PROGRAMME AND ABSTRACTS - Università degli Studi di Messina

work A Peregrinação, which is considered nowadays to be one of the most fascinating
accounts of the first contacts Europeans made with Asian cultures and religions hitherto almost
unknown to the Christian world. As implied by the title of the work, A Peregrinação (The
Travels or The Peregrinations), Fernão Mendes Pinto himself sees his travels as a spiritual
adventure and a test of his Christian faith. In his encounters with “pagan” religions, especially
in China, Pinto becomes increasingly critical in his attitude and compares, for instance, the
belligerent attitude and the hypocrisy of European missionaries with the kind of utopia, a world
free of sin and injustice, of the “pagans”. The conclusion that Pinto draws is summarised in his
stating that one may also exist with God’s laws without ever having heard of Christ. Pinto
thereby clearly states that it is possible to live according to highly moral norms outside the
Church. In this sense, A Peregrinação is a unique document in that it is one of the first
critiques of Christian missions in the history of Western ideas. The principle aim of this
communication is to present the spiritual transformation of a European Christian who develops
an increasingly universal deism throughout his encounters with non-Christian religions.
Carlo Donà, University of Messina, Italy
La cerva cornuta: dal mito al folklore
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Tue 15 th , 9.20, Classroom 6
The horned hind is an impossible animal, like the unicorn or the phoenix. In nature, only male
deers have horns, which every year fall and grow. In myth, in literature and in visual arts,
however, since Homeric age, and during all the classical period and the Middle Age, hinds with
horns are quite common. Why? What does this motif really mean? When did it spread? And
what was its history and diffusion? These are the questions put forward (and, I hope, al least
partially solved) in the present paper. The horned hind was, probably, only the theriomorphic
form of a great goddess, mother and owner of the land, attested in Siberian petroglyphic since
the neolithic period. We can follow the cultural history of this goddess step by step, throughout
Europe, from her classical hyposthasis (Artemis Ephesia, for instance), till the fairy-hind of
romances and folktales.
Salvatore Drago, University of Messina, Italy
Tue 15 th , 11.40, Classroom Aula Magna
Protestantesimo liberale e Cattolicesimo conservatore? Il ruolo delle Religioni per la
formazione del Pensiero economico nell’Europa in età moderna
Partendo dalle più recenti valutazioni storiografiche, sia in ambito economico rivolto a cogliere
il processo ed il ruolo dell’economia in stretta relazione costruttiva con gli aspetti eticoreligiosi,
sia nel settore religioso che ha favorito la dislocazione della storia delle Religioni da
un piano settoriale ad una dimensione più ampia comprendente anche il loro legame con il
pensiero economico, tanto da creare un superamento definitivo e propositivo di anacronistiche
impostazioni metodologiche e contenutistiche circa l’inconciliabilità del binomio Religione/i ed
economia, Chiesa/e e commercio, scopo della relazione, tenendo conto delle importanti
valutazioni concettuali espresse nei lavori pionieristici del tedesco M. Weber L’Etica
protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo del 1904 e dell’italiano A. Fanfani, Cattolicesimo e
Protestantesimo nella formazione storica del capitalismo, del 1935, consiste nell’analizzare il