2011 Programme
Evento n.24
Alessandro Barbero
How did Middle Ages men think? The merchant
Dino Compagni was a Florentine merchant. To him, the city and its prosperity were the only important things. People belonged to two groups: good people who worked for the common good, and bad people. He admired gentlemen who would risk their lives in battle but feared their violence, and found it right that they should be excluded from the city’s government. When he spoke of the Pope or the King, he would lower his voice as such prominent people intimidated him and he hardly dared to criticize them. At one crucial time in the history of Florence, lots were drawn and he found himself charged with political responsibilities: he was so surprised that he started writing—in Italian, for he knew no Latin. His Cronica depicts the Florence of Dante’s time as viewed through the eyes of a man of the people, the kind that only in Italian city-states of the period could find themselves involved in government by chance.
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.
Evento n.6
Zygmunt Bauman
Reflections on the notions of community and network, on social networks and Facebook
Evento n.14
Gian Carlo Calza
Different, eccentric, extraordinary: aesthetics and creativity between Asia and the West
Evento n.26
Franco Borgogno
In other people’s hearts and minds. A psychoanalyst between tradition and creativity
Evento n.37
Sonia Bergamasco, Fabrizio Gifuni
A quiet sunny day. Attilio Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini, a friendship in verse
