The figure of Pontius Pilate is at the intersection between memory and history. On the one hand, the Gospels, great laboratories of Christian religious memory, which inaugurate a new model of literary communication that combines written composition and oral tradition. It is about the death of Jesus, the axis of his narrative strategy, as reported by Pilate, especially the Gospel of John. On the other hand, two first century intellectuals, Flavius ​​Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, who wrote about Pilate in the context of the events that occurred in Roman Judea during the principalities of Tiberius and Caligula.
From these sources, Aldo Schiavone draws up the portrait of the prefect of Judea, painstakingly reconstructing the events that led to the death of Jesus. Of the historical figures linked to this culminating event in Christian narration, the point of contact between evangelical remembrance and imperial history, it was Pilate who played the decisive role. The judgment on his behavior, as well as on the weight that the contingencies of the moment exerted on him, has provoked endless disputes.
To whom was the responsibility for the cross attributed? Was it the Jews - the most uncompromising "deicidal" people of Christianity - or the Romans who wanted Jesus' death? And consequently what was Pilate's role really? That of a despot? An accomplice? An inept?

Reviews and criticisms:

- "In a recent essay, the historian and jurist Aldo Schiavone investigates the history / memory dichotomy in the case of the original episode of Christian identity, the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ." (La Razón, May 31, 2020)

- "The historian Aldo Schiavone reviews the figure of the prefect who tried Jesus to explain his ambiguity and banish myths: it is unlikely that he washed his hands." (Interview in El País, April 9, 2020)

- «Aldo Schiavone is an academic, romanist, essayist, with a long and complex academic career. His Pontius Pilate of him, written with elegance, fully introduces us not only to the description of the character but also to the substance of the events that made him go down in history. (ABC Cultural, April 10, 2020)

- "This essay by the Italian scholar Aldo Schiavone is one of the most important works on Pilate that has been published in recent years." (The country)