RESEARCH General History

LITERARY COLLECTIONS
Priceless documents from Italian collection 'going home'

Andrea Lynn, Humanities & Social Sciences Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

6/1/03

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – As scholars know so well, special collections have a funny way of winding up half a world away from where they originated. Which is why, for example, the papers of the late British novelist Rebecca West are at the University of Tulsa, and those of her fellow countryman and lover, the late novelist H.G. Wells, are at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

So it isn’t at all unusual to find the extraordinary collection of Italian Count Antonio Cavagna Sangiuliani di Gualdana (1843-1913) also at Illinois’ Rare Book and Special Collections Library. It has been there, in all its glory, since 1921, when Cavagna’s heirs sold it to the university.

The nobleman, author of 160 publications and a passionate bibliophile, acquired extensively. By the end of his life, he had collected 30,000 volumes, 138 portfolios of unbound manuscripts – some of them unique, plus nearly 300 bound volumes of manuscript material and 100 transcripts.

The Cavagna Collection is a veritable treasure trove of Italian history, especially local history, including extensive genealogies, materials on municipal government, legal acts and documents, some of which have their original seals. The earliest document, dated 1116, originated with Henry V, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The parchment proclaims Henry’s protection of Menaggio, near Lake Como. Henry had butted heads with Pope Paschal II over the right of investiture, and in 1116 made his second expedition to Italy to give rights of protection to the people of Menaggio.

Also of great value are the maps and atlases Cavagna collected. In all of his purchases, he concentrated on Lombardy and Piedmont. Cavagna’s family dated from 1112, but he was the last of the Cavagna counts. After he died, his four daughters tried, unsuccessfully, to sell his library locally.

While all of these materials have been open to scholars worldwide, the materials now are, in a sense, going home. Six Italian institutions from the area most represented in the materials have formed a consortium to have the unbound portion of the Cavagna Collection microfilmed.

The university will soon begin the filming project, and when it is completed, the microfilm will be sent to Italy.

The Italians will find that the inventory, which is organized by place and family name, includes such familiar household names as Buggati and Ferrari, Cacciatore, Parmesano and Romano, and Mantovani, Medici and Machiavelli. The first document, from 1468, describes Antonio Abbiati Galuppi’s water rights in Abbiategrasso.

The last gives baptismal records for the Rolandi family of Zuccarello. Another group of documents has genealogical tables for the Lomellini family of Genova from 1177.

One Illinois librarian, Meta Sexton, devoted nearly her entire career to the Cavagna Collection. By the time she retired in 1951, she had cataloged more than 20,000 items. Sexton’s guide followed Cavagna’s original arrangement of the material, and will serve as the guide to the contents for the reels of film. For more information, contact Bruce Swann, Illinois’ classics librarian, at b-swann@uiuc.edu.