Dal purgatorio alla communio sanctorum
In 1992, Marc Augé suggested a reading of contemporary age founded on the distinction between places and non-places, and on the exponential increase of the latters, i.e. spaces intended as physical entities without any identity-making role or relational connotation, and characterized by transience a...
| Subtitles: | From purgatory to the communion of saints |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | Italian |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Morcelliana
2014
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| In: |
Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni
Year: 2014, Volume: 80, Issue: 1, Pages: 300-317 |
| Further subjects: | B
Council of Trent (1545-1563)
B CHRISTIAN eschatology B Purgatorio B Catholic Church B Purgatory B communio sanctorum B Eschatology B Augé, Marc, 1935- B Council of Trent B Vatican Council (2nd : 1962-1965) B Vaticano ii B Escatologia B Vatican II B Concilio di Trento |
| Summary: | In 1992, Marc Augé suggested a reading of contemporary age founded on the distinction between places and non-places, and on the exponential increase of the latters, i.e. spaces intended as physical entities without any identity-making role or relational connotation, and characterized by transience and a sense of not belonging. In light of this theoretical framework, so far confined to sociological analysis, we intend to investigate with a diachronic approach the Catholic intermediate eschatology, showing how from the Council of Trent to Vatican ii, the concept of purgatory has undergone a progressive physical and spatial dematerialisation, in contrast to the exaltation of its communitarian and interactional dimension. If in the great Tridentine formulation the purgatory was the median element, endowed with an effective spatial consistency, of the tripartite scheme completed by heaven and hell, the eschatology of Vatican ii will focus on the expression "communio sanctorum", which indicates the unity among believers on earth, saints in heavenly glory, and departed waiting to reach it. Therefore the purgatory, a post-mortem condition in itself provisional, comes to be integrated in a permanent interactional dynamics between heaven and earth, connected by a communitarian bond. Then, with Vatican ii, a council which has been widely interpreted as a modernizing break, the Catholic Church has in fact proposed an eschatological model centered on one of the prerogatives of pre-modern organic society - namely the contiguity between the world of the living and that of the dead - and has taken the shape of a "place" in the fullest sense of the word, i.e. a "sacred space" able to resist the threat of individualistic disintegration. In this sense, the present study aims to highlight how a dematerialized redefinition of purgatory is not at all, as most critics have argued, the proof that its historical and cultural function is by now obsolete. On the contrary, such a device represents a more or less conscious and convincing response to that dissolution of spatial-temporal and relational categories theorized by Augé. (English) |
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| ISSN: | 2611-8742 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni
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