PETTAZZONI, RAFFAELE (1883–1959), an Italian historian of religions, was "one of the very few historians of religion who took seriously the dimensions of his discipline: as a matter of fact, he attempted to master the entire field of allgemeine Religionswissenschaft" (Eliade, 1963, pp. 104–105). He founded and promoted historical religious studies in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century and presided over the International Association for the History of Religions from 1950 to his death.

Life

Pettazzoni was born in San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna) on February 3, 1883. He attended high school and university in Bologna, and during those years, under the influence of a positivist and Carduccian cultural background, he lost his Catholic faith. But he kept his love for religion and felt a vocation for the history of religions, a discipline absent in Italian universities at that time and in which he trained by himself, subordinating his...