More than 2.000 books in catalogue from the main scholars in the fields of theology, philosophy, and religious studies. Among our series: «Biblioteca di teologia contemporanea»; «Giornale di teologia»; and the International journal Concilium.
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To meet God means entering into a new relationship that urges us to reconsider the models that have fuelled our believing experience. God is a constant surprise, a surprise that generates a new theological syntax for thinking, praying and narrating the adventure of existence.
A hospitable practice needs hospitable thinking and a way of believing. If, before being a right, existing is a debt that is extinguished only by becoming hospitable people, theology is called to favour coexistence among people by overcoming even its own self-understanding, when this is an obstacle to dialogue, helping to live this great change, and learning to welcome the spiritual riches that are for all. This, to the point of making a public contribution at the service of human and spiritual growth of humanity. A research of great value for a hospitable belief, which gives a theological foundation to a new paradigm of welcome and which opens up concrete perspectives for the indispensable interreligious dialogue.
The secularization debate went through a big change during the last fifty years. Could this change be described as a paradigm shift? The volume, after an introduction that deeply analyses the “secularization” concept, picks up and discusses in eight chapters several exemplary figures in the recent debate (H. Blumenberg, D. Martin, C. Taylor, H. Joas, T. Asad, M. Gauchet, J. Habermas, G. Vattimo).Thus, the Author gives for the very first time, a systematic reconstruction of the changes and developments in this debate, ending in a real paradigm shift. The conclusion is however hesitant. It is unclear, Costa claims, whether this concept is still helpful to understand what is going on around us now and is in store for us in the near future. Winner of the Book Prize of the European Society for Catholic Theology (category: senior scholar)
The book presents an original philosophical reflection on the urban suburbs, on their birth and their functioning, as well as on the human suburbs, with the experience of those who live "remotely", as a peripheral being. The path followed leads to a substantial reformulation of our way of understanding the suburbs, in the wake of the pastoral attention of the magisterium of Pope Francis, with the aim of opening new paths of meaning.
This book starts with an upside down turn of perspective. If a sense must be searched and found in the phenomenon of human mobility, we cannot content ourselves with the knowledge of a possible future for migrants in their country of arrival. We could rather ask whether these people give a future and open up new understandings to the societies they come to. This turn is the cornerstone offered by a “generative thinking” to the debate on migration.
In 1927 Romano Guardini wrote a precious little book on The Holy Signs, with pages of incomparable depth. Franco Giulio Brambilla, a well-known theologian and pastor, takes up and revisits the theme in a current and captivating language. The liturgical signs are here characterized by their prevailing trait: bodily signs (standing, kneeling, beating one’s chest, raising and imposing hands), creatural signs (water, light/fire, oil, bread and wine) and ritual signs (candle, ash, incense, robes, bells). The result is a surprising journey that renews these symbols to hand over the fire of existence to the new generations.
This study by Roberto Repole takes on the challenge of rethinking the mission of the church, offering the proposal of a new paradigm, that of gift. Thus, he shows how the Church lives from a gift, the divine one, and how what she really transmits is nothing else than the gift from which she lives that can be maintained as a gift to others: indeed, in the only possible form, that of a gift, which is authentic only under certain conditions.
An essay to approach the Bible as a source for an authentic spiritual life; a book that gives a biblical backing to the present revival of spirituality, avoiding any deviations or partiality.The author follows here two paths: first, he examines the Old and the New Testaments, focusing especially on the prophets, the psalms, Job, the Song of Songs, and the beatitudes. With the second path, card. Ravasi outlines a concise map of spirituality in the Scriptures, thus composing a unitary message.The final outcome is not only a guide to mysticism, but also an essential synthesis of biblical theology.
A man stands out on the scene, a free man. He puts forth a new way of relating to the God of Israel. He is the heir. The one who knows how to receive and transmit what he has received by impressing his unique trait on it. Many are fascinated by this figure. Others are scared to the point of precipitating events until the man is killed. However, precisely in death, this figure will release his vision of God in all its strength. A vision that from then on will never cease to attract, to scandalize, and to provoke reality. Today like yesterday. The Christian dogmatics presented through engaging events, with the flavor of a contemporary novel.
