Gianfranco Ribaldone
One wrongly thinks that the indication of archival sources has uniquely the value to justify the truthfulness of a historical reconstruction.
Really (and this has not to be considered a paradox) it is not that the sources work for historical search, but the exact contrary: the most prestigious objective that a rigorous and rational archival investigation can achieve is the value increase of the archival source on which the very investigation has been “founded”. Sharing the feeling of the presence of a source means also to transmit the critical and dilemmatic sense of historical reconstruction and, I dare say, the emotion of research.
The anthropological value of such an operation is potentially immense. An experimentum led in the year 2002 can testify it; it was carried out within a bachelor thesis in social anthropology. On such an occasion a book of mine, entitled Alasina was given to the teacher of an elementary school, it is the reconstruction of the daily life of a village of Montferrat (Northwest Italy) at the beginning of the XVI century, established on the notarial sources found in the State Archives of Alessandria. The teacher was asked to choose two episodes, to read them to her pupils (of the fifth year) and to try to transmit them the notion of “archival source”. I was witness of the course of the experimentum and I wrote about it in a newspaper article (Gianfranco Ribaldone, History, Greta, and the astonishment, in “Al païs d’Lü”, no. 3, year 2002, p. 4) that I am glad to re-propose as follows:
History, Greta, and the astonishment. Biella, 30th January, 2002. In the fifth class of the elementary school of the Institute Lamarmora, Sabrina Coda Cap, graduating in social anthropology, checks the progress of an experiment. The teacher Natalina Galleran reads two episodes of the book “Alasina” to her fifteen pupils: her voice slowly syllabizes every word, every word falls into the mind of the children as into an empty ampoule and assumes a shape. At the end of the reading, a child, with unrestrainable instinct, cries: “How nice!”. Life has recognized life... The teacher proposes to her pupils to write a composition or draw a picture with the following title: “Immersed in a far age, while reading the book Alasina a sentence reaches me: ‘In the pale sun the monatto (the remover of corpses during plague) walks around the village, but she says new words’. And so I reflect and think that...”. As in a grain field struck by the wind, the ears bend now on one side and then on the other, alternatively supporting one another, in this class of an elementary school as well, the still pure minds need to be reassured reciprocally: the children now talk to each other, then they hang from the teacher’s lips, and like wind blows, the words of one become the words of all. But little by little history enters their horizon, everyone begins to mirror himself in it, they use the characters to depict their face. The pupils begin to write. Alasina, a promised spouse, is still a child in the tender imagination of Carlotta: “Alasina is a child who has two brothers and a sister, unfortunately their parents have died. Her father, dead of plague, left some money (florins) in inheritance to Alasina. The child remained astonished of all that money and explained that much less would have been enough for her necessities. So she decided to give the part in excess to her brothers”. Chiara “I never heard a more meaningful history than this one”. Why does Alasina’s behaviour astonish the children? Greta, in a drawing with joyful tints, gives a colour to her astonishment: Alasina cries “No!”, renouncing to part of her dowry; the notary smiles and strikes the bench with his small hammer; Alasina’s promised spouse, generous like her, pretastes the joy that he will give to two poor girls, leaving them a part of his goods. However the fifteen pupils of Biella, though admiring Alasina, do not manage to identify themselves in her: renouncing to such a lot of money... Julia cuts short: “I think that Alasina is a heroin who does not care of money”. Therefore she argues: “I think that Alasina could have used that money to carry out a ‘research’ to recover people from the plague. But she could have also kept it, because it was a gift from her father”. Elisa uses three exclamation marks to say: “I am not sure that in such a moment as that in which she was and in which her village was, i.e. submitted to the plague, I would have behaved in the same way!!!”. Riccardo with lively eloquence: “I believe that anyone, except her, would have said “thanks” and would have kept all the money without bothering of her brothers or sisters”. For wise Thomas the matter lies in the cautious and prudent management of her family’s budget: “This story makes me reflect on how high was the risk to die in those times and how important it was to have some savings for being able to pay the cures and the care of somebody”. The vicissitudes emerging from a deed of the XV or XVI century is wrapped in silence: they say something, but they keep a lot in suspence. The mystery, terrible and gentle like the sun, attracts with feracious lure. So Andrea runs through Alasina’s story in his own way, adding facts that are not included in it: “But another thing that made me reflect is that she secretly went to feed the ill people hit by the plague, one day she was discovered, arrested and imprisoned”. Let’s leave Andrea walking in the magical circle of Alasina’s story, that is also “our story” as Ludovico writes, that was rediscovered thanks to “some documents”, as his schoolfriends Chiara, Gabriele, Alberto, Lodovico, and Andrea point out. Documents to search, see, touch, and love: on the 8th of March 2002 the fifteen pupils, accompanied by the school director, their teacher, and by Sabrina Coda Cap, explored the State Archives of Biella. “Now I understand why...” writes Francesco. It is like waking up one morning and discovering a new language. |