2 - Di Carpegna Falconieri - The Militant Middle Ages

The Militant Middle Ages
Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

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The Militant Middle Ages
Contemporary Politics between New Barbarians
and Modern Crusaders
By
Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri
Translated by
Andrew M. Hiltzik
leiden | boston

First published in Italian as “Medioevo militante. La politica di oggi alle prese con barbari e crociati” –
© 2011 Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino.
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Contents
Preface to the English Edition (2019) vii

Acknowledgments viii
Prologue x
Introduction 1
1 The Neo-Medieval West 13
2 All New Barbarians and Same Old Crusaders 26
3 Once upon a Time in the Middle Ages 50
4 The Middle Ages of Identity 66
5 Merchants and Bowmen: Middle Ages of the City 77
6 Folk and Jesters: Anarchist and Leftist Middle Ages 88
7 Templars and Holy Grail: Middle Ages of Tradition 105
8 Warriors of Valhalla: Middle Ages of the Great North 133
9 Druids and Bards: Celtic Middle Ages 142
10 Popes and Saints: Catholic Middle Ages 153
11 Peoples and Sovereigns: Middle Ages of Nations 173
12 Emperors and Wanderers: Middle Ages of a United Europe 194
Epilogue 216
References and Sources 223

Index of Personal Names 269

Preface to the English Edition (2019)
In the Spanish and French editions, both from 2015, I found it opportune to
slightly update the text, introducing a few more recent examples of the politi-
cal use of the Middle Ages, compared to what appeared in the Italian original
(2011). Since then, however, many years have passed. National governments,
popes, and US presidents have come and gone, balances of power have shifted,
many events have transpired, and a new awareness of the fundamental impor-
tance of medievalism in the cultural and political life of the West has made it-
self known. For this reason, I have preferred not to continue the pursuit of a
chronology of facts, limiting myself to correcting a few imprecisions and to
augmenting the bibliography. Some more recent examples of political medie-
valism are discussed in the epilogue.

Acknowledgments
I have talked about the many contemporary ways of imagining the Middle
Ages with friends, students, and colleagues, in encounters that led me down
many interesting roads. The debts I owe to those who study this subject are
great: as always, the dwarf sits on the shoulders of giants, even if the giants are
squeezed into bibliographical notes, reduced to fine print. I wish to thank Pat-
rick Geary and Gábor Klaniczay, directors of the international program, Medi-
evalism, Archaic Origins and Regimes of Historicity. Participating in this working
group comprising scholars of over twenty different nationalities has helped me
grasp the importance of medievalism and its political repercussions: in various
parts of the world the use of myths pertaining to the Middle Ages aids in con-
structing legitimate feelings of belonging, but also justifies ethnic cleansing,
holy wars, and death.
I would like to express my thanks to Amedeo De Vincentiis, who believed in
my project and presented it to the Einaudi publishing house, to Joep Leerssen,
who wanted to add this English edition to his prestigious book series, “National
Cultivation of Culture,” and to Andrew M. Hiltzik, who performed the transla-
tion. I would also like to thank Alison Locke Perchuk for a final rereading of the
English text and Davide Iacono for the new bibliography and index. For the
valuable suggestions that emerged in the course of seminars, study groups, and
intense conversations, I would particularly like to thank Alessandro Afriat,
Lorenzo Ascani, Giuseppe Maria Bianchi, William Blanc, Benedetta Borello,
Marco Brando, Elisabetta Caldelli, Franco Cardini, Massimo Ciavolella, Fran
cesca Declich, Marco Dorati, Andrew Elliott, Riccardo Facchini, Valentina Ivan-
cich, Samantha Kelly, Margareth Lanzinger, Umberto Longo, Pedro Martins,
Raimondo Michetti, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Lorena Olvera de la Torre,
Francesco Pirani, Salvatore Ritrovato, Francesca Roversi Monaco, Ana Maria
S.A. Rodrigues, Matteo Sanfilippo, Raffaella Sarti, Felicitas Schmieder, Piotr
Toczyski, Richard Utz, Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro, Maria Elisa Varela Rodriguez,
Stefano Visentin, Lila Yawn, Marino Zabbia, and Nada Zečević. My conversa-
tions with so many people have allowed me to grasp the depth of the problem
and its powerful diversification, contained, however, in a fundamental unity.
I affectionately thank my wife and daughters, for their patience in bearing
the theft of time to which I fell victim while writing. Time that would have been
spent in other ways, living and laughing together, and that I still like to think
was not wasted. Books, indeed, have the virtue of safeguarding ideas, transmit-
ting them, and allowing readers to form them anew; for that reason, this book

Acknowledgments ix
and the time it took to write it are dedicated to my wife Anna and to my
daughters. So that, when they are a little bit bigger, Livia, Sofia, and Vittoria will
know once and for all why I locked myself in my study or ran off to the
library instead of playing Red Light/Green Light with them.

Prologue
It’s a beautiful day in May, the sun is shining, and the cathedral bells are chim-
ing in the distance. The tournament lists are built, and the taverns have opened
their shutters. All around, there is a to-and-fro of people, passing by merchants’
boutiques, candy stalls, jugglers, and acrobats. The town mayor, small but
stately, is dressing for the ceremony. His garments are so vast that he almost
disappears among them. He wears a fiery red greatcloak and a large collar, car-
ries a scepter, and is searching for his fine, plumed hat. When he’s finally found
it, he marches down the street, accompanied by buglers, bodyguards, and
bowmen.
A few hundred miles away, a man with a long beard has just finished an il-
lustration of a knight in chainmail, with a red cross on his surcoat. He looks
over the product with satisfaction. Beyond the mountains, a youth with hair
shaved down to his scalp (but obviously blond), has put on mail just like the
kind drawn by the bearded man and has hidden himself in ambush among the
tangled brush of the undergrowth. Even farther, to the East, a green-eyed child
is buying bread. He counts his money and hands it to the baker, who glances at
it distractedly before putting it away. The cash depicts the face of a sovereign
with a crown of gold lilies. Somewhere, in another happy corner of the globe, a
girl with red hair and a white dress is singing a ballad, accompanied by a harp:
she sings a tale of love, death, and passion. Farther yet, in a land much nearer
to the Pole, a group of men are drinking ale and laughing. The warriors bear
colorful shields and horned helmets; their camp tents have carved dragons on
the pales. Elsewhere, beyond the sea, a zealous preacher speaks to an attentive
town square: “God wills it!” he cries to those present. “It is time to launch a
crusade to reclaim our civilization and spread it throughout the world!” And
then, there is a man wandering about the halls of a university. He catches snip-
pets of lectures and conversations and finally sits, exhausted, with his head in
his hands like a gargoyle of Notre Dame.
It’s a beautiful day in May, but what year is it? The mayor marches down the
street surrounded by a retinue of bodyguards, but then he climbs into a car and
drives to the parade that’s just about to set off from the historic district. The
man with the long beard puts his drawing on a scanner and sees it reappear on
the computer screen: it’s for the posters he’s designing. The hidden boy is play-
ing wargames, along with his merry friends in the woods. When they’ve finished
playing, he’ll recount his thrilling adventures on his blog. The boy buying bread
with a king’s head is using a two-hundred-forint bill from the Republic of Hun-
gary. The girl singing the Irish ballad is interrupted by the untimely ring of a

Prologue xi
cell phone. The Vikings with the horned helms are camped out in Australia,
and their beer comes in cans, while the preacher shouting in the public square
is connected to half the world through the television and is announcing the
birth of a social network to round up his new crusaders. The last character has
traveled many highways and taken several airplanes to finally reach the cam-
pus of a university in Michigan, where he hears fragments of words with his
head between his hands like a gargoyle. Across so many anonymous, identical
non-places, he has finally found a place where they are talking about a great
utopia. This utopia is the Middle Ages.

Introduction
Medieval: the word means very different things depending on where you find
it. There is a considerable gap between the Medieval Era studied in research
institutions and the one found in newspapers, novels, films, and other media of
our contemporary society. While to some it may still seem absurd, the more-or-
less fabricated Medieval Era in the media is just as subject to study and inter-
pretation as the one studied and taught in universities. This research should be
done not to restore an illusory “effectual truth of things” (as Machiavelli writes),
claiming to explain what the Middle Ages really were, but rather because the
common idea of the Medieval—also called neo-medieval or medievalism—is
a vessel of such vast proportions that we face it every day. There is, perhaps, no
other historical epoch that provides our contemporary world with so much
nourishment for our own imaginations.1
Not only is the Medieval Era present as a trace of the past, it is also a concept
that our current age utilizes constantly. And we even use it in the field of poli-
tics. In the last decade in particular, themes and topics that are medieval
in various ways have come to the fore. Medievalism is not just an innocuous
divertissement, a more or less fleeting fashion, like the superficial symptom of
1 This book makes frequent use of three similar terms, often seen as overlapping: “Medieval
Era” (or “Middle Ages”), “medieval history,” and “medievalism.” The first term is defined as the
period extending from the fifth to the fifteenth century. The second term identifies the disci-
pline that has the medieval period as its subject, with the aim of comprehending its historical
dynamics. An issue of the journal “Studies in Medievalism” was dedicated to the definition of
medievalism, the principal subject of this book: Defining Medievalism(s), XVII (2009).
See also R. Utz, Coming to Terms with Medievalism, in “The European Journal of English Stud-
ies,” xv (2011), n. 2, pp. 101–113; E. Emery and R. Utz (eds.), Medievalism: Key Critical Terms, D.S.
Brewer, Woodbridge 2017; B. Bildhauer and C. Jones (eds.), The Middle Ages in the Modern
World: Twenty-first Century Perspectives, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2017. “Medievalism”
is a concept that identifies the post-medieval representation, reception, and use of the Mid-
dle Ages in every aspect, from revivals to its modernization in a political sense. The study of
medievalism thus covers all the forms in which the Medieval Era has been represented from
the fifteenth century to today, including historiography, archaeology, and art history. As the
bibliography on medievalism is constantly expanding, I refer the reader to the open access
review journal Medievally Speaking, http://medievallyspeaking.blogspot.it, an excellent and
frequently updated resource. Among the more recent books, I must at least mention Andrew
Elliott’s, which also addresses the relationship between medievalism and politics, but from
the perspective of the sociology of communication. A.B.R. Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and
Mass Media. Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-first Century, D.S. Brewer, Cam-
bridge 2017. See also: Daniel Wollenberg, Medieval Imagery in Today’s Politics, Arc Humanities
Press, Leeds 2018.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, �� | doi:10.1163/9789004414983_002

2 Introduction
an escape fantasy, or magic or fairy tales. On the contrary, it establishes solid

ties to public action.
In the Middle Ages, either as a historical period or a sort of symbolic else-
where, contemporary politics finds its preferred source of models, explanatory
allegories, and focalizing examples. The Medieval Era is a gloomy time that
somewhat resembles our current era: how many people say or think this? The
1970s, for instance, witnessed the use of the idea of the Medieval in terms of
class warfare and conflict with the establishment, on both the right and the
left. And what immediately leaps to mind (but must be understood on its own
terms), is the fact that many Western communities today—especially since the
1980s—use the label “medieval” to attest their own particular identity, whether
in terms of laying claim to their origins, or in terms of self-representation. At
various levels, in a sort of ascending scale, this happens to civic communities/
identities; to regional communities/identities seeking an affirmation of their
autonomy; to national communities/identities reforged in Eastern Europe af-
ter the fall of the Berlin Wall; to the European community/identity; and finally
to the entire Western community/identity as seen as a counterpoint above all
to the Islamic World (and vice versa). Even in America the phenomenon is in
full swing, with New Medievalism as a legitimate interpretive category in the
study of international relations. Thus, to represent and express one’s belonging
to a group, the predetermined code of communication is, often, of a medieval
hue—a phenomenon that is neither obvious, expected, or inevitable, but its
causes can be explained. In this book I would like to offer a panoramic over-
view of how the Medieval Era has been perceived and employed in the politi-
cal realm in the West in recent decades. The concept of the Middle Ages be-
comes a possible key to reading contemporary society and the direction in
which it is headed.
It has often been said—and certainly not incorrectly—that the Middle Ages
do not exist in reality. In effect, the words represent no more than an idea
whose usage may complicate rather than simplify things.2 The day the Medi-
eval Era began to take form was the day that people decided it was over: the
time when some men enamored with antiquity became aware of the millennial
2 For example, V. Branca, Premessa in Id. (ed.), Concetto, storia, miti e immagini del medio evo,
Sansoni, Firenze 1973, p. x: “Truly that of the ‘Middle Ages’ is a definition and periodization
[ …] that should by now be abandoned”; R. Pernoud, Pour en finir avec le Moyen Âge, Seuil,
Paris 1977; J. Heers, Le Moyen Âge: une imposture, Perrin, Paris 1992; G. Sergi, L’idea di medioe-
vo. Fra storia e senso comune, Donzelli, Roma 2005. A well-known list of ten ways of repre-
senting the Middle Ages was written by Umberto Eco: Dreaming of the Middle Ages, in Travels
in Hyperreality, Picador, London 1987, pp. 61–72 (original edition: Dieci modi di sognare il me-
dioevo, in U. Eco, Sugli specchi e altri saggi, Bompiani, Milano 1985, pp. 78–89).

Introduction 3
gap that separated them from the dream they were chasing. Then, for the first
time, they thought up the media tempestas, the intermediary period situated
between antiquity and its re-naissance, between the ancient world and the
modern one. A middle age, totally unknown to those who found themselves
within it and who—a detail always worth repeating—had no conception of
being medieval men, but considered themselves “modern,” testaments to a
world that is aging, awaiting its final redemption. Few were the medieval men
conscious of living in the Middle Ages: among them, the Duke of Auge. But he
was capable of time travel, and his creator, Raymond Queneau, loved to play
with words and dreams.3
“An empty between two fulls,” from the fifteenth century onward, the Middle
Ages have changed shape and meaning like no other epoch.4 While the classi-
cal has consistently represented, even through a thousand regenerations, an
ideal of universality, purity, balance, and perfection, the medieval, in a precise
dialectic with the classical, has signified, for those who imagined it, a universe of
alternative possibilities, charged with ambiguous values.5 This contrast be-
tween the medieval and the classical represents the first pair of oppositions that
must be taken into account. Every historical period, in fact, describes itself
based on the judgment it pronounces on the past and the way it represents it. It
has been written that the rebirth of the classical represents “the rhythmical
form” of European cultural history.6 The classical is born, dies, is born again, al-
ways in new forms: as was the case, to cite only the most notable examples, in the
Renaissance and in Neoclassicism. To grasp the complete sense of this rhythmic
3 R. Queneau, Between Blue and Blue, trans. B. Wright, The Bodley Head, London 1967 (original
edition: Les fleurs bleues, Gallimard, Paris 1965). A similar thing happens in the film The Lion
in Winter (1968), when Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine says to her husband Henry ii, “It’s 1183
and we’re barbarians!” The philosopher Étienne Gilson recalled in 1973, at the age of 89, a
cartoon that had made him laugh so much in his youth, an English bowman who tearfully
says to his beloved, “Adieu, ma chère femme, je pars pour la Guerre des Cent Ans” (“Goodbye,
my dear wife, I’m leaving for the Hundred Years’ War”): É. Gilson, Le Moyen Âge comme “saec-
ulum modernum,” in V. Branca (ed.), Concetto, storia, miti e immagini cit., pp. 1–10: 1.
4 M. Montanari, L’invenzione del medioevo, in Id., Storia medievale, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2002,
pp. 268–279: 269.
5 S. Settis, The Future of the “Classical,” trans. Allan Cameron, Polity Press, Cambridge-Malden
2006 (original edition: Futuro del classico, Einaudi, Torino 2004). See also Lord Acton’s remark
(1859), quoted until recently on the homepage of the journal “Studies in Medievalism”: “Two
great principles divide the world, and contend for the mastery, antiquity and the middle ages.
These are the two civilizations that have preceded us, the two elements of which ours is
composed. All political as well as religious questions reduce themselves practically to this.
This is the great dualism that runs through our society.”
6 Cf. S. Settis, The Future of the “Classical” cit., p. 76, which analyzes this definition proposed by
Ernst Howald in 1948.

4 Introduction
odel, the Middle Ages must be placed in the middle. In the transitional phase
m
between the birth and rebirth of the classical, there can be found a third age
that is, indeed, the Middle Ages. The play on words helps us to better under-
stand the reasoning: our idea of the “Middle Ages” is opposed to that of the
“classical” in a number of ways: in a certain sense it is a reaction to it. One who
is in love with the classical shuns and condemns the medieval; one who, on the
other hand, was until recently fascinated by classical forms and ideals, throws
her- or himself head first into the dream of the medieval, unearthing those
values that in being seen as subversive are all the more attractive. If the classical
is the cradle of rationality, which produces philosophy and law, the medieval
serves as the symbol of a positive irrationality, which produces poetry and sen-
timent. If the classical is the foundation of the idea of universality, the medi-
eval is seen as the root of national identity, as the point of departure for the
differentiation between gentes, as the forge of myth understood as the authen-
tic expression of an entire people. If the classical is the time and place of the
sunny civilizations of the Mediterranean, the medieval becomes the time and
place of the Northern civilizations, of the night and the moon. Finally, if the
classical is the time of slavery, the medieval will be the time of individual lib-
erty, of barbarian vitality. Thus, the anti-classical medieval becomes, itself, a
classical canon, and the Nibelungenlied, the medieval epic considered to be the
origin of a nation, is transformed into the “Teutonic Iliad” of Romantic
Germany.7
Just as a community’s sense of identity often starts by inventing an enemy,
so the very idea of the Middle Ages has acquired its meaning in opposition to
another. The one epoch and the other can exist only in contrast: there is no
medieval without Renaissance, but the reverse is also true. This reasoning is
central, because it shows that the Middle Ages as a concept (and above all as
a political concept) is born under the sign of opposition. Our idea of the Mid-
dle Ages acquires, however, an extra connotation, of contrast not only with
“antiquity,” but also with “modernity.” This latter, due to its equivalence with
the concept of “change,” is considered to be generally positive from a progres-
sive perspective and generally negative from a reactionary one. Opposition in
the name of medievalism can assume a reactionary character when it turns
to the Middle Ages to recover or create a tradition, or it can have a revolu-
tionary character, when it permeates a movement of protest that has a need
for medieval symbols in which to find an example of social solidarity and
7 H. De Boor and K. Bartsch (eds.), Das Nibelungenlied, Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1956; L. Manci-
nelli (ed.), I Nibelunghi, Einaudi, Torino 20062. On the classical-medieval opposition, see also
Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge, Boutique de l’Histoire, Paris 20022, pp. 19–22.

Introduction 5
rebellion against the establishment. From a historical perspective, the medi-

eval as a metaphor and mirror of the reaction or revolution constitutes the
keystone of an interpretative framework that continues all the way up to our
day and age.8
The uses of the idea of the Middle Ages as a golden age to dream of and pos-
sibly reproduce in the current day are many and radically different among
themselves, even as they shade one into another: anarchist, progressive, reac-
tionary, conservative, nationalist, secessionist, Europeanist, racist, ecological,
existentialist, religious…The vessel is so vast that one might ask oneself if it
even makes sense to seek out an internal logic, or if instead this attempt at
conceptual reordering belongs only to the specific intellectual habits of those
who who find themselves reimagining the Middle Ages daily and seek to ren-
der it comprehensible. The object that we struggle to capture with our woe-
fully blurry gaze could be compared to a constellation. Stars separated by un-
fathomable stellar distances acquire a shape only thanks to the observer’s
point of view. The stars don’t know each other. They have no conception of the
logic that unites them. The nocturnal navigator seeks a route across the sea us-
ing the sky and from there he begins to tell stories of gods. As so happens now:
outside of metaphor, the subject we are preparing to introduce is, to all appear-
ances, free of connections. But the point of view of this book is that of a curi-
ous medievalist, who seeks to make sense of the word Medieval. It is precisely
this word, a fixed reference point, that allows us to propose a unifying interpre-
tation. The medieval necessarily presents a broad frame of reference, as it is
seen as the other elsewhere that contrasts with modernity and exceeds it by
way of the nostos, the return voyage that, for three millennia now, has accom-
panied our Western existence to bring us back home. The idea of the Middle
Ages is an essential and inextricable part of the discourse of the idea of the
8 The concept of the Medieval Era as a metaphor, allegory, or “mirror” of modernity appears
often. See e.g. B. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Alfred
A. Knopf, New York 1978; F. Cardini, Medievisti “di professione” e revival neomedievale, in Il
sogno del medioevo cit., pp. 33–52: 41; R. Bordone, Il medioevo nell’immaginario dell’Ottocento
italiano, in Studi medievali e immagine del medioevo fra Ottocento e Novecento, monograph
issue of “Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo,” 100 (1995–1996), pp.
109–149: 115; E. Menestò (ed.), Il medioevo: specchio ed alibi. Proceedings of the conference
held on the occasion of the second edition of the International Ascoli Piceno Prize (Ascoli
Piceno, May 13–14, 1988), CISAM, Spoleto 19972; G.M. Spiegel, The Changing Faces of American
Medievalism, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.-21. Jahr-
hundert/Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th-21st Century/Usages et Mesusages du Moyen
Âge du xixe au xxie siecle, Wilhelm Fink, München 2009, pp. 45–53: 45; K.P. Fazioli, The Mir-
ror of the Medieval. An Anthropology of the Western Historical Imagination, Berghahn Books,
New York 2017.

6 Introduction
modern.9 Which is obvious, if we think about it for even a moment, in so far as

the concept of the medieval was forged precisely to perform this dialectical
function: first, in the Renaissance era, then in the Romantic era, invoking it as
a brother in arms to represent the renewal of the spirit.
Two general interpretations have emerged from the ternary opposition
Classical/Medieval/Modern, ones to which we still turn when we need to as-
sign a value judgment to the Middle Ages. The legacies of the Renaissance,
onto which was grafted the culture of the Protestant Reformation, then the
Enlightenment, and finally Marxism, have forged the negative idea of the Mid-
dle Ages. An age of barbarians, who destroyed the greatest civilization of all
time, the negative Medieval Era is an opaque, irrational, and malignant place,
degenerate to the highest degree in its inability to permit development, lacking
the capacity to produce true art, profoundly unjust in its social systems found-
ed on harassment and oppression, devoid of any state entity worthy of the
name, brutal and violent, pounded by the wrath of rival factions, stunted by
a superstitious religiosity that burned hordes of innocent people at the stake.
It is, in short, the Middle Ages of the ius primae noctis, of serfdom, corrupt
popes, witches, massacres, famine, and pestilence.
On the other hand, the cultural legacy that originates mainly from the Cath-
olic Counter-Reformation, followed by French and Italian erudition of the
modern age and by English literature, and finally culminating in the Romantic
movement, has molded the positive idea of the Middle Ages. This one is a uni-
verse of symbols: it is the time of castles and fairy tales, of magic and knights,
of damsels with pointed hats, of troubadours, bards, and jesters, of industrious
merchants, of the regeneration of a civilization founded on the “eternal values”
of country, faith, and heroism.10
In the same way, and for partially overlapping reasons, the partition be-
tween the negative and positive Middle Ages is partly attributable to distinct
political and historiographical positions, definable respectively as progressive
9 In general, see J. Le Goff, Storia e memoria, Einaudi, Torino 1977, partially reproduced in
Id., History and Memory, Columbia University Press, New York 1996, a comprehensive
study on the idea of time, and particularly on the opposing pairs of progressive/
reactionary, past/present, ancient/modern. See especially pp. 144–149, 204–211, 321–328 of
the Italian edition.
10 The contemporary bibliography on the developments of the representation of the Middle
Ages is quite vast, starting with G. Falco, La polemica sul medioevo, Biblioteca storica sub-
alpina, Torino 1933 (n. ed. Guida, Napoli 1988). Today, many textbooks on medieval history
dedicate a chapter, initial or final, to the “idea of the Middle Ages,” as it is now a common
opinion that even the cultural representation of a phenomenon is a historical datum, and
thus open to historical analysis.

Introduction 7
and conservative, or rather “left” and “right.” Seen from the left, the Medieval is
a fundamentally negative period; seen from the right, it is a fundamentally
positive period.11 This strict partition is crude and imprecise, since the points
of contact, contamination, and inversion are frequent and significant. Without
a shadow of a doubt, there exists a Medieval Era seen as positive by progressive
movements and, vice versa, as negative by conservative movements. These po-
sitions are often reversed when comparing Anglo-Saxon to Continental cul-
tures: we will have plenty of time to cover this later. Nevertheless, despite the
numerous and well-deserved distinguos, the theoretical partition is useful for
sketching out the analysis in general terms and understanding the reception
the Medieval Era has had in contemporary politics, from as early as the end of
the Eighteenth century.
The paths that lead through the Middle Ages to day or night do not run par-
allel, but constantly intersect, because the very word “medieval” is ephemeral:
indeed, we might say it functions precisely because of its ambiguity. Thus, it is
easy to chance upon symbols or tropes that are considered medieval, but that
permit us say and think things that are diametrically opposed. Knights, for
instance, are pure and spotless, or else they are bloodthirsty marauders; they
are crusaders filled with a steadfast Christian faith, or else they are colonizers
with no scruples; or, along with bards and druids, they are the last testaments
to an ancient, pre-Christian, pagan knowledge. The pathways cross each other
even in people’s consciousnesses, since there is no guarantee that one who ap-
proaches medievalism today does so with political intentions. Those who read
fantasy novels or listen to goth music, who visit Merlin’s castle at an amuse-
ment park with the same joy and curiosity as when they visit the European
castles of Pierrefonds, Neuschwanstein, and Gradara, those who play role-
playing games set in medieval scenarios, who remain fascinated by the myste-
rious Templars, their secrets, and their treasures, who lead a virtual Second Life,
along with so many other pseudo-friends connected on the Internet, nam-
ing themselves after damsels, dragons, and knights, building castles, artisanal
boutiques, or ships that set sail into the unknown—all of them are, generally,
passionate for that ancient time, which they recreate in their minds with the
aid of stereotyped descriptions. Their principal sentiment—entirely pre-
political—is that of nostalgia: nostalgia for green lands, for authentic passions,
and, in the absolute virtuality of their lives, for a true life, for a lost Holy Grail.
The Medieval Era, from Romanticism on, is certainly a vessel for nostalgia,
without necessarily having a political connotation. Nostalgia, on the other
hand, becomes political when combined with a plan to return to the past:
11 Cf. for instance, in France, Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 199–201.

8 Introduction
when the laudatio temporis acti (“praise of times past”) that men experience
just after growing out of their youth translates into a reactionary impulse. Ulti-
mately, the figures that populate our idea of the Medieval, witches and knights
for instance, may or may not be imbued with a political significance: on their
own, they remain inert.
These are not the only roads that lead to the idea of the Middle Ages: other
interpretive paths intersect with them, forming an even more complex map.
In fact, it is even possible to imagine the Middle Ages through another pair of
opposites: as a “before” and as an “elsewhere.” The Medieval Era is often inter-
preted as one that is located at the origin of modernity. Situated in a precise
period of Western history, a prior time, it contains within itself, in potentia, the
elements that will later find their mature expression in the institutions and
societies of the following eras. For example, the Middle Ages as the age of
the foundation and dawn of the West can be considered the mold in which the
Franks become French, and the Teutons Germans, in which the nation and the
state start to identify with each other, in which social classes and the very idea
of Europe are formed. To think of the Medieval Era in this way means attribut-
ing to it a precise meaning within the course of history, understood as an
ongoing process of construction and becoming. In this case, we cannot formu-
late any too-rigid distinction between the thought of the right—conservative
or reactionary—and the left—progressive or revolutionary: seen from one
side or the other, the Medieval Era is considered part of a more or less teleo-
logical course, but nevertheless felt to be necessary. A conservative will main-
tain that the great Middle Ages must be exalted and imitated, and will per-
ceive the echoes of ancient traditions in the institutions of his/her time—the
state, the country, the Church, the monarchy; while a progressive thinker will
maintain that the grim Middle Ages must be replaced, but not necessarily for-
gotten, as it remains an undeniable part of the progress of social liberation:
without the peasant and artisan revolts, without the heretical movements,
without Robin Hood, Cecco Angiolieri, and François Villon, we would never
have reached the revolutions that gave rise to democracy. Right and left, in
short, are not averse to what Bloch called “the idol of origins,”12 and both can
be Darwinian in their application of historical evolutionism, adapted to the
concept of the progressive civilization of societies, states, and individuals: in
a word, of humanity.
Alongside the idea of the Middle Ages as a historical time “of before,” the
precondition and origin of the current world, is another vision—ahistorical,
12 M. Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. P. Putnam, Manchester University Press, Manches-
ter 1992 (original edition: Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien, in “Cahiers des
Annales,” 1949, n. 3).

Introduction 9
mythical, and symbolic—that conceives of the Medieval as an elsewhere, a

place that has no relation to the contemporary.13 Its chronological span, its lo-
cation between antiquity and modernity, holds no importance: it is merely the
receptacle that gives shape to the imaginary. It is the hinterland that, not nec-
essarily linked to political interests, gave birth to the Gothic romance, colored
the traditional fairy tale, and generated fantasy literature and the recent obses-
sion with the Grail. Yet it is also the Medieval Era that, permeated with political
intentions, generates the myth of the primordial hero and the solitary knight,
of the existential and antagonistic path closed to the uninitiated—that is, the
Middle Ages of so-called “Tradition.” And it is the perfect time when men lived
in immediate contact with nature not yet contaminated by ecological disas-
ters, in a direct relationship with the sacred, whether it be understood in Chris-
tian, ecological, or neo-pagan terms. This is the time/not-time of numerous
modernizing and decontextualizing interpretations, to which the course of
history is only an accessory.
The fact remains that the Middle Ages cause some discomfort.14 Its anti-
nomic value endures, unresolved, in every one of us and in our common West-
ern sentiment. Whoever engages with the word Medieval attributes to it, time
after time, one of the two value judgments evinced above. The Medieval Era of
fairs and turreted castles collides in our mind with that of witches and heretics
burned at the stake. And, pardon the triviality, the Medieval Era of “courtly
love” is exactly the opposite of the one contained in the expression, “I’ma get
medieval on yo’ ass,” a line from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) that
has become synonymous with the most brutal torture.15
The Medieval Era becomes classical by being anti-classical; modern
or a nti-modern, reactionary, revolutionary, or even anarchist; positive or nega-
tive; political or apolitical; a requisite before or the absolute elsewhere:
such, t herefore, is the nature of this extraordinary, Janus-faced word. Political
13 On the Middle Ages as a “fundamentally ahistorical myth” see R. Bordone, Lo specchio di

Shalott. L’invenzione del medioevo nella cultura dell’Ottocento, Liguori, Napoli 1993, pp. 11–
16: 12. See also G. Sergi, Antidoti all’abuso della storia. Medioevo, medievisti, smentite, Liguo-
ri, Napoli 2010, p. 361.
14 P. Delogu, Introduzione alla storia medievale, il Mulino, Bologna 20032, p. 14: “The Middle
Ages as a historical period, or, if you will, as a mythic image, constitutes a problem for the
modern consciousness; that is, it causes discomfort, presenting itself alternately as a
period to be exorcised or an ideal to be sought.”
15 See C. Dinshaw, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre and Post-modern,
Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 1999, pp. 183–206. I also found, in a blog, the sugges-
tion that the adjective “medieval” could easily acquire a negative connotation thanks to
its rhyme with the word “evil”: Ch. Hodgson, Podictionary, the Podcast for Word Lovers,
http://podictionary.com/?p=533 (cons. Feb. 2, 2010) (the page was found to be inactive
when cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

10 Introduction
medievalism draws liberally from all of these representations. This has been
happening for over two centuries, since the end of the 1700s, but what is pre-
sented in this book is much more limited in time. I intend to discuss only the
way in which, in recent decades, people have made recourse to the “common
sense of the Medieval,” conferring on it a hundred different political connota-
tions. The choice of this chronological segment is dictated by two consider-
ations. The first is the fact that the Medieval Era, after a few decades of relative
dormancy, returned to the spotlight at the end of the 1960s. Since then, its po-
litical uses have not diminished, but on the contrary have been amplified by a
sudden mutation of the global political scene and by epochal events carved
symbolically into our collective memory by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
and the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001. For fifty years now, the
Middle Ages can be found everywhere. A negative meaning is attributed to it,
in so far as it is an intuitive metaphor for a civilization about to collapse, or
positive, seeking answers in the exempla of the past, be they druids, knights or
valiant Lombards.
The second reason for my choice of this chronological segment is that since
the early 1970s historians—and medievalists in particular—have become
aware of the cultural appeal lurking in contemporary medievalism (and not
merely in the well-known phenomenon of nineteenth-century medievalism)
and have begun to observe this phenomenon attentively. The accelerate con-
struction of medievalism in our years therefore finds a precise correspondence
in historiographical analysis. In the case of this book, such analysis is intended
to be neither apologetic nor d estructive, but rather to involve, as much as pos-
sible, constructive criticism.
The chapters that follow are concerned with the principal macro-
interpretations of the idea of the Middle Ages. The first two follow the traces of
the Middle Ages represented as a time of darkness and oppression, while the
other ten address the theme of the Middle Ages conceived as the morning light
at the dawn of contemporary political identities. All these chapters will discuss
how and why we have constructed these cultural representations for ourselves;
since, let us be clear, we are almost always operating within “inventions of tra-
dition” and “imagined communities,” anthropological concepts first embraced
by historians in the early 1980s.16 Condensed to the extreme, the former con-
cept expresses the awareness that some Western traditions we believe to be
centuries or millennia old are in reality much more recent, generally dating
16 I refer to E.J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.) The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge 1983; B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Ori-
gins and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London 1983, n. ed. 1991.

Introduction 11
back only to the nineteenth century. The latter can instead be summarized in
the observation that the identity of organized communities is, for the most
part, a cultural artifact, the fruit of the activity of leading intellectuals and of
the popularization of the media, which together lead to mass movements that
follow a modular form always identifiable despite its adaptation to different
social situations. Communities become aware of themselves only when they
have been described.
Contemporary historiography is fully aware of the foundational role of in-
terpretation and of how the construction of memory is an artificial instrument
that can produce falsehoods. Both the individual who remembers, and the so-
ciety that passes down, reconstructs, or even invents the memory of itself,
choose, select, interpret, explain, forget, rediscover, magnify, reorganize, switch
the order of anteriority and posterity, determine and mingle cause and effect,
construct or destroy, confer a meaning and a direction to history, even when
history, as the song goes, “un senso non ce l’ha.”17 Maybe nature does not make
leaps (non facit saltus), but memory certainly does. This is why studies of the
trickery camouflaging the use and abuse of the great word “history”, are numer-
ous today.18 Precisely for these reasons, medieval scholars cannot help but
pose questions about the “common sense of the Middle Ages” and about its
uses in politics. For such perceptions, which fully contribute to forming our
complete idea of that period, even when they are fictions, falsehoods, or inven-
tions of traditions, are partly the fault of historians themselves. And most im-
portantly, they have real, concrete consequences.
This line of reasoning directly affects the task of those who are accustomed
to discussing the sources produced during the medieval millennium. Medie-
valists themselves are holding a winning hand, since they are in a position
to establish comparisons between the Medieval Era that emerges from the
17 V. Rossi, Un senso, 2004: “Voglio trovare un senso a questa storia / anche se questa storia
un senso non ce l’ha” (“I want to make sense of this history / even if this history makes no
sense”).
18 Some examples, not necessarily centered around the Middle Ages: D. Lowenthal, Pos-
sessed by the Past. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, The Free Press, New York
1996; U. Fabietti and V. Matera, Memoria e identità. Simboli e strategie del ricordo, Meltemi,
Roma 1999; M. Sanfilippo, Storia e immaginario storico nella rete e nei media più tradizio
nali, 2001, http://dspace.unitus.it/handle/2067/25 (cons. Apr. 28, 2019); J. Ryan, Cultures of
Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves, Routledge, New York 2003; E. Traverso, Il passato:
istruzioni per l’uso. Storia, memoria, politica, Ombre Corte, Verona 2006; S. Pivato, Vuoti di
memoria. Usi e abusi della storia nella vita pubblica italiana, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007;
M. Caffiero and M. Procaccia (eds.), Vero e falso. L’uso politico della storia, Donzelli, Roma
2008; L. Canfora, La storia falsa, Rizzoli, Milano 2010; G. Sergi, Antidoti all’abuso della sto-
ria cit.

12 Introduction
sources they analyze, and the common sense of the Middle Ages that they find
expressed in contemporary society. Having developed efficacious terms of
comparison, they find themselves equipped to recognize the differences, con-
tradictions, and distortions, and even to grant them a significance in historical
terms.19
Ultimately, this book is about what Erasmus of Rotterdam called opiniones,
which are not the reality of things. As Folly says, eulogizing itself, it is opin-
ions, not reality, that grant man happiness.20 But also, not uncommonly,
unhappiness.
19 Among the most significant texts on instrumentalized interpretations of the Middle Ages
determined by political intents, and with which we will weave a continuous dialog in
these pages, are: G. Sergi, L’idea di medioevo cit.; Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit.;
P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe, Princeton University Press,
Princeton 2002; F. Cardini, Templari e templarismo. Storia, mito, menzogne, Il Cerchio ini
ziative editoriali, Rimini 2005; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail. The Quest for the
Middle Ages, Hambledon Continuum, New York 2007; J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch
und Missbrauch cit., which collects the proceedings of a meeting held in Budapest, June
30-July 11, 2003, and March 30-April 2, 2005; G. Scarre, R. Conningham (eds.), Appropriat-
ing the Past. Philosophical Perspectives on the Practice of Archeology, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 2013. We are still waiting for the acts of some recent conferences; among
them: Medievalism. 22nd International Conference at Western Ontario, London (ON, Cana-
da), 4–6 October 2007, partially published in J.M. Toswell (ed.), The Year’s Work in Medie-
valism, 2008, Wipf & Stock Publishers, Eugene (OR) 2009; Medievalism, Colonialism, Na-
tionalism: A Symposium, University of California Riverside, November 7–8, 2008; The
Middle Ages in the Modern World, University of St Andrew, 24–28 June 2013, partially pub-
lished in B. Bildhauer, Chris Jones (eds.), The Middle Ages in the Modern World cit.; The
Middle Ages in the Modern World, University of Lincoln, 29 June-2 July 2015; University of
Manchester, 28 June-1 July 2017; John Cabot University-École française de Rome, Rome,
21–24 November 2018. In Italy, there are two gatherings where political medievalism is the
object of analysis: the annual The Middle Ages Among Us conference (Il Medioevo fra noi),
organized in Urbino and Gradara by the University of Urbino, and the Festival of the Mid-
dle Ages (Festival del Medioevo) in Gubbio. I have had the opportunity to test some of the
considerations contained in this book (and above all to receive rich suggestions) during
discussions at lectures and seminars delivered between 2008 and 2011 in Italy, the United
States, and Hungary, and, since the 2011 release of the original Italian edition of this book,
in Catalunia, Portugal, Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Mexico, and
South Africa.
20 “Nimium enim desipiunt, qui in rebus ipsis felicitatem hominis sitam existimant. Ex
opinionibus ea pendet” (“Those who maintain that human happiness derives from the
thing itself are fools. It depends on opinion”): Erasmus of Rotterdam, Encomium Moriae
sive declamatio in laudem Stultitiae [1509], apud Andr. Cloucquium, Lugduni Batavorum
1624, p. 66 (Engl. ed.: The Praise of Folly, ed. Clarence H. Miller, Yale University Press, New
Haven-London 1979).

Chapter 1
The Neo-Medieval West
On the twenty-fifth of September, twelve hundred and sixty-four, at break

of day, the Duke of Auge appeared at the summit of the keep of his castle,
there to consider, be it ever so little, the historical situation. It was some-
what confused. A few odd remnants of the past were still lying around
here and there, rather messily. On the banks of a nearby gully two
Huns were camping; quite near them a Gaul, a Haeduan, perhaps, was
boldly immersing his feet in the fresh, running water. On the horizon
were outlined the flabby silhouettes of tired Romans, nether Norse-
men, old Francs, and Christmas Carolingians. A few Normans were drink-
ing calvados.
R. QUENEAU, Between Blue and Blue (1965)
“What is this, the Middle Ages?” is a comment that may pass our lips any time
we’re faced with a case of injustice, misappropriation, inefficiency, backward-
ness, obtuseness, ignorance, obscurantism, prevarication, or violence. The met-
aphor of the age of steel serves as an enduring metric for the infamy of the
modern world. Mass exterminations, pogroms against the Jews, and the “clash
of civilizations” between Islam and the West are colored by a sinister déjà vu of
the Dark Ages of our progenitors.
Even when dealing with our little daily annoyances, the Medieval Era rushes
to our aid in constructing similes. For example, in Italy, if you want to critique
a university (an institution, incidentally, that has its roots in the twelfth cen-
tury), you call the professors “barons,” while the places where they exercise
their dominion—faculties, departments, institutes—become veritable fiefs in
your eyes.1 And this is because “feudal system” is synonymous with “unjust sys-
tem.” If, however, a diligent traffic cop is hiding with his radar gun behind a
bush along a deserted straightaway, to write you up a hefty fine for speeding,
even then our imagination makes us weave a comparison with the unjust lev-
ies, the highway tolls, the harassment and vexations of those legalized bandits
that were medieval lords. All this, naturally, has a touristic feel: in Europe, any
self-respecting castle must instill terror, keep secrets, have a torture chamber
1 One example: Baroni e “feudi”, la denuncia degli studenti An, “il Giornale,” 30 Oct. 2007, http://
www.ilgiornale.it/news/baroni-e-feudi-denuncia-degli-studenti.html (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

14 Chapter 1
and maybe a few trap doors, gears, shackles, cleavers, and chastity belts. Only
once you’ve left and gotten back to the cars and trucks can you begin to breathe
again.
The cliché that the Medieval Era is a shadowy land has illustrious origins
and remains the most diffuse today by a wide margin. So much so that even its
Romantic revision by which the Middle Ages were instead a time of great civi-
lization, is so worn out that it has become the necessary complement to the
former in casual conversation. If we want to simplify as much as possible the
way that we have represented the Middle Ages as darkness for centuries, we
must make exclusive reference to two historical moments; its origins and its
ending. As everyone knows, the Medieval Period begins with the barbarian in-
vasions of the fifth century and ends with the great crisis of the fourteenth
century. At its debut we find the death of the Roman Empire, the victorious
onslaught of cultures held to be inferior, the population collapse, the decline of
cities, people fleeing to the country, the economy contracting to a mere subsis-
tence level; at the end, we find the Hundred Years’ War and the infinite, devas-
tating skirmishes led by bands of mercenaries, economic depression, recurring
famines, the Inquisition, witch hunts, and, above all, the plague. Sandwiched
between the barbarians and the plague, the Medieval Era is indeed terrifying:
it is a time of brutality, danses macabres, flagellants, tortures, and fear of the
imminent end of the world.
This idea of the Middle Ages (which comes from the Renaissance, and espe-
cially the Enlightenment) was formed by a process that has only taken the be-
ginning and ending of the medieval millennium into account, refusing to con-
sider anything in between even worth mentioning. It is a very effective
ideological construction and mental representation. It seems, however, to be
as if, in describing the life of a man, we limited ourselves to mentioning his
mother’s death in childbirth and then, immediately afterward, his decrepit old
age. As Francesco Milizia (1725–1798) did, with an extraordinary ellipsis of sev-
en centuries, when he described Gothic art as “a crudeness introduced into the
arts after the ruin of the Roman Empire, which was destroyed by the Goths,
and thus it is called Gothic.”2
The interpretation of the Medieval Era as an age of darkness is still useful
today—perhaps especially today—in expressing a great variety of lamenta-
tions, all converging on the basic idea that the age we live in is somehow unfor-
tunately comparable to that one. We are dealing with shared interpretations
that have a considerable impact on public action and, consequently, determine
2 F. Milizia, Dizionario delle belle arti del disegno, [Remondini], Bassano 1797, vol. i, p. 270, ad
vocem “Gotico.”

The Neo-Medieval West 15
the idea of the Middle Ages in a fairly definite way. One case, that of the so-
called “New Medievalism,” even achieves a systematization of the modern/
medieval relationship in the arena of political theory. So impressive is this case
in its propositions and conclusions that it alone would be enough to justify an
analysis of the whole phenomenon.3
The sensation that the world is returning to a new Middle Ages is extraordi-
narily popular in our day and age, and all it takes is a trip to the internet to see
it. Aside from talk of the crisis of public administration and absence of moral
values, the authors of countless blogs and discussion forums are fond of em-
bellishing their considerations with the most slavish references to medieval
barbarism, to the rape, war, and violence of that time. The same even happens
with distinguished personalities who write for important papers. Two cases
readily come to mind regarding the tough questions of recent years: one can
read, for example, that the Mafia mirrors a system of power, and controls its
territory, in a way that is simultaneously barbarian and feudal,4 or that such
developing and overpopulated countries as China are acquiring cultivable
land in Africa and have established a new kind of serfdom there.5
This way of thinking, as I have said, is not actually new, but rather may be
the most ancient of all, since the idea of the Middle Ages was born as the bas-
tard child of history. And therefore, perhaps paradoxically, to speak ill of the
Middle Ages is the most philologically appropriate attitude. To say that the
world is getting worse year after year is nothing new. This trope, which origi-
nated in classical antiquity, has been a constant theme throughout the twenti-
eth century, one made quite palpable by its disasters: the World Wars, coloni-
zation and decolonization, the terror of the atom bomb, all the way up to such
more recent and commonly shared fears as hunger, the under-development of
the Southern hemisphere, pollution, the loss of traditions and local identities,
the globalization of productive and economic systems, the clash of civiliza-
tions, global warming, the hole in the ozone layer, the death of the forest, the
emergence of unknown diseases and the return of others that were believed
eradicated, at least in the West.
3 Cf. infra, Chapter 2.

4 F. Alberoni, Se lo Stato ha il consenso è piu forte dei barbari. L’esempio virtuoso della Sicilia negli
anni Novanta, in “Corriere della Sera,” June 9, 2008, p. 1. It’s worth remembering that between
the adjectives “barbarian” and “feudal” lie five centuries of history.
5 D. Quirico, Africa in vendita in cambio di cibo. La Fao denuncia: rischio catastrofe. Milioni di
ettari ad arabi e cinesi per coltivazioni intensive di riso, in “La Stampa,” May 26, 2009; E. Vigna,
2009, Asia e Africa: la nuova lotta alla servitù della gleba, in “Corriere della Sera Magazine,”
xxiii (July 23, 2009), n. 29, p. 69.

16 Chapter 1
Even the grave economic crisis in which we are currently floundering has a
strong odor of the Middle Ages. In June 2010, Minister Giulio Tremonti, at-
tempting to simplify the legal panorama by modifying two articles of the Ital-
ian Constitution in favor of recovery, explained that we are not in a position to
operate competitively today because we are hindered by a neo-medieval “regu-
latory madness”:
As in the old Middle Ages, the whole economy was crippled by duties, by
entrance and exit tolls at the city gates, ports, and crossings, so that our
current territory is populated by an endless number of legal totems […].
The true Middle Ages are over, as such. But the new Middle Ages, which
manifests as the juridico-democratic caricature of the previous one, car-
ries us off to a sweet death.6
Testaments to a disgusted attitude toward the world we live in can be found in

any age, and are even quite common in medieval literature. They have, how-
ever, become ever more pervasive since the First World War. The terrifying
Middle Ages of modernity is evoked on various occasions: for example by José
Ortega y Gasset, who in 1930 read the phenomenon of mass rebellions in the
twentieth century as a new “vertical” barbarian invasion—that is, originating
from within and thus self-destructive for society.7 But the general reception of
this kind of imaginary Middle Ages is more recent, as far as I can tell datable to
the second half of the Sixties and particularly to the early Seventies—in other
words, to the period when the Middle Ages returned to the attention and curi-
osity of an ever broadening public, a period corresponding to the last years of
the postwar Boom and the first economic, financial, and energy crisis in the
West after decades of nearly uninterrupted development.
Among the consequences of this crisis in the idea of progress was a sym-
bolic “return to the Middle Ages,” which proceeded in two branching direc-
tions. The first is a sort of refuge in the Middle Ages, seen as a heroic, fairy-
tale elsewhere to pine over and dream about: once one of the engines of the
6 The text appears in the speech that accompanies the plan for the new constitutional law for
modifying articles 41 and 118 of the Italian Constitution. See, Tremonti spiega come uscire dal
medioevo per liberare le imprese, in “Il Sole 24 ore,” June 26, 2010, www.ilsole24ore.com/art/
notizie/2010-06-26/usciamo-medioevo-liberare-imprese-080300.shtml?uuid=AYhEiQ2B
(cons. Apr. 28, 2019). But see especially the harsh comment by Emanuele Conte, professor of
History of Italian Law: Id., Medioevo negato, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuAqOVvFzCA
(cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
7 J. Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, trans. A. Kerrigan, University of Notre Dame Press,
Notre Dame (IN) 1985 (original edition: La rebelion de las masas, in “Revista de Occidente,”
viii (1930).

omantic movement of the 1800s, it has come to drive twentieth- and twenty-
R
first century fantasy fiction and film—which we will speak of at length later.
The other direction is the terror of modernity perceived as neo-medieval: this
is what we are talking about in these early chapters. The why is clear: hunger,
plague, and war—the terrifying triad of Furies that we attribute to the Middle
Ages—reappear in the flesh as “world hunger,” aids (along with sars, mad
cow disease, anthrax attacks, swine flu…), and naturally the “clash of civiliza-
tions” and World War iii.
From the Seventies until now many novels, films, and comics have appeared
that straddle the line between medieval revival and science fiction, providing
us with an abundance of macabre details of the possibility of an imminent
catastrophe (atomic, economic, etc.) that will hurl us right back to the deepest
Middle Ages.8 They present dystopias, not much different from a thousand
others produced in the course of the twentieth century, that evoke alienated
societies, world wars, and apocalypses, all thrown together as necessary ingre-
dients for the representation of the Medieval in the future. In the “post-atomic”
or “apocalyptic” genre, we come full-circle and the Middle Ages return, bold
and barbaric: armed bandits, ruined cities, scattered villages, endless deserts,
humanity reduced to a subsistence living and scavenging whatever is left of the
old technology, all make up the landscape of this film typology: Soylent Green
(1973), The Ultimate Warrior (1975), The Warriors (1979), the Mad Max series
(1979–2015), Escape from New York (1981), up to Waterworld (1995) and all the
way to Doomsday (2008).9
As this is an early sketch of the adamantine idea of the Middle Ages as a
time of crisis and catastrophe, we can try to reflect more systematically on re-
cent years, when we may glimpse a sometimes asphyxiating use of the m edieval
8 R. Vacca, The Coming Dark Age, Doubleday, Garden City (NY) 1973 (original edition: Medioevo
prossimo venturo: la degradazione dei grandi sistemi, Mondadori, Milano 1972). The same par-
allelisms between a frightening 1300s and an even more terrifying 1900s are explicit in
B. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror cit.; cf. N. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works
and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century, Harper Perennial, London 1993,
p. 17. For a much more recent example in the same vein: J.H. Kunstler, The Long Emergency:
Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, Atlantic Monthly Press,
Boston 2005.
9 See V. Attolini, Cinema di Fantascienza e medioevo, in “Quaderni medievali,” viii (1983), n. 16,
pp. 137–148. (TN: Several further examples from Hollywood cinema come to mind. In Reign of
Fire (2002), human settlements struggle to survive when ancient dragons reawaken in Lon-
don; The Road (2009), based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, The Book of Eli (2010), and the
popular Walking Dead franchise (2010-present) all portray futures in which some form of
apocalyptic event has reduced humanity to a medieval existence, complete with walled city-
states connected by roads plagued with banditry.)

18 Chapter 1
metaphor. The first way we refer to the Middle Ages today is in a millenarian
key.10 In its simplest form, this concept does not give rise to any real political
theory. A huge gap lies between those who are still expecting the end of the
world from one moment to the next, and those who invented and thus deni-
grated the Middle Ages. The men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries re-
jected the Middle Ages for the mirage of an even older golden age; in the same
way, shifting our point of view, the progressive thought of the last two and a
half centuries has largely rejected the Middle Ages in pursuit of the optimistic
conviction that mankind can continually better itself. Today, however, many of
those who judge the modern age negatively, comparing it to the Middle Ages
with disgust, feel imprisoned, gripped in the coils of a dragon that seems im-
possible to escape. For them, the world is languishing in a decadence that
knows no end. We are dealing with an interesting mental attitude, as it gives us
the possibility of attempting comparisons between the way people living in
the Middle Ages thought of the future and the way many of us represent it in
our day: “Hora novissima tempora pessima sunt: vigilemus.” 11
The reference point may be that of the post-modern, with its conviction, as
popular as it is vague, of living in an age of doubt regarding modernity, pitting
the idea of decadence against the positivist, Enlightenment idea of the con-
stant progress of history and the continual perfectibility of human reason. In
the Middle Ages, people thought that “the world is aging” and that the things
considered best—the incarnation and resurrection of Christ, the height of the
Empire—had already happened. Or they also believed, as in the Viking North,
that Ragnarok, the fall of the Æsir, was imminent. For this reason, the post-
modern attitude has been, not unjustly, equated with the concept of deca-
dence that permeated Medieval society for so many centuries, establishing a
sort of equivalence between “postmodernity” and the “neo-medieval.” The use
of the Middle Ages in this vein may therefore be considered one of the ways—
not the only one, but one of the most easily understood—by which current
cultures define themselves: the medieval becomes its own interpretive catego-
ry. Franco Cardini sums up the concept in the following terms:
10 U. Eco, Dreaming of the Middle Ages cit.; G. Duby, An 1000 an 2000. Sur les traces de nos
peurs, Textuel, Paris 1995; L. Pandimiglio, “Estote parati.” L’attesa della fine del millennio, in
“Quaderni medievali,” xxv (2000), n. 49, pp. 64–80; M. Sanfilippo, Storia e immaginario
storico cit., Part 1, Ch. 6: Apocalissi di fine millennio.
11 “It is the final hour, the times are most wicked—be watchful!” Bernard of Morval, De con-
temptu mundi (1140 ca.), v. 1. (Scorn for the World: Bernard of Cluny’s De Contemptu Mundi:
The Latin Text with English Translation and an Introduction by Ronald E. Pepin, Colleagues
Press, East Lansing , MI, 1991).

In search of models, at the very least analogical, to help him more easily
understand his woes, the man of today finds them in themes and epochs
that to his culture speak the language of the “Medieval.”12
In the Seventies and Eighties, a belief in the imminent end of the world gave
rise to many cults and shaped certain currents of New Age culture. After so
many other predictions, an umpteenth apocalypse was supposed to happen in
2012 (on December 21, to be exact), the result of magnetic storms confirmed by
the Mayan calendar.13 Another one should follow in 2036, thanks to the a steroid
99942 Apophis, which will come hurtling towards the Earth—another celestial
body of ill omen, like the comets once detested by medieval chroniclers.
Two jarring moments of terror have already come to pass in the transition
from the second to the third millennium: 31 December 1999, and 11 September
2001. The fear of an imminent global catastrophe took on a medieval hue in the
months immediately prior to the dawn of the year 2000, when the horror of the
“millennium bug” (in reality a tiny computing issue due to computers that
were programmed to date years with two digits rather than four) gave rise to
fear over the fate of humanity. The alarm was sounded online back in 1998, the
work of those prophets of misfortune with which the United States swarms,
and it spread like an oil stain through the “global village.” The transition into
the third millennium triggered a veritable state of panic, provoking waves of
collective psychosis that were compared—both by those who believed in the
catastrophe and by skeptics—to the presumed terror of those men who must
have found themselves, trembling, awaiting the dawn of the year 1000. In 1999,
the Apocalypse, Joachim of Fiore, and Nostradamus came back into style. It
was a tragedy waiting to happen, not divine but man-made, a technological
breakdown that Corriere della Sera represented in its December 31, 1999, issue
with a photo on the front page of carriage drawn by a horse. On the plain of
Megiddo (the modern name of Armageddon), in the Jezreel Valley, hundreds
12 F. Cardini, Medievisti “di professione” cit., p. 47. On the relationship between the Middle
Ages and post-modernism, see especially F. Alberoni, F. Colombo, U. Eco & G. Sacco, Do
cumenti su il nuovo medioevo, Bompiani, Milano 1973; U. Eco, Dalla periferia dell’impero,
Bompiani, Milano 1977, n. ed.: Dalla periferia dell’impero. Cronache da un nuovo medioevo,
Bompiani, Milano 2003 (which also includes essays from the early 1970s); B. Holsinger, The
Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago 2005; Postmodern Medievalisms, monograph issue of “Studies in Medievalism,”
XIII (2005).
13 For example, “il Venerdì di Repubblica” titled their 1,109th issue (June 19, 2009) 2012. È la
fine del mondo (e non ho niente da mettermi) (2012. It’s the end of the world, and I have
nothing to wear). In Autumn 2009, a disaster movie called 2012 was released.

20 Chapter 1
of American Christians gathered to wage the final battle between Good and
Evil. Amid fears that bank accounts would vanish and nuclear missiles would
launch out of control, amid fireworks and champagne bubbles, 1 January 2000
arrived like any other astronomical day. The “millennium bluff,” as it soon came
to be called, made us breathe a sigh of relief much deeper than those of a thou-
sand years before, when almost the entirety of the population hadn’t the slight-
est idea in what year they were living. In Rome, the solemn celebrations of the
Catholic Jubilee came only later, a cyclical and perfect time of divine absolu-
tion, pronounced for the first time by Boniface viii in the year 1300.
The real catastrophe happened the following year. On September 11, 2001,
the Pentagon was attacked and the Twin Towers fell in New York, the result of
simultaneous terrorist attacks carried out with hijacked airplanes. This date is
so impressed on our memory as to be much more epochal than 2000: after
“September 11,” the world transformed and a new era began. For some, a new
Middle Ages. The mass of rubble, the number of casualties, the site of civic
memory that Ground Zero is today, introduce us to the most politically rele-
vant aspect of the medieval metaphor of recent years, as a perspectival center
of gravity. The fall of the Towers came unexpectedly, but was later considered
by many a sort of prophesy fulfilled, like an American apocalypse or a new
Tower of Babel. The idea of the Middle Ages might seem extraneous to all this,
but it is in fact central, operating through a theory of chronological develop-
ments. The collapse of the Towers has been interpreted as a point of no return
that brought us straight to a long-foretold “clash of civilizations” between mo-
dernity and barbarity, a global scenario that, according to post-modern thought,
has exploded so many certainties.14
One of the theories underlying this analysis is political science’s so-called
“New Medievalism,” which proposes structural analogies between the Medi-
eval and Modern Eras. This framework of thought, already well developed by
some Italian authors in the early 1970s, was formalized at the end of that de-
cade by Hedley Bull, and expanded mostly in the 1990s, to the point of becom-
ing a relatively homogeneous doctrinal system useful for explaining the fluid
evolution of international relations.15 Its strong point is the assertion that close
14 S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon &
Schuster, New York 1996. The eight “civilizations” in question would be the Chinese, Japa-
nese, Hindu, Muslim, Orthodox, Western, Latin-American, and African.
15 F. Alberoni [et al.], Documenti su il nuovo medioevo cit.; U. Eco, Dalla periferia dell’impero
cit.; H. Bull, The Anarchical Society. A Study on Order in World Politics, Columbia University
Press, New York 1977. A preview of the parallelism between the Middle Ages and moder-
nity in the realm of the privatization of public affairs is already present in V. Branca, Pre-
messa, in Id. (ed.), Concetto, storia, miti e immagini cit., pp. ix ff. Among the principal

affinities exist between the current and the premodern eras, or in other words,
between today and the Middle Ages. The latter is understood in a primarily
negative sense, as a paradigm of the break-up and non-existence of the state,
although no proponent of this doctrine would think even for a moment of a
true “return to the Middle Ages.”
There also exists a positive interpretation that determines the orientation of
political action precisely in the analogies between the medieval and the mod-
ern. In Italy this manifests as federalism in the neo-medieval sense as theo-
rized by Gianfranco Miglio and promoted by the Northern League Party (the
Lega Nord).16 This “return” can also be interpreted in a neutral way, its final
outcome depending on our behavior: thus the strict comparison between the
current European Union and the Holy Roman Empire proposed by Jan Zielon-
ka.17 From many points of view, in short, we are moving “shrimpwise,” as Um-
berto Eco puts it—in other words, backwards.18
The national and territorial state, with its sovereign jurisdiction, army, laws,
borders, economy, language, culture, leaders, and citizens is a product of the
modern age: in the Middle Ages nothing of the sort existed. The state in
the modern sense has now reached a possibly irreversible crisis, one leading
towards the dissolution of its prerogatives and functions. Other political sub-
jects unconnected to the state have become the ones who define the bal-
ance of power in economic and political terms, in a new order that remains
studies that propose the concept of New Medievalism: R. Matthews, Back to the Dark Age:
World Politics in the Late Twentieth Century, School of Foreign Service, Washington DC
1995; St. J. Kobrin, Back to the Future: Neo-medievalism and the Post-modern Digital World
Economy, in “The Journal of International Affairs,” LI (Spring 1998), n. 2, pp. 361–386;
J. Rapley, The New Middle Ages, in “Foreign Affairs,” lxxxv (May–June 2006), n. 3, pp.
95–103; A. Gamble, Regional Blocks, New Order and the New Medievalism, in M. Telò (ed.),
European Union and New Regionalism. Regional Actors and New Governance in a
P ost-hegemonic Era, Ashgate, London 2007, pp. 21–36; Ph. Williams, From the New Middle
Ages to a New Dark Age: The Decline of the State and US Strategy, in “Strategic Studies In-
stitute United States Army War College,” June 2008, https://www.globalsecurity.org/mili
tary/library/report/2008/ssi_williams.pdf (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
16 Starting with this study, which re-elaborated the jurist Carl Schmitt’s thoughts on pre-
modern and modern cultures in an original way, see for example G. Piombini, Prima dello
Stato. Il medioevo della libertà, L. Facco Editore, Treviglio 2004. On the Northern League’s
medievalism, see especially Chapters 9 and 11.
17 J. Zielonka, Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union, Oxford Univer-
sity Press, Oxford 2006. The subject is addressed in Ch. 12.
18 “A passo di gambero”: lit. “moving like a shrimp.” Cf. U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock: Hot
Wars and Media Populism, Mariner Books, New York 2008 (original edition: A passo di
gambero. Guerre calde e populismo mediatico, Bompiani, Milano 2006); today, see also
Z. Bauman, Retrotopia, Polity, Cambridge 2017.

22 Chapter 1
incomprehensible and, to many observers, tends toward anarchy. We are deal-

ing with systems in competition with one another, with fragmented, overlap-
ping, and intersecting authorities, with geographical and virtual territories not
subject to control by the res publica understood in the traditional sense. These
political subjects are peoples and nations who often do not identify with a
state or indeed have no state that represents them; they are the organizational
structures of religions, non-governmental organizations, and multinational
corporations that control politics, the economy, world finance, private armies,
economic cartels, and even drug and terrorist cartels, and any ethnic group,
movement, party, or lobby that may pop up on the political scene to lay claim
to its own role. Ultimately, the Scottish Independence Movement, unesco,
the Hague tribunal, the World Trade Organization, Greenpeace, the Anti-
globalization Movement, and Coca-Cola share the same socio-political land-
scape as the Medellin cartel and Al-Qaeda. To this situation we must also add
cyberspace—the web of telecommunications and the internet—which allows
us to view and execute any action in any part of the world, rendering the con-
cept of modern concrete borders obsolete: Rai, cnn, Al-Jazeera, Microsoft, and
Google are, inherently, political subjects. In the end, the ever more accentuat-
ed mobility of persons belonging to different cultures brings with it the prob-
lem of integration, which until recently was addressed in the sense that host
countries—that is, the old colonizers—tried to assimilate immigrants as much
as possible into their own cultural model and their own judicial order. Today,
instead, identities are recognized as multiple. Immigrants and other histori-
cally marginalized groups claim the right to express their own culture, lan-
guage, lifestyle, and religious convictions, thus creating the problem of how to
proceed when these attitudes are unexpected or run contrary to the dominant
order. The motto cuius regio, eius religio—whose realm, his religion—that
sums up the 1555 Peace of Augsburg and is confirmed in the 1648 Peace of
Westphalia (an event that theorists of international relations usually consider,
more or less erroneously, the terminus a quo of the origin of the modern state)
no longer applies–just as the absolute identity between sovereignty and terri-
tory that was declared in the treaties themselves, and that would define the
general perspective on relations between states for three and a half centuries,
no longer applies.
From all this derives a strong ambivalence towards the legitimacy of power,
the sources of legitimacy, the relationship between public and private, the very
definitions of “public” and “private,” the positive attribution of authority, and
even sovereignty itself, which can be held by political subjects of any kind, not
just by state governments.

States may falter; they may no longer be able to govern. The world vacillates
between globalization and regionalization, poles of a highly fluid geopolitical
axis. And we see how the medieval metaphor reappears, stronger than ever, to
explain the phenomenon of this apparent globalization that tends toward an-
archy. The proposed similarities between the medieval and the post-modern
are many: the absence of territorial states, the polycentrism of power, the coex-
istence of overlapping and intersecting political actors of various natures, from
monarchs and ecclesiasts to feudal lords, citizens, and “peoples,” the very no-
tion of a jurisdiction tied to a well-defined territory, the instability of the bal-
ance of power, and many more still.
A few examples will suffice to better convey what we are talking about. Just
as a large corporation today both is subject to the laws of the country in which
it operates and has the power to exert political pressure, a medieval lord may
simultaneously swear fealty to multiple suzerains and still sway their politics.
In the same way a modern state delegates some public functions to private
subjects, a medieval vassal—or rather a lord who would later become a vas-
sal—is assigned some public functions and conflates them with his own patri-
mony, privatizing the state. A typical case, in Italy as elsewhere, is that of high-
way tolls, which are accused of perpetuating the nature of “tribute,” as the
proceeds are appropriated by private companies standing in for the state, and
dealing not with citizens but with clients.
In the same way that the state is not capable of maintaining full control over
some zones (for example, the dilapidated suburban spaces of big cities that
become no-man’s lands run by criminal organizations), the dimension of ter-
ritorial non-control is the most obvious and most common in the Middle Ages:
the king has limited power and other, originally illegitimate, subjects step for-
ward. And even the solutions to the modern failure to govern the territory are
neomedieval: the same way one might hire mercenaries or “contractors” or, in
Italy and other countries, one might organize citizen patrols, in the Middle
Ages they enlisted private militias, mercenary troops, and watchmen. Or rath-
er, in the same way that some rich citizens today protect themselves from the
dangers of the outside world by enclosing their own residences or even whole
communities with walls and suitable defenses (this applies equally to the gat-
ed communities in the United States and to the to the fortified villages in Isra-
el), the Medieval Era—as everyone knows—is the time of castles and fortress-
es. And as in the High Middle Ages, the ancient imperial infrastructure—roads,
bridges, fortresses, cities, trade hubs—decays and then vanishes, the same
happens, especially in the recent years of economic crisis, to the capillary
network of infrastructure that the modern state struggles to maintain. The

24 Chapter 1
connective tissue decays and disintegrates; secondary railway lines, flag carrier
airlines, and public services in general close down (or privatize), while, on the
other hand, enormous sums are allocated for pharaonic projects with powerful
symbolic impact: miles-long bridges and high-speed trains, like great cathe-
drals among mud huts.
And again, in the same way that in the post-modern age it is no longer pos-
sible to speak of borders, in the Middle Ages borders are not solid, but nebu-
lous zones where cultures meet and melt together. Vice versa, tax havens are
such precisely because they continue to value their own internal laws, and thus
they are comparable to frontier fiefs, where (in the Early Modern Era) smug-
glers practice their trade. In the same way that corporations with their head-
quarters in one state can follow the laws of another depending on their regula-
tory practices, in the same way that drafters of international commercial
contracts may decide to apply a “neutral” law, that is, one other than that of the
state to which either party belongs, or even to submit parts of the contract to
different state laws, so in the High Middle Ages the law was personal, in that
the individual does not live according to the rules of the territory he inhabits,
but according to that of his own family and community: which is to say that in
a single judicial negotiation and in a single civil suit one may use multiple legal
systems at the same time. And finally, just as today’s “clash of civilizations” pits
Islam and the West against each other, the very same clash transpired in the
Middle Ages, the time of the Crusades.
The Medieval Era and its post-modern counterpart assume a positive value
when a constructive meaning is attributed to their dynamicity, while they as-
sume a negative value when the same concept sinks to a pejorative sense, turn-
ing into uncertainty, indeterminacy, and anarchy. From the point of view of
historians of the Middle and Early Modern Ages, these analogies are interest-
ing, but in need of some adjustment. Neo-medieval theory has adopted the
idea of the fluidity and co-presence of multiple systems and hybrid cultures
during the Middle Ages, in other words, of the Medieval Era understood as an
age in motion—an approach that is also popular in contemporary medieval
studies, following the “dissolution of the myth of the great State as a touch-
stone for expressing judgments of approval or condemnation.”19 Today, accul-
turation, dynamicity, processes of construction, and experimentation with
political systems and social orders are widely discussed.20 This is quite the
19 O. Capitani, Medioevo passato prossimo: appunti storiografici tra due guerre e molte crisi, il
Mulino, Bologna 1979, p. 263. Cf. G. Sergi, L’idea di medioevo cit., pp. 101–106.
20 G. Tabacco, Sperimentazioni del potere nell’alto medioevo, Einaudi, Torino 1993; S. Carocci
(ed.), La mobilità sociale nel medioevo, École française de Rome, Roma 2010; G. Sergi, Anti-
doti all’abuso della storia cit., Part 3: Medioevo senza chiusure.

o pposite of the backwards Middle Ages represented, for example, by the so-
called “feudal pyramid,” the marvelous structure of vassals, vavasours, and sub-
vassals that was erected in the nineteenth century and that remains a persis-
tent cliché, firmly entrenched in even my memory, thanks to the illustrations
in my primary school textbooks. The New Medievalism, however, is based on
rigid models that in practice fail to take into account the true developmental
modalities of medieval and early modern civilizations, making use of them
only as a secondary framework whose structure is determined once and for all.
Both the medieval and the early modern function as immobile concepts, even
as historical research has dramatically complicated the over-all frame of refer-
ence. The system of coalition government, defined by shifting equilibriums,
multiple subjects, informal management groups, oligarchies, and the lack of
rigid borders—even in the presence of a national state—that students of
neomedievalism attribute to the Middle Ages in clear opposition to the mod-
ern age, for the express purpose of constructing the neomedieval metaphor, is
instead a European characteristic of the entire ancien régime, in which the
peace of Westphalia is an important, but internal, event. Hence, to be more
sustainable, neomedievalism should take into account the idea of the Long
Middle Ages, which extends to both the French and Industrial Revolutions.
The period when people theorized and successfully attempted a form of gov-
ernment where everything was within the State and nothing was outside it
lasted a relatively short time, from Napoleon to the Second World War, and
even in this case there were numerous exceptions to the rule. And still today,
despite the supposed gradual breakdown of the state, the system of national
states is still quite strong—so much so that the achievement of national inde-
pendence is still a widespread political ideal. One need only look at how the
states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are configured and to
what they lay claim.21 Ultimately, neomedieval theory is crippled by the im-
measurability of the frame of reference, yet remains quite effective as a meta-
phor. If it had not trotted out the medieval with its barbaric evocations, it prob-
ably would never have worked.
21 Cf. Chapter 11.

Chapter 2
All New Barbarians and Same Old Crusaders
“Hurrah for the Holy Imperial crown!” cried Kurt.

“And down with the sultan!” replied the sentinel. “Please, though,
when you get to headquarters, do ask ‘em to send along my relief. I’m
growing roots out here!”
i. calvino, The Cloven Viscount (1951)
Here we are again in the Middle Ages: there is nothing to be pleased about.
Catastrophism and, in part, New Medievalism give a shape to the feeling of
unease and insecurity that comes from the belief that the world is no longer
what we once knew. The plunge into the darkness of the Middle Ages is, for
some, an actual fact, for others only a metaphor, but even in this second sense
it opens onto sinister meditations.
But have we all been thrown back into the Dark Ages? Of course not. “Medi-
eval” is a versatile and polysemic concept, used primarily—in political terms—
to identify an opposition. If the medieval is the negative frame of reference,
then its corresponding positive would still be modernity. In a globalized soci-
ety where everything moves and everything is simultaneous, who, then, is me-
dieval, and who modern? The former, evidently, would be those who cause
crises that make civilization regress, while the latter would be those who de-
fend their own culture and their own prosperity, and do not want to lose either
thanks to recent arrivals: they are the defenders of the classical modernity they
have crafted with their own hands. If, therefore, neomedievalism lays out the
thesis that the post-modern condition is a sort of collective return to the Mid-
dle Ages, in reality a conspicuous part of Western public opinion does not
know or does not accept this analogy, which can easily be criticised as absurd.
How can anyone think that the wealthy West is returning to the Middle Ages?
If such a return happens, the West can hardly be to blame. And if it happens,
the West must be defend itself. Precisely from these considerations arises an-
other usage of our political metaphor.
This time, the Medieval Era is not a symbol of the West imploding from self-
consumption, as in the catastrophist perspective and in some developments of
the theory of New Medievalism, but rather a symbol of the West fearing that it
shall succumb to the menace of the Other, the enemy that invades and de-
stroys, first infiltrating in a seemingly innocuous way, then quickly taking the
upper hand, and ultimately engineering the collapse of the system. In other

All New Barbarians and Same Old Crusaders 27
words, a catastrophe that originates from an attack on a healthy body, like an

epidemic. The theory of a return to the Dark Ages framed in these terms has
very remote origins, deriving first of all from Greek thought—from Hesiod—
through late antique and early medieval reflections on history in terms of
sweet infancy, prosperous maturity, and horrible senescence, and finally from
the application of this biological cycle to the fate of civic institutions. Augus-
tine, Orosius, and Gregory the Great are with us, now more than ever, in these
bleak premonitions, already formalized in terms of an anthropomorphized
civilization in Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918–1922).1
Insofar as it pertains to our discussion, these premonitions, already wide-
spread during the 1970s, became even more noticeable as a reality in the course
of the 1980s in conjunction with the initial dismantling of welfare and the so-
cial state in various Western countries, starting with Great Britain. From the
end of that decade onward, their growth becomes exponential. The breaking
point can be dated between 1989 and the years immediately following, corre-
sponding with the end of the opposition between the West and the Soviet Bloc.
The victory of Solidarność in Poland (June 4 and 18, 1989), the dismantling
of the Iron Curtain in Hungary (August 23, 1989), the demolition of the Berlin
Wall (November 9, 1989), the first Iraq War (August 2, 1990—February 28, 1991),
the reunification of Germany (October 3, 1990), the break-up of the Warsaw
Pact (July 1, 1991), and the Russian Federation’s declaration of independence
(August 24, 1991) are the principal dates of the new landscape in which the
Medieval functions as a grand allegory that explains everything in terms of
conflict. Seeing these dates all grouped together (not to mention the uprising
in Tienanmen Square in Beijing, in April 1989), I do not deny that this historian
of the Middle Ages, accustomed to quarter-century-long chronologies, feels a
bit out of place and disoriented, even though he was already an adult at the
time.
As Tzvetan Todorov has written, the hope for a new world order in the wake
of the end of the conflict between East and West was entirely disillusioned:
Only twenty or so years later, it has to be admitted that this hope was
illusory…The great conflict between East and West had relegated various
1 O. Spengler, The Decline of the West, Allen & Unwin, London 1954 (original edition: Der Unter-
gang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, C.H. Becksche Verlags-
buchhandlung, München 1918–1922). See also J. Le Goff, Storia e memoria cit., p. 322; F. Car-
dini, Rileggere Spengler, Sept. 1, 2008, www.francocardini.net/Appunti/1.9.2008a.html (cons.
Feb. 2, 2010; the page was found to be inactive when cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

28 Chapter 2
kinds of hostility and opposition to the background: these soon started to

re-emerge.2
The collapse of the Soviet Bloc and communist ideology did not mean the re-
unification of the world under a single banner or a single ideology, since a new-
yet-old conflict arose immediately and with a vengeance: that between differ-
ent cultural regions, to which different degrees of civilization were attributed.3
In other words, a conflict was declared between Western civilization and
barbarism.
We arrive at the muddy metaphor of the Imperial Eagle. The civilization par
excellence, of course, is Rome, and after her, the United States, which, with its
vassal kingdoms and colonies, is the true heir to the translatio Imperii initiated
by Constantine and pursued by Charlemagne and Frederick I, only to finally
land across the Atlantic. Some will recall the incipit of the letter that an ob-
scure writer from Pontus Ausonius (Italy) sent to Emperor Ford in 1977:
Ad Geraldum Fordulum Balbulum, Foederatorum Indianarum ad Occa-

sum Vergentium Civitatum Principem. Hail to you, Prince and Emperor,
Light of the West Indies, Upholder of the Pax Atlantica, and to the Senate
and People of America, hail.4
Umberto Eco’s irony then yielded the floor to more sinister voices. In 1992, the
end was announced in a book by Gore Vidal that evoked the Middle Ages right
in its title by paraphrasing Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the A
merican
Empire.5 In recent years the analogy has been constantly re-proposed, in so
many other book titles and blogs.6
2 T. Todorov, La peur des barbares, R. Laffont, Paris 2008, p. 12.

