In the Laboratory of Modernity. Switzerland in the Age of Reformation: Theology, Ontology and Psychology between Germany and Italy

ABSTRACT

After the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by Luther (1517-2017), this year the Protestant world celebrates 500 years since the introduction of the Reformation in Switzerland by Huldrych Zwingli (1519). This conference aims to illustrate some of the most important outcomes due to the spreading of the Reformation in the main Swiss towns (Basel, Geneva, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Zurich), especially regarding theology, ontology and psychology. Through the formula of the “Close reading”, the conference will explore how Switzerland played the role of a cultural “bridge” between Italy and Germany, not only providing shelter to many intellectuals, theologians and heretics in the context of a general peregrinatio europaea, but also producing an effective translatio studiorum regarding ideas, texts and problems. All these phenomena will lead to new conceptions of God and mankind, and also to the “birth” and the institutionalisation of new disciplines such as ontology and psychology.