Order and Disorder in Henri Pirenne’s Europe

Belgian historian Henri Pirenne builds his ‘narrative’ of Europe in the troubled context of the Great War, so that his idea of Europe is affected by the German responsibility for the occupation of Belgium and the ensuing moral, economic and political crisis. His thought on Europe are entrusted to lectures offered to a group of Russian prisoners. In the, he tries to raise awareness about Europe, its weaknesses and problems, but also its modernity (e.g. the state, religious pluralism, the dawn of secularism, the Renaissance). A cognitive premise but also an acute reflection on the mistakes that should not be repeated and on prejudice that still pervade the political unification of the European states. The paper intends to analyze the evolution of the states of the Old Continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth century and the elements of ‘order and disorder’ in them analyzed in a European perspective.