Passato, presente e futuro della storia delle religioni

Does it still make sense to speak of “history of religions” in 2025? A little over a century after the establishment of the first chair at the Royal University of Rome, by Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883-1959), and exactly one hundred years after the foundation of “Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni”, the discipline and the journal are undergoing through a deep crisis, between revisionist methodological demands and innovative impulses, perhaps because Pettazzoni’s scientific orientation has not been sufficiently understood and his school has consciously gone in other directions. The contribution therefore attempts, on the one hand, to make an appraisal of a difficult legacy, summarily examining the stages of this crisis; and, on the other, to try to reimagine the discipline beyond its internal frictions between resistance, continuity and refoundation.