3 Cf. S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations cit. (but with a long tradition behind it: just
think of Arnold Toynbee). In the same years as Huntington’s book, the computer strategy
game Civilization, created by Sid Meier in 1991, was taking off. The objective was to develop a
vast empire over the course of millennia. There were fourteen civilizations to choose be-
tween. If you chose the American civilization, you received the surprise of beginning the
game with an initial advantage. Furthermore, the form of government capable of ensuring
the greatest prosperity (but also the most difficult to maintain) was Democracy. You won ei-
ther by destroying the other civilizations, or by being the first to colonize outer space.
4 U. Eco, Dalla periferia dell’impero cit., pp. 7–10. See also ibid., Crisi della Pax Americana, pp. 194
ff. (TN: Pontus Ausonius is a play on words referring to Pontus Euxinus—the coast of the Black
Sea in modern-day Turkey, considered the extreme Eastern limit of the Roman Empire’s
reach—and Ausonia, an early Greek word for the Italian peninsula.)
5 G. Vidal, Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Odonian Press, Tucson 1992.
6 For example: N. Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Penguin, Lon-
don 2004; among the many blogs and articles online: S. Wojtowicz, The Fall of the Ameri-
can Empire (1993), www.slawcio.com/republic.html (cons. Apr. 28, 2019); J. Quinn, Decline

If the West is like the crumbling Empire, the other half of the metaphor de-
ploys the external barbarians, who undermine the Empire’s foundations and
want to destroy it. A new opposition between civilization and barbarism is
wrapped up in the conflict between rich peoples and poor peoples, North and
South, between the West and the East of the globe. In Europe, a tautological
analogy is often constructed around the migrations that distinguish our mo-
dernity from the barbarian invasions, the Völkerwanderungen of the fourth to
sixth centuries. The old communists—Romanians, Poles, Moldavians, Ukraini-
ans, even the isolated Albanians—invade the West and are considered the new
barbarians. Since the early Nineties, we have seen a deluge of books, films, and
television shows that—usually, but not always, in a comedic vein—inform us
of these “new barbarian invasions,” turning the metaphor into a w idely-believed
cliché.7 And then there are those that come from the South: Africans, Kurds,
landless peoples who die on the high seas in leaky barges, floundering in the
Mediterranean. Men and women who are even poorer, even more technologi-
cally backwards, and thus guilty of being even more barbaric and anti-modern.8
Men and women who are even more culturally distant: in other words, Mus-
lims, just like their infamous ancestors who split the Mare nostrum in half and
determined—at least according to Henri Pirenne—the true start of the Mid-
dle Ages in the seventh century.9
and Fall of the American Empire, Aug. 2, 2009, www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/

2009/0802.html (the page required an authorization when cons. July 23, 2018, and was found
to be inactive when cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
7 A metaphor anticipated by U. Eco, Dalla periferia dell’impero cit., p. 194. In the Italian post-
apocalyptic film The New Barbarians (1982), set in 2019, the fiercest gangs around are called
the “Templars.” Among the most recent examples: The Barbarian Invasions, a television pro-
gram directed by Daria Bignardi from 2004 to 2011. In the homonymous Canadian film (2003),
the attack on the Twin Towers lurks in the background. Its director, Denis Arcand, was previ-
ously the director of the film, The Decline of the American Empire (1986). For another exam-
ple, see M. Warschawski, Les nouveaux barbares, in “Alternatives International,” Feb. 22, 2007,
www.alterinter.org/article641.html?lang=fr (cons. Apr. 28, 2019): here, the “new barbarians”
are the Israelis and the Americans. Alessandro Baricco considers the “barbaric” transforma-
tion of our society not in terms of an invasion or an apocalypse, but as a profound mutation
that involves and is caused by everyone: Id., The Barbarians: An Essay on the Mutation of Cul-
ture, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2014 (original edition: I barbari. Saggio
sulla mutazione, Feltrinelli, Milano 2006).
8 On the North-South opposition, especially in this allegorical key: see J.-Ch. Rufin, L’Empire et
les nouveaux barbares, Lattes, Paris 1992.
9 H. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, Martino Fine Books, Eastford (CT) 2017 (original
edition: Mahomet et Charlemagne, Nouvelle société d’éditions - Felix Alcan, Bruxelles-Paris
1937). His thesis, which states that the true Middle Ages only began with the Arab con-
quest of the Mediterranean, has been refuted, though it continues to represent a question of
fundamental importance. See also O. Capitani, Medioevo passato prossimo cit., pp. 75–101.

30 Chapter 2
Many political parties ride the wave of fear of the Other, in what manifests
now as an inescapable “clash of civilizations.” The medieval metaphor plays a
not-insignificant role in all this, clarifying—insofar as it leads back to the cat-
egory of the “dreaded return of something that already happened”—a situa-
tion that is far from clear. And indeed that never actually transpired during the
late antique and early medieval eras, but is happening now for the first time.
The medieval metaphor is an “image of the past [that] modifies the perception
of the present.”10 It takes responsibility away from political actors, who carry
on with the conviction, shared by that segment of the populace who also sub-
scribe to the metaphor, that they are resisting historical processes imagined as
analogous to ancient ones.11
The West exports civilization, but at the same time, some say, it gets barba-
rized.12 Thus, in the last twenty years, vast sectors of Western public opinion
have had the opportunity to create an effective representation of the presumed
enemy, the barbarian, the one excluded from “civilization” (an absolutized and
undebated term), and consequently the opportunity to create an equally effec-
tive representation of themselves: as paladins and crusaders, as defenders of
the Limes, the ancient imperial border. They cannot accept the opening of bor-
ders and the expansion of the European Union to the east in positive terms, as
it reminds them all too much of the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, with which
Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all subjects of the Empire, opening the
door to its downfall—that is, to the Middle Ages.
If xenophobic parties in the government and anti-immigrant groups are by
now common throughout Western Europe, the United States of the previous
Republican administration is the country where the melding of the theme of a
“clash of civilizations” with the medieval metaphor of the new barbarians has
so far reached its most heated level, coming to illustrate above all the US’s rela-
tionship with Islam. Here too we find a lengthy history, for behind the declared
opposition between Islam and the West, which has substituted the Cold War
opposition Soviet Union-West, we see a recasting of the old Orientalism, that
A synthesized presentation of the historiographical debate is in G. Vitolo, Medioevo.

I caratteri originali di un’età di transizione, Sansoni, Firenze 2000, pp. 104–106.
10 T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit. Perhaps precisely so as not to fall victim to the barba-
rism/fall of the Empire analogy, which would have negative consequences for his hypoth-
esis, Todorov never uses the concept of “barbarian” in reference to the populations pres-
ent in the Roman Empire or around its borders, but only the concept of “barbarism” as
elaborated by the Greeks.
11 See P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit.
12 For example, J. Monnerot, Racisme et identité nationale, in “Itineraires,” 1990 (online:
http://julesmonnerot.com/RACISME_IDENTITE.html, cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

representation of the “East” constructed across the nineteenth century with ste-
reotypical formulas (lax customs, laziness, cruelty, exoticism, irrationality, mys-
ticism, fanaticism, despotism, etc.), a vision that has become the vessel of a
universal symbol.13 This process finds analogy in the earliest ethnographic stud-
ies, which considered the indigenous African and American populations to be
“primitive”—in other words, objectively similar to our ancestors—except that,
as eternal children, they have not evolved, while we have.
A second precondition to the creation of this paradox has to do with the way
that the United States presents itself as the paradigm of modernity, precisely in
relation to the European Middle Ages as the symbol of anti-modernity. It is, in
fact, a way of refiguring the relationship between the “Old Europe” that shows
in the periodization of the Middle Ages as ending precisely with the “discovery
of America,” and that was already quite concrete by the end of the nineteenth
century. After having experienced a long season of romantic infatuation with
the Middle Ages, the United States, along with the rest of the West, had dis-
tanced herself from it.14 By 1889, when Mark Twain published his novel A Con-
necticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, satirizing the idealization of the Middle
Ages and, with it, the Old World itself, the divorce was already final.15 Oscar
Wilde’s Canterville Ghost (1887) can be read the same way: the contrast b etween
the old, English world and American modernity is produced by a parody of the
Gothic romance, and the poor ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville finds himself
forced to use the extraordinary Rising Sun Lubricator, made in America, to oil
13 E.W. Said, Orientalism, Pantheon Books, New York 1978; cf. J.M. Ganim, Medievalism and
Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity, Palgrave Mac-
Millan, New York 2008; W. Calin, Is Orientalism Medievalism? Or, Edward Said, Are You a
Saracen?, paper in Medievalism. 22nd International Conference at Western Ontario, London
(ON, Canada), Oct. 4–6, 2007, published in The Year’s Work in Medievalism, 2008 cit., pp.
63–68; see also: G. Leardi, “La musa m’ispiri, Santa Sofia m’illumini e l’imperatore Giustini-
ano mi perdoni”. L’orientalismo rubato di Edmondo De Amicis e la Santa Sofia di Costanti-
nopoli, in T. di Carpegna Falconieri, R. Facchini (eds.), Medievalismi italiani (secoli XIX–
XXI), Gangemi, Roma 2018, pp. 67–74.
14 In general: B. Rosenthal and P.E. Szarmach (eds.), Medievalism in American Culture,
Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton (NY) 1989; R. Bordone, Lo specchio
di Shalott cit., pp. 199–210; M. Sanfilippo, Il medioevo secondo Walt Disney. Come l’America
ha reinventato l’Età di Mezzo, Castelvecchi, Roma 1993; Medievalism in North America,
monograph issue of “Studies in Medievalism,” VI (1994); A. Lupack and B. Tepa Lupack,
King Arthur in America, D.S. Brewer, Cambridge 2001. Medievalism in North America is a
common theme at the International Congress on Medieval Studies held annually at the
University of Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
15 M. Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Charles L. Webster & Company,
New York 1889.

32 Chapter 2
his rattling chains.16 All the way up to our time: when, in early December of
2009, a young US college student studying Italy was convicted of her friend’s
murder, some in the United States launched a campaign against the sentence
handed down by the Perugian courts, which they accused of being swayed by
“medieval superstitions.”17 And what more could you expect, they said, from a
small, backwater town in the heart of Italy? Or indeed from Italy in general,
since, as one could read on Wikipedia for a short time, “Italian laws are directly
descended from the Inquisition.”18 Then comes the media trial founded on the
ancient precept sat pulcher qui sat bonus (who is beautiful must be good), sub-
stituting for the judicial process founded on the examination of evidence and
testimony. It makes one wonder where we should really be seeking the “Middle
Ages.”
To go back before 1989, the accusation of living in the Middle Ages could
never really work with respect to the Soviet Union and its allies. They were
enemies, sure enough, even baby-eating ogres, and, if you wanted to draw
attention to their cruelty and characteristically “Oriental” inefficiency, the
members of the Party or the Politburo could even be “satraps.” But the two su-
perpowers in a race for the conquest of space and control of the planet at least
acknowledged the fact that they were both “modern,” even though their two
developmental models diverged at the root. The West’s relationship with Is-
lam, however, is a whole other thing. Even in the early Eighties, the Italian jour-
nalist Oriana Fallaci, invited to Afghanistan as a reporter when the Taliban
were still heroic warriors against the Red Army (and the Iraqis defended the
West against the Iranian lion), could rail against Western Realpolitik and claim,
regarding the Afghan militants: “To see the word of God coupled with the mor-
tar blast sent shivers down my spine. I felt like I was in the Middle Ages.”19
16 O. Wilde, The Canterville Ghost, in “The Court and Society Review,” III (1887), n. 4,
pp. 183–186, 207–211.
17 B. Severgnini, Amanda e il tifo sbagliato dell’America, in “Corriere della Sera,” Dec. 4, 2009,
pp. 1 e 24–25.
18 “Italy’s laws are direct descendants of the Inquisition”: Murder of Meredith Kercher,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Meredith_Kercher. Consulted on Dec. 15, 2009, the site
(considered explicitly “non-neutral”) did not contain the sentence. Upon a later visit
(June 21, 2011) the site turned out to be protected and no longer modifiable. The link be-
tween the Amanda Knox’s trial and the Inquisition can nevertheless be found on numer-
ous sites. After a long, drawn-out process, Amanda Knox was definitively absolved by the
Italian Supreme Court in January 2018.
19 O. Fallaci, The Rage and the Pride, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2002 (orig-
inal edition: La rabbia e l’orgoglio, Rizzoli, Milano 2001, p. 58). The same idea that Afghani-
stan was dwelling in the darkest Middle Ages, hence the justification for Soviet interven-
tion, was still shared by the militant left: Cf. Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., p. 201.

Since September 11, 2001, the conviction of being faced with a clash of
c ivilizations—namely, a clash between modern and medieval—has become
common coin. The United States has lost her invulnerability. New York in 2001
is like Rome in 410, fallen prey to Alaric’s hordes. On September 14, 2001, the
noted journalist Thomas Friedman wrote that Islam had for years been wracked
by a civil war between “modernists” and “medievalists.” Between the two,
Americans should have backed the “good guys,” who certainly weren’t the
latter.20
According to the medieval historian Bruce Holsinger, since September 11
medievalism has become a journalistic and political paradigm for making
sense of the first five years of the “War on Terror.” All the US’s top government
officials, from President George W. Bush to Secretary of Defense Donald Rums-
feld, employed the medieval metaphor in their speeches on international ter-
rorism in the form of Islamic fundamentalism. They used it whether talking
about themselves as “new crusaders” (thus also assigning a positive value to
the Middle Ages, a point to which we will return), or assigning to terrorists and
the leaders of terrorist countries the label of “medievalists,” that is to say, medi-
eval men. Now, in proper English the word “medievalist” refers not to a person
living in the Middle Ages, but to a scholar of the Middle Ages: this is where
Holsinger’s concern stems from, as a historian who found himself equated, at
least terminologically, to Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Al-Zarqawi,
which spurred him to put his hands to work on an incisive little book.21
The chain of analogies is simple and easy to reconstruct: the Medieval Era
is barbaric, uncivilized, backwards, violent, fanatical, and anti-modern, and
therefore also anti-American, since America represents, traditionally, the fu-
ture. The Islamic terrorists are equally barbaric, uncivilized, backwards, vio-
lent, fanatical, anti-modern, and furthermore anti-American: therefore, they
are also men of the Middle Ages. This confirmed, in the hallucinatory days
following September 11, 2001, the equivalency between the Middle Ages and
Islamic terrorism.22
20 Th. L. Friedman, Foreign Affairs; Smoking or Non-Smoking?, in “The New York Times,” Sept.
14, 2001, www.racematters.org/friedmansmokingornonsmoking.htm (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
21 Br. Holsinger, Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror, Prickly Paradigm
Press, Chicago 2007.
22 For references to the French press (from 1998 to 2001): Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge
cit., pp. 320–322. The same equivalence, but with a different interpretation, can be found
in a book by F. Cardini and G. Lerner, Martiri e assassini. Il nostro medioevo contempora-
neo, Rizzoli, Milano 2002. See also the review of B. Placido, I martiri tecnologici dell’Islam
ci stanno trascinando dentro a un nuovo medioevo contemporaneo, in “la Repubblica,” Jan.
27, 2002, p. 32.

34 Chapter 2
Holsinger’s analysis leads us to consider points of intersection between the

vision of US neo-conservatives and the theory of New Medievalism. The ter-
rorists are medieval primarily because they are tribal, culturally and economi-
cally under-developed, and fanatical. They act in a tactically medieval way,
nimbly, adapting to every situation, conducting a mobile, deviously intelligent,
asymmetric war, which combines medieval—in other words, brutal—
sensibilities with modern technology, using “dirty” bombs, trying to set off
anthrax pandemics, just like the “plague spreaders” and just like in disaster
movies. They reject the state, instead joining up with international crime orga-
nizations determined to impose a neomedieval landscape and demolish the
established order. Indeed, some states where Islamic fundamentalism rules are
called “State Sponsors of Terror.” From this derives the assumption that, to ef-
fectively wage and win the “War on Terror,” America must abandon the rule of
international law and adopt a new doctrine for its own security, that it must
adopt an agile strategy, reclaiming the high ground by accepting the gauntlet
thrown down on the new battlefield. One must fight medieval with medi-
eval—in other words, with the non-state.
Thus neomedievalism, in the sense of deregulation, justifies previously ille-
gitimate approaches. For these reasons, a member of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda,
or even a mere captured soldier, is subject to unique laws that the US itself can
set as if it were dealing with an internal matter. Being a man of the Middle
Ages, and thus a man who according to the New Medievalism lives “without a
state,” the terrorist cannot be considered a citizen of a sovereign state (as arti-
cle 15 of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Man has affirmed since
1948); he need not be recognized as a soldier and enemy combatant, nor need
he be protected by the Geneva Convention, even if captured in uniform, in Iraq
or Afghanistan for instance. Declaring the Afghan state failed redefines the
Taliban not as soldiers, but as armed bandits and international terrorists ruled
by feudal lords. We see, then, how the New Medievalism, if applied to the War
on Terror, allows the United States to arm itself with ideological and legal
premises that lead, in two characteristic examples, to “Preemptive War” and to
Guantanamo Bay Prison, which does not house prisoners of war, but criminals.
Ultimately, according to Holsinger, the medieval metaphor transforms the
“ontological nature of the enemy.”23 To find similar examples, it is not neces-
sary to go back to the Middle Ages, for this treatment reflects the kind that was
23 Br. Holsinger, Neomedievalism cit., p. 72. For another interesting comparison between ter-
rorism and the concept of the pirate as a contemporary paradigm of the universal adver-
sary, see D. Heller-Roazen, The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations, Zone Books,
New York 2009.

inflicted on “bandits,” that is to say partisans, by occupation forces: it doesn’t

reflect the Third Crusade so much as the Second World War.
The medieval metaphor is far from the exclusive prerogative of the West.
Certainly, the term in question is not truly the “Middle Ages,” since Islamic
culture (like other not-yet-entirely Westernized cultures) does not employ
this periodization. Nevertheless, the references to historical events witnessing
conflict between Islam and Christianity that we date to the Middle Ages are
numerous.
One important link to the Middle Ages takes us directly back to the Taliban
and Al-Qaeda. The declarations by members of the US’s Republican adminis-
tration regarding the anti-modernism and consequent medievalism of the ter-
rorists and Islamic fundamentalists are not born exclusively from comparative
analysis, but from facts and claims that originate from those factions them-
selves. The members of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda actually judge modernity as
something impure, they are truly anti-democratic and anti-Western, and they
fight for a “return” to the glorious seventh century of Arab conquests under the
banner of Islam. The American analysis, therefore, captures an authentic as-
pect of the Taliban’s view of the world.24
But from there it’s only a short leap to considering all of Islam “medieval”
and thus anti-Western, and even inherently terroristic. On September 26, 2001,
the Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi claimed that Western civilization
was superior to Islamic civilization and that Islam was still 1,400 years behind
the West.25 Despite the outcry, this way of imagining the West’s relationship
with Islam is common everywhere. The risk is of it spiraling out of control,
which we have all witnessed. Many may recall the effects of the publication of
several satirical cartoons depicting Mohammed in the major Danish newspa-
per Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005. Eleven Islamic countries formally
protested against Denmark; some ambassadors were recalled, some Western
embassies were attacked, and the Danish embassy in Beirut was set on fire;
Danish products were boycotted, an Italian priest was killed in Turkey. The car-
toons were republished by many Western newspapers under the claim of free-
dom of the press; one of them was even glimpsed on television, printed on a
t-shirt that the Italian minister Roberto Calderoli was wearing under his suit.
24 L. Wright, The Looming Tower. Al Qaeda’s Road to 9/11, Penguin, London 2007, pp. 233
ff. and passim.
25 See S. Folli, Tra orgoglio culturale ed equivoco politico, in “Corriere della Sera,” Sept. 27,
2009, p. 9.

36 Chapter 2
After an attack on the Italian consulate in Benghazi, Libya, claimed several

casualties, the minister resigned.26
Ultimately, the political responses that spring from the neomedievalist anal-
yses of American neoconservatives run the risk of conflating Islam with funda-
mentalism sic et simpliciter, and allowing (even impelling) those of the Muslim
faith—every one of them—to consider themselves anti-Western by birth.
These analyses do not necessarily have to accept the field of battle chosen by
their adversary, which is always and only terrorism: though it may be true that
Islamic terrorists are fighting for something like a return to what we would call
medieval, that does not mean that we have to medievalize ourselves to oppose
them. But that is what we have seen happen, for, aside from transforming the
ontological nature of the enemy, the neoconservatives have even tried to trans-
form that of the friend, utilizing the medieval metaphor as a reality and con-
sidering the “defenders of the West” as new crusaders. In fact, in addition to the
reference to the seventh century, even the Crusades have returned today to
represent the minefield where the two sides meet. Since Islam resisted the
Crusades, the modernization of those distant events (a leitmotif present
throughout the twentieth century) leads to the perception of the Americans,
Israelis, and Westerners in general as the natural successors of those who per-
petrated the invasions that began at the end of the eleventh century and were
halted by the Battle of Hattin (July 4, 1187), only to reappear with colonialism.27
The Muslims won the Crusades, and they know it.
As the Lebanese-born author Amin Maalouf wrote in 1983, “Israel is equat-
ed, in both popular opinion and in some official discourse, to a new Crusader
state,” and “the Arab world cannot simply decide to consider the Crusades a
mere episode in a closed past.”28 Already in 1956, the Suez Crisis in Egypt was
judged the same way as the Third Crusade, which was predominately Anglo-
French. And on May 13, 1981, “the Turkish Mehmet Ali Ağca [shot] at the Pope
after explaining in a letter, ‘I have decided to kill John Paul ii, supreme leader
of the Crusaders.’”29 The Nineties witnessed an escalation in the use of this
26 For more on the affair, see T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., pp. 231 ff.
27 B. Lewis, From Babel to Dragonmans, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004; A. Maalouf,
Les croisades vues par les Arabes, Lattes, Paris 1983, pp. 286–288: “Of the three divisions of
the Palestine Liberation Army, one still bears the name of Hittīn (Hattin).”
28 Ibid., p. 287.
29 Ibid. Furthermore, as soon as Ali Ağca was released from prison (January 2010), he de-
clared himself to be Jesus Christ and announced the imminent end of the world. See, for
example Ali Ağca torna libero: “Io sono Gesù,” in “La Stampa.it,” 18 January 2010, https://
www.lastampa.it/2010/01/18/esteri/ali-agca-torna-libero-io-sono-ges-7iAasdvdgpDhXv-
28lZHPoK/pagina.html (cons. May 5, 2019).

metaphor, owing to the broadening of the conflict. The Americans are archi-
tects of the new “Oil Crusades,” as per the title of a recent book.30 And, while I
was searching the web for information, I was struck by a cartoon posted on
many sites, depicting George W. Bush dressed as a medieval knight, kneeling,
one hand extended in a gesture of benediction and the other resting on a
shield emblazoned with an oil pump.
In various communiqués between 2001 and 2002, Osama bin Laden spoke of
nato as the collective of kingdoms that launched the Third Crusade (1189–92),
comparing Bush to Richard the Lionheart and his allies to Frederick Barbaros-
sa and Saint Louis of France.31 The United States is, naturally, the Evil Empire,
an epithet previously coined by Ronald Reagan to describe the Soviet Union.
In November 2006, on the occasion of Benedict xvi’s trip to Turkey, the organi-
zation Al-Qaeda in Iraq accused the pope of “preparing a Crusade against the
Islamic countries.”32 The same juxtaposition of Westerners and Crusaders
punctually returned in March of 2011, during the Libyan Revolution, which re-
ceived support from nato. Muammar Qaddafi was not the only one who
mocked the missiles launched in this “Crusade against Islam.” Even Vladimir
Putin declared that UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of March 17, 2011,
which authorized the international community to employ any means neces-
sary to protect civilians and impose a cease-fire, “recalls a medieval call to the
Crusades” rather than an act of international law, thus justifying Russian
rearmament.33
The figure of Saladin is the one around which, for the whole of the twentieth
century, the myth of heroic resistance to and ultimate victory over the “West-
ern Crusade” was primarily constructed.34 The unifier of Islam from the Tigris
to Cyrenaica and from Yemen to northern Syria, liberator of Jerusalem in 1187,
Saladin has become the icon par excellence of the victorious unity of Islam.
30 A.Y. Zalloum, Oil Crusades: America through Arab Eyes, Pluto Press, London-Ann Arbor
(MI) 2007.
31 O. Guido, Osama è ancora vivo: ecco il suo nuovo video, in “Corriere della Sera,” May 20,
2002, p. 6. The English Prime Minister Tony Blair, as soon as he initiated military opera-
tions in Afghanistan, was dubbed “Tony Coeur de Lion” by “Le Monde”: Ch. Amalvi, Le
goût du Moyen Âge cit., p. 321.
32 Turchia. Benedetto XVI è arrivato a Istanbul. Al Qaeda: “Sta preparando la crociata,” www
.rainews24.rai.it/it/news.php?newsid=65653 (cons. Jan. 18, 2010, the page was found to be
inactive when cons. Apr. 28, 2019). See G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede. La Chiesa di Giovanni
Paolo II e Benedetto XVI, Rusconi, Milano 2007, p. 318.
33 See, for example, Medvedev contro Putin: “Astensione scelta giusta, non si tratta di una cro-
ciata,” in “Il Messaggero,” Mar. 22, 2011, p. 2.
34 A.-M. Eddé, Saladin, Flammarion, Paris 2008, especially pp. 9–10 and Ch. 6, par. 28: Le
mythe du héros arabe, pp. 570–582.

38 Chapter 2
Both the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Iraqi President Sad-
dam Hussein (who declared himself successor to the sultan, similarly born in
Tikrit), identified with this figure suspended between myth and reality, pro-
posing themselves as new charismatic leaders with the capacity to win the war.
And even the Turkish Prime Minister, now President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
has been received in his country as “the new Saladin.”35
Their failure to comprehend non-religious societies and their rejection of
the concept of a secular state allows fundamentalists to believe that the link
between current events and the medieval crusades is still firm, insofar as they
were opposed and are opposable today by jihad, understood as “holy war”: in
other words, a “war of religion” applicable to both sides.36 A parallelism be-
tween jihad and Crusade—which corresponds to a stated parallelism between
two societies similar inasmuch as religion is the linchpin to both—is an easy
message to spread because it is so basic, but it still does not make logical or
historical sense. The parallelism does not hold water, starting with the fact that
the Crusades are events datable to a precise era, while jihad is a Quranic pre-
scription: the one is past, the other is current. Moreover, it is very limiting to
think of jihad as a mere synonym for “holy war,” as it actually translates to
“struggle” and has a much broader spectrum of meaning.37 But what historians
(and Catholics) may judge to be senseless has actually found support in the
fact that some Christian traditionalist movements and the US administration
itself, led by Bush, have spoken of the conflict as a new Crusade, attributing a
religious and positive value to the term. The word “crusade,” in fact, condenses
in itself our entire discourse: like the idea of the Middle Ages, it is extraordi-
narily ambivalent. The War on Terror has even been written and talked about
as a “Tenth Crusade,” positioning the modern war in a logical, chronological
35 R. De Mattei, Preface to A. Del Valle, Perché la Turchia non può entrare in Europa, Guerini
e Associati, Milano 2009.
36 Cf. O. Fallaci, The Rage and the Pride cit., p. 84: “You don’t realize or don’t want to realize
that a war of religion is being carried out. A war they call Jihad.” P. 83: “You don’t under-
stand, or don’t want to understand, that a Reverse Crusade is on the march.” On a Saudi
woman’s inability to understand secularism, see the anecdote ibid, p. 113.
37 S.P. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations cit., maintains that religions represent the principal
identifying characteristics of civilizations, such that the clash between the latter consti-
tutes a religious war. See, however, T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., pp. 154–162;
M. Meschini, Il jihad e la crociata: guerre sante asimmetriche, Ares, Milano 2007. Harsh is
the judgment of F. Cardini, Franco Cardini e il falso scontro di civiltà, on YouTube, www
.youtube.com/watch?v=fZGZMb6ii1k (cons. Apr. 28, 2019): “Lo scontro di civiltà è una
balla ideologica travestita da studio sociologico” (“The clash of civilizations is an ideologi-
cal myth dressed up like sociological study”).

sequence with the nine medieval Crusades—despite a temporal gap of more

than 700 years.38
In Italy, the reaction to Islam has become particularly powerful in recent
years and, naturally, often in the name of the new Middle Ages. For example,
I found a history book that reads:
I believe we should be grateful to those who fought the Crusades for two
reasons: first of all, because so many centuries later, they prove that
one may live and die for one’s faith. Secondly, because through their sac-
rifice our liberty today has been to some extent, but still effectively,
safeguarded.39
While in 1967 Paul vi restored the banners of the galleys defeated at Lepanto to
Turkey, we see now how political parties like the Northern League (Lega Nord,
est. 1989) and the New Force (Forza Nuova, est. 1997) arise in Italy, making
Catholic fundamentalism, in an anti-Islamic key, one of their central tenets.40
The New Force’s symbol is two crossed hammers (the same that appear in Pink
Floyd’s film, The Wall). Its adherents believe themselves to be “new knights of a
post-modern Middle Ages, crusaders deployed in defense of White Europe.”41
And note the birth of magazines like “Lepanto” and “Radici cristiane” and
political circles like Militia Christi, which, in the exact words of Roberto De
Mattei, vice president of Italy’s National Research Council from 2003 to 2011
and president of the Lepanto Foundation, defines itself as a “Catholic political
movement,” and has a youth branch called Saint Louis ix.42 On August 8, 2008,
the Leaguist member of the European Parliament (mep) Mario Borghezio
38 Cf. Tenth Crusade, Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Crusade (cons.

Aug. 9, 2011). When I visited the page in 2011, the article existed only in English, Japanese,
and, significantly, Arabic. On April 28, 2019, I found the entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Tenth_Crusade_(CounterPunch), published exclusively in English. Consider, however, that
the Ninth Crusade (1271–1272) is generally considered part of the Eighth (1270).
39 L. Negri, False accuse alla Chiesa. Quando la verità smaschera i pregiudizi, Piemme, Casale
Monferrato 1997, p. 127. See U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock cit. (pp. 23–27 and 213–242 of
the Italian edition).
40 On the Northern League’s flag, which presents a white cross on a red field (originally the
standard of the city of Milan), see the remarks of E. Voltmer, Il carroccio, Einaudi, Torino
1994, p. 28: “Con essa viene espresso molto bene lo spirito di crociata che anima questo
movimento di protesta e rinnovamento” (“This expresses so well the spirit of the Crusades
that animates this movement of protest and renewal”).
41 C. Cernigoi, Nuova destra, radici vecchie, in “terrelibere.org,” Mar. 21, 2005, www.terrelibere
.org/index.php?x=completa&riga=192 (cons. Feb. 4, 2010, the page was found to be
inactive when cons. May 6, 2019).
42 Cf. www.facebook.com/miliziachristi/ (cons. Apr. 14, 2019).

40 Chapter 2
announced, in the church of the Commandery of St. John of Pré in Genoa, cur-
rently the seat of the Knights of Malta—a church which the city of Genoa
planned to transform into an interfaith center—a solemn oath worthy of a
Crusader:
We warrior knights swear to defend, always and forever and by any means
necessary, the Commandery of Prè for the defense of Christianity from
the profanation of Islam. I swear it.43
Thus, crusaders against warriors of the faith and Christianity against Islam.
Reasoning this way triggers an interpretive mechanism that, even if founded
on updated assumptions about the historical Middle Ages, leads not to a con-
flict between Islamic fundamentalism’s “medieval” vision based on anarchy
and a “modern” Western vision founded on the rule of law, so much as a con-
flict between two visions that, reluctantly embracing the metaphor, become
equally “medieval.” They in fact justify and adopt illegitimate oppositions and
maintain that the conflict is an authentic “clash of civilizations” founded—on
both sides—on religion. As if what really distinguishes the West today from
the terrorists and Islamic fundamentalist states (and also permits the publica-
tion of books like this one) was an alternate faith in a homologous political
theocracy, and not in fact the opportunity and capacity to affirm that society,
state, and religion are non-overlapping principles—unlike in the Middle Ages.
But, in the end, the Middle Ages are over, while Medievalism triumphs.
Nor should one believe that everyone is in agreement about using the Cru-
sades as an eternal symbol of the defense of the West against Islam. Saint Louis
ix, the Crusader king who in immediate post-war France was still considered
“one of the providential founders of the colonial Empire,” is no longer a politi-
cal symbol outside of Catholic traditionalist circles.44 Saladin, who in the Me-
dieval West once represented the ideal of a magnanimous knight (Dante puts
him in Limbo, while Mohammed is found in Hell), is today, as Anne-Marie
Eddé writes, probably “the only Muslim sovereign in history who Hollywood
studios can imagine in the role of a hero.”45 Indeed in 2005 Kingdom of Heaven
was released, a film on the Crusades with obviously modernized references,
albeit in the name of mutual respect, tolerance, and the common goal of peace:
43 A. Costante, Rassegna Stampa sul comizio antiislamico dell’eurodeputato della Lega

Nord Borghezio, www.ildialogo.org/islam/BorghezioAGenova10082008.pdf (cons. Apr. 28,
2019).
44 Cf. Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 91 ff.
45 “Le seul souverain musulman de l’Histoire auquel les studios de Hollywood puissent
imaginer de donner un role de heros”: A.-M. Eddé, Saladin cit., p. 10.

here Saladin, with his wisdom and nobility, is perhaps the most memorable
character.46
Starting with Voltaire, and especially after the publication of Diderot and
d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–1772), a positive judgment of the Crusades is by
and large rejected by progressive culture, which instead—with simplifications
analogous yet contrary to those we have discussed so far—comes to judge
them episodes of barbarism and violence by which “western civilization” was
imposed.47 Moreover, the use of the idea of the Crusades to deceptive and anti-
Islamic ends is opposed on many fronts, even in conservative or otherwise
right-wing circles. There are, in fact, Catholic and conservative historians who
describe the Crusades as the time and place of a fertile meeting of cultures.48
The infamous name “Osama” also belonged to a twelfth-century Arab emir
who had a friendly relationship with Knights Templar.49 There is even an ap-
parently Islamophile current of thought within so-called “post-Fascism”: not
only, as one might think, because it is anti-Israel, but also because, following
the interpretive tradition of Friedrich Nietzsche, René Guénon and Julius Evo-
la, it finds in Islam those traditional, common (and non-Christian) values that
are being forgotten in Europe.50 Its symbol might be Frederick ii Hohenstaufen,
who negotiated for peace instead of conflict during the Crusades, and who
46 V. Attolini, Le Crociate di Ridley Scott, in “Quaderni medievali,” XXX (2005), n. 60, pp. 141–
152; A.-M. Eddé, Saladin cit., p. 565; S. Kudsieh, Neo-Medieval Adaptations of the Myth of
Saladin: The Case of Sir Walter Scott’s Talisman (1825) and Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heav-
en” (2005), paper presented in: Medievalism. 22nd International Conference at Western On-
tario, London (ON, Canada), Oct. 4–6, 2007. On cinema and the Crusades: N. Haydock and
E.L. Risden (eds.), Hollywood in the Holy Land. Essays on Film Depictions of the Crusades
and Christian-Muslim Clashes, McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 2009.
47 Cf. F. Cardini, Le Crociate fra Illuminismo ed età napoleonica, in E. Menestò (ed.), “Le Tene-
bre e i Lumi,” Il medioevo tra Illuminismo e Rivoluzione, proceedings of the conference held
on the occasion of the third edition of the International Ascoli Piceno Prize, Ascoli Pice-
no, June 9–11, 1989, Amm.ne comunale, Ascoli Piceno 1990, pp. 53–95, especially pp. 54–
55, 67–78; K. Armstrong, Holy War. The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World, An-
chor Books, New York 2001.
48 F. Cardini, Studi sulla storia e sull’idea di crociata, Jouvence, Roma 1993; Id., L’invenzione
del nemico, Sellerio, Palermo 2006.
49 F. Gabrieli, Le crociate viste dall’Islam, in V. Branca (ed.), Concetto, storia, miti e immagini
cit., pp. 183–198: 196 ff.
50 L. Lanna, F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari: tutto quello che c’è da sapere sulla destra, Vallecchi,
Firenze 2003, pp. 237–247; U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock cit. (p. 225 of the Italian edition).
On the Crusades as equivalent to jihad, both being holy wars (but in the Middle Ages) and
thus positive symbols of a unity of traditional spirit, though contrasting: J. Evola, Revolt
Against the Modern World, Inner Traditions, Rochester (VT) 1995; original edition: Rivolta
contro il mondo moderno, U. Hoepli, Milano 1934; new edition (from which we cite):
Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 20073, pp. 167 ff. On the Middle Ages of “Tradition” see Ch. 7.

42 Chapter 2
“pursued the political and esoteric dream of the meeting—and perhaps

fusion—of the Christian West and Muslim civilization.”51 Nothing could be
further, then, from the Northern League, who detest not only Muslims but also
Frederick ii, as he was a bitter enemy of the Lombard League in the thirteenth
century.52
More complex and controversial is the discourse regarding the Roman
Catholic Church’s attitude toward the Crusades and their modern equivalent.
Here one should keep in mind that, in today’s broad usage of the medieval
metaphor, the most recent popes have also often been defined as “neomedi-
eval.” We may read an example of this in a blog:
We must be clear: the start of the neomedieval era is marked above all by
the pontificate of a great medieval pope: John Paul ii.53
We find similar judgments expressed by illustrious scholars who have a great

deal of familiarity with the Middle Ages: in 1985, Umberto Eco compared Pope
Wojtyła to a “pop-culture Heroic Fantasy,”54 while in 1982, Jacques Le Goff
spoke with ambiguous subtlety of the success of the Middle Ages (the Middle
Ages being inherently ambiguous), locating it in the pontiff:
I believe that a particularly spectacular expression of the success of the

Middle Ages and its myth today is embodied by the current pope. This
pope who, with his behavior, ideas, and words is a man of the Middle
Ages, but at the same time a man of mass media, which he uses perfectly.
For me, the current Pope John Paul ii is the Middle Ages plus television.
He is ultimately the symbol, the sum, the very expression of the ties that
exist between the modern world and the Middle Ages.55
Two days after the pope’s death on April 2, 2005, the front page of “Corriere
della Sera” published an article by Francesco Alberoni titled The Arms of the
Last Prophet: Faith, Hope, Technology, which opened with:
51 L. Lanna, F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit., p. 247.

52 M. Brando, Lo strano caso di Federico II di Svevia. Un mito medievale nella cultura di massa,
pref. by R. Licinio, postf. by F. Cardini, Palomar, Bari 2008; Id., L’imperatore nel suo la-
birinto. Usi, abusi e riusi del mito di Federico II di Svevia, Tessere, Firenze 2019.
53 A. Cavallo, Il nuovo medioevo. Seconda parte: il Giubileo, Aug. 18, 2000, www.eurinome.it/
medioevo2.html (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
54 U. Eco, Dreaming of the Middle Ages cit., p. 61.
55 J. Le Goff, Intervista sulla storia, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1982, p. 132; cf. F. Cardini, Medievisti
“di professione” cit., p. 33.

To my judgment there have been three great popes in the history of the
Church: Gregory vii, Innocent iii, and Pope Wojtyla.56
The sunny Middle Ages of the three greatest popes was soon echoed in an ar-
ticle by Primo Mastrantoni, president of the Association for the Rights of Users
and Consumers (aduc), which polemically asked: “Is John Paul ii a medieval
pope?” thus reversing the point of view with a simple application of the “other
way” of understanding the Middle Ages.57 More recently, in January 2009 the
German theologian Hans Küng interpreted Benedict xvi’s attempt to bring
four Lefebvrian bishops—one of them a Holocaust denier—back into the fold
of the Catholic Church as a kind of return to the medieval darkness of the ob-
scurantist Church.58
The interpretation of the Church and these two recent popes as medieval—
in a decidedly negative sense—challenges the “return backwards” toward hier-
archization, the most traditional cult forms, the loss of a role for the laity, and
the chilling of dialogue with other religions, criticizing the interpretation of
the Vatican ii Council as status quo rather than revolution offered by John Paul
ii and Cardinal Ratzinger, later Benedict xvi. An accusation of a return to the
Middle Ages inasmuch as the papacy is experiencing a restoration: which, for
those familiar with the papacy of the nineteenth century, has a more meta-
phorical meaning. In any case, it is worth keeping mind that we are talking
about externally defined denominations, which do not correspond to the way
the Church itself imagines and uses the Middle Ages, but function well enough
because they avail themselves of a convenient and time-tested classification.
The pope who is usually called “medieval” today is not Gregory vii but Pius xii,
who in his anti-modernism was rivalled only by his recently beatified nine-
teenth-century predecessor, Pius ix.59
56 F. Alberoni, Le armi dell’ultimo profeta: fede, speranza, tecnologia, in “Corriere della Sera,”
Apr. 4, 2005, p. 1.
57 P. Mastrantoni, Giovanni Paolo II: un papa medievale?, Apr. 4, 2005, in “ADUC. Associazione
per i diritti degli utenti e dei consumatori,” www.aduc.it/comunicato/giovanni+paolo+ii+
papa+medievale_8656.php (cons. Apr. 28, 2019). On the judgment of “pontificate of
contradictions” declared after 27 years of John Paul II’s reign, see G. Miccoli, In difesa della
fede cit., p. 10.
58 L. Annunziata, Intervista ad Hans Küng, in In mezz’ora, Rai3 program, Feb. 8, 2009, www
.tg3.rai.it/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/Content Item-62172e41-2f7e-4cd5-b50c-c7537f371
847.html?p=2 (cons. Feb. 2, 2010, the page was found to be inactive when cons. Apr. 28,
2019); Küng, attacco a Benedetto XVI. “Riporta la Chiesa al medioevo,” in “la Repubblica,”
Oct. 15, 2009, p. 27.
59 This topic will be taken up again in Chapter 10.

44 Chapter 2
But turning back to the Crusades, it is widely known that the Holy See op-
posed the war in Iraq with all its diplomatic means and was careful not to refer
to the mission led by the United States as a “Crusade,” which would have justi-
fied the theocon conceit of considering the conflict a religious war—one in
which the new Urban ii, however, would have been George W. Bush. In this
way, John Paul ii tried to prevent the creation of an axiomatic opposition be-
tween Christianity-West and Islam-East. This goal was so powerful that one
might also consider it one of the reasons for his decision to no longer use the
pontifical title “Patriarch of the West,” a custom that despite its late antique ori-
gins might today lead to inappropriate interpretations.60 It is also noteworthy
that the Holy See and other ecclesiastical hierarchies, though they do not dis-
play a full unity of intent, have until now reined in—but not halted—the zeal
of Catholic traditionalists, mostly in terms of immigration policy: for example,
by protesting against the “Crusader’s Oath” of mep Borghezio. In early Decem-
ber 2009, the Northern League railed against the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan
Dionigi Tettamanzi, calling him an imam because of his openness to Islam, and
yet pretending at the same time to interpret the tradition of the Catholic
Church authentically.61
The Crusades evoked by the Bush administration and extremely common in
the political vocabulary of Catholic traditionalists are nowhere to be found in
60 See the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity’s Press release regarding the sup-
pression of the title “Patriarch of the West” in the “Annuario pontifico” 2006, www.vatican.va/
roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/general-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20060322_
patriarca-occidente_it.html (cons. Apr. 28, 2019): “Currently, the meaning of the term
‘West’ recalls a cultural context that does not refer to Western Europe alone, but extends
to the United States of America and all the way to Australia and New Zealand. Clearly, this
use of the term ‘West’ is not intended to describe an ecclesiastical territory, nor can it be
employed as the definition of a patriarchal territory. If one wishes to give the term ‘West’
a meaning applicable to the ecclesiastical juridical language, it would apply only to the
Latin Church. Thus, the title ‘Patriarch of the West’ would describe the special relation-
ship between the latter and the Bishop of Rome, and could express the particular jurisdic-
tion of the Bishop of Rome over the Latin Church. Consequently, over the course of his-
tory, the title ‘Patriarch of the West,’ which has always been somewhat vague, has become
obsolete and practically useless. It therefore seems senseless to insist on dragging it with
us.”
61 Onorevole Tettamanzi, in “La Padania,” Dec. 6, 2009, p. 1; G. Reguzzoni, Come un gregge
senza pastore, ibid., Dec. 8, 2009. A reference to the Middle Ages is always possible: cf.
G. Zizola, Un ritorno al medioevo e alla lotta per le investiture, in “la Repubblica”, Dec. 7,
2009, p. 13: “Per come è stata presentata, questa rivolta del potere civile contro una carica
ecclesiastica fa regredire la scienza politica moderna alla lotta per le investiture dell’anno
Mille” (“As presented, this revolt of the civic power against an ecclesiastical charge re-
duces modern political science to the struggle for the investiture of the year 1000”).

the pope’s speeches. Nevertheless, Islam’s holy war was given a name on Sep-
tember 12, 2006, in the course of a masterclass on the relationship between
faith and religion held by Benedict xvi at the University of Regensburg. The
pope cited the Byzantine emperor Manuel ii Palaiologus, who at the end of the
fourteenth century remarked to a learned Persian:
Show me, then, what Mohammed brought that was new, and you will
find only wicked and inhuman things, such as his directive to spread by
the sword the faith that he preached.
The citation of the medieval text, a passage that must be understood within a
complex university lecture, raised such violent protests in the Muslim world
that the pope had to reaffirm, in the following Sunday’s Angelus prayer and ad-
dress, broadcast live on Al-Jazeera, that this did not reflect his own thought,
expressing regret for the reactions it provoked.62 A small correction followed in
the adaption from the speech’s text to the published version, a phrase added to
maintain that the Byzantine emperor’s reasoning was not shared by the Ro-
man pontiff.63 Nevertheless, what was said was said, especially considering
that despite the alteration the published lecture continued to declare the irra-
tional character of a faith that insists on asserting itself with violence, and do-
ing so while speaking of Islam and jihad, both named directly, and not Christi-
anity and the Crusades, which the pope failed to mention. The silence around
the Crusades, in this case, prevents the closure of the parallelism: the judg-
ment on jihad is clear, on the Crusades no verdict is passed. And it was a missed
opportunity, because in other circumstances the pope has been quick to con-
demn wars “declared by invoking, on one side or the other, the name of God.”64
62 Meeting with the representatives of science. Lecture of the Holy Father, Aula Magna of the
University of Regensburg, Tuesday, 12 September 2006, Faith, Reason and the University.
Memories and Reflections, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/
september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html (cons. Apr.
28, 2019). Cf. the considerations of T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., pp. 256–265;
G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., pp. 314 ff.
63 The text he read stated: “[The emperor], in a surprisingly brusque tone, brusque to the
point of shocking, simply turns to his interlocutor with the central question on the rela-
tionship between religion and violence in general.” The expression quoted here in italics
was corrected to “brusque to the point that we found it unacceptable.” Note that the unac-
ceptability of the question posed by Manuel Palaiologos lies not in the merit but the
method, that is, in the tone of voice.
64 Meeting with representatives of some Muslim communities. Address of His Holiness
Pope Benedict XVI, Cologne, Saturday, Aug. 20, 2005, http://w2.vatican.va/content/

46 Chapter 2
John Paul ii and Benedict xvi—with all due respect to those who are more
Catholic than the pope—have not turned a benevolent eye on the Crusades.65
Which does not mean that the Church considers itself in the wrong. If there
was a wrong, the responsibility is laid on the men—the Crusaders and mem-
bers of the clergy—who strayed from the Gospel. Men and even ecclesiastical
institutions can err, but not the Church, which is guided by the Holy Spirit and
marches toward salvation. The Crusades may be a black mark in the history of
the Church, but they do not represent the Church, which is the “mystical body
of Christ” whose essence is inscribed in a theological and eschatological—and
thus ahistorical—design.66 As if to say: the crusaders, embroiled in the rhythm
of history, were in the wrong, but the Church remained pure. The distinguo is
powerful: the pope can ask forgiveness for the sins committed by the sons of
the Church, but never lays the blame on her.67
The distinction between the purity of the abstract entity and the impurity of
her historically bound human sons is certainly understandable, but only with-
in a logic that considers history as grafted onto theology and does not allow for
relativism. In acknowledging it, one would have to recognize the fact that the
medieval Church, though it was always the same institution that has come
down to us over the centuries, expressed different ways of living and thinking
that were as common then as they are uncommon today. The idea of the
benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050820_meeting-
muslims.html (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
65 L. Accattoli, Quando il papa chiede perdono: tutti i mea culpa di Giovanni Paolo II, Monda-
dori, Milano 1997; Id., La “purificazione della memoria” da Giovanni Paolo II a Benedetto
XVI. Conferenza di Luigi Accattoli ai Mercoledì della Cattolica, June 6, 2007, www.luigiaccat�-
toli.it/blog/?page_id=430 (cons. Apr. 28, 2019). On May 14, 2001, John Paul II asked forgive-
ness for the Sack of Constantinople perpetrated by participants in the Fourth Crusade
(1202–04). Accattoli repeats a statement from 2002 by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:
“Speaking of the Crusades we might cite a statement by Cardinal Ratzinger contained in
a text on Francis of Assisi, who first dreamed of the Crusade (it was the time when the
‘Fourth Crusade’ of Wojtyła’s mea culpa was being prepared) but then—the cardinal
says—when he ‘truly knew Christ he understood that even the Crusades were not the
right way to defend the rights of Christians in the Holy Land, but it was better to take the
message of the imitation of the crucifixion at its word.’”
66 Cf. John Paul II, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium, Rizzoli,
Milano 2005 (Italian edition: Giovanni Paolo II, Memoria e identità, intr. by J. Ratzinger
pope Benedict XVI, Rizzoli, Milano 20102, pp. 29, 93–97, 142 ff., 178, 181–185).
67 Cf. O. Fallaci, The Rage and the Pride cit., p. 81: “Tell me, Holy Father: is it true that some
time ago you asked the sons of Allah to forgive the Crusades that Your predecessors fought
to take back the Holy Sepulchre? But did the sons of Allah ever ask you to be forgiven for
having taken the Holy Sepulchre?” In any case, John Paul II asked forgiveness for the
Fourth Crusade. Aside from the fact that it was condemned by Innocent III while it was
being waged, it was directed against the Byzantine Empire, not the Muslims.

rusades as a “just war” was perfectly ecclesiastical, though today it no longer

C
is, for we cannot deny that the entire Christian religion has witnessed, over
time, a profound process of transformation.68 Therefore, from a truly historical
point of view this reasoning doesn’t work: the medieval Church that declared
the Crusades was the authentic Church in a phase of its history and the Cru-
saders were its most devoted children. Fighting to liberate the Holy Sepulchre
was a way into Heaven. Ultimately, no discussion of the Crusades can end in an
accord. This reference to the Middle Ages remains instrumental in both the
East and West, such that it really makes one want to say, along with Giuseppe
Sergi: “It could all go well—or almost—but history won’t bother.”69
So where are the Middle Ages taking us now? On January 22, 2009, American
newspapers reported that upon setting foot in the White House for the first
time, the staff of the incoming president Barack Obama encountered the “Dark
Ages” for the absolute lack of any advanced communication technology. The
Bush Era, then, was immediately labeled a dark time from which we were fi-
nally free, much in the same way Americans speak of the “witch hunts” during
McCarthyism in the Fifties. On July 21, 2009, forty years to the day after man
first landed on the Moon, plugging the exact phrase “Obama is the Messiah”
into Google gave me 80,800 results. Typing “Obama is the Antichrist,” I found
57,400. At Christmas in 2010, Pope Benedict xvi compared the crisis of values
of our age with the end of the Roman Empire.70 In that same season between
November 2010 and January 2011, the “Bunga Bunga” and “Ruby Rubacuori”
scandals, whose protagonist was the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, renewed
the feeling that Italy was plunging into a Late Imperial decadence, that it was
plummeting “in free fall towards a television Middle Ages,” and that, to para-
phrase Dante (Purg. vi, 78), it had been reduced to a brothel.71
68 Cf. G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., pp. 212 ff.

69 G. Sergi, L’idea di medioevo cit., p. 61.
70 A. Riccardi, Se il papa evoca la caduta dell’Impero, in “Corriere della Sera,” Dec. 21, 2010,
pp. 1 and 50.
71 Silvio Berlusconi ou le scandale permanent, in “Le Monde,” November 1st, 2010, p. 1; M.
Brambilla, Basso Impero, in “La Stampa,” 12 November 2010, https://www.lastampa
.it/2010/11/12/cultura/basso-impero-x7TAy5Zk8wXohrVRR5lAKM/pagina.html
(cons. May 5, 2019): Compare to U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock cit. (pp. 181–183 of the
Italian edition, article appearing in “L’Espresso,” October 2002). C. De Gregorio, Le altre
donne, in “L’Unità. Blog. Invece,” Jan. 18, 2011, http://concita.blog.unita.it/le-altre-don
ne-1.266857 (cons. June 21, 2011, the page was found to be inactive when cons. Apr. 28,
2019): “This is the harm caused by the five decades we have lived through, this is the politi-
cal crime committed: emptiness, the flight in free fall towards a television Middle Ages, in
the end, Italy reduced to a brothel.”

48 Chapter 2
Finally, on July 22, 2011, the thirty-two-year-old Norwegian Anders Behring

Breivik detonated a car bomb in downtown Oslo, causing eight deaths and
thirty injuries, and immediately afterward went to the tiny island of Utøya and
massacred a summer camp full of children belonging to the labor party’s youth
branch, shooting sixty-nine people to death and wounding sixty-six. Of the
seventy-seven people who lost their lives, fifty-five were under twenty years
old. The killer declared himself a “knight justiciar grand master of the Knights
Templar of Europe.”72 His nom de guerre was “Sigurd the Crusader.” Ferociously
anti-Islamic, his manifesto-memorial of over 1,500 pages, which bears a large
templar cross on the frontispiece, describes in minute detail the war that the
new militia of the Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solmonici (Poor
Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon), founded by himself
in 2002, must wage from now until 2083 to save Europe from Islam, Marxism,
and multi-culturalism. His work—lucid, methodical, and obsessive—can be
read online:73 it proposes, among many other considerations, a history of the
Crusades and the need to revive them in the modern era by way of the new
Templar order, which must become a triumphant army. He describes the de-
grees, uniforms, and distinctions of this order, the words of the oath, the rite of
initiation, the guarantee of indulgences, all the way to the shape the tombs of
the fallen will take. The document even contains a diary of his preparation for
72 Also “Justiciar Knight Commander for Knights Templar Europe and one of the several
leaders of the National and pan-European Patriotic Resistance Movement.”
73 Andrew Berwick [alias of Anders Behring Breivik], 2083. A European Declaration of Inde-
pendence. De Laude Novae Militiae. Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templisque Solomonici,
London 2011, for example at www.slideshare.net/darkandgreen/2083-a-european-decla
ration-of-independence-by-andrew-berwick (cons. Apr. 28, 2019). On July 26, 2011, in the
course of a Radio24 broadcast, the Leaguist member of European Parliament Mario Bor-
ghezio (the same who pronounced the “Crusader Oath” at Genoa in 2008) endorsed the
positions expressed by Breivik: “Sono posizioni sicuramente condivisibili” (“They are po-
sitions that certainly can be shared”); “buone alcune delle idee espresse al netto della vio-
lenza, direi, in qualche caso, ottime” (“Some of his ideas on the net result of violence are
good, sometimes even great”). “Il sostenere la necessità di una forte riforma cristiana an-
che in termini di crociata contro questa deriva islamista e terrorista e fondamentalista
della religione islamica, e questo tentativo di conquista dell’Europa—il progetto del ca
liffato in Europa—beh, è sacrosanto” (“His belief in the necessity of a powerful Christian
reform, even in terms of a Crusade, against the Islamic religion’s drift towards Islamism,
terrorism, and fundamentalism, and this attempt at the conquest of Europe—this goal of
a caliphate in Europe—well, it’s sacrosanct”): www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XK8XRezt8E
(cons. Apr. 28, 2019). The same day, interviewed by Radio Tehran, Borghezio confirmed his
positions, although condemning the heinous act of violence: www.youtube.com/watch?v
=0hXOS_6wONE&feature=related (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

the attacks, up to 12:51 on the day of the killings. At 3:25:22 PM the bomb ex-
ploded; less than two hours later, Breivik the Templar started shooting.74
74 It would be an arduous task to catalog the numerous new publications about the current
reuse of the medieval dichotomy between Islam and the West, a theme that seems obvi-
ous today to a broad public and about which we will say more in the epilogue to this book.
I would only like to note, in French: W. Blanc, Ch. Naudin, Charles Martel et la bataille de
Poitiers. De l’histoire au mythe identitaire, Libertalia, Paris 2015; in Italian: M. Di Branco, Il
califfo di Dio. Storia del califfato dalle origini all’ISIS, Viella, Roma 2017; R. Facchini,
Sognando la “Christianitas”: l’idea di Medioevo nel tradizionalismo cattolico italiano post-
conciliare, in T. di Carpegna Falconieri, R. Facchini (eds.), Medievalismi italiani cit., pp.
29–51. As for English, aside from A. Elliott, Medievalism, Politics, and Mass Media cit.,
which is centrally concerned with the theme, I would note that in 2018, the publisher
Routledge launched a series called “Engaging the Crusades,” comprising short books that
“offer initial windows into the ways in which the crusades have been used in the last two
centuries; demonstrating that the memory of the crusades is an important and emerging
subject” (https://www.routledge.com/Engaging-the-Crusades/book-series/ETC, cons.
Apr. 28, 2019).

Chapter 3
Once upon a Time in the Middle Ages
He who controls the present controls the past.

G. ORWELL, 1984 (1949)
We left off with a comment on the Bush Era, which was accused of being dark
and medieval no sooner than it was over. Now we are setting off from the Ken-
nedy Era. The same White House that in 2009 was called medieval for its lack
of technological equipment, was between 1961 and 1963 referred to as Camelot.
In the wake of the enormous success of the eponymous musical by Alan Jay
Lerner, which debuted less than a month after the 1960 elections, the Presi-
dent’s cabinet became the Knights of the Round Table, while John Fitzgerald
and his consort Jacqueline were Arthur
se
and Guinevere.1 Almost fifty years lat-
er, various observers wondered whether Camelot had come again to the White
tecendo
House, weaving parallels between the smiling Kennedy and Obama families.2
Thus, within a sixty year period, the United States would see four returns to the
Middle Ages: twice in the name of darkness (McCarthyism and the Bush ad-
ministration) and twice in the name of Arthur’s splendid chivalry (the Kenne-
dy and Obama administrations). Moreover, in recent years the Bush adminis-
tration has been censured anew not just because it was perversely “medieval,”
but also for the exact opposite reason: because it had completely disregarded
the great tradition of the Magna Carta, whose lesson on liberty sanctioned by
laws still endures today.3 George W. Bush thus becomes a disturbing character
1 The comparison was first conceived by John Steinbeck. On that subject: Br. A. Rosenberg,
Kennedy in Camelot: The Arthurian Legend in America, in “Western Folklore,” xxxv (1976),
n. 35, pp. 52–59; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 167 ff.
2 For example: N. Tucker, Barack Obama, Camelot’s New Knight, in “The Washington Post,” Jan.
29, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/28/AR20080128
02730.html (cons. May 5, 2019); “Camelot” Returning to the White House?, in “The Early Show,”
Nov. 7, 2008, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/07/earlyshow/main4581583.shtml (cons.
Apr. 28, 2019); N. Bryant, Obama Echoes JFK’s Camelot Romance, in “bbc News,” Jan. 15, 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7786440.stm (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
3 Cf. N. Turse, Repealing the Magna Carta, in “Mother Jones,” Jan. 6, 2006, http://motherjones
.com/politics/2006/01/repealing-magna-carta (cons. Apr. 28, 2019); P. Linebaugh, The Magna
Carta Manifesto. Liberties and Commons for All, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los
Angeles-London 2008, pp. 11, 267; see p. 275: “Magna Carta is required to open the secret state.
Magna Carta is needed for the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.” Linebaugh’s book is a study of

Once upon a Time in the Middle Ages 51
both as a symbol of the dark Middle Ages and as someone ignorant of the en-
lightened Middle Ages—even as he himself accused fanatical extremists of
sinister, anarchical, and feudal medievalism and claimed to be a Crusader
mandated with a mission to defeat them. This is where the two-sided idea of
the Middle Ages has led us, even in America, a land that throughout that his-
torical era remained unknown to the West. ocidente
The first two chapters presented some reflections on the medieval as a nega-
tive concept. In the cases previously considered, the robust Middle Ages serve
as a touchstone for the modern age. Apart from the case of New Medievalism,
which can take a neutral point of view, and also apart from the positive use of
the idea of the Crusades (which nevertheless arises only in the context of bitter
conflict), in general the medieval and its correlate the post-modern have been
judged as equally sinister. The key word has been “analogy”: we are like them,
equally wretched. Now, however, our conversation moves in a different direc-
tion. The argument of this chapter and those to follow aligns with the preced-
ing, in the sense that here too we find a critique of current events accom-
plished through constant references to the Middle Ages. The metaphor stands,
but turned on its head. “Medieval” becomes not a term of similarity, but a place
of opposition. The key word is no longer analogy, but distance. The rhetori-
cal device shifts from parallelism to antithesis. Antithesis between a corrupt
civilization—the current one—and a better civilization, which is held to be
the medieval one. The Middle Ages return not to frighten, but to enchant. This
is made possible, and we cannot say this enough, because the word “medieval,”
which has become polysemic over the course of the centuries, contains in it-
self both condemnation and celebration. I now want to discuss this second
aspect of the theme, examining the many ways the Medieval Era produces
positive reference points for political events of the last fifty years.
Readings of the Middle Ages as a positive period can be found in the vast litera-
ture of the critique of progress. We are dealing with a new querelle des anciens
et des modernes in which, contrary to the judgments passed in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the palm of victory goes to the anciens. In this sense,
our debt to late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture is immense: from
Luddism, the movement against the society of machines, through Novalis and
François-René de Chateaubriand, through John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites,
and William Morris, we can trace a line to contemporary environmentalism,
the uses, interpretations, and omissions to which two documents from the thirteenth cen-
tury (the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest) have been subjected from the sixteenth
century to today.

52 Chapter 3
realizing that the affect is always the same. All tell us of an uncontaminated
world, of a lost paradise that precedes the horrors of standardization, consum-
erism, pollution, overpopulation, and automation: a world of virgin forests,
independent heroes, and free peoples sustained by an authentic faith.
Medievalism as a cultural movement was born in England around 1760, has
been expressed with greater or lesser intensity depending on the place, and has
undergone various metamorphoses. As a unifying element it saw a wide diffu-
sion across Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century—a dif-
fusion possible precisely because of its inherent multiformity.4 The long, multi-
faceted nineteenth century, a century of progress and reaction, of poetry and
history, of industry, science, and war, was also the time of the Middle Ages. This
is when the genesis of the “common understanding of the Middle Ages” must
be sought, inasmuch as “Romanticism” and “Medievalism” are two terms that
have long been interchangeable.5 This happens not because the idea of the
4 The bibliography on this topic is growing longer year by year. Among the most significant ti-
tles in the Italian language one might recall Il sogno del medieovo cit.; R. Bordone, Lo specchio
di Shalott cit.; Studi medievali e immagine del medioevo cit.; G. Cavallo, C. Leonardi, and
E. Menestò (eds.), Lo spazio letterario del medioevo. 1. Il medioevo latino, vol. iv, L’attualizzazione
del testo, Salerno Editrice, Roma 1997; P. Boitani, M. Mancini, and A. Vàrvaro (eds.), Lo spazio
letterario del medioevo. 2. Il medioevo volgare, vol. iv, L’attualizzazione del testo, Salerno Edi-
trice, Roma 2004; E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi (eds.), Arti e storia nel medioevo, vol. iv, Il me-
dioevo al passato e al presente, Einaudi, Torino 2004. Among the numerous titles in other
languages I must cite at least Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit.; M. Alexander, Medieval-
ism. The Middle Ages in Modern England, Yale University Press, New Haven-London 2007;
V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit. ; V. Groebner, Das Mittelalter hört nicht auf. Über
historisches Erzählen, C.H. Beck, München 2008; V. Ferré (ed.), Médiévalisme: modernité du
Moyen Âge, L’Harmattan, Paris 2010; O.G. Oexle, Die Gegenwart des Mittelalters, Akademie
Verlag, Berlin 2013; T. Pugh, A.J. Weisl, Medievalisms. Making the Past in the Present, Routledge,
Oxon-New York 2013; D. Matthews, Medievalism: A Critical History, D.S. Brewer, Woodbridge
2015; L. D’Arcens (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 2016; K.P. Fazioli, The Mirror of the Medieval cit.; The Middle Ages in the
Modern World cit.; Medievalism: Key Critical Terms cit.; A. Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and
Mass Media cit. A continuously updated bibliography on the topic can be found on the
“Timeline” page of the online journal “Medievally Speaking,” http://medievallyspeaking
.blogspot.com/2009/09/timeline.html (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
5 The coincidence of meanings is already found at the end of the eighteenth century in Herder:
M. Domenichelli, Miti di una letteratura medievale. Il Nord, in E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi
(eds.), Arti e storia nel medioevo, vol. iv cit., pp. 293–325: 293. Cf. in general Romanticismo/
Medievalismo, monograph issue of “La Questione romantica,” V (1999), n. 7/8. In Italian, the
noun “medioevo” (a translation of medium aevum, from the seventeenth century) and the
adjective “medievale” cannot be found earlier than the nineteenth century: Cf. C. Battisti, G.
Alessio, Dizionario etimologico italiano, G. Barbera, Firenze 1975, ad voces. Even in English, the
adjective “medieval” is first attested in 1827: Cl. A. Simmons, Medievalism: Its Linguistic His-
tory in Nineteenth-Century Britain, in “Studies in Medievalism,” XVII (2009), pp. 28–35: 29 ff.

Middle Ages per se was born then—as we have seen it was already centuries
old—but because only during this long century do we find the first, full social-
ization of ideas and the development of a widespread political culture, trans-
ferred from the elite environments of the courts and salons to cafés, theaters,
squares, and those virtual spaces of society that are magazines and newspa-
pers. The very concept of the Middle Ages, which is far from intuitive in that it
presupposes a familiarity with the notion of “history” in which it should be
situated, simply could not have had a mass effect before that time. The Middle
Ages already existed, but it was enclosed in the minds of an educated few. On
the other hand—and this is why we must come to terms with nineteenth-cen-
tury medievalism in order to truly understand modernity—during the nine-
teenth century the Middle Ages became a widespread myth at the bourgeois
and even the popular level.
Finally the people had both the tools to imagine and reimagine history, and
the information to create a secular history. Never before had there been a such
a widespread and pervasive way to interpret the journey of man outside of re-
ligion. Popular and children’s literature were born precisely in that period
when all of Europe was pervaded by a Romantic longing for the Middle Ages,
with the result that this literature received a corresponding “imprint.” We
should be clear that this message did not pass through literature to historio-
graphical or theoretical works on medievalism, such as those of Viollet-le-Duc,
Pugin, and Ruskin, but rather that both reflect the magnitude of medievalism
as an overarching cultural framework. Medievalism was disruptive and omni-
present, and proposed a clear, unitary, and effective message that presented
history as a narrative. It was a living evocation of times past and thus of all our
ancestors, in every country that subscribed to this model. The medieval was
related in a colorful way—moving images that foreshadowed the cinema—the
market, the peasants, the village, the knight’s garb, the construction of the ca-
thedral, the battlefield, the settlement of a people in their land. Medievalism
was present in objects visible to everyone (great monuments, museums, na-
tional expositions, scenography en plein air), shared culturally (songs, operatic
arias), and fairly accessible economically (replica crafts, cheap editions of fa-
bles, legends, and novels, prints, even collections of figurines and stamps).
The tremendous impact of this medieval revival is above all tied to the pop
ularity of historical novels, illustrations, and neo-Gothic, neo-Romanesque,
and (in Spain and parts of the US) neo-Moorish architecture. Considering that
iconographic sources and materials from the final centuries of the Middle Ages
are much richer and more abundant than those from earlier times, these cen-
turies of the Middle Ages’ “waning” became the visual paradigm containing
in itself the entire medieval millennium. A Crusader could don fifteenth- or

54 Chapter 3
sixteenth-century tournament gear and a damsel of the twelfth century could

dress like a lady of that later era, wearing a coned hat like a fairy. We are dealing
with a process of standardization that has led to stereotypes of medieval fashion
derived from the Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and even the sixteenth centu-
ry. It is precisely this autumn of the Middle Ages, useful for dressing up even
barbarian chiefs and crusaders, that has come down to us, through the illustra-
tions in children’s books and especially through cinema, without much
alteration.6
But why did this medieval myth come to have such a wide reception? The
question is fundamental, because the answer can help explain the reuse of the
Middle Ages in modernity. The starting point to keep in mind is the following: idade
almost since their end the Middle Ages have been, in Western culture, one of media
como
the most preferred settings for the marvelous, whether in a bright and benevo- uma
epoca
lent tone—fairy magic and the knight’s quest—or a terrifying and sinister daora
pra
one—as they said in the nineteenth century, “gothic”: ghosts, mysterious fantasias
(fairy
happenings, and witchcraft. The word “medieval” is so evocative of this fantas- tales) ou
pra um
tical setting that the two are practically synonymous.7 Such superposition of lance
mais
sinistro.
6 For cinema with medieval themes, see in general: V. Attolini, Immagini del medioevo nel cin-
ema, Dedalo, Bari 1993; Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 63–68; G. Gandino, Il cine-
ma, in E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi (eds.), Arti e storia nel medioevo, vol. iv cit., pp. 737–755;
M. Sanfilippo, Historic Park. La storia e il cinema, Elleu multimedia, Roma 2004, pp. 99–134;
V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 193–223; K.J. Harty, The Reel Middle Ages:
American, Western and Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian Films about Medieval Eu-
rope, McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 20062; N. Haydock, Movie Medievalism. The Imaginary Middle
Ages, McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 2008; M. Sanfilippo, Cavalieri di celluloide, in M. Mesirca and
F. Zambon (eds.), Il revival cavalleresco. Dal Don Chisciotte all’Ivanhoe (e oltre), Pacini, Pisa
2010, pp. 243–254, also online: http://dspace.unitus.it/bitstream/2067/950/1/Testo%20San
filippo.doc (cons. Apr. 28, 2019); B. Bildhauer, Medievalism and the Cinema, in L. D’Arcens
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism cit., pp. 45–59. Specific themes have also
been the subject of monographs, such as, for example, M. Sanfilippo, Il medioevo secondo
Walt Disney cit.; Id., Camelot, Sherwood, Hollywood. Re Artú e Robin Hood dal medioevo inglese
al cinema americano, Cooper, Roma 2006; B. Olton (ed.), Arthurian Legends on Films and Tele-
vision, McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 2008; P. Dalla Torre, Giovanna d’Arco sullo schermo, Studi-
um, Roma 2004; M.W. Driver, S. Ray and J. Rosenbaum (eds.), The Medieval Hero on Screen:
Representations from Beowulf to Buffy, McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 2004; Hollywood in the Holy
Land cit.; L. D’Arcens, Comic Medievalism. Laughing at the Middle Ages, D.S. Brewer, Wood-
bridge 2014. The journal “Quaderni medievali,” active from 1976 to 2005, contains a number of
articles dedicated to cinema. One website on the topic is Cinema e medioevo, www.cineme
dioevo.net (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).
7 G. De Turris, L’immaginario medievale nel fantastico contemporaneo, in Il sogno del medioevo
cit., pp. 93–109; R. Bordone, Il medioevo nell’immaginario dell’Ottocento italiano cit.; Id., Me-
dioevo oggi, in G. Cavallo [et al.] (eds.), Lo spazio letterario del medioevo, 1, vol. iv, L’attua
lizzazione del testo cit., pp. 261–299; M. Oldoni, Il significato del medioevo nell’immaginario

meanings does not exist in the idealization of other epochs: the concepts of
the ancient, modern, and contemporary ages do not immediately bring about
this alignment of thought. Yet the popular fairy tale itself always seems to be set
in the middle ages: not the time of the authors, as in the collections of Perrault
or La Fontaine, or even in Aesop’s fables, but that of traditional folk legends.
When we speak of magic, fairies, and heroes, we are of course referring to
archetypal imaginary forms that respond to the profound and universal exi-
gencies of humankind. These archetypes require no precise historical time; it
is enough for them to conjure up an “other” time, ancient inasmuch as every
myth refers to a remote past. This is the time of “once upon a time.” Outside the
West the Middle Ages are not a fitting vessel, even though in Persian, African,
and American Indian tales we find the same archetypes. The Middle Ages may
be the setting of European tales, but it does not represent their essence so
much as their color. a idade media pode ser o cenário dos contos, mas eles não representam sua essência nem suas cores.
To be clear, our basic problem is not understanding how much was truly
o problema eh medieval in the nineteenth century’s historical, artistic, and literary re-imagin-
perder o real
medieval com essasing of the Middle Ages, how much, in other words, historiographical analyses
reinterpretações
acerca da idade me and rewritings respected medieval sources. What is essential is that we com-
dia no sec. XIX
prehend how the entire process carried out in the nineteenth century involved
coloring archetypal and fantastical situations with medievalizing hues—even
if such situations were not actually medieval. The Brothers Grimm, Victor
Hugo, Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson, along with Gustave Doré, Wal-
ter Crane, and a hundred other great and minor authors have, in a word, histo-
ricized the “once upon a time,” and called it Medieval.
We might call this process of adapting fables and legends in the template of
medieval culture a normalization of the fantastic. Yet in coloring the arche-
types, the very word medieval is transformed into something evocative of myth.
The fantastic, the mysterious, and the fairytale are reduced to a standard, a
canonical formula, a code of communication understood by all. This is not
a new process: during the Medieval Era itself and, mutatis mutandis, during
the Renaissance, an analogous approach enabled the weaving of bonds with
Classical Greece and Rome, through both history and mythology. And already
in the Early Modern era, authors like Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, Spenser, and
Shakespeare, vanguards and precursors to medievalism, recreated their Middle
Ages. In our case the influence is even more broad, extending even to children
and the illiterate.
contemporaneo, in Medioevo reale, medioevo immaginario. Confronti e percorsi culturali tra

regioni d’Europa, conference proceedings (Torino, 26–27 May 2000), Città di Torino, Torino
2002, pp. 187–208.

56 Chapter 3
Even absent Romanticism, the pre-existing fantastical motifs would have

continued to serve their functions in popular culture: heroes fight and win, we
know, just not necessarily in chain mail. These fantastical motifs are neverthe-
less garbed in courtly dress throughout the long nineteenth century. By the
first decades of the next one, the Middle Ages had become the preferred ste-
reotype for fantastic narrative. Thus, we can easily say that the nineteenth cen-
tury definitively transformed the way that Europeans represented the fantasies
with which they supplied the West: they medievalized them, providing them
with a “historical” landscape.
And thus we see a canon taking shape, a motif-index of popular imagination
pertaining to the Middle Ages that persists almost unaltered to the present day,
as one can see, to take a random example, in the comic strip The Wizard of Id
(1964–). The character types are the king and queen, the dame and damsel donzela
(usually in distress), the prince, the knight, the troubadour or minstrel, the
jester, the bard, the friar, the merchant, the innkeeper, the peasant, the serf,
the pope, the emperor, the fairy, the witch, the inquisitor, the dragon, the mage,
the hermit, the saint, the rebel, the wolf, the barbarian, the conjurer, the char-
latan, the thief, the churchman… With whom are we dealing, Chaucer? Boc-
caccio? They are already distant specters, concealed behind so many rewrit-
ings. The typical places where these stories transpire are the cathedral, the city,
the forest, the tournament list, the battlefield, and, naturally, the castle. Which,
to be recognized as canonical, must have its crenellations (Guelph or Ghibel-
line), its drawbridge, catapults, four towers, possibly cylindrical and preferably
with coned roofs. Without crenellations it’s not a real castle, or it’s at least a
shoddy one. And then there must be double- or triple-arched windows, vault-
ed ceilings, grotesque sculptures, great hearths, tapestries, and pelts. Are we
talking about a real fortress? Absolutely not: it’s an Idealtypus that takes its in-
spiration primarily from the neomedieval castles of Pierrefonds and
Neuschwanstein (this last the one on which Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty
Castle is based) and which is easy to find, even today, in children’s books.8
8 The literature on neomedieval castles, which, along with churches, university buildings, and
seats of public institutions represent the crown jewels of neomedievalism, is quite vast, start-
ing with K. Clark, The Gothic Revival. An Essay in the History of Taste, John Murray, London
1928. Various studies on the subject can be found in the volume of E. Castelnuovo and G.
Sergi (eds.), Arti e storia nel medioevo, vol. iv cit.; See also, specifically, N.R. Kline (ed.), Castles:
An Enduring Fantasy, State College Art Gallery, Plymouth 1985; T. Lazzari, Castello e immagi-
nario dal Romanticismo a oggi, Battei, Parma 1991; R. Bordone, Lo specchio di Shalott cit.,
pp. 121–137 and 173–184; M. Sanfilippo, Il medioevo secondo Walt Disney cit.; R. Licinio, Castelli
reali, castelli virtuali, castelli immaginari, in “Quaderni medievali,” xxii (1997), n. 43, pp. 94–
118; R.R. Taylor, The Castles of the Rhine: Recreating the Middle Ages in Modern Germany,

Nineteenth-century historians, architects, illustrators, and novelists shaped

public opinion and planted the models that have since taken root and ramified
ad infinitum. Their glossy and, in part, fabricated Middle Ages have remained
alive in popular imagination because they had two considerable advantages:
they were described in a way that left no room for doubt, and they were ever
present before the eyes of the people. The Medieval Era is alive because, during
the nineteenth century, it was largely constructed or reconstructed in a mi-
metic tone that did not bother to distinguish—with some exceptions—the
possible original element from the artificial one: a principle that applies
equally to architecture as to costumes and scenery. The quantity of products
proposed as medieval was so tremendous that they have had continued to con-
dition every interpretation to come. Someone with no philological training
still has trouble today distinguishing (and has no reason to do so) between the
Middle Ages invented in the nineteenth century and the “real,” historically
verifiable era—which also has the d efect of being less monumental, less com-
plete, and more imperfect, because it has been corroded by the years. Why
should an Englishman and a Hungarian know that the seats of their parliaments
were both erected in the nineteenth century, seeing as they were both taught
that their respective nations—represented precisely by those buildings—
date back to the Middle Ages? And why should an Italian know that her festival
costumes—the symbols of civic identity—are much closer to the ones found
in opera and film than medieval paintings? It is therefore thanks to the nine-
teenth-century revival that the modern world has been able to construct a col-
lective imaginary and call it, sic et simpliciter, medieval.
What are the political implications of all this? Even if we limited ourselves
to collecting fantastical elements, the Middle Ages would still emerge as cen-
tral to the construction of the Western imagination, but our work would stop
there. In reality, however, the crucial step with which we have yet to reckon is
the mobilization of these feelings of distance, wonder, the sacred, and the ar-
cane in service of an identitarian political sentiment. Medieval does not just
mean magic, black or white as the case may be, but above all a historical patria,
a sense of a place (possibly even physical, with monuments, lieux de mémoire),
a feeling of belonging to a community, a group, a religion, a sect. This is the
hook on which hangs a large part of political medievalism.
The nineteenth-century artistic and literary movements, which at first glance
appear out of touch with the hard realities of the everyday life that they sought
to transcend, harbor a profound and deep-rooted politics without which they
ilfried Laurier University Press, Waterloo (ON) 1998; A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités
W
nationales. Europe xviiie-xxe siècle, Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1999, pp. 146–149.

