the first European festival on creativity

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. 

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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.


All theevents2011


   

Evento n.1

Chiara Saraceno

Too much inequality hinders everyone’s well-being

Evento n.2

Giuseppe Penone, Sergio Risaliti

Flowing in time like a river pebble

Evento n.3

Kinds of lies

Evento n.4

Edoardo Boncinelli

What is life? Can artificial life exist?

Evento n.6

Zygmunt Bauman

Reflections on the notions of community and network, on social networks and Facebook

Evento n.7

Alessandro Barbero

How did Middle Ages men think? The friar

Evento n.8

Francesco Piccolo

How to write a screenplay

Evento n.10

Maurizio Bettini

Mythological forms of memory in ancient Greece and Rome

Evento n.11

Almudena Grandes, Ranieri Polese

History from the viewpoint of women

Evento n.12

Adriano Prosperi

Crime and forgiveness

Evento n.14

Gian Carlo Calza

Different, eccentric, extraordinary: aesthetics and creativity between Asia and the West

Evento n.16

Marco Belpoliti

As you have seen it on tv

Evento n.17

Salvatore Veca

On philosophical imagination

Evento n.18

Vittorio Gregotti

City, metropolis and urban design

Evento n.19

Enzo Bianchi

Paths of humanization

Evento n.20

Patrizia Cavalli

Poetry knows everything first

Evento n.21

Edoardo Boncinelli

What is life? Life is communication

Evento n.23

Silvio Orlando

Diderot, Rameau and other paradoxes

Evento n.24

Alessandro Barbero

How did Middle Ages men think? The merchant

Evento n.26

Franco Borgogno

In other people’s hearts and minds. A psychoanalyst between tradition and creativity

Evento n.27

Giuseppe Bertolucci, Emanuele Trevi

In words and pictures: cinema and literature

Evento n.28

Michela Marzano

Mind and body: anorexia, or the enigma of desire

Evento n.29

Alfonso Berardinelli

Intellectual types, styles and powers

Evento n.30

Luca Scarlini

The power of images, the images of power

Evento n.31

Felice Cimatti

Mind, communication and language in animals, including Homo sapiens

Evento n.32

Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna

Regretting the families of yesteryear?

Evento n.33

Alberto Manguel

The Muse of impossibility

Evento N.34

Ennio Peres

Mathematics is the game of life

Evento N.35

Luce Irigaray

Saving human energy. Breathing: a source of universal sharing

Evento n.36

Edoardo Boncinelli

What is life? Life yesterday, today and tomorrow

Evento n.37

Sonia Bergamasco, Fabrizio Gifuni

A quiet sunny day. Attilio Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini, a friendship in verse

Evento n.39

Alessandro Barbero

How did Middle Ages men think? The knight

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