Legge e teologia morale nell’Europa cristiana: i limiti della sacralizzazione nelle ultime opere di Paolo Prodi

Abstract

This essay analyzes the final works of Paolo Prodi, which are characterized by a constant reflection on moral theology and secularization. His most original contribution concerned the conflict between law and conscience in the history of Latin Christianity: a problem that led him to design a triptych of books influenced not only by the Verfassungsgeschichte, but also by Harold Berman. If for Max Weber modern world was born from the Reformation, for Prodi the medieval conflict between canon and civil law, and between the inner forum and the external forum of justice, introduced a peculiar structure in Europe that would last until the triumph of the nation states and the “political religions”. Without the “papal revolution” would have been no universities, no free cities, nor the mercantile world, nor a desacralized political power. The Reformation, according to Prodi, strengthened the role of the state by reducing the conflict between the divine and the human norm. On one point he agrees with Weber: nur im Okzident did religion and institutions allow for the birth of a society that enhanced the role of individual conscience. The essay also addresses the relationship between Giorgio Agamben’s writings and those of Prodi and highlights how in his later years the catholic historian was prompted to reflect on the role of religious prophecy by a pessimistic view of the fate of the Western world.