Ugo Bianchi

Ugo Bianchi (13 October 1922 – 14 April 1995) was an Italian historian of religions.

Biography

Ugo Bianchi was born in Cavriglia, Province of Arezzo. After graduating in Literature from the Sapienza University of Rome (1944), he took the 'postgraduate diploma' in historical-religious studies at the same university in 1947.

A private lecturer in History of Religions in 1954, he became extraordinary professor in 1960 and then from 1963 to 1971 full professor of History of Religions at the University of Messina. He moved to the University of Bologna in 1971 and, from 1974 until his death, to Sapienza University. He was professor of the same discipline at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan from 1972, and visiting professor of Religious Ethnology at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome from 1977.

President of the Italian Society for the History of Religions, president of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR, 1990–1995), former consultant of the 'Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians', member of the Academies of Messina and Bologna, member of the gremium for the 'Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte' and for the 'Texte und Untersuchungen' of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, doctor honoris causa of the Catholic Universities of Louvain and Uppsala in 1980.

Ugo Bianchi passed away at San Pellegrino, Firenzuola, a few weeks after becoming 'professor emeritus'.

Thought

He was a direct pupil of Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883–1959) and a firm believer in the historical approach to the religious phenomenon. Religion for Bianchi is the content of culture even if it retains characteristics of creativity in its diversification. An expert on the religiosity of the classical world and the ancient Near East, Ugo Bianchi also tackled Gnosticism and Manichaeism with great rigour.

As far as Gnosticism is concerned, his lectures at the 1966 Messina Conference are well known, where he grouped the 64 communications aimed at circumscribing the areas of diffusion and the characteristics of the Gnostic movement around ten themes.

See also

• Roman School

Works

He dealt with the methodology of historical-religious research, the religions of Greece, Hellenism and Rome, mystery cults, Gnosticism, Iranian religions, dualism in religions, cosmogonies and religious ethnology.

Several of his studies have been published in the journal Augustinianum including:

• "Questioni storico-religiose relative al cristianesimo in Siria nei secoli II-V," Augustinianum, Vol. XIX (1979), 41–52.
• "Religiosità popolare cristiana e pagana," Augustinianum, Vol. XXI (1981), 77–90.
• "Polemiche gnostiche e antignostiche sul Dio dell'Antico Testamento," Augustinianum, Vol. XXII (1982), 35–51.
• "Encratismo, acosmisnio, diteismo come criteri di analisi storico-religiosa degli apocrifi," Augustinianum, Vol. XXIII (1983), 309–17.
• "L'anima in Origene e la questione della metensomatosi," Augustinianum, Vol. XXVI (1986), 33–50.

He organised numerous national and international conferences on historical-religious topics. In 1978, Bianch contributed a paper on the subject of gnosticism for Hans Jonas' festschrift.

His is the concept of 'God in vicissitude', a god who experiences crisis and recovery, like a man.

Translated into English

• The Origins of Gnosticism (1967; editor)
• Problems and Methods of the History of Religions (1972; editor; with Alessandro Bausani)
• "Mithra and the Question of Iranian Monotheism," Acta Iranica, Vol. XVII (1978), pp. 19–46.
• Selected Essays on Gnosticism, Dualism and Mysteriosophy (1978)
• The Notion of "Religion" in Comparative Research: Selected Proceedings (1994; editor; with Lorenzo Bianchi & Fabio Mora)

References

Casadio, Giovanni (2002). Ugo Bianchi: Una vita per la storia delle religioni. Roma: Ed. il Calamo.

Casadio, Giovanni (2021). "Ermeneutica del dualismo e logica binaria: Ioan Petru Culianu da Mircea Eliade e Ugo Bianchi a Raimondo Lullo." In: In-cognita: Ioan Petru Culianu's Approaches to Religion. Bucharest: Zeta Books, pp. 59–121.

Cerutti, Maria Vittoria (2021). "Il dualismo religioso, tra (e dopo) U. Bianchi e I. P. Culianu." In: In-cognita: Ioan Petru Culianu's Approaches to Religion. Bucharest: Zeta Books, pp. 123–60.

Duchesne-Guillemin, J. (1959). "Explorations dualistes avec Ugo Bianchi," L'Antiquité Classique, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, pp. 285–95.

Gasparro, Giulia Sfameni (1995). Agathè elpis. Studi storico-religiosi in onore di Ugo Bianchi. Roma: L'"Erma" di Bretschneider.

Gasparro, Giulia Sfameni (1997). "Ugo Bianchi: October 13, 1922 - April 14, 1995," History of Religions, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, pp. 99–100.

Gordon, Richard (2005). "A Tribute to Ugo Bianchi," The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. LV, No. 1, pp. 349–51.

Monaca, Mariangela (2013). Ugo Bianchi e la storia delle religioni. Roma: Aracne.

Rudolph, Kurt (1995). "In Memoriam: Ugo Bianchi," Numen, Vol. XLII, No. 3, pp. 225–27.

Spineto, Natalie (2009). "L'histoire des religions en Italie: Modèles et méthodes." In: Mihail Neamțu & Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban, eds., Memory, Humanity, and Meaning: Selected Essays in Honor of Andrei Pleșu's Sixtieth Anniversary. Bucharest: Zeta Books, pp. 133–51.

External links

• Works by Ugo Bianchi at Persée
• Works by Ugo Bianchi at JSTOR