On the Importance of Visiting Archives

One would think that, at this point, anything related to historical figures of the caliber of Galileo Galilei is known, studied and rigorously catalogued. I did so, at least, until a small book came into my hands, Galileo ritrovato. La lettera a Castelli del 21 dicembre 1613. I couldn’t help reading a book talking about “the first manifesto on the freedom of science”, could I?

To my great surprise, the authors describe the discovery of an original letter written by Galileo Galilei to his friend Benedetto Castelli, mathematician at the University of Pisa, in 1613. The letter, of which only some copies were known, stayed unnoticed for more than two centuries at the library of the Royal Society in London, until Salvatore Ricciardo found it in 2018, just 3 years ago.

First and last page of the letter from Galilei to Castelli

I won’t discuss the historical significance and implications of this discovery, but I’m using this example to highlight the importance of archival search. Libraries, archives, and all other repositories of books and documents are treasure chests hiding key elements to understand and interpret history correctly.

Leaving aside secret archives and forbidden texts, there are precious pieces of information which can be hidden due to misdating, incomplete annotations, and wrong cataloging of documents, or, more trivially, to the lack of personnel with the expertise and the time needed to explore large documental bodies.

The RUTTER team, aware of the importance of this task, is eager, after two years of discontinuous and limited trips to archives, to spend time among rutters and manuscripts. A post from around one year ago showed our enthusiasm for “starting to dive into the past”, but travel conditions are still far from optimal and kilometers of material, literally, are still waiting to be read.

Document digitization has proved a powerful tool to access bibliographical resources on maritime literature, and to overcome the pandemic limitations to a certain extent, as shown by the creation of the RUTTER Virtual Library “A Sea of Books”. However, we are sure that only with in-person search we will be able to find our “lettera a Castelli”. [Silvana Munzi]