Il 4 dicembre 1975 & egrave; morta Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). & Egrave; la protagonista del mio romanzo biografico Quel che sembriamo (Guanda, 2023). Prende le mosse dall'estate 1975. Hannah Arendt trascorre un'ultima vacanza in Ticino. Questo & egrave; il punto di partenza del mio romanzo che riunisce diversi aspetti di una personality incredibilmente variegata: quelli pi & ugrave; conosciuti, noti, famosi e pubblicamente esposti, e quelli pi & ugrave; nascosti che Hannah ha tenuto per s & eacute; fino alla fine della sua vita. All'autrice de La banality del male si accompagna la poetessa ancora poco conosciuta e si incontrano anche altri aspetti della sua opera che non trovano pi & ugrave; spazio nell'immagine odierna. Le immagini possono sovrapporsi alla realty e nasconderla, secondo il monito incisivo di Hannah Arendt. In occasione del 50 degrees anniversario della sua morte vorrei ricordarla durante la sua ultima vacanza in un piccolo villaggio italofono.
This article analyses dance as a language of knowledge and power in late antique and medieval Christianity, focusing on women's bodies as mediators between grace and disrepute. From the earliest biblical interpretations, dance emerged as both an inspired act and a sign of otherness and impurity. The study examines this duality through emblematic figures such as Salome, Theodora, Miriam and the Virgin Mary, and sources including the Church Fathers, Justinian's legislation, and Dante's Paradiso. In this context, dance takes shape as a communal form of knowledge, a symbol of cosmic harmony, and an instrument of redemption. While the male gaze often reduced the dancer to a guilty or demonic body, Christian tradition reinterpreted the Platonic choreia with spiritual and pedagogical overtones. By reinstating the role of women's dance as a vehicle of wisdom, it was thereby transformed from a symbol of exclusion into a paradigm of order, grace, and access to the divine.
Of Jewish origin on her mother's side, she is a member of the board of directors of the Levh Chadash Reform Synagogue in Milan, married to Massimo Vigan & ograve; and mother of Aurora. She holds a PhD in Ecumenical Theology and a specialisation in Rabbinic Hermeneutics. She is a permanent lecturer in Judaism and Jewish Hermeneutics at the ISSR in Milan, affiliated with the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, where she coordinates interfaith activities, including a summer course in Jerusalem in collaboration with the Ratisbonne Institute and other local institutions. She is a lecturer in Biblical and Jewish Culture at the Ulpan in Milan (School of Hebrew Language, History and Thought) and a guest lecturer at various Italian universities, including the University of Milan-Bicocca, the Gregorian University and the Auxilium University in Rome. She was also responsible for the Jewish section of the master's degree course on the three monotheistic religions at the Catholic University of Milan, which is no longer active. She edits the "Studi Giudaici" series for the Effat & agrave; publishing house in Cantalupa (Turin), edited the Judaica column for the Franciscan Custody's magazine << Terrasanta >>, and directed the Jewish Thought section for the revision of the Philosophical Encyclopaedia published by Bompiani, and collaborates with the Accademia Ambrosiana in Milan. She is active in the dialogue between Jews and Christian churches at both national and international level and is the author of numerous essays and articles of both a scientific and popular nature.
This essay examines the role of ecclesiastical discipline within the Dutch Reformed Church of the seventeenth century as a tool of religious, moral, and social control, highlighting the gender and class inequalities embedded in its application. Through the analysis of the consistory records of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, it explores cases of censorship that reveal a harsher attitude toward women, particularly in matters of sexual misconduct or religious nonconformity. The study shows how the consistory's authority extended beyond the spiritual sphere, shaping social relationships and deeply affecting the reputation and honor of community members. In this perspective, ecclesiastical discipline emerges as a pervasive form of power-both religious and sociopolitical-through which acceptable behavior was defined and patriarchal order reinforced within Dutch Reformed society.
The essay explores forms of "female conviviality" between representation and demonization, tracing the semantic and social trajectory of gossip from its Old English godsibb -a baptismal bond of spiritual kinship- to its modern reduction as malicious chatter. By reconstructing practices and rituals (gossips' feasts, lying-in, churching), it shows how female networks once provided para-kin solidarity with community recognition and agency, later reframed through disciplinary stigma. Within this frame lies the Querelle des femmes: from the Roman de la Rose to Christine de Pizan's rejoinders, the debate turns the "woman question" into a public, political struggle over reputation. Martin Le Franc's Le Champion des Dames (1441-1442) counters misogynistic rhetoric through a probative chain of exempla, yet also hosts early depictions of witchcraft, revealing the poem's ambivalence between defense and suspicion. The Evangiles des Quenouilles -circulated in multiple fifteenth-century versions- braid orality and writing, wavering between ethnographic document and misogynistic satire. Finally, following Robin Briggs, the essay examines early modern village women's networks: reciprocity, oral memory, and gossip build and transmit reputations that, when gathered by male institutions, fuel witchcraft accusations, with long-term effects and inherited stigma. Overall, the essay links linguistic change, literary controversy, and social practice to explain how women's convivial spaces were reimagined as sites of disorder and, ultimately, demonized.
