Tra storia della chiesa e storia delle idee. Le ricerche di Hubert Jedin su Girolamo Seripando

The biography of the Neapolitan Augustinian friar Girolamo Seripando constitutes the first monumental scholarly work of the Silesian historian Hubert Jedin. It outlines a conception of the history and of the work of the historian that seems to remain constant over the following decades. Despite the developments in his conception of church history, Jedin seems to remain faithful to a historiographical model that tends to bring the personalities of the past to life in their ideas and free individual choices and to shun any form of historical determinism. The task of the historian is, according to Jedin, to retrace the drama of human existence and to make it a «lived experience» (Erlebnis). In highlighting the close relationship between history and life, Jedin appears very close to the view of history of Benedetto Croce, who encouraged the young Jedin during his stay in Naples and appreciated the fruit of his research.