Gina Fasoli

Luigina (Gina) Fasoli (born June 5, 1905 in Bassano del Grappa , † May 18, 1992 in Bologna ) was an Italian medieval historian.

Fasoli enrolled at the University of Bologna at the age of 17 , where she finished her studies in 1926. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the unpublished statutes of her hometown. She learned from Luigi Simeoni at the Chair for Medieval and Modern History.

In 1950, Fasoli became a lecturer and thus the first woman in Italy to hold a chair in medieval studies. First she taught at the University of Catania , from 1957 at the Università di Bologna , where she taught until her retirement in 1981. Her focus was on the historiography , the history of the Lombards and that of the cities.

life and work

Statuti del comune di Bassano dell'anno 1259 e dell'anno 1295 '(1940)

Gina Fasoli's father, Arturo, was an engineer who graduated from Padua in 1902. Based on his study of hydro power, he was for the construction of the aqueduct of Mestre responsible both for the of Asiago . His wife Adele Pozzato gave birth to a daughter on June 5, 1905, but Arturo Fasoli died of food poisoning on June 10 of the following year.

Adele's father, Francesco Pozzato, was an assessor at the municipality, and he too worked on an aqueduct in 1895, namely that of his hometown Bassano. The great-grandfather owned a printing company.

Since Gina was believed to have weak bronchi, she was homeschooled. When she was nine, she went to high school, the Liceo von Bassano. Her most important teacher was the Sardinian Vincenzo Tedesco, who worked as a freelance lecturer. Even at this time, Luigina was interested in the stories about Ezzelino da Romano .

During the First World War , the family moved to Bologna, which made it easier for them to finish school. During the summer holidays, mother and daughter regularly drove to Bassano. She held out this alternation between the nine months of academic life and the three months in the country for almost her entire life.

After graduating from the Liceo Classico Minghetti in Bologna, she enrolled at the Facoltà di Lettere in Bologna in 1922 . Until 1926 she learned from Raffaele Petazzoni. She wrote her thesis on the Statuti comunali inediti di Bassano , the unedited statutes of Bassano, through which she became familiar with medieval history, for which her teacher and professor of palaeography , Pietro Torelli, was responsible. He had Fasoli write about the complex forms of life in the Middle Ages, but she devoted only four pages to the Codex. In doing so, it went far beyond the topics that were usually dealt with in the field of palaeography and diplomacy at the time .

In 1927 Luigi Simeoni was appointed to the University of Bologna, with whom an intensive exchange developed over a quarter of a century. Over the next five years, Fasoli familiarized herself with the didactic and pedagogical side of her profession, a terrain in which she was later considered a master. In addition to Fasoli, the circle around Luigi Simeoni also included Eugenio Duprè-Theseider and Paolo Lamma , although none of them became his pupil. During this time, Fasoli was working in the Bologna State Archives in order to get an idea of ​​the extremely complex source situation and the complicated mechanisms of the municipality in order to develop a new picture. This gave rise to a history of Bologna's anti-magnetic legislation, which was published in 1933. This topic, already worked on by Robert Davidsohn and Nicola Ottokar for Florence, was almost uncharted territory in Bologna. In doing so, she came to the conclusion that the formation of the municipalities could only be explained on a comparative basis, which included the development of internal administration. Using the pseudonym Gif , she wrote articles for Festa , a Catholic newspaper for young intellectuals , in parallel with her research . This showed her ability to make complex processes understandable, even for laypeople.

At the Archivio Veneto , she prepared her dissertation results in such a way that, in contrast to previous legal history, her thrust was much more closely linked to everyday life and a place in life that inevitably included other sciences. Together with Pietro Sella she published the statutes of Bologna from 1288. In 1940 she obtained a free lectureship in medieval history.

1947-48 she resumed her work as an assistant in Bologna after teaching had ceased in the immediate post-war period. There she took up a new topic, that of the relationship between the free cities and their surroundings. The focus was on founding the borghi franchi . Again from the perspective of legislation directed against the local big players, it included economic aspects for the first time, along with demographic issues, the social structure, but also the forms of dispute over land ownership.

During the war, Fasoli had discovered a new topic that had not been well researched until then, that of the invasion by the Hungarians in the 10th century. In doing so, it far exceeded the scope of purely Italian research. Methodologically and with a view to the source situation, she entered the terrain of hagiographic and other narrative sources, the scattered documents, and she left the territory of the statutes, communal contracts, as in general a dense urban tradition. At the same time, she examined the early days of the municipalities, which saw themselves in a defensive battle.