58 Chapter 3
do not make sense. If we look but a little bit closer, we see that the medievalism
of the Restoration is not that of the July Revolution, nor that of the People’s
Spring, the Italian Risorgimento, the irredentist states of Eastern Europe or the
United Kingdom, of labor unions, Russian pan-Slavism, the foundation of the
Second Reich or the late, decadent nineteenth century. Its instrumental use can
be twisted to any possible interpretation: conservative, revolutionary, patriotic,
neo-Guelph or neo-Ghibelline, individualist (the solitary hero) and collectivist
(the industrious city, the people in action), such that it has been spoken of as a
“great repertoire of ambiguously polyvalent metaphors.”9 In fact, nineteenth-
century political medievalism, born with a clear stamp of reaction and counter-
revolution, has also been revolutionary, liberal, constitutionalist, and parliamen
tarian. François-René de Chateaubriand, that great figure of post-Napoleonic
Restoration, made use of it, but so too did Freidrich Engels, Marx’s co-author for
the Communist Manifesto; John Ruskin, who dreamed of a return to a Middle
Ages of original purity, his disciple Walter Crane, who gave it a socialist reading,
and finally Richard Wagner, who constructed the myth of the Great Germany
upon it. A veritable shared language, propagated by a hundred “national bards,”
from the mysterious Ossian all the way to Giosue Carducci and William Butler
Yeats.10
According to nineteenth-century principles recently returned to fashion,
the Middle Ages are the before-time of national kings who ensured the birth of
the state in the great countries like France, Spain, England, already institution-
alized in this era, or else—in countries that were still “irredentist” in the nine-
teenth century, like Italy, Poland, or Ireland—the glorious time of liberty be-
fore the imperialist invasions of vicious and soulless Others, be they English,
Austrian, Spanish, German, Russian, or Turkish. “History is the nation,” wrote
Guizot. “It is the patria across the centuries.”11
9 R. Bordone, Il medioevo nell’immaginario cit., p. 115. He notes the contradiction inherent

in the Italian judgment on the Middle Ages: ibid., p. 128.
10 The studies on nineteenth-century political medievalism are numerous and represented
by almost all contemporary nations, to the point that it is difficult to provide even a basic
representative sample. See, however: A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités natio
nales cit.; Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., especially pp. 185–202 and 230–241;
J. L eerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History, Amsterdam University Press,
Amsterdam 2006; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 99–117; P.J. Geary, The
Myth of Nations cit., pp. 15–40; Id., Writing the Nation: Historians and National Identities
from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Centuries, in The Middle Ages in the Modern World:
Twenty-first-century Perspectives cit., pp. 73–86. This topic is addressed more fully in Ch. 11.
11 “L’histoire c’est la nation, c’est la patrie à travers les siècles”: F. Guizot, Mémoires pour ser-
vir à l’histoire de mon temps, Michel Levy Frères, Paris 1858, vol. I, p. 28.

In the course of the nineteenth century, the search for the beginning, the
founding day, found a perfect response in the identification of the first settle-
ments of the gens, of its most ancient songs, of warrior heroes, of royal corona-
tions and battles won, foreshadowing the new battles that the gens is called to
fight and the new kings who hope to put themselves on the throne. The Medi-
eval Era, de facto timeless even when meticulously dated to the Early and High
Middle Ages, serves this process by imposing a historical category and ethics of
judgment according to which the present-day winners are not those who truly
have justice on their side, but those who “were there first”: the peoples who
first drained the swamps and cleared the forests, who erected and defended
their cities. The conquered are redeemed and return as the potential patrons of
their land, bearing their ancestral presence as a deed of ownership. The posi-
tion according to which justice is on the side of those who were there before
and not those who came after with numbers or the force of arms, is at the base
of every nationalist and irredentist claim of the nineteenth century and many
political movements today: the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, for instance. The Middle Ages become indispensable for
demonstrating the continuity that can confirm the right of precedence.12
In establishing antithesis, the enemy is the secret ingredient to producing
synthesis and creating identity.13 The Middle Ages are the great time of heroes
who fight for their people and their country, both the one that once existed but
is now endangered, and the one that must, necessarily, find its final form in the
state that one day—hopefully soon—will be reborn: heroes like El Cid, Alexan-
der Nevsky, Robin Hood, Joan of Arc, William Tell, William Wallace, Jan Hus,
and Alberto da Giussano. In this manner the medieval hero operates as a high-
ly effective exemplum of a whole population understood as an active and com-
batant subject. And it operates just as effectively for the intellectuals of the
consolidated national states as for those leading patriotic movements aspiring
to the formation of a governing state: Greeks, Italians, Bohemians, Slovaki-
ans, Hungarians, Poles, Serbs, Slovenes, Croatians, Macedonians, Romanians,
12 See A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., pp. 232–33: “It is difficult to es-
tablish, according to the national principle, statute of limitations for the occupation of
ancient soil […]. An extreme case would be the Serbian reclamation of Kosovo, declared
the sanctuary of the nation because in 1389 the great battle against the Ottoman Empire
was fought there, marking the end of an independent Serbian reign.” See also P.J. Geary,
The Myth of Nations cit., p. 13, for the concept of the “moment of primary acquisition.”
13 F. Cardini, L’invenzione del nemico cit.; G. Ricci, Il nemico ufficiale. Discorsi di crociata
nell’Italia moderna, in F. Cantù, G. Di Febo and R. Moro (eds.), L’immagine del nemico.
Storia, ideologia e rappresentazione tra età moderna e contemporanea, Viella, Roma 2009,
pp. 41–55.

60 Chapter 3
ulgarians—in short, those within the Austrian and Ottoman Empires—or

B
Scotsmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, Bretons, Occitans, Basques, Catalans—the
independentists active in the British, French, and Spanish Empires. Each
movement discovers its own medieval battles, with songs and heroes; each
possesses the full (albeit imagined) knowledge that the Middle Ages were the
origin of its own nation.14
It is this strict contiguity between the historical sense and the sense of
wonder, the result of precise cultural operations that have selected and re
interpreted certain medieval elements while omitting many others, that
forms the bedrock of nineteenth-century, and with it contemporary, political
medievalism—above all because of the perfect alignment of a belief in the
primordial formation of identities with foundation myths. Local and national
identity, tradition, heroism and a sense of wonder, empirical history and leg-
end: all can converge in the same word, “medieval,” today as in the nineteenth
century. The historically documented knight , the national symbol, and the leg-
endary or indeed fairy-tale hero come to be represented, and thus received, in
the same way. The Battle of Legnano and Joan of Arc have spatiotemporal loca-
tions as precise as they are discrete, but they produce emotion because they
are perceived as myth, simultaneously “here” and “elsewhere.”
They are myths, but they are quite different from those of mythology as
generally understood. Unlike in classical mythology, the mythic time of the
Middle Ages is presented as a real time that actually happened, that is de-
scribable in historical and thus credible terms, and that contains proven
(though not a lways tested) facts. All the clichés about the Middle Ages, many
of which we will encounter in the following chapters, have been at times ac-
cepted historiographical interpretations.15 The Middle Ages’ real mythogra-
phers are the historians and the archaeologists, even when they made judi-
cious use of critical methods and applied philological rigor to written sources
and material remains. While substantial doubts around the admissibility of
certain interpretations already flourished among nineteenth-century authors
14 Cf. infra, Chapter 11.

15 Overviews in K. Biddick, The Shock of Medievalism, Duke University Press, Durham (NC)
1998; N. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages cit.; Studi medievali e immagine del medioevo fra
Ottocento e Novecento cit.; E. Artifoni, Il medioevo nel Romanticismo. Forme della storiogra-
fia fra Sette e Ottocento, in G. Cavallo [et al.] (eds.), Lo spazio letterario del medioevo, 1, vol.
iv, L’attualizzazione del testo cit., pp. 175–221; E. Occhipinti, Gli storici e il medioevo. Da
Muratori a Duby, in E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi (eds.), Arti e storia nel medioevo, vol. iv
cit., pp. 207–228; G. Sergi, Antidoti all’abuso della storia cit., pp. 237–338; R. Utz, Medieval-
ism. A Manifesto, Arc Humanities Press, Kalamazoo and Bradford 2017, pp. 19 ff., 39 ff.

(and not only p rofessional historians),16 in actuality the history, archaeology,

and museology of the Middle Ages “precisely reconstructed” greatly reinforced
the mythopoetic interpretation of the period, because they were simply su-
perimposed on this interpretation without eliminating it. Indeed, they have
even legitimized it scientifically inasmuch as they share its “mission” of laying
the foundations of the “history of the fatherland” in a true political program.17
Born in the same environment, medievalism and medieval studies have
necessarily drifted apart over time. The writing of medieval history acquires its
characteristic physiognomy from continual reinterpretation, in the present, of
historical facts gleaned from the study of the Middle Ages, from new acquisi-
tions in research, and from the questions that historians are called to answer.
Hence the fact that the study of history is always a process of becoming: the
certainties of one generation can be contested by a following generation, and a
scholar has every right to change his/her mind in the course of his/her research,
16 For example, on the high degree of awareness and understanding of historical dynamics
on the part of some authors, including of the implausibility of a simplistic understanding
of the history of the communes as that of the Italian nation, see R. Bordone, Il medioevo
nell’immaginario cit., pp. 111 ff.; O. Capitani, Carducci e la storia d’Italia medievale. Controri-
flessioni inattuali, in A. Mazzon (ed.), Scritti per Isa. Raccolta di studi offerti a Isa Lori San-
filippo, Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, Roma 2008, pp. 101–114; F. Roversi Mona-
co, “O falsar la storia…”: Massimo D’Azeglio e la Lega Lombarda, in A. Malfitano, A. Preti,
F. Tarozzi (eds.), Per continuare il dialogo. Gli amici ad Angelo Varni, Bononia University
Press, Bologna 2014, pp. 131–140; Id., “Il gran fatto che dovrà commemorarsi”: l’Alma Mater
Studiorum e l’Ottavo Centenario della sua fondazione. Medioevo, memoria e identità a Bolo-
gna dopo l’Unità d’Italia in T. di Carpegna Falconieri, R. Facchini (eds.), Medievalismi ita
liani cit., pp. 149–162.
17 See Cl. Fawcett e P.L. Kohl (eds.), Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1996; T. Champion and M. Diaz-Andreu (eds.),
Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe, Westview Press, Boulder (CO) 1996; S. Jones, The
Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present, Routledge, Lon-
don-New York 1997; A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., pp. 204–210 and
passim; G. Iggers, The Uses and Abuses of History and the Responsibility of the Historians:
Past and Present, in 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences, 6–13 August 2000.
Proceeding Acts: Reports, Abstracts and Round Table Introductions, University of Oslo, Oslo
2000, pp. 83–100; A.D. Smith, The Nation in History. Historiographical Debates about Eth-
nicity and Nationalism, Brandeis-Historical Society of Israel, Jerusalem 2000; Antiquités,
archéologie et construction nationale au xixe siècle, monograph issue of “Mélanges de
l’École française de Rome. Italie et Mediterranée,” cxiii (2001), n. 2; Cl. A. Simmons (ed.),
Medievalism and the Quest for the “Real” Middle Ages, Routledge, London 2001; G. Klanic-
zay and E. Marosi (eds.), The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization” in Hungary
and Europe, Collegium Budapest for Advanced Study, Budapest 2006; B. Effros, The Ger-
manic Invasions and the Academic Politics of National Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century
France, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 81–94; M. Baár, Histo-
rians and Nationalism. East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University
Press, Oxford 2010.

62 Chapter 3
for relativism and methodical doubt, against which many voices are raised to-
day, are and remain the cornerstones of the discipline.18 Even if the word “revi-
sionism” seems negative (as often happens to “isms”), in reality historical writ-
ing is unimaginable except as a continual self-correction—always, however
(and this is how it differs from revisionism per se), tending to the most exact
and intellectually honest reconstruction of the dynamics of the past. Medieval
studies, then, is a discipline of constant evolution, which discusses itself and
has transformed many times in the course of the last two hundred years. The
ways that a nineteenth-century historian studied and understood the Middle
Ages do not correspond to ours, and not all the questions that our colleague of
two centuries ago had to address interest us anymore.
Twentieth-century history writing, filled with opposing tensions, did not of-
fer a unitary and teleological vision of historical processes; on the contrary, it
expressed ever more critical and nebulous concepts. Not just that: it found it-
self competing with other sciences born in the second half of the nineteenth
century that quickly rose to the rank of co-star if not leading actor in the inter-
pretation of the world of men: psychology, ethnography, anthropology, sociol-
ogy. What a century earlier could be theorized in historical terms and present-
ed according to narrative models has become the investigative territory of
disciplines that have developmental epistemologies distinct from that of his-
tory, seen at times as an elderly aunt. It is not at all by chance that the most il-
lustrious historians of the mid-twentieth century, like Marc Bloch, Henri Brau-
del, and Lucien Febvre, are those who sought (and found) a compromise in
making history a social science comparable to the others: in other words, a
sociology particularly attuned to diachronic development.
The enrichment and specialization of the human sciences has had a posi-
tive effect in the incredible increase in the possibilities of posing and resolving
problems, but the trade-off has been the impossibility of following develop-
ments outside one’s own specialty with adequate competence. As history (like
sociology and other disciplines) becomes academic, it is no longer in a posi-
tion to speak to everyone. The osmosis between fields of knowledge that
marked nineteenth-century erudition has dwindled and at times ceased com-
pletely. Seen from a distance of over a hundred years, the architect Viollet-le-
Duc, the novelist Stevenson, the art critic Ruskin, and the historian Cattaneo
ultimately do not seem to think of the Middle Ages all too differently: they love
it, they narrate it, they relive it, and they make it modern. Even to one with full
knowledge of their different epistemological bases and methodologies, they
always point in the same direction. Not so in the twentieth century: now
18 See Chapters 7 and 10.

medieval studies addresses carefully delineated themes, changes its mind, cor-
rects itself, seeks new avenues, evaluates new sources, and sometimes consid-
ers its scholars’ responsiveness to the demands of modernity inappropriate, the
risk of falling into reviled anachronisms too great. But the other side of the coin
is that the results of historical analysis grow muddled and are received too late,
if at all, by those who practice her sister fields (sociologists, journalists, histori-
ans who specialize in other periods) and by those “not suited to the task.”19 The
professionalization of historiography has thus had an unexpected outcome: the
severing of academic knowledge from common understanding. The ways of
comprehending and representing the Middle Ages have split into two paths:
history as practiced in the university world (not a very influential environment
in terms of demographic impact, at least not before 1968), and popular percep-
tion. The interaction between these two modes of understanding the past (in
this case, the Middle Ages) has always remained relatively limited.20 Com-
pounding the situation, a certain kind of academia (primarily in Germany and
Italy, countries where the tradition of the essay is weak) has and often contin-
ues to favor a writing style that, while justifiably technical, can too easily lapse
into jargon and even into an intentional esotericism rooted in a real horror
at the prospect of its “vulgarization.”21 The consequences are clear: the space
of communication about the Middle Ages, which in the nineteenth century
was entirely filled with learned historians, has since been occupied by others. In
Italy, for instance, the Middle Ages are known largely thanks to the Storia
d’Italia a fumetti (History of Italy in Comics) and books by the journalists Indro
19 See G. Sergi, Preface to the Italian edition of P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit. (Il mito
delle nazioni. Le origini medievali dell’Europa, Carocci, Roma 2005, pp. 9–15: 10), for the
concept of “asynchronous update.”
20 G. Sergi, L’idea di medioevo cit., especially p. 12, on the “ineffectiveness of professional re-
search on the distortion of collective memory”; B. Stock, Listening for the Text. On the Uses
of the Past, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadephia 19962, pp. 71–72, on the “gap
between academic medievalism and general culture”; J. Le Goff, À la recherche du Moyen
Âge, Audibert, Paris 2003, p. 7: “The florid French school of medieval studies, despite its
scientific successes, does not seem to have changed anything in the media or the basic
ideas that are broadcast.” See analogously S. Settis, The Future of the “Classical” cit., pp. 13
ff., which speaks of a true “divorce between the ‘science of antiquity’ and the use of antiq-
uity in contemporary culture.” On clichés, aside from Sergi’s L’idea di medioevo, see F. Ma-
rostica (ed.), Medioevo e luoghi comuni, Tecnodid, Napoli 2004; A. Brusa, Un prontuario
degli stereotipi sul medioevo, in “Cartable de Clio,” V (2004), n. 4, www.mondimedievali.
net/pre-testi/stereotipi.htm (cons. Mar. 10, 2010, the page was found to be inactive when
cons. Apr. 28, 2019); M. Bull, Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle
Ages, Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2005; G. Sergi, Antidoti all’abuso della storia cit.,
pp. 359–364.
21 R. Iorio, Medioevo e divulgazione, in “Quaderni medievali,” xiii (1988), n. 26, pp. 163–170;
S. Pivato, Vuoti di memoria cit., pp. 29–36.

64 Chapter 3
Montanelli and Roberto Gervaso.22 In the same way, and not by chance, the
Italian personality most directly associated with the Middle Ages is Umberto
Eco, renowned semiotician and accomplished novelist. Consequently, in the
words of Giuseppe Sergi, “The Middle Ages of non-medievalists (historians of
the Modern Era, anthropologists, literary critics) has great success precisely
because it corresponds to the common culture and to what the greater public
expects.”23
Medievalism is a cultural, social, and political phenomenon that responds
to a different set of needs and is structured in a completely different manner
from the academic study of the Middle Ages. Those who “use” the Middle Ages
usually have no intention of discussing and understanding it in its ambiguity,
nor of contextualizing it: on the contrary, if they can’t find a parallel with the
modern world, the medieval is of no use to them. This means that the beloved
or exploited Medieval Era does not exist as an object in itself, but only as the
measure by which the echoes of modernity are given substance: it is reflected
in a mirror that deforms the original image, for “nunc videmus per speculum in
aenigmate”: now we see as through a mirror, darkly.24 And all too frequently
this reflection in the mirror may have no solid object behind it, for the image
may be within the mirror, that is, within us. And above all, those who “use” the
Middle Ages have no intention of changing their minds about it. To be fully
appreciated, their Middle Ages must not be subject to change: the knight, the
pope and the emperor, the nation, the community and their identities must
wrap themselves up in a tidy bow.25 It follows that medievalism, with respect
22 I. Montanelli e R. Gervaso, L’Italia dei secoli bui: il medioevo sino al Mille, Rizzoli, Milano
1965; Id., L’Italia dei comuni: il medioevo dal 1000 al 1250, Rizzoli, Milano 1967; Id., L’Italia dei
secoli d’oro: il medioevo dal 1250 al 1492, Rizzoli, Milano 1967; E. Biagi, Storia d’Italia a fu-
metti, vol. I, Dai barbari ai capitani di ventura, Mondadori, Milano 1979. Cf. R. Iorio, Medio-
evo e giornalismo, in Il sogno del medioevo cit., pp. 119–125.
24 Paul, 1 Cor, 13,12. For nineteenth-century medievalism (but the analogy with the present is
sound), see R. Bordone, Lo specchio di Shalott cit., pp. 9 e 14: “The tearful history of sorcery,
love, death, and chivalry in The Lady of Shalott […] in some ways lends itself to being seen
as a metaphor for the collective imaginary of the Middle Ages: in fact, we almost never
capture a direct image of that fabulous time, derived from contemporary sources, but al-
ways and only the reflection of that warped mirror that was nineteenth-century fantasy,
faithfully reproduced on the “canvas” of Romantic iconography […]. Certainly, we are
dealing with a mirror, this is not the Middle Ages of our sources that are instead standing
outside of that window. But we know full well and it is not here that we seek the reality of
the Middle Ages. What we seek in that mirror is another story.”
25 For analogous considerations on the “Classical”: Settis, The Future of the “Classical,” cit.,
pp. 51, 55 ff., 110 ff.; see also B. Coccia (ed.), Il mondo classico nell’immaginario contempora-
neo, Apes, Roma 2008.

to medieval studies, is a much less versatile thing, and has changed much less
over the years.
The Middle Ages, as should now be clear, is an age for all seasons: it is such a
vast and remote period that, at least in popular sentiment, it loses any real his-
torical connotation. Its fundamental uncertainty is its defining feature. Its lim-
inal position—suspended between history and fantasy, and therefore able to
fill itself with any ingredients—has remained its only constant, even into its
contemporary political use. The Medieval is where fable, legend, myth, and his-
tory find their point of convergence. Indeed, it is precisely this willful indeci-
sion between history and legend, between politics and fantasy, that has allowed
it such good fortune. But medievalism is mimetic: it is a myth that presents it-
self as history. And in the nineteenth century, as today, this is its trump card.

Chapter 4
The Middle Ages of Identity
“What d’you expect to be sure of?” Torrismund interrupted. “Insignias,

ranks, titles… All mere show. Those paladins’ shields with armorial bear-
ings and mottoes are not made of iron; they’re just paper, you can put
your finger through them.”
I. calvino, The Nonexistent Knight (1959)
At the end of the nineteenth century, the West’s passion for the Middle Ages
first saw a period of lively coexistence with other forms of cultural expression,
and then fell into torpor. Medievalism’s decline began with the rise of alternate
modes to replace Romanticism. In certain cases a syncretism was achieved, as
in the transition from the Neogothic style to Eclecticism and finally to Art
Nouveau in architecture and the visual arts, or the Decadent Movement in
literature. Even these eventually yielded to an all-out rejection of medievaliz-
ing taste in deference to the search for a sobriety of form and to a tendency
towards positivism, abstraction, pragmatism, socialism, materialism, progres-
sivism, and all those -isms that Romanticism and its dreamy, languid offspring
Medievalism were temperamentally unable to reproduce. The Italian Futurist
motto, “We shall kill the light of the moon” also killed the knight Parsifal and
Giosue Carducci’s Lady Laldòmine:
O Lady Laldòmine, come to your balcony all dressed in silver, and hear
the last love song of the Italian poetry that was. Come out, come out, my
lady, before the damp night falls and enshrouds us.1
Medievalism was counted as one of the good results of very poor taste: it was
sappy, garish, ridiculous, excessively ornate and too colorful, and at the same
time too dusty, derivative, and false. Pierrefonds Castle was held up as the
1 G. Carducci, Confessioni e battaglie, Sommaruga, Roma 1884, p. 218; F.T. Marinetti, Uccidiamo
il chiaro di luna! Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia, Milano 1911; Id., Abbasso il Tango e Parsifal! Let-
tera futurista circolare ad alcune amiche cosmopolite che danno dei the-tango e si parsifalizza-
no, Milano, 14 January 1914: “Parsifal è la svalutazione sistematica della vita […]. Purulenza
polifonica di Amfortas. Sonnolenza piagnucolosa dei Cavalieri del Graal. Satanismo ridicolo
di Kundry…Passatismo! Passatismo! Basta!” (“Parsifal is the systematic devaluation of life […]
the polyphonic purulence of Amfortas. The whining indolence of the Knights of the Grail.
Kundry’s ridiculous Satanism…Pastism! Pastism! Enough!”).

The Middle Ages of Identity 67
erfect example of how not to restore a monument. As with the rest of the long
p
nineteenth century, Medievalism was felled by the machine-gun fire of the
First World War, a fratricidal, muddy, and decidedly unchivalrous war that
crumbled all the central empires, from whose ashes many modern nation-
states were born.2 The season of the great medieval revival closed with two
resounding trumpet blasts. The first was the canonization in 1920 of Joan of
Arc, the heroine of those troops in the trenches who saw her shining through
the clouds. The second was the 1922 birth of the Irish Free State, whose inde-
pendence from the United Kingdom was obtained with arms but also with the
fundamental contributions of Lady Augusta Gregory and William Butler Yeats,
singers of the Celtic epic and of Irish patriotism: in 1923 Yeats received the No-
bel Prize for having given “expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”3 But dur-
ing the interwar and immediate postwar eras, aside from exceptional cases
(most notably Germany, which we will discuss later), the political usage of the
Middle Ages was much more limited than before.
Medievalism’s agony, however, proved long, and in the end, to paraphrase
Mark Twain, the reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. Between the
1920s and the 1960s, it fell out of fashion, surviving largely on the cultural
margins in children’s books and “sword and sorcery” films. Yet it was precisely
during this period of dormancy and general regurgitation and rejection that
we find some of the most illustrious examples of the idealization of the
Middle Ages. These served as a kind of bridge, a counter-trend even, provid-
ing philosophical and literary nourishment for the generations that since the
2 On the topic of medievalism in the First World War, see M. Girouard, The Return to Camelot:
Chivalry and the English Gentleman, Yale University Press, New Haven-London 1981, pp. 275–
293; Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 235 ff.; M. Domenichelli, Miti di una letteratura
medievale cit., pp. 322–325; A.J. Frantzen, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and World War i,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2004; M. Alexander, Medievalism cit., pp. 210 ff.; St. Goe-
bel, The Great War and Medieval Memory. War, Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and
Germany, 1914–1940, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007; V. Ortenberg, In Search of
the Holy Grail cit., p. 158; M. Passini, La fabrique de l’art national. Le nationalisme et l’origine de
l’histoire de l’art en France et en Allemagne 1870–1933, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de
l’homme, Paris 2012, pp. 191–228; T. di Carpegna Falconieri, Il medievalismo e la grande guerra,
“Studi storici,” 56/1 (2015), pp. 49–78; Id., Il medievalismo e la grande guerra in Italia, “Studi
storici,” 56/2 (2015), pp. 251–276. B. Stock, Listening for the Text cit., pp. 62, 69–70, 73, considers
the Second World War as the turning point in attitudes towards the Middle Ages as institu-
tionalized by the Romantic conception. For his analysis of medievalism, see especially pp.
63–68.
3 “For his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of
a whole nation”: Nobel Prize, official site: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1923/
summary/ (cons. Apr. 28, 2019). On Yeats’s medievalism, see M. Alexander, Medievalism cit.,
p. 142 and ad indicem. Cf. also infra, Ch. 9.

68 Chapter 4
late Sixties, have reworked this material within various mass movements, in
some cases even transforming it into proper ideological structures.
We’re talking about the Catholic conservative alternative to “Modernism,”
about the “conservative revolution” in Weimar Germany, about Theodor Ador-
no and Max Horkheimer, who reported the impossibility of a positive relation-
ship between human progress and the society of machines; we’re talking about
Herbert Marcuse, philosopher of the “great refusal” of socialism and capitalism
alike. We’re talking about an extremely varied group of artists and authors who
otherwise have almost nothing in common, but who have found in the medi-
eval era the interpretive key to modernity: the existential longing of directors
like Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928), Roberto Rossellini
(The Flowers of St. Francis, 1950), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, 1957), of
novelists, scholars of myth, jurists, philosophers, and poets like Raymond Aron,
Nikolai Berdyaev, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Mir-
cea Eliade, T.S. Eliot, Georges Friedmann, Stefan George, René Guénon,
Romano Guardini, Ernst Jünger, György Lukács, Jacques Maritain, Attilio Mor-
dini, José Ortega y Gasset, Mervyn Peake, Ezra Pound, Carl Schmitt, Georges
Sorel, Oswald Spengler, John Steinbeck, J.R.R. Tolkien, T.H. White, W.B. Yeats.
All the way up to Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Pasolini. An uncomfortable author, to be sure: hated by the right as a Marxist
and controversial with the left for some of his more reactionary opinions.4
And before him, Antonio Gramsci, with his reflections on the importance of
recovering the progressive folklore of the subaltern classes.5 Two names that are
not out of place in this list, for if many of those mentioned have been and are
still considered the bedrock of conservative and even reactionary culture, in
reality those movements that reject modernity and proclaim the necessity of
recuperating previous rhythms of life do not all have identical politics. The
evils of contemporary life have been denounced as much by the right as the
left, and the Middle Ages, as an immobile and eternal symbol par excellence of
the preindustrial and anti-modern age, have been trotted out by all parties. Just
remember that the environmentalist Green Party, born in Germany in the 1980s
and represented in various Western governments, skews clearly to the left.6
4 See A. Baldoni e G. Borgna, Una lunga incomprensione. Pasolini fra destra e sinistra, Vallecchi,
Firenze 2010.
5 A. Gramsci, Observations on Folklore, in Id., Prison Notebooks, Columbia University Press, New
York 2011, Notebook 27 (It. edition: Osservazioni sul “folclore,” in Id., Quaderni del carcere,
Einaudi, Torino 1948–51; critical ed. of Istituto Gramsci, ed. V. Gerratana, Einaudi, Torino
20082: Quaderno 27 (xi), 1935).
6 Despite that, its anti-progressive position permits Le Goff to consider the environmentalist
movement as “reactionary”: Id., Storia e memoria cit., p. 222; cf. also U. Eco, Turning Back the
Clock cit. (p. 140 of the Italian edition).

Or consider that the founder of Greenpeace, David Taggart, “claimed to be in-

spired to his environmental duty by the struggle of the Hobbits of the Shire
against the desolate land of Mordor, the source of all pollution and industrial
horrors.”7 In fact, in English-speaking countries, Tolkien is an author beloved by
hippy culture and environmentalists.8 “Frodo lives” could be found scribbled
everywhere in the Sixties and Seventies; the Ents, the Shepherds of the Trees,
could be considered a symbol of union with nature.9 In Italy, on the other hand,
where Tolkien is seen as an author of the right, his imagination has nourished
several generations of neo- and post-fascists.10 Together with his friend Clive
Staples Lewis, Tolkien can also be read in a Christian key.11 Like the Middle Ages
that he is often called to represent, even Tolkien has far more than one
meaning.
Medievalism as a phenomenon exploded again at the end of the Sixties and
endures today, such that we can say that in the last fifty years we have been
witness to many little revivals.12 Little, compared to the near mania of the
nineteenth century, but equally significant as a mass phenomenon. The cur-
rent reappropriation of the medieval—or better, medievals, since the possible
declensions of the idea are many—must be understood in these broad terms.
7 Cit. by P. Gulisano, Tolkien. Il mito e la grazia, Ancora, Milano 2001, p. 172. See also P. Curry,
Defending Middle-Earth. Tolkien: Myth and Modernity, Mariner Books, Boston 2004, p. 44.
8 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Unwin Paperbacks, London-Boston-Sidney 19833
(original edition: Allen & Unnwin, London 1954–55).
9 In the vast bibliography on the subject, two relatively recent titles are worth mentioning:
M.D.C. Drout (ed.), J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, Rout-
ledge, New York-Oxford 2006 (on this specific topic, the entry by A.K. Siewers, Environ-
mentalist Readings of Tolkien, pp. 166–167); K. Chance and A.K. Siewers (eds.), Tolkien’s
Modern Middle Ages, Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2009.
10 R. Arduini, Italy: Reception of Tolkien, entry in M.D.C. Drout (ed.), J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclope-
dia cit., pp. 299 ff. The topic is addressed infra, Ch. 7.
11 Br. J. Birzer, Christian Readings of Tolkien, entry in M.D.C. Drout (ed.), J.R.R. Tolkien Ency-
clopedia cit., pp. 99–101. For Italian examples: P. Gulisano, Tolkien. Il mito e la grazia cit.; G.
Spirito OFM Cap., Tra San Francesco e Tolkien. Una lettura spirituale de “Il signore degli
anelli,” Il Cerchio iniziative editoriali, Rimini 2006; A. Monda, L’anello e la croce: significato
teologico de “Il signore degli anelli,” Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2008. Cf. G. De Turris,
L’immaginario medievale cit., p. 107. In his Chronicles of Narnia saga (1950–56), Clive Sta-
ples Lewis deliberately depicted a Christ allegory. See in general R. Hein, Christian Myth-
makers: C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton &
Others, Cornerstone Press, Chicago 1998.
12 On the Middle Ages, currently “dans le vent” (in fashion): P. Monnet, Introduction, p. 17, in
J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 15–20. On the “second great re-
turn of the Middle Ages in France” since the 1970s, though incomparable in scale with
Romanticism: Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., p. 261. The Society for the Study of
Popular Culture and the Middle Ages has been active for several years, https://medie
valinpopularculture.blogspot.com/ (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

70 Chapter 4
It can be seen as a cultural expression that, though constantly changing its ap-
pearance, has remained the same in its essential traits. These are not to be
found in the expanding and increasingly sophisticated historical analyses of
the late twentieth century, so much as in the repurposing—exaggerated to an
unimaginable degree by old and new modes of communication—of the cul-
tural sediment of the nineteenth century. Without always being aware of it,
enthusiasts of the Middle Ages still act the way Giosue Carducci described in
the distant year of 1879, in the margins of his Song of Legnano:
The poet is permitted, if he so desires and is able, to visit Persia and India,
not to mention Greece and the Middle Ages: the ignorant and the lazy
have the right not to follow him.13
The Middle Ages are a spatio-temporal elsewhere to which one may wish to
return, they are exoticism and sentiment. Contemporary scholars have grasped
the Romantic framework of the new medievalism (here with a lower-case n
and m)—which yet still lives off of nineteenth-century culture—that charac-
terizes the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the
twenty-first. As Franco Cardini writes:
Our medieval revival is in reality a “new romantic”; the success of Tolkien,

Rohmer’s Perceval, Boorman’s Excalibur, cannot be explained as neo-
medieval, so much as neo-neo-gothic.14
In addition to what was said in the previous chapter, to get a sense of how
much the nineteenth century has been a filter for current medievalism, one
need only think of the Dark, Gothic, or simply Goth movement, born in Great
Britain between the Sixties and the Eighties and still very much alive. Its adher-
ents distinguish themselves by their dress (metal accessories, black clothes,
white lace, black and white make-up, black nails) and by a specific musical
genre.15 The Gothic atmospheres, the gloom, the moon, death, ghosts, vam-
pires, witches, stakes, will-o’-the-wisps, eternal fog—in short the fear that lurks
behind the negative imaginary of the Middle Ages—are what most profoundly
13 G. Carducci, Della canzone di Legnano, Parte 1, Il Parlamento, in Poesie di Giosue Carducci

mdcccl-mcm, Zanichelli, Bologna 19087, pp. 1035–1046: 1046.
14 F. Cardini, Medievisti “di professione” cit., p. 45.
15 Gothica. La generazione oscura degli anni Novanta, Tunnel, Bologna 1997. For the con
nection with Satanism: M. Introvigne, The Gothic Milieu, in J. Kaplan and H. Loow (eds.),
The Cultic Milieu. Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization, AltaMira Press-
Rowman and Littlefield, Walnut Creek (CA)-Lanham (MD) 2002, pp. 138–151.

attract those that profess to be Goths. The Middle Ages are attractive because
they are frightening, because their light is sinister. This movement is therefore
particularly interesting precisely from the point of view of the study of medi-
evalism, since it shows, more than other cases, how the Middle Ages evoked
here could not exist if it had not received a dye job (black, naturally) from the
Romantic culture. This Medieval Era corresponds to the Gothic novel, to Wal-
pole’s Castle of Otranto and all its infinite derivatives.16 It could not exist with-
out Ossian, without Bram Stoker and his Dracula, without Victorian fashion,
and without Edgar Allan Poe. Tim Burton, perhaps the artist best known for his
capacity to evoke Gothic atmospheres (think of such films as Edward Scis-
sorhands, from 1990), is simultaneously a neomedieval and neoromantic au-
teur. Or rather, he is neomedieval inasmuch as he is neoromantic.
We are talking about reflections of a distant age, which in turn echoes an-
other age, even more distant; we will see many times over how much this
dream of a Neo-Romantic Middle Ages conditions contemporary political
events. It must, however, be firmly restated that political connotations are not
necessary elements of medievalism. Anarchist, fascist, or communist, Republi-
can or Democrat, Tory or Labour, the political hue does not take on immediate
importance. From the second half of the Sixties and across the Seventies, with
a first peak between the Seventies and Eighties and a second apex at the end of
the millennium, the Middle Ages have recurringly come into fashion among
people of very diverse political inclinations. For example, the mania over the
Holy Grail and the Templars, so typical of a right-wing usage of the Middle
Ages, is in reality shared by many, many people. The mania in itself, however, is
neutral and apolitical: indeed, it is the only reason why the vast majority of
people today show any interest at all in the Middle Ages.
Medievalism is so universal that, since the end of the Sixties, “fantasy” has
become the most diffuse literary genre in the West, a primacy it still maintains
due in no small part to the incredible success of the Harry Potter saga.17 We
16 The literature on the subject is quite vast. See G. Germann, Dal Gothic Taste al Gothic
R
evival, in E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi (eds.), Arti e storia nel medioevo, vol. iv cit., pp.
391–438; M. Aldrich, Gothic Revival, Phaidon Press, London [etc.] 1997; M. Alexander, Me-
dievalism cit., pp. 1–49; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., especially pp. 27–87,
149 ff.; E. McEvoy and C. Spooner (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Gothic, Routledge,
Abingdon-New York 2007.
17 J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Bloomsbury, London 1998; Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Bloomsbury, London 1999; Harry Potter and the Prisoner
of Azkaban, Bloomsbury, London 2000; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Bloomsbury,
London 2001; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Bloomsbury, London 2003; Harry
Potter and the Half-blood Prince, Bloomsbury, London 2005; Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, Bloomsbury, London 2007.

72 Chapter 4
may plausibly date the explosion of this literary genre (with all its numerous
subgenres: Dark, Heroic, Sword & Sorcery, Gothic…) to 1965 with the release of
the American paperback edition of John R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which
sold 150,000 copies in one year.18 The main masterpieces of the genre concen-
trate around the Seventies: for instance, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle and
the Merlin trilogy by Mary Stewart, who has been called “the t wentieth-century
Geoffrey of Monmouth.”19
Fantasy literature, especially when inserted (in best nineteenth-century tra-
dition) into a vaguely medieval landscape, evokes deep emotions on the same
level as fairy tales.20 A passion for a fantastical Middle Ages can be interpreted
as a response to a crisis of the idea of progress, in the name of escape. In this
sense, “fantasy” literature, with its perennial conflict between Good and Evil,
heroes and monsters, works marvelously—as long as its value as a consumer
product is not underestimated.21
In addition to fantasy literature, we should mention the closely entwined
“role-playing games”: the acting out of stories, almost always in a fantastical,
medieval setting, by a “party” of friends who take on the roles of characters—
knights, elves, mages, thieves, etc. Role-playing games had incredible success
in the Seventies and Eighties, starting with the celebrated Dungeons and
D
ragons (1974), and that success continues to the present, through many
neo-medieval communities who live virtually on the internet and represent
the technological evolution of those now ancient dice games. We recall, among
others, the popular Society for Creative Anachronism (founded in 1966), which
proudly declares itself an “international organization dedicated to the research
and recreation of the arts and techniques of Europe prior to the seventeenth
18 J. Ripp, Middle America Meets Middle-Earth: American Discussion and Readership of J. R. R.

Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” 1965–1969, in “Book History,” 8 (2005) pp. 245–286: 256; G.
De Turris, L’immaginario medievale cit., p. 104; L. Del Corso, P. Pecere, L’anello che non
tiene. Tolkien fra letteratura e mistificazione, Minimum Fax, Roma 2003, pp. 50–64. Even
Peter Jackson’s three film adaptations of the novels (2001–2003) have had a resounding
success.
19 U.K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea, Parnassus Press, Berkeley (CA) 1968; The Tombs of
Atuan, Atheneum Books, New York 1971; The Farthest Shore, Atheneum Books, New York
1972; the series was continued later. M. Stewart, The Crystal Cave, William Morrow, New
York 1970; The Hollow Hills, Holder & Stoughton, London 1973; The Last Enchantment, G.K.
Hall, London 1981; the series was also continued later.
20 See for example S. De Mari, Il drago come realtà. I significati storici e metaforici della let-
teratura fantastica, Salani, Milano 2007.
21 D. Marshall (ed.), Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture,
McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 2007; L. Del Corso, P. Pecere, L’anello che non tiene cit.,
pp. 132–157.

century.” Their “known world” consists of twenty kingdoms, with over 30,000
members.22
Nor has the trajectory been different in the field of music. In the mid-Sixties
and above all across the entire next decade, the Middle Ages became a land to
discover and cultivate. During that period there were many groups dedicated
to the philological recovery of popular tradition and to experiments fusing it
with rock and pop music. “Folk medieval” became a fashionable genre, repre-
sented by such famous bands and singer-songwriters—new minstrels—as
Jethro Tull in England, Tri Yann in Britanny, the Chieftains in Ireland, Ougen-
weide in Germany, and Angelo Branduardi in Italy, who sought out the tradition
of medieval texts and melodies drawn predominantly from the repertoire of
Celtic countries. But even Pooh, in 1973, released the album Parsifal, and in the
same year Genesis released Selling England by the Pound: an album full of refer-
ences to the Middle Ages, starting with the song Dancing with the Moonlit
Knight and continuing with The Battle of Epping Forest, which describes a
brawl between rival gangs in terms of a medieval battle. Since then, music con-
taining allusions to the Middle Ages has become part of the cultural baggage
of the West as a whole, evolving into Progressive Rock, Heavy Metal, Gothic,
Electro-industrial, up to Neo-Medieval Music, especially common in the coun-
tries of Northern Europe, and pseudo-Gregorian and/or Satanist musical lines.
And now we come to the political implications. Since 1968, this passion for
the medieval has gone on to color movements across the political spectrum,
often youth movements, which, with dreams of power, raged against the mo-
notony of daily life and attacked the system, from right and left, from anarchy
and libertarianism. One significant reason for the rebirth of medievalism since
the end of the Sixties is political. And there’s no surprise there, seeing as how
anything, anything at all, could be considered political back then. As Mario
Capanna wrote:
The central element that emerges is the non-neutrality of culture, sci-

ence, or technology. It is the political objective (and its management)
that decides the nature of knowledge, the character of science, the effi-
cacy of technology, at the service of the proletariat and its emancipation,
or against them.23
22 Society for Creative Anachronism: www.sca.org (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

23 M. Capanna, Formidabili quegli anni, Garzanti, Milano 2002, pp. 80 ff. See also p. 268:
“Nulla è neutro. Dall’arte alla scienza, alla cultura, alla religione: nulla, nemmeno il con
cetto secondo cui nulla è neutro: questa è stata una delle maggiori ‘scoperte’ del Sessan-
totto.” (“Nothing is neutral. From art to science, culture, religion: nothing, not even the
very principle that nothing is neutral: this was one of the greatest ‘discoveries’ of ‘68.”).

74 Chapter 4
The political medievalism that was reborn at the end of the Sixties has since
undergone many re-elaborations and has three principal manifestations. The
first, characteristic of the Seventies, is linked to the desire to recover popular
traditions that have been lost. Expressed principally through music and dra-
ma, it is the time of ballads, troubadours, and public theater (cf. Chapter 6).
The second form is, if you will, a sort of specialization of the medieval land-
scape as a renewed fascination with chivalry, the Great North, and the Celtic
world. Even if this is obviously a Romantic tradition common throughout the
nineteenth century, it too seems reinvigorated in recent times: it is the “recov-
ery” of Tradition, in other words of medieval spirituality and Christian mystics,
as well as myths and beliefs that are non-Christian, but equally connected to
the medieval period. It is the Middle Ages of Ireland, Scandinavia, and Ger-
many, the time of pubs now scattered to every corner of Europe, of Celtic
crosses, the Holy Grail, Knights Templar, and Druidic and Viking neo-paganism
(cf. Chapters 7, 8, and 9). As the first form is strongly linked to the culture of the
left, the second appears to be predominantly an expression of the right—
although since the Eighties the distinction between right and left seems, in
reality, ever more hazy and uncertain. It is precisely this second form of medi-
evalism that seems to constitute, in the Nineties and the first decade of the
new millennium, the standard modality of representing the Middle Ages, now
borne for the most part on the shoulders of the Knights Templar and the seek-
ers of the Grail.
The third form of political medievalism with which we have to reckon is the
one perfectly described by the concept of an “identitarian Middle Ages.” As
early as the Seventies, but with an exponential growth already visible in the
early Nineties, political movements of an identitarian inclination (referring to
sentiment for a singular locality, a region, a nation, or even all of Europe) have
molded the Middle Ages into a master key for expressing the perception of
primordial belonging to their own cultural, linguistic, religious, or even ethnic
communities (cf. Chapters 5, 10, 11, and 12). This process too proceeds from the
early nineteenth century—when the Medieval Era was reimagined, through-
out Europe, as the historical place where citizens and nations were formed—
and has never truly halted, such that even today the link between the Middle
Ages and the origins of local and/or national identities is a widely (and blindly)
accepted historical interpretation. In the last two decades, the word “identity”
has become a veritable skeleton key, able to be used everywhere to justify one’s
own political intentions and supporting the conviction that the community in
question has always been distinct from all the others, imbued with unique
traits, original and ancient. Traits that must be safeguarded and defended,
through the official definition of a true politics of memory that nourishes a

canon in which one may recognize oneself. In May 2007 France notably insti-
tuted the Ministère de l’immigration, de l’integration, de l’identité nationale et
du développement solidaire (Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National
Identity, and Developmental Solidarity).24 In the same year Spain passed the
Ley de memoria histórica for those who suffered persecution during the civil
war and dictatorship: although in spirit opposed to the constitution of the
French ministry of national identity, this law expresses the same intent to
regulate memory according to a juridical format.25 Finally, in Italy political
actors have several times incited the burning of books written by left-leaning
historians.26
Political Medievalism represents the majority, if not in some cases the en-
tirety, of the “cultural heritage cult,” a little play on words. Originating with
elitist preoccupations—for example, it is the founding fathers of the new
Europe who have refreshed the myth of Charlemagne—the cult of cultural
heritage has expanded into what has been called a “popular crusade” involving
all social groups.27
24 The official site read: “Telle est l’ambition de ce nouveau ministère: lutter contre
l’immigration irrégulière, organiser l’immigration légale en favorisant le developpement
des pays d’origine afin de réussir l’intégration et de conforter l’identité de notre Nation”
(“This is the mission of the new ministry: to combat unregulated immigration, to oversee
legal immigration in favor of the development of the countries of origin, with the goal of
achieving integration and consolidating the identity of our Nation”): www.immigration
.gouv.fr/spip.php?page=dossiers_them_org&numrubrique=311 (cons. Oct. 20, 2009, the
page was found to be inactive when cons. Apr. 28, 2019). See, on that subject, the harsh
judgment of T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., pp. 136–142. The ministry was abolished
following the election of François Hollande in May 2012.
25 See: R. Escudero Alday and J.A. Martin Pallin (eds.), Derecho y memoria historica, Trotta
Editorial, Madrid 2008. On the social and political significance of the past—even
medieval—in contemporary Spain, see G. Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain: Travels through Spain
and Its Silent Past, Walker & Company, New York 2007; D. Coleman and S.R. Doubleday
(eds.), In the Light of Medieval Spain. Islam, the West, and the Relevance of the Past, pref. of
G. Tremlett, Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2008. After three years of parliamentary back
and forth, in 2016 Italy attached legal penalties to denial of the Holocaust, acts of geno-
cide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This means that such claims are consid-
ered aggravating factors in the crimes of racist speech, instigation and incitement of acts
of discrimination committed for racial, ethnic, national, or religious motives: cf. the law
of June 16, 2016, published in the “Gazzetta Ufficiale,” n. 149, June 28, 2016.
26 See for example A. Berardinelli and R. Chiaberge, Università. La sinistra dei baroni, in
“Corriere della Sera,” May 5, 1997, p. 27. Cf. also M. Caffiero, Libertà di ricerca, responsabi
lità dello storico e funzione dei media, in Id. and M. Procaccia (ed.), Vero e falso. L’uso politico
della storia cit., pp. 3–26: 11.
27 D. Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past cit.; W. Frijhoff, Cultural Heritage in the Making: Eu-
rope’s Past and Its Future Identity, in “Annual of Medieval Studies at ceu,” xiv (2008), n. 14,
pp. 233–246: 233 ff. On the myth of Charlemagne, see infra, Ch. 12.

76 Chapter 4
The forms of medievalism that in some way exalt the Middle Ages as a Gold-
en Age and a “Morning Light,” though very diverse among themselves and thus
demanding discrete investigations, are similar for two reasons: the first is that
in them we can see the implementation of a politics of memory; the second is
that such a politics does not usually correspond to a historical vision of the
Medieval period, but to an ahistorical and mythic reading of a fundamentally
nineteenth-century framework.28
28 B. Stock, Listening for the Text cit., p. 63.

Chapter 5
Merchants and Bowmen: Middle Ages of the City
Once past, dreams and memories are the same thing.

U. piersanti, L’uomo delle Cesane (1994)
It’s a beautiful day in May. We find ourselves in Assisi, the city of saints Francis
and Clare. The “Nobilissima parte de sopra” and the “Magnifica parte de sotto”
(the Most Noble Upper Part and the Magnificent Lower Part), which represent
the districts of the city’s theoretical medieval subdivision, challenge each oth-
er to a series of competitions: solemn processions, feats of dexterity, songs,
challenges launched in rhyme, stage shows. In this way, it renews the medieval
tradition of canti del maggio (May songs), performed in the piazzas and under
girls’ balconies by bands of youths wandering the city. A young woman is elect-
ed Madonna Primavera (Lady Spring). We celebrate the end of winter, the
return of the sun, flowers, and love. This medieval festival, resplendent with
parades, flag bearers, ladies, knights, bowmen, and citizen magistrates, re-
sounding with songs, tambourines, and trumpets, lasts three days and involves
the entire population of Assisi, which finds itself, together with tourists and
visitors, immersed in the atmosphere of a time that was. At night, when the
fires and darkness move the shadows and the natural odors are strongest, the
magic of the illusion of the past reaches its highest pitch:
Three nights of May leave their mark on our hearts

Fantasy blends with truth among sweet songs
And ancient history returns to life once again
The mad, ecstatic magic of our feast.1
Attested in the Middle Ages, the Assisan Calendimaggio (First of May) reap-
peared in 1927 and was interrupted by the Second World War, only to resume in
1947. Since 1954 it has assumed a more or less fixed configuration.2 If, starting
1 “Tre notti di maggio segnan nostro core | tra preziose note fabula se mischia a veritate | et
historia antica se rinnova ancora una volta | folle gaudiosa magia de nostra festa.” As on the
cover of the magazine, “Calendimaggio di Assisi,” i (April-May 2010), n. 1, p. 1.
2 Calendimaggio di Assisi, https://www.calendimaggiodiassisi.com/la-storia (cons. Apr. 28,
2019). On this festival see: T. di Carpegna Falconieri, L.E. Yawn, Forging “Medieval” Identities:
Fortini’s Calendimaggio and Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, in B. Bildhauer, Ch. Jones (eds.), The
Middle Ages in the Modern World cit., pp. 186–215.

78 Chapter 5
from Assisi, we begin to wander through Umbria, we’ll find Terni’s Cantamag-
gio, Foligno’s Giostra della Quintana (Joust of Quintana), the Palio dei Terzieri
(Palio of the Thirds) of both Città della Pieve and Trevi, the Palio dei Colombi
(Palio of Doves) of Amelia, the Festa dei Ceri (Festival of Candles) and the Palio
della Balestra (Palio of the Crossbow) of Gubbio, the Giochi de le Porte (Games
of the Gates) in Gualdo Tadino, the Mercato delle Gaite (Market of the Quar-
ters) in Bevagna, the Giostra del Velo (Joust of the Veil) in Giove, the Corsa
dell’Anello (Race of the Ring) in Narni, the Giostra del Giglio (Joust of the Lily)
in Monteleone di Orvieto, the Palio di San Rufino in Assisi, the Palio di Valfab-
brica… But the decision to start in Umbria is arbitrary. We could start our voy-
age in Siena, home of the most famous palio in the world; from there we might
wind up in Arezzo, where they celebrate the Joust of the Saracen, and then
continue through Tuscany. Or, we could run through the Marches, attending
the Quintana of Ascoli Piceno, and then maybe taking a jaunt to the Palio of
Asti and the Sagra del Carroccio (Carroccio Festival) in Legnano, just to name
a few notable festivals among the hundreds of imitators. Not to mention, natu-
rally, the Medieval Days in San Marino, the city-state in the center of the pen-
insula that has uniquely preserved the independence of a medieval commune,
and is quite proud of it: here, medieval reconstructions may be false and con-
trived, but liberty is real.3 Even in the south of Italy “medieval festivals” are
common, if less densely concentrated and often combined with the memory
of the Turks or the exaltation of sovereign dynasties: as in the Sfilata dei Turchi
(Turks’ Parade) in Potenza and the Palio dell’Anguria (Palio of the Melon) of
Altavilla Irpina. The festivals that involve the memory of Frederick ii of Swabia
in particular are numerous.4
To make a long story short: throughout Italy, hundreds of cities and villages
celebrate their own medieval festivals, especially during the spring and sum-
mer. The same is true in many other European countries, with a density per
square kilometer that sometimes, as in parts of France, for instance, rivals that
of central and northern Italy. In the regions of Celtic inheritance, the delight in
celebrations is especially evident: first and perhaps most importantly, the Fes-
tival interceltique of Lorient in Britanny (est. 1971). In Champagne, Provins pub-
licizes its fête médiévale by reminding you that the city is “The Middle Ages an
3 T. di Carpegna Falconieri, Liberty Dreamt in Stone: The (Neo)Medieval City of San Marino, in
“Práticas da História,” 9 (2019), http://www.praticasdahistoria.pt/pt/.
4 R. Iorio, Medioevo turistico, in “Quaderni medievali,” xxvii (2002), n. 53, pp. 157–166; M. In-
terino, Medioevo “reale” e medioevo “immaginario” nelle rievocazioni storiche contemporanee:
Campania e Basilicata, graduate thesis, Università degli studi di Urbino, AY 2004–2005;
M. Brando, Lo strano caso di Federico ii cit.; Id., L’imperatore nel suo labirinto cit.

Merchants and Bowmen: Middle Ages of the City 79
hour from Paris,” while in Aigues-Mortes in Camargue the Feast of Saint Louis
is celebrated by reconstructing the ship that carried him overseas and then
setting fire to the fortifications. In England, they even recreate the Battle of
Hastings, along with a hundred similar festivities. Spain hosts a long series of
Fiestas de Interés Turístico Nacional. In the Scandinavian countries and in Po-
land we find gatherings of neo-Viking communities, in other Eastern European
countries the most famous medieval sites (think, for instance, of the Visegrád
Castle and the Ópusztaszer National Heritage Park in Hungary, or the Bohe-
mian town of Český Krumlov) host historical demonstrations with performers
in costume, and every year in Croatia they celebrate the naval battle between
the Genoans and Venetians in which Marco Polo was captured.5
The use of medieval settings for festivals and for community cultural dem-
onstrations in general is clearly a phenomenon in full swing. As Ilaria Porciani
has written, even today we see the:
revival of local traditions, many of which, it has been noted, were invent-
ed in the last two decades. These are widespread and flourishing, and
ever more visible throughout the peninsula, giving life to popular festi-
vals that bring into play divisions into districts and neighborhoods, ban-
ners, symbols, and affiliations that do not seem solely geared towards the
tourism industry.6
This kind of medievalism is found almost exclusively in small and medium-

sized communities. It never seems to gain a foothold in the maelstrom of larg-
er cities, where shared identities are weaker and more diverse—except when
it comes to sports teams. This medievalism can attract a political meaning
when it affirms a partisan affiliation, as is the case in Italy with the historical
recreations organized on behalf of the Northern League. Through such festi-
vals participants testify to their living together, their belonging to a communi-
ty, that is, to a polis: these are political events in the original sense of the term,
a sense not inherently related to either conservative or progressive positions,
but able to encompass them both. Even the contests between factions within
the city, which in Italy rigorously emulates the historically authentic competi-
tion between the quarters of Siena, has the function of exorcising war and
5 N. Budak, Using the Middle Ages in Modern-day Croatia, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch
und Missbrauch cit., pp. 241–262: 258.
6 I. Porciani, Identità locale-identità nazionale: la costruzione di una doppia appartenenza, in
O. Janz, P. Schiera and H. Siegrist (eds.), Centralismo e federalismo tra Ottocento e Novecento.
Italia e Germania a confronto, il Mulino, Bologna 1997, pp. 141–182: 142.

80 Chapter 5
c onflict, ritualizing animosity, and leading urban factions back to a conclusive

peace.
These demonstrations play a significant role in our societies, leading to the
discovery of a social amalgam that otherwise is not easily recognizable amid
our daily routine. They create social cohesion in the name of the feast, inver-
sion, the masquerade, and renewal: they approximate the festivals of Carnival,
a liminal time of joy and mockery, and the feasts that celebrate the coming of
Spring, graced with smiling, little May Queens. In various cases, these local
festivals can carry religious sentiment, reinventing ancient traditions, feasts of
patron saints, and ritual processions. Finally, they also fill a fiscal function, as
they prove a consistent source of revenue for the communities that organize
them and stimulate additional economic activity in the region.7 This aspect,
connected to mass markets and the Middle Ages of entertainment, is one of
which local administrators are well aware, as they generally make it one of
their community’s top priorities. Each of these festivals is thus simultaneously
“a public, touristic spectacle, and a secret event, that only [the citizens] can
fully comprehend.”8
But are we really dealing with medieval festivals, in which we might recog-
nize a continuous tradition dating back centuries? Seen through the lens of an
ideal and symbolic relationship, they may be considered in some way inheri-
tors of the civilization that preceded them. In fact, during the Middle Ages
(and not only) the public festival was an important event in a person’s life. The
joyous climate, the feats of skill, the tourneys, the tricks, the grease poles, the
wild songs, the costumes, the Carnival, are all not only part of our imagination
regarding the Ancien Régime, but a constitutive component of contemporary
culture. Similarly, the important role that food plays in these feasts is part of a
symbolic universe that belongs not only to the Middle Ages but also to much
more recent generations, who in the massive feasting concentrated in a few
short days (for example, at harvest time or over the winter holidays) find the
same satisfaction and happiness that we find wandering the pubs, served
by waiters in costume, drinking wine out of earthenware pitchers, eating
bean and grain soups with grilled meat. And even this sense of belonging re-
lated to the jubilant celebrations—whether religious or secular—was already
7 S. Cavazza, La tradizione inventata. Utilità sociali (ed economiche) della festa e del folklore, in
“Golem L’indispensabile,” vii (August 2002), n. 8, www.golemindispensabile.it/articolo
.asp?id=952&num=19&sez=269 (cons. Apr. 10, 2009, the page was found to be inactive when
cons. Apr. 28, 2019). On the commercial uses of contemporary medievalism see Ch. Amalvi,
Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 256–260, 318 ff.; D. Marshall (ed.), Mass Market Medieval cit.,
and V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 225–235.
8 E. Voltmer, Il carroccio cit., p. 22, with reference to the Palio of Siena.

a fundamental element of society in the Middle Ages: one may recall, to take
an example at random, the Games of Agone and Testaccio that were held in
medieval Rome and that likewise served the purpose of reaffirming civic iden-
tity. Nevertheless, from a historical perspective, the modern demonstrations
have no direct connection with the Middle Ages. They rather represent, as
Giosuè Musca wrote regarding the Calendimaggio of Assisi, “a Middle Ages
dreamt-up, imagined, and reconstructed with the extraordinary attendance
and mutual identification of a good two thousand people, who transform their
city into a living museum of the historical imaginary.”9
Even if some palios are truly ancient (for example, the horse races attested
in Asti and Ferrara in the thirteenth century), in reality insurmountable gaps
lie between the Middle Ages and modernity. And even the celebrations that
truly date back, uninterrupted, to the Early Modern Era—such as, the best ex-
ample of all, the Palio of Siena—assumed a Medieval hue only much later.
Certainly, they also ran the palio in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
but those courts and banners did not represent the Middle Ages so much as
the proud city of Siena in its modernity.
So since when have civic festivals and even some religious feasts been dyed
with Medieval colors? And when did we start to invent these new traditions?
In Italy, the first phase can be traced between the last decades of the nine-
teenth century and the Second World War. During that period, some still ex-
tant traditions were reclothed in medieval or Renaissance garb, while others—
either dormant for centuries or simply non-existent—were restored, often on
pseudo-philological grounds, to the form that they supposedly had in the Mid-
dle Ages. The most acute phase of this “recovery” of civic traditions occurred in
the Fascist Ventennio. Among the festivals dating to this period are the Assisan
Calendimaggio (1927), the Cantamaggio (Festival of May) in Terni (1928), the
Giostra del Saracino (Joust of the Saracen) in Arezzo (1931), Pisa’s Giuoco del
Ponte (Game of the Bridge, 1935), the Sagra del Carroccio (Feast of the Carroc-
cio) in Legnano (, 1935), and the Palio of Ferrara (1937). While Fascism may be
best known for having taken the recovery of the myth of Imperial Rome to the
highest possible degree, it did not ignore the Middle Ages after all.10
9 G. Musca, Profumo di medioevo. Il Calendimaggio ad Assisi, in “Quaderni medievali,” xx

(1995), n. 40, pp. 133–152: 150.
10 The ideological parallel between medieval civilization and the formation of Italian iden-
tity was actually amplified under Fascism, sustained mostly by intellectuals and members
of the local ruling classes. The political significance of this historical epoch was, however,
relegated to a level of participation more civic than national, as if to say: the national pa-
tria will be represented by Rome while the civic patria will be represented by the Middle
Ages. This allows for the coexistence of otherwise irreconcilable architectural modes: the

82 Chapter 5
In the second phase, which began in the Sixties and continues to the pres-
ent day, neo-medieval traditions expanded to encompass ever smaller com-
munities. With every year that passes, another village invents a brand-new me-
dieval festival for itself. Even these new traditions, however, are constructed so
as to figuratively represent the peculiar Middle Ages of the nineteenth century,
when the canonical forms of the epoch were established: this is precisely why
we often see knights and ladies in late-medieval or Renaissance costumes in
these historical recreations.
Nowadays, cities across all of Europe celebrate the glories of their history,
concentrated on the Medieval Era. What are the motives for this choice, which
by necessity excludes or absorbs other possibilities? Why is the setting almost
invariably medieval, or at the latest Renaissance? The reasons are, naturally,
intertwined. The first is simple: typically, the city’s most ancient monuments,
its walls, castle, or cathedral, date back to that era, representing an illustrious
and tangible testament to the past (even if these monuments have been heav-
ily restored, usually in the nineteenth century). Furthermore, many cities,
above all those of Germany and Eastern Europe, are essentially medieval foun-
dations. But what happens in cities of Roman, or indeed older, origins? In Italy,
Spain, or Provençal France we should see the flourishing of celebrations
exalting the ancient Romans. This, however, is not what happens: even here
the symbols that express the identity of the community are almost always
medieval. Etruscan, Roman, Hunnic, or Sarmatian festivals do not exist, or are
construction of the eur on the one hand, on the other the coeval Gothic restorations of
cities like Arezzo and San Gimignano. The regime adopted civic medievalism while con-
trolling its representation from on high. It did so for economic reasons—the revival of
tourism—but also to educate the populace, to the extent that one may still speak of a
fully-fledged “folklorism of the state.” Cf. S. Cavazza, Piccole patrie. Feste popolari tra re-
gione e nazione durante il Fascismo, il Mulino, Bologna 20032; especially pp. 183 ff., 198 ff.,
207 ff.; A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., pp. 267 ff.; M.D. Lasansky, The
Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy, The Pennsylva-
nia State University Press, University Park 2004; F. Vollmer, Die politische Kultur des Fas-
chismus: Stätten totalitärer Diktatur in Italien, Böhlau, Köln 2007; T. di Carpegna Falco
nieri, “Medieval” Identities in Italy: National, Regional, Local, in P.J. Geary, G. Klaniczay
(eds.), Manufacturing Middle Ages. Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century
Europe, Brill, Amsterdam 2013 (National Cultivation of Culture, 6), pp. 319–345; T. di Car-
pegna Falconieri, L.E. Yawn, Forging “Medieval” Identities cit.; T. di Carpegna Falconieri,
Roma antica e il Medioevo: due mitomotori per costruire la storia della nazione e delle ‘pic-
cole patrie’ tra Risorgimento e Fascismo, in R.P. Uguccioni (ed.), Storia e piccole patrie. Rifles
sioni sulla storia locale, Società di studi pesaresi-Il Lavoro editoriale, Pesaro-Ancona 2017,
pp. 78–101; D. Iacono, Condottieri in camicia nera: l’uso dei capitani di ventura
nell’immaginario medievale fascista, in T. di Carpegna Falconieri, R. Facchini (eds.), Medi-
evalismi italiani cit., pp. 53–66.

e xtremely rare. Apart from the little warrior Asterix, even the Gauls are not
much appreciated—except in their Celtic guise, which is still substantially me-
dievalized. In general, wherever we go, we almost always run into noble ladies
and valiant knights. The motive for this choice in the name (and the dream) of
the Middle Ages can essentially be ascribed to the medievalism of the Roman-
tic era, which established a perfect equivalence between the Middle Ages and
affiliation with a specific community: this is the true heart of the problem. The
same analogy can be applied to all political scales, from the village to the na-
tion (indeed we will see this in Chapters 11 and 12), but the Middle Ages are
particularly meaningful with respect to the city. Medieval cities, in fact, were
thought of as foundation stones not so much because of their buildings, but
rather because of their inhabitants’ sense of civic identity, cohesive and strong
in their unity. “The city air makes you free,” goes the saying, referring to the fact
that peasants who moved to the city were delivered from servitude. In the
nineteenth-century interpretation, medieval cities represented, above all, the
home of those industrious men who, through hard work and intelligence, had
overcome their “feudal barbarism”: they were the cradle of the free bourgeois
and the forge that tempered them. It doesn’t matter, then, that the city of stone,
the urbs, could be Roman or even Etruscan: what matters is that its citizenry,
the civitas, first gained its communal self-awareness in the Middle Ages, that it
founded corporations, wrote its own statutes, fought for its freedom. Thus, at
one of his famous lectures, François Guizot took Walter Scott to task for hav-
ing, in one of his novels, improperly described a burgher from Liège:
He [sc. Scott] created a real joke bourgeoisie: fat, soft, with no experience,
no courage, concerned only with leading a comfortable life. The bour-
geoisie of that time, the gentlemen, always wore chainmail on their chest,
pike in hand; their life was tempestuous, warlike, hard, almost as much as
that of the lords they battled.11
This interpretation of medieval history applies to a large swath of Europe, but

it was thought up specifically to describe those countries in which the urban
11 “Il en a fait un vrai bourgeois de comédie, gras, mou, sans expérience, sans audace,
uniquement occupé de mener sa vie commodément. Les bourgeois de ce temps, Mes-
sieurs, avaient toujours la cotte de mailles sur la poitrine, la pique à la main ; leur vie était
presque aussi orageuse, aussi guerrière, aussi dure que celle des seigneurs qu’ils combat-
taient”: F. Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en Europe depuis la chute de l’Empire romain
jusqu’à la Révolution française, Didier et C.e, Paris 18566, pp. 213 ff. On the same subject see
today: J.-M. Moeglin, La bourgeoisie et la nation française d’après les historiens français du
xixe siècle, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 121–133.

84 Chapter 5
network was densest. In this discourse Central and Northern Italy loom par-
ticularly large. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the belief that the communal
period had represented the most majestic moment in the history of medieval
Italy had become increasingly widespread. Powerless to connect a theory of
the nation to the existence of a medieval state—as was happening in other
parts of Europe—Italian intellectuals of the nineteenth century exalted to the
highest degree the identitarian values of the “piccole patrie,” “little fatherlands,”
communal cities that were rich, free, proud, industrious, and resplendent with
works of art. In a cultural universe that at every turn found in the Middle Ages
a new alternative to classical myths of origins, Italy took the course of a dialec-
tical encounter between local identity and national identity, underlining how
the nation was formed primarily on the basis of its cities. Medieval, therefore,
as in the medieval city: civic identity as the basis and myth-engine of the sense
of local belonging as well as the foundation of Italianness. This is the point of
departure, in the nineteenth century, for the famous commemorations of the
Oath of Pontida and the Battle of Legnano.12
This way of imagining the Middle Ages supports, even today, the idea that a
sense of civic identity acquires greater force when it is depicted through recre-
ations of a medieval hue. The Middle Ages remain indispensible to the origin
story and the glory days of one’s community. We are dealing with a cinemato-
graphic Middle Ages, the ideal backdrop for historical recreations, and with an
identitarian Middle Ages, a perfect symbol for communal identity: despite the
intervening five hundred years, things aren’t really all that different. Though all
references to the birth and maturation of the bourgeois class, which was the
battle standard of the nineteenth-century interpretation consecrated by Henri
Pirenne, may have long since disappeared, the broader concept remains intact:
12 Among the numerous studies on the subject see, in particular: I. Porciani, Il medioevo
nella costruzione dell’Italia unita: la proposta di un mito, in R. Elze and P. Schiera (eds.), Il
medioevo nell’Ottocento in Italia e in Germania, il Mulino, Bologna 1988, pp. 163–191; Id.,
Identità locale-identità nazionale cit.; J. Petersen, L’Italia e la sua varietà. Il principio della
città come modello esplicativo della storia nazionale, in O. Janz [et al.] (eds. ), Centralismo
e federalismo cit., pp. 327–346; C. Sorba, Il mito dei comuni e le patrie cittadine, in M. Ridolfi
(ed.), Almanacco della Repubblica. Storia d’Italia attraverso le tradizioni le istituzioni e le
simbologie repubblicane, B. Mondadori, Milano 2003, pp. 119–130; S. Soldani, Il medioevo
del Risorgimento nello specchio della Nazione, in E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi (eds.), Arti e
storia nel medioevo, vol. iv cit., pp. 163–173; M. Vallerani, Il comune come mito politico. Im-
magini e modelli tra Otto e Novecento, ibid., pp. 187–206; T. di Carpegna Falconieri, “Medi-
eval” Identities in Italy cit.; D. Balestracci, Medioevo e Risorgimento. L’invenzione dell’identità
italiana nell’Ottocento, il Mulino, Bologna 2015; T. di Carpegna Falconieri, Roma antica e il
Medioevo cit.; F. Pirani, Le repubbliche marinare: archeologia di un’idea, in T. di Carpegna
Falconieri, R. Facchini (eds.), Medievalismi italiani cit., pp. 131–148.

a community of inhabitants, perhaps less clearly defined, but still united in the
symbol of the Middle Ages.
But why is it that since the Seventies—and even more so since the Nineties—
we have witnessed a massive renewal and recovery of these themes? There
is one primary reason: a response to a sense of the loss of traditions by seeking
to recover their memory. Hobsbawm writes:
For eighty percent of humanity, the Middle Ages ended suddenly in the
1950s, or, perhaps still, they were felt to end in the 1960s.13
These words of the illustrious scholar refer inherently to a negative idea of

the Middle Ages, but they can also be read another way: certainly, the world
welcomed the end of that dark age with relief, but only a few years later a pro-
found sense of nostalgia set in. This cultural attitude, characteristically post-
modern, is exactly the same one that we will encounter in the following chapter
as we examine the search for popular traditions by left-wing movements, art-
ists, and intellectuals. In the case of palios and medievalized festivals, however,
this combination of relief followed by loss and longing has a different result, as
it retraces an already beaten path, so deeply permeated by political idealism in
the civic/identitarian sense that it appears clearly neo-Romantic.
No sooner did we realize that blacksmiths, farriers, and basket-weavers no
longer existed, than we wished to recreate their open-air shops, like museums
preserving traditions and trades that have disappeared. Workshops that exist
for just one day, of course, without the stench of poverty. In fact, these selective
recreations of the past allow us to skip over its less pleasant aspects, keeping
only what we like, providing a new memory to share. Whether this memory is
founded on historical facts or entirely fictional is not very important: in order
to look backwards, to rewrite or dream of a past that does not exist, one must
be powerfully aware of the sense of separation. We must struggle to remember
and convince ourselves that the world we left behind, the world that no longer
exists, had many positive aspects. This not only brings us the recreations of
medieval fairs, but also the advertisements for Mulino Bianco—a place of in-
nocent, ancient, and delicious beauty—not to mention the ads for Nutella, as
13 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991, Michael
Joseph-Vintage Books, London-New York 1994, p. 340. Cf. P.P. Pasolini, Scritti corsari, Gar-
zanti, Milano 1975 (ed. consulted: Mondadori, Milano 1988, published in “Epoca,”
xxxix, June 20, 1988, n. 1968), p. 31: “Il mondo contadino, dopo circa quattordicimila anni
di vita, è finito praticamente di colpo” (“The peasant world, after about fourteen thousand
years of life, was finished with almost with a single blow”).

86 Chapter 5
good as your mamma used to eat, all inserted into “a fairy-tale past that runs
through commercial spots with a series of call-backs to rural tradition.”14
The colorful Middle Ages work wonders because they are severed from the
memory of our forefathers’ lives. They are magical, full of jugglers and fire-
eaters, jesters and maybe even dragons. It’s quite New Age, the opposite of that
poor and often rural environment abandoned by the generations of migrants
from the countryside between the Fifties and Seventies, the memory of which
was not passed on to their children.15 Or perhaps it is the dream told in fables
around the fire, which was not history but fantasy in its purest state. Here,
however, we are dealing with history. Without the bond of memory between
grandparents, parents, and children, the past can easily be reinvented. Since
the beginning of time, those who at long last achieve prosperity equip them-
selves with a new past, more suitable to their new status. The ennobled mer-
chants who bought their ancestors’ portraits by the yard did it, the nobles who
invented “incredible genealogies” did it, and others continue to do it today.16
Ultimately, the use of the Middle Ages in a markedly identitarian key may even
constitute, in certain cases, both the involuntary declaration of a collective loss
of memory and the simultaneous attempt to deny this loss—not by resorting
to history, but to its metamorphosis into myth. In the Canterville Ghost, Oscar
Wilde has the rich American who bought a castle in England say, “I know a lot
of people who would give a hundred thousand dollars to have a grandfather,
and much more than that to have a family ghost.”17
Medievalism has been (and still is) this, too: a picturesque ghost, an ecto-
plasmic recreation of the past by of those who no longer know the names and
trades of their grandfathers. But we do need to be careful not to paint with too
broad a brush. Not all historical recreations are completely invented, and some,
particularly more recently, even boast an admirable philological accuracy in
their reconstruction of the Middle Ages. There are associations that promote
specialized historical research and oversee the accuracy of reenactments: for
instance, the Italian Federation of Historic Games (Federazione italiana giochi
storici).18 The Assisan Calendimaggio itself is characterized by an element that
we may almost call esoteric, not open to the public but intended to be rigor-
ously evaluated, in terms of historical accuracy, by the judges (often eminent
historians) who determine the winning party. The Assisans and the Sienese
14 S. Pivato, Vuoti di memoria cit., pp. 61–74: 61 ff. TN: Mulino Bianco is a very popular brand
of cookie in Italy.
15 Ibid., especially pp. 38–41.
16 R. Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili. Scritti di storia nell’Europa moderna, il Mulino, Bolo-
gna 1995.
17 O. Wilde, The Canterville Ghost, The Electric Book Company, London 2001, p. 30.
18 Cf. www.feditgiochistorici.it/ (cons. Apr. 28, 2019).

celebrate their feast days with such emotional investment and such a strong
sense of identity that they consider the countless tourists almost a nuisance,
living as if suspended between the need and the refusal to welcome those who,
coming from the outside world, cannot fully comprehend the totalizing nature
of the experience.
Nevertheless, when the institution of the festival is recent and unstructured,
and when the operative desire is fundamentally economic and touristic, the
force majeure of identitarian medievalism finds itself in a formidable contra-
diction, for such medievalism should function as a counterpoint to globaliza-
tion, not derive benefit from it. The return to more or less imagined origins is a
response “to the loss of the ‘sense of home’ that one feels in great markets.”19
Faced with the alienation caused by malls, fast food, and huge chains of goods
and service, the Middle Ages, along with the “slow food” that accompanies it,
should facilitate this return. But the contradiction is that even the rebuttal in
the name of the Middle Ages is homologizing and globalized. This is nothing
new: even the rebellion of rock and roll is a product of the market, and we have
all known for a while that “Native American” art boutiques all sell identical
products. The model of the medieval marketplace is widely standardized, as
much in costume as in cultural content (fantasy literature and cinema), as
much in the demonstrations (races that quite often imitate the Palio of Siena,
jugglers, acrobats, taverns, and boutiques), as, more than ever, in the objects
put up for sale, for instance, fairy and troll dolls. Indeed, since Celticism is one
of the keys to reading the Middle Ages in modernity, we frequently encounter
strange cases of medieval fairs, palios, and tournaments that, in Italy as in
Spain or any other European country, display characters in fifteenth-century
costumes like something out of an opera against a backdrop of Celtic music: a
sort of “Celtic fusion” that certainly has nothing to do with the Middle Ages,
but is performed with melodies, rhythms, and instruments that, in the popular
perception, are indelibly associated with that era.20
So we’re talking about a Medieval Era that claims to define a unique identity,
but in reality is modular, repetitive, exportable, and precisely for this reason—
insofar as it is immediately recognizable—cherished by those who come to
visit. At times it so happens that the neo-medieval framework transforms a
place that on its own would be characterized by its elements of originality, its
monuments, and its works of art, into a non-place identical to so many others.
Ultimately, even the medieval village is often a global village. With at least one
difference: at least here the people get together to have fun.
19 I. Porciani, Identità locale-identità nazionale cit., p. 141.

