Bartolomeo e Giuseppe Lagumina e gli studi storici e orientali in Sicilia fra Otto e Novecento

Abstract

Editore: UniorPress Collana: Matteo Ripa Pagine: 364 Lingua: Italiano NBN: http://nbn.depositolegale.it/urn:nbn:it:unina-26414 Abstract: Sicilian Orientalism, like the Spanish one, constitutes a significant exception to the paradigms proposed by Edward Said, which have been primarily based on the Franco-British experience of the nineteenth century, an experience strongly characterized by the fascination, or repulsion, for the otherness and the exotic. The interest aroused by Oriental studies in Sicily as early as the sixteenth century unequivocally demonstrates the existence in Europe of a different, concrete experience, which construes the Arab-Islamic and Jewish presence as an integral, and sometimes problematic, component of national history. This book focuses on the cultural climate in Nineteenth and Twentieth century Palermo, in the long wave of the interest in the Arab and Oriental world created by the work of Michele Amari (1806-1889). The discussion is centered on the life and work of Bartolomeo Lagumina (1850-1931), an emblematic character, whose scientific production unfolds in a period of the Italian Orientalism dominated by the figures of Ignazio Guidi (1844-1935) and Carlo Alfonso Nallino (1872-1938), scholars with a strong scientific personality, and toward whom Lagumina had a relationship wavering between respect and lack of recognition. Bartolomeo Lagumina, who was inspector of the Museo Nazionale of Palermo, professor of Hebrew and then of Arabic, first at the Palermo Seminary and then at the University of Palermo, and also canon of the Cathedral of Palermo and finally Bishop of Agrigento, has been a trait d’union between different, distant and often opposite cultural environments.He was scientifically active in several areas, from Arabic-Sicilian epigraphy and numismatics to the study of important Arabic and Hebrew texts (abbot Vella’s Codex Martinianus, the Cambridge Chronicle, the Book of the Palm by Abū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī, the letters of r. ‘Ovadya of Bertinoro), to the reorganisation of the main oriental collections of Palermo (the numismatic collection of the Biblioteca Comunale and the catalog of the oriental codices of the Biblioteca Nazionale of Palermo). Together with his brother Giuseppe (1855-1931), Bartolomeo Lagumina created the Codice diplomatico dei Giudei di Sicilia, a long-indispensable work that collects over a thousand documents about the history of the Jewish communities in Sicily, from Saint Gregory the Great to the expulsion of 1492-93. His cultural activity directly involved not only the city of Palermo but also Agrigento, where Bartolomeo as bishop oversaw the restoration of the Cathedral and the reorganization of the diocesan collections. In addition to outlining the climate of an era, this book will make a balanced assessment of the scientific activity of Bartolomeo and Giuseppe Lagumina, updating and discussing the results of their work.