Life gives you surprises, as the Rubén Blades song says, but few like the one intellectual Giovan Battista Clemente Nelli received in the spring of 1739.
There is more than one version of what happened but only details vary so let’s stick to that of the doctor Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, great naturalist and trusted scientist of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who appeared in his “News of the extensions of the physical sciences that occurred in Tuscany throughout of the year LX of the XVII century”, published in 1703.
It turns out that “the famous doctor Gio. Lami, out of habit, went to dinner at his villa, at the Osteria del Ponte delle Mosse, with several friends”.
One of those friends was Nelli “later senator and gentleman” and Lami asked him to please bring mortadella from Cioci’s store, since it was the best of all.
So he did: he bought “two liräte of mortadella and put the wrapper in the hat”.
“Just arrived at the tavern, they asked for a plate to place the mortadella and on that occasion the senator sig. (Nelli) realized that the sheet of paper used by Cioci to wrap the mortadella was a letter from Galileo“.
Let’s stop there, at the moment when, on the sausage wrapping paper, Nelli recognized the handwriting of Galileo Galilei, one of the greatest eminences in history.
The controversial hero who, among other things, had rectified and, polishing his own lenses, transformed the spyglasses into telescopes that allowed him to discover new and unimaginable facts.
What he observed cast doubt on the vision of the cosmos of Aristotle, who placed the Earth at the center of the Universe, accepted as the only truth by the intellectual orthodoxies of the time.
Despite his commitment to scientific truth, his defense of the Copernican planetary system (centered on the Sun) led him to a serious conflict with the Church.
A trial for heresy and the threat of torture forced him to recant publicly and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
However, not even the powerful Inquisition could prevent his brilliant work, with its revelations and conclusions, from revolutionizing knowledge.
And survive.
Today, 380 years after his death, experts can still consult the Renaissance scholar by reviewing the ideas he wrote in his own handwriting in notebooks, documents and letters.
But, as Nelli realized that Florentine spring day, an important part of that legacy was in danger of being lost, and not because of any auto-da-fe of any inquisition but because of sheer laziness.
As a step?
Vincenzo Viviani was the last disciple of Galileo and took care of him at the end of his life.
He met him when he was 13 years old and they were neither 20 when his teacher died.
He dedicated himself to preserving and defending his image and work.
“Signor Viviani collected, both from Galileo’s heirs and from others, as many of his master’s works as he could find”, says Giambatista Venturi in “Memorie e lettere inedite fina o disperse di Galileo Galilei” (1739-1750).
“But to save them from the inquisition of intolerant people, since he himself was under suspicion of being an irreligious person, he kept them hidden at home in a wheat pit.”
Among those treasures was “a Galileo manuscript consisting of several small booklets titled on the cover ‘De Motu Antiquiora‘, which is recognizable as one of his first our youth studies”, wrote Viviani in 1597.
In it, the mathematician and scientist pointed out, “it is seen that from that moment on he could not force his free intellect to philosophize conventional schools“.
But when Viviani died in 1703, the fate of the “small notebooks” became uncertain.
The house in which they were hidden “was inherited by Abbot Jacopo Panzanini, Viviani’s nephew, and on his death in 1737, the pit was opened at intervals and many packages of the aforementioned writings were moved or sold to merchants for wrapping” Venturi recounts.
And adds: “quidquid charta amicitur ineptis“, which means: “any chart is a friend of idiots”.
What happened?
Let’s go back to that table surrounded by friends where Nelli had just realized that the bologna she had bought was wrapped in a letter written by Galileo.
Aware of the importance of the find, Targioni Tozzetti says that “he removed the fat from the blade with a napkin as best he could, then folded it and put it in his pocket”.
He did not say anything to anyone and, as soon as he could, “he ran to Cioci’s store, from whom he heard that at intervals an unknown servant was selling him a package of that type of writing”.
He bought all the writings he had in his possession from the shopkeeper and made him promise that he would notify him if more came into his hands and that he would ask where they came from.
“In fact, A few days later a larger package arrived, and Senator Sig. got to know that they were coming out of the aforementioned wheat well, so in 1739 with a few scudi managed to get his hands on all the rest of the precious treasure“.
The vendors were Viviani’s great-nephews, who had inherited their house after Panzaninni’s death and who, although in that same year Galileo had finally come to consider himself respectable enough to receive an honorable tomb in a church Florentine, did not share their great-uncle’s respect for the great scientist. bedclothes- and they looked for a way to make money with the, for them, useless papers.
No one knows how much was lost, but when Nelli showed up, they still had a large container overflowing with documents that They sold happily.
According to Targioni Tozzetti, “Senator Nelli, once the manuscripts were purchased, reordered them and h He has made the greatest studies of them and, as he was once kind enough to tell me, has written a long and reasoned life of Galileo, and of his most distinguished disciples, to be printed in conjunction with many of his posthumous works and the cards; but who knows when his many political activities will allow him to do so”.
He did not achieve everything he wanted but he did publish in 1793 “Life and literary trade of Galileo”, printed in Florence but falsely indicating that it had been in Lausanne, for fear to ecclesiastical censorship.
The work reconstructs the biographical facts of the great Florentine scientist from his youth through the rigorous analysis of a considerable number of letters, many of which are related to the publication of the Sidereus nuncius and the inquisitorial process.
After his death, that same year, Venturi continued his work and, finally, the treasure that Nelli found for buying mortadella ended up in the Florentine Archives.
There they were used by the greatest of all Galileo scholars, Antonio Favaro, who among 1750-1909 produced the monumental “Edizione Nazionale” of Galileo’s works: 20 volumes printed in 21 large tomes that are an indispensable reference for serious Galilean scholars.
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