20 Cf. Chapter 9.

Chapter 6
Folk and Jesters: Anarchist and Leftist Middle Ages
It depends, depends on what?

It all depends on where you see the world from.
jarabe de palo, Depende (1998)
It’s a beautiful day in May. The year is 1968. Between red flags and tear gas,
flower power and protests some might say that the Middle Ages are not exactly
at home. But in reality—as we anticipated—the Middle Ages were there, too.
In May of 1968, French students marched to the verses of Verlaine:
It’s toward the tremendous and delicate Middle Ages

That my broken heart should sail
So far from our days of fleshly spirit and sad flesh.1
Onward Middle Ages! Yet nevertheless, we remain surprised. If we look around

us, the Middle Ages’ role in politics these days comes almost exclusively from
right-wing movements. Even in the Seventies and Eighties the political usage
of the Middle Ages was primarily a phenomenon of the right, as we shall see in
the next three chapters. Another cause for our surprise is of a philosophical
nature: unless grafted to proud nationalisms, progressive culture does not
judge the Medieval Era in a kind light, for the simple reason that it belongs to
the past. The revolution looks forward: as the lines of the Internationale go, Du
passé faisons table rase, “let us make the past a clean slate.”
The betterment of the human condition is gradual, and accomplished
through processes—class struggle, according to Marxism—that lead us to a
perfect society. From this perspective the periods of Western history that come
one after the other—Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Modern Era, all the way
to today—are arranged in an evolutionary progression. Medieval, or rather
feudal, society is better than the ancient one of slavery, but worse than the
1 “C’est vers le Moyen Âge énorme et délicat | qu’il faudrait que mon coeur en panne naviguât.
| Loin de nos jours d’esprit charnel et de chair triste”: P. Verlaine, Non. Il fut gallican, ce siècle,
et janséniste!, in Sagesse, Goemaere-Librairie Catholique, Bruxelles-Paris 1881, vol. x,
vv. 2–4; cit. by R. Iorio, Medioevo e giornalismo cit., p. 125.

Folk and Jesters: Anarchist and Leftist Middle Ages 89
modern one, bourgeois and capitalist (even if the latter may be much more
cynical and brutal, its operations no longer veiled by “religious and political
illusions”),2 and much worse than contemporary society, in which the prole-
tariat has acquired class consciousness. In the same way, anarchist thought
cannot but reject the Middle Ages, the time of kings, priests, castes and an or-
der as immobile as it was unjust. And thus, what use could we ever make of
this Medieval Era, which by convention is a time of shadows?
If things were exactly so, this chapter would be out of order: it would have
made more sense to place it among the discussion in the first few chapters of
the “dark” Middle Ages. And that certainly would have been appropriate if we
were referring only to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–69), or to Pol
Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, which, from 1975 to 1979, led to the systematic
destruction and massacre “of whoever knew how to read and write, and thus
were bearers of that terrible affliction called the past.”3
But things are not exactly thus, because, as we have already said in reference
to Gramsci and Pasolini, thinking about the past and finding value in it is not
an exclusively reactionary attitude—the “paper tigers” of Maoist thought—
and tradition is not necessarily counter-revolutionary. From the mid-Sixties to
the end of the next decade, many left-leaning intellectuals and artists made
use of the Middle Ages, attributing positive connotations to it. In fact, Marxism
has discussed in depth the relationship between tradition and modernity. In
Italy this concept, already mature in the collection of popular Italian fairy tales
edited by Italo Calvino (1956), is seen most of all in conjunction with the mete-
oric economic boom of the Sixties and thus can be considered an effect of the
so-called “second industrial revolution.”4
So writes Anne-Marie Thiesse, discussing folklore in the postwar period:
The heights achieved by industrialization in the West in the Sixties, at the

dawn of a new phase of modernity, and the drastic decline in importance
of the rural world as a social category, give rise to a new movement pro-
moting traditional culture, which is presented as oppositional, youthful
and leftist. In Italy, ethnologists and militant artists who employ Grams-
cian analyses seek to give life to a modern, revolutionary folklore, primar-
ily musical, that reclaims the rhythms and melodies of traditional popular
2 K. Marx and Fr. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Pluto Press, London 2017. jstor, www
.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1k85dmc., p. 53 (cons. May 5, 2019).
3 T. Terzani, Fantasmi. Dispacci dalla Cambogia, Longanesi, Milano 2008, p. 246.
4 I. Calvino, Italian Folktales, Penguin Books, London 2000 (original edition: Fiabe italiane: rac-
colte dalla tradizione popolare durante gli ultimi cento anni e trascritte in lingua dai vari di-
aletti da Italo Calvino, Einaudi, Torino 1956).

90 Chapter 6
music yet endows the lyrics with political commentary. In France, during
the decade that follows after May of ’68, the rural world and its traditions
become a cornerstone of the anticapitalist struggle. The progressive-
regressive utopia strives to overcome the contradictions of contemporary
society by proposing, through the return to a pre-capitalist world, to re-
place productive values with those of conviviality, communal brother-
hood, and respect for nature.5
This same tool of reclaiming popular culture through music is a workhorse of

the English and American folk movements, with the revival of lays like the
Green Forest Ballads that retrace the ancient motifs of game poaching and the
domination of lords, and the better part of Joan Baez’s repertoire.6 The songs
are not always of openly political content and only rarely truly medieval, but
nonetheless lie in the vein of popular tradition, of the common people whose
choral voice must be restored. During the Seventies, “medieval pop” was quite
common even in the countries of Eastern Europe (bands like Sfinx and Trans-
sylvania Phoenix in Romania), although such cases may be interpreted not as
an alternative but as a nationalist artform—albeit one allied with the Com-
munist regimes that, after the Prague Spring, began to distance themselves
from the Soviet Union.7
An analogous discussion pertains to the great diffusion of theater. In Italy,
in accordance with the tradition of commedia dell’arte, many folk and collec-
tivist theater groups in the Seventies sought to revive popular theater, bringing
expressive—often dialectal—candor back into the spotlight, while also recog-
nizing its protest value, like the glorification of peasant tradition in the face of
the lie of bourgeois civilization’s machines, factories, and history written by
the victors. Even if the lyrical content could be variable, the performance in
itself came to constitute an eminently political act.
Aside from a few exceptions, the ballads and plays reproduced in Italy and
France, as in Romania and the United States, were not genuinely medieval. On
5 A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., p. 276.

6 See R. Leydi, Il folk music revival, Flaccovio, Palermo 1972; Id., La canzone popolare, in Storia
d’Italia, Einaudi, Torino 1973, vol. v, pp. 1181–1249; on this particular subject: P. Moliterni,
Medioevo, musica popolare e “folk music revival,” in “Quaderni medievali,” ii (1977), n. 3,
pp. 175–187.
7 F. Curta, Pavel Chinezul, Negru Voda, and “Imagined Communities”: Medievalism in Romanian
Rock Music, in “Studies in Medievalism,” XIII (2005) pp. 3–16, with reference also to other
Eastern European countries; Id., The Reinvention of the Middle Ages in Romanian Rock Music,
in What, in the World, is Medievalism? Global Reinvention of the Middle Ages (A Panel Discus-
sion), session of the 44th International Congress of Medieval Studies cit.

the contrary, they usually dated back no further than the sixteenth or seven-
teenth century, as was the case, to name some of the more celebrated ballads,
for Greensleeves, Geordie, Scarborough Fair, and Barbara Allen.8 The revival of
popular traditions, in fact, has no need to go all the way back to the Middle
Ages, but only to the folklore of the rural societies that modern civilization is
sweeping away. In this sense, we can grasp the idea of the Middle Ages only in
its broadest contours as an extra-long Middle Ages, even more extended than
the long Middle Ages of the Annales School (which ends with the French and
Industrial Revolutions). This is what Franco Cardini was speaking of when he
wrote:
There’s no more fooling ourselves: by now, we men of the nuclear and

computer age are much further from our predecessors of two or three
generations, from our grandfathers, than they were (in terms of mentality
and rhythms of existence) from the people of the thirteenth or fourteenth
century.9
In the ahistorical reconstructed past, the ballad can be considered medieval

even if it is not. This is because it belongs to another time, one that is unknown
and in need of reclamation: a time when people kept their animals on the
ground floor of their house, dresses were hand-sewn, and people spent their
nights around the fire. We are dealing with the same mental and sentimental
process that led to the “rediscovery” of thousands and thousands of country
fairs, knightly courts, and urban jousts.
But a Middle Ages of the people is even more than that. Popular culture
rethinks its own past, which for anarchist and leftist thought is one of tears
and blood: completely contrary, then, to the glittering past of urban palios.
The people, that is, the proletariat, must preserve their memory precisely in
order to reappropriate the tradition that they are losing and to reach the re-
newed class consciousness that would allow society to be reborn. Anarchists
and Marxists do not celebrate knights, they do not raise hymns to the sacred
order of the Middle Ages. Quite the contrary. They denounce its horrors, at the
same time exalting social solidarity and the rebellion of the sub-altern classes.
Their Middle Ages are made of revolts. Within a fundamentally negative judg-
ment, under the oppression of “little lords,” the poisoned gold of merchants,
and the horrors of monarchy and theocracy, one’s attention focuses on that
8 Fr. J. Child (ed.), The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, The Folklore Press, New York 1957
(original edition: 1882–1898), nn. 2, 84, 209, 271.
9 F. Cardini, Medievisti “di professione” cit., p. 50.

92 Chapter 6
social subject, pervaded by an innate positivity, that is the people: the peas-
ants, the miserable, the landless, precursors of the proletariat. A people that
suffers, but already strives for its future redemption, not yet in terms of a
true revolution but a prefiguration of it: the class struggle that, according to
Marxist historiography, would be waged between the serfs and lords in the
Early and High Middle Ages, between commoners and elites and between
workers and masters in the Late Middle Ages. Ultimately, among oratores,
bellatores and laboratores—the three orders of the medieval imaginary—the
Marxists prefer the latter by a long shot, equipped as they are with hammer
and sickle.10
These are not new ideas. In fact, they are firmly anchored in the Enlighten-
ment construction of the idea of the medieval and above all in its nineteenth-
century reworking in a revolutionary key. The people have their history and it
will be told! The positive aspects of the Middle Ages, entrusted to the subaltern
classes and not to the dominant elites, emerge in two characteristics attributed
to the medieval commons: solidarity and rebellion.
The course of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of utopian socio-
historical reconstructions that attributed to certain peoples, namely the Slavs
and Germans, the existence of a primordial and natural proto-Communism,
a veritable class solidarity that had no knowledge of private property and pre-
figured égalité and fraternité. This social solidarity expressed itself in the Com-
munes that, according to an interpretation common in the nineteenth century,
defeated feudalism, and then in the medieval corporations, presented by some
historians as forebearers of the democratic armies of workers. The medieval
worker still lived better than the modern one: feudalism certainly represents a
more backwards economic system with respect to bourgeois capitalism, but
also a less alienating and more human social system, because it was construct-
ed around a vast web of bonds of solidarity that capitalism itself has discard-
ed.11 Social solidarity therefore came to be reproduced in a neo-medieval
sense, for instance in William Morris and Walter Crane’s late nineteenth-
century “Arts and Crafts” movement, with its anti-industrial system of artisanal
10 G. Duby, The Three Orders. Feudal Society Imagined, University of Chicago Press, Chicago
1980 (original edition: Les trois ordres ou l’imaginaire du féodalisme, Gallimard, Paris 1978).
11 See for instance L. Mumford, Technics and Civilization, Harcourt Brace and Company,
New York 1934, pp. 153–155, on the subject of the “new barbarism” represented by the
“paleotechnic phase,” namely the early, inhumane industrialization of the nineteenth
century, which led to “the lowest point in social development Europe had known since
the Dark Ages” (p. 154).

production that took its model from medieval corporations.12 The powerful
impact of the nineteenth-century “social medievalism” of Morris, but also of
Cobbett, Pugin, Disraeli, Ruskin, Hopkins, etc., united in the grand myth of re-
demption represented by Robin Hood and the social pact sanctioned by the
Magna Carta, probably constitutes the fundamental reason why still today, po-
litical references to the Middle Ages can assume progressive connotations
much more often in Anglo-Saxon countries than in continental Europe, where
the key is predominantly conservative, or even reactionary. Thinking more re-
cently, medievalism helps us understand the long gestation of the protest
movements of the 1960s: in this sense one might claim that Tolkien represent-
ed for the flower children what William Morris, his spiritual ancestor, once rep-
resented for the fin de siècle English progressives.
The political imaginary connected to social solidarity and to the idea of the
collective realization of a vast popular project is a quite prominent motif in the
film Andrej Rublev (1966) by the Russian dissident Andrej Tarkovskij13 and is
the political theme at the heart of the novel The Pillars of the Earth (1989) by
Ken Follett, renowned author and English Labour activist.14 We can even see it
in the economic battles and endless strikes that inflamed England under the
leadership of Margaret Thatcher, recently compared to the peasant revolts of
the fourteenth century.15
Now, all this making use of popular traditions and of the identity of the poor
perhaps would not have had a long life and especially would not have been
anchored so firmly in the Middle Ages if, in addition to marrying itself to the
neo-medieval style, it had not found a solid foothold—even in terms of philo-
logical accuracy—in historiography. The link between the Middle Ages and
the left becomes more evident and politically relevant when we talk about a
characteristic feature of the period between the end of the Sixties and the
12 M.R. Grennan, William Morris: Medievalist and Revolutionary, King’s Crown Press, New
York 1945; J. Banham and J. Harris (eds.), William Morris and the Middle Ages, Manchester
University Press, Manchester 1984; M. Alexander, Medievalism cit., pp. 67–72, 176–180,
219 ff.; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 75–81 and ad indices; E. Sasso, Wil-
liam Morris tra utopia e medievalismo, Aracne, Roma 2007. On the concept of “feudal
socialism,” opposed by Marx and Engels who considered it totally reactionary, The Com-
munist Manifesto cit., p. 85 ff.
13 V. Attolini, Andrej Roublev, l’artista e la storia, in “Quaderni medievali,” I (1976), n. 2,
pp. 193–202.
14 K. Follett, The Pillars of the Earth, MacMillan-William Morrow, London-New York 1989. In
2010 the novel was adapted into a TV miniseries.
15 D. Horspool, The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Trouble-Making from the Normans
to the Nineties, Viking, London 2009.

94 Chapter 6
id-Eighties: the expansion of a vast audience for historical culture.16 Al-

m
though this interest was at the time turned primarily toward social history and
contemporary politics (thus to history as the study of the present), even the
Middle Ages played its part. In a relatively limited time, perhaps twenty years,
a handful of historians succeeded in transforming medieval studies into a dis-
cipline capable of speaking to everyone and strongly oriented toward the so-
cial. While most of the Western world was occupied with fantasy novels based
on medievalizing stereotypes taken primarily from the chansons de geste, in
France they studied the imaginary produced in the Middle Ages, analyzing a
theme, the history of mentalities, which simultaneously could be undertaken
through refined research into sources and would be an appropriate response to
the interests of non-specialists.17 The solidification of university attendance as
a mass phenomenon occurred in parallel with the general diffusion of the An-
nales school’s historiography, which though fundamentally structuralist and
thus Marxist in its initial presuppositions, finds a compelling expression in the
return to the historical tale of the Nouvelle Histoire. History is no longer just
tables and graphs, but stories. Capable of storytelling, the protagonists of the
so-called “revival of narrative” were now able to satisfy the public taste, finding
the key that was lost.18 Among the texts that may be considered this way are
The Legend of Bouvines by George Duby (1973) or Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s
Montaillou (1975), which sold 250,000 copies in Italy alone.19 The channels of
communication between universities and the broader public are thus re-
opened in the Seventies, turning some history books into actual best sellers—
medieval ones above all.
16 A. Caracciolo, Il mercato dei libri di storia. 1968–1978, in “Quaderni storici,” xiv (1979), n. 41,
pp. 765–777. The popularity of history books peaked, in Italy, in 1975. See also L. Blandini,
Dopo il ‘68. Editoria e problemi del passato, ibid., n. 42, pp. 1152–1164. On the complex rela-
tionship between Italian medievalism and Marxism in the 1970s: O. Capitani, Medioevo
passato prossimo cit., pp. 286 ff.
17 Cf. Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 249–253.
18 On this topic: L. Stone, The Revival of Narrative. Reflections on a New Old History, in “Past
and Present,” xxviii, 1979, n. 85, pp. 3–24; P. Burke, History of Events and the Revival of
Narrative, in Id. (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Polity, Cambridge 1991,
pp. 283–300; M. Mustè, La storia. Teoria e metodi, Carocci, Roma 2005, pp. 70–72.
19 G. Duby, The Legend of Bouvines: War, Religion, and Culture in the Middle Ages, University
of California Press, Oakland 1990 (original edition: Le dimanche de Bouvines: 27 juillet 1241,
Gallimard, Paris 1973); E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou. Cathars and Catholics in a French
Village, Penguin Books, London 1980 (original edition: Montaillou, village occitan: de 1294
à 1324, Gallimard, Paris 1975). Cf. S. Gensini, Presentazione, in Il sogno del medioevo cit.,
pp. 11–17: 13. In France the circulation has exceeded 300,000 copies: Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du
Moyen Âge cit., pp. 178 ff., 252.

The common people are “without history,” because history is always written
by the victors. As we hear at the beginning of the film Braveheart, “History is
written by those who have hanged heroes.” And the common people, the work-
ing peasants, left no trace, such that the Duke of Auge, while he considers his
historical situation standing atop his castle, almost doesn’t notice them: “A few
vileyns, here and there, were scratching the miserable soil, but they counted
for little in the landscape, being scarcely perceptible.”20
But in this medieval world dominated by social injustice and the tyranny of
whoever is in power, voices of disobedience are raised (and from time to time,
even the Duke of Auge paid the price). In reality the people have never been
silent: the myth of Robin Hood, the bandit that steals from the rich to give to
the poor, is this truth’s greatest metaphor.21 Bringing back to consciousness the
history of the poor, the marginalized, and the so-called Other, who are so only
because they are condemned by a distorted perspective defined by an unjust
order, is the task of the intellectuals. Or at least, it is in an environment that
saw the creation of works like Nathan Wachtel’s The Vision of the Vanquished
(1971), which recounts the invasion of South America from the point of view of
the native peoples; like The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg (1971),
which relates the worldview of a miller and an entire culture behind him on
the verge of collapse; like the books on the wretched by Bronisław Geremek,
starting from his study of the marginalized groups of Paris (1971–72), which
describe and explain the Middle Ages of the slums and ghettos; like the numer-
ous studies on heretical movements of the Late Middle Ages, understood in a
social key as the struggle against the normalization imposed by the Roman
Church; and like the analogous studies on witchcraft, understood as a popular
and feminine spirit, an alternative and ancestral culture condemned as devi-
ant: well, in this extremely vast cultural environment, even politically oriented
20 R. Queneau, Between Blue and Blue cit., p. 52 (“Quelques manants, çà et là, grattaient le sol
misérable, mais il comptaient peu dans le paysage, à peine perceptibles”: Id., Les fleurs
bleues cit., p. 67).
21 See St. Knight, Robin Hood. A Complete Study of the English Outlaw, Blackwell, Oxford-
Cambridge (MA) 1994; Id., Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca 2003; in Italian: M. Sanfilippo, Camelot, Sherwood, Hollywood cit., which offers a
broad perspective. Between 1958 and 1961 the periodical “Past and Present” hosted a de-
bate on the significance of Robin Hood as a symbol of peasant rebellion or, vice versa, of
the redemption of rural petty nobility, the “gentry”: see Id., Camelot cit., Part 2, Ch. 9, Il
dibattito storico, with bibliography. Since 1977 Veneto has been home to the Radio Sher
wood station, founded by a workers’ rights collective and still today an extra-parliamentary
voice for the left. Cf. Radio Sherwood, Wikipedia entry, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra
dio_Sherwood (cons. May 5, 2019).

96 Chapter 6
artists have reproduced, described, and loved the history of the “victims of this
world,” tracing a long allegorical arc.22
If these are some of our historiographical premises, getting into the specifics
of texts by authors who are not historians by profession becomes a serious
problem. In no case more so than this one, we need to propose effective dis-
tinctions within a nebula that is anything but clear. We are dealing with au-
thors who have been lumped into camps or called propagators of ideas they do
not share, as is the case with De André, a libertarian anarchist attributed ex
officio to the left but dear also to the right, and with Tolkien, who has been clas-
sified, but only in Italy, as a right-wing author. Nor should this surprise us, since
any work of creativity, as soon as it is made public, lives in the interpretations
of its consumers.23
We can point to any number of cases in which anarchist or left-leaning intel-
lectuals have written, sung, produced, or portrayed on the big screen themes
and scenarios that are medieval in various ways necessary for expressing artis-
tic sentiment or exploring existential dimensions, but that do not display—in
those contexts—openly politically messages: as, for instance, some songs by
Francesco Guccini (Ophelia, 1968), Bob Dylan (All Along the Watchtower, 1968),
Joan Baez (Sweet Sir Galahad, sung for the first time at Woodstock in 1969).
These examples are interesting, for they reinforce the notion that a fantastical
Middle Ages was not a taboo for the left, even though it was far removed from
the class struggle and political engagement. Also quite representative are the
writings of John Steinbeck, author of, among others, the “Arthurian” novels Tor-
tilla Flat (1937) and The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (published
posthumously in 1976), Italo Calvino, who wrote his celebrated Trilogy of Our
22 N. Wachtel, The Vision of the Vanquished. The Spanish Conquest of Peru Through Indian
Eyes, 1530–1570, Barnes & Noble, New York 1971 (original edition: La vision des vaincus: les
Indiens du Pérou devant la conquête espagnole 1530–1570, Gallimard, Paris 1971); C. Ginz-
burg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, Johns Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore 19922 (original edition: Il formaggio e i vermi: il cosmo di un
mugnaio del ‘500, Einaudi, Torino 1976); B. Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medi-
eval Paris, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006 (orginal edition: Ludzie margine-
su w średniowiecznym Paryżu xiv–xv wiek, Wrocław-Warszawa 1971; French ed. Les mar-
ginaux parisiens aux xive et xve siècles, Flammarion, Paris 1976); Id., I bassifondi di Parigi
nel medioevo: il mondo di François Villon, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1972 (original edition: Życie
codzienne w Paryżu Franciszka Villona, Warszawa 1972).
23 Cf. J.R.R. Tolkien, Foreword to the Second Edition, 1966, 11: “I think that many confuse ‘ap-
plicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other
in the purposed domination of the author.” Cf. T. Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the
Century, HarperCollins, New York 2001: pp. 190–196.

Ancestors in the Fifties, causing much dissent among his fellow members of
the Italian Communist Party, and Umberto Eco, who in The Name of the Rose
(1980) gestured toward the similarity between the peasant struggles of the
fourteenth century and the turbulent Years of Lead of Italian terrorism.24
So who used the Middle Ages politically in the Seventies? There’s no point
searching in the factories, unions, picket lines, demonstrations, rallies, and
strikes: no traces will be found. The Medieval Era is felt in music and theater, but
usually not to such an extent that it is recognized as having a concrete signifi-
cance that might distinguish it from a more general popular tradition. Only
rarely was it strictly and explicitly connected to political conflict; more typically
it represented one of many possible fonts of artistic inspiration. This compre-
hensive picture is complicated by one relevant exception, which constitutes
the deepest level of political discourse centered around the Middle Ages. In the
Sixties and Seventies, the theme that truly characterizes its usage on the left is
rebellion under the sign of inversion. The watchword is “flip your point of view”
towards the low and towards the margins, towards the grotesque, the satirical,
the irreverent, the sarcastic, even towards a taste for the trivial, licentious, and
24 J. Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat, Covici-Friede, New York 1935; Id., Ch. Horton (ed.), The Acts of
King Arthur and His Noble Knights, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1976. On Steinbeck
and his refashioning of Malory’s work, see V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit.,
pp. 167 ff. and the collected bibliography of L.F. Hodges, John Steinbeck’s The Acts of King
Arthur and His Noble Knights, in An Arthuriana/Camelot Project Bibliography, www.lib
.rochester.edu/camelot/acpbibs/hodges.htm (cons. May 5, 2019). Calvino’s The Nonexis-
tent Knight was considered an allegory of the Communist Party as an empty bureaucratic
machine, and the novel contains many references to the class consciousness of the work-
ing classes (cf. I. Calvino, Romanzi e racconti, under the direction of C. Milanini, eds. M.
Barenghi and B. Falcetto, Mondadori, Milano 20007, vol. i, p. 1062). Calvino himself wrote
of the sociopolitical significance of his book (ibid., p. 1362): “In the Knight [we can see] the
critique of the ‘organization man’ in mass society. I would say that the Knight itself, where
references to the present seem more distant, says something that hits closer to home.”
Umberto Eco in 2003 expanded on some political analogies contained in The Name of the
Rose (Harcourt, San Diego 1983, original edition: Il nome della rosa, Bompiani, Milano
1980): “In the course of the writing I realized that—through these medieval phenomena
of unorganized revolt—some parallels were emerging relating to that terrorism we were
living through at the time I was writing, more or less towards the end of the 1970s. Cer-
tainly, even if I had no precise intentions, all that led me to underline these similarities, so
much so that when I discovered that the wife of Fra Dolcino’s was called Margherita, like
Curcio’s wife Margherita Cagol, who died in more or less analogous conditions, I explicitly
cited it in the text. Maybe if she’d had a different name it wouldn’t have occurred to me to
mention it, but I couldn’t resist this kind of wink to the reader”: A. Fagioli, Il romanziere e
lo storico. Intervista a Umberto Eco, in “Lettera internazionale,” www.letterainternazio
nale.it/testi_htm/eco_75.htm (cons. May 5, 2019).

98 Chapter 6
pornographic: “A man may seye ful sooth in game and pley,” says Chaucer and,
after him, Pasolini of the Canterbury Tales (1972).25
So many films and novels come to mind that breathe this irreverent air,
this retelling of a Medieval Era of the marginalized, the poor, the ridiculous
knights.26 They are works that participate in the biting satire of the Seventies,
which in Italy translates to the bitter laughter of the Commedia all’italiana.
Works that may not flaunt a political message, but that were created by authors
who openly expressed their belonging to the left, such as Mario Monicelli’s two
films, L’Armata Brancaleone (“The Incredible Army of Brancaleone,” 1966) and
Brancaleone alle Crociate (“Brancaleone at the Crusades,” 1970), renowned in
Italy, or the novel Il pataffio by Luigi Malerba, a “cruel farce” of a popular stamp,
and the cycle of seven children’s stories by the same Malerba and Tonino Guer-
ra called Millemosche (1969–73; the knight’s name means “Thousand Flies”),
which narrate the adventures of three characters obsessed with hunger.27 In
those same years, the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail by Monty Python
(1974) took aim at everyone: from the self-governing peasants’ “anarco-
syndicalist commune,” to the valiant knights of Camelot, who trot about on
foot while their servants follow behind, using coconuts to imitate the hoof-
beats of their absent steeds.
But above all Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Decameron (1971) is the film in which the
Middle Ages and political engagement (albeit still implicit) are joined with the
greatest force in the carnal magic of bodies and food and the carefree attitude
of people who speak and sing in Neapolitan in dark alleys where time stands
still, mocking the bourgeois, clerical world. At the time he was directing the
film, Pasolini intended to write an essay he would have called, “How to reclaim
some reactionary affirmations for the revolution?” The essay was never w ritten,
25 The line is spoken by the Cook, who addresses himself directly to Pasolini/Chaucer in the
film, The Canterbury Tales, and recalls the line spoken by the host in the “Prologue to the
Cook’s Tale” in Chaucer., v. 31.
26 L. D’Arcens, Comic Medievalism. Laughing at the Middle Ages cit:, T. Pugh, Queer Medieval-
isms: A Case Study of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in L. D’Arcens (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Medievalism cit., pp. 210–223.
27 L. Malerba, Il pataffio, Bompiani, Milano 1978; T. Guerra, L. Malerba, Millemosche merce-
nario, Bompiani, Milano 1969; Id., Millemosche senza cavallo, Bompiani, Milano 1969; Id.,
Millemosche fuoco e fiamme, Bompiani, Milano 1970; Id., Millemosche innamorato, Bom-
piani, Milano 1971; Id., Millemosche e il leone, Bompiani, Milano 1973; Id., Millemosche e la
fine del mondo, Bompiani, Milano 1973; Id., Millemosche alla ventura, Bompiani, Milano
1974; also: Id., Storie dell’anno Mille, Bompiani, Milano 1972 e Nuove storie dell’anno Mille,
Bompiani, Milano 1981, with the same characters Millemosche, Carestia and Pannocchia.
Cf. G. Musca, Il medioevo di Luigi Malerba, in “Quaderni medievali,” iv (1979), n. 8,
pp. 182–194.

but the film is the cinematographic translation of these ideas of his, already
expressed elsewhere. Looking to the past is not reactionary, but a form of
revolution:
I am a force from the Past.

Only in tradition is my love.
I come from the ruins, the churches,
From the altarpieces, the villages
Forgotten in the Apennines or Prealps,
Where our brothers lived.28
The Medieval Era is a poetic place beyond time and antithetical to the present.
It is real life, archaic, corporeal, so much so that Pasolini named his films set in
the carefree and existential, colorful and ragged Middle Ages the “Trilogy of
Life”: The Decameron, of course, along with The Canterbury Tales (1972), and
Arabian Nights (1974).29 Death is somewhere else, a place much closer to us, in
the bleakness of Salò, or 120 Days of Sodom (1975), the first film of a “Trilogy of
Death” that Pasolini never brought to fruition because he was murdered.
Along with Pier Paolo Pasolini, the main protagonists of the political use of
the Middle Ages, reread in an obstinately human key, were perhaps Georges
Brassens, Jacques Brel, Fabrizio De André and Dario Fo.30 Different amongst
28 P.P. Pasolini, Io sono una forza del passato, in Id., Poesia in forma di rosa, Garzanti, Milano
1964.
29 See R. Escobar, Pasolini: il passato e il futuro, in “Quaderni medievali,” ii (1977), n. 3,
pp. 155–174; A. Blandeau, Pasolini, Chaucer and Boccaccio, McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 2006;
V. Marinelli, Pasolini e il medioevo: fuga nell’utopia tra sacro e profano, graduate thesis,
Università degli studi di Urbino, AY 2005–2006; T. di Carpegna Falconieri, L.E. Yawn, Forg-
ing “Medieval” Identities cit.
30 Ch. Tinker, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. Personal and Social Narratives in Post-war
Chanson, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2005; C. Cecchetto, Médiévalismes d’une
sémiose: le Moyen Âge en chanson, in V. Ferré (ed.), Médiévalisme: modernité du Moyen Âge
cit., pp. 177–188; Id., Passages de Villon dans la chanson contemporaine, in D. Bohler, G.
Peylet (eds.), Le temps de la mémoire ii: soi et les autres, Presses Universitaires de Bor-
deaux, Bordeaux 2007, pp. 305–322; C. Cecchetto, M. Prat (eds.), La chanson politique en
Europe, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, Bordeaux 2008; G. Guastella, P. Pirillo (eds.),
Menestrelli e giullari: il Medioevo di Fabrizio De André e l’immaginario medievale nel
Novecento italiano, Edifir, Firenze 2012. A comparative reading of De André and Pasolini is
proposed by R. Giuffrida, In direzione ostinata e contraria, in F. De André, Parole. I testi di
tutte le canzoni, Ricordi-la Repubblica-L’Espresso, Roma 2009, pp. 3–11: 5 ff. A reading of
the reception by the right (among other reasons, because of its “medievalizing reper-
toire”) in L. Lanna and F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit., pp. 136–139. On Dario Fo: L. Binni,
Attento te… Il teatro politico di Dario Fo, Bertani, Verona 1975; Id., Dario Fo, La Nuova Italia,

100 Chapter 6
themselves—only Dario Fo can be called a communist consistent with the po-

litical movement, while the others were antidogmatic and libertarian—all
these authors reclaim the immortal themes of the world upside-down, Carni-
val, the charivari, folly, the tradition of anti-bourgeois satire, the world of the
humble, the marginalized, the exploited, the vagabonds, the prostitutes, the
slaughtered, who in modernity also include alcoholics and addicts. Their Mid-
dle Ages, like modernity, is made of the beggars, hanged men, peasants—
genetically inferior beings born from a donkey’s fart—and even friars, whose
place in Hell is up the Devil’s asshole.
The jester, the child of the people, is for Dario Fo the one who “took the
people’s rage from them and gave it back tempered by the grotesque, by ‘rea-
son,’ so that the people could become mindful of their own condition.”31 The
jester is a revolutionary with a social mission. He is like the peasant Bertoldo,
the joker from a deck of cards, the mad saint of Russian tradition, or Erasmus
of Rotterdam’s Folly, who in the absurdity of his scurrilous jokes is the only one
to be sincere and the only one to whom the powerful concede the right to
taunt and tell the truth.32 As, naturally, does Dario Fo, himself a mad and buf-
foonish jester who denounces the horrors of the modern world. As early as
1968 he wrote a song together with Enzo Jannacci, called Ho visto un re (“I saw
a king”), which in its simple verses and melody is a powerful assault on the
“Overlords.” Some years later, recalling the political uproar over the death of
Giuseppe Pinelli, who fell out of a window of the Police Headquarters of Milan,
Dario Fo compares police chiefs to knights: “To the milites belonged those pro-
fessionals of the established order that we call commissioners, chiefs of
police.”33
In short, Dario Fo, along with his collaborators and the theater groups that
followed him, is the one who most consciously employed the popular medi-
eval as a political weapon. In his rereading of the renowned allegorical poem,
Rosa fresca aulentissima (Fresh and fragrant rose) by Cielo d’Alcamo,34 and
some of his other reinterpretations of late medieval literature as the work of
the people rather than a product of the intellectual elite (which in reality it
Firenze 1977. On his medieval themes: G. Musca, Il medioevo di Dario Fo, in “Quaderni
medievali,” ii (1977), n. 4, pp. 164–178; S. Soriani, Mistero buffo di Dario Fo e la cultura popo-
lare tra medioevo e rinascimento, ibid., xxviii (2003), n. 56, pp. 102–137.
31 D. Fo, Mistero Buffo, trans. Ed Emery, Methuen Books, London 1998 (original edition: Mi
stero Buffo. Giullarata popolare in lingua padana, Tip. Lombarda, Cremona 1968; n. ed.
Mistero Buffo. Giullarata popolare, ed. F. Rame, Einaudi, Torino 1997, p. 12).
32 Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Praise of Folly cit., 35–36.
33 D. Fo, Mistero Buffo (It. edition 1997) cit., p. 16.
34 In G. Contini (ed.), Poeti del Duecento, Ricciardi, Milano-Napoli 1960, vol. i, pp. 177–185.

almost always was), he was imitated by the philologist Mara Amara who, alter-
ing only two letters of two words in the first tercet of Dante’s Comedy, restored,
in her words, the original meaning of a “feminine masturbation in the absence
of an erect penis,” also claiming to have found that adulterated text in a fif-
teenth-century collection of proto-feminist popular songs:
Midway through the journey of our finger

I found myself amid a dark forest,
For the straight path had been lost.35
On the other hand, the Medieval Era of the chansonniers is a place of the soul.
Georges Brassens takes up the celebrated Ballade des dames du temps jadis
(“Ballade of the Ladies of Time Past”) by François Villon, while Jacques Brel
describes his Belgium with the famous, melancholically Gothic verses:
With cathedrals for its only mountains

And black belltowers like maypoles
Where stone devils clutch at clouds.36
But these authors are ablaze with the political medieval metaphor: Brassens
sings Le verger du roi Louis (“King Louis’ orchard,” 1960), in which the king’s
lovely garden is in reality the hangman’s field; Brel sings the famous Les bour-
geois (1962): “Les bourgeois, c’est comme les cochons…” (The bourgeois, they’re
like pigs); in 1967 Fabrizio De André recorded, with Paolo Villaggio, the song
Carlo Martello ritorna dalla battaglia di Poitiers (“Charles Martel returns from
the Battle of Poitiers”)—which cost him a trial—in which the brave victor over
the Arabs in 732 is reduced to a womanizer who flees from prostitutes so as not
to pay their fee.
Brassens and De André sing again the thundering verses of The Ballad of the
Hanged by Villon;37 De André cries, with Cecco Angiolieri, S’i fossi foco (“If
I were fire”; 1968) and along with Brassens sympathizes with those cursed p oets
35 M. Amara, Per una lettura femminista della “Commedia” di Dante, in “Quaderni di contro-
cultura,” 5 (1974), pp. 3–15. (TN: The play on words revolves around vita (life) in the origi-
nal and dita (fingers) in the adaptation.).
36 “Avec des cathédrales comme uniques montagnes / et des noirs clochers comme mâts de
cocagne / où des diables en pierre décrochent les nuages”: J. Brel, Le plat pays, 1962.
37 In F. Villon, Poesie, pref. by F. De André, trans., intr., and ed. L. de Nardis, Feltrinelli, Milano
20082, pp. 108–111. La ballade des pendus was also sung by Serge Reggiani in 1961 and was
reproduced in the a scene of the film Brancaleone alle Crociate called La Ballata
dell’intolleranza.

102 Chapter 6
from a Medieval Era of strong passions, living feelings, and scoundrels with
hearts of gold. So much so that, writing a preface to the works of Villon, of
whom he declared himself a student, De André addresses him directly,38 while
Brassens writes a song, Le Moyenâgeux (“The Middle-Ager,” 1966), in which he
laments not having lived in the Middle Ages, where he could have retraced Vil-
lon’s steps:
Forgive me, prince, if I am hopelessly medieval. Damn! Why wasn’t I born

in the fourteen or fifteen hundreds? Then I would have been among
friends!39
In a world that has been overturned and thus restored to its rightful order, the
people are true. The heroes are the great cursed poets of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. They are the ladies who await their husbands in vain (De
André, Fila la lana [“Spin the wool”], 1974) or who beg for salvation from merci-
less judges (the ballad of Geordie, in the repertoires of De André and Joan Baez),
or who burn at the stake, tired of war (Joan of Arc by Leonard Cohen, 1971, trans-
lated by De André in 1974). They are the heroic and powerful women in the
“feminist fantasy” of Marion Zimmer Bradley.40 They are those who fight for a
better world, like the Ciompi, Étienne Marcel, and the characters of the
Jacqueries. They are those who protest against the Church: Joachim of Fiore,
Jacopone da Todi, Wyclif, the Fraticelli and Lollards, often cited by Dario Fo, and
naturally St. Francis of Assisi, who becomes a protester in the eponymous film
by Liliana Cavani (1966).41 And even Jan Huss, remembered in Francesco Guc-
cini’s song Primavera di Praga (“Prague Spring,” 1970), which sees Huss’s death
at the stake recreated in the sacrifice of Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in
front of Soviet tanks. Vice versa, the enemies are the lords and hierarchies.
Above all, Boniface viii, to whom Dario Fo dedicates a devastating satire.42
“A laughter that will bury you all”: one of the most fashionable slogans of ’78
was perhaps the principal key to reading political medievalism during those
years. Even when the laughter left a bitter taste in one’s mouth.
Today this mode of representing the Middle Ages is hard to find. One might
believe that some fundamental opposition had gotten the upper hand and
38 F. De André, Prefazione a F. Villon, Poesie cit., pp. i–iv.

39 “Pardonnez-moi, Prince, si je suis foutrement moyenâgeux. Ah! que n’ai-je vécu, bon sang!
entre quatorze et quinze cent. J’aurais retrouvé mes copains!”
40 M. Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1983. Cf. V. Ortenberg,
In Search of the Holy Grail cit., p. 132.
41 V. Attolini, Francesco d’Assisi e tre registi, in “Quaderni medievali,” I (1976), n. 1,
pp. 165–170.
42 D. Fo, Mistero Buffo (ed. 1997) cit., pp. 105–119.

impeded the construction of a political thought coherent with the model. In

fact, the Middle Ages remain an obscure period: the revolts of peasants, her-
etics, and workers were suppressed in blood and thus represent an immature
phase of the revolution.43 The Medieval Era works if we look at it upside-
down, like a world inverted; but if we turn it right-side up again, suddenly it no
longer works. If we then refer to medieval sources and try to reread the spirit
of the people there, we quickly realize that the documentation available to us
transmits the memory of a world pervaded by a sense of the sacred. No pro-
fane pictorial art existed in the Middle Ages, and we know it almost intui-
tively, nor did a theatrical expression that was not sacra rappresentazione.44
To connect Christianity with one’s own profound secular vision of the world,
one must become heretical even in atheism: we need authors of the caliber of
Fabrizio De André, who rereads the apocryphal gospels, Pier Paolo Pasolini,
with his Gospel According to Matthew, and Dario Fo, who humanizes Jesus to
the point that even he becomes “a poor Christ.” But we are dealing precisely
with Authors with a capital “A,” who have moved “in an obstinate and contrary
direction.”
More than that, and perhaps most of all, the competition from the right for
the political use of the Middle Ages, which is more organic although in no way
more accurate, has led to its degradation: how can one use the same symbols
without running the risk of being, at the very least, misunderstood? Only Dario
Fo continues to set his works in the Middle Ages.45 In 1997 he was granted the
Nobel Prize for Literature for the following reason: “[He] emulates the jesters
of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the
downtrodden.”46
Apart from civic festivals, the film Les visiteurs (“The Visitors,” 1993), and a
few other cases that are largely apolitical, today the Middle Ages no longer
make us laugh: other medieval imaginaries have come forward. The gram-
melot, the linguistic koiné of Dario Fo obtained through a reinvention of
some medieval Padanian dialects, had a totally unpredictable outcome in the
43 Cf. K. Marx and Fr. Engels, The Communist Manifesto cit., pp. 349 ff.: “The earliest attempts
by the proletariat to assert its interests in a period of general unrest, in the period of the
downfall of feudal society, were bound to fail, both because the figure of the proletarian
was not yet fully developed, and because the general conditions of his emancipation did
not exist, which are indeed the product of the bourgeois age.”
44 TN: An Italian form of popular theater similar to morality and mystery plays.
45 See for instance his L’amore e lo sghignazzo, Guanda, Parma 2007, in which the two tales
Eloisa, pp. 11–51, and Storia di Mainfreda eretica di Milano, pp. 55–67, take place in a medi-
eval setting. Dario Fo passed away on October 13, 2016.
46 Nobel Prize, official website: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1997/summa
ry/ (cons. May 5, 2019).

104 Chapter 6
c reation of the Padania leghista, which also uses the Middle Ages as an identi-
tarian binder, but in a very different way. Yet perhaps some traces of this medi-
evalism, which allowed us to revel in the jugglers of the recreational centers
and the “medieval fairs” of the hippies and wiccans, may still be found.47 Only
in the last few years has a new progressive use of the Middle Ages come to the
fore, in so far as it is considered the time of a historical opening to multicultur-
alism on the European continent: but to this aspect we will dedicate other
pages.48
In June 2008, in the midst of an economic crisis, Italy’s Economic Minister
Giulio Tremonti came up with the “Robin Hood Tax,” announcing that the Ital-
ian government would tax those who profited from the high oil prices. Trem-
onti provoked a chorus of disapproval on the left for this appropriation of a
hero of the people on the part of a center-right minister. And naturally on the
web it is easy to find cartoons in which Barack Obama is the new Robin Hood,
or rather, “Obama Hood.” Establishing whether Robin Hood is a champion of
the people (taking from the rich to give to the poor) or the crown (liege of the
legitimate sovereign who will return) is a question perfectly within the scope
of medievalism and common even in the historiographical debate.49 However,
like so many other topics adressed in this book, labeling Robin Hood as a hero
of the right or left, from the point of view of medieval history, makes no sense
at all.
47 Cf. infra, Ch. 9.

48 Cf. infra, Ch. 12.
49 M. Sanfilippo, Camelot cit., Part 2, Ch. 9.

Chapter 7
Templars and Holy Grail: Middle Ages of Tradition
“I’m talking to you, paladin!” insisted Charlemagne. “Why don’t you show
your face to your king?”
A voice came clearly through the gorge piece. “Sire, because I do not
exist!”
I. calvino, The Non-existent Knight (1959)
Left and right, progressive and reactionary, craft different relationships with
medievalism. Many political movements on the right make it imposing and
eulogistic, betraying an affinity for the Medieval Era, while, as I have been say-
ing, the culture of the left sees it in an ambivalent light. Right and left seem
relatively similar in the way they use the Middle Ages when they use it to try to
construct a counterculture. A certain kind of Marxism sought it in popular tra-
ditions, struck silent and now called upon to speak anew. A certain Right has
instead sought from the Middle Ages examples and models with which to de-
fend an alternative to modern culture, to capitalism, liberalism, democracy,
egalitarianism, and socialism, finding them in the concept of “Tradition,” in the
idea of the survival and defense of values perceived as non-transient. In both
cases, we’re talking about a Medieval Era imagined as a place of antithesis,
contraposed to the official and orthodox models established by those who
hold the economic and intellectual power in modernity. The people in search
of redemption and the minor protest movement, “Revolutionary by tradition,”
which finds its guide and code of conduct in values attributed to a subversive
Middle Ages, are, with respect to medievalism, two sides of the same coin. The
jester who speaks truth through nonsense is not all too different from Parsifal,
an innocent knight and “pure fool.” And Pier Paolo Pasolini hoped to achieve a
revolution through tradition: despite the gulf between them, it is quite under-
standable that some of Julius Evola’s readers, in time, could appreciate that.
The similarities may end there, but they are not insignificant.
The main element underpinning the construction of the medieval imagi-
nary in the minds of the Right is chivalry. And thus, having already spoken
of peoples and jesters, we come to the time of knights: no longer the storytell-
ers who turn the world upside down, but faithful warriors. The figure of the
knight encompasses the entire Middle Ages: along with the castle, he is its

106 Chapter 7
most concise synthesis, recognized as such by any person asked to define that
era using only two words. Gianfranco De Turris writes on the subject, “I don’t
believe there can be any doubt that in the common, popular imagination, the
Middle Ages is chivalry.”1
Immediately after the release of the film Excalibur (1981), a right-wing youth
publication read:
We wish that this return to the Middle Ages was not a passing fashion just
waiting for others to come after, an escape from reality that comes from
disgust with modernity, but a vision of the world, a style of life, where so-
to-speak heroic characters from the Middle Ages are seen as role models
and interiorized to resist the squalor of today.2
The topos of the spotless and fearless knight, invested with a mission of salva-
tion for himself and others—who sets out knowing he must seek truth else-
where and, along with his small band of brothers in arms, is alone against the
world, who is valiant and brave and endowed with a tremendous sense of
honor—derives from a complex stratification of myths.3 Chivalry was a social
system and a system of values; projected onto the medieval imaginary already
during the Medieval Era through literary channels, it had its own perduring,
mutable career in the early modern age and was substantially reforged in the
1800s, when the chivalric imaginary of the Medieval and Early Modern Eras
came to be considered not a projection of social systems, but a fact corre-
sponding to reality. The quête of the knight became a historical truth in which
imagination and everyday life coincided.
1 G. De Turris, L’immaginario medievale cit., p. 101. On the relationship between the Right and
the Middle Ages (also addressed in the two following chapters) see M. Revelli, Il medioevo
della Destra: pluralità di immagini strumentali, in “Quaderni medievali,” viii (1983), n. 16,
pp. 109–136. On the subject of chivalry, see ibid., p. 131: “La cavalleria medievale è, in effetti, il
vero ‘luogo deputato’ in cui il neofascismo tradizionalista individua e rielabora il proprio tipo
ideale antropologico culturale” (“Medieval chivalry is, in effect, the true ‘designated space’
where traditionalist neo-fascism identifies and reelaborates its own ideal, cultural, and an-
thropological model.”). See also Id., Panorama editoriale e temi culturali della destra militante,
in Nuova destra e cultura reazionaria negli anni Ottanta, Istituto storico della Resistenza, Cu-
neo 1983, pp. 49–74; R. Facchini, Sognando la “Christianitas”: l’idea di Medioevo nel tradizio
nalismo cattolico cit.
2 F. Pellegrino, Excalibur: il film!, in “La Mosca Bianca,” 5 (1981), cit. in L. Lanna, F. Rossi, Fascisti
immaginari cit., p. 163.
3 A vast bibliography on the subject can be found in A. Barbero, La cavalleria medievale, Jou-
vence, Roma 2000. For general works, see ibid., Ch. ii, pp. 40–44; for its “reuse” see Ch. x,
pp. 120–122.

Templars and Holy Grail: Middle Ages of Tradition 107
Historicized, as many medieval myths have been, and thus made out to be
the heroic paladin of the people, of the nation and its innate spirituality, not
to mention its warlike capacity, the medieval knight has nourished the imagi-
nations of the entire West and, contextually, has represented one of the myth-
engines of nationalism. This has happened in nearly every Western nation,
but with particular force in France, the Celtic countries, England, Spain, and
Germany—that is, in the nations that, directly or in a mediated way, claim the
principal medieval sources on chivalry: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of
the Kings of Britain, the Welsh tales of the Mabinogion, the Irish legends of the
Tuatha Dé Danann and Cuchulain, the Song of El Cid, Wolfram von Eschen-
bach’s Parzival, the countless chansons de geste in langue d’oc and langue d’oïl,
and many other literary testimonies.4 With all his proclamations of France
Libre, General De Gaulle—himself seen by his contemporaries as a grand me-
dieval knight—was still citing Joan of Arc.5
The identitarian-nationalistic component of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century myths about knights is indissolubly linked with their religious inter-
pretations, as the knight figures both fatherland and faith to the highest, heroic
degree. In many cases—as in the Spanish El Cid the Champion, the French
Joan of Arc, the Crusades and the warrior saints (Martin, George, Michael,
James Matamoros, Louis ix…) and, in part, the myth of Templars and the Holy
Grail—this Christian literature of chivalry has been experienced as a return to
the Middle Ages, according to a tradition that has come down to us through
the texts of René Guénon, through its Francoist political usage in Spain, and
later through the ultra-catholic nationalists in some parties of the extreme
right like Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National and the revival of Traditionalist
4 Some English editions: Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. L. Thor-
pe, Penguin Books, London 1977; S. Davies (ed.), The Mabinogion, Oxford University Press,
Oxford 2009; Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival with Titurel and The Love-lyrics, ed. Cyril Ed-
wards, D.S. Brewer, Woodbridge 2002; A. Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men, John Murray, Lon-
don 1904; R. Selden Rose and L. Bacon (eds.), The Lay of El Cid, University of California Press,
Berkeley (CA) 1997.
5 He cited her, however, along with Danton and Clemenceau: J. Touchard, Le Gaullisme, 1940–
1969, Seuil, Paris 1978, p. 41 (cit. by S. Romano, Storia di Francia dalla Comune a Sarkozy, Lon-
ganesi, Milano 2009, p. 140) On the interpretations and utilizations of Joan of Arc for the
purposes of propaganda up to World War ii, the book to read is G. Krumeich, Jeanne d’Arc in
der Geschichte: Historiographie, Politik, Kultur, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen 1989. On
works that have the French heroine as their subject, see Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge
cit., pp. 96–114 (pp. 107 ff. for the most recent political uses) and P. Dalla Torre, Giovanna
d’Arco sullo schermo cit. On General De Gaulle’s “medievalization” as the “constable of
France” and “majestic as a Gothic cathedral” in the imagination of his contemporaries (and
even reproached by Roosevelt and Churchill for thinking himself to be Joan of Arc), see Ch.
Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 140–142.

108 Chapter 7
Catholicism in recent years (see Chapter 10).6 In still other cases, like that of
the Ku Klux Klan in the Southern United States, the myth of Arthur and his
medieval knights, now ghostly knights, has provided a symbolic framework to
assert the superiority of the white race and the Protestant religion over inferior
religions and races—black, Jewish, Catholic.7 Even the Teutonic Knights have
suffered a similar fate: to the Germans, they were the guardians of civilization
in the primitive and subhuman world of the Slavs. To the Russians, on the oth-
er hand, they represent the “forebears of modern fascists,” as we know from the
famous film Aleksander Nevsky by Sergei M. Eisenstein (1938).8 The proud and
loyal Russian people of the thirteenth century stand opposed to the ferocity of
the Teutonic Knights, waging their battle for liberty the year before the signing
of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and three years before the start of Russo-
German hostilities (June 1941). The Teutonic Knights are demonic beings and
wear the infamous black crosses; the infantry helmets explicitly recall those of
the German army. The sinister bishop who blesses the troops, simultaneously
a symbol of an evil Roman Church and the Reich, has little swastikas on his
6 A. Frigerio, Francisco Franco e la Pietra Filosofale, in “Storia in Network,” ii (September 2002),

n. 71: http://win.storiain.net/arret/num195/artic7.asp (cons. May 6, 2019), with bibliography,
focuses on the identification of Franco with the caudillos, the Catholic Asturian kings. In
1939, having conquered Madrid, the Generalissimo wanted “the choreography and ceremony
to be directly inspired by arrival of Alfonso vi and El Cid in Toledo after the defeat of the
Arabs” (1085). On the relationship between Francoism and the Crusades: H.R. Southwork, El
mito de la cruzada de Franco [1963], Debolsillo, Barcelona 2008; J. Andrés-Gallego, L. De Llera,
¿Cruzada o guerra civil? El primer gran debate del regimen de Franco, in M. Tedeschi (ed.),
Chiesa cattolica e guerra civile in Spagna nel 1936, Guida, Napoli 1989, pp. 103–128. For Le Pen
(who is well known for his veneration of Joan of Arc and the identification of France with
Catholicism, starting from the Baptism of Clovis in the early sixth century, along with Vercin-
getorix, Saint Louis ix, Roland, the soldiers of the First World War, the Indochina Wars, and
the Algerian War): J.-M. Le Pen, Les Français d’abord, Carrère-Lafon, Paris 1984. On medieval-
ism in the current French far right, see W. Blanc, Ch. Naudin, Charles Martel cit.
7 L. Finke, Knights in White Robes: Chivalry and the Klan, in Uses, Abuses and Misuses of the
Arthuriad, session of the 44th International Congress of Medieval Studies cit. On the relation-
ship between medievalism and white supremacy in the American far right, see the next
chapter. See also the publications found in the special series “Race, Racism and the Middle
Ages” on the website The Public Medievalist (https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-rac
ism-middle-ages-toc/, cons. May 6, 2019); A.B.R. Elliott, Internet Medievalism and the White
Middle Ages, in “History Compass,” 16/3 (March 2018), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
toc/14780542/2018/16/3 (cons. May 6, 2019); J. Schuessler, Medieval Scholars Joust With White
Nationalists. And One Another, in “The New York Times,” May 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes
.com/2019/05/05/arts/the-battle-for-medieval-studies-white-supremacy.html (cons. May 6,
2019).
8 Cit. by G. Gandino, Il cinema cit., p. 738. See V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit.,
pp. 114 ff.

itre. Yet even the hero who defeats them is a knight, the holy knight Alexan-
m
der Nevsky, whom we find again in the 1990s on Russia’s thousand-ruble
banknote.
The myth of medieval chivalry has also had outcomes and interpretations
of the esoteric variety, be they Christian, non-Christian, or explicitly anti-
Christian. Seen from this perspective, they seem characteristic of those move-
ments that—precisely in the use they make of the Middle Ages—recall Na-
tional Socialism. The starting point always consists in the conviction that the
present is a time of crisis, while the medieval past holds treasures of wisdom
and truth. To rediscover, transmit, and utilize this patrimony of Tradition is a
duty for those who have been enlightened by such knowledge.9 Many of these
spiritual legacies date back to a remote antiquity, were preserved during the
Middle Ages when they were made known to a select group of enlightened—
Cathars, Templars, witches, alchemists, Love’s Faithful—and then during the
following age remained secretly alive, through an uninterrupted sequence of
initiations that have ensured the continuance of a philosophia perennis, of an
authentic and original wisdom. The Middle Ages, the time when this wisdom
was reified, is therefore the era one must visit in order to come back pure. In it
are the archetypes of all things: truth, the sacrality of power, and the identity of
peoples. It is the time of heroes, knights, true believers, priestly regality, and
the Empire.
The esoteric currents that adopt the Middle Ages as a symbol of return to a
perfect age follow a long and winding road, originating between the end of the
nineteenth century and the First World War, in a phase of Western cultural
history when, alongside the positivism that explains everything rationally, we
find its opposite, a pull towards occultism and magic that translates into the
birth of secret societies, such as the Golden Dawn, the Thule Society, and the
New Order of Knights Templar. These last two are also the first organizations to
9 A synthetic definition of the “world of Tradition” can be found in Sein und Werden (originally
published in “Die Literatur,” 3, 1935), Gottfried Benn’s review of the 1935 German edition of J.
Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World cit., republished on pp. 438–444 of the 2007 Italian
edition, p. 440: “What is the world of Tradition? We are talking about, first of all, a new evoca-
tive image, not a naturalistic, historical concept, but a vision, a position, a magic. Something
universal, other-worldly, and superhuman is evoked, in an evocation that is made possible
and survives where the remains of that universality subsist, as approximations of it, to the
point of being exceptions and signs of an elitism, a dignity. In the name of Tradition, various
civilizations free themselves from what is human and historical, the principles of their gen-
esis lead back to a metaphysical plane where they can be perceived in their purest state and
where they provide the image of the primal, superior, and transcendent man, the man of
Tradition.” See also R. Facchini, Sognando la “Christianitas”: l’idea di Medioevo nel tradiziona
lismo cattolico cit.

110 Chapter 7
reintroduce the swastika to the West as a symbol proper to it. Primarily during
the Inter-War period, these initiation societies provided nourishment to politi-
cal movements that declaimed the urgency of recovering ancestral Celtic and
Germanic traditions, in order to renew society, the nation, or the whole world,
ultimately leading to what Giorgio Galli has called “magical Nazism.”10 Knowl-
edge of the existence of this Nazism concerned with pagan cults, Eastern mys-
ticism, and powerful sacred objects of the past has reached the broader public
almost exclusively through the films of Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark
and The Last Crusade), but in reality the esoteric and occultist component of
the National-Socialist movement contributes to a more complete understand-
ing of its entire ideology, starting precisely from its adoption of the swastika,
an “Aryan” solar symbol, and continuing to its eschatological vision of the cre-
ation of a new Empire: the Third Reich.11
The desire to refound the venerable, medieval Germanic Empire is one of
the keys to understanding this leap towards the Middle Ages and its esoteric
symbols. In Germany, as opposed to other states, the Middle Ages continued to
be presented as the nation’s primary distinctive and identifying element from
the nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War. The model of
renovatio Imperii was at the center of German politics in the time of the
emperors of the House of Hohenzollern (1871–1918). Just think of the Kyff-
häuserdenkmal, or Kyffhaüser Monument, erected between 1890 and 1896. On
a mountaintop, Emperor William I straddles his horse; beneath him is Freder-
ick Barbarossa on the throne, almost fused with the rock, in the act of reawak-
ening from a long sleep. The former is the renovatio of the latter.12 After the
10 G. Galli, Hitler e il Nazismo magico [1989], Rizzoli, Milano 20074; Id., La magia e il potere.
L’esoterismo nella politica occidentale, Lindau, Torino 2004; N. Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult
Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology, nyu Press, New
York 1993; S. Lionello, R. Menarini, La nascita di una religione pagana. Psicoanalisi del Na-
zismo e della propaganda, Borla, Roma 2008. On its Italian manifestation: G. De Turris
(ed.), Esoterismo e fascismo, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 2006; F. De Giorgi, Millenaris-
mo educatore. Mito gioachimita e pedagogia civile in Italia dal Risorgimento al fascismo,
Viella, Roma 2010.
11 M. Stolleis, Le Saint Empire Romain de Nation Allemande, le Reich allemand et le Troisième
Reich: Transformation et destruction d’une idee politique, in “Francia. Forschungen zur
westeuropaischen Geschichte,” xxxiv (2007), n. 3, pp. 19–37.
12 On the monument: G. Mai, Das Kyffhäuser-Denkmal 1896–1996. Ein nationales Monument
im europäischen Kontext, Bohlau Verlag, Wien-Köln-Weimar 1997. On the Romantic prem-
ises: O. Dann, Die Tradition des Reiches in der frühen deutschen Nationalbewegung, in R.
Elze and P. Schiera (eds.), Italia e Germania. Immagini, modelli, miti fra due popoli
dell’Ottocento, il Mulino-Duncker & Humblot, Bologna-Berlin 1988, pp. 65–82; P. Raedts,
The Once and Future Reich. German Medieval History between Retrospection and Resent-
ment, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (ed.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 193–204.

First World War and the constitution of the fragile Weimar Republic, although
not overt, nostalgia for the Reich was nevertheless present and representative
of a nationalist sentiment frustrated by defeat, as revealed in the principal his-
toriographical works of the time (Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio by Percy Ernst
Schramm; Emperor Frederick ii by Ernst Kantorowicz), and the poetic works of
Stefan George with his Secret Germany movement.13 These, along with the
founding of Oskar Ernst Bernard’s Grail Movement (1929) were the preludes.
The outcome was the Third Reich: a result that was not obvious—indeed, that
the phenomena were in any way linked was firmly rejected by Kantorowicz
himself—yet that, in our discussion, must be considered historically conse-
quential, as above all Nazism made the exaltation of the imperial idea its own.14
The new Reich, as revealed by its very name, intended to be the historical
continuation of the medieval German Empire, but from a perspective of radi-
cal renewal that drew part of its own eschatological tension from a rereading
of late medieval mysticism.15 The Germans continued to be the chosen race,
on a level of hegemony and conquest that remained prevalently European in
dimension and thus could be readily understood through the preferred meta-
phor of medieval reclamation: Great Germany, Eastern expansion, submission
or annihilation of the inferior races, just as the Teutonic Knights had done be-
fore. The Swabian emperors were exalted and, in 1943, shortly before the Allied
13 P.E. Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio: Studien und Texte zur Geschichte des römischen
Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des karolingischen Reiches bis zum Investiturstreit, Wis-
senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1929; E. Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second,
Constable, London 1931 (original edition: Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, G. Bondi, Berlin
1927); St. George, Geheimes Deutschland, in Das Neue Reich [1928], now in Id., Werke, Klett-
Cotta, Stuttgart 1984, vol. i, pp. 425–428.
14 On the relationship between academia and Nazism, see O.G. Oexle (ed.), Nationalsozial-
ismus in den Kulturwissenschaften, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004. While Nor-
man Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages cit., pp. 79–117, considers Kantorowicz very close to
Nazism, Roberto Delle Donne reaches the opposite conclusion, denouncing the incorrect
“analogical reasoning” that emphasizes real or presumed common elements among posi-
tions that are in reality quite diverse, recalling how Stefan George’s “Secret Germany” (Ge-
heimes Deutschland) was condemned in 1937 during the xix Historikertag: R. Delle Don-
ne, Kantorowicz e la sua opera su Federico ii nella ricerca moderna, in A. Esch and N. Kamp
(eds.), Federico ii. Convegno dell’Istituto storico germanico di Roma nell’viii centenario
della nascita, Max Niemayer, Tübingen 1996, pp. 67–86, especially pp. 68 ff., 72–76. One
intention of this chapter is to remind the reader that nostalgia for the Empire (as a histori-
cal or mythical place) and its hoped-for return have represented, in Germany, an element
in the construction of national identity for a very long period. In this sense one sees an
interpretive continuum that reaches to the end of National Socialism and that, without
direct points of contact, also involves Kantorowicz (who referred to the medieval Empire)
and George (who conflated the Classical with the South).
15 N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, Secker & Warburg, London 1957.

112 Chapter 7
landing in Sicily, a plan was drawn up to securely return to Germany the bodies
of Henry vi, Frederick ii, and their family interred in the Duomo of Palermo.16
The principal Medieval symbols dear to Nazi mysticism—the Grail and the
Holy Lance—were sought as material objects, with a view to celebrating and
reifying pagan Germany and the Ghibelline Empire, that of Frederick Bar-
barossa and Frederick ii. The Grail in particular, considered a magic object of
the greatest power, was sought by SS officer Otto Rahn at the site of Rennes-le-
Château, where it was supposedly hidden by the Cathars. The same Crusade
launched by the papacy against them in the early thirteenth century would
have been a “Crusade on the Grail,” and the Cathar castle of Montségur would
have been the historic location of Montsalvat, the castle of the Grail.17 The
knight Parsifal, made famous by the Wagner opera, is at the precise center of
this complicated “quest for the Grail” which, once undertaken anew, would
have led to the reflowering of the “wasteland.”
From a conceptually rigorous point of view, the valorization of the Middle
Ages constitutes one of the principles behind the texts of René Guénon, an
influential author in the school of thought still called Traditionalist and com-
mon in many right-wing movements.18 According to Guénon, the current
world finds itself in the final phase of the Hindu kali-yuga, the dark age corre-
sponding to the last cycle—the negative—of earthly humanity and precedes
an epochal renewal. In the course of kali-yuga, which lasts six thousand years
and can be understood as a progressive obscuring of true knowledge, there
16 M. Brando, Lo strano caso di Federico ii cit., pp. 77–82.

17 O. Rahn, Crusade against the Grail: The Struggle between the Cathars, the Templars, and the
Church of Rome, Inner Traditions, Rochester (VT) 2006 (original edition: Kreuzzug gegen
den Graal, Urban Verlag, Freiburg 1933). On the question of Rennes-le-Château and the
strange character of the abbot Saunière, who at the end of the nineteenth century discov-
ered the Templar treasure, that is to say the Grail (which would have been in turn an effigy
of Mary Magdalene), as well as on the later counterfeits up to the most recent reflexes of
this story in the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Doubleday, New York [etc.] 2003),
see F. Cardini, M. Introvigne and M. Montesano, Il Santo Graal, Giunti, Firenze 20062,
pp. 191–212; F. Cardini, Templari e templarismo cit., pp. 147 ff., with bibliography; M. Intro-
vigne, Il “Codice Da Vinci”: ma la storia è un’altra cosa, 2003, www.cesnur.org/2003/mi_da
vinci.htm (cons. May 6, 2019); U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock cit. (pp. 270–272 of the Italian
edition); Id., The Book of Legendary Lands, Rizzoli International Publications, New York
2013 (original edition: Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari, Bompiani, Milano 2013).
18 See especially R. Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, Sophia Perennis, s.l. 2004 (origi-
nal edition: La crise du monde moderne, Bossard, Paris 1927). On Guénon: A. Iacovella
(ed.), Esoterismo e religione nel pensiero di René Guénon, proceedings of the Roman con-
ference, 10 November 2001, Accademia di Romania, postf. by L. Arcella, Arktos, Carma
gnola (TO) 2009.

have been some phases of obvious worsening and decadence and other phases
of “rectification”—that is, returns to Tradition. The Middle Ages (which for
Guénon lasts from Charlemagne to the fourteenth century) represents the
most recent age in which, thanks to Christianity, such rectification occurred.
Classical Antiquity is inferior with respect to the Middle Ages, because it was
more rational and less traditional. During the Middle Ages, Christianity (better
yet, Catholicism) restored a “normal order,” in which the first position was oc-
cupied by the sacred, not by the material. During the Middle Ages, power does
not come from below, but from on high; contemplation and action are in bal-
ance; the forefront is always reserved for contemplation, spirituality, and intu-
ition as a super-rational mental process; medieval science is not the mere
profane calculation of data that excludes the transcendent, but (thinking of
alchemy) a sacred approach that leads to an authentic and complete knowl-
edge. The later Renaissance and Reformation have caused the free-fall of Tradi-
tion in the West. The current materialist, individualist, and pragmatic age con-
stitutes the final and most terrible stage of human history during this phase of
the cycle.
Guénon believed that a rectification of the modern world was possible by
returning to something approximating medieval Catholicism, as Catholicism
is the only Western religion in which he recognized the residue of a “traditional
spirit.” Since Eastern cultures, however, are in large part still depositories of an
authentic, living tradition uncontaminated by the West, this function of recti-
fication would have had to come through the knowledge of the Eastern spirit,
above all that of Muslim civilization, which for Guénon was very close to that
of the medieval West. The task of carrying out this rectification, in the sense of
a return to an integral Tradition, was entrusted to an intellectual elite, a small
group of people with the capacity to understand and act.
The vision of Guénon and other authors near to him stands in contrast to
other theories, both the progressive and the many iterations of anti-modernism,
because it doesn’t recognize the validity of the conception of time as linear
development but rather rehabilitates the notion, common in many traditional
cultures, of cyclical time, of “eternal return.” The use of this temporal structure
permits one to think of the recovery of traditional values not as reactionary, as
an actual turning back, but as revolutionary: in looking forward one traverses
the cycle and thus returns to a better version of the pre-existing condition,
which no longers reside in the past, but in the future. From this comes the ap-
parent paradox in the establishment of a “traditional revolution.”
Guénon’s conception, which has influenced many aspects of anti-modern
thought, is still quite present in some “Traditionalist” movements, as can be

114 Chapter 7
easily observed by perusing those movements’ websites, blogs, and discussion

forums.19 After all, if one reads the preface to his Crisis of the Modern World
today without knowing the publication date (1927), one might easily consider
it a text of the last twenty years. Guénon’s proposal still resonates with Catholic
anti-modernism, which we will say more on later, though it evidently diverges
in its complete heterodoxy and openness towards Eastern religions and phi-
losophies.20 Indeed, in 1930 Guénon converted to Sufism, which he judged the
religious practice most faithful to Tradition.
A similar proposition gave rise to some of the philosophical positions of
France’s so-called Nouvelle Droite (New Right), an extremist ideological move-
ment (whose principal exponent was Alain de Benoist) that developed during
the Sixties and Seventies. Through the studies conducted by the Groupement
de Recherches et Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (its acronym GRECE is
French for “Greece”), the Nouvelle Droite proposed a resurrection of European
cultural heritage, a rediscovery of itself in its pre-Christian and non-Christian
origins, that is, in Greco-Latin and Celto-Germanic cultures. In Italy, the world-
view promoted by Guénon and the influence exercised by the Nouvelle Droite
seem important above all in light of the rereading of their autonomous reimag-
inings by Julius Evola, commonly considered by Italian Traditionalist move-
ments to be without doubt the most authoritative and influential thinker.21 In
the writings of Evola, who seems the principal architect of the refashioning of
Guénon’s message into a political and ideological tool, we find all the medieval
myths dear to the “Traditionalist” Right described and explained symbolically.
Medieval chivalry itself constitutes one of the fulcrums of this discourse.
While Julius Evola adopted Tradition as conceived of by Guénon, he dis-
agreed fundamentally with his master on the Christian interpretation of the
19 For instance the Centro Studi La Runa (Study Center “The Rune”), www.centrostudilaru�-
na.it (cons. May 6, 2019). A well-known book by R. Guènon, The King of the World, Sophia
Perennis, s.l. 2004. (original edition: Le roi du monde, Ch. Bosse, Paris 1927), takes its title
from the song Il re del mondo by Franco Battiato.
20 On Catholic readings of the medieval Empire, especially in Germany and Austria be-
tween the two wars, see Kl. Breuning, Die Vision des Reiches. Deutscher Katholizismus
zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur (1929–1934), Hueber, München 1969. See also P. Tom-
missen, Carl Schmitt e il renouveau cattolico degli anni Venti, 16 December 2006, http://
carl-schmitt-studien.blogspot.com/2006/12/piet-tommissen-carl-schmitt-e-il.html (cons.
May 7, 2019).
21 J. Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World cit. (book completed between 1931 and 1932); Id.,
The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit, Inner Traditions,
Rochester (VT) 1996 (original edition: Il Mistero del Graal e la tradizione ghibellina
dell’Impero, Laterza, Bari 1937; n. ed. Il Mistero del Graal, with an introductory essay by
F. Cardini, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 19975).

medieval West. According to Evola, the rebirth of Traditional civilization over

the course of the Middle Ages was due not to Christianity (a product of Juda-
ism, which, grafted onto an already decadent civilization, destroyed Rome),
but to Nordic-Aryan civilization, to the feudal, chivalric, and imperial—or
rather, Ghibelline, in the sacral sense—Middle Ages.22 An early “syncope of
Western Tradition” had, in fact, come to pass with the end of Rome, but it was
followed by the translation of Empire into the hands of the Nordic races, who
in breathing new life into romanitas allowed Tradition one final great appear-
ance in the West. The apogee was the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, where
Tradition had “its last bright flicker” with the Swabian emperors.23 In that insti-
tution we see for the last time the fullness of royal tradition, inseparably priest-
ly and warlike. The first significant crisis was caused by the Roman Church,
which with its struggle for the right of episcopal investiture undermined Tradi-
tion, committing absolute heresy by destroying the unity of the regal and
priestly functions. After the Swabian emperors, nothing good is left: imperial-
ism and the state, which – no longer holy – ends up a simple, plebeian organi-
zation, take over.
Even medieval chivalry, which swore loyalty to the Empire and thus recog-
nized it (and not the papacy nor the Christian religion) as the sole spiritual
authority of universal status, had reproduced in itself the synthesis of the war-
rior and priestly functions, as its members were a consecrated military caste,
belonging to a super-territorial and super-national Order. Anything but Chris-
tian, the knights had initiation rites (the vigil of arms, penitence, fasting, the
lustral bath, the dressing, the benediction of arms) and performed deeds (the
devotion to the beloved lady, the quest for the Grail) that concealed esoteric
rituals. Even the seemingly Christian practices served exclusively as a mimetic,
cosmetic, esoteric element, adhering only formally to devotional Christianity,
which was considered an inferior form of spirituality.
The most representative case is that of the Templars, “warrior monks, re-
nouncing the pleasures of the world for a discipline that was not exercised in
the monasteries but on the fields of battle, with a face that was consecrated
22 TN: The Guelphs and Ghibellines were two factions that dominated Northern and Central
Italian politics between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. In the beginning, the Ghibel-
lines were supporters of the Holy Roman Emperors in Italy, while the Guelphs supported
the Popes. As the original allegiances were forgotten, the two groups became mere politi-
cal factions with their own sub-factions. In Italy, a reference to the Guelphs and Ghibel-
lines suggests a vicious, yet ultimately unfounded, rivalry, much like the Hatfields and
McCoys in the United States.
23 J. Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World cit. (p. 71 of the Italian edition).

116 Chapter 7
more with blood and victory than with prayer.”24 Their destruction by Philip
the Fair and the pope was therefore a second cause for crisis, corresponding
with the end of the ecumenical Empire.
Considering that in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, which, written in the
early thirteenth century, was the first recounting of the story of the Grail in the
German language, the castle that guards the Grail is called Temple and its
guardians are called Templeise, it was not difficult for Evola to finalize the graft-
ing of the Templar myth onto that of the knights of the Holy Grail begun by pre-
vious authors, even going so far as to suggest that they were one and the same.25
For Evola, the “Grail saga” also possesses a clear connection to the “Royal
religion”—not Catholic, not Eucharistic, but on the contrary endowed with a
heroic and initiative character which recalls a spirituality of a totally different
kind. Seeking and finding the Grail, “the highest ideal of medieval chivalry,” in
fact signified a “royal recovery,” symbolized by the healing of the Fisher King.
The knights, therefore, must restore a new order:
The Middle Ages awaited the hero of the Grail, when the head of the Holy
Roman Empire would become an image or manifestation of the “King of
the World,” such that all the forces would receive a new life, the Dry Tree
would bloom again, an absolute power would surge to vanquish all usurp-
ers, all opposition, all wounds, truly a new solar order would be seen, the
invisible emperor would also be the manifest and the “Age Between”—
the Middle Ages—would also mean the Central Age.26
This, for Evola, is “the secret soul of chivalry.”

Similarly to the anti-modern Catholic thought that we will discuss in a later
chapter, Evola thus considers the last Traditional era to end with the decline
of the medieval oecumene, that is, with the end of the universality of the Em-
pire. His Traditionalist Middle Ages correspond to a time that precedes the
24 Ibid. (p. 132 of the Italian edition).

25 Starting with A.E. Waite, The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail: Its Legends, and Symbolism
Considered in their Affinity with Certain Mysteries of Initiation and Other Traces of a Secret
Tradition in Christian Times, Rebman Ltd, London 1909. See on that subject F. Cardini, M.
Introvigne and M. Montesano, Il Santo Graal cit., pp. 12 ff.; F. Cardini, Templari e templar-
ismo cit., p. 122; T. di Carpegna Falconieri, L’eredità templare, in G. Andenna, C.D. Fonseca,
E. Filippini (eds.), I Templari. Grandezza e caduta della “Militia Christi,” Vita e Pen
siero, Milano 2016, pp. 225–233; S. Merli, Templari e templarismo: un mito dalle molteplici
declinazioni, in T. di Carpegna Falconieri, R. Facchini (eds.), Medievalismi italiani cit.,
pp. 93–114.
26 J. Evola, The Mystery of the Grail cit. (p. 159 of the Italian edition).

mid-thirteenth century and has its Golden Age in the twelfth century (the cen-
tury of Templars, Crusades, great emperors, and the earliest legends of the
Grail). National states, Renaissance, individualism, “irrealism,” the “regression
of the castes,” collectivism, and all that follows up to nefarious modernity, rep-
resented by the Russian and American monsters, constitute the successive
phases of the “fall of the West.”
There is a cure for all this, albeit one that is temporary and considered, even
by Evola himself, ineffective at altering the processes of “degeneracy” that he
judges already irreversible, except as a defensive retreat. The solution—the
“straightening out” of the modern world by a return to Tradition—cannot
come to pass through the endeavors of an ill-defined, Guénonian, intellectual
elite, but only through the concrete formation of an aristocratic elite of knights,
an Order infused with ascetic and warlike values and ideals. Thus his words in
introducing his Italian tradition of Guénon:
We believe that by far the most suitable and least equivocal concept
[with respect to that of the intellectual elite] would be that of an Order,
on the model of those that existed both in the European Middle Ages,
and in other civilizations. In such an Order a tradition of initiation may
still exist, albeit alongside a virile formation of character expressed in a
precise style of life and in a more real connection to the world of action
and history.27
In another text, Evola is even more explicit:
Only a scant minority could understand that just as the ascetic and mo-
nastic Orders performed a fundamental role amid the material and moral
chaos caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire, the same kind of Or-
der, in terms of a new Templarism, would be of decisive importance in a
world that, like the one in which we live, presents forms even more driv-
en by dissolution and internal rupture than that period.28
And here we are, having finally come down this road to find the current knights
and new Templars: The Templars are Among Us, was the title of a book from the
Sixties.29 We were made aware of the truth of this title on July 22, 2011, after the
27 Id., Introduzione, in R. Guénon, La crisi del mondo moderno, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma
20032 (Italian edition of La crise du monde moderne cit.), pp. 7–16: 13 ff.
28 Id., The Mystery of the Grail cit. (p. 224 of the Italian edition).
29 G. de Sède, Les Templiers sont parmi nous, ou, l’énigme de Gisors, R. Julliard, Paris 1962.

