WelLibri Federico Ruozzi presents Two Hundred Letters by Lorenzo Milani
Bologna, September 14, 2023 Friday, September 18, at 17:30 in Florence, in the picturesque setting of Villa Arrivabene, Federico Ruozzi, professor of the history of Christianity, researcher at the Foundation for Religious Sciences and head of the Milan Archives, presents the collection. Two Hundred Letters of Lorenzo Milani (EDB, 2023) in dialogue with Vanessa Roghi, historian and author of Subversive Letter. From Don Milani to De Mauro – the power of words (Laterza, 2017). The meeting will be moderated by Don Andrea Bigalli, representative of Libera Toscana and board member of the magazine Testimonianze.
The collection of letters, published on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Prior Barbiana, was edited by Federico Ruozzi, José Luis Corso and Adele Corradi, the teacher who contributed to the writing of the Letter to the Professor. Add two lines to the collection, something like this: Two hundred letters, selected in the collection from over a thousand known ones and considered the most poignant in terms of style and subject matter, allow us to delve deeper into the life and thoughts of Lorenzo Milani. a current figure, praised, loved, but also criticized and subject to simplifications: “And if I, a priest, am interested in your education, it is not to give you propaganda, but because I am sure that, having expanded your horizons to what “or, beautiful, true and good, I will make you do something grateful to your God, who gave you this for this purpose.”
“The idea of offering, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Don Milani, a selection of private letters written by Milani to various correspondents (his mother Alice, his friends Pecorini, Meucci, Ichino, Pirelli Brambilla, his brothers Bensi, Mazzolari, among others) came directly to Adele Corradi.” , says Federico Ruozzi. “An idea that Corso and I strongly supported. As we know, Adele, one of the few whom the abbot accepted as a teacher in Barbiana, wrote very little about Milani, choosing a different type of testimony compared to the experience she had on Monte Giovi from 1963 to 1967, namely: to continue to educate boys and girls without giving equal shares to unequals; Therefore, the idea of trying to make a selection from more than a thousand private letters written (also jokingly playing with the name: two hundred letters for the centenary) immediately seemed important to us, also for achieving the final goal: Don Milani is now a famous and public figure. The idea of the book was not to change the minds of those who like or dislike him, but rather to make this twentieth-century protagonist better known, not just ecclesiastical, to avoid turning him into a sacred card or framing him established stereotypes (master; red priest) or ineffective slogans. And to make him known, starting with private letters, thereby showing the complexity of who he was first and foremost as a priest, the radicality of his writing, but also irony and even sweetness. As Adele wrote, knowing how much Don Milani loved irony and even jokes helps, because it is very important not to take many of his provocations literally.”
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