Abstract
Under the influence of the Marxist materialist historicism, numerous authors have deemed Modernity as the historically necessary and unavoidable result of the development of economies and trade relations that has occurred in the Western World since the late Gothic Ages and the Rinascimento. However, such an explanation can be thought of as erroneous when one acknowledges the fact that previous economic and commercial progress had been achieved in other civilizations without transforming them into modern societies. In all awareness of this contradiction, other authors have sketched an alternative genealogy of Modernity. They generally hold that the true specificity of 16th and 17th Century Europe is the unique duration and magnitude of a peculiar form of conflict: the Religious Wars or Civil Ideological Wars. This enduring and arduous situation of stasis divided families, opposed neighbors and scotched friendships, thus threatening the mere concept of polity. Such a clash brings them to contemplate the birth of the modern political project that was later epitomized by Liberalism. It was developed as the direct consequence of a collective yearning for putting an end to this new form of historical crisis.