118 Chapter 7
massacre perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik (who does not, however,

seem to be familiar with the works of Evola). Among these new Templars,
some are affiliated with political movements of the extreme right that, having
constructed a chivalric self-image, consider themselves, to use the concluding
words of Evola’s Mystery of the Grail, “the only ones who may legitimately call
themselves alive.”30 And it is across his same mediation that analogies are
made possible between the medieval chivalric orders and the SS, compared by
Evola to “an Order, in the ancient sense.”31
Evola published his most significant texts concerning an imperial and chi-
valric Middle Ages in the Thirties, at a moment in which Hitler’s Germany
was already clearly in view. The books that made him most important to Ital-
ian neo-Fascism, however, date to 1969 (Revolt) and 1972 (The Mystery of the
Grail). Those are the years—as we have already seen—of a full revival of the
Middle Ages, one also tinged with colors of protest. In Italy, Evola’s readers
listened to De André and read Nietzsche, Pound, Kerouac, Céline. Most of all,
they read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, translated in its entirety for the first time
in 1970.32
Over the course of the Seventies, the youths associated with the move-
ments called the New Right revised their mode of conceiving of militancy and
30 J. Evola The Mystery of the Grail cit. (p. 225 of the Italian edition). The statement is decid-
edly similar to a line from Braveheart: “Every man dies, but not every man really lives.” On
the current movements that refer to the Templars and the Grail, see M. Revelli, Il medioevo
della Destra cit.; M. Introvigne, Il Graal degli esoteristi, in M. Macconi and M. Montesano
(eds.), Il Santo Graal. Un mito senza tempo dal medioevo al cinema. Atti del Convegno Inter-
nazionale di Studi su “Le reliquie tra storia e mito: il Sacro Catino di Genova e il Santo Graal,”
De Ferrari & Devega, Genova 2002, pp. 191–210; Id., Mito cavalleresco ed esoterismo contem-
poraneo, in F. Cardini (ed.), Monaci in Armi. Gli Ordini religioso-militari dai Templari alla
battaglia di Lepanto: Storia ed Arte, Retablo, Roma 2005, pp. 160–168; L. Lanna and F. Rossi,
Fascisti immaginari cit., pp. 153–158 e 459–470; R. Facchini, Il neocatarismo. Genesi e svi-
luppo di un mito ereticale (secoli xix–xxi), in “Società e storia,” 143 (2014), pp. 33–67. On
the long history of Templarism, which starts in the sixteenth century and has seen a num-
ber of variants, as well as Templaristic works so common today and links with the “sedi-
tious plots,” see F. Cardini, Templari e templarismo cit., pp. 121–151; A. Nicolotti, I Templari
e la Sindone. Storia di un falso, Salerno Editrice, Roma 2011; T. di Carpegna Falconieri,
L’eredità templare cit.; S. Merli, Templari e templarismo cit.
31 J. Evola, Le SS, guardia e “ordine” della rivoluzione crociuncinata, in “La vita italiana,” De-
cember 1938, n. ed. Raido, Roma s.a.; see M. Revelli, Il medioevo della Destra cit., p. 133; G.
De Turris, Elogio e difesa di Julius Evola: il barone e i terroristi, pref. by G. Galli, Edizioni
Mediterranee, Roma 1997, pp. 63 ff.
32 J.R.R. Tolkien, Il signore degli anelli, Rusconi, Milano 1970. On Tolkien’s reception by Ital-
ian circles of the far right see G. De Turris, L’immaginario medievale cit.; L. Lanna and F.
Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit., pp. 219–224; L. Del Corso and P. Pecere, L’anello che non
tiene cit.

presenting it in symbolic forms. Fascism’s beloved symbols of the lictors’ fasces

and the Roman salute, its exaltation of the Ventennio and the Italian Social
Republic, were joined by Evolian models and the exaltation of Nordic, Celtic,
and chivalric traditions, for which the role of “creator of myth” was attributed
primarily to Tolkien. In the Tolkienian universe, there are indeed many ele-
ments that may be appropriated as answers to the New Right’s prayers. Among
them is the perennial struggle between good and evil, which Tolkien narrates
as the victorious battle between the free peoples of the West and the Dark
Lord, with his monstrous Orcs that come from the East: it is the war of Gondor
and Rohan against Mordor that would become, in the unfolding allegory, the
struggle between traditional Europe and the Soviet Union. Then there are the
existential dimension of the journey and the trial, and the role of the Fellow-
ship of the Ring, which represents the small groups of free, heroic, faithful, and
courageous beings capable of vanquishing evil by flushing it out of even its
bleakest depths. There is, moreover, the concept of Middle Earth’s decadence,
told through a chronology subdivided into four Ages of the world, through the
memory of places of perfect and remote antiquity (Numenor and the Undying
Lands), through participation in the history of superior races (Elves, Dwarves,
the Men of ancient kingdoms) and, vice versa, through the degeneration of the
Elves into Orcs, the description of the horrors that Sauron wreaks on the lands
and minds that are subjected to him and what Saruman does to the little, green
Shire that winds up in his clutches. There is, still yet, the myth of defending to
the death, the glory of throwing yourself into desperate conditions in the sieg-
es of Gondolin, Helm’s Deep, and Minas Tirith. Finally, there is the most an-
cient myth of the return of the hidden king, rendered through symbolic arche-
types: the deep roots that do not freeze, the White Tree of Gondor that shall
bloom again, the broken sword that is reforged, and above all else, the charac-
ter of Aragorn, the warrior king who, like a leader (duce), is predestined to
reign.33
It is not difficult to glimpse, in these elements of Tolkien’s myth, a symmetry
with what we find in Evola (who, for instance, also uses the metaphor of the
Dry Tree). Which is not to say that Tolkien sought to attribute this kind of po-
litical meaning to his work: in fact he explicitly eschewed allegory and more-
over blamed Nazism for having perverted the Nordic spirit.34 It does, however,
33 Y.-M. Bercé, Le roi caché. Mythes politiques populaires dans l’Europe moderne, Fayard, Paris
1990. TN: Duce was the title assumed by Benito Mussolini as the leader of Italy’s Fascist
Party.
34 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings cit., pref. to the second edition (1966), unpublished in
Italy until 2003 (Bompiani, Milano), pp. 10–11: “As for any inner meaning or ‘message,’ it
has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical […]. Other

120 Chapter 7
Dean—and clearly so—that Tolkien, a Germanic philologist cum author of

fantasy literature, had produced precisely the same mythic and literary con-
tent that already underpinned Evolian considerations of Tradition. Unlike in
other countries, it was precisely the filter of Evola’s writings that allowed Tolk-
ien’s work to be embraced by the Italian New Right. And this assimilation itself
was the reason why, on the left, Tolkien was considered (but again, only in Ita-
ly) a reactionary and fascist author. As De Turris writes regarding the reception
of The Lord of the Rings and its “other world completely realized and realistic”:
From this, from its characters, its implicit and explicit themes, every read-
er is able to draw out the aspect (or aspects) most dear to him: the rural,
anti-industrial, and ecological mirage; the sense of heroism and duty ful-
filled, of the mission and camaraderie; spirituality, mysticism, and a
profound sacrality; a new liberty in relation to Nature; the dimension of
wonder; the esoteric symbolism.35
The adoption of Tolkienian mythology on the part of Italian neofascism had a

significant impact above all in the second half of the Seventies: there were,
from 1977 to 1980, three different “Hobbit Camps,” national gatherings in which
new musical groups met and previously unthinkable youth organizations were
created. In their wake followed, albeit on a much smaller scale, the Gatherings
of Elrond and the Gatherings of the Shire. Tolkien’s epic similarly gave names
to many magazines and specialized publishing houses in an obviously ideo-
logical mold: like the magazine Eowyn, founded in 1976 and named after the
warrior princess of Rohan who kills the King of the Nazgûl.
The political recruitment of Tolkien by the New Right was highly significant,
not only because it furnished a new repertoire of images that rendered many
historical references of the Italian Social Movement obsolete, but above all be-
cause the status of Tolkien’s literature as a mass phenomenon created for the
a rrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory
or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always
have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer his-
tory, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of read-
ers.” Cf. P. Gulisano, Tolkien. Il mito e la grazia cit., pp. 175–177; L. Del Corso and P. Pecere,
L’anello che non tiene cit., pp. 90, 126–128; A. Cortellessa, Quando mettono mano alla pistola
sfodero subito la cultura, Postfazione, ibid., pp. 203–217: 211–213; C. Medail, Tolkien: Non
cercate la politica tra gli elfi, in “Corriere della Sera,” Nov. 1, 2003, p. 31. See also J. R. R. Tolk-
ien, Wikipedia entry, paragraph Politics and Race, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._
Tolkien (cons. May 6, 2019), as well as C.A. Leibiger, German Race Laws, entry for M.D.C.
Drout (ed.), J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia cit., p. 237.
35 G. De Turris, L’immaginario medievale cit., p. 108.

first time a correspondence between the cultural references of a small political

group and those of a much wider public, otherwise completely separate. Tolk-
ien, in effect, “brought the young Right out of the ghetto.”36
Thus, a substantial portion of our notion of a chivalric, esoteric Middle Ages
and its potential usage in a political key passes, in Italy, through the reading of
Tolkien and, concomitantly, of Evola.37 Starting with the generation of ’68, it
comes down to us today primarily through musical groups. Various neo-fascist
“alternative music” or “identity rock” bands take their names from Tolkienian
myths: for instance La Compagnia dell’Anello (“The Fellowship of the Ring”;
est. 1976). Some bands were either reconstituted or founded during the Nine-
ties, with reference to the same imaginary world: Contea (“Shire”), Terre di
Mezzo (“Middle Earths”), Contea Modern European Folk. Other groups refer
directly to the chivalric imaginary: think, for instance, of Amici del Vento
(“Friends of the Wind,” est. 1975) and their song Scudiero (or Bianco Scudiero,
“White Squire”), or 270bis, a band founded in 1993 by Marcello De Angelis
(a member of the Italian Parliament from the People of Freedom party, 2008–
2013) that derives its name from the article of the Penal Code opposing subver-
sive organizations and that is known for songs like Oceano di guerrieri (“Ocean
of Warriors”) and Non nobis Domine, the latter on the subject of Templars:
“Jacques de Molay, now as yesterday, your holy knights do not tremble on the
braziers.”
After the Italian Social Movement38 turned into the National Alliance
(1994), and then merged with the People of Freedom (2009),39 hard-right neo-
fascist movements became marginalized and fragmentary—but not, however,
irrelevant, above all because they express themselves through pre-political
36 L. Lanna and F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit., p. 223. On the history of Italian neo-Fascist
movements see N. Rao, La Fiamma e la Celtica, Sperling & Kupfer, Milano 2006.
37 The querelle over the politicized use of Tolkien in Italy is still going. Other than the book
by L. Del Corso and P. Pecere, L’anello che non tiene cit., see A.M. Orecchia, I cacciatori di
Frodo. Tolkien tra destra e sinistra nella stampa italiana, in C. Bonvecchio (ed.), La filosofia
del Signore degli anelli, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2008, pp. 153–179. See also, for instance,
the skirmish between Roberto Arduini and Gianfranco De Turris: G. De Turris, Scoop
dell’Unità: gli Hobbit sono di sinistra, in “il Giornale,” Jan. 8, 2010, p. 31; R. Arduini, Liberate
Tolkien da De Turris, in “l’Unità,” Jan. 13, 2010, p. 37. See also L. Pellegrini, Compagno Hobbit.
Riprendiamoci Tolkien, non è di destra, in “la Repubblica,” May 20, 2010, pp. 44–45.
38 TN: The Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano), also known by its acronym
MSI, was founded in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini to continue the fascist political
legacy in Italy. In 1972 it was renamed Italian Social Movement—National Right (Movi-
mento Sociale Italiano—Destra Nazionale), or MSI-DN.
39 TN: The People of Freedom (Il Popolo della Libertà, PdL) split apart in 2013 into Forza Italia
(FI), the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI), and the now-defunct New Center-Right
(Nuovo Centrodestra, ncd).

122 Chapter 7
signs of an identitarian nature: skinheads, soccer hooligans (ultras). They act

from an extremist position and propose an alternative culture, even in a politi-
cal landscape that as a whole seems ever more oriented towards the right.
A medievalism in many ways similar to that of “Tradition” can be seen in
the idealization of the Middle Ages that—regardless of political orientation—
imposes itself today with ever greater force. I’m talking about the popularity
among a broad public of esoteric and symbolic interpretations, a popularity
whose significance is not lost on current post-fascists. Thus, for instance, in the
book Fascisti immaginari (“Imaginary Fascists”) we read these words in refer-
ence to the esotericism of the Sixties and Seventies:
They were the intellectual premises of what, in the global imaginary,

would be the style of The X-Files and Indiana Jones and, in Italy, would
inspire the successful television program Stargate, created by Roberto
Giacobbo and Fabio Andriola […] the road, ultimately, has been long: it
took the entire twentieth century, but in the end esotericism came into
the public eye. From the bourgeois salons of the early century, to the
meetings of carbonari between the two wars and the neo-fascist coteries
of the 1950s, almost approaching semi-officiality in the Seventies with
Elémire Zolla’s magazine Conoscenza religiosa and many books of Ru
sconi and Adelphi, esotericism has finally come to dominate the popular
imaginary through films, novels, and comics.40
Behind this homologization we can perceive structural and long-lasting pro-

cesses: a reconciliation of very distant positions, including under the sign of
adherence to a Traditionalist Catholicism, and an ever more widespread return
to interpretative positions that are not only religious but even magical in char-
acter. These positions certainly bring greater attention to the sphere of the sa-
cred and mythical, but at the same time, when taken to extremes, they impose
exclusively symbolic interpretations on the world, interpretations that are no
longer determined by sensory experience nor by investigation and the results
of research (necessarily subject to correction).41 Among the symbols em-
ployed, Templars, chivalry, sacred regality, Holy Grail, and Tolkien are always
the most prominent.
Given the significance and complexity of the phenomenon of Traditional-
ist medievalism, at this point in our analysis it seems opportune to reflect
40 L. Lanna and F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit., p. 157.

41 Cf. M. Caffiero, Miracoli e storia, in “Micromega,” xxii (December 2007), supplement,
pp. 126–133; U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock cit. (pp. 105 ff. and 261–278 of the Italian edition).

e xtensively on that “sense of history” which, in reality, it does not possess. The
dominant interpretation today of the Middle Ages (and of other exotic and
ancient civilizations like the Egyptians or the Maya) on the part of mass cul-
ture is very similar to the one we just considered: the Medieval Era is seen as an
arcane time of deep mysteries, mysteries that may still survive. Many widely
viewed television programs present the Middle Ages in a fundamentally differ-
ent way than they do the twentieth century. The twentieth century is described
in documentaries, through a continuous sequence of facts, coherent in devel-
opment, provided by first-person testimonies delivered by those who have
seen and lived it. At least (but not only) from this point of view, such documen-
taries can still be readily assimilated into historical culture because their meth-
odological cornerstones are primary sources and diachronic development.42
The TV Middle Ages are quite different. They are a mystery to unravel. Often,
the key to their decipherment lies in the Templar myth and the closely related
one of the Holy Grail, or else it lies in heresies, Cathars, alchemists, mages,
witches, Frederick ii, and all the kings that sleep beneath the mountain. It is a
spectacularization of history, certainly, and it is also something more.43
To explain the spread of all these ways of approaching the idea of the Mid-
dle Ages, one can and must invoke the lack of certainty, the crisis of the idea of
progress, and the loss of faith in the full and positive rationality of man that
drove the entire twentieth century. In this sense, medievalism is quite New
Age, and yet its utilization by exponents of the extreme right of “Tradition”
seems not dissimilar to that of either ultra-conservative Catholics or those ad-
epts of “new religions,” such that from this particular point of view (but in real-
ity many others as well) the opposition and distinction between right and left,
so well-defined in the Seventies, seems ever less clear. Not, however, in the
sense of a widespread accumulation of progressive themes and sensibilities:
quite the contrary. We find that our bulimic age of consumer goods also has a
desperate and highly disordered yearning for the irrational—almost as if, de-
spite science’s promise to explain and understand all things, we can sense that
part of humanity that by its nature can neither be explained nor understood in
rational terms. One of the roles of an organized and widely followed religion is
42 That they consist of a jumble of documentation and fiction, that the documentary films
themselves were in large part cases of propaganda, and finally that the collage of docu-
ments demonstrates a biased linearity of development that is quite hard to accept from a
historical point of view, are questions beyond the scope of this book. In French there is a
play on words between documentaire (documentary film) and documenteur (docu-liar,
mockumentary).
43 Cf. M. Caffiero, Libertà di ricerca cit., pp. 3–16; F. Olivo, Storia. Il grande spettacolo, in
“Il Messaggero,” Jan. 3, 2010, p. 21.

124 Chapter 7
to offer a structure of rites and symbols that can serve as a sensible expression
of all that. Apart from the revival of traditional Catholicism encountered in
several countries, this symbolic structure in the West is largely diminished,
leaving a void that tends to be refilled with whatever the market offers. The
myth of Paradise Lost (or more prosaically, of childhood innocence lost),
sparks an interest in the past, a past dressed up in garments of ineffable perfec-
tion. The druids were sages and ecologists, the ancient wisdom has been lost,
and so on. We believe much more in the medieval saying, “the world is growing
old,” than did our grandparents. In this sense, we feel a sort of “sympathy” with
the Middle Ages. In short, the average Western citizen is psychologically
starved of a “sense of mystery” and a “myth of a Golden Age.” The Middle Ages
that exists today is thus mostly a post-modern Middle Ages, a benchmark for a
culture that considers the vision of the world as ordered progress to be a totally
lost cause. From this perspective, it holds hardly any interest as a historical
period even as it assumes the giant’s role as a myth. Adopting the fundamental
distinction seen in the texts of Mircea Eliade, Claude Lévi-Strauss, René Gué-
non, and numerous other scholars of anthropology and the history of religions,
today the Middle Ages are conceived entirely within the category of mythic
time rather than historical time.44
Behind this use of the Middle Ages, many scholars read a generalized loss of
the sense of history. The mythic use of the Middle Ages corresponds to the
non-knowledge that we have of all of history, from the ancient to the modern.45
Today, medieval history is seen as located in an elsewhere, in a space/time that
is fixed, deprived of diachronic coordinates and, exactly like the classical, “seg-
mented […] in minimal units, decontextualized and arbitrarily reusable”: in
this, Doric columns are equivalent to Knights Templar.46 Its use is of a sym-
bolic and allegorical nature and its primary function is not that of reestablish-
ing some certainty of the past, but of capturing its nexus with modernity
through archetypal figurae. Ultimately, the discourse that commonly unfolds
44 See in general L. Arcella, P. Pisi, and R. Scagno (eds.), Confronto con Mircea Eliade: a rchetipi
mitici e identità storica, Jaca Book, Milano 1998; Tempo del mito—Tempo della storia.
Italian-French workshop, Roma, École française de Rome, February-May 2009, February-
May 2010.
45 Cf. S. Settis, The Future of the “Classical” cit. (especially pp. 109 ff. of the Italian edition);
S. Pivato, Vuoti di memoria cit., passim; A. Scurati, Un uomo senza storia, in “La Stampa,”
Aug. 26, 2008, p. 31; P. Monnet, Introduction cit., p. 18. On the rejection of history by the
UK’s current political class: M. Alexander, Medievalism cit., pp. 255 ff. A harsh judgment
that takes aim at the entire relationship between politics and culture and between criti-
cism and dogmatism is expressed by A. Asor Rosa, Il grande silenzio: intervista sugli intel-
lettuali, ed. S. Fiori, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2009.
46 S. Settis, The Future of the “Classical” cit. (pp. 23 ff. of the Italian edition).

today around the Middle Ages is not historical, but magico-religious in nature.47
As a result, the interpretative categories predominant in our “common sense of
the Middle Ages” are those that make use of symbolic analogy—that is, a simi-
larity between two or more elements that allows for the representation of
structural links between them on a basis that may be called shamanic, magical,
homeopathic, and even poetic, but absolutely not historical and not scientific.
A mandrake root must have an effect on human health, not because it is poi-
sonous, but because it looks like a little person. Not because one can empiri-
cally analyze the chemical processes caused by its ingestion, but because it
encapsulates a formal analogy between two objects.
Precisely for this reason, the selection of sources useful for grasping the
deep meaning of that period could equally include testimonies produced
back then, like the chansons de geste or the Norse Eddas, and—completely
erroneously—their later revisitations: the courtly romances rewritten in the
1800s, fantasy films and literature, echoes and redundant mirror images of ap-
parently dissimilar objects, a position that arranges everything on the same
plane and doesn’t allow for any hierarchies. Often, a reader faced with one of
Chrétien de Troyes’s romances—from the twelfth century—is unable to dis-
tinguish it from stories written in the modern age, from Tolkien’s novels and
fantasy literature. The necessity of grasping the difference between a historical
knight, a knight imagined by a medieval author, and a fairy-tale knight rein-
vented in the nineteenth or twentieth century is ignored, because what is
worth understanding, and what is truly fascinating, is the archetype of the
knight.48
The Middle Ages are sensed to be a transfiguration of infancy, an existential
and philosophical alternative to contemporary banality, a time of immortal
values: those who approach the problem of the Middle Ages as a topos are fully
aware of that. In other words, the myth is a real fact and should be understood
as such. Gianfranco De Turris, for instance, writes:
The Middle Ages are not just a historical topos […]; but also a symbolic,
mythic, and if you will, spiritual topos, and consequently it is possible to
47 Cf. G. Musca, “L’altro medioevo” nei “Quaderni medievali,” in Il sogno del medioevo cit.,
pp. 19–32: 27.
48 Cf. L. Del Corso and P. Pecere, L’anello che non tiene cit., pp. 132–157, on the interpretation
of fantasy literature, including the most grossly commercial, as “authentic” myth. Perhaps
not many know that the character of Wart, that is, the young Arthur who is still doesn’t
know he is destined to rule, was created by Terence Hanbury White in the novel The Once
and Future King, Collins, London 1958, and made famous by Disney’s The Sword in the
Stone (1963), but does not exist as such in medieval literature.

126 Chapter 7
interpret it as such with instruments besides those of pure and simple

“historical” analysis.49
Even though historical analysis is unfortunately not pure and not simple, this
reasoning is at its core sound. Having established that knowledge is a universal
value and that the ways of reaching it are multiple, each of us is free to take the
road that we believe best. Exegesis of a symbolic-structural variety makes use
of the criterion of analogy, which places many elements in comparison to find
some common meaning among them: the masters of this process were those
medieval exegetes of the Holy Scripture. The problem arises when such a sym-
bolic interpretation first presents itself as a historical analysis and then tries to
take the latter’s place. To be sure, the use of certain elements of the past as a
symbolic category is a legitimate operation that leads—among other things—
to a vision of the world in an allegorical and poetic key: such is the case in all of
Guénon’s work. But to claim that the symbolic categories that the poet—as
creator—defines of his own accord truly correspond to historical categories
found in the “other” era that is evoked—well, that claim is completely arbitrary
and incorrect. This anti-historical process can be seen in two cases: when anal-
ogy and simile are used to explain a cause-and-effect relationship between sev-
eral elements without recourse to other proof, and when one tries to use the
interpretation of symbols—in reality each easily dated and traced to a specific
context—encompassing and lumping together completely different circum-
stances, to describe a historical process that developed over time, with a before
and an after.
A few examples—though far removed from the scope of this book—should
suffice to clarify this reasoning. The Mayan and Egyptian pyramids may be
studied comparatively and the results—for example, referring to the concep-
tion of space, or their applications in astronomy, or the technical abilities of
those who built them—may be valuable. This, however, does not authorize us
to claim that the Mayans and Egyptians ever met, or that they both possessed
some technology originating on another world. Through mere comparative
analysis, which constructs ex novo a structural relationship between objects
that simply resemble each other or are close in some way, one may even go so
far as to say, as I happened to discover recently, that Aachen does not corre-
spond to Aix-La-Chapelle, Aquisgrana, but to a village in the Marches region of
Italy, and that the fantastical landscapes seen in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and the
portraits of the dukes of Urbino painted by Piero della Francesca, correspond
49 G. De Turris, L’immaginario medievale cit., p. 97.

to quite recognizable mountains, obviously those that can be seen from the
window of whoever’s writing.50
To return to our current theme, the myth of the Grail has produced a num-
ber of symbolic-structural interpretive keys, which are subsequently used to
explain consequential relationships of cause and effect and thereby to reestab-
lish a chronology in the sense of origin, duration, and continuity. Among the
many possibilities, some are more worthy of note than others: as we have seen,
in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the Grail (which is a stone, not a chal-
ice) is kept in a place called the Temple and the knights set to guard it are
called Templeise. Three similar words and the die is cast: the Grail is the Tem-
plar treasure.51 This treasure would reach Europe, carried by Mary Magdalene
and Joseph of Arimathea; or it would arrive with returning Crusades to end up
in the hands of the Cathars, who naturally were also closely related to the Tem-
plars and guarded it at Rennes-le-Château, unless the Templars had already
hidden it at Gisors. But the Grail is also in Valencia, Genoa, Castel del Monte,
and among the imperial treasures of Vienna. If the Grail is the Shroud, then it’s
obviously in Turin. Or else, to follow another lead, the Grail is no longer an
object, but, as Dan Brown recently revealed from his perch on the shoulders of
so many other authors prior, the tomb of Mary Magdalene, the wife of Christ
and thus the mother of his children and guardian/vessel of his descendants,
the royal blood, sangréal, that comes down to us through the Merovingian
kings.52 Just as the Frankish masons survive from remote antiquity, when
they were the builders of the Temple of Solomon and thus also Templars. Still
yet, the Grail may originate from an Arabo-Persian tradition, or it may be the
Sacred Cauldron of the Celts, passed down through Western tradition (but
50 Comitato per lo studio della presenza carolingia in Val di Chienti, www.youtube.com/

watch?v=6hJ-OZ5JMIQ (cons. May 6, 2019); G. Carnevale, La Val di Chienti nell’alto medio-
evo carolingio: fu la “Francia” delle origini e la culla dell’Europa, Comitato per lo studio
della presenza carolingia in Val di Chienti, Civitanova Marche 2003; R. Borchia and O.
Nesci, Il paesaggio invisibile. La scoperta dei veri paesaggi di Piero della Francesca, Il lavoro
editoriale, Ancona 2008: The book, as the cover reads, “has invented a new science: land-
scape busting”; Id., Codice P. Atlante illustrato del paesaggio della Gioconda, Electa, Milano
2012.
51 This identification endures in the numerous publications that, since the 1970s, have filled
bookstore shelves, and that have as their only ostensible source the writings of Wolfram
von Eschenbach, which is certainly not the only medieval testimony of the Grail. The real
question is not whether the Templars were guardians of the Grail, but why the poet felt
like talking about Templars in his Parzifal.
52 D. Brown, The Da Vinci Code cit., and The Da Vinci Code, 2003 (film). In the same vein to-
day, see for instance D.J. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal
Family, and the Birth of Christianity, Simon & Schuster, New York 2006.

128 Chapter 7
aterially, not just as a tale), by the knights of the Arthurian Cycle of romances
m
and some texts of the Welsh Mabinogion. In that case, better to seek it in
Glastonbury Abbey, where Arthur’s tomb was discovered in 1190, or on the Isle
of Avalon, where Arthur waits to be reawakened. Or maybe the Grail is an al-
legory of the alchemical discipline, or alludes to a fertility ritual: the feminine
vessel that is rendered fertile by the Holy Lance, the desolate, wintry land that
becomes a garden of Spring thanks to the handsomely endowed sun-Perceval.
All that (and much more) is the Grail today. It, writes Cardini,
is still wrapped up in the fog from which hypotheses emerge. The fact
remains that when we speak of the Grail our subject is a literary construc-
tion: its date of birth coincides with the end of the twelfth century, its
textual basis is the romance of Chrétien [de Troyes]. And the great suc-
cess of the Grail theme is certainly not enough to make us pass from lit-
erature to myth, nor from literature to history. The links from the first to
the second and third, however, remain obscure, maybe arbitrary, perhaps
even non-existent.53
The traces of a continuity between the search for the Holy Grail or the Tem-
plar order and our days are not in any way historically documented—that is,
through the research and analysis of sources produced during that period. The
traditions that created these fictitious continuities were all forged between the
eighteenth and twentieth centuries, in full awareness of the legitimate func-
tions of the past. There are dozens of Grails, as many as there are medieval
literary versions of its legend, and hundreds more will yet be produced, thanks
to the editorial fervor of our years. The link with the present is powerful: it acts
through parallelisms, allegories, and veiled language. But the Grail of Rennes-
le-Château and Dan Brown tells us much more about the present than it ever
could about the Middle Ages.
And here we come back to the fundamental problem: the attempt to graft
an inherently atemporal symbolic-structural exegesis onto specific time peri-
od, without recourse to appropriate sources, yet attributing a sense of “histori-
cal reality” to the result, is from the historian’s point of view an error, a parody
of anthropological studies, a reckless comparativism. This process is, however,
indispensable to a Middle Ages of Tradition: in order to speak of tradition
one must start from the desired locus of origin and reach the present day with
no gaps. Any holes in the middle render the course fragmentary, no longer
53 F. Cardini, Il Graal evoliano tra simbolismo ed esoterismo, in J. Evola, Il Mistero del Graal
cit., pp. 13–28: 14.

i ntelligible, and incapable of providing answers to the present. The solution to

the dilemma is to historicize the myth, and, specifically, the medieval myth. It
is a process that, rather than fading out thanks to continual advancements in
the field of medieval studies, lives on, with renewed vigor.
That knights had their own code of honor is true; that the Templars jeal-
ously guarded their own secrets, including their initiation rituals, is also true.
That the Cathars expressed a faith completely at odds with the Roman minis-
try is incontrovertible, just as it is certain that medieval literature is in part
mystical and also possesses some esoteric interpretive keys. But these facts are
not playing cards to be shuffled, and still less are they tarot cards for divina-
tion.54 To think that Dante may be understood through the sect of the Fedeli
d’Amore; that Frederick ii built Castel del Monte, with its “strange” octagonal
form, in accordance with precise astrological-astronomical revelations that
render that castle akin to the pyramids of Giza; that Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
belonged to a family of druids, and for that reason the Templars confiscated
the Grail, or that Jesus Christ was “Gaelic” in that he was “Galilean”; that in-
stead he was Julius Caesar, since in Latin both names bear the same initials
(J.C.), such that “The Gospel of Mark turns out to be the history of the Roman
Civil War from the crossing of the Rubicon up to the assassination and apo-
theosis of Caesar”—well, all this speculation is fascinating and even quite fun,
but it is not historically true. It did not happen.55
In the best of the hypotheses, the undocumented links are “proven” through
comparative and symbolic reading—a reading which is not, however, seen as
capable of responding to every question posed to it: if I condemn someone to
death just because he looks like a murderer, I would not be a trustworthy judge.
54 U. Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1991 (original
edition: I limiti dell’interpretazione, Bompiani, Milano 1990, pp. 56 ff., pp. 96–99 of the Ital-
ian edition for the “analogical recklessness” of R. Guénon, The King of the World cit).
55 M.P. Pozzato [et al.] (ed.), L’idea deforme. Interpretazioni esoteriche di Dante, Bompiani,
Milano 1989 (the title, meaning “the misshapen idea,” is an anagram of “Fedeli d’Amore,”
meaning “love’s faithful,” on which: L. Valli, Il linguaggio segreto di Dante e dei “Fedeli
d’Amore,” Optima, Roma 1928); U. Eco, The Limits of Interpretation cit. (pp. 90–96 of the
Italian edition); M. Brando, Lo strano caso di Federico ii cit., pp. 211–224. On Christ as Julius
Caesar: F. Carotta, Il Cesare incognito. Da Divo Giulio a Gesù, May 2002, www.scribd.com/
doc/4074287/Il-Cesare-incognito-Da-Divo-Giulio-a-Gesu (cons. May 6, 2019). The article
(which was turned into a book) has the air of a pseudo-essay, like those of the publication
“HotHair,” but some have been taken it seriously: see for example S. Breathnach, The Jesus
Joke, in “Irish Criminology,” 2007, www.scribd.com/doc/10062380/The-Jesus-Joke-Part-
1-by-Seamus-Breathnach (cons. May 6, 2019); Francesco Carotta, Wikipedia entry, http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Carotta (cons. May 6, 2019).

130 Chapter 7
It should not surprise us if the better part of the interpretations presented in

this chapter have no parallels in academic historiography, but rather are found
in the avalanches of texts that flirt with the occult. Simply put, these themes
cannot be approached historiographically. The evidence is simply not there.
Umberto Eco defines the Middle Ages of Tradition thus:
The Middle Ages of so-called Tradition, or of occult philosophy (or la pen-

sée sapientielle), an eternal and rather eclectic ramshackle structure,
swarming with Knights Templars, Rosicrucians, alchemists, Masonic ini-
tiates, neo-Kabbalists, drunk on reactionary poisons sipped from the
Grail, ready to hail every neo-fascist Will to Power, eager to accept as a
visual ersatz for their improbable visions all the paraphernalia of the
[barbaric] Middle Ages, mixing up René Guénon and Conan the Barbar-
ian, Avalon and the Kingdom of Prester John. Antiscientific by definition,
these Middle Ages keep going under the banner of the mystical weddings
of the micro- with the macrocosm, and as a result they convince their
adepts that everything is the same as anything else and that the whole
world is born to convey, in any of its aspects and events, the same Mes-
sage. Fortunately, the message got lost, which makes its Quest fascinating
for the happy few who stand proof-tight, philology-resistant, bravely ig-
norant of the Popperian call for the good habit of falsification.56
Even Michel Pastoureau, author of a book on the symbolic Middle Ages, does
not mince words when he writes:
Perhaps no field of study concerning the Middle Ages has been so com-
promised by texts and books of mediocre quality (to say no more). In
material of “medieval symbolism”—a vague, easily abused notion—the
public and students can, most of the time, expect nothing more than su-
perficial or esoteric works that play with time and space, mixing alchemy,
chivalry, heraldry, coronations of kings, Roman art, cathedral bells, cru-
sades, Templars, Cathars, black virgins, the Holy Grail, etc. together in a
more or less commodified drivel.57
56 U. Eco, Dreaming of the Middle Ages cit., p. 71. Cf. L. Del Corso and P. Pecere, L’anello che
non tiene cit., pp. 129 (“The systematic exchange of analogies with identity”) and 171–173.
57 M. Pastoureau, Une histoire symbolique du Moyen Âge occidental, Seuil, Paris 2004,
pp. 12–13.

In a not dissimilar way, but with even greater intensity, in 1986 Franco Car-
dini dealt a dramatic blow to the instrumental interpretations originating both
from the right and the left:
That the Middle Ages of the purest knights is the stuff of charlatans, no
more nor less than that of feminist witches and syndicalist Ciompi, is
true: but it is precisely these uses and abuses of history that the Medieval-
ist must combat.58
Julius Evola played on other tables and with other rules: his method, which
disdains historical analysis as “profane,” is detailed by him on several occa-
sions.59 One the one hand, in certain cases some strong, intellectual, common
suggestions enabled this author to reach conclusions similar to those proposed
by contemporary historiography: one example is a conception of the divorce
between priestliness and imperial regality consummated in the second half of
the eleventh century that in effect places the pope, and not the Emperor, in the
revolutionary position.60 On the other hand, in many other cases, as in his
58 F. Cardini, Medievisti “di professione” cit., p. 44. Cf. anche R. Iorio, Chi si serve del Graal?, in
“Quaderni medievali,” xxiii (1998), n. 46, pp. 176–190, especially p. 176: “It is still astound-
ing how in common culture the Middle Ages serve as a vessel for variegated memories
and reassurances, and its centuries like woods to be poached for symbolic references and
legitimations.”
59 For example in the Preface to the The Mystery of the Grail cit., pp. 9–10: “The characteristic
feature of the method that I call ‘traditional’ (in oppostion to the profane, empirical, and
critical-intellectual method of modern research), consists in emphasizing the universal
character of a symbol or teaching, and in relating it to corresponding symbols found in
other traditions, thus establishing the presence of something that is both superior and
antecedent to each of these formulations, which are different from and yet equivalent to
each other […]. Although this is the method I intend to follow, it is not the one favored by
most modern scholars. First of all, these scholars establish not true correspondences but
opaque derivations. In other words, they investigate the empirical and always uncertain
circumstance of the material transmission of certain ideas or legends from one people to
another, or from one literature to another, thus ignoring that wherever we find at work
influences characteristic of a plane deeper than that of a merely individual conscience, a
correspondence and a transmission may take place also through nonordinary ways, that
is, without specific temporal and spatial conditions and without external historical con-
tacts.” On the method and the relationship between historical time and mythic time in
Evola, see his Introduction to Revolt Against the Modern World (especially pp. 28 ff. of the
Italian edition).
60 Cf. C. Violante, Aspetti della politica italiana di Enrico iii prima della sua discesa in Italia
(1039–1046), in “Rivista storica italiana,” lxiv (1952), n. 3, pp. 157–176, 293–314, now in Id.,
Studi sulla cristianità medioevale. Società, istituzioni, spiritualità, collected by P. Zerbi, Vita

132 Chapter 7
e xtreme defense of a “soul of chivalry,” that is exclusively esoteric and indeed

pagan, Evola’s conclusions cannot find any kind of parallel in the medieval
sources. But his exegetical work does not want, necessarily, to be considered
historiography, and on this historians can agree.
e Pensiero, Milano 1972, pp. 249–290, especially 252 ff. See G.M. Cantarella, Il sole e la luna.
La rivoluzione di Gregorio vii papa, 1073–1085, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2005. Behind this con-
ception is Georges Dumézil’s theory on the three functions of Indoeuropean societies, of
which the first—royal—encompasses both sacrality and regality. The reception of
Dumézil’s theory has been very strong in medieval studies: see primarily G. Duby, The
Three Orders cit.; B. Grévin, La trifonctionnalité dumézilienne et les médiévistes: une idylle
de vingt ans, in “Francia. Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte,” 30 (2003), 1,
pp. 169–189.

Chapter 8
Warriors of Valhalla: Middle Ages of the Great

North
“So much history,” said the Duke of Auge to the Duke of Auge, “so much
history just for a few puns and a few anachronisms. I think it’s pathetic.
Shan’t we ever get away from it?”
r. queneau, Between Blue and Blue
At the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first book of the Lord of the Rings
trilogy, the two gigantic, menacing statues of the Argonath, the ancient sover-
eigns of Numenor, raise their imperious hands: “The left hand of each was
raised palm outwards in gesture of warning; […] the silent wardens of a long-
vanished kingdom.”1 Naturally, the gesture of the ancient kings has also been
interpreted as the Roman salute, though they raise their left hands, not their
right.2 The Kings Anàrion and Isildur hold battle axes in their right hands.
What goes out through the door comes in through the window: the axe intro-
duces us to a universe of symbols with close ties to the one discussed in the
previous chapter. In conventional wisdom, the Medieval Era may be summed
up with chivalry, but also with barbarism. The barbarian is a wild man who
transgresses the elementary laws of common life; he is the Other, a symbol of
divorce from the civilized world; he is the one on the side of chaos, of caprice,
who does not recognize the social order and fights with brutality and cruelty.3
Above all, he must be the mandatory opposite of the knight: we spoke of them
in this sense in the second chapter. And nevertheless, barbarism represents, and
has for quite some time, a positive myth as well, one which has recently been
considerably re-evaluated. The barbarian as a ferocious, yet pure and loyal, war-
rior who battles injustice, a kind of half-naked knight (who has borrowed a lot
from chivalry, but is not nearly as courteous as Galahad), is an integral part of
1 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings cit., p. 413.

2 See for example Se AN non ama il saluto romano, Jan. 22, 2007, http://santosepolcro. splinder
.com/post/10657801 (cons. June 6, 2010, the page was found to be inactive when cons. May 6,
2019). On the other hand, the so-called “Roman salute” itself is a modern invention:
M. Winkler, The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology, Ohio State University Press, Colum-
bus 2009.
3 T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., pp. 34–36, with other examples. See also M. Sanfilippo,
Storia e immaginario storico cit., Part 1, Ch. 4: Arrivano i barbari.

134 Chapter 8
our collective imaginary, made famous by the hero of Robert Erwin Howard’s
Conan the Barbarian (1932) and celebrated in a thousand “Sword and Sorcery”
fantasy romances and a thousand illustrations, among which are those of
Frank Frazetta. The barbarian, who being the fruit of fantasy can only be called
fearsome in his fantastical world, is in reality a symbol that may also carry a
political connotation. Indeed, his very origin is political. The concepts of the
positivity of violence and the purifying war are much more evident in the im-
age of the barbarian than in that of the knight. The belief in the existence of a
barbarian vitality and the innate goodness of people of pure race, closer to the
state of nature, not subject to the corruption brought on by mixing with infe-
rior or decadent peoples and cultures—a belief lurking in the West at least
since Tacitus’s Germania, up to Vico, Montesquieu, and Rousseau’s Noble
Savage—was widely discussed by historians in the first half of the 1800s, was
celebrated by men of culture throughout that entire century, and represents
one of the most pervasive myth-engines ever created to explain the ethnogen-
esis of nations and justify the superiority of one people over another, of one
race over others. Barbarism is invigorating and leads not to the destruction of
civilization but to its palingenesis, as the barbarian is free, strong, and heroic,
capable of defeating, with unprecedented but justified violence, the rot within
a corrupt society—namely the decrepit Roman Empire—and imposing a new
order founded on other, more authentic, ethical values: force, liberty, justice,
solidarity, loyalty, purity. Conquest, ultimately, is a right exercised by a superior
people, and war is not only just, but an explosive release of force.
This historiographic and philosophical theory, initially created to explain
the genesis of the aristocracy in a bloodline of Frankish conquerors, evolved
during the early decades of the 1800s and ended up providing a historical ori-
gin for all the peoples of Europe, through the elaboration of a doctrine that
has been called “theory of conquest.”4 It is known for attributing a fundamen-
tal significance to the clash of races, understood as bloodlines or ethnicities:
thus precisely to the barbarian invasions. This argument, initially proposed in
France by Augustin Thierry, works for any country where the Middle Ages
may assume a founding role through a historiographic representation of the
conflict between ethnic groups and the entry into a defined territory of peo-
ples who conquer it and transform it into a “national state,” under the leader-
ship of a sovereign who, like Clovis, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, William
4 G. Gargallo di Castel Lentini, Storia della storiografia moderna, vol. iv, La teoria della con-
quista, Bulzoni, Roma 1998; Cl. Nicolet, La fabrique d’une nation: la France entre Rome et les
Germains, Perrin, Paris 2003.

Warriors of Valhalla: Middle Ages of the Great North 135
the Conqueror, Tomislav of Croatia, Mieszko and Boleslaw of Poland, Arpad

and Stephen of Hungary, becomes its primordial hero.
In France, England, Spain, Italy, and many other countries, this theory of
conquest serves to justify the osmosis and hybridization of various peoples
and cultures, from victors to vanquished, who, through their ultimately salu-
tary contact, gave life to a nation with an original and distinctive character.
This is the case with the contact between the Franks and the Gallo-Romans in
France, and between the Celts and Anglo-Saxons, and then the Anglo-Saxons
and Normans, in England. In Germany and to a certain extent in the Scandina-
vian countries, which did not suffer from Roman domination and saw the ad-
vent of Christianity much later, the theory is pushed to its extreme. Rejecting
the idea of a “contamination” through contact with other cultures and ethnic
groups, its partisans claim that the Germanic “race” has remained forever pure.
The “Germans” of Tacitus would be the ancestors of those same people—
Goths, Vandals, etc.—who as implacable and supremely just judges delivered
the coup de grâce to the crumbling, immoral, mongrel, Christian, and Mediter-
ranean Roman Empire. And they would naturally be the ancestors of the cur-
rent Germans—for this is a perspective that leaves no room for the thought (to
which we will return to) that ethnogenesis is a dynamic and continuous pro-
cess, never settled once and for all. And since these pure peoples would be
ethnically and culturally superior to all (necessarily impure) others, they must
have the right to impose their own civilization. The Medieval Era becomes,
therefore, a consequence of Germanic civilization, an emanation that finds its
moment of origin in the great invasions, or rather migrations of people.
To maintain that the nation is formed through conquest, to claim that bar-
barian populations are the ones that bear the purest and most authentic val-
ues, to call upon the Great North as an origin myth, anti-classical, warlike, and
victorious, to overturn and overturn again the power dynamics between peo-
ples, to consider the enemy uncivilized, and to confer on all this the character
of an anti-historical, ancestral ethnicity, existent ab origine, means also being
able to consider all that already supposedly occurred in the Middle Ages as
repeatable and justifiable. The Germans must go East and conquer the Slavs,
because they are superior to them. The Russians must represent, as heirs of
Byzantium and the purest exponents of Slavism, the entire Eastern Orthodox
world.5 Therefore, if a people conquers another in order to civilize it (and has
5 For an Italian-language introduction to Panslavism: D. Caccamo, Introduzione alla storia

dell’Europa orientale, Carocci, Roma 1991, especially pp. 67–81; W. Giusti, Il panslavismo, pref.
by D. Caccamo, Bonacci, Roma 1993 (original edition: Istituto per gli studi di politica inter-
nazionale, Milano 1941). Cf. also infra, Ch. 11.

136 Chapter 8
every right to do so because the former is superior and thus working for the
latter’s own good), the very concept of European civilization—whose gene-
sis is newly rediscovered in the Middle Ages, starting from the barbarian
invasions—becomes applicable everywhere.6 The individual European na-
tions, invested with a tradition riding on an illustrious past, have the right to
conquer and govern the rest of the world. The positivist and colonialist age of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would lead to the intensification of
these theories, born to explain the barbarian invasions—until, as an extreme
consequence, they evolved into national-socialist theories on race and their
heinous application.7
Germanic culture in general, with its exaltation of the North as a symbol of
the inevitable conflict between conquerors and conquered, between civilized
barbarians and uncivilized Romans, between the proud pagans devoted to
Wotan and the weak Judeo-Christians, was the basis for the Nazi’s glorification
of the Nibelung. The great heroes of the barbarian tradition gave their name to
vast strategic plans: Operation Attila against France (Attila was actually a char-
acter in the Nibelungenlied, not a Mongol), Operation Alaric to occupy Italy in
the event of its separation from the Axis, Operation Valkyrie to quell a possible
revolt of the German people (and a name that would later come to identify the
coup d’état attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944). Siegfried is a barbarian, but
in the end he’s just like Parsifal: he too is a man of war, he is white, he is
German.
The defeat of Germany in the Second World War and its division into two
states, the secularization of Western society and especially that of Scandinavia,
the suppressive fire that for years kept down any manifestation of German na-
tionalism and racist ideology, the attempt to create a multicultural European
identity, all rendered this kind of theory and its political consequences dor-
mant. During the Eighties, however, manifestations of this kind began
6 See especially S. Gasparri, I Germani immaginari e la realtà del Regno. Cinquant’anni di studi
sui Longobardi, in Atti del xvi congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo, CISAM, Spo-
leto 2003, vol. I, pp. 3–28; Id., Prima delle nazioni. Popoli, etnie e regni fra antichità e medioevo,
Nis, Roma 1997; A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity. Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the
Early Middle Ages, Brepols, Turnhout 2002; W. Pohl, Modern Uses of Early Medieval Ethnic Ori-
gins, in J. M. Bak [et al.] (ed.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 55–70; I. Wood, The Use and
Abuse of the Early Middle Ages, in The Use and Abuse of the Early Middle Ages, 1750–2000, in M.
Costambeys, A. Hamer and M. Heale (eds.), The Making of the Middle Ages. Liverpool Essays,
Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2007, pp. 36–53; S. Gasparri, C. La Rocca, Tempi bar-
barici. L’Europa occidentale tra antichità e medioevo (300–900), Carocci, Roma 2002; I. Wood,
The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013.
7 W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., pp. 56 ff., with bibliography.

returning in force to the Western landscape. They fall mainly into three funda-
mental typologies, which we will briefly describe.
Self-declared neo-fascist or neo-Nazi groups—numerous today primarily in
former East Germany, but present throughout Europe and even North America
and Australia—make use of symbologies derived not only from National So-
cialism but also from Celtic mythology, to a much greater extent from Nordic
mythology, and from what we might call the barbarian imaginary: the two-
headed axe, the hammer of Thor, the runes. As, in Italy, already in the 1970s we
find the Avanguardia Nazionale (“National Vanguard”), whose symbol was the
rune of Othala, the Terza Posizione (“Third Position,” with the rune of the War-
rior), the Meridiano Zero (“Meridian Zero,” with the rune of Life). All told, the
spirit of the Great North is quite common in the movements of the extreme
right, including the Traditionalists that we described in the previous chapter.
Hence the cover of a book well-known in Italy, Fascisti immaginari (“Imaginary
Fascists”), is illustrated with a drawing of medieval warriors armed with axes,
created in one of those Hobbit Camps.8
In the same way, the “naziskin” or “hammerskin” youth movement, born in
England at the end of the Seventies as a politicized branch of the more general
skinhead movement, is slowly and continually growing. Its marked anti-
communist and racist inclinations also find expression in allusions to the bar-
barian myth, naturally mediated through its Nazi exaltation and, often, through
the use of a symbolism adopted from SS units.9
The third way of evoking Germanic roots is represented by the neo-pagan
religions that take after Norse mythology. Neo-paganism of a Germanic stripe
is present in all the countries where communities of Northern European (or, as
some still say, Aryan) origin live: namely in Germany, Scandinavia, and all the
Anglo-Saxon countries, including Australia and New Zealand.10 Once again we
are confronted with cultural movements and veritable “new religions” whose
first reclamation in an identitarian sense was due to the proto-anthropological
analysis of nineteenth-century authors, followed by a later, more powerful ide-
alization under National Socialism, which came to constitute a distinctive and
defining element of what has been called magical Nazism.11 The fundamental
concept is, however, always the same: those that endorse these cults consider
8 L. Lanna and F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit.

9 M. Blondet, I nuovi barbari. Gli skinheads parlano, Effedieffe, Milano 1993.
10 The phenomenon is also attested in Italy: cf. M. Introvigne, A. Menegotto, and P.L. Zoc-
catelli, Aspetti spirituali dei revival celtici e tradizionali in Lombardia, CESNUR, Regione
Lombardia 2001, https://www.cesnur.org/celti/ (cons. May 6, 2019), which also provides a
general bibliography.
11 G. Galli, Hitler e il Nazismo magico cit.

138 Chapter 8
themselves the renewers of an authentic pre-Christian culture with Celto-

Germanic roots, one that has survived despite repeated assaults by the world of
power and orthodoxy, that is, by the inquisitorial and homogenizing forces of
Christianity.12
A depiction of this veiled conflict between a more ancient culture and
Christianity is present in the film The Virgin Spring by Ingmar Bergman (1959),
which draws inspiration from a fourteenth-century Swedish legend and opens
with the servant’s invocation, “God Odin, come, God Odin, come!” The woman
lives in a Christian house dominated by the gnarled figure of Christ dying on
the cross. Envious of the master’s virgin daughter, the servant performs an an-
cient curse on her life. The daughter is later killed by three shepherds, trigger-
ing the guilt of the servant-witch, who considers herself responsible, and
unleashing the furious wrath of the girl’s father, who performs a pagan rite to
prepare himself for vengeance. In this world teetering between Christianity
and paganism (where God, however, does not show himself in either of the
two religions), a fountain finally bursts forth from beneath the corpse of the
blonde virgin, a small miracle of hope.13
In the new religions we’re discussing, the Medieval Era represents the time
of transition that permitted the ferrying of knowledge and rituals from antiq-
uity to the modern and contemporary world. The most ancient sources at our
disposal (for instance, the Edda), even when they refer to oral traditions that
go way back, were in fact fixed in their written form during the Late Middle
Ages.14 From this point of view, these religions are not actually new, but, on the
contrary, are ancestral. This goes for the religions of so-called Heathenry,
Odinism, or Asatru (a neologism meaning “Belief in the Aesir”), in turn
12 At the heart of this conception—the same one present in “Traditionalism”—lies a theory

advanced by the scholar Margaret Alice Murray in the early twentieth century. With the
backing of previous authors, she recognizes in medieval and modern witchcraft the con-
tinuation of pre-Christian pagan religions. Cf. Id., The God of the Witches, S. Low, Marston
& Company, London 1933. This theory, though scaled back significantly by historians, is in
reality applicable and applied to all contemporary neopagan movements, from Odinism
to Wicca. See M. Introvigne, A. Menegotto, and P.L. Zoccatelli, Aspetti spirituali dei revival
cit.; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 130 ff.; M. Gibson, Imagining the Pagan
Past. Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History since the Dark Ages, Routledge,
Abingdon-New York 2013.
13 On the director’s filmography: F. Cardini, Il medioevo nei film di Ingmar Bergman, in “Quad-
erni medievali,” iii (1978), n. 6, pp. 132–144. Another pagan, Viking prophetess can be
found in the film, The 13th Warrior (1999); cf. St. Airlie, Visions of Vikings: Sagas, Cinema
and History, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (ed.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 135–143: 140.
14 The Poetic Edda, ed. C. Larrington, Oxford University Press, Oxford 20142.

subdivided into various currents, all of which may be recognized by the com-
mon denominator of reproposing pagan, Norse cults in the forms they assume
primarily in the Edda. These currents are generally apolitical and deny any
connection with Nazism and racial theories, in the name of a vision of a toler-
ant, peaceful, and naturalistic world. Originating in the Forties and formalized
in the Sixties, they came to be considered accepted religions (to use a Constan-
tinian term) in the Scandinavian countries in the period from 1974 (in Iceland)
to 2007 (in Sweden). They may be considered the spearhead, the most radical
manifestation, of a much broader, and to us decidedly more interesting, move-
ment, which may be called a Nordic revival, naturally in the name of the Mid-
dle Ages. Some recent musical groups (for instance Faun, The Moon and the
Nightspirits, Fayrierie, Omnia) constitute its most expressive voices, conveying
poetic and philosophical pagan messages. These groups are usually considered
examples of the “Pagan Folk” genre, a term that can be interchangeable with
“Medieval Folk.” The Middle Ages, therefore, are pagan.
These cults are an integral part of the Viking revival, originally a Romantic
phenomenon, which has become especially widespread in recent years.15 In
the Shetland Isles they celebrate Midwinter by setting fire to a Viking ship. In
the Scandinavian countries and in Poland one may find numerous neo-Viking
communities that reconstruct the weapons, combat techniques, and daily life
of the ancient conquerors of the sea, and who even set out on pilgrimages to
certain traditional sites, where they celebrate a sort of Medieval festival. But
since the common denominator is the sense of belonging to a people who
originated in the North and then spread out everywhere on the continent (and
beyond, for as we recall, it was the Vikings who discovered America!), similar
communities are today common in all the Anglo-Saxon countries, as far away
as Australia.16 We may thus remember that the Society for Creative Anachro-
nism also has a new Viking section, and that associations like the New Varan-
gian Guard (est. 1981) and the Sudhird of Jòmsborg (est. 1988) exist. The first,
now based in Australia, commemorates the myth of a Norse military unit that
served the Byzantine Emperor in the tenth century. The second refers to the
semi-legendary fortress of Jòmsborg in Pomerania, that between the tenth and
eleventh century hosted a company of proud Viking mercenaries.
15 St. Airlie, Visions of Vikings cit., with bibliography; S. Trafford and A. Pluskowski, Anti-
christ Superstars: The Vikings in Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, in D. Marshall (ed.), Mass
Market Medieval cit., pp. 57–73.
16 S. Balliff Straubhaar, Jómsvikingar and Varangian Guardsmen, from Brisbane to Perth, in
44th International Congress on Medieval Studies cit. On medievalism in Australia see St.
Trigg (ed.), Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture, Brepols, Turnhout 2005.

140 Chapter 8
Even if, as we have said, the revival of the Nordic spirit generally rejects any
link with Nazism and racism, there still exist movements that make use of the
same repertoire of symbols for strongly politicized ends.17 The historian of re-
ligion Mattias Gardell has studied the American situation, which we only knew
of in Europe thanks to the “Illinois Nazis” detested by the Blues Brothers.18 For
these US groups (which belong to religious currents called Wotanism and
Irminism) the menace constituted by multi-culturalism can be overcome only
by a return to racial purity, as found in the pagan religion of the devotees of
Wotan. This creed comes to represent the model of the mythical time when
the Aryan race was uncontaminated—for Wotan, in fact, created the White
race. These religious racists consider themselves like ancient heroes, the war-
riors of Valhalla destined to restore the ancestral purity of the age that was.
Even with guns. The dimensions of this phenomenon are starting to worry the
authorities. Since, as opposed to in the Scandinavian countries, the heathen
religions are not officially recognized in the United States, the problem has re-
cently arisen of whether to permit or prohibit prisoners who profess them-
selves believers to carry around the symbol of their faith: Thor’s hammer.
A few years ago, the production of a Beowulf film set off a wave of reactions
on the part of neo-Nazi and racist groups, but also on the part of adepts of the
Asatru religion. Beowulf, the hero who defeats the monster Grendel, is an iden-
titarian myth that works for the entire North, since the medieval poem was
written in Old English, but the cultural references it contains are actually much
broader. It is therefore a cultural icon of the North Sea, valid for England, Den-
mark, Sweden, and Germany, known to many people primarily from the 1999
film, starring Christopher Lambert (which is, however, of the “postapocalyptic”
genre, set in a neo-Medieval future) and from the 2007 film in which Grendel’s
mother is played by Angelina Jolie. The problem, however, arose with a third
film, Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, also from 2007.19 Here, the actors who portray
the hero, both young and old, are not white and have not already lent their faces
to a Scottish immortal. They are, instead, two African-Americans, Jayshan Jack-
son and Damon Lynch iii. The choice of a Black character is central to the plot
of the film, since this Beowulf is said to be the son of an African explorer who
traveled as far as the Northern seas: the creators claim that there was no politi-
cal intention on their part, nor anything related to the search for a primordial
17 Cf. M. Revelli, Il medioevo della Destra cit., p. 130.

18 M. Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, Duke University
Press, Durham (NC) 2003.
19 R. Scott Nokes, Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odinists, in “Old English Newslet-
ter,” xli (2008), n. 3, pp. 26–31.

African identity.20 For that reason, they were utterly blindsided by the pande-
monium they provoked. As early as 2005, during the film’s pre-production, di-
rector Scott Wegener received e-mails containing death threats and blogs ap-
peared that railed against this “insult to the white race.” There were those who
wrote: “What would be the reaction if Bruce Willis was chosen to play the part
of Martin Luther King? Or if Brad Pitt played Pancho Villa?” The National So-
cialist Movement (an American neo-Nazi movement) has claimed that Beowulf
represents “the ideal Germanic and aristocratic warrior, and consequently a
role model for our society.” Heroes perforce must be blonde: like the Norwe-
gian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who did not fail to insert some
narcissistic self-portraits into his manifesto-memorial.21
20 As, opposed to, for instance, in the documentary by P.P. Pasolini, Appunti per un’Orestiade
Africana (1970) and the book by M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical
Civilization, Rutgers University Press, Newark (NJ) 1987–2006, 3 vol. Even in the Viking-
themed filmed The 13th Warrior, we find an “outsider,” the Arab Ibn Fadlan, played by
Antonio Banderas: cf. St. Airlie, Visions of the Vikings cit., p. 139.
21 A. Behring Breivik, 2083. A European Declaration of Independence cit., pp. 1510–1516. See
M. Gardell, The Roots of Breivik’s Ideology: Where Does the Romantic Male Warrior Ideal
Come from Today?, in “Eutopia. Institute of Ideas on Islam, Diversity and Democracy,” Aug.
2, 2011, www.eutopiainstitute.org/2011/08/theroots-of-breiviks-ideology-where-does-the
-romantic-male-warrior-ideal-come-fromtoday/ (cons. Aug. 9, 2011, the page was found
to be inactive when cons. May 6, 2019). Among the recent studies on the imaginary of
the Great North, I recall S. Briens (ed.), Le Boréalisme, monograph issue of the journal
“Études germaniques,” 71 (2016), 2; R. Facchini, D. Iacono, “The North is Hard and Cold,
and Has No Mercy”—Le “Nord” médiéval dans les séries télévisées, in Moyen Âge et séri-
es, monograph issue of “Médiévales: Langues, Textes, Histoire,” 2020, forthcoming.
I also recall the international interdisciplinary seminar Représentations modernes et
contemporaines des Nords médiévaux organized by Alain Dierkens, Alban Gautier, Odile
Parsis-Barubé and Alexis Wilkin, which convened various universities in France and Bel-
gium from 2015 to 2017.

Chapter 9
Druids and Bards: Celtic Middle Ages
The only consolation lies in fragments of medieval mystery plays, in

which God speaks Cornish and the Devil English.
C. magris, The Fortunate Isles (1989)
We have spoken of chivalry and the North—that is, of the values of Tradition,
courage in war, faith; of the pure and uncorrupted individuals, who know the
secrets of runes and the Grail; of the anti-classical, anti-Christian, and anti-
modern counter-cultures that emerge in antiquity, last through the Middle
Ages and survive up to our day in little “Fellowships of the Ring.” There is an-
other topos that reflects all these elements, adds distinctive new ones, and
characterizes just as richly, if not more so, the contemporary political imagi-
nary of the Middle Ages, juxtaposing and mixing with all the elements identi-
fied so far: what we’re looking at is a “new Celtic revival.”
The phenomenon of the current massive revival of Celtic traditions also
dates back to the Sixties, but from the Seventies on it has taken off in a way that
shows no sign of stopping.1 Combined with renewed claims to communal
identities, it offers a homogeneous and standardized representation, in a mode
analogous to what we have seen in the case of civic festivals. Celtic music
marked by fifes, harps, and bagpipes, from Alan Stivell and the Chieftains,
founded in 1963, to the famous American radio program The Thistle and Sham-
rock, the enormous musical catalogs available online, Irish pubs, celebrations
of Samhein and even the holiday of Halloween, a Christian appropriation of
the Celtic feast of Beltane unknown in Italy in its new form until thirty years
ago, are today commonplace throughout the West. In contrast to the myths of
the North, which are relatively less exportable because of their inherent ethnic
component, Celticism is in widespread vogue today for two primary reasons.
The first is because it has been reinvented in conjunction with the fantasy
genre: this world is one of its most common settings. We have been inundated
with “Celtic” material, presented as the rebirth or remains of an ancient, wise,
and perfect mystic tradition. The operation has been so successful that many
now associate the concept of a magical and distant past specifically with the
Celtic world. As an alternative tradition, Celticism is undoubtedly victorious.
1 V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 119–142, Ch. 5, The Celtic Bandwagon, and
pp. 143–174, Ch. 6, King Arthur, with bibliography.

Druids and Bards: Celtic Middle Ages 143
Like the myths of the North, it also serves today as the basis for new religions
that call themselves “old religions” or “traditional religions.” Part of the neo-
pagan movement, they promote peace and harmony and above all an intimate
and universal relationship with nature and its magic: they are Druidism or
Celticism, which presents itself as a continuation of the Druidic cults, and
Wicca, which claims to be a continuation of the esoteric medieval cults that in
turn derived from ancient pagan religions, were considered witchcraft, and
were brought to the brink of extinction by the Church.2 This is where, by the
by, we get the suspicions of Harry Potter promoting witchcraft and being anti-
Christian: a judgment that seems to have nothing at all to do with Joanne Kath-
leen Rowling’s intentions for the cycle of novels. The author has recently added
a further Celtic and medievalizing ingredient to her stories: The Tales of Beedle
the Bard, attributed to a bard-mage of the fifteenth century.3
The second reason for Celticism’s current great fortune resides in the fact
that it responds to the desire, primarily on the part of American culture, for an
ancestral homeland formed through Gaelic myths, the Arthurian cycle, and
the ancient Britannic and Irish lands. From this point of view, one might even
say that contemporary Celticism is a functional answer to the search for roots
and, at the same time, an umpteenth symptom of American culture’s impact
on the entire West. Thus, in the United States, Medieval and Renaissance Fairs
are common events beloved by Wiccans and hippies, who all come together,
dressed in long tunics, around booths and stalls where biological, non-GMO
products mix with recipes dating to the Middle Ages.
So far we’ve been talking about Celticism, but not about the Middle Ages
proper. In reality, the two are closely connected, as in the cases of the fantasy
genre and witchcraft touched on above (though we should always remember
that the phenomenon of witchcraft and the persecution of it is not, in reality,
characteristic of the Middle Ages). The connection between Celticism and the
Middle Ages is not immediately apparent, since when we talk about bards and
druids we are referring to an age even more remote than the Medieval Era.
Thus, and rightly so, the beloved Asterix comics humorously relate the
encounters between the proud Gauls of Brittany and the Roman invaders. The
2 Ph. Carr Gomm, The Druid Renaissance: The Voice of Druidry Today, Harper-Collins Canada,
Thorson 1996, n. ed. The Rebirth of Druidry: Ancient Earth Wisdom for Today, Element Books
Ltd, Rockport (MA) 2003; M. Introvigne, A. Menegotto and P.L. Zoccatelli, Aspetti spirituali
dei revival cit., with bibliography; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 127–137.
3 J.K. Rowling, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Children’s High Level Books, s.l. 2007. In the Italian
edition (Le fiabe di Beda il Bardo, Salani, Milano 2008), the name of the bard has been trans-
lated as that of the great Anglo-Saxon writer who lived between the seventh and eighth cen-
turies (St. Bede).

144 Chapter 9
adventures of Asterix and Obelix take place around 50 b.c., but even they have
been, and surprisingly still are, bent to political uses.4
Nevertheless, Celtic myths—along with German and Norse ones—are con-
sidered one of the most popular ways of representing the Middle Ages in mo-
dernity. This is for various reasons: first of all, because this new usage borrows
a great deal from the Romantic motifs that informed its first revival—the one,
just to be clear, that had a prophet in James MacPherson, the inventor of Os-
sian, and an epigone in William Butler Yeats.5 It is, in fact, precisely from Yeat’s
romantically medievalized Ireland that a good part of the recent Celtic revival
was born. Another motive for the medievalization of Celticism is linked to a
current return to the Norse myths, in that they share the dimension of contin-
uum from proto-historic civilization to medieval civilization, without the cae-
sura represented by Rome. The proto-historic phase leads into the Middle Ages
without interruption. And since the ancestral Celtic tradition, also a Nordic
alternative to the classical, has reached us through stone monuments of re-
mote antiquity and written texts that originate no earlier than the Middle
Ages, see then how dolmens and menhirs, tales and ballads come to be inter-
preted uninterruptedly, as the enduring traces of an ancient civilization. A fi-
nal motive for the link between the Celtic world and the Middle Ages lies in the
fact that the most famous medieval literary saga, the Breton cycle of Merlin,
Arthur, and his noble knights, is simultaneously Celtic and medieval. Thus the
Holy Grail, whose legend reaches us through medieval texts, must conceal a
much more ancient substrate, and the Grail itself must be none other than the
magic cauldron of the Druids, font of prosperity, magic, and wealth: in other
4 Being Celtic means being anti-Roman, and this means taking Asterix seriously, and Assur-
ancetourix (Cacofonix/Malacoustix in Britain and America) even more seriously, insofar as
they are “bards.” Cf. A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., p. 17: “France of the
Gaullist years granted a great success to Asterix, who, in a comic and anachronistic key, pro-
jected on their ancestors the banner of national identity.” Asterix, then, serves just as mag-
nificently for French nationalism as for Breton separatism. On Asterix as a myth of the right,
a symbol of deep France, defender of identity: L. Lanna and F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit.,
pp. 41–44. However, at the end of the 1800s the cult of Vercingetorix was characteristic of the
left: cf. Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 127 ff., 163. On the fiftieth anniversary of the
comic, Asterix and his Gauls were accused of being extremists, localists, and enemies of all
forms of cultural mélange. The good guys are the Romans again, the symbol of multicultural-
ism and modernity: cf. D. Naso, Altro che Asterix. Noi stiamo con Cesare, in “Ffweb Magazine,”
Oct. 27, 2009.
5 J. Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representa-
tion of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame (IN)
1997. On Irish political medievalism, see today E. Byers, St. Kelly, K. Stevenson, “The North
Remembers”: The Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages in Irish Political Culture, in The Middle
Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-first-century Perspectives cit., pp. 45–72.

words, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.6 Next to the Grail, even tradi-
tions that are characteristically Irish (such as the Little People, Leprechauns,
and the Túatha Dé Danann) or Welsh (the tales of the Mabinogion) can be set
in a Celtic and magical Middle Ages. Or, indeed, a Middle Ages that is magical
because it is Celtic. In Celticism we find everything we need: tradition, mystery,
mysticism, fairy tales, magic, the Grail. Fantasy, which as a literary and film
genre doesn’t need to base itself on historical reconstructions, is perhaps most
responsible for the synchronic superposition of places, times, and characters
that have obviously never met: in a work of fantasy, Druids, bards, ladies,
counts, and knights (not to mention orcs and dragons) may live together in
peace, in a setting that is, according to the laws of narrative, medieval.
This new, medievalized Celtic revival is so pervasive that it has a decisive
influence on current representations of the Middle Ages. The general notion
that we have of the Middle Ages today is once again the Romantic one. The
fantasy genre has progressively shifted the standard image of the Middle Ages
from grim, inquisitorial, and violent, to fantastical and fairy-tale, but at the
same time it has homogenized it into an imitative proposition valid for every
latitude. The greatest influence of this medieval Celticism lies in its character-
istic script. When I was a child, and up until about thirty years ago, the script
most identified with the Middle Ages was Gothic. Today, however, the scripts
best suited to representing the Middle Ages tout court are another: I’m refer-
ring to uncial, along with semiuncial.7 These Early Medieval scripts were com-
mon in the British Isles until the Norman conquest. After undergoing some
modifications, they even transitioned to print: they are the Gaelic fonts that
one finds all over contemporary Ireland. It is in precisely this kind of Anglo-
Irish type-setting, derived in turn from Roman models (following the evangeli-
zation of the British Isles by Saint Augustine of Canterbury) that one recog-
nizes the typical writing of the Middle Ages as imagined today. We can even
see the ogre Shrek (protagonist of the eponymous 2001 film) using a book
limned in uncial as toilet paper. This is an obvious shot at the old fairy-tale films
produced by Disney, which all opened with the pages of a lovely, ancient book;
but the writing in these was more Gothic, certainly not uncial. The same script
6 For example, R. Sh. Loomis, The Grail, from Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol, University of
Wales Press-Columbia University Press, Cardiff-New York 1963; N. D’Anna, Il Santo Graal.
Mito e realtà, Archè-Edizioni PiZeta, San Donato Milanese 2009.
7 T. di Carpegna Falconieri, Dalla gotica all’onciale. Considerazioni paleografico-sociologiche
sulla tipizzazione attuale della scrittura medievale, in “Quaderni medievali,” xxvii (2002),
n. 54, pp. 186–195; M.H. Smith, Du manuscrit à la typographie numérique. Présent et avenir des
écritures anciennes, in “Gazette du livre médiéval,” xxvii (2008), nn. 52–53, pp. 51–78: 59–61,
72 ff., www.menestrel.fr/IMG/pdf/Smith_Paleotypo.pdf (cons. May 12, 2019).

146 Chapter 9
is also employed in the title of the Lexikon des Mittelalters, one of the monu-
ments of contemporary Medieval scholarship.8 The adoption of uncial charac-
ters, round and far from harsh, may derive precisely from the association of the
Middle Ages with a legendary, Celtic time, populated by gnomes, fairies, and
fauns. Not for nothing does the Elfish script invented by Tolkien, also rounded
and graceful, resemble uncial. In short, Celticism is such an important phe-
nomenon that it has profoundly altered this most basic aspect of our current
representation of the Middle Ages.
Now, all that has been said thus far also has connections to politics. This
does not mean that Celticism today is relevant only in that sense; quite the op-
posite is true, and for many readers of fantasy novels and drinkers of Guinness,
the idea that their gestures could be considered markers of political identity is
probably news to them. When Angelo Branduardi “sings Yeats” and Fiorella
Mannoia titles her song The Skies of Ireland, it really doesn’t seem like politics
should be shoved into the middle of it.
Wicca and the new Celtic religions are apolitical or prepolitical cultural ex-
pressions, which in the Anglo-Saxon countries, at least, show some affinity with
movements of democratic inspiration, with anarchism, and most of all with
New Age culture. Our New Medieval Era, therefore, produces neo-pagans quite
different from one another, even in a political sense: while Odinists may not
champion progressive thought but cling tight to their ethnic models, Druidists
and Wiccans (particularly in their feminine component, the result of a broadly
feminist culture) only rarely identify themselves in such terms.9 Yet even they
can be considered in a certain sense “reactionary,” in that they believe they are
passing down ancient secrets and returning to an ancestral, matriarchal order.
Nevertheless, the origins of the political usage of Celticism can be found in
that Romantic “reawakening of nations,” in the contemporaneous search for
epics, songs, romances, artworks, historical sources, and monuments, and in
the related independence movements that coursed through the 1800s and that
in all of Europe identified the Middle Ages as the historic site of the origin of
the nation.10 Communities that have a clan structure, like those of Scotland
8 Lexikon des Mittelalters, Artemis-&-Winkler-Verlag, München-Zürich 1980–1993 (voll. i–

vi); LexMa-Verlag, München 1995–98 (voll. vii–ix).
9 Cf. V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 131 ff. Now and then, witches cast
curses on Donald Trump: see, e.g., C. Keck, What Witches Can Teach Us about Fighting
Back against Trump, Jan. 17, 2017, https://www.bustle.com/p/what-witches-can-teach-us-
about-fighting-back-against-trump-30574, and Witches cast “mass spell” against Donald
Trump, bbc News, Feb. 25, 2017: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39090334
(cons. May 12, 2019).
10 See Chs. 3 and 11.

and Ireland, developed in relatively ancient (but not necessarily medieval)

times a sentiment distantly comparable to contemporary nationalism, since
they already possessed such identity-defining elements as distinctive languag-
es, characteristic garments, and a pronounced feeling of otherness with re-
spect to the kingdom of England. Above all, this feeling of a collective past was
powerful because the clan structure made everyone, lords and peasants, part
of the same group, conceived in its genealogical continuity with mythicized
common ancestors: which ultimately leads us, however, to a fragmentation of
identity rather than to a coherent national sentiment in the modern sense.
In the Celtic countries (especially Scotland and Ireland) the common feel-
ing of belonging may be more ancient than in other countries, but it is equally
subject to the vicissitudes of history: even these supposedly ancestral identi-
ties are in reality mutable. To actually arrive at the Middle Ages, or indeed an-
tiquity, by following a continuous thread of traditions is impossible, because
the breaks are centuries-long. The kilt is not attested earlier than the 1700s;
Druidism is a religion that originated in the same century and was refounded
only in the last few decades; during the nineteenth century, Wales was filled
with miniature Stonehenges; the Breton flag with ermine spots was designed
in 1923.11 The universal Celtic character is a modern philological construct,
based on the fact that peoples of truly ancient origin, but otherwise very dis-
tant from each other, are linked by the circumstance of speaking (or trying to
rediscover) languages belonging to the same family; and it is a political con-
struct based primarily on the identification of a “common enemy,” namely the
French for the Bretons and the English for the others. Thus, current Scots call
the English “Sassenach,” or Saxon, pretending to still be in the position of that
Early Middle Ages that sees the Celts fortifying against the Saxon invasion; yet
Lowland Scots of the 1700s and early 1800s, such as Walter Scott, did not actu-
ally consider themselves “Gaelic,” but “Teutonic.”12
Celticism remains one of the most remote myth-engines of national identity,
but it is almost entirely of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manufacture.
11 C. Bertho, L’invention de la Bretagne. Genèse sociale d’un stéréotype, in “Actes de la recher-

che en sciences sociales,” vi (1980), n. 35, pp. 45–62, www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/
prescript/article/arss_0335-5322_1980_num_35_1_2099 (cons. May 12, 2019). See in general
the essays contained in E.J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition cit.,
in particular H. Trevor-Roper, The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scot-
land, pp. 15–43; Id., The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, Yale University Press, New
Haven-London 2008. See also A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit.,
pp. 198–201; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 123 ff.; W. Pohl, Modern Uses
cit., pp. 62 ff., with bibliography.
12 V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., p. 127.

