Il Rinascimento e la spiritualità cristiana

Un’interessante lezione della scuola di Giovanni Colombo

Abstract

In 1938, G. Colombo already professor of literature, is called to the Chair of Spiritual Theology. He is favored by a certain continuity in methodology between the study of literature and spirituality – read as an analysis of the human soul’s life called by the Spirit of Christ and in which the Spirit operates – namely the study of the Christian life. The lessons of Colombo, in fact, always start from the biography and the historical context: this indicates an approach of the historical dimension to a more correct Spiritual Theology. He therefore mitigates the even shared dominant conception of the spiritual life as a pure translation of the dogma. The field chosen is
the one of Renais- sance Humanism, to the sources of modernity, characterized by the need for concreteness, whose different interpretations and experiences originate many spiritual currents. The A. sympathizes with the Christian or Devout Humanism, provided «Catholic interpreted», and studies the methoding of prayer, striving to preserve the purity of the life of the spirit. Hence the rise of spiritual Schools: he presents and analyzes them in detail.