Ritual and Space in the Mirror of Texts: the Case of Late Medieval and Humanist Rome

In Rome, both ritual and space were understood as products of the history of the city. This is not a phenomenon restricted to Rome, but in this city, history is charged with meanings that elsewhere would be unimaginable. For late medieval Romans, the city was not only the casket enclosing an exemplary story, but was also the origin of European history. Whereas Greek history inevitably remained nebulous, known only through fragments reflected in the mirror of Latin sources, Roman history could be followed in all its phases, from its very roots. It could also be related to the other great history of humanity then known, as narrated in the Old Testament. The ties between the two stories were to be as complex and as reiterated as the decorations of a romanesque capital, but what has so far not been underlined is that the history of ancient Rome could also be read as a sacred history, from the moment when Aeneas arrived in the place that would become Rome and from the foundations of the city. This profane sacrality was, from its earliest moments, a question of ritual and space