Centre for Interreligious Studies

Launched in the Academic year 2020/2021, the class focuses on conversion programmes and attempts addressed to both individuals religious groups in the context of the coexistence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the Mediterranean from the late antiquity to the early modern age. It looks at the Scriptures (the Torah, the Christian Bible, and the Qur’an), interfaith disputes, theological treatises, epistles, and travel books as sources for the historical study of conversion, with a special focus on the debate on compulsion, coercion, and violence (e.g. forced conversion, mass baptism) within one or the other religion. Distinct conceptions, strategies, and policies of conversion are discussed by analysing case studies related to the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, and the Near East. Far from being self-evident and monolithic, the concepts of coexistence and conversion are critically considered through a variety of historical dynamics and hermeneutical perspectives.

Launched in the Academic year 2020/2021, this class provides students with a broad overview of the forms which Christian denominations developed from the sixteenth to the twentieth century - into what we define as “theologies”. Whether it is about the relation between Christian churches, or about encounters and clashes between Christian denominations and other religions, analyzing the ways in which churches think is fundamental to understand their relationship with the world, man, and society.

The class is divided into an introductory part which tackles the lexicon and the semantics of the discipline, and a second part which offers a broad chronological overview of the history of Christianity from its origins to the twentieth century. The second part of the class has a monographic character, revolving around a specific topic (e.g. the history of monasticism, the history of Biblical exegesis) which shifts very year.

The class is divided into two parts. The first part has a historiographical and methodological character. It aims at presenting and framing a discipline which is academically born in the last decade in the wake of interfaith discussions rooted in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It looks at the history and theologies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as a single, multifaceted history originating in the Mediterranean context. The teaching method is based on the close reading and discussion of primary sources with the participants. The second part of the calss has a monographic character. Topics shift every year, e.g. scriptural debates, reformation concepts, the role of images, visions of the afterlife, thus allowing students to specialize themselves in one aspect of the interfaith interaction between the Abrahamic religions.