Maria Valtorta’s pages describe legionaries, administrators, customs, habits, religious rites, philosophy and literature, daily life, economics, ships, ports, roads, villas, monuments, and coins. But more than in the descriptions, these elements emerge in the characters’ dialogue. Bringing Palestine during the time of Jesus to life, as if it were before our eyes, as he traveled daily from town to town, Maria Valtorta reports historical, geographical, and archaeological details known only to a handful of specialists, or unknown, or discovered only after the work’s publication. For someone who works as a university researcher in Roman history, the work immediately strikes as an unexpected window onto the ancient world, accurately describing the era’s context and indeed presenting elements that no historical research could reconstruct.
Fernando La Greca is a researcher in Roman History at the Department of Humanities at the University of Salerno. He is the author of numerous publications.
