Workshop: Theological Culture in Dante’s Florence

Organized by the AHRC-funded Project “Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society,” co-led by the Universities of Leeds and Warwick.

Presented by Matthew Treherne, Claire Honess, Anna Pegoretti, and Nicolò Maldina.

This workshop will present some of the findings of the research project, “Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society”, enabling those attending to encounter some of the archival materials relating to theological and religious life in the 1280s and 1290s. The workshop will introduce Florentine religious culture in the period, with a particular focus on the quodlibetal disputations held in the mendicant houses of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, and on preaching. A sample of the disputations and of the sermons which Dante’s Florentine contemporaries – and perhaps Dante himself – would have heard will be presented; much of this material will be made available in this workshop for the first time. In discussion, we will consider the theological interest of the material, as well as its possible value for understanding of Dante’s works. The sample material (in Latin and in translation, amounting to around eight pages) will be made available prior to the workshop. For further information, please contact Anne Leone (aleone@nd.edu).

The workshop will be divided into two parts, with a reception in between from 4:45 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. Audience members may attend the entire workshop or just part of it.