148 Chapter 9
Deeply intrinsic to medievalism, it represents, along with the German move-

ment, perhaps the greatest national epic ever constructed, existing in opposi-
tion to “Englishness” and in a partial dialectic with the sentiment of “British-
ness,” whose foundation was pursued by the Empire in the Victorian Age.13
And here we state the obvious: Merlin, Arthur, and the noble knights of the
Round Table are founding figures not just for the Celtic nationalist myth, but
also for the identitarian construction of Englishness and its broader form of
Britishness. One need only recall (among so many other even more venera-
ble manifestations) Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.14 The Arthurian
myth may function just as perfectly to represent the monarch of the United
Kingdom of “Great” Britain, as to symbolize secession, exclusive identity, and
strenuous defense from invasion. This is one reason, for instance, for recent
disputes surrounding historic sites in Cornwall, which can be part of English
Heritage or, vice versa, of a quite distinct Cornish Heritage.
A prolonged early Celtic revival in a political key can be dated to the period
between the mid-1700s and circa 1922, when the Free State of Ireland separated
from the United Kingdom. The second Celtic revival, on the other hand, start-
ed in the early Seventies, coeval with the resumption of bilingual instruction in
Ireland—and continues today. This revival corresponds, politically, to Breton,
Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and Cornish irredentism, which inevitably makes use
of the Middle Ages to express itself—insofar as Celticism is constructed in
an essentially medieval setting—and which connects to the identification of
13 On “Britishness” and “Englishness” see ibid., pp. 107 ff.; 146. Veronica Ortenberg recalls
how “Englishness” was sacrificed in the nineteenth century to the broader ideal of “Brit-
ishness,” such that even today, historical references that are characteristically English, like
the figure of Alfred the Great, are perceived and promoted as generically British. On the
current revival of specifically English nationalism, which makes use of the symbol of St.
George, for example, cf. ibid., pp. 108 ff. The Scottish identity itself, as is known, does not
necessarily lead to a separatist vision, since Scotland has been considered, since the 1800s,
“the guardian of the ancestral values of the United Kingdom,” with its Balmoral Castle, its
whisky, the bagpipe, and the kilt, worn by soldiers and princes of the blood alike: cf. A.-M.
Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit, pp. 198 ff.
14 A. Tennyson, The Idylls of the King, 1856–85, now in the edition of J.M. Gray, Penguin,
London 1983. On the Arthurian myth in Anglo-Saxon countries there is a nearly boundless
bibliography: cf. V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 143–174 (pp. 158 ff. on the
subject of Tennyson; pp. 171 ff. on the earliest years of the new millennium). See also D.L.
Hoffman and E.S. Sklar (eds.), King Arthur in Popular Culture, McFarland, Jefferson (NC)
2002; B. Olton (ed.), Arthurian Legends on Films and Television cit.; W. Blanc, Le roi Arthur,
un mythe contemporain: de Chrétien de Troyes à Kaamelott en passant par les Monty
Python, Libertalia, Paris 2016. In Italian it is helpful to refer to M. Sanfilippo, Camelot cit.,
which analyzes and comments on interpretive threads up to 2006.

historic sites of the Round Table (at Caerleon), the Isle of Avalon, and Tintagel.15
The release of Mel Gibson’s film Braveheart (1995), which relates the fourteenth-
century epic of William Wallace and Scotsmen against English presented as
simply evil beings, created a tense environment.16
Precisely because it is a broad construct with a structured tradition, as well
as a purveyor of independentist and libertarian messages embedded in a Mid-
dle Ages already loved and shared for other reasons, political Celticism is re-
ceived far beyond the geographical borders of its proper regions. As opposed to
America, where Celticism does not generally have any real political connota-
tion and, when it does have one, is in an anarchist or progressive mold, and as
opposed to Scotland, Brittany, or Wales, where its motivation is markedly patri-
otic, its political uses on the continent are often of a conservative orientation.
Here Celticism is seen as a return to shared traditions and a European Golden
Age, as one could say that all the Western countries of the Old Continent had,
at some point, a Celtic phase: not just in Wales and Brittany, but even in the
rest of France, and in Germany, Italy, or Spain.17 The same cannot be said, for
instance, of the Basque independence movement, which makes similar claims
and identifies itself with the Middle Ages in the Kingdom of Navarre, but is
lacking that common myth-engine that serves as a bond and that resides, at
least in part, precisely in the medieval imaginary standardized in a Celtic key.
Almost all Europeans, at a certain point in their history, can claim to have been
Celts. They all know of King Arthur and Merlin the Wizard and think of these
characters almost as childhood friends. Few Europeans, however, can claim to
have been Basque.
The Breton, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish are considered the epigones of a once
dominant ancient civilization, who fought and still fight against the invader:
they become symbols of a struggle against oppression in an anti-modern key,
and thus particularly close to Traditionalist thought, as in Belgium’s Jeune Eu-
rope (“Young Europe,” est. 1962) and in Italy’s far-right movements of Evolian
15 On which see the ironic article by J. Nobel, Tintagel: The Best of English Twinkie, in D.L.
Hoffman and E.S. Sklar (eds.), King Arthur in Popular Culture cit., pp. 36–44; B. Earl, Places
Don’t Have to Be True to Be True. The Appropriation of King Arthur and Cultural Value of
Tourist Sites, in D. Marshall (ed.), Mass Market Medieval cit., pp. 102–112; V. Ortenberg, In
Search of the Holy Grail cit., p. 173.
16 T. Shippey, Medievalisms and Why They Matter, in “Studies in Medievalism,” XVII (2009),
pp. 45–54: 50.
17 J. Markale, The Celts: Uncovering the Mythic and Historic Origins of Western Culture, Inner
Traditions, Rochester (VT) 1993 (original edition: Les Celtes et la civilisation celtique. Mythe
et histoire, Payot, Paris 1969); V. Kruta, Aux racines de l’Europe: le monde des Celtes, Kronos,
Paris 2001; E. Percivaldi, I Celti. Una civiltà europea, Giunti, Firenze 2003.

150 Chapter 9
inspiration.18 In Italy, in fact, we can easily see the presence of two usages of
Celticism, opposite in their political intentions, yet all but identical in setting.
The first is that of the neo-fascists and post-fascists (and one that in truth is not
limited to Italy), who since the early Eighties have displayed an affinity with
Scottish and above all Irish independence, who share the same medieval imag-
inary represented by the Grail and Excalibur, and who declare their Celticism
in a pan-European key, quite often (and paradoxically, given its origins as a
mass phenomenon) with an anti-American function. They consider Celtic mu-
sic the “European dimension of ethnic music”19 and have adopted the Celtic
cross as their own primary symbol. While the origin and fate of this political
sign must be sought elsewhere, with time it has acquired this simultaneously
Celtic and Nordic meaning, as one may deduce, for instance, from the song
Terra di Thule (“Land of Thule”), recorded in 1980 by the band La Compagnia
dell’Anello (“Fellowship of the Ring”):
On a sun-kissed plain
The Northern folk are all arrayed
Blonde warriors in silver helms
The Circle and the Cross are fluttering in the wind.20
As we have already spoken of this particular use of the Middle Ages in previous
chapters, we turn instead to consider another employment of Celticism in
Italy, one that is much more recent and that is founded on a presumed ethnic
basis. We speak of the political party known as the Northern League (Lega
Nord), which has provided itself with a new remote past appropriated in a
18 Note however that René Guénon did not believe in a preserved Druidic tradition: cf. The
Crisis of the Modern World cit., p. 21: “We do not dispute the survival of a certain ‘Celtic
Spirit’ which is still able to manifest itself in various forms, as has in fact happened from
time to time; but when people try to convince us that there still exist spritual centres
where the Druidical tradition is preserved intact, we cannot but demand proof of an as-
sertion which in the meantime certainly appears extremely doubtful, if not altogether out
of the question.” Cf. also ibid., pp. 24 ff.
19 L. Lanna and F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit., pp. 259 ff.; see also M. Martelli, La lotta ir-
landese. Una storia di libertà, pref. by F. Cardini, Il Cerchio iniziative editoriali, Rimini
2006; G. Armillotta, I popoli europei senza stato. Viaggio attraverso le etnie dimenticate,
Jouvence, Roma 2009, pp. 15–18 (Brittany), 39–44 (Cornwall), 63–68 (Wales), 145–152
(Scotland).
20 The Celtic cross came to Italy through France, as one of the symbols of Jean Thiriart’s
Young Europe, and had already made an appearance during the Algerian War. With no
original connection to Celticism, this symbol took root in the peninsula by the end of the
1970s. Reproduced infinite times, partly thanks to its simplicity, in Italy it was declared il-
legal in 1993. See L. Lanna and F. Rossi, Fascisti immaginari cit., pp. 132–135; N. Rao, La
Fiamma e la Celtica cit.

singular way from the Celtic revival.21 Since Northern Italy was inhabited by
Celtic populations (Insubres, Libui, Hardoni,22 Cenomani), it follows that
Padania itself must be a Celtic country, and therefore that Roman civilization
was no more than a foreign invasion.23 The fact that Milan was capital of the
Empire, that Virgil was born in Mantua, Catullus in Sirmione, and Livy in
Padua—all locations in the north of Italy—has no place in their narrative: the
only hero worth remembering is Brennus the Gaul who sacked Rome in 390
b.c. There’s no point in mentioning that these Celts were invaders themselves,
having reached Northern Italy in the fifth century b.c., and were entirely and
definitively assimilated with the Romans. Besides, we’re not really think of
these Italian Celts when we organize fairs with bagpipes and characters in
horned helms, but the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish, with whom they share the
fate of suffering in the clutches of the invader.
The treasure of Manerbio,24 the most important discovery of Celtic coins in
Europe, was perhaps the common safe and sanctuary of a federated people.
From that it follows that:
These remains lead one to believe that [the Insubres, Libui, and Ceno-
mani] had an interest in important federated projects (importanti progetti
federativi) […] and had autonomy in negotiating their relationship with
the Romans.25
21 Cf. A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., p. 286. See, for example, G. Ciola,
Noi Celti e Longobardi. Le altre radici degli Italiani. L’Italia celtica preromana, l’Italia ger-
manizzata dei secoli bui, Edizioni Helvetia, Spinea (VE) 19972. Numerous articles on an-
cient and medieval history can be found in the publication “Quaderni padani” of the
Libera compagnia padana, since 1995, http://www.laliberacompagnia.org/_old_site/pub
blicazioni/quaderni_01.html (cons. May 12, 2019). TN: In 2018 the Lega Nord, whose full
name is the Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania (“Northern League for the Inde-
pendence of Padania,” Padania being its mythical homeland in the Po River plain)
rebranded itself as simply the Lega, “League,” without officially changing its name. Until
August 20, 2019, it formed part of Italy’s ruling coalition, together with the Movimento 5
Stelle (The Five-Star Movement, M5S).
22 TN: In Italian the name is “Celoduri,” which permits a clever, but practically untranslat-
able, play on words based on the Italian expression “ce l’ho duro,” meaning “I have an
erection.” In the 1990s, “La Lega ce l’ha duro!” (“The League has a hard-on!”) became a
rallying cry for followers of the Northern League, and its leader Umberto Bossi coined the
term “celodurismo” to describe his party’s aggressive, stubborn, unilateral approach to
politics.
23 TN: On Padania: see note 21, above.
24 TN: Manerbio (BS) is a town in Lombardy; the horde was discovered in 1955.
25 Thus in the foreword by the mayor of Brescia, Paolo Corsini, to the book E.A. Arslan and
F. Morandini (eds.), La monetazione delle genti celtiche a nord del Po tra iv e I secolo a.C. Il
tesoro di dracme in argento di Manerbio, Et, Milano 2007, s.p.

152 Chapter 9
Federalism becomes a fundamental characteristic of the Padanian Celtic

populations, just as it would be for the League of Lombard cities in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. In this manner a continuum is constructed with the
current demands for federalism of the Northern League and its accusation lev-
eled at Rome as the “Thief.”
Amid the vast wash of renewed claims to national identity that have swept
through the world since the early 1990s, the case of Leaguist Celticism seems
particularly interesting because it arose practically from nothing. It represents,
therefore, an example of an invented tradition whose very recent genesis is
patent. Its emergence should essentially be attributed to a conscious mimesis
rooted in an understanding of the effects of Celticism on a mass culture from
which it yet tries to distance itself, inasmuch as the Northern League is also a
strongly anti-European party. Thus, side by side with an identitarian construct
founded on autochthonous movements (the Lombard League and its war
against Barbarossa, whom we will meet in Chapter 11), the Northern League
has invented a Celtic identity for itself, for instance, introducing a marriage rite
during which the bride and groom drink apple cider and exchange bracelets in
place of rings.26 Moreover, it has adopted the emblem of the so-called “Sun of
the Alps,” a rotating solar symbol similar to one of all too unhappy memory. To
all appearances, there are even Padanian bards.27
26 See, for example, E. Rosaspina, Un rito celtico per le prime nozze padane, in “Corriere della
Sera,” 21 September 1998, p. 5.
27 Giovani Padani “Primule Verdi,” Scrivi anche tu le storie Padane, diventa un bardo Padano,
2001–2002, http://digilander.libero.it/primuleverdi/fantasy/bardopadano.html (cons.
May 12, 2019). Cf. L. Del Corso and P. Pecere, L’anello che non tiene cit., p. 7.

Chapter 10
Popes and Saints: Catholic Middle Ages
He thought […] of old Madame de Tremouillac, who, having wakened up

one morning early and seen a skeleton seated in an armchair by the fire
reading her diary, had been confined to her bed for six weeks with an at-
tack of brain fever, and, on her recovery, had become reconciled to the
Church, and broken off her connection with that notorious sceptic, Mon-
sieur de Voltaire.
O. wilde, The Canterville Ghost (1887)
After having delved into the uses of the Middle Ages on the part of those who
have found in it a political and/or spiritual meaning structured as an alterna-
tive, a return, or an elsewhere, it is time for an analysis that may be even more
complex, that of the political use of the idea of the medieval in Christian—and
more specifically Catholic—culture of the last few decades. Among the many
themes contained in this book, this is perhaps the most difficult to develop,
albeit for a reason that is quite simple: while the political, cultural, and reli-
gious movements we have spoken of so far are experiences that were born and
matured during a period between the 1700s and 1900s, Christianity is not.
Christianity in the Middle Ages was already adult; indeed, the Medieval Era
only constitutes one long segment of its history. The institutions that gave
shape to the Christian religion, the churches, the Orders, the communities of
the faithful, have deep origins in a time that predates the Medieval Era, and
many of them were empirically founded before then.
As opposed to the myth of an enduring Wicca, Druidic, or Odinist religion,
the Roman papacy was truly—historically—an operating institution in the
Middle Ages as today. The Catholic tradition is presented so coherently that it
has itself served as a model for those who found themselves needing to rethink
their own history as a continuum without having any proof. But the question
of the relationship between Christianity and the Middle Ages is highly com-
plex. As, for example, we invoked the concepts of historic time and mythic
time to explain the relationship between a medieval phenomenon (like chiv-
alry) and its current reappropriation, we could do the same here, but only with
the caveat that the intersections are much deeper and thus it’s not easy to dis-
tinguish where the course of history ends and the atemporal dogmatic dimen-
sion, and from there the mythical sphere, begins.

154 Chapter 10
Continental Protestantism (Lutheran, Calvinist) requires a “positive” Mid-

dle Ages only in a limited form, as it always has recourse to a much higher and
older model, that of the first sequela Christi, the primitive Church. Except for a
few necessary exceptions—above all the recovery of an individual dimension
of medieval spirituality—one can argue that Protestantism fundamentally re-
jects the Middle Ages as a positive politico-religious and public category, con-
sidering it instead a decadent period of superstitious religiosity, which made
use of images and basely material objects, and of the corrupt Roman Church:
such a view informed the sixteenth-century histories of Matthias Flacius Illyri-
cus and the Magdeburg Centuries.1 The Middle Ages are identified with tradi-
tion and stasis, while the reform represents modernity and dynamism: its func-
tion is thus eminently oppositional. The celebrated work of Max Weber, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), radicalized this ideological
polarization.2 Perhaps this is why, in the countries of Protestant tradition, the
myth of the Middle Ages, while quite common, does not tend to manifest as a
politico-religious category, and when it does, it usually takes either generic
themes (chivalry) or non-Christian ones (pagan religions, esotericism) as its
points of reference. Or, alternately, it takes up ancient motifs of anti-Catholic
and anti-Papist conflict, as encountered in several recent novels and feature
films, such as The Da Vinci Code (2003) and Pope Joan (2009).
The case of Anglicanism, which Veronica Ortenberg and Michael Alexander
have touched on, is completely different.3 This Anglo-Saxon Protestant cul-
ture, aside from making fundamental contributions to medievalism in general,
has also offered a supreme image of medieval religiosity which it adopts as its
own, insofar as its relationship with tradition, perceived as autochthonous, is
presented in a continuous and not in an oppositional key. Hence the great
Pre-Raphaelite artistic movement of the 1800s, which was also profoundly
mystical; hence the launch of the traditionalist revival of the High Church,
summed up in the popular expression “smells and bells.”4 Hence the recovery
of a Middle Ages shines forth in construction of great, neo-Gothic Cathedrals—
almost like towering forests of the North—and university buildings, places of
1 Cf. Ch. Amalvi, Le gôut du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 215–218.

2 M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Other Writings, Penguin, Lon-
don 2002, original edition: Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, in “Archiv
für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik,” i (1904–1905), nn. 20–21. Cf. B. Stock, Listening for
the Text cit., pp. 117–119.
3 V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 81–85, 157, 177 ff.; M. Alexander, Medievalism
cit., pp. 50–64, 212, 245–261.
4 V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., p. 83.

Popes and Saints: Catholic Middle Ages 155
culture associated with monastic spirituality.5 We’re dealing with a religiosity

that continues well into the twentieth century, for instance, through the adop-
tion of the chivalric ethics of Saint George by Lord Baden-Powell’s scout pro-
gram, and through the literary works of countless authors.
But in countries of Anglican culture, the Middle Ages cannot serve to repro-
duce values that embrace adherence to a universal, Christian community sub-
ject to the Roman authority, which is the node of the Catholic interpretation of
the Middle Ages. If from the level of the highest spirituality translated into
symbols, one proceeds to consider the ecclesiastical institutions and hierar-
chies operative in these territories, then one comes rapidly up against Angli-
canism’s almost insurmountable problem of establishing a balance between
continuity—necessary for celebrating its own heritage—and caesura—also
necessary, but this time to mark the rupture with Rome and thus with the Me-
dieval Era itself. Not for nothing is the Anglo-Saxon revival, to a not-insignificant
degree, Anglo-Catholic (think of Cardinal Newman in the 1800s, or authors like
G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1900s). And not for nothing have those
Protestant thinkers who refer to the higher meaning of the Christian Middle
Ages often been suspected of being papists and crypto-Catholics.
We come then to evaluate, in broad strokes, a Catholic Middle Ages. Here
the discourse presents itself in the guise of linearity, because tradition, which
includes the original Church and the entire medieval period, is not under dis-
cussion. All of history is historia salutis, the history of salvation, and knows no
interruptions. The model of medieval christianitas is that of a society divided
into perfect (that is, unalterable) ordines, which coexist harmoniously and syn-
ergistically, each one respecting its own role, adhering to a single creed, and
obeying a single hierarchy. According to Catholic philosophy and historiogra-
phy, this Societas Christiana is one of the original and originating characteris-
tics of medieval civilization, and the Medieval Era becomes “the age of a global
civilization, tending towards an organic realization of itself.”6 From ethical and
political points of view, returning to the spirit of the Middle Ages thus means
returning to the unitary ideal of society, which corresponds once and for all to
the Church, the perfect society. The theme of medieval Christianity as a unify-
ing period for society is one of the cornerstones of the debate, quite heated in
5 C.A. Bruzelius, Il gotico nell’architettura universitaria, in E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi (eds.),

Arti e storia nel medioevo, vol. iv cit., pp. 483–490.
6 R. Manselli, Il medioevo come Christianitas: una scoperta romantica, in V. Branca (ed.), Conc-
etto, storia, miti e immagini cit., pp. 51–89: 89. On that subject today, see also R. Facchini,
Sognando la “Christianitas” cit.

156 Chapter 10
recent years, over the “Christian roots” of Europe, a theme we will address in a
later chapter.
In order to lay this design out in all its limpid clarity, we must obviously
consider Papal primacy as existing ab origine and not as the result of a histori-
cal process, which it actually was. We must consider the apostolic tradition as
univocal and uninterrupted, relegate the emperors to the role of simple lay-
men and the anti-popes to the role of schismatic heresiarchs, and judge every-
thing that in the Middle Ages was opposition, dissent, or even simple diversity
as extraneous to the social communion. The other religions practiced in Eu-
rope are incongruous and mere demonic leftovers: omnes dii gentium daemo-
nia (“All the gods of nations are demons”). The heresies turn into the crime of
lèse majesté, a failed attempt to subvert the divine and natural order. The idea
that multiple Christianities existed throughout the Middle Ages is unaccept-
able, except to the extent that one then recognizes that the true Christianity
was the one that triumphed. Thus, John Paul ii, celebrating the first millenni-
um of Hungary’s Pannonhalma Archabbey in 1996, gave a speech affirming
that “to commemorate the thousand years since the foundation of Pannon-
halma means […] thinking back to that state of unity among believers that
characterized the first millennium.”7 Certainly, the pontiff meant to refer to
the fact that the Great Schism between East and West (1054) had not yet hap-
pened, but thinking of the first millennium of Christianity as a long, original
period of unity among believers is not historically sound: if anything, the op-
posite is true, but after bitter conflict they finally settled on a few distinct
orthodoxies.
Rather than an inverted, antagonistic, and heterodox Middle Ages typical of
some of usages that we have seen on both the left (Ch. 6) and right (Ch. 7), here
we find ourselves before an official, orthodox, and legitimate Middle Ages. To
ensure the decidedly organic nature of this model, we must make reference
primarily to the period from the mid-twelfth to the early fourteenth century,
that stretch of time that in 1997 John Paul ii called a “Golden Age”8: the period,
7 John Paul ii, Con grande gioia sono venuto pellegrino, in J. Pal and A. Somorjai (eds.), Mille
anni di storia dell’arciabbazia di Pannonhalma, Accademia d’Ungheria, Roma 1997, pp. 7–11:
7 ff.
8 “Medieval Christianity in its Golden Age, reflecting on the facts of Revelations and the influ-
ence of Greek philosophy, expressed its vision of reality through the ‘transcendentals’: every
entity, as a participant in Being, is true, good, and beautiful […]. The primary acquisition of
medieval thought was that man, in the act of knowing, opens himself to objective reality,
which places itself before him as the limit of his wonder, and thus his respect, in addition to
his creativity. Thus the fundamental lines are drawn not only of a conception of the real, but
also of man’s very engagement with the world. Modern thought, whatever interpretation you
wish to give it, has replaced the principle of reality with the search for certainty through so-
called ‘methodical doubt.’ The consequence has been that man, having progressively lost his

that is, of effective Roman primacy, of hierarchical, juridical, liturgical, and

theological unity in the Church.
Now, concepts of a Christian empire and a Societas Christiana were in fact
widespread in the Middle Ages. Even the myth of the universality of Christian
and Imperial Rome is authentically medieval and pervaded the entire epoch:
the Middle Ages loved Rome more than the Renaissance did, because they
considered themselves its continuation and not its recreation. They kept it
alive as an illustrious elder rather than trying to resurrect the dead.9 Even Fran-
cis of Assisi is, to be sure, a man of the Middle Ages, but his message perdures,
and not through any later, intellectual reclamation, but through institutions
that have been kept alive for centuries. The hidden gaps exist and they are nu-
merous: the example of Francis was not chosen by chance, but because the
recollection of the saint has in fact changed many times over the centuries,
until he became the saint of peace.10 The fabric of his memory has been mend-
ed so many times already that it is hard to recognize the stitches that might
allow one to glimpse the restoration work and the labor of recomposition that,
a posteriori, presents a neat design and a unified plot.
In reality, a not insignificant part of what we consider authentically m
edieval
in religion is the fruit of the Restorationist, neo-Thomist, anti-Enlightenment,
anti-Progressive, and anti-Modernist Catholic and Anglican thought of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries: only since the 1800s have people thought
sense of wonder and respect for the reality external to and independent from him, has
started to erect himself as the center of the cosmos with a growing presumption of do-
minion.” John Paul ii, Messaggio al xviii Meeting per l’amicizia tra i popoli, Rimini, Aug.
24–30, 1997, in “Tracce. Rivista internazionale di Comunione e Liberazione,” www.tracce
.it/?id=338&id_n=4689&pagina=7 (cons. May 13, 2019). Cf. L. Negri, Controstoria. Una rilet-
tura di mille anni di vita della Chiesa, San Paolo, Torino 2000, pp. 9 ff. See also John Paul ii,
Memory and Identity cit. (pp. 118 ff. of the Italian edition).
9 A. Giardina and A. Vauchez, Il mito di Roma da Carlo Magno a Mussolini, Laterza, Roma-
Bari 2000; Roma antica nel medioevo. Mito, rappresentazioni, sopravvivenze nella “Respubli-
ca Christiana,” Vita e Pensiero, Milano 2001.
10 See C. Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate: una storia per parole e immagini
fino a Bonaventura e Giotto, Einaudi, Torino 2010; R. Michetti, Francesco d’Assisi e l’essenza
del cristianesimo. A proposito di alcune biografie storiche e di alcuni studi contemporanei, in
Francesco d’Assisi fra storia, letteratura e iconografia, Proceedings of seminar, Rende, 8–9
May 1995, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 1996, pp. 37–67; Id., François d’Assise et la paix
révélée. Réflexions sur le mythe du pacifisme franciscain et sur la predication de paix de
François d’Assise dans la société communale du xiiie siècle, in R.M. Dessì (ed.), Prêcher la
paix, et discipliner la société: Italie, France, Angleterre (xiiie–xve siècle), Brepols, Turnhout
2005, pp. 279–312; T. Caliò, R. Rusconi (eds.), San Francesco d’Italia. Santità e identità na-
zionale, Viella, Roma 2011; A. Marini, Controstoria: Francesco d’Assisi e l’Islam, “Francis-
cana,” 15 (2012), pp. 1–54; Ch. Mercuri, Francesco d’Assisi: la storia negata, Laterza, Roma-
Bari 20183.

158 Chapter 10
of the Middle Ages as the great age of united faith, free from those later strug-
gles among various denominations.11 The idea of a Europe united in Christian-
ity is the dream (and indeed also the project) of Innocent iii (r. 1198–1216) and,
six hundred years later, it is the dream (and regret) of Novalis: it is a territory
that lies between the dream of a future that was never realized and the dream
of a past that never was. This medieval project and its Romantic regret are
what truly united Europe in Christianity:
They were beautiful, splendid times, when Europe was a Christian land,
where a sole Christianity lived in this part of the world, humanely consti-
tuted; a single, great, common interest united the most distant provinces
of this vast spiritual realm. Without great worldly possessions a sole, su-
preme head directed and unified the great political forces. A bountiful
body, to which all had access, was placed immediately beneath him and
heeded his gestures and zealously labored to consolidate his beneficent
power.12
Thus, the Santa Romana Repubblica (to cite the title of a book by Giorgio Falco)
was the expression both of a culture dominant from the eleventh to thirteenth
centuries in particular, and of much more recent cultures that revived these
plans, dreams, and grievances with a political intention: these recent cultures
are the children of Innocent iii, but also of Novalis and Chateaubriand.13 They
11 R. Manselli, Il medioevo come Christianitas cit.

12 “Es waren schöne glänzende Zeiten, wo Europa ein christliches Land war, wo Eine Chris-
tenheit diesen menschlich gestalteten Welttheil bewohnte; Ein großes gemeinschaftli-
ches Interesse verband die entlegensten Provinzen dieses weiten geistlichen Reichs.—
Ohne große weltliche Besitzthümer lenkte und vereinigte Ein Oberhaupt, die großen
politischen Kräfte.—Eine zahlreiche Zunft zu der jedermann den Zutritt hatte, stand
unmittelbar unter demselben und vollführte seine Winke und strebte mit Eifer seine
wohlthätige Macht zu befestigen”: Novalis, Die Christenheit oder Europa [1798, first ed.
1826], now in Id., Schriften. Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. R. Samuel [et al.],
Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1960–77, vol. iii, pp. 507–525: 507. The work was written in 1798,
but only published in 1826; see on that subject R. Manselli, Il medioevo come Christianitas
cit., p. 64: “To be considered the true manifesto of Romantic historiography on the Middle
Ages in Germany”; F. Cardini, Europa. Le radici cristiane, Il Cerchio iniziative editoriali,
Rimini 20022, pp. 23 ff.
13 G. Falco, La Santa Romana Repubblica: Profilo storico del medioevo, Ricciardi, Milano-
Napoli 1954. Cf. R. Manselli, Il medioevo come Christianitas cit., especially pp. 63–69,
74–82. On the positions of Falco, Morghen, Manselli, and Miccoli regarding the “equation”
that Medieval=Christianitas, see O. Capitani, Medioevo passato prossimo cit., especially
pp. 304 ff.

are, at least in part, the result of an ex post reelaboration that created a sense of
unity by cherry-picking the most appropriate historical material.
From this perspective, the post-Middle Ages is a progressive undoing: the
nation-states undermined the pontifical auctoritas and Christian universal-
ism; the Renaissance introduced a naturalist neo-paganism; the Protestant
Reformation destroyed the unity of Christians, gave life to the nefarious germ
of individualism, and invented capitalism; the Enlightenment and Revolution
are the parents of atheism, statism, and historical relativism: all these are the
stepping stones of a descending path that has distorted humanity. The French
Revolution marks the radical turning point. It must represent “the highest de-
gree of corruption that has ever been reached,”14 burying what still remained
alive of the Middle Ages, that is, the concept of the sacred nature of authority
and power, the “feudal” institutions based on interpersonal relationships of
loyalty and not on the abstract bureaucracy of a sinister and oppressive state: a
medieval Kafka would have had nothing to write about.
This, then, is the judgment expressed to various degrees by many Catholic
thinkers.15 Above all Jacques Maritain, who rejected modernity for a hopeful
return to the Middle Ages. For him, the radiant first age of Christianity was fol-
lowed in modern times by the second, which would have brought on the
eclipse of sacred. The “third age,” however, would have seen the dawn of the
new Christianity.16
The Catholic Church was the only institution in the twentieth century to
pose an effective resistance to “Modernism,” this latter understood as the phil-
osophical defense of positivism, historical relativism, historical-critical read-
ing of the sacred scriptures, and, simultaneously, of subjectivism. The Church
offered an alternative that affirmed the preeminence of the social body—that
is, the community of believers subject to the ecclesiastical mastery—over the
state and over the individual. The term “Medievalism” itself joins in the bitter
14 Cf. J. Le Goff, Storia e memoria cit., p. 211, on the positions of the realist reactionaries, the
ultras.
15 For example, R. Guardini, La fine dell’epoca moderna, Morcelliana, Brescia 1954 (original
edition: Das Ende der Neuzeit: ein Versuch zur Orientierung, Hess, Basel 1950); cf. A.
Kobylińsky, Modernità e postmodernità. L’interpretazione cristiana dell’esistenza al
tramonto dei tempi moderni nel pensiero di Romano Guardini, Pontificia Università Grego-
riana, Roma 1998; A. Mordini, Il tempio del Cristianesimo, Cet, Torino 1963; E. Malynski,
Fedeltà feudale-dignità umana, pref. by M. Tarchi, Edizioni di Ar, Padova 1976; Cf. M. Re
velli, Il medioevo della Destra cit., pp. 118 ff.
16 J. Maritain, Antimoderne, Édition de la Revue des Jeunes, Paris 1922; Id., Humanisme inté-
gral. Problèmes temporels et spirituels d’une nouvelle chretienté, Fernand Aubier, Paris 1936.
See: M. Grosso, Alla ricerca della verità: la filosofia cristiana in É. Gilson e J. Maritain, pref.
by P. Viotto, Citta Nuova, Roma 2006.

160 Chapter 10
querelle with the publication of Pius x’s encyclical Pascendi (1907), “On the
Doctrines of the Modernists.”17 As an opposition to “Modernism,” George Tyr-
rell gave “Medievalism” an entirely negative and retrograde meaning, while
Agostino Gemelli debuted the journal “Vita e Pensiero” with the polemical ar-
ticle Medioevalismo, in which he exalted the medieval period as the most or-
ganic and radiant one in the history of man: “This is our plan! We are
medievalists.”18
The debate on what meaning to ascribe to the “Christian Middle Ages” was
blazing, in the heart of the Catholic world, for the entire twentieth century.
The Medievalist or Traditionalist position was strongly opposed by a Modern-
ist one—expressed in Italy by historians like Ernesto Buonaiuti, Raffaello Mor-
ghen, and Raoul Manselli—that essentially claimed that it was permissible
and necessary to understand religion from a historical perspective, analyzing
the sources, presenting detailed hypotheses and considering them falsifiable,
using the scientific method and evaluating the medieval period not as the con-
summate expression of the universal Church, but as a dynamic process in
which spirituality and institutions manifested in complex and diverse ways.19
This is the fundamental reason why two distinct types of university disciplines
17 The text of the Pascendi Dominici gregis can be found online on the official site of the Holy
See: http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_190709
08_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html (cons. May 13, 2019).
18 G. Tyrrell, Medievalism. A Reply to Cardinal Mercier, Longmans, Green & Company, Lon-
don 1908, especially pp. 143–146, www.archive.org/details/medievalismreply00tyrriala
(cons. May 13, 2019); cf., for example, pp. 143 ff.: “Its opposite is Medievalism, which, as a
fact, is only the synthesis effected between the Christian faith and the culture of the late
Middle Ages, but which erroneously supposes itself to be of apostolic antiquity; which
denies that the work of synthesis is necessary and must endure as long as man’s intellec-
tual, moral, and social evolution endures; which therefore makes the medieval expression
of Catholicism its primitive and its final expression. Medievalism is an absolute, Modern-
ism a relative term.” A. Gemelli, Medioevalismo, in “Vita e pensiero. Rassegna italiana di
coltura,” i (1914), n. 1, pp. 1–24: 1. See for example p. 2: “We want a culture that responds to
the most legitimate exigencies, the most profound and inextinguishable aspirations of
the human spirit, recognizing the supreme values of our life. And a culture with these
characteristics, we believe, cannot be achieved except by those who seek the principles of
medieval life.” Or, p. 5: “We are medievalists; and we are so because we recognize that so-
called modern culture is the fiercest enemy of Christianity and that it is pointless to talk
about adaptation and penetration.”
19 For works on medieval subjects produced by modernist historians between the end of the
nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth, see F. De Giorgi, Il Medio-
evo dei modernisti. Modelli di comportamento e pedagogia della libertà, Editrice La Scuola,
Brescia 2009.

emerged (and still exist) in Italy: the “History of the Church,” and the “History
of Christianity.”20
At the same time, the idea of the Middle Ages is not necessarily beholden to
the idea of an opposition between the defense-to-the-death of tradition and
corrupt modernity: Catholic philosophers like Étienne Gilson have maintained
that modern science did not arise as a victory over medieval ecclesiastical “ob-
scurantism,” but instead grew from a continuity, a unitary tradition, a course
that proclaims the Christian roots of modern scientific and philosophical
thought.21 Indeed, for Gilson the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centu-
ries, the inventors of the scholastic quaestio, are much more modern than the
humanists, who, precisely because they worshiped the cult of antiquity must
have detested modernity. It’s not for nothing that to them, modern architecture
and modern letters were the horrible, Gothic constructions and characters.22
The Middle Ages, then, not as Tradition but as modernity.
If the twentieth-century Church rejected Modernism (Buonaiuti, who was a
priest, was excommunicated and reduced to a layman), the very same Church
is, however, the only institution in that century to have sought to shape pro-
spectively the relationship between modernity and tradition, through the Vati-
can ii Council (1962–65). The years of that reform (which also provoked a
broad historiographical debate on the Middle Ages) were considered a time of
spiritual regeneration, in which the symbol of medieval Catholicism changed
meaning by becoming, as Christian Amalvi wrote, “ouvert et polyphonique.”23
And the Franciscan message of peace, just like the attempt at reconciliation
with other Christian denominations and Judaism, went in that exact
direction.
Despite the two-thousand-year tradition of the Church and its desire to re-
cover the Pauline ecumenism of its origin, the Vatican ii Council and its litur-
gical reforms enacted in 1970 must also be considered the two fuses that
reignited the dialectic between defenders of tradition and innovators. But this
time the roles are reversed, with the Church as the one guiding, at least ini-
tially, the changes. These, while presented in the groove of tradition as a proj-
ect of reform, have in point of fact also been interpreted as a profound
20 TN: While both refer to historical, rather than theological, disciplines, the History of the
Church has always been more closely affiliated with the Catholic world, while the History
of Christianity tends to take a more secular approach.
21 Among his many works: É. Gilson, Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la forma-
tion du système cartésien, J. Vrin, Paris 1930; see M. Grosso, Alla ricerca della verità cit.
22 É. Gilson, Le Moyen Âge comme “saeculum modernum” cit., pp. 8 ff.
23 Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., p. 218.

162 Chapter 10
r enewal—that is, as a revolution.24 On the one hand, Vatican ii prepared the

Church for ’68, helping it to live it or to deal with it by several means: other-
wise, not only would there not have been the “basic Christian community” nor
the presence of guitars in church, but maybe the number of Catholics would
be even more diminished. Many believers and many intellectuals were on
board, such that Paul vi addressed his message for men of science to Jacques
Maritain himself. At the same time, however, Vatican ii catalyzed a reactionary
process on the part of those who rejected it utterly, considering it not a reform,
not a new ecclesiastical Pentecost that respects tradition, but an unwarranted
and absolute novatio.
The traditionalist hemorrhage, strongest primarily in France, united around
the figure of Monsignor Marcel-François Lefebvre, who founded the Society
of Saint Pius x in 1970, officially broke ties with the Roman Church in 1975,
and was excommunicated in 1988. His tomb reads, “Tradidi quod et accepi”
(I passed on what I received).25 By the early Seventies, Catholic integralism was
already linked with the formation of far-right political movements, like Jean-
Marie Le Pen’s Front National (1972), but it remained in the margins for twenty
years, seen only in traditionalist aristocratic and curial environments.
All this discussion, then, would seemingly belong to the final phase of the
long querelle between modernity and tradition, if the traditionalist front had
not gained ever broader support from the 1990s onward, presenting itself as
one of the elements of strong affirmation of political identity in those coun-
tries that still have a Catholic base: France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Austria,
and Italy. Catholic Traditionalism, in fact, presents itself today as an organic
and structured response to the theme of the “clash of civilizations,” understood
primarily as the defense of the “Christian roots” of Europe and its individual
nations or regions from the risk of “Islamization.” According to this way of
thinking, “Turkey in Europe” sends shivers down the spine and the attempts
at dialogue with other religions of the time of John xxiii and Paul vi are seen
as unfeasible, both from a historical perspective—because of the fear of a
24 Cf. G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., p. 16; R. Facchini, Sognando la “Christianitas” cit. It’s
important to recall that Christianity admits to the need for a conscious return to the past,
to the perfect time of purity, employing the category of reform, of re-formatio and re-
novatio. This happened so many times in the Middle Ages, in addition to the Modern Age
and contemporary times, that even in the continuous thread of tradition, which is never
rejected, the Church becomes the conscious architect of epochal gaps in history. The ecu-
menical synods signaled profound changes, such that re-form, re-action, and re-storation
are concepts that can, in fact, be translated into undeclared revolutions.
25 Paul, 1Cor, 11,3.

c ontamination that would lead to annihilation—and from a theological one—

because the Catholic religion cannot be one among many, as it is the sole au-
thentic faith.26
Today, more so than in the recent past, a desire for a spirituality sometimes
called “medieval” has returned to the heart of the Church, finding its symbolic
expression in the observance of mass in Latin, the polyphonic Roman and the
monodic Gregorian chant, the vestments and solemn gestures of the ancient
Catholic liturgy, since “barbarized” by guitars and applause at the end of the
ceremony.27 Medievalism plays an important role in describing a traditionalist
political identity that considers the medieval period an ideal era, when Euro-
pean society was ordered in the Christian name and battled against the non-
Christian. Hence traditionalism’s return to the Crusades, the Templars, and
naturally the saints that defended and still defend the West. Perhaps also be-
cause it uses medievalizing symbols otherwise present in the common imagi-
nary, this culture, considered extremist until a short time ago, is now seen less
as antagonistic and more as responding to needs for control and social defense,
can now surround itself with support originating from sectors that in the past
were less likely to come together. With the exception of the blunt fact of reli-
gion (if such a thing is possible), the Catholic traditionalist movement today
shows close links, including in their adopted symbologies, with American Prot-
estant neo-conservatism.28 Even some post-fascist right-wing circles, which for
decades in the spirit of Traditionalism identified with references alien to Chris-
tianity, now seem to be converging on traditional Catholicism. We are obvi-
ously talking about a phenomenon that is far from new, for we can recognize it
already in the medievalized rural France of the Vichy regime’s propaganda, in
Francoist Spain, in the precocious marriage of primordial and Catholic tradi-
tion found in some thinkers of the Fifties and Sixties, in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s
ultra-reactionary movement. In Italy, between the late Sixties and early Seven-
ties, the neo-fascist, extremist organization Movimento Politico Ordine Nuovo
(“Political Movement of the New Order”), in addition to the “barbarian” sym-
bol of the two-headed axe and the SS motto “my honor is called loyalty,” took
as its anthem La Vandeana, an old counter-revolutionary ballad that celebrated
26 See, for example, A. Del Valle, Perché la Turchia non può entrare in Europa cit.; La Turchia
in Europa. Beneficio o catastrofe?, monograph issue of “Lepanto,” xxviii (2009), n. 178. Cf.
also G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., pp. 318 ff.
27 See, for example, E. Cuneo, D. Di Sorco, and R. Mameli, Introibo ad altare Dei: il servizio
all’altare nella liturgia romana tradizionale, Fede & Cultura, Verona 2008.
28 U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock cit. (pp. 254–257 of the Italian edition); L. Copertino, Spa-
ghetticons. La deriva neoconservatrice della destra cattolica italiana, Il Cerchio iniziative
editoriali, Rimini 2008.

164 Chapter 10
anti-Jacobin insurgence. The impression that emerges is that this syncretism

between generally unrelated political traditions is much more prominent to-
day than it was in the past. One may thus refer to the Italian Forza Nuova (“New
Force”) movement (est. 1997) and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (“Freedom
Party of Austria”), that under the leadership of Jörg Haider became the number
two party in Austria in 1999. A pertinent example seems to be that of Gianni
Alemanno, former Minister of Agriculture and later Mayor of Rome, who in
May 2006 showed his necklace with a Celtic cross on television. When asked by
the newscaster Daria Bignardi why he wore it, Alemanno replied that it was a
symbol of Celtic Christianity and a memento of a murdered friend. Two years
later, he claimed he had the cross blessed during a visit to the Holy Sepulchre.
That the circled cross is an emblem of Celtic Christianity is a fact, but to some
commentators it seemed improbable that, in earlier years, Alemanno would
have worn it for this wholesome meaning, rather than for its militant neo-fas-
cist significance.29 The supporters of the Northern League can, as has been
proven, be at one and the same time Crusaders ready to battle for their faith
and Celtic pagans who raise hymns to the god Po around a High Priest.30
The Medieval Era offers a convenient space-time for the sharing of symbols
in the name of Christianity: knights, Crusades, and the pious Celts of Bravehe-
art. Filippo Burzio wrote about this already in 1935, admonishing Julius Evola
for his anti-Christianity:
Leaving aside the metaphysical question—in the historic landscape one

ideal unites us: Chivalry. But Chivalry was not just warfare, it was also
generosity and piety; in it, the “Christian synthesis” was fully realized […];
now, you all forget this point.31
New militias of the Temple are forming today, new knightly orders that are
shared, as we have seen, by political movements of a different stamp, but this
time we come to them in the name of Catholic orthodoxy. The Templars are
not the guardians of an arcane and anti-Roman knowledge (or even anti-
Christian: Militia Templi is also the name of a Satanist rock band), but the Cath-
olic defenders of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, exalted in the Praise of the
29 Cf. F. Ceccarelli, Gianni crociato eclettico tra Evola e il Santo Sepolcro, in “la Repubblica,”
April 22, 2009, p. 9.
30 A. Tornielli, Il Carroccio prega il dio Po ma non tradisce la Chiesa, in “il Giornale,” Aug. 23,
2009, http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/carroccio-prega-dio-po-non-tradisce-chiesa.html
(cons. May 13, 2019).
31 F. Burzio, review of J. Evola, Rivolta contro il mondo moderno cit., www.centrostudilaruna
.it/evolaburzio.html (cons. May 13, 2019).

New Knighthood of Bernard of Clairvaux.32 The fact that they were absolved by
Pope Clement v in the course of the trial against them—a recent historical
discovery that in turn absolves the pope, as it lays the greater responsibility for
their condemnation and destruction on the King of France, Philip the Fair—
has been particularly welcomed in the climate of these recent years.33 Thus the
Templars are beloved by people of very different political creeds, who often
have no love for one another.34 Like “Crusade,” like “Tolkien,” and like “Medi-
eval,” “Templar” is a word of many meanings.
The Catholic hierarchy’s answer and proposal in the face of these demands
are quite articulate. From many perspectives the Church continues to march
under the banner of ecumenism and dialogue between religions: the gap be-
tween it and those who appeal to an inescapable “clash of civilizations” is
stark. In the same way, even the great Medieval season of evangelization in the
East is presented in a multicultural dimension, as a successful mission carried
out in the name of respect for those cultures with which the missionaries made
contact.35 And this change of direction happened before everyone’s eyes, and
the accusations of a “return to the Middle Ages” to which we alluded to in the
second chapter point precisely in this direction.
What seemed during John Paul ii’s papacy like a problematic return to pre-
Vatican ii positions grew more intense under his successor Benedict xvi,
whose Traditionalist ideas were already known during his tenure as cardinal.
Benedict placed the blame on the “cacophonous” years following Vatican ii,
when the council itself would be distorted and misinterpreted as an indiscrim-
inate and anarchical breach.36 Moreover, in a radical manner the pontiff held
up Enlightenment culture as primarily responsible for the critique of Christi-
anity, which is the sole guardian of truth.37 In this telling, Enlightenment
philosophy is considered irrational and thus cannot lead to the truth but only
32 Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the New Knighthood. A Treatise on the Knights Templar
and the Holy Places of Jerusalem, ed. C. Greenia, De Gruyter, Berlin 2010 (Bernardus Cl-
araevallensis Abbas, Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae militiae).
33 B. Frale, Il papato e il processo ai Templari. L’inedita assoluzione di Chinon alla luce della
diplomatica pontificia, Viella, Roma 2003.
34 F. Cardini, Templari e templarismo cit., p. 122; S. Merli, Templari e templarismo cit.
35 John Paul ii, Encyclical Slavorum Apostoli, June 2, 1985, http://w2.vatican.va/content/
john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_19850602_slavorum-apostoli.html
(cons. May 13, 2019); Id., Memory and Identity cit. (pp. 115, 125–128 of the Italian edition);
I santi Cirillo e Metodio precursori dell’inculturazione, conference, Roma, Pontificia Uni-
versità Gregoriana, 3 December 2009; cf. G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., pp. 165 ff.
36 G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., pp. 18 ff., 28 ff., 147.
37 J. Ratzinger, Verité du Christianisme? Conference à la Sorbonne (Nov. 27, 1999), in “La Docu-
mentation Catholique,” lxxxii (2000), n. 97, pp. 29–35. Cf. G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede

166 Chapter 10
to the horrors of the last three centuries, while Christianity—presented as the

true heir to Greek philosophy—is the rational one. In accordance with the
neo-scholastic model of the long nineteenth century, the great Late Antique
and medieval philosophers are brought back to the fore: Augustine, Thomas
Aquinas, and Bonaventure, with whose exegeses the pontiff himself has long
grappled, recognizing in St. Thomas the achievement of “harmonic synthesis”
between faith and reason.38
Even the choice of the name Benedict—which aside from the homony-
mous saint recalls the name of Benedict xv (1914–1922)—seemed ancient, a
harbinger of a restorative impulse that predated the Johns and Pauls. The pope
tried to bring the Lefebvrian schismatics back into the fold of the Church, an
action that caused controversy, as it was considered the result of a reactionary
plan hatched when he was a cardinal. He resumed the use of some vestments
that had not been seen since the papacy of John xxiii, and he once more
granted permission to hold mass according to the Tridentine rite (the version
of 1962 presented in the Roman missal of John xxiii, itself an update to that of
St. Pius v). The Tridentine liturgy accentuates the distance between clergy and
laity: the priest turns his back to the faithful and the people of God cannot sing
the mass. The reinstatement of certain prayer formulas, above all for the salva-
tion of the Jews, provoked widespread incertitude. This was accentuated by
the fact that the religious freedom of all believers, recognized by Vatican ii, is
again substituted with the clear affirmation that the Catholic Church is the
only possessor of truth: a hardening of doctrine that makes it difficult to follow
the ecumenical path of religious tolerance, not to mention collaborating with
non-believers.
People today are reiterating with renewed energy the basic anti-modernist
interpretation of the Pascendi encyclical (1907), and going still further back, the
Syllabus of Errors of Pius ix (1864) and all the anti-Unification, anti-Rationalist,
anti-Enlightenment Catholic apologists who make negative myth-engines of
the specters of the French Revolution, the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy, and the
lie of Italian unification, and positive myth-engines of the anti-Jacobin insur-
gence (above all the Vendée) and Bourbonophile brigandage.39 Thus, while
cit., p. 275. For John Paul ii’s position—more balanced although also strongly critical—
regarding the Enlightenment, see his Memory and Identity cit. (pp. 18–21, 120–122, 133–136
of the Italian edition).
38 Benedict xvi, Insegnamenti di Benedetto xvi, vol. i (April-Dec. 2005), Libreria editrice
vaticana, Città del Vaticano 2006, p. 175, cit. by G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., p. 311.
39 Pius x, Pascendi Dominici gregis cit.; Pius ix, Quanta cura (1864, Dec. 8), https://w2.vatican
.va/content/pius-ix/la/documents/encyclica-quanta-cura-8-decembris-1864.html (cons.

the atlases and theories of state founded on ancestral ethnicity lead Eastern
Europe back to the 1800s and early 1900s (as we will see in the following chap-
ter), in Rome the Church follows a parallel path. The simultaneity of the two
phenomena is striking: on the one hand a neo-medieval neo-Romanticism, on
the other an anti-modernism that in the early twentieth century was already
called “medievalism.”40 This undoubtable “powerful thought” lays the ground-
work for radio stations (like Radio Maria in Italy) that spread messages like the
one that seeks to stamp out the frequent recourse to magicians and fortune-
tellers by branding these practices not as superstitions but as the work of the
devil. In denouncing their sinister origin, they give them credit for efficacy.
But they also reject scientific theories that “make less of God”: we come back
to creationism as the sole doctrine that can explain the birth of the universe,
categorically excluding the scientific theory of evolution.41
None of this, however, is truly medieval, except in the negative and extrinsic
sense that we have recognized and discussed in the second chapter. It is in-
stead the expression of a now centuries-old discomfort that the Roman Church
harbors toward modernity, and that today returns in force and with the power
of persuasion, presenting itself as the main reference (courtesy of its solid in-
stitutional and media profiles) for other ways of representing the world in a
mystic, esoteric, and symbolic key, and thereby finding itself in alliance with
May 13, 2019). Cf. M. Caffiero, Libertà di ricerca cit., pp. 13–16. It’s not easy to understand
whether Benedict xvi was talking solely about a restoration project promoted by this
pontificate, or a reality that truly concerns the Catholic Church in its global dimension.
Now we feel more strongly the disconnect between the Romanocentric positions and the
orientation of many Episcopal conferences and believers. See, for example, R. Chiaberge,
Lo scisma. Cattolici senza papa, Longanesi, Milano 2009.
40 G. Tyrrell, Medievalism cit., especially pp. 143 ff.; A. Gemelli, Medioevalismo cit.
41 John Paul ii, Memory and Identity cit. (p. 99 of the Italian edition): “The origins of
history—the believer knows—can be found in the Book of Genesis.” See, for example,
M. Blondet, L’uccellosauro ed altri animali: la catastrofe del darwinismo, Effedieffe, Milano
2002; R. De Mattei, Evoluzionismo. Il tramonto di una ipotesi, Cantagalli, Siena 2009. Cf.
however G. Filoramo, La Chiesa e le sfide della modernità, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007, espe-
cially Ch. 6, not to mention P. Odifreddi, In principio era Darwin. La vita, il pensiero, il di-
battito sull’evoluzionismo, Longanesi, Milano 2009, and furthermore the site Dimissioni del
vicepresidente del CNR Roberto De Mattei, www.activism.com/it_IT/petizione/dimissioni-
del-vicepresidente-del-cnr-roberto-de-mattei/4563 (cons. May 13, 2019). On the other
hand, it’s well known that, in Raymond Queneau’s ironic interpretation, the cave paint-
ings of primitive man were painted by the infamous Duke of Auge at the end of the eigh-
teenth century. They too were essentially the products of the Enlightenment. R. Queneau,
Between Blue and Blue cit. (pp. 221 ff. of the French edition)

168 Chapter 10
other post-modern modes of rejecting the modern—an alliance that, only

twenty years ago, could not be conceived of in such dimensions.42
But what, then, is the Middle Ages that the Church truly feels to be its own
and translates into a political message? Here the most interesting thing to con-
sider is a peculiar and distinctive element: the fact that the pope still partici-
pates today in that distant epoch, adding new characteristic traits, ultimately
modifying it. We are referring to the canonization in recent years of saints of
the Medieval Era. In truth they are few in number, but they are significant in-
deed. John Paul ii canonized 482 saints, more than had received the Honors of
the Altar during the several previous centuries. Most of them lived in the 1800s
and 1900s; a not-insignificant number date to the early modern era; the medi-
eval saints are no more than ten. If the Sicilian Saint Eustochia Smeralda Calaf-
ato (1434–1485), canonized in 1988, cannot tell us much, the plot thickens when
we remember Saint Agnes of Bohemia (1211–1282), the daughter of King Otto-
kar i, canonized on November 12, 1989. An Eastern European princess becomes
a saint three days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in a precarious Czechoslova-
kia that only a few days later would experience the “Velvet Revolution” that
overthrew the socialist government.43 Along with her we find Saint Hedwig,
queen of Poland (1374–1399), canonized June 8, 1997, and Saint Cunegonda
(Kinga) (1224–1292), another queen of Poland, raised to the Honors of the Altar
on June 16, 1999. These sainted princess and queens were joined by the revival
of the Cult of Saint Meinhard (1134/46–1196), the first Bishop of Livonia, now
Latvia (September 8, 1993), and the canonizations of the Dominican tertiary
Zdislava of Lemberk (Czech Republic; 1220–1252, canonized May 21, 1995) and
the priest Jan of Dukla (Poland; 1414–1484, canonized June 10, 1997).
Now, ascertaining the sanctity of a man or woman who lived in the Middle
Ages, and thus allowing masses to be celebrated and churches built in their
name, is an act that can be described as political. Proclaiming the sanctity of a
medieval person seems to represent an even stronger gesture than canonizing
a contemporary one, as the act exalts the concept of the continuity of the
Church and reaffirms its right to interfere with tradition. Here we are not talk-
ing about characters often defined as “neo-medieval,” such as Saint Pius of
42 Cf. M. Caffiero, Miracoli e storia cit., and R. Michetti, La Chiesa romana, le modernità e la
paura della storia tra medioevo e nuovi tempi, in “Studi storici,” xlviii (2007), n. 2,
pp. 557–568.
43 P. Pitha, Agnes of Prague. A New Bohemian Saint, in “Franciscan Studies,” lxvii (1990),
n. 72, pp. 325–340; Ch.-F. Felskau, Samtene Revolution und “našy středověk.” Das mittelal-
terlichen Böhmen in der Forschung Tschechiens und auf seinem Buchmarkt während der
Transformation (ca 1990–2000), in J.M. Bak [et al.] (ed.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit.,
pp. 263–278.

Pietrelcina (canonized June 16, 2002),44 but authentically medieval figures,

who lived in that distant age and—according to Catholic thought—restored
the glory of their faith in those Eastern European countries that had just es-
caped from the atheist, Marxist, Soviet yoke. In Slavic countries, both Catholic
and Orthodox, the medieval Christian is once more seen as indispensable to
the construction of national identity. In these countries a real “history” does
not exist before the medieval evangelism that came from Rome or Constanti-
nople, before the introduction of writing thanks to Christian texts, and before
the conversion of the chiefs. As opposed to Western and Northern Europe,
where sometimes ancient Rome and sometimes Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, German-
ic, or Scandinavian culture may represent a historic alternative, among the
Slavic peoples the only alternative to the Middle Ages, to the Christian Middle
Ages, is “prehistoric”—that is, tribal and not documented by written sources.45
In the next chapter we will address some of these aspects from a regional point
of view; now we consider that, from the perspective of the Roman Church, es-
tablishing the sanctity of medieval kings and queens of Eastern Europe means
reaffirming the historical national identity of those countries in the name of
the apostolic authority, the Catholic faith, and sacred royalty, tracing a contin-
uous thread that starts precisely from the Middle Ages and judges the period of
actual socialism to be a mere parenthesis. These kings and queens are pre-
sented, to use the title of a book by Gábor Klaniczay, as Holy Rulers and Blessed
Princesses, testaments to a faith as ancient as it is authentic and eternal, one
that goes from Saint Stephen of Hungary (969–1038) all the way to the newly
beatified Charles of Austria (1887–1922).46
John Paul ii gave Poland, Bohemia, and Latvia their sainted queens, bishops,
and priests, thus seeking to reconnect Rome with Catholic Eastern Europe by
way of the Middle Ages and its tradition of faith. Benedict xvi, who on May 1,
2011, beatified his predecessor, did something similar, albeit with his eyes on
44 Cf. R. Michetti, La Chiesa romana, le modernità e le paure cit., p. 567.

45 See John Paul ii, Memory and Identity cit. (pp. 96 ff. of the Italian edition): “Speaking of
baptism […] we’re not just talking about the sacrament of Christian initiation received by
the first historical sovereign of Poland, but also the event that was decisive for the birth of
the nation and the formation of its Christian identity. In this sense, the date of the Bap-
tism of Poland signals a turning point. Poland as a nation, then, emerges from its prehis-
tory and starts to exist in history […]. From the moment of the Baptism, the various tribes
begin to exist as a Polish nation.” Cf. ibid., pp. 80 ff., 107, 164.
46 G. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002. On the beatification of Emperor Charles:
Homily of John Paul ii, Beatification of Five Servants of God, Sunday, Oct. 3, 2004, official site:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/2004/documents/hf_jp-ii_
hom_20041003_beatifications.html (cons. May 13, 2019).

170 Chapter 10
the West. The saints canonized by him who had lived in the Middle Ages are
Szymon of Lipnicza, Bernardo Tolomei, and Nuno de Santa Maria Álvares
Pereira (1360–1431), who interests us most at the moment.47 This knight, com-
mander in chief of the army, was the architect of Portugal’s independence
from Castille and is considered the forefather of the royal and imperial House
of Braganza. Already venerated as a saint immediately after his death—he was
called o Santo Condestável—his deeds were sung by Camões. Becoming friar
after a life on the battlefield, he founded the celebrated Carmo Convent of
Lisbon.
The canonization of Saint Nuno has a significant political importance and
has caused conflict with Spain, which has always been opposed to counting
among the saints the general who inflicted the unforgivable defeat of Aljubar-
rota (August 14, 1385). But above all the canonization of a man of war provoked
general reactions of shock and disapproval, even as it produced very favorable
comments in traditionalist Catholic circles. In the words of Massimo Introvi-
gne, president of the Center for the Study of New Religions and member of the
traditionalist Catholic Alliance movement:
If, then, there were those who sought to diminish the long “military and
warlike” phase of Saint Nuno’s life—almost as if only “the sunset of his
life” in a convent demonstrated his sanctity—Benedict xvi on the con-
trary highlights the “exemplary figure” of the Commander more as a
knight, a miles Christi: a vocation of which chivalry is the emblem and
nomen, which certainly manifests in various ways in various epochs, but
remains an eminent path to sanctity for the Catholic layman who conse-
crates his life “to the service of the common good and the glory of God.”48
And in effect, the text of the pontifical sermon delivered on the occasion of his
canonization (April 23, 2009) contains a direct reference to the militia Christi,
though the link it establishes between sanctity and military service is in reality
more subtle. The fact that he was an outstanding Christian military captain is
considered the main character of Nuno’s sanctity, but the context of war is also
defined as “apparently” unfavorable to a life of faith and observance:
47 On Portuguese political medievalism, including Saint Nuno, see P.A. Guerreiro Martins,
History, Nation and Politics. The Middle Ages in Modern Portugal (1890–1947), PhD disserta-
tion, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2016.
48 M. Introvigne, Benedetto xvi e San Nuno Alvares Pereira. Le lezioni di una canonizzazione,
2009, www.cesnur.org/2009/mi_nuni.htm (cons. May 13, 2019).

“Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears
when I call to him” (Ps 4: 3). These words of the Responsorial Psalm ex-
press the secret of the life of Bl. Nuno de Santa María, a hero and saint of
Portugal. The 70 years of his life belong to the second half of the four-
teenth century and the first half of the 15th, which saw this nation con-
solidate its independence from Castille and expand beyond the ocean
not without a special plan of God opening new routes that were to favour
the transit of Christ’s Gospel to the ends of the earth. St Nuno felt he was
an instrument of this lofty design and enrolled in the militia Christi, that
is, in the service of witness that every Christian is called to bear in the
world. He was characterized by an intense life of prayer and absolute
faith in divine providence. Although he was an excellent soldier and a
great leader, he never permitted these personal talents to prevail over the
supreme action that comes from God. St Nuno allowed no obstacle to
come in the way of God’s action in his life, imitating Our Lady, to whom
he was deeply devoted and to whom he publicly attributed his victories.
At the end of his life, he retired to the Carmelite convent whose building
he had commissioned. I am glad to point this exemplary figure out to the
whole Church, particularly because he exercised his life of faith and
prayer in contexts apparently unfavourable to it, as proof that in any situ-
ation, even military or in war time, it is possible to act and to put into
practice the values and principles of Christian life, especially if they are
placed at the service of the common good and the glory of God.49
This speech, which recalls the providential design of Portuguese colonialism,

the soldier’s faith in divine aid, and the victories that the saint attributed to the
Virgin Mary’s intercession, seems difficult to reconcile with the pontifical
speech of August 20, 2005, already mentioned in the second chapter:
How many pages of history record battles and wars that have been waged,
with both sides invoking the Name of God, as if fighting and killing, the
enemy could be pleasing to Him. The recollection of these sad events
should fill us with shame, for we know only too well what atrocities have
49 Homily of His Holiness Benedict xvi, Holy Mass for the Canonization of Five New Saints,
St Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2009, http://w2.vatican.va/content/
benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20090426_canonizzazioni
.html (cons. May 13, 2019).

172 Chapter 10
been committed in the name of religion. The lessons of the past must
help us to avoid repeating the same mistakes.50
There is no doubt that at Aljubarrota the King of Castille Juan I also trusted in
the aid of that same God and the same Virgin who, on that occasion, would
have offered their support to Dom Nuno. It falls to us to make the final com-
parison. In 1969, Paul vi downgraded the Feast of Saint George, the Christian
knight who defeated the dragon, whose historical existence is now in doubt, to
an optional memorial.51 In 2009, however, Benedict xvi canonized a medieval
knight. In forty years, the world seems to have made a complete turn, but not a
revolution.
50 http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf
_ben-xvi_spe_20050820_meeting-muslims.html (cons. May 13, 2019). Cf. supra, Ch. 2. On
evangelization outside Europe, “a glorious epic, over which the question of colonization
still casts a shadow”: John Paul ii, Memory and Identity cit. (pp. 128–130: 128 of the Italian
edition). For a radical position in the name of integralism, see for example 1492–1992:
Cinque secoli di epopea missionaria e civilizzatrice, monograph issue of “Lepanto,” xi
(Sept.-Nov. 1992), n. 125.
51 On St. George and his political interpretation, see today G. Oneto, Il santo uccisor del dra-
go. San Giorgio, patrono della libertà, Il Cerchio iniziative editoriali, Rimini 2009, pp. 101–
108 for its uses in contemporary times, as in Soviet Russia and Catalunia. For England:
M. Girouard, The Return to Camelot cit.; V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail, pp. 108 ff.,
135 ff.

Chapter 11
Peoples and Sovereigns: Middle Ages of Nations
History is falsified in its essential facts, in the interests of the ruling class.
Libraries and bookstores are cleansed of all works not considered ortho-
dox. The shadows of obscurantism once more threaten to suffocate the
human spirit.
a. spinelli, e. rossi, and e. colorni, Ventotene Manifesto (August 1941)
On June 28, 1989 (June 15 in the Orthodox calendar, the Feast of Saint Vitus),
exactly six hundred years after the Battle of Kosovo Polje (the “Field of Black-
birds”), where the Serbs were defeated by the Ottomans, the newly elected
president of the Republic of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, on the exact site of
the encounter, gives a solemn speech before a million of his countrymen. That
medieval battle, a symbol of the chiefs’ disunity and betrayal, but also of the
heroism and the courage of the Serbian people throughout history, offers a
striking counterpoint to contemporary claims:
The heroism of Kosovo has inspired our creativity for six centuries, it has
nourished our pride and keeps us from forgetting that we were once a
great army, courageous and proud, one of the few that were never beaten,
even in defeat. Now, six centuries later, we are again engaged in battles,
and we must face them. They are not armed battles, though we cannot
count those out yet. But, no matter the kind of battles, none of them can
be won without determination, courage, and sacrifice, without the noble
qualities that were present here on the Field of Kosovo in times past […].
May the memory of the heroism of Kosovo live forever!1
1 The official presentation of the event still had a Yugoslavian character, although its intention
was to exalt the Serbian people. The speech can be read in English: http://emperors-clothes.
com/articles/jared/milosaid2.html (cons. May 13, 2019). See on that subject, V. Ortenberg, In
Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 90–92 and 117; T. Shippey, Medievalisms and Why They Matter
cit., p. 51; W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., pp. 67–68, and above all Ch. Mylonas, Serbian Orthodox
Fundamentals. The Quest for an Eternal Identity, ceu, Budapest 2003, pp. 152 ff.; D. Djokic,
Whose Myth? Which Nation? The Serbian Kosovo Myth Revised, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebr
auch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 215–233, with bibliography. It should be emphasized that this
same day of the Feast of Saint Vitus, a day which Serbians consider particularly holy, was that
on which in 1914 the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
was assassinated in Sarajevo by a pan-Serbian nationalist: the event that launched the First
World War.

174 Chapter 11
This speech is a spark in a gasoline canister. After two years of smoldering

tensions in the heart of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on June 25,
1991, Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence, followed by Bosnia in
1992. The wars in Croatia and Bosnia—the first waged in Europe since 1945—
continued into 1995. In 1999, nato bombed the Serbians until they completely
retreated from Kosovo. The expression heard most often in those years was
“ethnic cleansing”: a meticulous purging operation horrible enough to even be
labeled “medieval.”2
Through the grisly example of Yugoslavia, we can start to talk about the ex-
ploitation of the Middle Ages today in service of nationalism. In the Eighties,
when the global system of two superpowers was still going strong, the situation
was completely different. The nation states in Western Europe, already in the
middle of a decades-long identity crisis, refused to reaffirm the eternal and im-
mutable principles of national sentiment, but rather worked to create the
European Union. In doing so, they willingly eschewed the Middle Ages as a
myth-engine for that identity, with the effect that it was left almost exclusively
to the movements of the extreme right.
Independence movements were also common in Western Europe, but until
the 1980s historical regions that sought emancipation were willing to operate
under a form of controlled autonomy and so were no longer considered dan-
gerous to integrity of their ruling nations, which themselves were in the middle
of broad processes of decentralization. In Eastern Europe the nationalisms
that smoldered under the ashes in Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland were still
reined in under the great Soviet cloak and the superior ideal of socialist inter-
nationalism.3 But no sooner did the Berlin Wall fall (1989) and the Soviet Union
disintegrate, than nationalisms reappeared, in a limited manner in Western
Europe, in more dramatic forms in Eastern Europe, as well as in other parts of
the world.4 Just when we thought we were moving towards globalization, sud-
denly the lid blew off and we found ourselves with an explosion of “little
nations.”
2 Cf. J. Le Goff, À la recherche du Moyen Âge cit., p. 15: “Carla Del Ponte, Chief Prosecutor of the
UN tribunal, denounced the ‘ethnic cleansing’ performed by Slobodan Milosevic as a ‘medi-
eval’ practice.”
3 Obviously we’re talking about profoundly different social realities, comparable only in per-
spective: the liberty felt in Hungary in the 1980s had nothing to do with the Romanian or
Russian situations.
4 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities cit. Cf. P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit., p. 169, regard-
ing the use of the Zulu “myth” in modern Africa and its parallels with Europe: “This attempt
to make history serve politics recalls the machinations of certain European nationalists, for
instance Slobodan Milosevic’s exploitation of the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo and
that of Clovis’s baptism by Jean-Marie Le Pen.”

Peoples and Sovereigns: Middle Ages of Nations 175
In the West, the states of political subjects were gradually weakened in the
face of the advance of the new, so-called “medieval disorder” (we discussed
this aspect in the early chapters of the book), and the separatists were fully
persuaded that the origins—ultimately ethnic—of their suffering peoples
were to be sought in the Middle Ages. Requests for autonomy and indepen-
dence, at times accompanied by forms of xenophobia and tinged with medie-
valism, began to make themselves heard with renewed force on the part of
stateless peoples from historical regions, while other “ancient nations,” like
Carinthia, began to raise their once-silent voice.5 Others, however, have arisen
from nothing: for instance, in Italy, the Padanian nation proclaimed its inde-
pendence as the “Northern Republic,” on June 16, 1991, and with its name
“Padania,” on September 15, 1996.
In addition to movements linked to Celticism, about which we have already
spoken, the phenomenon of identitarian medievalism in the Romantic fashion
is still present in the French Midi and some valleys of the south-western Pied-
montese Alps. The Occitan movement, quite strong in the 1800s and tending to
a Pan-Provençalism that identifies with the troubadourish tradition and the
ancient county of Toulouse (just remember Frédéric Mistral, winner of the 1904
Nobel Prize in Literature), gained autonomistic political capital in the post-war
years with the creation of the Partit Nationalista Occitan (1959). This move-
ment still exists: March 24, 2007, saw the announcement of the “Gouverne-
ment Provisoire Occitan pour la République Fédérale et Démocratique des
Pays d’Oc,” which, watched with interest in Catalunia, is considered by its
members “an important act to bring awareness to the world of the existence of
an Occitan nation.”6 Nevertheless, the movement today is decidedly dimin-
ished; in general those who speak the many variations of Provençal and Occi-
tan languages are often intent on their specific cultural identities, having
5 Thus, for example, Jörg Haider, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (fpö), appeared on
April 21, 2001, at the exhibit of medieval art and customs of Friesach in a falconer’s costume,
with a magnificent royal (or imperial) eagle perched on his glove. Or else, another extreme
example, a certain Franz Fuchs—who sent some letterbombs in the mid 1990s—used to fol-
low up these missives with normal letters, in which he declared himself to belong to the
“Odilo of Bavaria Liberation Army,” in reference to a figure who lived in the eighth century
and battled against the Slavs in Carinthia: see Die Geschichte der “Bajuwarischen Befreiung
sarmee” des Franz Fuchs, www.antifa.co.at/antifa/bba.pdf (cons. Mar. 12, 2010, the page was
found to be inactive when cons. May 13, 2019). TN: The historical Duchy of Carinthia spanned
not only the eponymous Austrian province, but also parts of northern Slovenia.
6 Es constitueix el Govern Provisional Occita per a la República Fédéral i Democràtica dels Països
d’Oc, in “Radio Catalunya,” May 2, 2007, www.radiocatalunya.ca/noticia/1629/ (cons. Mar. 13,
2010, the page was found to be inactive when cons. May 13, 2019).

176 Chapter 11
b ecome aware that a “Greater Occitania” never existed linguistically, socially,

or institutionally.7
By contrast, this type of identitarian medievalism is quite alive in Catalunia
and adjacent regions of France, like Roussillon, as well as in the zone of Algh-
ero in Sardinia. In this “Gran Catalunya,” in addition to a keen sense of linguis-
tic distinction, the memories of its early adherence to the Carolingian world
and its immense late medieval Mediterranean kingdom are constantly re-
vived.8 Such medievalisms resemble Celticism more than a little, because they
likewise color separatist events with neo-Romantic hues. The main difference
is that they are less exportable.9
In Spain and Great Britain the process of decentralization has long been
underway, in France it is much less perceptible, and in Italy it is the subject of
unending debate. Whether in historical regions like Catalunia, Brittany, and
Scotland, or pseudo-historical ones like Padania, the separatists have not fully
achieved their goals, such that the geographic map of Western Europe (with
the obvious exception of Germany) remains the same as it was in 1945. The
landscape of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, on the other hand, is
completely different: here, new nationalistic claims have led to the reaffirma-
tion of a strong identitarian consciousness in those countries that already
existed, and a rapid emancipation and independence—at times with

resistance—in many other cases. When Yugoslavia and the ussr shattered,
dozens of smaller and larger states started popping up on the maps again:
That we were sliding backwards already seemed obvious after the fall of
the Berlin Wall, when the political geography of Europe and Asia radi-
cally shifted. Atlas editors had to turn all their stock (made obsolete by
7 See especially A. Touraine, F. Dubet, Zs. Hegedus, and M. Wieviorka, Le pays contre l’état: Lut
tes Occitaines, Seuil, Paris 1981; Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 173–180. For the
harsh positions against nationalist Occitan ideology, see the site for Consulta Provenzale,
www.consultaprovenzale.org/ (cons. Mar. 13, 2010, the page was found to be inactive when
cons. May 13, 2019).
8 A. Balcells, Història del nacionalisme Català: dels origens al nostre temps, Generalitat de Cata-
lunya, Barcelona 1992; D. Conversi, The Basques, the Catalans and Spain. Alternative Routes to
Nationalist Mobilisation, Hurst, London 1997; G. Armillotta, I popoli europei senza stato cit.,
pp. 23–33. See, however, what I write in the epilogue of this book regarding the Catalan
secession movement in 2017.
9 In any case, even Provençalism has had, in the past, close ties with “esoteric” fascism, through
the memory of Cathar persecution and troubadourish tradition exalted by Ezra Pound, a
memory that also passes through the court of Frederick ii. See R. Facchini, Il neocatarismo
cit.; see also S. Cavazza, Piccole patrie cit., pp. 55 ff. for the contact (except for the separatist
aspects) between Italian Fascism and the “Felibrism” founded by Frédéric Mistral.

the presence of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Eastern Germany, and other
monstrosities of the sort) to pulp and turn back to atlases published be-
fore 1914, with their Serbia, Montenegro, Baltic states [sic], and so on.10
The Europe of the Nineties and the first decade of the new millennium, then,
resembles the one we knew ninety years ago, except that is even more compli-
cated, because if on the one hand Yugoslavia was dissolved, on the other the
German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires no longer exist.
After having served as the backbone of almost all nationalisms, in Western
Europe the Middle Ages are seen no longer as essential in defining the identity
of the nation-state, but instead as useful in constructing a sense of “little home-
lands” and one “great European homeland,” institutions that want to be strong-
ly identitarian but not organized in the form of a traditional nation-state.11 In
Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Russia, however, a comprehensive rethinking
of history has been underway for twenty years, in which the reclamation of
distinctive historical state and national identities in the name of the Middle
Ages performs a central role. This is a medievalism that has been defined as
“contagious” and involves all the ex-communist European states, from Estonia
in the north all the way to Bulgaria in the south.12
10 U. Eco, Turning Back the Clock cit. (p. 6 of the Italian edition). Cf. P.J. Geary, The Myth of
Nations cit., p. 3.
11 On Europe see the following chapter.
12 The Contagious Middle Ages in Post-Communist East Central Europe, Exhibition, Budapest,
Open Society Archives at the Central European University (OSA), Sept. 15-Oct. 20 2006; Uni-
versity of California Berkeley, Nov. 1 2007-Jan. 31 2008, www.osaarchivum.org/files/exhibi
tions/middleages/index.html; www.osaarchivum.org/images/stories/pdfs/activity_repo
rts/rferep2006.pdf (cons. Mar. 30, 2010, the pages were found to be inactive when cons. May
6, 2019): “The exhibition presented the resurrection of the Middle Ages in p ost-communist
countries: in political battles, state and church anniversaries, millennial celebrations, the
canonizations of national saints, the revival of archaic traditions as well as the ideolo-
gies that they embodied, the reemergence of pagan cult sites, wax-puppet shows, martial
arts, tournaments, touristic and gastronomic commodities, films, rock musicals, festivals.”
See G. Klaniczay, Medieval Origins of Central Europe. An Invention or a Discovery?, in R.G.
Dahrendorf and Y. Elkana [et al.] (eds.), The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences, ceu,
Budapest 2000, pp. 251–264; A. Ivanišević, A. Lukan, and A. Suppan (eds.), Klio ohne Fes
seln? Historiographie in östlichen Europa nach den Zusammenbruch der Kommunismus,
P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2003; G. Klaniczay, Political Use of the Middle Ages in Post-
Communist Central and Eastern Europe, in Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages, 19th-21st
Century, Budapest, Central European University, Mar. 30-Apr. 2 2005; S. Antohi, P. Apor, and
B. Trencsényu (eds.), Narratives Unbound. Historical Studies in Post-Communist Eastern
Europe, ceu, Budapest-New York 2007; J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch
cit., passim. A separate question is that of medievalism in Greece, for which see: D. Ricks

178 Chapter 11
State and nation—respectively, the institution and the social body—are

still thought of as necessarily corresponding, in contrast to the rest of the West-
ern world.13 And the Medieval Era, which in the Western European countries is
now a metaphor for the non-state, is seen in Eastern Europe as the foundation
of both the state and the nation. The examples may be numerous, but we will
limit ourselves to a few notable cases, starting with symbolism. Banknotes
printed since the early Nineties and circulating in Bulgaria, Moldavia, Poland,
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Hungary… (all republics) represent medi-
eval sovereigns as fathers of the nation. In Russia we find rubles with the like-
ness of Saint Alexander Nevsky, in Macedonia denars with the Byzantine icons
of Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin, in the Czech Republic the koruna with
Saint Agnes of Bohemia. The very names of coins current in Croatia and
Ukraine—kuna and hryvnia—recall those attested in the Middle Ages. When
Slovenia began minting Euro coins (2007), it stamped the two-cent coin with
the image of the “Prince’s Stone,” the upturned base of an ionic column once
used during the High Middle Ages in the coronation ceremony of the Duke of
Carantania. And which is found, however, in Carinthia in Austria, not Slovenia:
thus the “preoccupation” expressed by the Austrian government and the clear
stance of Haider, who moved the site of preservation of this symbolic object so
important to both nations.14
In Poznań, in Poland, they argue endlessly over whether to reconstruct the
royal castle—and according to which blueprints.15 In Hungary they restored
the national monument in Ópusztaszer, which houses an immense circular
painting narrating the settlement of the Magyars in their territory in the tenth
century with powerful visual impact. The Archabbey of Saint Martin in Pan-
nonhalma, Mons Sacer Pannoniae, which in the 1800s became the world center
for Hungarianness and celebrated its thousandth year in 1996, today reassumes
its unifying function. In July 2011, the heart of Archduke Otto von Habsburg
(1912–2011), son of the last Austro-Hungarian emperor, was buried there.16 The
Republic of Hungary itself has readopted as a national symbol the crest of
and P. Magdalino (eds.), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity, Centre for Hellenic
Studies—King’s College, London 1998.
13 Cf. A. Gamble, Regional Blocs cit. Excluding, of course, extreme cases like those of Jean-
Marie Le Pen’s National Front and, later, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
14 The Prince’s Stone, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince%27s_Stone (cons. May 13, 2019).
Cf. W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., p. 68.
15 R. Grzesik, The Middle Ages as a Way of Popularization of a Region—The Case of Poznań, in
J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 278–285: 281 ff.
16 The body was instead interred in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna. Cf. M. Ricci Sargentini,
Muore Otto, ultimo erede dell’impero asburgico, in “Corriere della Sera,” 5 July 2011, p. 19.

the Royal House of Arpad, flanked by a double cross, all topped with the an-
cient crown of Saint Stephen—which since the year 2000 has been kept not in
a museum, but in the seat of the national parliament. Another crown and an-
other saint, George, occupy on the crest of the Republic of Georgia, while Cyril
and Methodios return triumphantly to the Orthodox countries. In Serbia we
find Saint Sava (thirteenth century), a member of the Nemanjic dynasty, as a
central element in the formation of national identity. In Bosnia the memory of
Blessed Catherine (fifteenth century), wife of the penultimate king Stephen
Thomas, who lived in exile in Rome as a Franciscan tertiary after the Muslim
invasion of her country, has come back to life.
Behind these symbols, with their invocations of the past and often of the
Middle Ages, one may glimpse the revival of precise political ideals. In Bulgar-
ia, the historiographical myth of the proto-Bulgars has come back into vogue,
with which Bulgarians reaffirm their own identity against the Slavic paradigm
typical of the Socialist era.17 In Hungary, many scholarly studies address
the history of the medieval monarchy.18 Between 1995 and 2000, in celebra-
tion of the first millennium of the Hungarian state, seventy-seven new monu-
ments were dedicated to the king Saint Stephen.19 The unresolved knot of
Transylvania—Hungarian or Romanian—is heating up again, with each side
claiming the right of the region’s hypothetical “first arrivals.” In Slovakia the
Great Moravia of the ninth century is considered “the only possible national
predecessor” of the new state.20 In Ukraine, pro-Russians and pro-Ukrainians
fight over who is the true heir of the principality of Kiev and thus of true Ukra-
nian identity.21 The director of the Institute of Russian History at the Academy
of Sciences insists “aggressively” on the fact that the Varangians, the Viking
founders of the Rus’, along with their prince Rurik, were, in reality, Slavs.22 But
Russia is a case in itself: it celebrates the Tzars of every age. In 2000 it pro-
claimed Nicolas ii and his family holy martyrs and started referring to itself
17 Cf. The Contagious Middle Ages cit.

