Saints and Sinners

History has demonstrated that saints would not have existed without sinners and vice versa. The course will examine the encounters and interrelationships between saints and sinners over the course of Italian history. In many cases, the Saint was also a former Sinner but rarely the other way around. The great Saint Augustine, for example, is a testament to former sinners as seen in his famous Confessions in which his vivid, at times red-light experiences as a young man are described and redeemed by a saintly life. The texts, at times, almost hint at a subtle vein of regret and faint whiffs of nostalgia for the dolce vita of Augstine's past. The same can be said of Saint Francis, who was known for conducting a dissipated, playboy-oriented lifestyle in Assisi conveniently financed by his rich father Bernardone. In other cases, history has documented epic clashes between sinners and saints-to-be. Between the dying Lorenzo il Magnifico and the future saint Savonarola, for example, in which the latter refused to absolve the former who had refused to confess his sins. Saint Bellarmine, Galileo's inquisitor, condemned the scientist for demonstrating the error of the Sacred Scripture regarding the geocentrism, demonstrating yet again a saint's victory. Another topic that will be examined by the course is the posthumous redemption of sinners such as the Giuseppe Verdi's Lady of the Camellias in La Traviata and the lovers Paolo and Francesca in Dante's Divina Commedia.