A hundred years ago, Lugi Trafelli, mathematician and physicist from Nettuno, near Rome, got his first philosophical-religious essay printed at his own expense (Pistoia, 1917) and distributed the free copies among a limited number of readers. The title was “XX Secolo dopo Cristo – Ubi Christianus? (Experimentum crucis)”.
The book deals with the incompatibility between war and Christianity and represents a vivid witness of the pacifist mindset in Italy and Europe in the first half of the Twentieth Century. One of the Trafelli’s most remarkable messages is the synthesis between the brotherhood preached by Jesus Christ, the Greek-roman Stoicism’s observance of civil laws and the balance between man and nature envisioned by the Epicurean poet Lucretius Caro. The harmonious adoption of these pillars of the “liberty of human spirit” would likely help us in tackling the most pressing humanitarian and environmental challenges of the 21st Century. The publication of this book (edited by the Trafelli’s last descendants, Carla and Franca Podo) aims at creating a bridge between the world and the era described by the author and the present generations.