18 P. Kovacs, Storiografia politica, nuove prospettive, in “Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italia-
no per il medio evo,” 113 (2011), iv Settimana di studi medievali. La Storiografia ungherese
dal 1989 ad oggi, pp. 315–321.
19 G. Klaniczay, Studi medievali in Ungheria dopo il 1998 nel contesto dell’Europa orientale,
ibid., pp. 323–337; J.M. Bak, Vorwort, in Id. [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp.
9–13: 9.
20 W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., p. 68, with bibliography.
21 M. Kizilov, “Autochthonous” Population, Ethnic Conflicts and Abuse of the Middle Ages in
Ukraine and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und
Missbrauch cit., pp. 297–311.
22 S.A. Ivanov, Medieval Pseudo-History and Russian National Identity Crisis, in J.M. Bak
[et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., pp. 235–239: 238.

180 Chapter 11
again as holy Mother Russia. And in any case—in clear opposition to other
Eastern countries—both the public and the government are once again exalt-
ing the greatness of the more recent past: the national anthem of Russia is,
once again, the Soviet one.23
The examples could go on for pages and pages—and could also remind us
that the use of the Middle Ages and of history in general has led in periods of
war to the systematic destruction of monuments to the enemy, of their places
of memory.24 The evidence provided, however, should suffice to give an idea of
the air we’ve been breathing for the last thirty years, only partially tempered by
the Europeanism that we will see in the next chapter.
This reclaiming of national identities, often under the sign of the Middle
Ages, is a counter-response to the leveling and repression once imposed by the
socialist regimes.25 In the Eastern countries, except in Russia, the rejection of
communism is complete (though often the senior management still originates
from the ranks of the party) and the damnatio memoriae of its symbols is total:
before the parliament of Budapest waves a banner with the colors of Hungary
and a large hole in the center, where the emblem of the Socialist Republic once
was.26 The recent past is erased in the name of a nationalism and symbolism
that directly recall the period prior to the First World War.
This does not actually mean that nationalism did not exist under the social-
ist regimes, along with a political use of history, principally through state-
promoted folklore: it would be absurd to believe such thing. For instance, in
Romania Ceauşescu pushed for an extreme cult of great ancestors and the
23 Ibid., p. 235. On the return of religiosity in the patriotic sentiment of Eastern countries:
A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., pp. 279 ff. and G. Klaniczay, New
Religious Cult and Modern Nationalism, in Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages in Central
and Eastern Europe: From Heritage to Politics, a Program for University Teachers, Ad-
vanced PhD Students, Researchers and Professionals in the Social Sciences and Humani-
ties, Budapest, Central European University, June 30-July 11 2003; for Serbia: Ch. Mylo
nas, Serbian Orthodox Fundamentals cit. and D. Djokić, Whose Myth? cit., p. 216; For
Bohemia: Ch.-F. Felskau, Samtene Revolution cit.; for Romania: A. Pippidi, Anniversaries,
Continuity, and Politics in Romania, in J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch,
pp. 325–335, especially pp. 333 ff.; for Russia: J. Garrard, C. Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy
Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia, Princeton University Press, Princeton-
Oxford 20142.
24 For Croatia: N. Budak, Using the Middle Ages cit., p. 243; for Crimea: M. Kizilov, “Autochtho
nous” Population cit., pp. 309 ff.
25 J. Le Goff, La vieille Europe et la nôtre, Seuil, Paris 1994, p. 59; F.P. Tocco, Europa: complesso
di identità. In margine al processo di unificazione monetaria europea, in “Quaderni medie-
vali,” xxvii (2002), n. 53, pp. 140–156: 146.
26 The flag with the hole in the middle also, and above all, recalls the anti-Soviet revolution
of 1956, of which this modified flag was the emblem. See D. Lowe, T. Joel, Remembering the
Cold War: Global Contest and National Stories, Routledge, London-New York 2013, p. 95.

c elebration of the national spirit.27 Polish Marxist historiography was notably

avant-garde in its studies, but under the socialist regime it stood out for its at-
tention to the Piast dynasty (which held power in Central Europe), rather than
the Jagiellonians, who conquered a good half of European Russia.28 Polish his-
torians studied the class struggle of the peasants and the birth of the state, so
that in 1962 Poland celebrated its first millennium triumphantly: obviously not
in memory of the “Baptism of Duke Mieszko,” which happened in 966, but as
the veritable founding date of the state, following the concession of the ducal
title by the emperor. Any discussion of ecclesiastical history, religiosity, sym-
bolism, the sacred power of the king, and ethnicity (if not in the Russian and
Soviet form of Pan-Slavism and all that entails) was unacceptable. New sym-
bols and new founding myths were (re)invented, in part to produce conscious
syncretisms with previous traditions: these were the myths of industrial super-
production, the heroes of the Bolshevik revolution and the anti-German resis-
tance. In Russia, as they proceeded with the destruction of the Orthodox
Church and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior itself, “the mummified cadaver
of Lenin becomes the relic of the new regime.”29 But if the past remained, its
role was marginalized as they looked to the future: “The past is disqualified, as
an alienating archaism destined to vanish in the new communist society.”30
There were, without a doubt, independent spirits like the director Andrei Tar-
kovsky, the historian Aron Gurevich, and the historians of the Warsaw School,
Bronisław Geremek and Karol Modzelewski, who occupied themselves with
medieval history precisely to avoid constant conflict with the present era and
who thus hoped to protect “the organic fabric of the national patrimony.”31 But
27 A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., pp. 277–282; A. Pippidi, Anniversa
ries cit., especially pp. 330–332. On identitarian conflicts in Yugoslavia before the eruption
of the Balkan War: G. Troude, Conflits identitaires dans la Yougoslavie de Tito, 1960–1980,
Association Pierre Belon, Paris 2007, with bibliography.
28 A fact that remains important in contemporary political dialectic: in December 2004, the
Russian Duma switched the national holiday from November 7, which marked the start of
the October Revolution, to November 4, which commemorates the liberation of Moscow
from Polish occupation in 1612. Cf. S.A. Ivanov, Medieval Pseudo-History cit., p. 239.
29 A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., p. 278. On medieval millenarianism
transferred, not just to Nazism, but also to Marxism: N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenni
um cit.; F. Dimitri, Comunismo magico. Leggende, miti e visioni ultraterrene del socialismo
reale, Castelvecchi, Roma 2004.
31 K. Modzelewski, Bronisław Geremek storico polacco nel contesto europeo, in Lo storico
Bronisław Geremek, protagonista dell’89 polacco ed europeo, conference, Rome, Acca-
demia dei Lincei, April 21, 2009. The conference presentations are reproduced audiovisu-
ally on the site of Radio Radicale, www.radioradicale.it/scheda/277258 (cons. May 13,
2019).

182 Chapter 11
the partial openings of the Fifties and Sixties, ushered in with the end of Stalin-
ism, were closed by the end of the decade with the Prague Spring.
After 1989, however, nations turn medieval and Christian again, and rather
than being metaphorical, references to the Middle Ages become their very
foundations.32 The difference with respect to past usage is notable, first of all
for the degree of diffusion of the concept, especially over the course of the
1990s, and second for the way in which the nation and the medieval are
described: “blood and soil reach an importance unthinkable in the official
Communist discourse.”33 In 1998, the president of the Republic of Croatia,
Franjo Tudman, expressed as much in his introduction to a volume on King
Tomislav:
What he [Tomislav] achieved in the first quarter of the tenth century is

attained today by the Croatian people with its army, on land and on sea
[…]. Croatia is resurrected in our time, after many centuries, by keeping
alive the memory of King Tomislav, which is therefore sacred to every
Croat.34
According to some commentators,
We are faced with an ethnic reawakening, the blooming of those organic

nationalisms and the widespread polemological system that they gave
life to: the national State […]. The century closes with the rebirth […] of
ancient Nations, harkening directly back to their traditional cultures and
beliefs.35
From our point of view, however, we find ourselves on a continent marching at

two different speeds: while Western Europe is building the European Union
(politically and culturally, and with considerable difficulties), seeking solu-
tions that can mediate between the old sense of the state and the emergence
of regional homelands, in Eastern Europe nineteenth-century themes of hard
32 J.M. Bak [et al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit., passim. For the Balkan region, nu-
merous examples in N. Budak, Using the Middle Ages cit., especially pp. 243–244. For Slo-
venia: M. Verginella (ed.), Fra invenzione della tradizione e ri-scrittura del passato: la storio
grafia slovena degli anni Novanta, monograph issue of “Qualestoria,” xxvii (1999), n. 1.
33 S.A. Ivanov, Medieval Pseudo-History cit., p. 238. See R.W. Ayres and S.M. Saideman, For Kin
or Country. Xenophobia, Nationalism, and War, Columbia University Press, New York 2008.
34 Cit. by N. Budak, Using the Middle Ages cit., p. 258.
35 C. Risé, Julius Evola, o la vittoria della Rivolta, in J. Evola, Rivolta contro il mondo moderno
cit., pp. 17–22: 21.

and fast nationalism are taken up again, with the same inventions and inver-
sions. And with all the nefarious consequences that derive from it: as Eric J.
Hobsbawm writes, with the Treaties of Versailles and Trianon that followed the
First World War,
in Europe the basic principle of re-ordering the map was to create ethnic-
linguistic nation states […]. The attempt was a disaster, as can still be
seen in the Europe of the 1990s. The national conflicts tearing the conti-
nent apart in the 1990s were the old chickens of Versailles once again
coming home to roost.36
This theme reinforces, if there was ever any need, the concept of the “short
twentieth century” (1914–91) theorized by Hobsbawm himself: from the per-
spective of historic-political categories, the current countries of the East tend
to ignore the century completely, throwing out not only the Stasi and the
Stalinist purges, but much, much more. This can cause some real mystification,
as one can observe in that strand of contemporary Russian historiography
closely aligned with the government and in the face of which a historian can
do nothing but throw up his hands, as no sooner was the communist censor-
ship ended than “an avalanche of pseudo-academic literature flooded over the
Russian readers.”37 We find the mathematician Anatolij Fomenko, author of
various books on Russian “history,” whose contribution to our knowledge was
summed up in Corriere della Sera on July 12, 2008:
Fomenko claims to have studied the position of the stars through the cen-
turies and compared them with ancient documents. It seems all of his-
tory must be rewritten, because what we believed happened in antiquity
is instead shifted to the Middle Ages. Christ, then, was born in 1053 and
crucified in 1086. The first Rome was in reality Alexandria, Egypt, which
moved across the Bosporus in the eleventh century and became Byzan-
tium (the name, naturally, comes from the Russian Bis Antik, Second An-
cient). The mathematician then maintains that this city was also known
by other names, Jerusalem and Troy. With astounding temporal acrobat-
ics, he maintains that the war described by Homer was none other than
the Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders. But moving forward, when
Byzantium grew weak, Moscow was born, its direct heir, and what we
36 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes cit., p. 31.

37 S.A. Ivanov, Medieval Pseudo-History cit., p. 236.

184 Chapter 11
know as Rome, on the coast of Latium. It is obvious that this theory rein-
forces the theories of Slavophiles. The Russian Empire, indeed, is not
born as the heir of Rome (and thus of the West), but parallel to Rome and
for that reason has nothing in common with our civilization.38
The danger is not only in the excesses, which the critical spirit (if and where it
still exists) can easily recognize—despite Fomenko’s ramblings being still
quite popular today in Russia, a land that seems to possess not its own national
memory but an Imperial kind of non-memory.39 The danger is primarily in its
obviousness—that is, in proposing historical interpretations that conform to
common sentiment, insofar as they are profoundly conditioned by narrative
themes and motifs that have held sway for some time. Through this popular
understanding of history, one finds in the Middle Ages the origin of the nation,
its sentiment, and even its immutable, ancestral ethnicity.40
Thus, instead of directing itself towards experimentation with new forms of
affiliation, the yearning for liberty on the part of Eastern Europe has found its
reference symbols in the period preceding the recent past that it strives to for-
get. These states have returned not only to atlases printed before 1914, but also
to the political projections of the nation via the Middle Ages that were typical
of the nineteenth century and the decades before the Great War.41 The princi-
pal modalities of imagining and using the Middle Ages in the countries of East-
ern Europe and the Balkans start there.
The conviction that there were any ethno-cultural continuities from the
deepest Middle Ages up to our day is really the result of Romantic culture.
Even the identification of the nation with its people, or rather the claim that
nation and people have always been the same thing and hence that a “national
sentiment” exists primordially among the population, is primarily a creation of
38 F. Dragosei, Così il Cremlino riscrive la storia, in “Corriere della Sera,” 12 July 2008, p. 41, in
response to A.T. Fomenko, Antiquity in the Middle Ages. Greek and Bible History, The Ed-
win Mellen Press, Lewiston-Queenston-Lampeter 1999. See S.A. Ivanov, Medieval Pseudo-
History cit., who writes of Fomenko (p. 237): “It is completely impossible to render
Fomenko’s arguments: all of them, from the first word to the last, are absolute

nonsense.”
39 S.A. Ivanov, Medieval Pseudo-History cit., pp. 237 ff. The Ukrainians refuse to be outdone:
according to a pseudoscientific theory, the Ukrainian language is one of the oldest in the
world, the precursor to Sanskrit, and the Ukrainian mythology is the most ancient Indo-
European mythology: M. Kizilov, “Autochthonous” Population cit., pp. 299 ff. Some Roma-
nians, however, consider the foundation of Troy to be the work of the Dacians: A. Pippidi,
Anniversaries cit., p. 333.
40 Cf. supra, Ch. 3.
41 See today M. Baár, Historians and Nationalism cit.

nineteenth-century culture. That today we know that these theories are sub-
stantially false is the result of historiography of the last thirty years: until rela-
tively recently, almost everyone—historians included—was convinced of
their full validity. How could one not believe the obvious conclusion that the
Germani were the progenitors of the Germans and that the French were once
Franks? That is, that these historical peoples constitute the ancient, but al-
ready perfectly defined, counterpart to contemporary ones?42 We’re dealing
with a misunderstanding that confuses planes of reality, that disregards the
infinite gaps in history, that confers ethnic unity on fluid, amalgamated, and
diverse populations, that ignores that constructions of memory may vary cul-
turally according to the social groups that produced them, and that, in the end,
attributes to the people an uninterrupted historical memory. In fact, even
when a certain territory has been home to a single people (and no more than
one, of course), a people that has been ethnically continuous from the Middle
Ages to our days—and such a thing does happen here and there—how can
one think that this same people has had a continuous identity, that they have
felt the same way for centuries, and centuries, and centuries? And that, pre-
cisely in virtue of this ancestral identity, they could have developed a political
orientation that would lead them necessarily to self-determination?
The Middle Ages as a necessary and indisputable premise of contemporary
nations is an axiom that just does not work. Benedetto Croce, in times now
distant, already connected nationalism, especially the German variety, to Ro-
manticism and its “religion of the medieval,” coming to the conclusion that he
was dealing with “perverse” interpretations of history:
But if the religion of the medieval was the principal and most widely
known, it was not the only one; next to it, and sharing some features with
it, was once exalted the religion of bloodlines and of the people, of those
people who, based on scant evidence and historical meditation, were
deemed the creators and dominators of the Middle Ages, the Germanic
race, whose virtue is now sought and found and celebrated in every cor-
ner of Europe […]. All those, considered in their origins, were perversions
in that they substituted the particular for the universal, the contingent
for the eternal, the creature for the creator.43
42 Cf. W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., p. 56.

43 B. Croce, Introduzione alla Storia d’Europa nel secolo xix [1931], now in Id., Filosofia, Poesia,
Storia. Pagination from the author’s complete works, Adelphi, Milano 1996, pp. 1262–1314:
1306 ff.

186 Chapter 11
Today, historians follow with great attention the processes of redeployment

of those nineteenth-century cultural categories that created nationalism by
basing it instrumentally on the Middle Ages.44 Among these, medieval histori-
ans, many of whom are active in Eastern Europe, maintain a critical vigilance
that seems more necessary now than ever.45 There are scholars who believe that
44 P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit., pp. 15–40. Cf. for example A.-M. Thiesse, La création des
identités nationales cit., p. 133: “At the dawn of the nineteenth century, nations have no
history yet: even those that had already identified their ancestors only possess a few in-
complete chapters of a narration whose core remains to be written.” Equally eloquent are
the words of N. Budak, Using the Middle Ages cit., p. 242: “The political rhetoric of almost
the last two decades was not based on current knowledge about the Middle Ages, but
rather on its reinterpretation by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians and
politicians.” Cf. P.P. Pasolini, Scritti corsari cit., pp. 45–48, 8 luglio 1974. Limitatezza della
storia e immensità del mondo contadino (Open letter to Italo Calvino, published in “Paese
Sera”), p. 46: “The peasant’s universe […] is a transnational universe: which indeed does
not recognize nations. It is the remains of a previous civilization (or an accumulation of
previous civilizations, all quite related), and the dominant (nationalist) class dominated
these remains according to their own political ends […]. It is this unlimited peasant
world, prenational and preindustrial, which survived until a few short years ago, that I
mourn.” See above all B. Anderson, Imagined Communities cit.; E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations
and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge 1983; J. Ryan, Cultures of Forgery cit.; J. Leerssen, National Thought in Europe cit., as
well as P. Rossi, L’identità dell’Europa. Miti, realtà, prospettive, il Mulino, Bologna 2007, pp.
119–134 (the Ch. Identità locali, identità nazionali, identità europea). In the course of the
1990s, many international journals were founded to study nationalisms: for example “Na-
tions and N ationalism” (1995) and “National Identities” (1999). For a review of the princi-
pal historiographical positions: J.M. Faraldo, Modernas e imaginadas. El nacionalismo
como objeto de investigacion historica en las dos ultimas decadas del siglo xx, in “Hispania,”
lxi/3 (2001), n. 209, pp. 933–964.
45 The research projects are numerous, important, and interrelated. Among the most signifi-
cant publications the following should be mentioned at least: S. Gasparri, Prima delle na
zioni cit.; Id., I Germani immaginari e la realtà del Regno cit.; P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations
cit.; A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity cit.; W. Pohl, Le origini etniche dell’Europa. Barbari
e Romani fra Antichità e Medioevo, Viella, Roma 2000; Id., Aux origines d’une Europe eth
nique: identités en transformation entre Antiquité et Moyen Âge, in “Annales: Histoire, Sci-
ences sociales,” lx (2005), n. 1, pp. 183–208; G. Cracco, J. Le Goff, H. Keller, and G. Ortalli
(eds.), Europa in costruzione. La forza delle identità, la ricerca di unità (secoli ix–xiii), pro-
ceedings of the xlvi week of Centro per gli studi italo-germanici in Trento, Trento 15–19
September 2003, il Mulino, Bologna 2006; F. Bougard, L. Feller, and R. Le Jan (eds.), Les élites
au haut Moyen Âge. Crises et renouvellements, Brepols, Turnhout 2006; I. Wood, The
Use and Abuse of the Early Middle Ages cit.; G. Klaniczay, Medieval Origins of Central
Europe cit.; I. Garizpanov, P.J. Geary, and P. Urbańczyk (eds.), Franks, Northmen, and Slavs:
Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, Brepols, Turnhout 2008; J.M. Bak [et
al.] (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch cit.; P.J. Geary and G. Klaniczay (eds.), Manufacturing
Middle Ages cit.; S. Gasparri, C. La Rocca, Tempi barbarici cit.; I. Wood, The Modern Origins
cit. Among other studies one may recall the American project Creating Ethnicity: The Use

a “hard core” of national sentiments existed as early as the Late Middle Ages,
but only with a precise recontextualization and limitation to governing elites.46
Other historians, the larger contingent by far, instead maintain, with excellent
intellectual foundations, that the birth of our concept of national identity is no
earlier than the eighteenth or even nineteenth century and that it is the fruit of
deliberate political and cultural operations. Both, however, deny that one may
speak of biologically ethnic continuities from the Early Middle Ages to today,
affirming in every case the absolute preeminence of cultural factors and ac-
knowledging that even these factors were fluid and changeable across time.47
In fact, under the ancien régime, the feeling of belonging was founded on
premises other than the nation: such as religious faith, loyalty to one’s lord or
sovereign, identity based on the city or at least a defined place, and most of all
affiliation with a social class. There can be no doubt that ethnicity existed as a
distinguishing factor, even in the Middle Ages, and that it became relevant pri-
marily in episodes of direct contact, for instance during military or commer-
cial expeditions; but in any case it was not predominant. A much stronger
and Abuse of History, directed by Patrick Geary (1994–96, ucla, Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies) and numerous projects directed by Gábor Klaniczay at the Collegi-
um Budapest (est. 1992) and Central European University, which have contributed signifi-
cantly to the internationalization of such studies. In particular, Medievalism, Archaic Ori
gins and Regimes of Historicity. Alternatives to Antique Tradition in the Nineteenth Century
in Europe, directed by G. Klaniczay and P. Geary, unified many European and American
research entities: www.colbud.hu/medievalism/ (cons. Mar. 31, 2011, the page was found
to be inactive when cons. May 13, 2019). Operational in Holland is the Study Platform on
Interlocking Nationalisms (SPIN), directed by Joep Leerssen (since 2008), www.spinnet.eu/
(cons. May 13, 2019). For Italy we should mention the research project (Cofin) I Longobardi
e l’identità italiana: riflessione storiografica, prove materiali, memoria locale e falsificazioni
tra ‘800 e ‘900, coordinated by Stefano Gasparri (Università di Venezia Ca’ Foscari, 2004).
For an overview of recent developments in historiography in Eastern European countries,
see M. Saghy (ed.), Fifteen-Year Anniversary Reports, in “Annual of Medieval Studies at
CEU” (Central European University, Budapest), eds. J.A. Rasson and B. Zsolt Szakacs, xvii
(2009), n. 15, pp. 169–365. Among more recent studies: L.A. Berto, I raffinati metodi di in
dagine e il mestiere dello storico. L’alto medioevo italiano all’inizio del terzo millennio, Uni-
versitas Studiorum, Mantova 2016 (a dissenting voice against the ideological exploitation
found even in those studies cited above) and S. Losasso, Identità interpretate: la cultura
materiale dei barbari. L’influenza del contesto nella lettura del passato, in Medievalismi ital
iani cit., pp. 75–92.
46 For example J. Le Goff, L’Europe est-elle née au Moyen Âge?, Seuil, Paris 2003, pp. 230–233.
Cf. G. Sergi, L’idea di medioevo cit., pp. 59–61; Id., Prefazione cit., pp. 9–12.
47 On the intermediate position of “refashioning,” according to which historical processes
always entail both continuity and discontinuity, and thus the “invention of tradition” is
never that simple: E. Ohnuki Thierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The
Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002.

188 Chapter 11
e lement of shared identity could be, for instance, the veneration of a patron
saint. The “nation” exists, naturally, even during the old regime, but it is a social
marker much more than an ethnic one and an almost exclusively aristocratic
concept. The term nation, in fact, does not identify a people, but its lords. This
appears especially evident in Poland, in the concept of Szlachta, which re-
ferred to the nation-as-nobility. One might think of the ideas of race, origin,
and genealogy developed by all the European aristocracies from the Late Mid-
dle Ages onward—from the time, that is, that the aristocratic class enclosed
itself within the ranks of nobility and patriciates. Nobility is antiquity: every-
one knows it. The further back into the mists of time a family can trace its ori-
gins, the more it can be considered illustrious. One may reach back to Ancient
Rome, the classical heroes, or, more frequently, to the Middle Ages: all the aris-
tocratic houses boast a Crusader grandfather, at the very least, if they don’t
decide to go all the way back to consuls or barbarian chieftains. The mecha-
nism of inventing tradition, by which ancient origins are even attributed to the
parvenus—albeit financially well off—is the exact equivalent, in the ancien
régime, of what happened at the end of the 1700s when the concept of the na-
tion transferred to the people. The same slippery slope of meaning happened
to the word race: during the old regime, race signified aristocratic bloodline
(for instance, race capétienne), and had nothing to do with any ethnic connota-
tion. From the historian’s point of view, we are faced with a democratization of
the “incredible genealogies,” which we encounter in many authors of the early
nineteenth century. They didn’t find themselves heirs to the Middle Ages so
much as its biological children.48
This same reasoning may be presented in a more immediately intelligible
way if we refer to language as one of many principal elements in the construc-
tion of identity. In 1807–1808, Fichte wrote that language determines the na-
tion, and in effect the totality of nineteenth-century nationalist movements
relied on the “language question” as the most obvious banner to wave in sup-
port of the existence of a secular identity shared among the people.49 But if
this is true, and if contemporary nations were effectively constructed with the
aid of a national language, it is also true that these national languages were,
everywhere, constructed languages, sometimes invented around a table, some-
times even founded ex novo by the discovery (that is, essentially, the fabrica-
tion) of some national epic. Languages have also been, for centuries, elements
of demarcation much more social than ethnic: My Fair Lady can still testify to
48 S. Soldani, Il medioevo del Risorgimento cit., p. 152.

49 J.G. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation, Berlin 1808.

that. The Italian people (the ones who are supposed to be the nation) did not
speak their own national idiom, Dante’s Italian, but infinite local variants.50
This is not the occasion for correcting such an erroneous assessment; let’s
leave that to other authoritative studies, for the problem of the identity of
medieval European populations is one of the most debated topics in contem-
porary Medieval Studies. The fact remains, however, that this earlier historio-
graphical interpretation, which has lived long enough to become a cliché, is
the basic framework on which political medievalism was founded—and is still
founded today—in its role as the container of national identities; the suit that,
cut to measure like a beautiful redingote or a sparkling dragoon’s uniform, is
best suited to our contemporary medievalism. Currently, two opposing heirs of
nineteenth-century culture, always so close by despite the passing years, are
often found expressed alongside one another and by the same movements: on
the one hand, the denial of evolution, scientific rationalism, and thus certainty
in modernity, but on the other hand the clear assertion of the biological deter-
minism of race and ethnicity, which finds its inspiration in Darwinian evolu-
tion itself.
Naturally, studies published today do not in fact propose “an idyllic picture
of a multicultural Middle Ages,” as this epoch was indeed intensely marked by
interethnic conflicts.51 What is reconstructed and affirmed, however, is the fun-
damental Otherness of the Middle Ages with respect to the modern world.
Pressed by the urgency of modernity (because ethnicism and nationalism have
set off wars even in the name of the Middle Ages, and because even in
Venice—a Mediterranean port that was the capital of an empire!—some
chase after the genetic code of “Venetians doc”),52 historians are faced with
the task of responsibly evaluating whether, how, and to what extent declared
cultural and ethnic “Medieval” identities may correspond with verifiable
historical facts. And these identities have been welcomed into the ample
bed of the “invention of tradition,” belying their deceptive nature and their
50 Cf. for example A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., pp. 67–81 and 113–
131; T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., pp. 102 ff. On falsifications in particular J. Ryan,
Cultures of Forgery cit.; J.M. Bak, P.J. Geary and G. Klaniczay (eds.), Manufacturing a Past
for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-
Century Europe, Brill, Amsterdam 2014.
51 W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., p. 70. Cf. also G. Sergi, Antidoti all’abuso della storia cit.,
pp. 161 ff.
52 R. Bianchini, Caccia al dna dei veneziani doc, in “la Repubblica,” 12 Nov. 2009, pp. 1 and 23.
TN: doc stands for “denominazione di origine controllata,” or “controlled designation of
origin.” It is a certificate of quality assurance confirming that a product—chiefly wine—
was produced in the region specified on the label.

190 Chapter 11
far-from-remote origin. Thus Patrick Geary, in his book The Myth of Nations:
The Medieval Origins of Europe, broadly showed that ethnogenesis is a dynamic
and continuous process, certainly not an acquisition granted once and for all.
What do Early Medieval European populations have to do with the pretensions
to ethnic nationalism of our day? Geary’s answer is clear: “Nothing.”53
Similarly, Giuseppe Sergi writes:
It is unacceptable for the European Middle Ages to be treated like a river-

bank to be fished—with often uninformed discussions of convenience—
for the legitimate origins of great, nineteenth-century, national forma-
tions or the unknown roots of regionalistic reclamations in a neo-nazi
vein. That world must be read from within and, when not treated as a
crutch, does not provide much for the propagandists or non-historians to
find […]. The Middle Ages are quite a long way from “national,” and not
only because they were so fractured, but also because there is nothing
evocative in the reconstructions that bloom in its final centuries: in the
drawing up of new states there was, ultimately, nothing found preconsti-
tuted in the presumed enduring identities of the people who predomi-
nantly lived there.54
This return to the nineteenth-century interpretation, a medievalizing neo-

Romanticism, is omnipresent today, but it appears particularly clearly in two
otherwise dissimilar cases. The first is that of the Serbs, with which we started
this chapter. Its obviousness springs from the fact that current Serbian nation-
alists, aside from referring to the medieval Greater Serbia, explicitly call them-
selves “neo-Romantics,” proving they are aware of the debt they owe the 1800s.
Today in Serbia, centers for studying the genealogy and history of the people
are popping up everywhere, and history books from the nineteenth century are
being published in their unaltered forms.55
53 P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit., p. 156. Cf. ibid., p. 170: “The history of the peoples of
Europe in the early Middle Ages cannot be used as an argument for or against any of the
political, territorial, and ideological movements of today.”
54 G. Sergi, L’idea di medioevo cit., pp. 60 ff.
55 R. Radić, Srbi pre Adama i posle njega, Istorija jedne zloupotrebe: Slovo protiv “novoro
mantičara” [The Serbs before Adam and after: A History of Abuse, a Word against “Neoro-
mantics”], Stubovi kulture, Beograd 2005. See also D. Djokic, Whose Myth? Which Nation?
cit. Ivan Djurić (1947–1997), president of the “Liberal Forum of Serbia,” was in the early
1990s the first academic to denounce the instrumentalization of history, recalling how
distant our mental categories are from those of persons of the past and how the topoi that
characterize nations are so recent, resistant, and erroneous. See I. Djurić, Vlast, opozicija,
alternativa [Power, Opposition, Alternative], ed. S. Biserko, Helsinški odbor za ljudska

The other case is that of the Northern League. The foundational myth of
Padania, one that coexists with Celticism, is that of the Lombard League,
which waged a victorious war against the Emperor in the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries. The Battle of Legnano, the Oath of Pontida, and the Carroccio
are the symbols of this new nation. In October 2009, the film Barbarossa ap-
peared in movie theaters, a tableau of the “Padanian people’s” aspirations to
independence already in the twelfth century.56
The phenomenon of medievalism in the Northern League comes from a po-
litical doctrine, formulated by Gianfranco Miglio, that foretells the end of the
modern state and the need to rethink society in a federalist way, reconsidering
the validity of earlier political systems and in particular those of the corpora-
tive and territorial institutions—free cities, federations—through which Late
Medieval society was articulated. Despite this theoretical approach, which one
might define as post-modern, the Northern League’s medievalism in reality
constitutes a tremendous example of the lasting effect of nineteenth-century
medievalism on Italian political culture. And indeed this party assumes as its
own origin myth not so much the historical Lombard League founded by the
Communes against the Emperor, but the “idea of the Lombard League” forged
in the 1800s.57 The Northern League (which in the 1980s, before becoming an
prava u Srbiji [Helsinki Committee for human rights in Serbia], Kragujevac 2009, for ex-
ample pp. 50 ff., 62 ff.; see also Id., Istorija: pribeziste ili putokaz [History: Refuge or Com-
pass], Svjetlost, Sarajevo 1990; Id., Les racines historiques du conflit serbo-croate, in
“Études,” iv (Oct. 1991), n. 3754, pp. 293–303. A synthetic bibliographical review of the
pseudo-historical writings of Serbian nationalists can be read in M. Vukašinović, At the
Beginning, There Were Serbs—The Concept of Magnifying a Nation’s History, the Case of a
Publishing Agency Catalogue, www.1989history.eu/upload/1247826070.pdf (cons. Aug. 12,
2010, the page was found to be inactive when cons. May 13, 2019 ). Most “Neoromantics”
today are linked to Vojislav Koštunica’s Serbian Democratic Party and Vojislav Šešelj’s Ser-
bian Radical Party.
56 T. di Carpegna Falconieri, Barbarossa e la Lega Nord: a proposito di un film, delle storie e
della Storia, in “Quaderni storici,” xxxiv (2009), n. 132, pp. 859–878.
57 E. Sestan, Legnano nella storiografia romantica, in Id., Scritti vari, ed. G. Pinto, Le Lettere,
Firenze 1991, vol. iii, Storiografia dell’Otto e Novecento, pp. 221–240; M. Fubini, La Lega
lombarda nella letteratura dell’Ottocento, in Popolo e stato in Italia nell’età di Federico Bar
barossa: Alessandria e la Lega lombarda. Speeches and communications of the xxxiii
Congresso storico subalpino per la celebrazione dell’viii centenario della fondazione di
Alessandria (Alessandria, 6-7-8-9 Oct. 1968), Deputazione subalpina di storia patria, To-
rino 1970, pp. 399–420; E. Voltmer, Il carroccio cit., pp. 13–21; P. Brunello, Pontida, in M. Is-
nenghi (ed.), Luoghi della memoria. Strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita, Laterza, Roma-Bari
1997, pp. 15–28; N. D’Acunto, Il mito dei comuni nella storiografia del Risorgimento, in Le
radici del Risorgimento, Acts of the xx Convegno del Centro di studi Avellaniti, Fonte
Avellana, Aug. 28–30, 1996, s.n., s.l. 1997, pp. 243–264; C. Sorba, Il mito dei comuni e le patrie
cittadine cit.; S. Soldani, Il medioevo del Risorgimento cit.; M. Vallerani, Il comune come

192 Chapter 11
umbrella party for federated movements, had its heart in a party actually called
the Lega Lombarda, “Lombard League”) uses medieval stereotypes coined in
the 1800s to wage its own political war. For instance, the knight found in all its
logos—Alberto da Giussano—is not a historical personage, but a statue erect-
ed at the end of the 1800s, and the party’s website shows the poem The Oath of
Pontida by Giovanni Berchet: a poem from the Risorgimento era that until re-
cently all Italian children learned by memory.58
This way of presenting the political Middle Ages remained the stock-in-
trade of schoolbooks until at least the time that I finished elementary school in
the Seventies. When we talked about Communes, we were already talking
about Italians; the wars of the Lombard League against the Emperors were
equal to the Wars of Independence; when we studied the Battle of Legnano, we
never would have thought of using the historian Rahewin as a source, as our
authentic sources were the Risorgimento poets, the compositions of Prati, Ber-
chet, and Carducci, or the paintings of Massimo d’Azeglio.
mito politico cit.; P. Grillo, Legnano 1176. Una battaglia per la libertà, Laterza, Roma-Bari
2010, pp. 192–198.
58 Movimento Giovani Padani, Il Giuramento di Pontida. Giovanni Berchet, www.giovani
padani.leganord.org/articoli.asp?ID=5260 (cons. Mar. 12, 2010, the page was found to be
inactive when cons. May 13, 2019). The new oath, declared by Umberto Bossi on May 20,
1990, has this tone: “I swear loyalty to the cause of autonomy and liberty for our people
who today, as for a thousand years, are incarnated in the Lombard League and its demo-
cratically elected organs”: Movimento Giovani Padani, May 20, 1990, Il Rinnovo del Giura
mento di Pontida del 7 aprile 1167, www.giovanipadani.leganord.org/articoli.asp?ID=5807
(cons. Mar. 12, 2010, the page was found to be inactive when cons. May 13, 2019). For a po-
litical analysis of the early years (when recourse to identitarian medieval motifs was al-
ready perfectly structured): R. Biorcio, La Lega come attore politico: dal federalismo al
populismo regionalista, in R. Mannheimer, La Lega Lombarda, Feltrinelli, Milano 1991, pp.
34–82, especially pp. 67–72. For some analyses of Leaguist medievalism, see R. Iorio, Il giu
ramento di Pontida, in “Quaderni medievali,” xv (1990), n. 30, pp. 207–211: 211 (on Leaguists
as “apocryphal successors to Pontida”); S. Cavazza, L’invenzione della tradizione e la Lega
lombarda, in “Iter-percorsi di ricerca” (1994), n. 8, pp. 197–214; E. Voltmer, Il carroccio cit.,
pp. 24–31; I. Porciani, Identità locale-identità nazionale cit., pp. 142 ff.; T. di Carpegna Falco-
nieri, Barbarossa cit., pp. 874 ff.; A. Spiriti, L’Alberto da Giussano, in F. Benigno and L. Scuc-
cimarra (eds.), Simboli della Politica, Viella, Roma 2010, pp. 85–98. Cf. Ch. Duggan, The
Force of Destiny. A History of Italy since 1796, Allen Lane-Penguin Books Ltd, London 2007,
pp. 582ff: “Under Bossi’s charismatic leadership, the League promoted a strong pseudo-
ethnic culture, postulating the existence of a north Italian nation called Padania, cele-
brating Lombard and other local dialects, and drawing selectively on history to support its
claim to the essential unity of the north. Much was made (ironically, given how it had
been used by the ‘Italian’ patriots in the Risorgimento) of the twelfth-century Lombard
League.”

Bolstered by the knowledge of this great and basic narrative, the Northern
League has overturned the Risorgimental rhetoric according to which the
Lombard League of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries represented the glori-
ous Italian epic against the foreign oppressor, transforming it into the epic of
the Lombards against the centralizing oppressor that is Rome. Thus, using the
same stereotypes of the Middle Ages, in the 1800s one could speak of unifying
the fatherland, while today one speaks of the secession of Northern Italy. The
Battle of Legnano, ultimately, is exactly like Arthur and Merlin for the Welsh as
opposed to the English: like many other coins that fill the coffers of our Medi-
evalism, this one too is double-sided. Among other things, this means that
without the Risorgimento that unified Italy, the Northern League today would
not have the rhetorical tools to declare that it wants to secede. Its hero is Al-
berto da Giussano, an imaginary character concocted about a hundred and
fifty years after the period in which he would have lived. These, like many other
personalities of the identitarian Middle Ages, resemble Comrade Ogilvy, a war
hero invented from nothing that George Orwell describes in the novel 1984:
Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him
as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade
Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and
when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authen-
tically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.59
59 G. Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York 1949: p. 48.

Chapter 12
Emperors and Wanderers: Middle Ages of a

United Europe
Finally, there he was, they glimpsed him advancing down below, Char-
lemagne, on a horse that seemed larger than life, with his beard down to
his chest, his hands on the pommel of the saddle. He reigns and battles,
battles and reigns, on and on, he seemed a little bit older than the last
time those soldiers had seen him.
i. calvino, The Non-existent Knight (1959)
It is a beautiful day in June, the year is 1767. Twelve-year-old Cosimo Piovasco

di Rondò is climbing a tree in protest because he does not want to eat a plate
of snails. From then on, the Baron in the Trees carries out all his business in the
canopies of the woods between Ombrosa and Olivabassa. But his territory is
much vaster, as he explains to his beloved sitting on her swing:
“As far as you can go if you move through the trees—this way, that way,
beyond the wall into the olive grove, up the hill, to the other side of the
hill, into the woods, into the bishop’s lands…” “Even as far as France?” “As
far as Poland and Saxony.”1
Let’s turn this great, green forest that is Europe upside down: at the foot of so
many trees, we can imagine myriad, intertwining roots. They are “the roots of
Europe”: an expression that, in recent years, has become quite popular in politi-
cal and cultural debates.2 A very similar concept is that of European identity,
which encompasses the former. If the roots are those constitutive components
accumulated throughout the historical process of becoming, which continue
1 I. Calvino, The Baron in the Trees, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York 2017, p. 23.
2 B. Geremek, Le radici comuni dell’Europa, il Saggiatore, Milano 1991; J. Le Goff, L’Europe est elle
née au Moyen Âge ? cit.; F. Cardini, Europa. Le radici cristiane cit.; Id. and S. Valzania, Le radici
perdute dell’Europa. Da Carlo V ai conflitti mondiali, postf. by L. Canfora, Mondadori, Milano
2006; R. De Mattei, De Europa: tra radici cristiane e sogni postmoderni, Le Lettere, Firenze
2006; M. Introvigne, Il segreto dell’Europa. Guida alla riscoperta delle radici cristiane, SugarCo,
Milano 2007. See also T. di Carpegna Falconieri, Il discorso pubblico sulla Storia medievale
nell’Europa contemporanea: tra unioni “carolinge” e specifiche identità locali, in G. Cordini
(ed.), Europa: cultura e patrimonio culturale, esi, Napoli 2018, pp. 25–37.

Emperors and Wanderers: Middle Ages of a United Europe 195
to nourish European culture—as long as they are kept alive and don’t wither—
the identity is the tree in its entirety: what defines us and grants us the aware-
ness of being European. Cosimo Piovasco attempted to write a “Planned
Constitution for an Ideal State Founded in the Trees”; it falls to us, however, to
discuss the no-less-intricate topic of constructing a Europe that has so many
roots.
The interest in knowing and understanding identity through the past starts
with the confirmation that the forest of Europe is not very lush. So many roots,
in fact, do not correspond to a shared identitarian sentiment and Europe
continues to be a fatherland that does not exist.3 Ever more integrated from an
economic point of view, ever more uniform (across the Continent we eat the
same products, dress the same way, and watch the same kinds of TV programs),
Europe is still not united, for it lacks the pillars that would make it a community,
like a legal system, single government, foreign policy, and, naturally, the sense
of belonging and brotherhood expressed through a symbolic patrimony.
The process of cultural integration, launched successfully in the early Fif-
ties, has seen various phases of stagnation. The Maastricht Treaty of 1991, with
the transformation of the European Economic Community into the European
Union, did not lead to an effective cultural politics in the name of cooperation,
which thus far has resulted only in a common flag (hoisted for the first time in
1986). The later expansion of the Union to numerous countries of Eastern Eu-
rope only aggravated dormant tensions. Certainly, the introduction of a single
currency, the euro, has meant an important development in the idem sentire,
including from a symbolic point of view, but nevertheless, as has been said,
“The euro is not an ideal.”4 And besides, the euro is not even the currency of all
European countries, nor indeed of all those within the Union. In short, now
that we have made Europe, we must make Europeans.5
The interest in realizing and transmitting the sense of a European identity
also derives from the fact that its limited capacity for involvement does not
3 A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales cit., p. 288; P. Rossi, L’identità dell’Europa
cit., pp. 12–25 e 268; F. Cardini, Europa. Le radici cristiane cit., pp. 8 ff.; Id., Introduzione, in
S. Taddei, Per quale Europa? Identità europea, fisco, prevenzione, assistenza. Una sussidiarietà
praticabile, Jouvence, Roma 2006, pp. 9–16: 15. See F. Chabod, Storia dell’idea d’Europa, La
terza, Bari 1961; A. Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe from Antiquity to the European Union,
Woodrow Wilson Center Press-Cambridge University Press, Washington-Cambridge 2002;
G. Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, MacMillan, London 2005.
5 TN: A reference to a famous 1861 remark by Massimo d’Azeglio: “We have made Italy; now we
must make Italians.”

196 Chapter 12
simply leave a hole, but also triggers reactionary mechanisms. These in turn
further diminish Europe’s importance inasmuch as they tend to fall back on
national or local identities, as we saw in the previous chapter. The failure to
ratify the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands (2005), where
popular referendums were held, speaks volumes. Thus, while from one per-
spective we must regard the world as globalized, having already moved beyond
the idea of nation-states, the leaders of countries in the European Union often
continue to express primarily national interests. After half a century, the “long-
exorcised” specters of nationalism, ethnocentrism, and racism have reap-
peared.6 Similarly, the current crisis in Europeanism helps to reinforce the
well-known “identities of reaction” that are first defined by identifying an ad-
versary. This is the now-classic case of Islam: as if European citizens of Islamic
faith did not participate in the formation of a common identity. The constantly
restated urgency of recognizing—including legally—the “Christian roots of
Europe” can, among those who do not recognize its historical importance and
most of all its interconnection with so many other roots, be equivalent to a
declaration of war against all that is not Christian. In the end, our increasing
difficulty in defining the West also amounts to an identity crisis of immense
proportions. The West, which once meant Europe alone, then Europe plus the
Anglo-Saxon countries and some Latin American countries, now also includes
non-Western cultures while, at the same time, the differences between Europe
and the United States appear—according to many observers on either shore of
the Atlantic—ever vaster.
What, then, is Europe today? And, above all, who are the Europeans, and
what makes them so?
For some time, recourse to a common historical patrimony, drawn from the
construction of Europe, was seen with suspicion. The shadow of the Second
World War encouraged a prudent approach to history when proposing to use it
as a unifying subject. European history, in fact, is made up of fratricidal wars,
perversely “medieval” even when waged in the twentieth century.7 On April 21,
2009, a commemoration was held in Rome for the great historian and politician
6 P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit., p. 17.

7 See for example O. Fallaci, The Rage and the Pride cit., p. 154, which presents the Italian resis-
tance against the Germans as a war between equals, belonging to the same culture: “I felt as
if I were fighting in the Middle Ages, when Florence and Siena made war and the waters of
the Arno [sic, instead of Arbia] ran red with blood.” Cf. Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit.,
p. 237; M. Brando, Lo strano caso di Federico ii cit., pp. 92–95; A. Osti Guerrazzi, Unni! I tede
schi nella percezione degli italiani, in Abgehort—Intercettazioni. Krieg und Nachkrieg der fas-
chistischen Achsenbundnisses im Lichte neuer Quellen. Guerra e dopoguerra dell’Asse alla luce
di nuove fonti, Convegno Internazionale, Roma, Istituto storico germanico, April 1–2, 2009;

Bronislaw Geremek, author of a book dedicated to the common roots of Eu-

rope and vehement proponent of the idea that European parliament must take
direct responsibility for its historical memory.8 On that occasion, Romano Pro-
di, former Prime Minister of Italy and ex-President of the European Commis-
sion, underlined the impossibility of using history as a glue, since looking back
we find nothing but war and division. According to his thought, the construct
of Europe foundered at the start of the new millennium, precisely when we set
about seeking our common roots.9 The past leads us to a dead end—but histo-
rians must above all have a sense of the future. And indeed it was a historian,
Girolamo Arnaldi, who reiterated that in all of Altiero Spinelli’s Ventotene Man-
ifesto (1941)—the first attempt to imagine a Europe united against every form
of totalitarianism, penned while it was in the middle of full-on war—there is
not a single word spent on the past as a motive for the unity of Europeans.10
The past, in fact, divides us. And, in effect, the problem of arriving at a neces-
sary, historical, shared memory cannot be resolved, as is sometimes desired
and sometimes attempted, either by the dismissal of the wounds that have
lacerated the continent, or by an unjustifiable reevaluation of responsibility,
which at best leads to a sugar-coated revisionist history and at worst to
denial.11
Nevertheless, the course undertaken in recent years on the part of the Euro-
pean Union and numerous intellectuals is precisely that of emphasizing the
role of culture—and even of history, with all the weight of responsibility—in
the blueprint of what Mikhael Gorbachev called “our Common European
Home.”12 We may thus recall Geremek’s dream of creating a European univer-
sity; the prospect of achieving a “European research space”; the programs
sponsored by the Union to develop a common history in French-German
school books; the editorial project titled Making Europe, promoted by editors
of five nationalities, and the volumes of the “Yearbook of European Studies”
series; the launch of common projects in a historical setting, supported pri-
marily by the European Science Foundation; and the Musée de l’Europe in
W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., p. 64; P. Grillo, Legnano cit., p. 197; Id., La falsa inimicizia. Guelfi
e Ghibellini nell’Italia del Duecento, Salerno Editrice, Roma 2018.
8 B. Geremek, Le radici comuni dell’Europa cit.; Lo storico Bronisław Geremek cit.
9 R. Prodi, Testimony, in Lo storico Bronisław Geremek cit.
10 G. Arnaldi, Testimony, ibid. (at the end of R. Prodi’s testimony); A. Spinelli, E. Rossi, and
E. Colorni, Manifesto per un’Europa libera e unita [Manifesto di Ventotene, 1941], in
A. Spinelli, Il Manifesto di Ventotene e altri scritti, il Mulino, Bologna 1991.
11 See, for example, on contemporary Italy, A. Del Boca (ed.), La Storia negata. Il revisionismo
e il suo uso politico, Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2009.
12 M. Gorbačev, La casa comune europea, Mondadori, Milano 1989.

198 Chapter 12
russels (est. 1998), which puts itself forward as the lieu de mémoire for all Eu-
B
ropeans.13 Culture, therefore, must become “the third pillar of the European
construct, next to the economy and the political and legal institutions.”14
But in which cultural legacy should Europeans recognize themselves? The
possibilities are, naturally, endless. For example, the founding role of the Ro-
mans has been highlighted, or vice-versa, as we have seen, that of the Celts and
the Arthurian myth, or else that of philosophy in general and above all the
Enlightenment, or better yet the Law, whether “common law” or Roman codes.15
Even Romanticism, despite being the architect of nationalisms, is assigned a
relevant role in the construction of European identity: one need only recall
Guizot, author of The History of Civilization in Europe. The Brothers Grimm
themselves, aside from being fathers of the German nation, can be considered
among the earliest unifiers of Europe.16
The desire to affirm common, Christian roots is the one that has provoked
the most heated political debate in the present day. It has been pronounced
numerous times by the popes. First by Paul vi, who in 1964 gave Saint Benedict
the title of Founder of Europe, then by John Paul ii, a Slavic and Polish pope,
who in 1980 conferred the same title on Saints Cyril and Methodius, architects
of an “outstanding contribution to the formation of the common Christian
roots of Europe.”17 John Paul ii exhorted Europeans on many occasions—first
13 P. Morawski, Geremek e l’Europa: tra memoria e sfide, in Lo storico Bronisław Geremek cit.
On Franco-German manuals, cf. P. Monnet, Introduction cit., p. 15; on the European Sci-
ence Foundation: http://www.esf.org/ (cons. May 14, 2019). In particular, I recall three
research projects from the esf on the subject: The Transformation of the Roman World;
Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Europe; Technology and the
Making of Europe, 1850 to the Present (Inventing Europe). On the Musée de l’Europe: http://
europa-museum.org/ (cons. May 14, 2019). See also P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit.
14 T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., p. 281.
15 Some recent examples: E. Percivaldi, I Celti cit.; V. Kruta, Aux racines de l’Europe cit.;
P. Grossi, L’Europa del diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007; J.-N. Robert, Rome, la gloire et la
liberté. Aux sources de l’identité européenne, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2008. On the Arthuri-
an myth and its difficulties in representing the formation of a united Europe “through
aggression and war”: K. Gerner, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Soros: Aggression and Inte-
gration in Europe, in Yearbook of European Studies, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1999, vol. ii,
pp. 37–68 and P. Toczyski, Carolingian References in the Europeanization Process, in What,
in the World, is Medievalism? Global Reinvention of the Middle Ages (A Panel Discussion),
session of the 44th International Congress of Medieval Studies cit. On the identitarian val-
ue of philosophy: P. Rossi, L’identità dell’Europa cit., pp. 13, 114–117, 232.
16 R. Romano, Europa, Donzelli, Roma 1996, p. 15; A.-M. Thiesse, La création des identités
nationales cit., pp. 64 ff.
17 Encyclical Slavorum Apostoli (1985) cit., vii, 25. Cf. G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit.,
p. 164.

when it was divided into two blocs and then after the fall of the Wall—to find
in Christianity their reasons for unity, pursuing the mission of a new evange-
lism as the goal of his entire pontificate.18 A moment of acute tension trans-
pired in 2003–2004, following the request, promoted by some countries of the
Union and opposed by others, to insert an explicit mention of their common
Christian roots in the preamble to the European Constitution. Finally, the pen-
ultimate pope aimed to label himself Christianly European even through the
choice of his assumed name, Benedict, which he intended to evoke the figure
of the patriarch of Western monasticism, “a fundamental reference point for
European unity and […] a powerful reminder of the indispensable Christian
roots of his [sic] culture and civilization.”19 The road to ruin down which he
believes Europe has embarked starts with forgetting that its own identity is
founded on Christian values.
In this general debate, the Medieval Era assumes a dominant role and even
academic historians are deeply involved. The Medieval Era is, in fact, a histori-
cal period recognized as foundational—from the Romantic Era onward—by
almost all the nations of Europe: and as such, it should be possible to trace in
this epoch some of the original characteristics of common European society.
Which is possible, naturally, provided one approaches the task with due
caution.20
Substantially speaking, there are two ways that the Middle Ages can be
mined for the common roots of a modern European identity. The first is to
search for those things that were unifying elements; the second is to evaluate
these unifying elements in their diversity. We’re dealing with two ways of un-
derstanding the Middle Ages that at first glance may seem contradictory, but
that in actuality have numerous points of contact, as long as one does not try
to take these positions to their extremes. When that happens, we are faced
with the conflict between two Medievals: the first immobile, hierarchical, so-
cially and religiously cohesive, the second chaotic and casual. Naturally, nei-
ther one nor the other position shows any awareness of historical nuance,
which cannot take an axiomatic approach that holds only one explanation
18 See John Paul ii, Memory and Identity cit. (pp. 113–131 of the Italian edition). Cf. G. Miccoli,
In difesa della fede cit., pp. 160–195.
19 Reflection on the Name Chosen: Benedict xvi, general audience of Wednesday, Apr. 27,
2005. Official website: http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2005/
documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20050427.html (cons. May 14, 2019). See also G. Miccoli, In
difesa della fede cit., pp. 273 ff.
20 Cf. J. Le Goff, L’Europe est elle née au Moyen Âge ? cit., p. 13: “The centuries between the
fourth and fifteenth have been definitive and […] of all the legacies vital for Europe of
today and tomorrow, the medieval is the most important.”

200 Chapter 12
valid, but rather necessitates a complex and thus, one hopes, comprehensive
approach.
The first medieval symbol of the European Union is Charlemagne.21 Re-
course to the ancient sovereign in his role as founder is encountered as early as
1949, in the immediate post-war period, in the establishment of one of the
most prestigious acknowledgments awarded annually to those great citizens—
the vast majority politicians—who have helped to build Europe: we speak
of the Charlemagne Prize (Premio Carlomagno, Karlpreis, Prix Charlemagne)
of the city of Aachen. Recently (since 2008), the award has been enhanced by
a section recognizing young Europeans aged 16 to 30. There is also the “Médail
le Charlemagne pour les Medias Européens,” bestowed on distinguished per-
sons and institutions in the communication sector. 1965, the Nineties, and 2003
saw important exhibitions on the emperor, on the Franks and Alemanni, and
on the relations between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the time Char-
lemagne.22 Even the initial proposal for the European flag was an imitation of
Charlemagne’s standard.23
Charlemagne has the credentials to be recognized as one of the fathers of
Europe—it is a fact that cannot be denied.24 In fact, sources in his day called
him Pater Europae, “Father of Europe,” and it is clear that the Carolingian Em-
pire, whose duration, idealism, and fragility are certainly debatable, was an
institution that transformed for centuries—in the name of unity—societies
that were just beginning to become European.25 At the height of its expansion,
21 K. Gerner, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Soros cit.; P. Toczyski, Carolingian References cit.;
V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., especially pp. 110 ff.; K. Oschema, The Once
and Future European? Karl der Große als europäische Gründerfigur in Mittelalter und Geg-
enwart, in Alte Helden—Neue Zeiten. Die Formierung europäischer Identitäten im Spiegel
der Rezeption des Mittelalters, ed. A. Schindler, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg
2017, pp. 39–67.
22 K. Gerner, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Soros cit.; P. Toczyski, Carolingian References cit.;
V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., especially pp. 110 ff.
23 P. Toczyski, Carolingian References cit.
24 F. Cardini, Carlomagno. Un padre della patria europea, Rusconi, Milano 1998; A. Barbero,
Carlo Magno. Un padre dell’Europa, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2000 (note how in both cases, the
noun padre, “father,” is preceded by the indefinite article); G. Andenna and M. Pegrari
(eds.), Carlo Magno: le radici dell’Europa, monograph issue of “Cheiron. Materiali e stru-
menti di aggiornamento bibliografico,” xix (2002), n. 37; R. McKitterick, Charlemagne.
The Formation of a European Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008. See
also D. Balestracci, Ai confini dell’Europa medievale, B. Mondadori, Milano 2008, pp. 21–24
and bibliography pp. 40–43.
25 Among the main bibliographic references, one work that still seems relevant to me is
Nascita dell’Europa ed Europa carolingia: un’equazione da verificare, Acts of the xxvii Set-
timana di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, Spoleto 19–25 aprile 1979,

the Empire comprised the greater part of continental Europe, from Northern
Spain, to Northern and Central Italy, and all the way east to modern-day Hun-
gary. It was therefore the only successful post-Roman attempt at uniting a large
portion of the continent under a single political institution. The standardiza-
tion of relationships to the sovereign power and authority, of the legal system,
of weights and measures, of liturgies, of monastic and canonical life, of lan-
guage (Latin) and script (Caroline) are elements that have contributed equally
to the formation of a cultural koiné that has survived for centuries the disap-
pearance of the Empire as a political entity. An entity that was truly European,
as its barycenter was not the Mediterranean region, which had become a
boundary and line of contact with the Islamic world, but continental Europe.
The Carolingian Era functions so effectively as a precedent and exemplum
primarily because during the ninth century there was a revival of the concept
of Empire, which while it had nothing to do with a modern state, did long for
universality. With the exception of some obvious differences (like an authority
considered to be of divine origin), the ideal of the medieval empire finds a
precise correspondence in the way that European consciousness may be con-
structed today, as the synthesis of populations that, even in the mutual recog-
nition of their peculiarities and identities, agree on the existence of a higher
organizing principle. That is how the idea of Empire, translated into a modern
macroregion (one among several on the globe), is employed by some interpret-
ers of New Medievalism. Aside from talking about the American Empire, they
also make use of the Holy Roman Empire as a precedent to the European
Union, even as they keep in mind the obvious differences, the primary of which
in a geopolitical sense is the fact that a medieval empire was generally a closed
economic and cultural space.26 The parallelism is expressed in a book by Jan
Zielonka: for this author, the years following 1989, when the European Union
began to incorporate former member states of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet
Union, entailed a transformation of the imperial connotation of the old Euro-
pean Union.27 Thus, the very notion of the union has changed, definitively su-
perseding the era of nationalisms that followed the peace of Westphalia (1648).
If Europe in the modern era is seen as a well-defined structure and hierarchy,
Europe of the medieval empire is the paradigm for the neo-medieval, post-
modern one, of variegated political situations, multiple identities, cultural het-
erogeneities, untidy and shifting borders: we have already discussed all this in
cisam, Spoleto 1981. On the concept of Europe developed in the Middle Ages, see today
K. Oschema, Bilder von Europa im Mittelalter, Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2013.
26 A. Gamble, Regional Blocs cit.
27 J. Zielonka, Europe as Empire cit.

202 Chapter 12
the second chapter. The European Union is not transforming into a new state,
but into a much more complex organism in which the recently joined member
nations of Eastern Europe play a fundamental role.
Aside from Charlemagne, other emperors could also claim their place: from
the Ottonian dynasty, which pushed the borders of Europe much further east,
to Frederick Barbarossa, refounder of Roman law (if it had not been judged so
German), all the way up to the sovereigns of the House of Habsburg and Napo-
leon, if the latter had not been so French and the formers so Catholic. But only
to Charlemagne can a truly founding role be attributed, and this is because the
emperor is considered transnational, whether in the west in France, in the cen-
ter in Germany, or in the eastern nations. The name of Charles is so evocative
that, in Polish, the word for “king” is król, in Hungarian király, in Lithuanian
karalius—words that all derive from Carolus. It’s just a shame about Charles’s
wives, whose names do not commonly designate queens, perhaps because he
had five of them.
Uniquely among medieval and modern sovereigns, Charles appears in the
mythopoetic cycles of numerous nations as both a national king and an em-
peror. And he does so by recourse to that formidable element of cultural ex-
change that was the Carolingian Cycle. Through this, Charles makes his way to
Sicily, which was never part of his Empire but which sings the deeds of his
paladins in the Opera dei Pupi (“Opera of the Puppets”), which in 2001 was
declared a unesco “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage.” Some coun-
tries of Eastern Europe resort to the Carolingian Cycle to signify their belong-
ing to Europe and to support their petition to join the Union. In Dubrovnik
(olim Ragusa), in Croatia, one may find “Orlando’s Column,” erected in 1419 and
employed for four centuries to fly the banner of the Republic of Ragusa. This
column and its statue depicting the paladin had to wait till 2013 to “join Eu-
rope,” as they erroneously say, along with the nation of Croatia, which had
already joined nato in 2009. And thus, as has been observed, “Dubrovnik is
self-presenting as linked to Western Europe through the medium of a legend-
ary character.”28
28 P. Toczyski, Carolingian References cit. Cf. A. Kremenjaš-Daničić (ed.), Orlandovi Europski

Putovi, Rolands Europäische Wege, Les sentiers européens de Roland, I sentieri europei di
Orlando, Roland’s European Paths, Europe House Dubrovnik—Europski dom Dubrovnik
2006. Toczyski has brought in examples of uses of the Carolingian myth in other Europe-
an countries, such as Slovakia, France, and Germany. In 1998, Gregory Peroche wondered
why Charlemagne, “Emperor of the Franks,” wouldn’t also consider himself “Emperor of
the Croats.” Id., Croatie-France, 797–1997. Douze siècles d’histoire, pref. by G.-M. Chenu,
François-Xavier de Guibert, Paris 1998, pp. 21 ff.; see on that subject F. Borri, Francia e
Chroatia nel ix secolo: storia di un rapporto difficile, in “Mélanges de l’École française de

Many, then, are the reasons and methods for which and with which Char-
lemagne and his literary cycle are, even in Europe of the third millennium,
employed as useful and meaningful symbols. Recourse to the figure of the sov-
ereign functions not so much because one may use it to imagine a medieval
and thus also contemporary Europe as culturally homogenous, but on the con-
trary: because the emperor was the head of a political entity as powerfully ide-
alized in its feeling of unity, as it was multicultural in its overall physiognomy.
Reference to Charlemagne is therefore legitimate only if does not become a
shortcut to believing that Europe was once united in essence in the Early Mid-
dle Ages, or indeed that the Carolingian Empire was once our Europe, a highly
absurd notion, historically speaking.
Even the figure of Charlemagne is very easily abused, mainly because, as it
always bears recalling, the Carolingian Empire was somewhat “abortive,” as
Jacques Le Goff writes, and a “false start,” according to Duccio Balestracci.29
The Carolingian Empire declined toward the end of the ninth century, and to
think of it as a direct precursor to the European Union, perhaps through a lens
of continuity, is unacceptable, just as it would be completely unacceptable to
claim a kind of birth of identitarian sentiment on the part of a presumed
“European people” in the ninth century. Otherwise we commit the same neo-
Romantic error of judgment that we analyzed in the previous chapter on
nationalisms. We are not European because Charlemagne existed, but also be-
cause Charlemagne existed. In fact, every exemplum is imperfect. Rivers of ink
have been spilled on whether the emperor was French or German.30 The Eng-
lish, certainly, have little use for Charlemagne: except perhaps to convince
themselves once more that this Europe is nothing but a precarious accord
drawn up by the Paris-Berlin axis. And this may not be so hard, considering
that, during the Second World War, a volunteer unit from Vichy France, inte-
grated organically into the Waffen SS, called itself the Charlemagne Division, or
Rome, Moyen Âge,” cxx (2008), n. 1, pp. 87–103: 87. On the usage of the Middle Ages in
Croatia, see in particular N. Budak, Using the Middle Ages in Modern-day Croatia cit. Bu-
dak addresses two distinct usages: the first, typical of the 1990s, is the well-known nation-
alist rhetoric (today relegated to the extreme right), while the second, coexistent with the
first and characteristic of the early years of the third millennium, applies parallels be-
tween the Middle Ages and modernity in favor of new ideology of European integration:
see especially ibid., pp. 248 e 260 ff. (on stamps depicting Charlemagne and the exhibit
Croats and Carolingians held in 2000).
29 J. Le Goff, L’Europe est-elle née au Moyen Âge? cit., pp. 47–59; note that the author has an
anti-Europeanist view of Charlemagne; D. Balestracci, Ai confini dell’Europa medievale
cit., p. 23. Cf. also G. Sergi, L’idea di medioevo cit., Ch. 6, Il medioevo come infanzia
dell’Europa, pp. 51–62, and F. Cardini, Europa. Le Radici cristiane cit., pp. 43 ff.
30 Cf. W. Pohl, Modern Uses cit., pp. 60 ff.

204 Chapter 12
that in the 1960s Charles de Gaulle labored to construct the project of a “Caro-
lingian Europe,” as opposed to an “Atlantic Europe.”31 But even in today’s
France there are those who fear that the European Union will translate into a
new, imperial, German supremacy.32 The Turks who would like to join the Eu-
ropean Union must not be happy with Charlemagne and Roland, slayers of
Muslims, much less those countries in the area once subject to the Byzantine
basileus and where the Carolingian Empire represents the manifestation of a
sacrilegious act of hubris on the part of a barbarian Frankish king who wished
to arrogate the name and insignias of the Roman Emperor. Not to mention the
Avars, a people of Eastern Europe with no defenders in modernity, having suf-
fered a now-forgotten genocide perpetrated by Charles himself.33
The history of united Europe may lend itself to improper uses, the simplest
of which—as we have seen many times, for instance regarding neo-medieval
festivals—is that of recourse to a mythical and golden age as an expedient to
silence the more recent—insidious and cruel—past. Thus, in 1335 at Visegrád
an important meeting was held between the kings of Hungary, Poland, and
Bohemia. On February 15, 1991, in the same Hungarian city, the leaders of Hun-
gary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia met, giving rise to the “Visegrád Group,”
which, on the model of Benelux, had the primary political goal of reinforcing
economic exchange among these countries and working in harmony to join
the European Union simultaneously, which eventually transpired in 2004.34
Appropriately, on the official site of the “V4” (as the members of the group are
called, Czechoslovakia having divided into two states) one can clearly read:
This high-level meeting held at Visegrád, Hungary, created an imaginary

historical arch linking the idea of this meeting to the idea of a similar
meeting, which took place there in 1335.35
The historical arch is imaginary and links two ideas, which is both possible and
legitimate. Less legitimate, and historically impossible—this is the objection a
31 Cf. G. Mammarella, Storia d’Europa dal 1945 a oggi, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1992, Ch. 12, Europa
atlantica ed Europa carolingia, pp. 294–317, especially pp. 315–317.
32 Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 240 ff., citing A. Minc, Le Nouveau Moyen Âge,
Gallimard, Paris 1993, pp. 33 ff., 200 ff.
33 For other critiques, even ironic, of the contemporary use of Charlemagne in the construc-
tion of Europe, see P. Toczyski, Carolingian References cit., for the Avars: W. Pohl, The Av-
ars. A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2018.
34 See Visegrád Group, official site: www.visegradgroup.eu/main.php (cons. May 14, 2019).
35 Ibid.

medievalist historian might make—is charging the Middle Ages with mean-
ings that do not belong to it, with the inappropriate goal of establishing a past-
present connection that omits an intermission of 656 years.36
Quite similar, from this point of view, is the way the Congress of Gniezno, a
formal encounter between Emperor Otto iii and Duke Boleslaw of Poland that
took place in the year 1000, is celebrated. At that meeting the first archiepisco-
pal seat and the first ecclesiastical metropolis in Poland were founded upon
the tomb of Saint Adalbert. In recent decades, Gniezno has often been men-
tioned for its symbolic significance as a place of communion. Pope John Paul ii
visited there in 1979 and 1997, on the second occasion raising a prayer for the
unity of Europe. On March 3, 2000, the first millennial of the Congress of
Gniezno was celebrated with all due pomp in the presence of the presidents of
the Polish, German, Hungarian, and Slovakian Republics, the Cardinal Secre-
tary of State of the Vatican, and numerous other prelates. Two quite m emorable
events, therefore, whose usage is symptomatic of a transition to Europeanism
even on the part of some countries of the former Eastern Bloc. And all the
same we are dealing with events that are not modifiable ad usum Delphini, as
has already been observed.37 Some historians and politicians have greeted the
Congress of Gniezno as a testament to the fact that “the beginning of Polish-
German relations was marked by intimacy and unity.” Patrick Geary, aston-
ished at such an exaggeration, exclaims:
It is truly astounding that a thousand years of bloody history of Polish-

German antagonism can be so easily erased by some medieval incident!38
Even when, as in these cases, the goal is to represent a joining of forces anti-
thetical to the nationalistic perspectives discussed in the previous chapter, the
use of the medieval past in a contemporary key is exploitative. It’s all right to
use these symbols, but always keeping in mind that they are just symbols. Oth-
erwise the Medieval Era risks becoming a siren that sings of ancient knights
36 P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations cit.

37 TN: Ad usum Delphini is an expression derived from a series of Classical texts modified for
use in the classroom, including through the elimination or rephrasing of passages that
were deemed not suitable for the sensibilities of children.
38 Ibid. Cf. Z. Dalewski, Medieval Past and Present Politics in Post-war Poland, in Uses and
Abuses of the Middle Ages cit. Cf. also John Paul ii, Memory and Identity cit. (p. 104 of the
Italian edition), which recalls how in 1979 at Gniezno he spoke in patriotic tones of the
Bogurodzica (Madre di Dio) hymn, attributed to Saint Adalbert: “The Bogurodzica song
became the national anthem, which again in Grunwald [Tannenberg, 1410] led the Polish
and Lithuanian troops into battle against the Teutonic Order.”

206 Chapter 12
and bishops to make us forget the twentieth century. As the Polish medievalists
did so they wouldn’t have to mention Lenin. As once happened, according to
Benedetto Croce, during the Restoration:
And because the recent past, that of the ancien régime, was still too clear
in the records, too precise in its boundaries, and resistant to idealization
and sacred sublimation, yearning carried us to a more remote past, […] to
the Medieval Era, in which we saw or imagined shadows as solid things,
marvels of faith, loyalty, purity, generosity […].39
The second symbolic nucleus of contemporary European identity in which the

Middle Ages plays a role of capital importance is the concept of Christian Eu-
rope. Obviously intertwined with the idea of empire (whether Carolingian or
Ottonian, as the Holy Roman Empire is properly called), the belief in the pre-
eminence of Christianity in medieval Europe is today widespread, and in fact
it would make no sense to claim the contrary. To the question, “Was the medi-
eval West […] conscious of representing an entity?” Jacques Le Goff responds:
“There certainly exists a Europe, naturally Christian, that has the conscious-
ness of common values and interests.”40
Monasticism, cathedrals, saints, and art (which in the Middle Ages was al-
most exclusively sacred), are the elements that reinforce this conviction. It is
not for nothing that, in common Italian parlance the term “Christian” has for a
long time been equivalent to “person.” Not only was profound religiosity one
of the original characteristics of medieval civilization, but vast sectors of the
population were conscious, and for many centuries, of their Christian identity:
it is society understood as Societas Christiana, a position particularly dominant
in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The idea of a Europe that was Christian
makes sense, as it was formed around the territorial extension achieved by Ro-
man and Constantinopolitan Christianity, a geographic area (and two cultural
areas) quite distinct from that of the Ancient Roman Empire, but also from the
vast reach Christianity achieved in the Middle Ages, as it spread into Asia
39 B. Croce, Introduzione alla Storia d’Europa cit., p. 1305.

40 J. Le Goff, À la recherche du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 115 ff. See for example A. Geretti (ed.), Il
potere e la grazia. I santi patroni d’Europa, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Palazzo Venezia,
Oct. 7, 2009-Jan. 10, 2010), Skira, Milano 2009. According to Veronica Ortenberg, the first
three politicians who in the 1950s pushed for European integration, namely the French
Robert Schuman, the Italian Alcide De Gasperi, and the German Konrad Adenauer, “prob-
ably had in mind to recreate one day a modern version of ‘Christendom’, as had been the
spiritual and the political union of the West under Charlemagne”: Id., In Search of the Holy
Grail cit., pp. 110 ff.

(Assyrians, Armenians, Maronites) and Africa (Copts). And Christianity itself

was the principal medium of an early shared identity.41
If this is the general consideration, other additional reflections will nuance
to the argument in important ways, primarily regarding the political uses—
renewed today—that one can make by calling upon the Christian Middle Ages.
In Europe (in a purely geographical sense) from antiquity to today, there have
been many Christianities, including some now exterminated for which we no
longer know even the origins. Cultic forms, devotional practices, and social
impact have varied greatly through time and space. These various Christiani-
ties also coexisted with other religions—Islam, primarily in Spain, and Juda-
ism, not to mention more-or-less formalized cult forms that, especially among
rural populations and the generally more peripheral ones—where evangeliza-
tion came late—have maintained characteristics syncretic with other ancient
religions and customs.
In the 1970s and above all in France, during the heated historiographical
debate provoked by the Vatican ii Council, the entire so-called “myth of the
Christian Middle Ages” came under question and its historical reality was
largely refuted. Needless to say, this position, which would reduce even medi-
eval Christianity to a Romantic invention, is extreme and not credible except
in its most general outlines—for Christianization did not entirely encompass
the masses until mendicant preaching in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries
and this process was not completed until the sixteenth century. It is, in fact,
true that medieval popular culture was quite different from that of the cultural
elite, that is, the clergy, which perceived and proposed a learned homogeneity.
This is, however, not the same thing as saying that the medieval European pop-
ulations in almost their entirety were not and did not feel Christian.
The debate on these topics cannot be said to be closed yet, and the funda-
mental idea that “Medieval Christianity” is a vast concept and one not reduc-
ible to a formula remains valid for us. The existence of a single Christianity
(always referred to, primarily after 1054, the year of the schism, as the Latin
West) was an ideal mainly sought by an intellectual, spiritual, and ruling elite
who had the ability to disseminate certain principles, to a certain extent still
present in the Catholic world, that could be the basis of integration, and to
tenaciously battle any opposing forces, whether religious (the numerous het-
erodox currents, strongly associated with the notion of heresy) or social and
political (conflict with the secular lords, cities, and kingdoms), through a grad-
ual appropriation of all that was linked to sacrality. But these conflicts, fric-
tions, struggles, and opposing points of view were quite present during the
41 See D. Balestracci, Ai confini dell’Europa medievale cit., pp. 16–20.

