Bertoldi - [Lugo] - La Censura e l’Apologia - 1795

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LUGO AGAINST LUGO: WAR OF CARDS IN ROMAGNA IN THE 18TH CENTURY: CONTROVERSY OVER THE ANCIENT FOREST
TWO PROS AND CONS OF SANT’ILARO, BOUND TOGETHER IN COEVAL RUSTIC BINDING
Two rare writings from 1795 gathered in a rustic, contemporaneous edition: Bertoldi defends his historical reconstruction through chronicles, parchments, and archival documents at the heart of a heated Romagnolo scholarly controversy.

Interesting volume of Romagnolo historical erudition that brings together two publications from 1795 closely linked to the controversies about the origins of Lugo and the tradition of Sant’Ilaro: Apologia of Chapter XXXII of the Life of Sant’Ilaro Abbot, printed in Bologna at the Stamperia del Sassi, and The Censorship and the Apology Refuted Defending the Historical Notices of the Ancient Forest of Lugo, published in Ferrara by the Heirs of Giuseppe Rinaldi.
The latter, a work by Francesco Leopoldo Bertoldi, constitutes a sharp defense of the research published in the Notizie istoriche dell’antica Selva di Lugo of 1794 and allows readers to follow almost in real time a lively dispute among eighteenth-century scholars.
Chronicles, parchments, medieval testimonies, archival documents, topographical questions, and source interpretations are used to reconstruct the antiquity of Lugo, the extent of its famous Forest, and the ecclesiastical and civil history of the territory.
Particularly interesting is the joint presence of the two texts in their contemporaneous rustic edition: the volume physically preserves a substantial part of the polemic and serves as a testimony of Romagnolo historical culture on the eve of Napoleonic transformations.

WHY TO BUY
* TWO WORKS – Two rare writings from 1795 gathered together in a contemporaneous rustic edition.
* HISTORY OF LUGO – Important testimony on the origins of the city and its ancient Forest.
* POLÉMICA – Lively eighteenth-century dispute fought through documents, chronicles, and parchments.
* ROMAGNA – An interesting source for local history, erudition, and eighteenth-century historiography.

MARKET VALUE
A work destined for a specialized market, but interesting for the strongly local nature of the publication and for the presence in the same volume of two texts from 1795 linked to the same historical-erudite milieu. The contemporaneous rustic binding and the overall conditions more than good increase the appeal of the exemplar. Indicative antiquarian value: €250–350. Suggested price Luxury Books: €320–350.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Two works in one volume. Contemporary rustic cardboard with handwritten titles to the spine; exemplar preserved in its simple seventeenth-century editorial dress. Apologia: pp. 33, (3). The censorship and the apology refuted: pp. 207, (1). Front free endpaper detached from the binding; natural signs of time, overall more than a good exemplar.
In old books, with a multi-century history, a few imperfections may be present, not always noted in the description.

FULL TITLES & AUTHORS
Francesco Leopoldo Bertoldi.
The censorship and the refuted apology in defense of the Notizie istoriche dell’antica selva di Lugo, printed in Ferrara in the year MDCCXCIV.
In Ferrara, for the Heirs of Giuseppe Rinaldi, 1795.
UNITED WITH:
Apologia of Chapter XXXII of the Life of Sant’Ilaro Abbot, printed in Faenza in the year 1792.
In Bologna, Stamperia del Sassi, 1795.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
The volume belongs to the great era of Italian municipal erudition in the eighteenth century, when the history of cities and local institutions was progressively examined on the basis of documentary evidence.
At the center of the controversy are Lugo and its ancient Forest, whose origin, extent, and history become the ground of comparison among scholars. Behind a seemingly narrow topic emerges a much broader question: how to reconstruct scientifically the past of a community when chronicles, local traditions, and documents seem to contradict each other?
Bertoldi tackles the issue by resorting to parchments, chronicles, medieval and Renaissance documents, and geographic and topographic considerations. References appear to Lugo, Ravenna, Imola, Ferrara, the Santerno, and the historical transformations of the Romagna territory.
The polemical character makes the reading particularly interesting: it is not a history written afterwards, but the direct testimony of a controversy among contemporary scholars.
The presence of the Apologia of Chapter XXXII of the Life of Sant’Ilaro Abbot in the same volume also allows reconstructing a broader segment of the cultural environment in which these discussions matured.
The volume thus effectively documents the transition from traditional antiquarianism to a historiography increasingly grounded in critical comparison of sources, right in the final years of the Ancien Régime.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Francesco Leopoldo Bertoldi was an ecclesiastic and scholar active in the Ferrara and Romagna area in the second half of the eighteenth century. His interests concerned mainly civil and ecclesiastical history, local antiquities, and the documentary reconstruction of territorial events.
His activity belongs to the Italian erudite tradition developed in the eighteenth century along the lines of Ludovico Antonio Muratori’s historical-documentary method: parchments, chronicles, and archival testimonies become fundamental tools to verify established traditions and critically reconstruct the past.
The controversy regarding the Forest of Lugo constitutes a particularly significant example of this method and shows Bertoldi engaged not only in historical research but in the public defense of his conclusions against contemporary critiques and refutations.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The censura e l’apologia smentite was published in Ferrara in 1795 by the Heirs of Giuseppe Rinaldi as a direct intervention linked to the Notizie istoriche dell’antica Selva di Lugo, appearing in the same city in 1794.
The Apologia of Chapter XXXII of the Life of Sant’Ilaro Abbot was instead printed in Bologna in 1795 at the Stamperia del Sassi and calls in the title the Faenza printing of 1792.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Francesco Leopoldo Bertoldi, The censorship and the apologia smentite in defense of the Notizie istoriche dell’antica Selva di Lugo printed in Ferrara in the year MDCCXCIV, Ferrara, Heirs of Giuseppe Rinaldi, 1795.
Apologia of Chapter XXXII of the Life of Sant’Ilaro Abate printed in Faenza in the year 1792, Bologna, Stamperia del Sassi, 1795.
Notizie istoriche dell’antica Selva di Lugo, Ferrara, 1794.
Bibliographic sources and repertoires relating to the history of Lugo, Romagnolo historiography, and the Ferrarese and Bolognese printing production of the eighteenth century.