I Re d'Italia appeared in 1949 , a work that made the breadth of her approaches and interests known. In 1950, after numerous professors had gone abroad, persecuted by the fascists, Fasoli was the first woman in Italy to be appointed professor of medieval history. She went to Catania , where she taught until January 31, 1957, when she returned to Bologna. First she worked her way into the history of Sicily in order to meet the interests of her students. In Catania, Carmelina Naselli taught the history of folk traditions, which had an impact for Gina Fasoli insofar as she now also resorted to anthropological and folkloric methods and questions. This included customs and legends, but also the regional dialects. In the meantime she had a kind of histoire totale in mind , a comprehensive conception of history that included all aspects of life, which she called the “Storia come storia della civiltà”. At the same time, it penetrated further into the early Middle Ages and dealt with the Lombards .

Luigi Simeoni was followed by Eugenio Dupré in the Chair of Medieval and Modern Era . Simeoni, who had repeatedly encouraged her and who at the same time had admired her toughness, intelligence and honest work, died in June 1952. Meanwhile, Fasoli was carrying the burden to be able to fill her office as a woman in the 1950s. She brought her strength to the reorganization of the historical sciences in Italy. For example, the Centro Italiano di Studi sull'alto medioevo was established in Spoleto , and in 1955 the Commission for Urban History of the International Association of Historians began to be established in Rome , dedicated to comparative studies of European cities.

Its first president was Hermann Aubin (1955–1958), followed by Hektor Ammann (1958–1967), then Philippe Wolff (1967–1986). From Italy it consisted of Ernesto Sestan , Eugenio Duprè , Carlo Guido Mor , Cinzio Violante and Gina Fasoli until 1980 . Friendships developed among her colleagues with Raoul Manselli and Giovanni Tabacco . Fasoli returned with suggestions from Reichenau or other congress venues. In 1966 she became a member of the board of directors of the renowned Centro di studi sull'alto medioevo in Spoleto. There she had given a lecture herself in 1957 on the Caratteri del secolo VII , another in 1965 on Castelli e signorie rurali , in which she made new interpretations of Italian feudalism known.

In 1957 she went back to Bologna, where she headed the Istituto di Discipline Storiche e Giuridiche until 1977 . There it was above all the innovative research approaches and her didactic skills that were beneficial to her calling. She was the first woman in the world to hold a semester opening lecture at a mediaeval university institute. In it she spoke about the projections of the Risorgimento from national identity into the Middle Ages ( national kingship ). In Bologna she promoted the search for new research methods, new paths in history didactics , interdisciplinarity, and the establishment of a special library. Long before the reforms from 1980 onwards, she invited speakers from outside the field and methodologically opened up the subject. She used aerial photographs of cities in order to introduce into urban studies the tracking, as it were, with which the historical perspective was practiced. It was clear to them that what archeology and historical research brought to light gave them the meaning today.

In the next few years she was recognized throughout Europe as a specialist in the history of the Hungarians and Lombards, the communes and the empire , the Lega Lombarda and Frederick II . In 1975 she retired. In 1987 she received the prestigious Premio Archiginnasio d'oro for services to the city of Bologna. She had already received a similar award in Bassano in 1980. In 1989 she received a corresponding award from the Austrian Working Group for City History in Linz .

In recent years she has intensified her studies on Bassano, La Storia e l'Atlante appeared , and she continued to gather a group of students around her.

Works (selection)