208 Chapter 12
entire Middle Ages and they cannot be ascribed to the deviation from a norm
given once and for all. To say, then, that in the central Middle Ages there exist-
ed a Societas Christiana is without a doubt true, but not for everyone. It is par-
ticularly true for the Roman Church, and on this topic Franco Cardini has un-
derlined the centrality of Rome rather than of Europe:
It must in any case be clear that between Christianity (especially in its

Catholic form) and Europe there is no intrinsic link, while there is, pro-
foundly, between Catholic tradition and Romanness.42
Charlemagne himself—now become a symbol of unity in the name of Euro-

pean Christianity—was made a saint, though not by Pope Alexander iii, who
was recognized by history as the legitimate pope, but by his adversary, the im-
perially sponsored Antipope Paschal iii. Thus, Charlemagne may still be the
patron saint of European unification, but as a saint per se he has a whiff of
heresy: canonized by an anti-pope, he must be an anti-saint. And if we turn to
examine the modern and contemporary age, this discourse loses consistency
and grows ever more volatile. Christianity embarks on new roads—reform,
evangelization of distant peoples—making it quite reductive to consider it a
distinctly European trait. Christianity retreats before the Turkish advance,
which conquers a considerable slice of the continent and provokes, on the
other side, a new thrust towards the Atlantic that leads, as early as the late
1300s, to “an interesting detachment, at the limits of unfamiliarity, of the most
Western part of Europe.”43 Europe itself—the part not subject to the Sultan—
becomes in the 1700s a territory where religion is no longer the only way to give
meaning and direction to life. It is in this vein that Cardini wonders: “Since
when, and until when, can we speak of a ‘Christian Europe’?”44 Having estab-
lished the terminus a quo in the Carolingian Age, he proposes a shifting set of
termini ad quem: in the “first configuration of modernity as the era of philo-
sophical-scientific rationalization,” therefore between the 1500s and 1600s; in
the deeply rooted popular imagination of the peoples of Western Europe, until
the French Revolution; while for peoples living in other parts of Europe, above
all the central and eastern ones, this same phases lasts until the early 1900s.
And the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) is generally considered the moment
42 F. Cardini, Europa. Le radici cristiane cit., p. 16.

44 F. Cardini, Europa. Le radici cristiane cit., especially the Chapter Europa e Islam, pp. 115–
149: 115.

in which Christianity was superceded by Europe as the framework for the bal-
ance of powers among the various states.45
After these reflections, it becomes difficult to share such sentiments as: “Eu-
rope is none other than what was once called ‘Christianity,’ but simply
secularized.”46 These historically insufficient declarations must in any case be
taken into consideration, as they have been formulated by movements that, for
the efficacy of their draconian message, find ever more ample ground.47 In
fact, in the past twenty years or so, the debate has abandoned libraries and
taken to the streets. Affirmations of this type provide an answer to the conflicts
derived from immigration, above all Muslim, creating an “identity through dif-
ference” that is once again reactionarily Christian.48
Now we see why the request to insert a mention of “Christian roots” in the
European Constitution provoked such a colossal ruckus, a reaction we did not
anticipate in response to a problem that, all told, seemed mostly cultural. Thus
there was a debate over what sense to give the “roots,” how to interpret them as
a simple metaphor, and how to clearly distinguish them from the concept of
“origins” with the idolatry that it notoriously entails.49 The recollection of
roots, in fact, need not entail any deterministic aspect, hypothetically neces-
sary to the course of history. But if this is Franco Cardini’s judgment, in reality
there are many who hold that the roots should be remembered precisely be-
cause from them it is possible to trace a continuous historical line defined by
eternal values that must be not only defended, but reclaimed in opposition to
that which is different and new, and therefore negative, in secularized society:
these are “the deep roots [that] are not reached by the frost,” from a poem by
Tolkien, often cited in some Italian right-wing circles. They are the baptisms of
King Clovis and Duke Mieszko, from which the nations of France and Poland
originate.50 Christianity, therefore, comes to be proposed as a measure and
norm, one that should be inserted into a legal document with binding power:
a “fundamental criterion to which European society, and thus the newborn
45 Cf. G.V. Signorotto, Interessi, “identità” e sentimento nazionale nell’Italia di antico regime, in
Studi in memoria di Cesare Mozzarelli, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 2008, vol. I, pp. 399–420: 417.
46 S. Taddei, Per quale Europa? cit., p. 18: “Europe, in essence, is not constructed, it is known
and discussed, because Europe is nothing but what was once called ‘Christianity,’ simply
secularized, which nevertheless gradually reacquires a new consciousness, and first of all
is the Greco-Roman civilization that imposed itself as a universal empire with concrete
details.”
47 G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., p. 173.
48 P. Rossi, L’identità dell’Europa cit., pp. 12 e 103 ff.
49 Ibid., p. 54; F. Cardini, Europa. Le radici cristiane cit., pp. 168 ff.
50 On Clovis: Ch. Amalvi, Le goût du Moyen Âge cit., pp. 125–130; 316.

210 Chapter 12
Union, must conform.”51 Which may be valid for all Christians (not just Euro-
pean), but why should it be for all Europeans? And, to go further, to what form
of Christianity are we referring? Many indeed are the Christianities through-
out history. Precisely for this reason, in relation to the proposal to insert the
reference to “Christian roots” in the European Constitution, Giovanni Miccoli
declared:
There remains a powerful doubt toward a generic reference to Christian

identity, regarding its meaning and importance, as two thousand years of
history prove it to be fragmented in extraordinarily diverse models, mani-
festations, and customs.52
Many are the Christianities throughout history, but the proposal to insert a
mention of Christian roots comes from a Catholic environment. Since the Ro-
man pontiff, who is the “universal shepherd” and “the father and teacher of all
Christians,” holds the charge of safeguarding an authentic tradition under-
stood as neglected by many, and since he declares the Catholic and apostolic
faith to be the original one, it follows that in speaking of “Christian roots,” the
pope cannot mean anything but “Catholic roots.” One may thus comprehend
why the proposal to insert the reference to “Christian roots” was rejected not
only by the secular governments, and not only as an acknowledgment of the
non-Christian religions practiced in Europe, but also because it was perceived
by Protestant and Orthodox believers as an undue assertion of pontifical
primacy.
The decision not to explicitly allude to Christian roots in the preamble to
the European Constitution was taken after long discussion.53 Instead, the pro-
vision established that the Union would be formed by:
Drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheri-

tance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the
inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democ-
racy, equality and the rule of law.54
In this there is also much of Christianity.
51 P. Rossi, L’identità dell’Europa cit., p. 13.

52 G. Miccoli, In difesa della fede cit., p. 195; cf. in general ibid., pp. 160–196.
53 T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit, pp. 298 ff.
54 Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, signed Oct. 29, 2004 in Rome, in “Official
Journal of the European Union,” vol. 47, C 310, Dec. 16, 2004, p. 3, https://eur-lex.europa
.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C:2004:310:FULL&from=EN (cons. July 23, 2018).

The last way that the Medieval Era is called to arms in response to today’s
political exigencies is by inserting it into the debate on multiculturalism, un-
derstood not as the mere co-presence of many cultures in the same territory,
but as a continuous process of interaction and integration. Even this Europe-
anism, more thoroughly permeated by progressive thought than almost all the
examples of medievalism presented so far, proposes in some capacity to vali-
date the thesis of a Europe formerly united in the Middle Ages.
Historical and sociological studies on this subject ought—in a purely theo-
retical vein—to have cleared the field of misunderstood interpretations, de-
rived for the most part from the Romantic belief that cultures and ethnicities
possess unique and characteristic identities, immune to change except by
force, and dating back to very remote eras. It has been widely shown, in fact,
that immutable, collective identities do not exist, that on the contrary identi-
ties are inherently plural (as Guizot wrote already in 1828, in opposition to his
contemporaries), and that they are continually shifting.55 Consequently, “the
idea of constructing a European cultural canon, common and immutable, is
preposterous.”56
Cultural plurality is the basis of how the European Union imagines itself,
since belonging to a nation does not prevent one from belonging to Europe: its
official motto is “United in diversity.”57 This is symbolically and effectively rep-
resented by the euro, whose two faces testify, on the one hand, to the common
belonging to Euroland, and on the other, to the retention of national identities.
Thus, for example, France is European and solidly anchored in republican
values; Germany is European, but perhaps still a bit nostalgic for the Deutsche
Mark; nations ruled by monarchies continue to stamp the face of the s overeign;
and Italy has chosen to present itself as a nation founded on culture: Castel del
Monte, the Mole Antonelliana, the Colosseum, Michelangelo’s Campidoglio,
55 F. Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en Europe cit. (1856 ed.), pp. 37 ff.: cf. P. Rossi, L’identità
dell’Europa cit., pp. 13, 27–39, 131; T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., especially pp. 282 ff.
The idea of ancient times as diverse, hybrid, and dynamic, useful for understanding antiq-
uity today, is also present in S. Settis, The Future of the “Classical” cit. (pp. 101, 115, 119, 123 ff.
of the Italian edition).
56 T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., p. 289. On Apr. 16, 2011, in Pisa, the Italian Society of
Medieval Historians organized a roundtable on the theme of A European “canon” for me-
dieval history?, with the participation of medievalists of various nationalities who, almost
unanimously, spoke against the construction of a European “canon,” which they found
impossible and perhaps unhelpful. Nevertheless, they observed that, in point of fact, this
common canon already exists, not in the traditional metanarrative of national histories,
but in the contents and chapter structures of introductory textbooks.
57 Preamble of the European Constitution, art. 5.

212 Chapter 12
Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, Dante as painted by Raphael (though it’s a shame

that such culture is relegated to small change).58
But if the general political project of the European Union is that of recogniz-
ing plurality as the basis of unity (always with our old Charlemagne in mind),
in reality this process, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is opposed by
nationalist movements and by those who in general want to proclaim the
absolute Otherness (if not superiority) of their culture. Even the Europeanism
that some movements champion is ruined by being reduced to a mere “faith-
fulness to the past”:
Selecting the most convenient characteristics from Europe’s abundant

past, refusing to see the necessarily mutable aspect of cultures, all those
who identify its nucleus as fundamentally stable, in reality pronounce on
the past a judgment anchored to the present [and] reiterate their con-
temporary ideal by seeking ancient prefigurations of it.59
And thus, the Middle Ages loom large once more. It is the firm, ethnic, nation-
alist, selective Middle Ages: it is a manor that stinks of mildew and disuse even
when decorated with picturesque images. It is against this idea of the Middle
Ages, largely fabricated, that numerous medieval historians are writing today.
The same working groups that occupy themselves with the uses and abuses of
medieval history and the Romantic and neo-Romantic processes of inventing
traditions by referring to ethnicities and national cultures as if they had existed
in the Middle Ages, are also interested in the significance that such processes
and invented traditions assume in contemporary Europe. A Europe that in the
Middle Ages was not only multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and characterized by
uninterrupted dynamic processes, but that was also profoundly “mixed race.”
Thus Stefano Gaspari describes the Early Middle Ages as “an epoch character-
ized by a tremendous ethnic shuffling. If you wish, this may indeed by a useful
key to understanding the sense of the period as a whole.”60 In the same way,
Girolamo Arnaldi wrote a book on Italy and Its Invaders, concentrating his
58 See also F.P. Tocco, Europa: complesso di identità cit.

59 T. Todorov, La peur des barbares cit., p. 289.
60 S. Gasparri, Prima delle nazioni cit., p. 16. Quante madri e quanti padri. Matrici, conflitti e
retaggi di un medioevo multietnico (roundtable, Università di Bologna, Festa internazio-
nale della Storia, Oct. 22, 2009), was a session organized at the 2009 International Festival
of History in response to declarations by the Italian government in favor of the idea of a
“non-multiethnic” Italy. See for example, Berlusconi: “La nostra idea dell’Italia non è multi-
etnica,” in “Il Sole 24 Ore,” 9 May 2009, https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/
Italia/2009/05/berlusconi-no-italia-multietnica.shtml (cons. May 5, 2019).

attention on it as a land of conquest, but also of encounters between cultures.61

On February 16, 2010, at a conference organized by the Italian Historical Insti-
tute for the Middle Ages on the subject of political strife in medieval Italy, then
Speaker of the House Gianfranco Fini compared Italy to a great pier thrusting
into the Mediterranean, recalling that our identity has always been open.62
Plurality, complementarity, circulation, exchanges, webs, and relations are
concepts that describe the Middle Ages. And these are what render that an-
cient age similar to our contemporary Europe, the one and the other character-
ized by a “mobile polycentrism” that makes them like a kaleidoscope.63 Thus,
one effective symbol of this mobile and vital epoch might be its roads. Europe
was a great web of land and sea routes, which have drawn and defined the ter-
ritory, uniting among them people and ideas.64
Like roots, roads reflect values. Like roots, roads, as they trace certain routes,
are metaphors for flowing time, evoking the past, the present, and the future.
Unlike roots, however, roads are a symbol of sharing, exchange, and openness.
Furthermore, they are physically, empirically present in the European territory.
Since the second half of the Eighties ever more projects have arisen—promoted
by both the European Union and individual nations—aimed at rediscovering
and reevaluating the web of medieval routes, with the intention of “activating
the ‘adhesive’ elements of national states, such that [they may] recognize and
discover an identity and a European cultural diversity together, open a dialog,
and enrich each other in turn.”65 Such as the most famous of these projects, the
61 G. Arnaldi, Italy and Its Invaders, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2008 (original
edition: L’Italia e i suoi invasori, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2002).
62 “The work of historians offers, among its many merits, the important opportunity to re-
mind today’s Italy how its past is always marked by dialogue and thus by the meeting of
religious, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic realities profoundly different from one
another. The great pier of the Mediterranean, the Peninsula has been, through the millen-
nia, a dock and conveyor belt for various peoples who met, confronted, perhaps fought,
but always fused into a long series of new, sometimes dramatic, but also fertile, synthesis.
It follows […] that the Italian identity has never been closed and impermeable to the
heterogeneity of influxes that have passed through it over the centuries.” G. Fini, Prolu-
sione, in Lotta politica nell’Italia medievale, giornata di studi, Roma, Feb. 10, 2010, Istituto
storico italiano per il medio evo, Roma 2010, pp. 11–16: 12.
63 G. Sergi, Antidoti all’abuso della storia cit., pp. 51–58: 58.
64 R. Greci (ed.), Itinerari medievali e identità europea, Acts of the International Congress,
Parma, Feb. 27–28, 1998, Clueb, Bologna 1999. Not without reason, the primary contempo-
rary Italian website for medieval studies is called “Reti medievali” (“Medieval Networks”).
On the use of a metaphor other than “roots,” namely that of a river with its tributaries, see
M. Bettini, Contro le radici. Tradizione, identità, memoria, il Mulino, Bologna 2012.
65 Via Francigena: la strada del turismo culturale europeo, Nov. 18, 2009, www.taf
ter.it/2009/11/18/via-francigena-la-strada-del-turismo-culturale-europeo/ (cons. Dec. 22,

214 Chapter 12
recreation of the Via Francigena, the ancient road that connected France to
Rome, which concluded its iter (and it is truly appropriate to call it that) with
its official recognition on November 11, 2009.
Without a doubt, even in these cases we find ourselves all too often before a
massive reinvention of the Middle Ages. Some itineraries are total fabrications
with no correspondence to ancient viability. Historical revisionism is all too
evident, as precedents to our age of webs and communications are sought in a
medieval Europe (in reality, a Europe of every time, up to yesterday) that had
to grapple with very difficult means of communication and exchange. Villages
accessible solely by dirt paths and mule tracks are not an exclusively medieval
experience and the roads have always been infested with bandits. Thus, to sim-
plistically imagine that the European Middle Ages is its roads is a fabrication
like any other. Likewise, in constructing these routes we often make use of dis-
parate, ahistorical ingredients that echo the usual Romantic medievalism,
with its goal of attracting tourists and turning cultural histories into money-
making machines. This can be rectified by intervening philologically: which
does not mean denying the value of the symbol and its function, but making
both adhere to the course of history. When we speak of roads, in fact, there is
no need to invent elements of cohesion: when they were there, they were actu-
ally there.
The Medieval Era was also a time of travelers, starting, traditionally, with the
great migrations of peoples and ending, symbolically, with the great voyage of
Christopher Columbus. The composite physiognomy of medieval travelers—
merchants, lords, clerics, students, pilgrims, soldiers, families, and migrant
peoples—permits a reception of the symbol of the voyage by contemporary
men and women of almost any political orientation. The voyage may be under-
taken like an existential or religious journey. From this comes the recent re-
vival of slow and suffering pilgrimage towards the traditional goals of medieval
devotion: the ancient Camino de Santiago, rediscovered by Catholics and by
those who, in the labor of going on foot down a path trodden for centuries and
centuries, seek a more authentic dimension for their life. And, along with
Santiago, the return of the pilgrimage to Rome and to the Michaelic sanctuar-
ies of Normandy and Apulia, the cultural routes of monasticism, also like the
2009, the page was found to be inactive when cons. May 14, 2019). Today there are twenty-
three official European cultural itineraries, many of which recall the Middle Ages: cf. P.
Carboni, Itinerari culturali in Europa e in Italia, May 3, 2007, www.tafter.it/2007/05/03/
itinerari-culturali-in-europa-e-in-italia/ (cons. Dec. 22, 2009, inactive when cons. May 14,
2019).

pilgrimages of New Age travellers to the most remote and secret zones of “Celt-
ic Arcadia.”66
The journey is also a testament to the identity of cultures in contact with
one another: thus the already existing routes dedicated to the rediscovery of
Jewish patrimony, of Southeastern Europeans, of Celts, Vikings, Normans,
Arabs of al-Andalus, Catalans and Castillians, up to the routes dedicated to
material culture, to rites and popular European festivals. Children also of Geof-
frey Chaucer’s pilgrims, so different from one another, today’s Europeans con-
tinue to travel roads—and this is the beautiful thing thing—that may lead
anywhere. If we wish, we may even travel through the canopies, like the Baron
in the Trees.
66 On New Age travellers cf. V. Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail cit., pp. 135–137.

Epilogue
It is a bright May evening. In the midst of a clearing stands a wizard who pos-
sesses a mighty and precious magic: the power to summon things past. A king
arrives and says: “I have conquered the realm of another king. I have slain many
men and now my conscience has begun to gnaw at me.”
And the mage replies: “Feel no remorse, for the realm you have conquered
once belonged to your ancestors. Your subjects dwelt there for centuries, be-
fore they were driven out. You have done the right thing.”
“Can it be true?” asks the king.

“If it is not true, it will soon be.”
This is only the prompt for a legend that has not been written, but it encapsu-
lates the principal problem addressed in this book, where we have encoun-
tered so many mages and kings made in this mold.
When I set out on this project I had much clearer ideas than when I finished
it. The man “with his head in his hands like a gargoyle of Notre Dame,” men-
tioned in the prologue, is me while I wander lost around the campus of the
University of Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, seeking the Middle Ages in
America, between the plains of Michigan and Chicago’s neogothic skyscrapers.
And Notre-Dame’s gargoyles as we know them are, as should now be obvious,
a creation of the 1800s.1 I have babbled so much about all the impossible pasts
I have come across that, from time to time, I have gotten the impression that
history truly is as Raymond Queneau describes it: that it has been thrown
about en vrac, willy-nilly. The constant coming and going of the Duke of Auge
and his alter ego Cidrolin between the Middle Ages and modernity is perhaps
the pendular motion that most resembles this book. Along with, naturally, the
laborious non-existence of Italo Calvino’s Non-existent Knight.
Even if seen as much as possible as a unified whole, the discourse that I have
attempted to set forth has resolved itself in a not entirely systematic way, at
times approaching a broad overview, at others restricting the field of vision to
themes that my personal research has already examined in somewhat greater
1 Cfr. M. Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame: Medievalism and the Monsters of Moderni-
ty, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2007. The gargoyles, a translation into stone of the
dreams of Viollet-le-Duc, are a wondrous symbol of Paris; I hope that the devastating fire that
consumed the roof of the cathedral on April 15, 2019, as this book was headed to press, has left
them unscathed.

Epilogue 217
depth elsewhere. It follows that even the degree of understanding that I have
been able to achieve is not homogeneous: some of this book’s considerations
and conclusions will doubtless require correction and further confirmation.
And in the laborious synthesis of data I have doubtless succumbed more than
once to errors and omissions, for which I now ask your indulgence.
Often I have asked myself, living as I do in the modern world, why I am so
fascinated with the Middle Ages, to the point of dedicating more than thirty
years of study to it. In this book, which deals with the relationship between our
today and that ancient yesterday, I have tried to seek an answer. The reasons
that moved me to write are in fact far apart yet convergent: personal reflec-
tions, conversations, readings, movies. Number one on the list of cultural mo-
tivations is the encounter between me as a medievalist and the people with
whom I speak about the Middle Ages. This encounter operates on multiple
levels and always arrives at different viewpoints and conclusions. I have spo-
ken with people who, though not specialists, prove to have quite a clear idea of
the Middle Ages, something that does not typically happen when dealing with,
let’s say, algebraic geometry. Like when a mayor wanted to convince me to
write a pamphlet to demonstrate his town’s belonging to Romagna rather than
the Marches, thus granting a “historical” basis for a tiny secession. Or when,
during a television broadcast, I was invited as a medievalist to speak about
chastity belts, a subject on which I do not have an iron grip. Often, when dis-
cussing the Medieval Era with the students in my courses on historical research
methods and medieval history, I have started the first class meeting by asking:
“What do you think the Middle Ages are?” I have taken note of their answers:
the time of fairies, castles, and knights, the time of witches, darkness, and
oppression… I do not correct their claims, because, as we have seen, they are
not wrong, in that they correspond perfectly to contemporary ideas about
the Middle Ages. I do, however, try to historicize these ideas by reflecting on
them together with my students, introducing the concept of medievalism and
working on the relationship between that and medieval history. To tell them:
“See how the Middle Ages are something different” would be both harmful and
incorrect.
Analyzing medievalism and its impact on the contemporary world means
reinforcing the foundations of the bridge that links the writing of history to
modernity, bringing medieval history back to the center of the debate. Vice
versa, failing also to carry out this historiographic analysis runs the risk of leav-
ing medievalists on the other side of the bridge, thereby giving license to that
opinion by which they are nothing other than antiquarians in search of curi-
osities: useless people because they do not produce goods for immediate con-
sumption, but only conduct research.

218 Epilogue
I suggest that this type of historical analysis is all the more beneficial in cur-
rent times, when in so many countries the relationship between the political
class and the world of culture, research, and education has become rather
fraught.2 In Italy, Berlusconi’s fourth administration (2008–2011) tried multiple
times to eliminate the Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo (Italian Historical
Institute for the Middle Ages) and, along with it, some of the country’s other
leading cultural institutes, such as the Accademia dei Lincei (Lincean Acade-
my). In September 2011, special funding legislation came to the rescue of cer-
tain cultural institutes studying the Middle Ages; but, as Petrarch has sung for
over six hundred years, “the wound is not healed by the loosening of the bow”
(Canzoniere, xc, 14). In Hungary, the Collegium Budapest-Institute for Ad-
vanced Study, an entity centered primarily around medieval history and whose
seminars on the construction of national identity were highly influential for
this book, was not so lucky. It was shuttered in 2011. As of 2017, the ultranation-
alist government of Hungary began its notorious policy of chicaneries against
the Central European University, considered a sort of American beachhead.
This cultural crisis is deeply connected to historical studies.3 And among these,
medieval history often assumes the role of Cinderella. In England, as Michael
Alexander wrote, “a Cambridge-educated New Labour Minister of Education
did not want people to study medieval history.”4 In the US, in June 2018, the
College Board removed medieval history from its Advanced Placement Pro-
gram, which introduces students to university-level work. A number of pro-
tests followed, including an open letter from the Medieval Academy of
America.5
Evidently, we are faced with a paradox. The eclipse of the discipline of me-
dieval history does not, in fact, correspond to a silence surrounding the Middle
Ages. On the contrary, the Middle Ages are always in fashion. In the years that
have passed between the original Italian edition and the present English edi-
tion, I have collected so many examples of the modern reuse of the Middle
Ages that I seriously considered writing a whole extra chapter. Such a decision
would have been motivated, for instance, by the great success of the Assas-
sin’s Creed videogame, set during the time of the Third Crusade, and the even
2 Cf. T. di Carpegna Falconieri, Medioevo, quante storie! Fra divagazioni preziose e ragioni
dell’esistenza, in Medioevo quante storie. V Settimana di studi medievali 130 anni di storie. Gior-
nata conclusiva, Roma, May 21–23, 2013, ed. Isa Lori Sanfilippo, Istituto storico italiano per il
medio evo, Roma 2014, pp. 109–137: 126–128.
3 Cf. J. Guldi, D. Armitage, The History Manifesto, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014.
4 M. Alexander, Medievalism cit., p. 243.
5 http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/an-open-letter-from-the-medieval-academy-of-
america-to-the-college-board (cons. May 15, 2019).

Epilogue 219
g reater success of the TV series Game of Thrones, which has nailed half the
world to their couches, but also by the silver brooches and soft chain mail of-
fered by Dolce & Gabbana, or the Crusader costumes worn by England fans at
the World Cup in both Brazil (2014) and Russia (2018).
In any case, I convinced myself that it wasn’t necessary—at least for now—
to write additional chapters, keeping in mind that the reactivation of the Mid-
dle Ages in the world of today proceeds along the same lines elaborated across
the course of this book. The case studies that have popped up enrich the pic-
ture, but the general framework of medievalism remains unchanged. This is
true of political medievalism in particular. To make things clearer, it is worth
proposing some final examples, pertaining to the years leading up to 2018.
One particular case allows for some reflection on what may seem, as Jorge
Luis Borges wrote, like “a secret kind of time, a pattern with repeating lines.”6
As we know, on February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict xvi abdicated the papacy;
then, on March 13, 2013, the new pope was elected and took the name of Fran-
cis. Quite a few commenters observed that while Benedict’s abdication could
be compared to that of Pope Celestine V in 1294, the new pope claimed to have
chosen his name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. Amid the media frenzy, the
formal analogies between current events and medieval events emphasized
supposedly eschatological meanings: the return of a poor Church in the name
of Saint Francis, or, vice versa, the coming of the end of times heralded by the
election of a “black pope” (Pope Bergoglio is in fact the very first pope to come
from the Jesuit order, and the Superior General of the Jesuits is often referred
to as the Black Pope). These analogies may not be the fruit of mere chance, but
may in fact derive from an intention on the part of the two popes to suggest
connections between current events and medieval ones. Indeed, some years
prior to renouncing the papacy, Benedict xvi made a gesture of laying his own
papal pallium—that is, the symbol of pontifical dignity granted to him on the
first day of his papacy—on the tomb of the now sainted Celestine V. Likewise,
in the Middle Ages, the name of Francis was associated with the hope of an
“angelic pope,” a Saint Francis reborn who would free the Church from worldly
corruption. This belief, quite common in the Late Middle Ages, including
around the time of Celestine V, has seen a powerful revival since 2013, in the
name and the dream of the Middle Ages (and Pope Francis).
The summer and fall of 2014 brought the tragic events connected with
the founding of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (isis), which on June 29 of
that year proclaimed the restoration of the Caliphate, an ancient medieval
6 J.L. Borges, “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” Collected Fictions, Penguin Books,
London 1999, pp. 143–146.

220 Epilogue
emory—and which wages jihad and considers Westerners as Crusaders in

m
need of beheading. On September 22, 2014, a spokesman for isis levied threats
against what to them, in a clear manifestation of the Middle Ages, remains the
preeminent symbol of the West: “We will conquer your Rome, break your
crosses, and enslave your women.”
The conflict between the West and Islam framed as an updated medieval
Crusade shows no sign of stopping, and recollecting the attacks leaves a long
trail of blood. Like Copenhagen on February 14, 2015, when a shooting took
place at a talk about satirical cartoons featuring Mohammed that had been
published ten years prior by the newspaper Jyllands-Posten (see Ch. 2). Like
the slaughters in Paris on November 13, 2015, and in Nice on July 14, 2016. Like,
sadly, the massacres perpetrated in many other places in the West and the East.
isis claims to be the heir to the Caliphate, but in the West, reactionary and
populist parties are in bed with this kind of thinking and gladly share its opin-
ion: in France, after the attack on the headquarters of the magazine Charlie
Hebdo (January 7, 2015), not only was the motto “Je suis Charlie” born, to de-
nounce the horror of what happened and to proclaim the desire to defend the
free world, but also the motto “Je suis Charles Martel,” claiming the victor over
the Arabs at the Battle of Poitiers (732) as a hero for the modern West.7 Our
West, which sees a “crusader subculture” among troops deployed in the Near
and Middle East, who sew patches on their uniforms with offensive slogans in
English and Arabic (so as to be understood), like “Pork-Eating Crusader.” Our
West, where, with the tacit encouragement of the Trump administration,
neo-medievalist culture from the extreme right has risen with a vengeance,
provoking—the only positive thing to come from all this—a healthy realiza-
tion of the problematic relationship between contemporary politics, alt-right,
white supremacy, and medieval studies on the part of American academics.8
In an America where it is well known that the kkk’s newsletter is called “The
Crusader,” and where a Republican candidate, Carly Fiorina, went so far as to
claim that her degree in medieval history could be helpful in defeating isis.
Some might even say that fortunately we still have Melania Trump, who in June
2018 “played the role of a medieval queen,” interceding with her cruel consort
in favor of immigrant children who had been separated from their parents.9
7 W. Blanc, C. Naudin, Charles Martel et la bataille de Poitiers cit.

8 We are referring primarily to the site www.publicmedievalist.com. As this book was going to
press, the New York Times published an overview of the issue: see J. Schuessler, Medieval
Scholars Joust With White Nationalists cit.
9 S. Drimmer, Melania Trump Plays the Role of Medieval Queen, “The Atlantic,” June 21, 2018,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/trumps-medieval-queen/563381/
(cons. May 15, 2019).

Epilogue 221
But let’s go back to Europe. In the same Hungary that closed one important
research center and is threatening another, the medievalizing nationalism of
the extreme right is standing strong. And the same thing is happening in
France, where the Rassemblement National (National Rally) is gaining more
and more approval, and where on the six-hundredth anniversary of Joan of
Arc’s birthday (January 2012), the parties of the right and left wrestled to lay
claim, each in their own way, to the image of the Maid of Orleans, either an
ultranationalist symbol or one of unity and concord. In the Ukraine, the bloody
events of the war waged there in the spring of 2014 have been represented as a
great, neo-medieval narrative. In Great Britain, Westminster and Big Ben are
literally sliding into the Thames, and some have even proposed selling them
(January 2012), while in the days leading up to the Scottish referendum that
secured the continuation of the United Kingdom (September 18, 2014), many
were the medieval references, both to the glorious legends of the Middle Ages,
and to the “New Middle Ages” into which we would have plunged if the seces-
sionists had won. In Spain, since 2012 they have been debating whether to offer
citizenship and passports to descendants of the Sephardic Jews expelled by the
Catholic monarchs in 1492. And if the government in Madrid is leaning to-
wards rectifying a medieval mistake, the medieval Adriatic has been domesti-
cated for tourism: it has been claimed that the great explorer Marco Polo was
not Venetian and in August 2012 a museum dedicated to him opened on the
Croatian island of Korčula. Any Chinese citizens who visit—they announced—
will enjoy free admission.
But is something changing? In reality, I believe so. In Europe today, things
seem different compared to ten or fifteen years ago. The Middle Ages are still
on the march in some circles of the extreme right, and still work well for ex-
pressing affiliation at the level of the piccole patrie, the little homelands: a case
in point is the fact that medieval/renaissance fairs continue to proliferate.
Apart from this kind of expression, however, in recent years the separatist
claims have ceased to speak the language of the Middle Ages. In Italy, the Lega
(“League”; which has abandoned the modifier “Northern” and is now a govern-
ment party of thinly veiled neo-Fascists) no longer makes use of these symbols,
and even in the rest of Europe things are moving in this direction. The proof is
in the propaganda that in 2016 led to “Brexit” and in 2017 to an attempt at inde-
pendence in Catalunia. In both cases, references to the need for re-separation
(from Europe and from Spain) could have found abundant material in their
respective medieval histories: the English, for instance, could have easily in-
voked the substantial alterity of the English Middle Ages compared to that of
the rest of Europe, and the Catalans could have recalled that Catalunia was
never conquered by the Arabs, that they were part of the Carolingian Empire—
and thus represented the furthest tendril of the Northern world—or still yet

222 Epilogue
that the crown of Aragon in the Middle Ages reigned over a Mediterranean
empire. Instead, the English and the Catalans did not make use of these na-
tional narratives, or in any case they did so with much less enthusiasm than we
might have expected: in point of fact, in both cases all of history, not just medi-
eval history, played a secondary role.10 Little remains in Western Europe these
days of the political infatuation with the Middle Ages that we saw even quite
recently. And so, we must wait and see what happens. I conclude by citing an
event to which I would like to attribute an auspicious significance: in January
2018, the French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron agreed to loan the cele-
brated Bayeux Tapestry (which depicts the Norman conquest of 1066) to Eng-
land. This has never before happened: it is a gesture of detente, in the name of
the Middle Ages.11 But I remain a scholar, and so I take my leave of you, dear
readers, with the words that Bernard of Clairvaux wrote nine hundred years
ago, which apply to all researchers: “With that, let us put an end to our book,
but not to our search” (De Consideratione, xiv, 32).
10 References to history were generally limited to the modern era (in Catalunia, in particu
lar, the most popular date is 11 September 1714, the last day of the fourteen-month Siege of
Barcelona during the Spanish War of Succession). It should still be underlined that
in May 2015, the intellectual society Historians for Britain emphasized the powerful dif
ferences between British history and that of the continent. On May 11, David Abulafia
published a kind of manifesto, Britain, apart from or a part of Europe? (https://www.histo
rytoday.com/david-abulafia/britain-apart-or-part-europe, cons. May 15, 2019) in which,
among other things, one may read the incredible phrase, “The British political temper has
been milder than that in the larger European countries.” Since we can’t ask the ghosts of
Edward ii, Henry viii’s wives, the Tasmanians, and the Iroquois for their opinion (just to
name a few), we may respond with a phrase that Walter Scott puts in the mouth of the
beautiful Jew Rebecca: “The people of England are a fierce race, quarreling ever with their
neighbours or among themselves, and ready to plunge the sword into the bowels of each
other” (W. Scott, Ivanhoe [1820], Ch. 44). Another good answer, signed by 250 British his-
torians and published the following May 18, is found here: https://www.historytoday.com/
various-authors/fog-channel-historians-isolated (cons. May 15, 2019).
11 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/17/emmanuel-macron-bayeux-tapestry-
loan-britain (cons. July 10, 2018).

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Index of Personal Names
Abulafia, David 222 Arcella, Luciano 112, 124

Accattoli, Luigi 46 Arduini, Roberto 69, 121
Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg 3 Ariosto, Ludovico 55
Adalbert of Prague, saint 205 Armillotta, Giovanni 150, 176
Adenauer, Konrad 206 Armitage, David 218
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund 68 Armstrong, Karen 41
Aesop 55 Arnaldi, Girolamo 197, 212–213
Afriat, Alessandro viii Aron, Raymond 68
Ağca, Mehmet Ali 36 Árpád, dynasty 179
Agnes of Bohemia, saint 168, 178 Árpád, ruler of the Hungarians
Airlie, Stuart 138–139, 141 (895–907) 135
Alaric, king of the Visigoths (395–410) 136 Arslan, Ermanno A. 151
Alberoni, Francesco 15, 19–20, 42–43 Arthur, imaginary character 50, 108, 125, 128,
Alberto da Giussano, imaginary 144, 148–149, 193
character 59, 192–193 Artifoni, Enrico 15
Aldrich, Megan 71 Ascani, Lorenzo viii
Alemanno, Gianni 164 Asor Rosa, Alberto 124
Alembert, Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’ 41 Attila, king of the Huns (434–53) 136
Alessio, Giovanni 52 Attolini, Vito 17, 41, 54, 93, 102
Alexander iii (Rolando Bandinelli), pope Augustine of Canterbury, saint 145
(1159–1181) 208 Augustine, Aurelius, bishop of Hippo,
Alexander, Michael 52, 67, 71, 93, 124, 154, saint 27, 166
218 Ayres, R. William 182
Alfonso vi, known as the Valiant, king of Azeglio, Massimo Taparelli d’ 192, 195
Léon (1065–1068) and Castile
(1073–1109) 108 Baár, Monika 61
Alfred, known as the Great, king of Wessex Bacon, Leonard 107
(871–899) 134, 148 Baden-Powell, Robert Stephenson
Al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab, alias of Ahmad Fãdil Smyth 155
al-Nazãl al-Khalã’il 33 Baez, Joan Chandos 96, 102
Amalvi, Christian 4, 7, 12, 32–33, 37, 40, 52, Bak, János 5, 12, 61, 69, 79, 83, 110, 136, 138,
54, 58, 67, 69, 80, 94, 107, 144, 154, 161, 168, 173, 177–180, 182, 186, 189
176, 196, 204, 209 Balcells, Albert 176
Amara, Mara 101 Baldoni, Adalberto 68
Andenna, Giancarlo 116, 200 Balestracci, Duccio 84, 200, 203, 207
Anderson, Benedict 10, 174, 186 Balliff Straubhaar, Sandra 139
Andrés-Gallego, José 108 Banderas, Antonio 141
Andriola, Fabio 122 Banham, Joanna 93
Angelina Jolie, stage name of Angelina Jolie Barbarossa, see Frederick I of Swabia
Voight 140 Barbero, Alessandro 106, 200
Angiolieri, Cecco 8, 101 Barenghi, Mario 97
Annunziata, Lucia 43 Baricco, Alessandro 29
Antohi, Sorin 177 Bartsch, Karl 4
Apor, Peter 177 Battiato, Franco 114
Arcand, Denys 29 Battisti, Carlo 52

270 Index of Personal Names
Bauman, Zigmund 21 Boccaccio, Giovanni 56, 99

Bede, known as the Venerable, saint 143 Boitani, Piero 53
Benedict of Nursia, saint 198–199 Bołeslaw I Chrobry, duke of Poland (992–
Benedict xv (Giacomo Della Chiesa), pope 1025), king of Poland (1025) 135, 205
(1914–1922) 166 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, saint 166
Benedict xvi (Joseph Ratzinger), pope Boniface viii (Benedetto Caetani), pope
(2005–2013) 169, 172, 199, 219 (1294–1303) 20, 102
Benigno, Francesco 192 Bonvecchio, Claudio 121
Benoist, Alain de 114 Boorman, John 223
Beowulf, imaginary character 140, 141 Borchia, Rosetta 127
Berardinelli, Alfonso 75 Bordone, Renato 5, 9, 31, 52, 54, 56, 58, 61, 64
Bercé, Yves-Marie 119 Borello, Benedetta viii
Berchet, Giovanni, alias of Riccardo Borges, Jorge Luis 68, 219
Michelini 192 Borghezio, Mario 39, 44, 48
Berdyaev, Nikolai 68 Borgna, Gianni 68
Bergman, Ernst Ingmar 68, 138 Borri, Francesco 202
Berlusconi, Silvio 35, 47 Bossi, Umberto 151, 192
Bernal, Martin 141 Bougard, François 186
Bernard of Clairvaux (Bernardus Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, Jacqueline Lee 50
Claraevallensis), saint 129, 165, 222 Bradley, Marion Zimmer 102
Bernard of Morval 18 Braganza, dynasty 170
Bernard, Oskar Ernst 111 Brambilla, Michele 47
Bernardo Tolomei, saint 170 Branca, Vittore 2, 3, 20, 41, 155
Bertho, Catherine 147 Brando, Marco viii, 42, 78, 112, 129, 196
Berto, Luigi 187 Branduardi, Angelo 73, 146
Berwick, Andrew, alias of Anders Behring Brassens, Georges 99, 101–102
Breivik 48–49, 118, 141 Braudel, Fernand 62
Bettini, Maurizio 213 Breathnach, Seamus 129
Biagi, Enzo 64 Brel, Jacques 99, 101
Bianchi, Giuseppe Maria viii Brennus, Gaul chieftain
Bianchini, Roberto 189 Breuning, Klaus 151
Biddick, Kathleen 60 Briens, Sylvain 141
Bignardi, Daria 29, 164 Brown, Dan 112, 127–128
Bildhauer Bettina 1, 12, 54, 77 Brunello, Piero 191
Bin Laden, Osama (Osãma bin Muham-mad Brusa, Antonio 63
bin ‘Awad bin Laden) 33, 37 Bruzelius, Caroline A. 155
Binni, Lanfranco 99 Budak, Neven 79, 180, 182, 186, 203
Biorcio, Roberto 192 Bull, Hedley 20
Birzer, Bradley J. 69 Bull, Marcus 63
Biserko, Sonja 190 Buonaiuti, Ernesto 160
Bizzocchi, Roberto 86 Burke, Peter 94
Blair, Anthony Charles Lynton, known as Burton, Timothy William, known as Tim 71
Tony 37 Burzio, Filippo 164
Blanc, William viii, 49, 108, 148, 220 Bush, George Walker 33, 37–38, 44, 47, 50
Blandeau, Agnès 99 Byers, Eamon 144
Blandini, Luigi 94
Bloch, Marc 8, 62 Caccamo, Domenico 135
Blondet, Maurizio 137, 167 Caesar, Caius Julius 129, 193

Caffiero, Marina 11, 75, 122–123, 167–168 Celestine V (Pietro del Morrone), pope (1294),
Cagol, Margherita 97 saint 219
Caldelli, Elisabetta viii Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 68, 118
Calderoli, Roberto 35 Cernigoi, Claudia 39
Calin, William 31 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de 55
Caliò, Tommaso 157 Chabod, Federico 195
Calvino, Italo 26, 66, 68, 89, 96–97, 105, 186, Champion, Timothy 61
194, 216 Chance, Kane 69
Camille, Michael 216 Charles I of Habsburg, emperor of Austria
Camões, Luis Vaz de 170 (1916–18), beatified 169
Canfora, Luciano 11, 194 Charlemagne, Charles I, known as, king of the
Cantarella, Glauco Maria 132 Franks, emperor of the Holy Roman
Cantor, Norman 17, 60, 111 Empire (800–814) 28, 75, 105, 113, 134,
Cantù, Francesca 59 193–194, 200, 202–204, 206, 208, 212
Capanna, Mario 73 Charles Martel, mayor of the Palace (of
Capetian, dynasty 188 Austrasia: 715–741, of Neustria:
Capitani, Ovidio 24, 41, 61, 94, 158 718–741) 101, 220
Caracalla, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, known Chateaubriand, François-René de 51, 58, 158
as, Roman emperor (211–217) 30 Chaucer, Geoffrey 56, 98
Caracciolo, Alberto 16 Chenu, Georges-Marie 202
Carboni, Paola 214 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 155
Cardini, Franco viii, 5, 12, 18–19, 27, 33, 38, Chiaberge, Riccardo 75, 167
41, 42, 59, 70, 91, 112, 114, 116, 118, 128, 131, Child, Francis James 91
138, 150, 158, 165, 194–195, 200, 203, Chrétien de Troyes 125, 128
208–209 Churchill, Winston Léonard Spencer 107
Carducci, Giosue 58, 61, 66 Ciavolella, Massimo viii
Carnevale, Giovanni 24 Cid Campeador, El, Rodrigo Díaz di Vivar,
Carocci, Sandro 135 known as 59, 107–108
Carolingian, dynasty 176, 200–204, 206, 208, Cielo d’Alcamo 100
221 Ciola, Gualtiero 151
Carotta, Francesco 129 Clare of Assisi, saint 77
Carpegna Falconieri, Tommaso di 31, 49, 61, Clark, Kenneth 56
67, 77–78, 82, 84, 99, 116, 118, 145, Clemenceau, Georges Benjamin 107
191–192, 194, 218 Clement V (Bertrand de Got), pope
Carr Gomm, Philip 143 (1304–1314) 165
Castelnuovo, Enrico 52, 54, 56, 60, 71, Clovis, king of the Franks (481–511) 108, 134,
84, 155 209
Catherine, queen of Bosnia (1424–63), Cobbett, William 93
beatified 179 Coccia, Benedetto 64
Cattaneo, Carlo 62 Cohen, Leonard Norman 102
Catullus, Gaius Valerius 151 Cohn, Norman 111, 181
Cavallo, Alberto 42 Coleman, David 75
Cavallo, Guglielmo 52, 54, 60 Colombo, Furio 19
Cavani, Liliana 102 Colorni, Eugenio 173, 197
Cavazza, Stefano 80, 82, 176, 192 Columbus, Christopher 214
Ceauşescu, Nicolae 180 Conningham, Robin 12
Ceccarelli, Filippo 164 Constantine I, known as the Great, Roman
Cecchetto, Céline 99 emperor (306–337) 28

Conte, Emanuele 16 Delanty, Gerard 195

Contini, Gianfranco 100 Delle Donne, Roberto 111
Conversi, Daniele 176 Delogu, Paolo 9
Copertino, Luigi 163 Dessí, Rosa Maria 157
Cordini Giovanni 194 Di Branco, Marco 49
Corsini, Paolo 151 Di Febo, Giuliana 59
Cortellessa, Andrea 120 Di Sorco, Daniele 163
Costambeys, Marios 136 Diaz-Andreu, Margarita 61
Costante, Alessandra 40 Diderot, Denis 41
Cracco, Giorgio 186 Dierkens, Alain 141
Crane, Walter 55, 58 Dimitri, Francesco 181
Croce, Benedetto 185, 206 Dinshaw, Carolyn 9
Cunegonda (Kinga), queen of Poland Disney, Walter Elias, known as Walt 145
(1239–1279), saint 168 Disraeli of Beaconsfield, Benjamin 93
Cuneo, Elvis 163 Djokic, Dejan 173, 180, 190
Curcio, Renato 97 Djurić, Ivan 190
Curry, Patrick 69 Dolcino da Novara 97
Curta, Florin 90 Domenichelli, Mario 52, 67
Cyril, saint 179, 198 Dorati, Marco viii
Doré, Gustave 55
D’Acunto, Nicolangelo 191 Doubleday, Simon R. 17, 75
D’Anna, Nuccio 145 Dragosei, Fabrizio 184
D’Arcens, Louise 52, 54, 98 Dreyer, Carl Theodor 68
Dahrendorf, Ralf Gustav 177 Drimmer, Sonia 220
Dalewski, Zbigniew 205 Driver, Martha W. 54
Dalla Torre, Paola 54, 107 Drout, Michael D. C. 69, 120
Dann, Otto 110 Dubet, François 176
Dante Alighieri 40, 47, 129, 212 Duby, Georges 18, 92, 94, 132
Danton, Georges-Jacques 107 Duggan, Christopher 192
Davies, Sioned 107 Dumézil, Georges 132
De André, Fabrizio 96, 99, 101–103, 118 Dylan, Bob, alias of Robert Allen
De Angelis, Marcello 121 Zimmerman 96
De Boor, Helmut 4
De Gasperi, Alcide 206 Earl, Benjamin 149
De Giorgi, Fulvio 110, 160 Eco, Umberto 2, 18–21, 28, 29, 39, 41–42, 47,
De Gregorio, Concita 47 64, 68, 97, 112, 122, 129–130, 163, 177
De Llera, Luis 108 Eddé, Anne-Marie 37, 40–41
De Mari, Silvana 72 Edward ii Plantagenet, king of England
De Mattei, Roberto 38–39, 167, 194 (1307–1327) 222
De Nardis, Luigi 101 Edwards, Cyril 107
De Turris, Gianfranco 54, 69, 72, 106, 110, 118, Edwig of Anjou, queen of Poland (1384–1399),
120–121, 125–126 saint 168
De Vincentiis, Amedeo viii Effros, Bonnie 61
Declich, Francesca viii Eisenstein, Sergei 108
Del Boca, Angelo 197 Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of France
Del Corso, Lucio 72, 118, 120–121, 125, 130, 152 (1137–1152), queen of England
Del Ponte, Carla 174 (1154–1189) 3
Del Valle, Alexandre 38, 163 Eliade, Mircea 68, 124

Eliot, Thomas Stearns 68 Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio), pope

Elliott, Andrew viii, 1, 49, 52, 108 (2013-) 219
Elze, Reinhard 84, 1, 110 Francis of Assisi, saint 46, 77, 102, 157, 219
Emery, Ed 100 Franco y Bahamonde, Francisco 108
Emery, Elizabeth 1 Frantzen, Allen J. 67
Engels, Friedrich 58, 89, 93, 103 Franz Ferdinand of Habsburg, heir to the
Erasmus 12, 100 Austro-Hungarian throne 173
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 38 Frazetta, Frank 134
Esch, Arnold 111 Frederick I of Swabia, known as Barbarossa,
Eschenbach, Wolfram von 107, 127 emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
Escobar, Roberto 99 (1152–1190) 37, 110, 112, 152, 191, 202
Escudero Alday, Rafaël 75 Frederick ii of Swabia, king of Sicily
Eustochia (Smeralda) Calafato, saint 168 (1198–1150), emperor of the Holy
Evola, Julius, alias of Giulio Cesare Roman Empire (1220–1250) 41–42, 78,
Andrea Evola 41, 109, 114–121, 111–112, 123, 129, 176
128, 131, 164, 182 Friedman, Thomas L. 33
Friedmann, Georges 68
Fabietti, Ugo 11 Frigerio, Alessandro 108
Facchini, Riccardo viii, 31, 49, 61, 82, 84, Frijhoff, Willem 75
106, 109, 116, 118, 141, 155, 162, 176 Frugoni, Chiara 157
Fagioli, Alessandra 97 Fubini, Mario 191
Falcetto, Bruno 97 Fuchs, Franz 175
Falco, Giorgio 158
Fallaci, Oriana 32, 38, 46, 196 Gabriel, archangel 178
Faraldo, José Maria 186 Gabrieli, Francesco 41
Fawcett, Clare 61 Galahad, imaginary character 133
Fazioli, Patrick K. 5, 52 Galli, Giorgio 110, 118, 137
Febvre, Lucien 62 Gamble, Andrew 21, 178, 201
Feller, Laurent 186 Gandino, Germana 54, 108
Felskau, Christian-Frederik 168, 180 Ganim, John M. 31, 140–141
Ferguson, Niall 28 Gardell, Hans Bertil Mattias 140–141
Ferré, Vincent 52, 99 Gargallo di Castel Lentini, Gioacchino 134
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 188 Garizpanov, Ildar H. 186
Filippini, Elisabetta 116 Garrard, Carol 180
Filoramo, Giovanni 179 Garrard, John 180
Fini, Gianfranco 213 Gasparri, Stefano 136, 186–187, 212
Finke, Laurie 108 Gaulle, Charles de 204
Fiori, Simonetta 124 Gautier, Alban 141
Fiorina, Carly 220 Geary, Patrick J. viii, 12, 30, 58–59, 63, 82,
Flacius Illyricus, Mattija Vlacic, known 174, 177, 186–187, 189–190, 196, 198, 205
as 154 Gemelli, Agostino, born Edoardo
Fo, Dario 99–100, 102–103 Gemelli 160, 167
Follett, Ken 93 Gensini, Sergio 94
Folli, Stefano 35 Geoffrey of Monmouth 72, 107, 215
Fomenko, Anatolij Timofeevič 183–184 George, Stefan 68, 111
Fonseca, Cosimo Damiano 116 Georges, saint 107, 148, 155, 172, 179
Ford, Gerald Rudolph Jr 28 Geremek, Bronisław 95–96, 181, 194, 197
Frale, Barbara 165 Geretti, Alessio 206

Germann, George 71 Gulisano, Paolo 69, 120

Gerner, Kristian 198, 200 Gurevich, Aron Yakovlevich 181
Gerratana, Valentino 68
Gervaso, Roberto 64 Habsburg, dynasty 202
Giacobbo, Roberto 122 Haider, Jörg 164, 175, 178
Giardina, Andrea 157 Hamer, Andrew 136
Gibbon, Edward 28 Harris, Jennifer 93
Gibson, Marion 138 Harty, Kevin J. 54
Gibson, Mel Columcille Gerard 149 Haydock, Nickolas 41, 54
Gillett, Andrew 136, 186 Heale, Martin 136
Gilson, Étienne 3, 159, 161 Heers, Jacques 2
Ginzburg, Carlo 95–96 Hegedus, Zsuzsa 176
Girouard, Mark 67, 172 Hein, Rolland 69
Giuffrida, Roberto 99 Heller-Roazen, Daniel 34
Giusti, Wolf 135 Henry ii Plantagenet, king of England
Goebel, Stefan 67 (1154–1189) 3
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas 110 Henry vi of Swabia, king of Sicily (1186–1196),
Gorbachev, Mikhael Sergueïevitch 197 emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
Gottfried, Benn 109 (1189–1197) 112
Gramsci, Antonio 68, 89 Henry viii, king of England (1509–1547)
Greci, Roberto 213 222
Greenia, Conrad 165 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 52
Gregory I the Great, pope (590–604), Hesiod 27
saint 27 Hiltzik, Andrew M. viii
Gregory Persse, Augusta 107 Hitler, Adolf 136
Gregory vii (Ildebrando di Soana), pope Hobsbawm, Eric John Ernest 10, 85, 147, 183,
(1073–1085), saint 43 186
Grendel, imaginary character 140 Hodges, Laura F. 97
Grennan, Margaret Rosé 93 Hodgson, Charles 9
Grévin, Benoît 132 Hoffman, Donald L. 148–149
Grillo, Paolo 192, 197 Hohenzollern, dynasty 110
Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Karl 55, 198 Holsinger, Bruce 19, 33–34
Grimm, Wilhelm Karl 55, 198 Homer 183
Groebner, Valentin 52 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 93
Grossi, Paolo 198 Horkheimer, Max 68
Grosso, Mauro 159, 161 Horspool, David 93
Grzesik, Ryszard 178 Horton, Chase 97
Guardini, Romano 68, 159 Howald, Ernst 3
Guastella, Gianni 99 Howard, Robert Erwin 134
Guccini, Francesco 96 Hugo, Victor 55
Guénon, René 41, 68, 107, 112–114, 117, 124, Huntington, Samuel P. 20, 28, 38
126, 129–130, 150 Huss, Jan 102
Guerra, Antonio, known as Tonino 98 Hussein, Saddam (Sadãm Husayn ‘Abdal-
Guido, Olimpio 37 Majïd al-Tikrïtï) 33, 38
Guinevere, imaginary character 50
Guizot, François-Pierre-Guillaume 58, 83, Iacono, Davide viii, 82, 141
198, 211 Iacovella, Angelo 112
Guldi, Jo 218 Iggers, George 61

Innocent iii (Lotario dei conti di Segni), pope Kerouac, Jack, born Jean-Louis 118
(1198–1216) 43, 46, 158 King, Martin Luther 141
Interino, Maria 78 Kizilov, Mikhail 179–180, 184
Introvigne, Massimo 70, 112, 116, 118, 137–138, Klaniczay, Gábor viii, 61, 82, 169, 177,
143, 170, 194 179–180, 186–187, 189
Iorio, Raffaele 63–64, 78, 88, 131, 192 Kline, Naomi Reed 56
Isnenghi, Mario 191 Knight, Stephen 95
Ivancich, Valentina viii Knox, Amanda 32
Ivanišević, Alojz 177 Kobilińsky, Andrzej 159
Ivanov, Sergej A. 179, 181–184 Kobrin, Stephen J. 21
Kohl, Philip L. 61
Jackson, Jayshan 140 Koštunica, Vojislav 191
Jackson, Peter 72 Kovács, Péter 179
Jacopone da Todi, Jacopo dei Benedetti, Kremenjaš-Daničić, Adriana 202
known as 102 Krumeich, Gerd 107
Jagiellonian, dynasty 181 Kruta, Venceslas 149, 198
James the Greater (Moor-slayer), saint 107 Kudsieh, Suha 41
Jannacci, Enzo 100 Küng, Hans 43
Janz, Oliver 79, 84 Kunstler, James Howard 17
Jesus Christ 18, 36, 46, 48, 69, 103, 127, 129,
138, 183 La Fontaine, Jean de 55
Joachim of Fiore 19, 102 La Rocca, Cristina 136, 186
Joan of Arc, saint 59–60, 67, 107–108, 221 Lambert, Christophe 140
Joel, Tony 180 Lanna, Luciano 41–42, 99, 106, 118, 121–122,
John I Trastamara, king of Castille and León 137, 144, 150
(1379–1390) 172 Lanzinger, Margareth viii
John of Dukla, saint 168 Larrington, Carolyne 138
John Paul ii (Karol Józef Wojtyła), pope Lasansky, Medina D. 82
(1978–2005), saint 36, 42–44, 46, Lazzari, Tiziana 56
156–157, 165–169, 172, 198–199, 205 Le Goff, Jacques 6, 27, 42, 63, 68, 159, 174,
John xxiii (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli), pope 180, 186–187, 194, 199, 203, 206
(1958–1963), saint 162, 166 Le Guin, Ursula Kroeber 72
Jones, Chris 1, 12, 77 Le Jan, Régine 186
Jones, Sian 61 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 107–108, 162–163, 174, 178
Joseph of Arimathea, saint 127 Le Pen, Marine 178
Jünger, Ernst 68 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel 94
Leardi, Geraldine 31
Kafka, Franz 159 Leerssen, Joep viii, 58, 144, 186–187
Kamp, Norbert 111 Lefebvre, Marcel-François 162
Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig 111 Leibiger, Carol 120
Kaplan, Jeffrey 70 Lenin, Nikolaï Vladimir Ilitch, alias of V. I.
Keck, Catie 146 Oulianov 181, 206
Kelly, Samantha viii Leonardi, Claudio 120
Kelly, Stephen 144 Leonardo da Vinci 126, 212
Kennedy Onassis, Jacqueline, see Bouvier, Lerner, Alan Jay 50
Jacqueline Lee 50 Lerner, Gad 33
Kennedy, family 50 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 124
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald 50 Lewis, Bernard 36

Lewis, Clive Staples 69 Maritain, Jacques 68, 159, 162

Leydi, Roberto 90 Markale, Jean 149
Licinio, Raffaele 42, 56 Marosi, Ernő 61
Linebaugh, Peter 50 Marostica, Flavia 63
Lionello, Silvia 110 Marshall, David W. 72, 80, 139, 149
Livy (Titus Livius Andronicus) 151 Martelli, Manfredi 150
Locke Perchuk, Alison viii Martin Pallin, José Antonio 75
Longo, Umberto viii Martin, saint 178
Loomis, Roger S. 145 Martins Guerreiro, Pedro A. viii, 170
Lööw, Hélène 70 Marx, Karl 89, 93, 103
Losasso, Stella 187 Mary, mother of Jesus 171–172, 178
Louis ix, king of France (1226–1270), Mary Magdalene, saint 112, 127
saint 39–40, 107–108 Mastrantoni, Primo 43
Lowe, David 180 Matera, Vincenzo 11
Lowenthal, David 11, 75 Matthews, David 52
Lukács, György 68 Matthews, Richard 21
Lukan, Walter 177 Mazzon, Antonella 61
Lupack, Alan 31 McCarthy, Cormac 17
Lupack, Barbara Tepa 31 Mc Kitterick, Rosamond 200
Lynch, Damon 140 McEvoy, Emma 71
Medail, Cesare 120
Maalouf, Amin 36 Meier, Sid 28
Macconi, Massimiliano 118 Meinhard of Riga, saint 168
Machiavelli, Niccolò 1 Menarini, Raffaele 110
Macpherson, James 144 Menegotto, Andrea 137–138, 143
Macron, Emmanuel 222 Menestò, Enrico 5, 41, 52
Magdalino, Paul 178 Mercuri, Chiara 157
Magris, Claudio 142 Merli, Sonia 116, 118, 165
Mai, Gunther 110 Merlin, imaginary character 7, 72, 144,
Malerba, Luigi, alias of Luigi Bonardi 98 148–149, 193
Malory, Thomas 97 Meschini, Marco 38
Malynski, Emmanuel 159 Mesirca, Margherita 54
Mameli, Raimondo 163 Methodios, saint 179
Mammarella, Giuseppe 204 Miccoli, Giovanni 37, 43, 45, 47, 158, 162–163,
Mancinelli, Laura 4 165–166, 198–199, 209–210
Mancini, Mario 52 Michael, archangel 178
Mannheimer, Renato 192 Michelangelo Buonarroti 211
Mannoia, Fiorella 146 Michetti, Raimondo viii, 157, 168–169
Manselli, Raoul 155, 158, 160 Mieszko I, duke of Poland (965–992) 135, 18,
Manuel ii Palaiologus, Byzantine emperor 209
(1391–1425) 45 Miglio, Gianfranco 21, 191
Marc, saint 129 Milanini, Claudio 97
Marcel, Étienne 102 Milizia, Francesco 14
Marcuse, Herbert 68 Miller, Clarence H. 12
Margherita da Trento 97 Milošević, Slobodan 173–174
Marinelli, Valentina 99 Minc, Alain 204, 258
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 66 Mistral, Frédéric 175–176
Marini, Alfonso 157 Modzelewski, Karol 181

Moeglin, Jean-Marie 83 Nuno de Santa Maria Álvares Pereira,

Mohammed 35, 40, 45, 220 saint 170–172
Molay, Jacques de 121
Moliterni, Pierfranco 90 Obama, Barack Hussein 47, 50, 104
Monda, Andrea 69 Obama, family 50
Monicelli, Mario 98 Occhipinti, Elisa 15
Monnerot, Jules 30 Odifreddi, Piergiorgio 167
Monnet, Pierre 69, 124, 198 Odin, see also Wotan 138
Montanari, Massimo 3 Oexle, Otto Gerhard 52, 111
Montanelli, Indro 64 Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 187
Montesano, Marina 112, 116, 118 Oldoni, Massimo 54
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Olivo, Francesco 123
baron de La Brède et de 134 Olton, Bert 54, 148
Morandini, Francesca 151 Olvera de la Torre, Lorena viii
Morawski, Paolo 198 Oneto, Gilberto 172
Mordini, Attilio 68, 159 Orecchia, Antonio Maria 121
Morghen, Raffaello 158, 160 Orosius, Paul 27
Moro, Renato 59 Ortega y Gasset, José 16, 68
Morris, William 51, 92–93 Ortenberg, Veronica 12, 50, 52, 54, 58, 67, 71,
Mumford, Lewis 92 80, 93, 97, 102, 108, 138, 142–143, 146–149,
Murray, Margaret Alice 56, 107, 138 154, 172–173, 200, 206, 215
Musca, Giosuè 81, 98, 100, 125 Orwell, George, alias of Eric Arthur Blair 50,
Mustè, Marcello 94 193
Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina viii Osama, Arab emir (12th century) 41
Mylonas, Chrystos 173, 180 Oschema, Klaus 200–201
Ossian, imaginary character 58, 71, 144
Napoleon I Bonaparte, emperor of the French Osti Guerrazzi, Amedeo 196
(1804–1815), king of Italy (1805– Otto iii of Saxony, emperor of the Holy
1815) 25, 202 Roman Empire (996–1002) 205
Naso, Domenico 144 Otto of Habsburg, archduke 178
Nasser, Gamal Abdel 38 Ottokar I, king of Bohemia (1198–1230) 168
Naudin, Christophe 49, 108, 220 Ottonian, dynasty 202, 206
Negri, Luigi 39, 157
Nemanjic, dynasty 179 Pagden, Anthony 195
Nesci, Olivia 127 Pál, Jószef 156
Nevsky, Alexander, saint 59, 108–109, 178 Palach, Jan 102
Newman, John Henry 155 Pancho Villa, alias of José Doroteo Arango
Nicolas ii Romanov, tsar of Russia Arámbula 141
(1894–1918) 179 Pandimiglio, Leonida 18
Nicolet, Claude 134 Parsifal/Perceval, imaginary character 66,
Nicolotti, Andrea 118 105, 112, 136
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 41, 118 Parsis-Barubé, Odile 141
Nobel, James 149 Paschal iii (Guido da Crema), antipope
Nokes, Richard Scott 140 (1164–1168) 208
Nostradamus, Michel de Nostredame, known Pasolini, Pier Paolo 68, 85, 89, 98–99, 103,
as 19 105, 141, 186
Novalis, alias of Georg Friedrich Philipp Passini, Michela 67
Freiherr von Hardenberg 51, 158 Pastoureau, Michel 130

Paul of Tarsus, saint 64, 161, 166 Pol Pot, alias of Saloth Sar 89
Paul vi (Giovanni Battista Montini), pope Polo, Marco 221
(1963–1978), saint 39, 162, 172, 198 Porciani, Ilaria 79
Peake, Mervyn 68 Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis 68, 118, 176
Pecere, Paolo 72, 118, 120–121, 125, 130, 152 Pozzato, Maria Pia 129
Pegrari, Maurizio 200 Prat, Michel 99
Pellegrini, Loredana 121 Prati, Giovanni 192
Pellegrino, Fabio 106 Procaccia, Micaela 11, 75
Pepin, Roland E. 18 Prodi, Romano 197
Percivaldi, Elena 149, 198 Pugh, Tison 52, 98
Pernoud, Régine 14 Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore 53, 93
Peroche, Gregory 261 Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovitch 37
Perrault, Charles 55
Petersen, Jens 84 Qaddafi, Mu’ammar (Mu’ammar Abu Minyar
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) 218 ‘Abd al-Salâm al-Qadhdhâfï) 37
Philip iv, known as the Fair, king of France Queneau, Raymond 3, 13, 95, 133,
(1285–1314) 116, 165 167, 216
Piast, dynasty 181 Quinn, James 28
Pius xii (Eugenio Pacelli), pope Quirico, Domenico 15
(1939–1958) 43
Piero della Francesca 126 Radić, Radivoj 190
Piersanti, Umberto 77 Raedts, Peter 110
Pinelli, Giuseppe 100 Rahewin 192
Pinto, Giuliano 191 Rahn, Otto 112
Piombini, Guglielmo 21 Rame, Franca 100
Pippidi, Andrei 180–181, 184 Ranger, Terence 10, 147
Pirani, Francesco viii, 84 Rao, Nicola 121, 150
Pirenne, Henri 29, 84 Raphael Sanzio 212
Pirillo, Paolo 99 Rapley, John 21
Pisi, Paola 124 Ratzinger, Joseph, see also Benedict xvi 37,
Pitha, Petr 168 43, 45–47, 165–167, 169–172, 199, 219
Pitt, Brad, stage name of William Bradley Ray, Sid 54
Pitt 141 Reagan, Ronald Wilson 37
Pius of Pietrelcina, saint 169 Reggiani, Serge 101
Pius V (Antonio Ghislieri), pope (1566–1572), Reguzzoni, Giuseppe 44
saint 166 Revelli, Marco 106, 118, 140, 159
Pius ix (Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti), Riccardi, Andrea 47
pope (1846–1878), beatified 43, 166 Ricci Sargentini, Monica 178
Pius X (Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto), pope Ricci, Giovanni 59
(1903–1914), saint 162, 166 Richard I the Lionheart, king of England
Pius xii (Eugenio Pacelli), pope (1189–1199) 37
(1939–1958) 43 Ricks, David 177
Pivato, Stefano 11, 63, 86, 124 Ridolfi, Maurizio 84
Placido, Beniamino 33 Risden, Edward L. 41
Pluskowski, Aleks 139 Ripp, Joseph 72
Poe, Edgar Allan 71 Risé, Claudio 182
Pohl, Walter 136, 147, 173, 178–179, 185–186, Ritrovato, Salvatore viii
189, 197, 203–204 Robert, Jean-Noël 198

Robin Hood, imaginary character 8, 59, 93, Schramm, Percy Ernst 111

95, 104 Schuessler, Jennifer 220
Rodrigues, Ana Maria S.A. viii Schuman, Robert 206
Rohmer, Éric 70 Scott, Walter 55, 83, 140, 147, 222
Roland, imaginary character 108, 204 Scuccimarra, Luca 192
Romano, Ruggero 198 Scurati, Antonio 124
Romano, Sergio 107 Sède, Gérard de 117
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 107 Selden Rose, Robert 107
Rosaspina, Elisabetta 152 Sergi, Giuseppe 2, 9, 11–12, 24, 47, 52,
Rosenbaum, Jonathan 54 54, 56, 60, 63–64, 71, 84, 155, 187,
Rosenberg, Bruce A. 50 189–190, 203, 208, 213
Rosenthal, Bernard 31 Šešelj, Vojislav 191
Rossellini, Roberto 68 Sestan, Ernesto 191
Rossi, Ernesto 173, 197 Settis, Salvatore 3, 63–64,
Rossi, Filippo 41–42, 99, 106, 118, 121–122, 137, 124, 211
144, 150 Severgnini, Beppe 32
Rossi, Pietro 186, 195, 198, 209–211 Shakespeare, William 55
Rossi, Vasco 11 Shippey, Thomas 96, 149, 173
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 134 Siegfried, imaginary character 136
Roversi Monaco, Francesca viii, 61 Siegrist, Hannes 79
Rowling, Joanne Kathleen 71, 143 Siewers, Alfred K. 69
Rufin, Jean-Christophe 29 Signorotto, Gian Vittorio 209
Rufinus of Assisi, saint 78 Simmons, Clare A. 52, 61
Rumsfeld, Donald 33 Sklar, Elizabeth S. 148–149
Rurik, Varangian prince (852–879) 179 Smith, Anthony D. 61
Rusconi, Roberto 157 Smith, Marc H. 145
Ruskin, John 51, 53, 58, 62, 93 Soldani, Simonetta 84, 188, 191
Ryan, Judith 11, 186, 189 Solomon 48, 127
Somorjai, Adam 156
Sacco, Giuseppe 19 Sorba, Carlotta 84, 191
Sághy, Marianne 187 Sorel, Georges 68
Said, Edward W. 31 Soriani, Simone 100
Saideman, Stephen M. 182 Southwork, Herbert R. 108
Saladin (Salãh al-Dĩn Yũsuf ibn Ayyũb ibn Spengler, Oswald 27, 68
Shãdĩ ibn Marwãn), sultan of Egypt Spenser, Edmund 55
(1177–1193) 37–38, 40–41 Spiegel, Gabriel M. 5
Samuel, Richard 158 Spinelli, Altiero 173, 197
Sanfilippo, Matteo viii, 11, 18, 31, 54, 56, 95, Spiriti, Andrea 192
104, 133, 148 Spirito, Guglielmo 69
Sarti, Raffaella viii Spooner, Catherine 71
Sasso, Eleonora 93 Steinbeck, John 50, 68, 96–97
Saunière, François-Bérenger 112 Stephen I, king of Hungary (997–1038),
Sava, saint 179 saint 169, 179
Scagno, Roberto 124 Stephen Thomas, king of Bosnie
Scarre, Geoffrey 12 (1459–1461) 179
Schiera, Pierangelo 79, 84, 110 Stevenson, Kath 144
Schmieder, Felicitas viii Stevenson, Robert Louis 55, 62
Schmitt, Carl 68 Stewart, Mary Florence Elinor 72

Stivell, Alan, stage name of Alan Trafford, Simon 139

Cochevelou 142 Traverso, Enzo 11
Stock, Brian 63, 67, 76, 154 Tremlett, Giles 75
Stoker, Abraham, known as Bram 71 Tremonti, Giulio 16, 104
Stolleis, Michael 110 Trencsényu, Balâzs 177
Stone, Lawrence 94 Trevor-Roper, Hugh 147
Suppan, Arnold 177 Trigg, Stéphanie 139
Szarmach, Paul E. 31 Troude, Gilles 181
Szymon of Lipnicza, saint 170 Trump, Donald 146, 220
Trump, Melania 220
Tabacco, Giovanni 24 Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim 5, 17
Tabor, D. James 127 Tucker, Neely 50
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius 135 Tudman, Franjo 182
Taddei, Stefano 195, 209 Turse, Nick 50
Taggart, David 69 Twain, Mark, alias of Samuel Langhorne
Tarantino, Quentin Jerome 9 Clemens 31, 67
Tarchi, Marco 159 Tyrrell, George 160, 167
Tarkovsky, Andrei 181
Tasso, Torquato 55 Urban ii (Oddon of Lagery), pope (1088–
Taylor, Robert R. 56 1099), beatified 44
Telò, Mario 21 Urbanczyk, Przemyslaw 186
Tennyson, Alfred 148 Utz, Richard viii, 1, 60
Terzani, Tiziano 89
Tettamanzi, Dionigi 44 Vacca, Roberto 17
Thatcher, Margaret 93 Vallerani, Massimo 84, 192
Thierry, Jacques-Nicolas-Augustin 134 Valli, Luigi 129
Thiesse, Anne-Marie 57–59, 61, 82, 89–90, Valzania, Sergio 194
144, 147–148, 151, 180–181, 186, 189, 195, Vaquero Piñeiro, Manuel viii
198 Varela Rodriguez, Maria Elisa viii
Thiriart, Jean-François 150 Vàrvaro, Alberto 52
Thor 137 Vauchez, André 157
Thorpe, Lewis 107 Vercingetorix, king of the Arverni 108, 144
Tinker, Chris 99 Verginella, Marta 182
Tocco, Francesco Paolo 180, 212 Verlaine, Paul-Marie 88
Toczyski, Piotr viii, 198, 200, 202, 204 Vico, Giambattista 134
Todorov, Tzvetan 27–28, 30, 36, 38, 45, 75, Vidal, Gore, alias of Eugene Luther Vidal 28
133, 189, 198, 210–212 Vigna, Edoardo 15
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel 68, 69, 72, 93, Villaggio, Paolo 101
96, 118–119, 120–122, 133, 146, 155, 165, Villon, François, François de Montcorbier,
209 known as 8, 101–102
Tomislav I, king of Croatia (925–928) 135, Violante, Cinzio 131
182 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel 53, 62,
Tommissen, Piet 114 216
Tornielli, Andrea 164 Viotto, Piero 159
Toswell, Jane M. 12 Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro) 151
Touchard, Jean 107 Visentin, Stefano viii
Touraine, Alain 176 Vitolo, Giovanni 30
Toynbee, Arnold 28 Vitus of Lucania, saint 173

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet, known Williams, Phil 21

as 41, 153 Willis, Bruce, stage name of Walter Bruce
Vollmer, Frank 82 Willison 141
Voltmer, Ernst 80 Winkler, Martin M. 133
Vukašinovic, Milan 191 White, Terence Hanbury 68
Wojtowicz, Slawek 28
Wagner, Wilhelm Richard 58, 112 Wojtyła, Karol Józef, see also John Paul ii 36
Waite, Arthur E. 116 Wollenberg, Daniel 1
Wallace, William 59, 149 Wood, Ian 136, 186
Walpole, Horace 71 Wotan, see also Odin 138
Warschawski, Michel 29 Wright, Lawrence 35
Weber, Maximilian Karl Emil, known as Wyclif, John 102
Max 154
Wegener, Scott 141 Yawn, Lila Elizabeth viii, 77, 82, 99
Weisl, Angela J. 52 Yeats, William Butler 58, 67–68, 144, 146
Wieviorka, Michel 176
Wilde, Oscar (Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Zabbia, Marino viii
Wilde) 32, 86, 153 Zalloum, Abdulhay Yahya 37
Wilkin, Alexis 141 Zambon, Francesco 54
William I of Hohenzollern, king of Prussia Zdislava of Lemberk, saint 168
(1861–1888), German emperor Zečević, Nada viii
(1871–1888) 110 Zerbi, Piero 131
William I, known as the Conqueror, duke of Zielonka, Jan 21, 201
Normandy (1035–1087), king of Zizola, Giancarlo 44
England (1066–1087) 135 Zoccatelli, Pierluigi 137–138, 143
William Tell, imaginary character 59 Zolla, Elémire 122


2 - Di Carpegna Falconieri - The Militant Middle Ages

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The Militant Middle Ages

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Joep Leerssen (University of Amsterdam)

John Breuilly (The London School of Economics and Political Science)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ncc

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Preface to the English Edition (2019) vii

1 The Neo-Medieval West 13

2 All New Barbarians and Same Old Crusaders 26

3 Once upon a Time in the Middle Ages 50

4 The Middle Ages of Identity 66

5 Merchants and Bowmen: Middle Ages of the City 77

6 Folk and Jesters: Anarchist and Leftist Middle Ages 88

7 Templars and Holy Grail: Middle Ages of Tradition 105

8 Warriors of Valhalla: Middle Ages of the Great North 133

9 Druids and Bards: Celtic Middle Ages 142

10 Popes and Saints: Catholic Middle Ages 153

11 Peoples and Sovereigns: Middle Ages of Nations 173

12 Emperors and Wanderers: Middle Ages of a United Europe 194

References and Sources 223

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004414983_002

an escape fantasy, or magic or fairy tales. On the contrary, it establishes solid

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

­rebellion against the establishment. From a historical perspective, the medi-

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

modern.9 Which is obvious, if we think about it for even a moment, in so far as

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

mythical, and symbolic—that conceives of the Medieval as an elsewhere, a

13 On the Middle Ages as a “fundamentally ahistorical myth” see R. Bordone, Lo specchio di

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

The Neo-Medieval West

On the twenty-fifth of September, twelve hundred and sixty-four, at break

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004414983_003

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

3 Cf. infra, Chapter 2.

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Testaments to a disgusted attitude toward the world we live in can be found in

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri - 978-90-04-41498-3

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, �� | doi:10.1163/9789004414983_002

rebellion against the establishment. From a historical perspective, the medi-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, �� | doi:10.1163/9789004414983_003

incomprehensible and, to many observers, tends toward anarchy. We are deal-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, �� | doi:10.1163/9789004414983_004

A synthesized presentation of the historiographical debate is in G. Vitolo, Medioevo.

inflicted on “bandits,” that is to say partisans, by occupation forces: it doesn’t

rusades as a “just war” was perfectly ecclesiastical, though today it no longer

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, �� | doi:10.1163/9789004414983_005