Suono e Spettacolo. Athanasius Kircher, un percorso nelle Immagini sonore.

The Society of Jesus made great propaganda efforts throughout the seventeenth century and chose the images and the play as a privileged means to communicate and persuade. Athanasius Kircher, a key figure of the seventeenth century, he decided to dominate the wild nature of sound through Phonurgia Nova, which includes a gallery of powerful symbolic images for Baroque aesthetics. The essay, through the grant of the images from the Library of the Department of Mathematics "Guido Castelnuovo" Sapienza University of Rome, aims to understand, through the pictures offered by Kircher, the sound phenomenon and the spectacle that this produces. In Phonurgia Nova a process of dramatization sound effects takes place, often through machines and "visions" applied to the theatrical reality, as experimental and astonishing environment beloved in baroque. Kircher illustrates the sound through explanatory figures, so to dominate the sound through the eyes. Sound is seen, admired and represented: its spectacle not only takes place through the implementation of sound machines or the "wonders" applied to the theater, but even through images, creating create a sense of wonder in in the erudite person of the seventeenth century

A Guglielmite Trinity?

In the Abbey of Viboldone, in suburban Milan, there is a medieval Trinitarian sinopia that never before has received an in-depth analysis. This paper proposes that the sinopia is related to a group known as the Guglielmites, prosecuted in this region of Milan in 1300. The Guglielmites believed that a woman named Guglielma was the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Christian Trinity, come to earth incarnate in female form. The sinopia appears to portray a female Holy Spirit, and the history of the Abbey in which it is located suggests some intriguing relationships with this heretical group

The wicked and the damned

Whereas representatives of the medieval church insisted that possessing spirits were demons or fallen angels, many medieval Italians attributed spirit possession to ghosts. In particular, the untimely dead who had perished through violence were thought to seize the bodies of the possessed in order to re-experience embodiment. Such beliefs had a long genealogy, predating the spread of Christianity. I argue that those elements of culture that persist unchanged over a long period of time are not retained unthinkingly, but are chosen because they serve the needs of the communities that employ them. In this case, belief in ghosts as possessors was an opportunity for several types of healing for the benefit of the victim, the ghost itself, and the whole community

A Guglielmite Trinity?

In the Abbey of Viboldone, in suburban Milan, there is a medieval Trinitarian sinopia that never before has received an in-depth analysis. This paper proposes that the sinopia is related to a group known as the Guglielmites, prosecuted in this region of Milan in 1300. The Guglielmites believed that a woman named Guglielma was the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Christian Trinity, come to earth incarnate in female form. The sinopia appears to portray a female Holy Spirit, and the history of the Abbey in which it is located suggests some intriguing relationships with this heretical group

Le dévoyé et le damné

Au Moyen Âge, en Italie, les représentants de l’Église considéraient les esprits venus posséder les vivants comme des démons ou des anges déchus, tandis que le peuple avait plutôt tendance à y voir des revenants. D’après une croyance préchrétienne, les personnes décédées de façon violente et prématurée pouvaient prendre possession du corps d’une personne vivante pour revivre une incarnation. Or, ces éléments de culture n’ont pas traversé le temps par inadvertance : ils ont été retenus parce qu’ils servaient les besoins des communautés qui en avaient l’usage. En l’occurrence, l’idée que les morts puissent posséder les vivants permettait d’opérer plusieurs types de guérison, au bénéfice de la victime, mais aussi du revenant et de la communauté tout entière

Fantômes

Des morts apparaissent – dans les bunkers des îles Anglo-Normandes, dans les foyers vietnamiens d’après-guerre, dans les plaines désolées de Sibérie, dans les villages médiévaux italiens ou dans les salons bourgeois européens ; des morts apparaissent – aux prêtres taoïstes, aux moines bénédictins, aux adolescents curieux ou aux hommes courageux ; des morts apparaissent et obligent les vivants à les accueillir, à leur ménager une place dans un monde ébranlé par l’événement saisissant de leur surgissement ; des morts apparaissent – ce sont les fantômes