CENTRO DI STUDI MALASPINIANI
"ALESSANDRO MALASPINA"

Mulazzo, Massa-Carrara, Italia

NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTRO

Year 2, no. 3            February 18/2001

Edited by Dario Manfredi, translated by John Black




NEWS

1. At Mulazzo, on Saturday March 3, at 4.30 pm, in the Mario Mengoli Auditorium of the Centro di Studi Malaspiniani, there will be a presentation on the book Libri & Destini by Loris Jacopo Bononi. Under the heading Publications Received, below, we explain in more detail the importance of this volume.
 

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

Loris Jacopo BONONI, Libri & Destini. La cultura del libro in Lunigiana nel secondo millennio. Parte Prima, Lucca, Maria Pacini Fazzi, 2000, 340 pp.

In this substantial volume, the author, a noted literateur, patron and bibliophile, paints a lively fresco of the contribution made by the typographers, publishers, authors and bibliophiles of Lunigiana to the development of publishing from the 15th to the 20th  century. Several members of the Malapena family, among them Marco Antonio and Orazio Malapena di Mulatto (the latter better known by the pseudonym of Celio), are also justly remembered for the merit of the first edition of the poem of Torquato Sasso which they published under the title Il Goffredo, but which is known to the history of literature as La Gerusalemme Liberata. The volume concludes with a proposal for a museum which would cover all of Lunigiana, and which - quite rightly - would also include Alexandro Malaspina, who was undoubtedly the greatest Lunigianese writer of the Enlightenment.

The second and third parts of the book will probably appear within a year; included in the third part - devoted to the authors of Lunigiana - will be Alexandro Malaspina's previously unpublished work Carta crítica sobre la obra del Quixote.

 I Gesuiti fra impegno religioso e potere politico nella Repubblica di Genova, Genova, Biblioteca Universitaria e Biblioteca Franzoniana, 1991, pp. 116. This is the catalogue of a bibliographical exhibition of Jesuit publications preserved in the Biblioteca Universitaria in Genoa. Among many authors, we would like to point out some who have a connection to Lunigiana or to missionary activity in territories outside Europe: Gian Carlo Brignole, Anton Giulio Brignole Sale, Lazzaro Cattaneo, Agostino and Nicolò Mascardi. PUBLISHING NOTES AND COMMENTS

"Las costas del fin del mundo. Expediciones. Viajes científicos españoles a las tierras de ultramar". National Geographic, Spanish Edition, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2001, 8 pp., with notes.

The figure of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (1744-1794), and his three expeditions between 1775 and 1792 to the northwest coasts of America, are used as vehicles to bring to light, succinctly but clearly, the reasons why the Spanish crown defended its political and economic interests on those coasts at the end of the world, since the encroachment from the north of the Russians, in pursuit of the fur trade, attracted in turn the arrival of other foreign ships, which constituted a serious threat to the Spanish possessions of that region. From Juan Pérez (1774) to the schooners Sutil and Mexicana,  Chief Maquinna and the Tlingit people, the settlement at Nootka and the negotiations with Captain Vancouver to establish once and for all the colonial affiliation of the island: everything is splendidly illustrated with reproductions of sketches, engravings and ethnological artefacts from Spanish museums, and with a map showing the routes of Bodega's voyages.  (Blanca Sáiz)


PEDANTS' CORNER

In Newsletter No. 3/2000 there was some discussion of the year of death of Alexandro Malaspina, with a reproduction of a document relating to his final will (of February 7/1810).  Evidently this was not convincing enough. Therefore we reproduce and transcribe below another document, in which the precise date of the death is indicated: April 9/1810. It is taken from the "Book of the Dead" of the parish of San Pietro (in Pontremoli).

In Document No. 136 is written:

Anno Domini 1810 – die 9 aprilis

Sacramentis omnibus rite munitus obijt in Domine Alexander ex Marchionibus Malaspina de Mulatio in hanc Parochia habitans; aetatis annorum 54 circiter, eiusque cadaver delatur ad publicum cemeterium, vulgo Campo-Santo, ibi sepultus fuit presente Don Vincentio Angella delegato ut supra, a me

Francisco Muri Rector

Translation:

In the Year of Our Lord 1810 – the 9th Day of April

After receiving all the appropriate sacraments, Alexandro Malaspina of the Marquisate of
Mulazzo, an inhabitant of this Parish, died in the Lord at the age of about 54 years; his body was taken to the public cemetery, known as Campo Santo, and there he was buried in the presence of Don Vincenzo Angella, delegated to the above task by me,
                                                                                                    Francesco Muri, Rector

Sooner or later even the Library of Congress (Washington, DC, USA) will be forced to acknowledge that Alexandro Malaspina died in 1810, and not in 1809, and therefore will have to deal with modifying its bibliographical records!

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