Recherche par auteur > Di Fazio Massimiliano

The contribution aims to present some reflections of a mainly methodological nature to frame the phenomenon of manifestations of religiosity in pre-Roman Italy in their historical development. The changes in function, value and meaning that various places of worship seem to have experienced in the course of their history are in fact mainly a consequence of the changed political, social and economic conditions of the communities that frequented/managed the place of worship. But it is possible that in some cases the changes are to be linked to the evolution of the divine figure(s) who had their home in the place of worship. The example of some Italic deities (Feronia, Angizia, Mefitis) may be useful to illustrate this aspect.

The transition from central deities in a religious system to almost 'ancillary' and subordinate figures to major deities that these gods undergo over the centuries, particularly following the inclusion of communities of reference within the Roman cultural and political system, cannot fail to be reflected in some way in the life of a place of worship, in its management, in its experience. This phenomenon, of course, is still an aspect of the more general theme of political and social change. The discourse must therefore be approached on several levels, keeping the focus on the sense of the ancient religious phenomenon as a social phenomenon.

This approach ends up being focused on a macro-turn, which is that linked to 'Romanisation', leaving aside the many minor upheavals that may have accompanied the life of a place of worship and the communities that gravitated around it. It will however be useful, as a reflection of method, to start from the phenomenon that is most easily observable because it can be more or less widely reconstructed on the basis of literary sources, in order to at least try to consider analogous phenomena of a more historically reduced scope, which we all too often tend to overlook when analysing the materiality of sacred complexes.