Il debito e la grazia. Purgazione e sacrificio nel cristianesimo tardoantico e medievale

The sacrificial model of Latin Christianity found its apex in the invention of Purgatory as the third place in the afterlife. It entered into crisis because, with the commercial revolution of the XIIth-XIVth centuries, the balance is now conceived as a property of the incessant movement determined by the dynamics of credit and financial debt: credit is no longer identified exclusively with the credit accumulated with good works (alms, prayers, pilgrimages) which compensate the debt of guilt generated by sin; credit is granted to the merchant less and less on the basis of goods already available but on the basis of insurance and planning guarantees that only time, the new measurable time of the merchant, can verify.