The event was strongly supported by the Dante Alighieri Societies of Rome and Sydney, and the latter’s president, Concetta Cirigliano Perna. Barbero’s visit was made possible thanks to a collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute and the NIAWA (National Italian Australian Women’s Association).

The conference, structured as a dialogue between Barbero, Cirigliano Perna and the Italian Cultural Institute of Sydney Director Paolo Barlera, took place in front of a crowd of over 300 people.

A historian, writer, academic and one of Italy’s most beloved public intellectuals, Barbero is known for turning any lecture into an adventure. During the event, he once again proved that history, when taught by someone who understands and loves it, can be fascinating.

After earning a degree in Literature from Turin and a PhD from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, he began his academic career as a researcher at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. In 1998, he joined the University of Eastern Piedmont (Amedeo Avogadro), where he taught medieval history until his retirement in 2024.

Today, he continues to travel, write, record lectures and grow the public’s love for history. He’s also a familiar face on television, an author of historical novels and enjoys a large following on YouTube.

With sharp wit and a memory that seemed to draw from the secret library of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Barbero dismantled one common misconception after another.

“The Middle Ages never existed,” he stated plainly, claiming it was a “narrative created retrospectively”, often to glorify the Renaissance.

Even chastity belts and the ius primae noctis were declared myths.

“If they had really existed, we’d find them everywhere in records. But instead, nothing. Not even in documents from those protesting against abuses,” he revealed.

Audience members were jotting notes, laughing at every punchline and nodding along, captivated by his delivery.

In response to a question from Perna, Barbero explained how, despite being excluded from certain formal rights, women were central to the management of life’s most delicate moments like birth, education and death.

He also emphasised how medieval peasants knew how to organise, build community and make their voices heard.

“And all of this without a mobile phone,” he quipped.

The joke drew laughter, but also underscored the often-underrated capacity for collective action during that era.

According to Barbero, the Renaissance was the result of a slow, layered process.

“The printing press, Brunelleschi’s dome, the discovery of America ... These weren’t flashes in the dark, but the natural evolution of a world already in transition,” he explained.

To glorify the new, the old had to be obscured; thus was born the myth of a grim Middle Ages.

In the second part of the talk, Barbero used the past to talk about the present, and vice versa. He explained how every era builds myths about itself. The concept of modernity, often seen as a superior civilization, can mask new forms of inequality and historical amnesia.

“At certain moments, a thousand years ago, we may have had a clearer idea of who we were and how the world worked.”

It was, in short, a call to not consider ourselves evolved simply because we live in the present.

Barbero also alluded to the idea - one he’s expressed before - that intellectual freedom may have been even greater in the Middle Ages.

According to him, critical thinking had more room to breathe, precisely because there was no centralised, pervasive power as exists today.

Starting from Foucault’s notion that “every society has its own regime of truth”, he highlighted how the transition to modernity was marked by shifts in how historical knowledge is constructed and legitimised.

When asked about today’s world of artificial intelligence, social media and algorithmic filters, he was asked whether we are living through a new revolution in knowledge.

The question stemmed directly from the conference’s themes of history as a cultural construct, modernity as a narrative and the growing fragility of shared truth.

“Today, everything is accessible, but also more fragile,” he said, “There’s always the threat of a single baseless opinion passing a hoax off as truth.

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. And those who do are doomed to watch others repeat it.”

He added that while the method of historical inquiry remains based on sources, interpretation and rigor, the context in which knowledge circulates has radically changed, making it more vulnerable to manipulation and instability.

Asked about our own time, Barbero acknowledged the many advances such as civil rights, pluralism and personal freedom, but also issued a warning:

“We live in a society where there’s a lot of talk, but little knowledge. Ideology dominates. Logic is mocked. It feels less like the classical Middle Ages and more like the Early Middle Ages - the time of barbarian invasions.”

The conference was an invitation to view history (and ourselves) with clearer eyes. It served as an antidote to the superficiality with which we too often oversimplify both past and present.

Those who attended left with a different perspective, and perhaps fewer certainties.