Le forme della regalità nella Roma latino-sabina

The analysis of historical sources, onomastics data, and the festive calendar, shows that the most archaic Roman kingship was structured in the form of a diarchy between a lifelong king-priest and a temporary warrior-king: the latter ruled in the season of war, while in peacetime the city government was led in turn by the patres (interregnum). This diarchy could be the result of the influence, on Roman institutions, of the constitutional structures of the Greeks and of the Italic peoples, since among other Indo-European cultures, like Vedic India and the Celts, the pattern seems rather to be a triad — composed of a priest, a supreme king and a warrior king — surviving in Rome only at a theological level in the Pre-Capitoline triad Iuppiter Mars Quirinus. Given these premises, the subsequent Etruscan monarchy appears to be the result of the rising of the army commander to a tyrannical and lifelong power, and of the marginalization of the rex sacrorum, while the Republic seems a partial restoration of the oldest constitution

Theology, Politics and Society: the Missing Link. Studying Religion in the Mamluk Period

The chapter focuses on a few problematic topics which have so far received little attention in contemporary scholarship on religion in the Mamluk period. In particular it tries to shed light on what the author describes as a missing link between theological production and its social and political significance, between theologians and society at large, between ideas about God and their relevance to people\u2019s lives. The article argues that exploring the link between society and theology may be a rewarding research enterprise. An attention to this link is generally missing in scholarship both on the intellectual and the socio-religious history of the Mamluk period. The paper identifies the reasons for this state of affairs and provides a sample of materials that proves that we do not lack the resources for pursuing research in this direction. The paper advocates an interdisciplinary approach where the efforts of experts in Islamic theology and historians interested in religion and society ought to merge