Pagan Saints in Middle-earth

Is Tolkien’s work Christian or pagan? This question has intrigued readers and scholars ever since The Lord of the Rings has been published. Even today this important problem has not been given the full critical attention it deserves, and the present volume is an attempt to provide an answer.

The volume contains a comprehensive bibliography on the subject, detailed indices, a foreword by Verlyn Flieger, and an afterword by Tom Shippey.

Claudio Antonio Testi graduated in Philosophy at the University of Bologna and received a Ph.D. summa cum laude in Philosophy at the Pontificia Università Lateranense. He is the President of the Philosophical Institute of Thomistic Studies, Vice President of AIST (Italian Association of Tolkien Studies), and at the Dominican Philosophical Study of Bologna he holds courses on Tolkien and on Formal Logic. As a scholar he has written 43 papers (published, among others, in Tolkien Studies and Hither Shore), two books, and edited 15 volumes, two of them in collaboration with Roberto Arduini for Walking Tree Publishers.

Critical voices on the book

“[Testi] has brought his readers the best of both schools. He has shown how they work, and best of all, shown how they can work together.”

(Verlyn Flieger)

“Both admirers and critics, however, have now been helped to a better and truer understanding of Tolkien’s work by this admirable exposition, the deepest appreciation yet written of Tolkien’s Catholicity, and one he himself would certainly have welcomed and approved.”

(Tom Shippey)