (2011), Alabama (2021) and Poeta al comando (2022) and Brick for stone (2023), published by Sellerio.
Event #3
Anna Salvo
Sorrow is like a telescope that helps us look into the distance: creatività and suffering
Event #4
Andrea Moro
I speak, therefore I am Like the starry sky: visions of language across the centuries
Event #28
Mauro Agnoletti, Ilaria Borletti Buitoni
Culture, environment, landscape. For a possible, sustainable future
