Page 177 - mediterranea 45

Cancila R (letture)_8 19/04/19 17:33 Pagina 174

174 Rossella Cancila

understand, which Ricci tries to discern beyond the silences. And so,
the author asks: «what were they preparing for, in Mantua and
Constantinople, while Suleiman’s attack on Central Europe took
shape?» (p. 104).
Of a completely different tenor, but no less significant for Ricci’s
thesis, is the letter written, but probably never delivered, by Lucrezia
Gonzaga, belonging to a lesser branch of the Marquises of Mantua, to
the Sultan with the aim of obtaining the freedom of her husband
Giampaolo Manfrone, prisoner of Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. That
a lady, a Gonzaga, noted for her religiosity and culture, close to
positions inspired by Erasmus, could even conceive of enrolling the
feared corsair Dragut (Türgüt Alì), who in that era raged around the
Mediter ranean, sowing terror and death, leaves some margin for
reflection open to us: we do not even know whether the letter is
authentic, but besides this, «the appeal to Suleiman is thus of value
because it was published under the name of Gonzaga and because it
was not repudiated by her: this is the level of factuality that interests
us and not other questions of authenticity» (p. 128).
The subject of true or false, of the authenticity of sources, the role
of propaganda and of discrediting one’s enemy is – as has been seen –
always just around the corner, and probably represents the greatest
challenge that the historian has to face from a methodological point of
view. Ricci’s book is a concrete example on this terrain of that which
is, or should be, the task of a historian, equipped to move among the
hidden dangers of the sources and of their translations, capable of
going beyond the known and the it is said, so as to give voice to
absences and silences, interpreting them, to grasp what the words say,
but also what they mean, in a language which at times can be
understandable only to those directly involved, who know the context.
Here one cannot improvise: the skill of the expert is required.
But Ricci gives us another challenge on the level of content, and one
no less important: the need, that is to say, to make a reckoning of this
frontier reality, that the Mediterranean was-is-will be, in which those
who have lived around it have learned to coexist with the dangers, but
also with the opportunities that being an avant-garde brings with it.
Transforming danger into opportunity, exorcising fear, breaking the
boundaries of prejudice, adjusting to plural presences thus represents
the authentic Mediterranean alternative to the theory of collisions.
Rossella Cancila
(English translation by Richard Chapman)

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVI - Aprile 2019 n.45
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)