Only seven short sentences, whispered by a dying Jesus on the cross. Yet, these words are so meaningful they have urged a deep theological and spiritual reflection along the centuries. According to Western culture, Jesus’ words from the cross enshrine the universal mystery of life, suffering, death and hope. Cardinal Ravasi gives here an exegetical reading, followed by some meditations that weave together biblical, literary and artistic references, thus offering Jesus’ last will and testament anew in all its human and theological shades.
In this book, Kurt Appel works out a theory of time, starting from Leibniz, Kant, Schelling’s late philosophy and Hegel. He demonstrates the central role of the concept of time in their philosophical and theological concept.Time, as we usually consider it, is the linear and mechanical one of the chronometer. It expands ad infinitum, always in the same way. It is a continuum without quality, neutral and aseptic. The book discusses the relationship between the secular time and the biblical time questioning the presuppositions of the first.Appel tries to show that the biblical concept of time abrogates (aufheben) the secular concept of historiography based on the chronological time and leads to the name of God whose dignity lies in the vulnerability and the openness of being.
The terms "synod" and "synodality" that appear as essential ecclesiological categories today, simply do not exist in the New Testament. Nonetheless, even if not explicitly named, they are dimensions authentically present in the communities of the origins, and they emerge in many biblical texts. This book sheds light on them, gathering them around the historical-narrative moments of the ecclesiastical unfolding, as they appear in the biblical text: a Church gathered, realized, structured, sent and eschatologically oriented. These stages constitute the structure of a sort of synodal-biblical ecclesiology, elaborated from the document of the International Theological Commission, «Synodality in the life and mission of the Church», and towards the Synod of bishops 2022.
This essay masterfully deciphers some of the most mysterious prophecies that can be found all over the Apocalypse, a sort of manual of spiritual discernment of the signs of God. These symbols teach Christians of the past - but also to our contemporaries - to recognize the appeal of God in the facts of history, in the paths of the Church and in the very events of life. The Risen One, who appears in vision to the prophet John as a knight on a white steed, has already won and continues to defeat Satan and the deadly forces he deployed against the Church, the beloved fiancée of Christ himself. By taking part in this victory, she is preparing to become his bride forever.
Joseph occupies a marginal place inside the theological discourse, unlike Mary. Yet, he also reflects important issues of our time, linked to the debate on identity, relationships and functions of being in the world as men and women, and in terms of living in a church made up of men and women. Freed from hagiographic stereotypes and strictly apologetic purposes, Joseph becomes the emblem of a masculinity that is now more than ever in question: what does it mean for a male to feel himself as a subject, as a person? What does it mean to share a journey of substantial relationships and to generate life together? What does it mean to take care of the world, in the plurality of its possible expressions (politics, profession, civil commitment)? This book starts an original path, expression of the fruitful intertwining that theology intends to establish with other cultural approaches. It discloses a set of “looks” – historical, biblical, sociological, theological, pastoral ... – aimed at Saint Joseph, a figure of a masculinity that questions us. Moreover, it proposes an ideal dialogue between scholars who have accepted Pope’s invitation: Ite ad Ioseph, «Go to Joseph». Their answers can be surprising. CONTRIBUTORS: Daniele Bouchard, Arianna De Simone, Elizabeth E. Green, Andrea Grillo, Adreas Heek, Michela Murgia, Paolo Naso, Cristina Oddone, Giusi Quarenghi, Simona Segoloni Ruta, Silvia Zanconato.
The entire human existence is studded with rituals. To travel, eat, make friends, love, educate, heal, have fun, play: every human act generates its own ritual forms. Likewise, when I participate in religious rites I am the same person that watches YouTube, travels with Ryanair, has met the partner on Tinder, who downloads music and listens to it with earphones while walking. Now, the question is: do the rites “outside the church” somehow defile the rites “inside the church”? Is there such a gap in the “density of meaning” and “intensity of joy” between religious rites and other rites as to prevent osmosis? The author would like to investigate these crucial interactions. If we live in an era of “sad rites”, indeed, what will be the fate of the liturgy?
