Christian Travelers Guide to Italy

9780310225737

0310225736

This series of books is an unintended consequence of serious academic research financed by both the University of Calgary and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Both institutions need to be thanked for the support they gave to the original academic research that allowed some of the authors to visit many of the places discussed in these books. The Christian Travelers Guide to Italy Copyright © 2001 by David Bershad and Carolina Mangone Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bershad, David. The Christian travelers guide to Italy / Irving Hexham, general editor; David Bershad and Carolina Magone. p. cm. ISBN: 0-310-22573-6 1. Italy-Guidebooks. 2. Christians-Italy-Guidebooks. I. Magone, Carolina. II. Hexham, Irving. III. title DG416.B369 2001 914.504'93-dc21 00-046289 CIP All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Interior design by Todd Sprague Printed in the United States of America 01 02 03 04 05 /. DC/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Preface Remember how the LORD your God led you. Deuteronomy 8:2 The task of history . . . is to establish the truth of this world. Karl Marx (1955:42) Memories of paintings, sculptures, museums, churches last a lifetime. Edith Schaeffer-The Tapestry Our series of books is designed to awaken an awareness of Europe's Christian heritage among evangelical Christians, although we hope all Christians and others who are simply interested in Christianity will also find them helpful. Anyone visiting a large bookstore will quickly discover that it is possible to buy travel guides with titles like Pagan Europe, Occult France, Magical Britain, and The Traveler's Guide to Jewish Germany, alongside more traditional travel guides which attempt to take in everything worth seeing. Yet even books like the Frommer's, Fodor's, and Rough guides, although they mention Christian places and events, tend to underplay the Christian contribution to Western Civilization through neglect or a negative tone. Therefore, our guides have been written to correct what we see as a major oversight in existing works. Our series is concerned with people and events of historical significance through their association with particular places. Thus we attempt to locate the development of ideas which have changed the world through their relationship with people and places. Consequently, we suggest visits to particular places, because by visiting them you can gain a better understanding of the times when important events took place. The central theme of these books is the contribution of Christianity to Europe and the world. But not everyone discussed in these books was Christian. Indeed, many of the people we mention were strongly anti-Christian. Such people are included because it is impossible to understand our own times without appreciating the destructive forces that have attempted to replace Christianity by secularism and neopagan religions. History and Memory Christianity is rooted in history. The New Testament begins with a genealogical table that most modern readers find almost incomprehensible (Matthew 1:1- 17). The purpose of this genealogy is to locate the birth of Jesus in space and time according to the standards of Jewish history. The appeal to "the first eyewitnesses," in the prologue to the gospel of Luke, is also clearly intended to engage the skepticism of Greco-Roma