Segni dei tempi. Figure profetiche e cifre apocalittiche. Scritti scelti per il settantesimo compleanno. A cura di Marco Rainini. Con una bibliografia dell'autore a cura di Federico Ferrari

In the first part, the volume presents seven essays that aim to elucidate transformations and uses, between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, of the main prophetic rhetorics, concerning Antichrist, angelic pope and messianic ruler of the end times. Contrary to what has often been believed, prophecies did not circulate only within fringe circles of fanatics, but innervated polemical conflicts between popes and emperors, fed ambitions of rising cardinals, and magnetized intellectuals such as Arnaldo di Villanova and Dante. Fundamental elements of dynastic legitimacy and politico-ecclesiastical propaganda, they help shape public language, turning nostalgia into hope, desires into promises, mythical tales into historical actuality. The second part includes five essays concerning twentieth-century European scholars who, confronting in depth the questions posed by Modernism, renewed biblical studies and intellectual history research in the medieval West: the French Dominicans from Marie-Joseph Lagrange to Marie-Dominique Chenu, Beryl Smalley, Herbert Grundmann, Arsenio Frugoni, Tullio Gregory.