Nicola Bergamo's in-depth study proposes an historical excursus on the evolution of relations between the nascent city of Venice and the powerful Byzantine empire, from the first Venetian settlements in the lagoon eaves of the Augustan X Regio Venetia et Histria, through the devastating gothic wars and the Longobard invasion, until the fiscal liberation of 1082 with the chrysobolla granted by the basileus Alessio I Comneno, which greatly increased the commercial fortune of the Venetians within the Mediterranean, consolidating what would become a shining thousand-year-old republic. A change also in the political power that from the exarch, the tribune and the magister militum would pass to the elite families who elected the first duces, and would move its centre of gravity from the primitive capital Civitanova on the mainland to the lagoon nucleus of Rivoalto around which the city would develop, seeking a solution to the continuous struggles between the patriarchates of Grado and Aquileia and the assaults of the Narentan pirates who crossed the ships on their way to Constantinople.The essay is accompanied by an introductory text by PierAlvise Zorzi.
Zanmaria Millevoi, the murderous tailor from Contrada di San Mattio; Elena Sciarles, the woman burned in her house in the Chiovere di San Girolamo; Vittoria Basadonna, the noblewoman killed in the Gritti palace in San MattioMoisé; Giovan Battista Bombonati, the hairdresser from Vicenza who thought up the scam of the pot of spirits; Chiara Pentarina, the cook accused of having put poison in her master's broth in San Paterniano; the nameless drowned man fished out on the edge of the Ponte della Panada... are the protagonists of some crime stories that happened in Venice in the second half of the eighteenth century and of which we have news through the documents preserved in the State Archives.Davide Busato, deepening the development of these emblematic cases, reconstructs the working methods of the police who investigated at the time of the Serenissima and the Magistrates who coordinated the investigations, giving ample emphasis to the many curious little details of daily life of the time that emerged from the reading of the interrogations.
With the fall of the Serenissima (1797) and the French domination, later followed by the Austrian one, the most decadent period of its millenary history began for Venice: between the increasingly evident poverty and the upheaval of the sumptuous social customs that had characterised the city, even in the field of prostitution, the new oppressive climate was perceived with an increase in the rules of behaviour and health and hygiene controls, as well as the purely fiscal management of the wolves. Once the era of the cultured courtesans who had fascinated kings and travellers was over, that of the poor, maltreated and sometimes problematic women, often a step away from criminalisation or expulsion from the city, began. Elisabetta Tiveron, through the stripping of archive documentation, the analysis of the distribution of the houses of tolerance and the judicial events of some prostitutes, reconstructs a still little known area of 19th century Venetian history.
After the two tragedies avoided in summer 2019, the theme of the cruises ships in the lagoon has returned to international prominence. For too many years Venice has been waiting in vain for the solution to what is only one of the serious problems that afflict the city (tens of millions of tourists who besiege it every year, thousands of apartments Airbnb and the consequent hemorrhage of residents, the scandal of the Mose, the most useless and expensive public work in Europe) and the solution can only be one: out the ships from the lagoon. This long story, that in France has been defined a récit, tries to give voice to those who live in Venice and is forced to suffer the sieges of mass tourism. In an alternation between the lagoon and Saint Nazaire, where most of the cruise ships are built, the narrator and his companion do the accounts with the consequences of these epochal anomalies. They are looking, like other Venetians, for a possible key to resistance in a city where obstacles are increasing day by day, in the face of the indifference of institutions often hindering themselves. Venice, which has become the crossroads and the emblem of an era finally forced to come to terms with a nature that is showing us the bill, that tells us to hurry, that time is up. A book that tries with the word to find an alternative route, a possible and necessary reversal of course to save the most beautiful and fragile city in the world, and with it the entire planet. The series: Taccuini d'Autore collects books on the road. Texts that travel around the world, crossing the frontiers of writing, crossing this abstruse era looking for traces of meaning, meeting stories, landscapes, characters. Books that accompany us in our daily lives and in ours elsewhere.
"From Altino to Venice" wants to present the first phase of the history of the Serenissima through its crucial knots: the birth of the Doge's Palace, the rise of Rivoalto, the cult of St. Mark and the formation of the city, the invasion of the Hungarians, the policy of Doge Peter II Orseolo and the domination of the Adriatic, the first Crusade, the birth of the Great Council, the policy of Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard League, the peace of 1177.Franco Bordin analyses - through narrative sources, documents (treaties, wills, decrees...) and historians' interpretations - the life of the city through the complex plot of historical events and its continuous development in the political, constitutional, economic, urban, religious and artistic fields. It is a fundamental work both for the passionate reader of History and for the scholar.
