Roberto de Mattei (born february 21, 1948, in Rome) is an Italian Roman Catholic historian and author.
Contents |
Former student and assistant to the philosopher of politics Augusto del Noce and to the historian Armando Saitta at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Sapienza University of Rome, he has extensively studied European history of the 16th and 20th Century with particular focus on the history of religious and political ideas. Among other academic posts, he was Professor of Modern History at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Cassino and is currently Professor of Modern History and History of Christianity at the European University in Rome, where he is also Coordinator of the Degree Course in Historical Sciences.
He is vice-President of the National Research Council of Italy (since 2004). As a vice-President he has been higly criticized for his anti-scientific ideas, in particular for having organized and funded a meeting supporting antievolutionism. This fact led part of the italian scientific community to a request for his resignation.[1][2] The controversy upsurged again after some statements by de Mattei, e.g. that the tsunami in 2011 in Japan was a divine punishment. Furthermore he claimed gay people to be responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire.
He is member of the Board of Directors of the “Italian Historical Institute for the Modern and Contemporary Age” and of the "Italian Geographic Society". He is President of the Lepanto Foundation (Rome - Washington) and he is editor-in-chief of the monthly review “Radici Cristiane”, of the three-monthly historical review “Nova Historica” as well as of the weekly “Corrispondenza Romana”. From February 2002 to May 2006 he held the post of Adviser for International Affairs to the Italian Government. He furthermore cooperates with the Pontifical Council for Historical Sciences and has been awarded from the Holy See the Order of Knighthood of St. Gregory the Great, as acknowledgement to this service to the Church. Among his most recent publications, there is the history of the Vatican Council II (Il Concilio Vaticano II. Una storia mai scritta, Lindau, Turin 2010) wherein, without touching onto the theological debate on the hermeneutics of the Council, suggests an historical view on the event which is antithetical to that proposed by the School of Bologna.