• Catalogo descrittivo degli statuti Bolognesi conservati nell'Archivio di Stato di Bologna , Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio, s. II, n.XLI, Bologna 1931.
• Statuti del comune di Bassano dell'anno 1259 e dell'anno 1295 , R. Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, Venice 1940.
• I Bentivoglio , Nemi, Florence 1936.
• La Serenissima , Florence 1937.
• Ricerche sui borghi franchi dell'alta Italia , in: Rivista di storia del diritto italiano XV (1942) 139-214.
• Le incursioni ungare in Europa nel sec. X , GC Sansoni, Florence 1945.
• I re d'Italia (888–962) , Sansoni, Florence 1949.
• Mondo feudale europeo , in: Ernesto Pontieri (ed.): Storia Universale Vallardi , Vol. IV, 1, Milan 1960.
• Che cosa sappiamo delle città italiane nell 'Alto Medio Evo , in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 47 (1960) 289–305.
• L'America latina nel periodo coloniale. Aspetti e momenti , Riccardo Pàtron, Bologna 1962.
• Città e sovrani, dalle lezioni tenute alla Facoltà di Magistero dell'Università di Bologna nell'anno accademico 1962–63 , Bologna 1963.
• I Longobardi in Italia, dalle lezioni tenute nella Facoltà di Magistero dell'Università di Bologna nell'anno accademico 1964-65 , Bologna 1965.
• with Francesca Bocchi: La città medievale italiana , Sansoni, Florence 1973.
• Statuti di Bologna dell'anno 1288 , vol. 1, Città del Vaticano 1973.
• with Antonio Carile : Documenti di storia feudale , Bologna 1974.
• (Ed.): Storia della Città di Bologna dal 1116-1280 , Bologna 1975 (Italian edition of the work by Alfred Hessel : History of the city of Bologna from 1116 to 1280 , Berlin 1910).
• Navigazione fluviale - porti e navi sul Po , in: La navigazione mediterranea nell'alto medioevo , vol. 2, Spoleto 1978, 565-667.
• with Reinhard Elze (ed.): City nobility and bourgeoisie in the Italian and German cities of the late Middle Ages , Berlin 1991.
• Ceti dominanti nelle città dell'Italia centro-settentrionale fra X e XII secolo , in: Giorgio Cracco (ed.): Nuovi studi ezzeliniani , Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, Nuovi Studi Storici, XXI, Rome 1992, pp. 3-13 .

Awards

• 1970 Medaglia d'Oro dei Benemeriti della Scuola della Cultura e dell'Arte
• 1980 Premio per la cultura della città di Bassano
• 1987 Premio Archiginnasio d'oro del Comune di Bologna
• 1989 Austrian Working Group for Urban History, Linz (honorary member)

literature

• Francesca Bocchi, Gian Maria Varanini: L'eredità culturale di Gina Fasoli. Atti del convegno di studi per il centenario della nascita, 1905-2005: Bologna-Bassano del Grappa, 24-25-26 November 2005 , Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2008.
• Memorial per Gina Fasoli. Bibliografia e alcuni inediti , ed. Francesca Bocchi, Bologna 1993.
• L'opera storiografica di Gina Fasoli , in: Atti e Memorie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Province di Romagna XLIV, Bologna 1993.
• La storia come storia della civiltà , in: Atti del Memorial per Gina Fasoli, ed. S. Neri and P. Porta, Bologna 1993.
• Francesca Bocchi: Biography of the Centro Gina Fasoli per la storia delle città .
• Paolo Golinelli: Gli studi matildico-canossani di tre amici scomparsi: Gina Fasoli, Vito Fumagalli, Lalla Bertolini , in: Atti e memorie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per le antiche provincie modenesi, p. XI, XXII (2001) 3-12.
• Vito Fumagalli : Ricordo di Gina Fasoli , in: Quaderni medievali 35 (1993) 5 f.

Web links

• Francesca Bocchi: Biography at the Centro “Gina Fasoli” per la storia delle città
• Publication list at Centro (directory with 327 titles)
• Francesca Bocchi: Gina Fasoli , 2004
• Publications by and about Gina Fasoli in the Opac der Regesta Imperii

Remarks

1. ^ Gina Fasoli: Statuti del comune di Bassano dell'anno 1259 e dell'anno 1295 , R. Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, Venice 1940.
2. ^ Gina Fasoli: La legislazione antimagnatizia a Bologna fino al 1292 , in: Rivista di Storia del diritto italiano VI (1933) 351-392.
3. ^ Gina Fasoli: Le incursioni ungare in Europa nel sec. X , GC Sansoni, Florence 1945.
4. ^ I re d'Italia (888–962) , Sansoni, Florence 1949.
5. ^ Gina Fasoli: Aspetti di vita economica e sociale nell'Italia del secolo VII , in: Caratteri del secolo VII in Occidente, Settimane, 5 , Spoleto 1958, pp. 103-159.
6. ^ Gina Fasoli: Castelli e signorie rurali , in: Agricoltura e mondo rurale in Occidente nell'alto medioevo , Spoleto 1966, pp. 531-567.