San Francesco. Un Santo Scomodo

Historian, writer, and university professor of Medieval History Alessandro Barbero, a familiar face to Italian television audiences, is opening the summer season of the Teatro dell’Opera al Circo Massimo with a lecture-performance based on his book dedicated to the patron saint of Italy – a key figure in Italian and European history – whose 800th anniversary of his death falls this year.

Amidst the ruins of the greatest entertainment venue of antiquity, Barbero recounts the saint’s story in his characteristic accessible style, which combines historical rigor and source analysis with clear and engaging storytelling, capable of inspiring a passion for history in the general public, whilst exploring the enormous communicative power that the “poor man of Assisi” still wields today. What emerges is a fresh, vivid and human portrait: the Francis portrayed by Barbero is less of a stock image than the one handed down by traditional iconography, which has been carefully smoothed over since its origins (from St Bonaventure to Giotto) and stripped of tensions, conflicts and doubts to construct a coherent and reassuring model.

The earliest biographies, in fact, paint a more complex picture, portraying a far more human and at times problematic figure: not a static icon, but “an extraordinary and challenging man”, driven by a radical faith and deeply involved in the political, religious and social dynamics of his time.