ABSTRACT

In this contribution, starting from two passages taken from the writings of Leon Battista Alberti (Profugiorum ab aerumna libri, De re aedifi¬ca¬to¬ria), some significant suggestions for the history of Christian worship are revealed. In the fifteenth century, ritual practice in the Western Churches was marked by many critical issues, some of which were lucidly highlighted with bitterness by Alberti himself. However, the liturgy of the Church continued to offer itself as a context that allowed for intense ritual partici-pation. Even humanists of Alberti’s level – in this solidarity with the great majority of lay faithful who were often illiterate – participated in worship not primarily through a noetic, cognitive way, through understanding the meaning of words and gestures, but through an aesthetic way, through the verbal, paraverbal and metaverbal codes of Christian liturgy.