1first-year issues of his Archivio, sums up his life in less than ten lines, and says
practically all there is to say.
Yet, Martini
in 1902, Orlando
in 1906, and
Giovannozzi
in 1910, without producing any salient facts, have enriched the
brief, recorded data with notes on his character and with a few significant
episodes which serve today to render his figure lifelike and to shed further light
on his already clear personality. The sense of the man that one gathers from
this information, which might be thought to be biased since it is handed down
to us by men who were his devoted friends, is fully confirmed by accounts one
can still hear from the lips of the old parishioners of Quarate in the Ema Valley,
or from Lamberto Caverni, the oldest of his grandnephews who was only a few
years old when Don Raffaello died, but who remembers clearly everything his
father, Egisto, had to tell about that uncle. Some of these details and others
besides can be checked against the documents and papers, although there are
some, together with a great many manuscripts, which the heirs jealously keep
to themselves.
practically all there is to say.
Yet, Martini
in 1902, Orlando
in 1906, and
Giovannozzi
in 1910, without producing any salient facts, have enriched the
brief, recorded data with notes on his character and with a few significant
episodes which serve today to render his figure lifelike and to shed further light
on his already clear personality. The sense of the man that one gathers from
this information, which might be thought to be biased since it is handed down
to us by men who were his devoted friends, is fully confirmed by accounts one
can still hear from the lips of the old parishioners of Quarate in the Ema Valley,
or from Lamberto Caverni, the oldest of his grandnephews who was only a few
years old when Don Raffaello died, but who remembers clearly everything his
father, Egisto, had to tell about that uncle. Some of these details and others
besides can be checked against the documents and papers, although there are
some, together with a great many manuscripts, which the heirs jealously keep
to themselves.
Raffaello Caverni was born in San Quirico di Montelupo in a house on the
Via Pisana. The place is now marked by a memorial plaque with an epigraph
by Father G. Giovannozzi, placed there in July 1902, which following the
unfortunate cultural customs of those times remembers him in a rather
infelicitous manner as “most celebrated writer ... with German erudition
and Italian genius.” Such rhetoric hardly suits his work which, though not
always polished and rigorous, is brilliant, sagacious, and often piercing—in a
word, truly Tuscan. The Registry of baptisms in Pieve di Montelupo shows
that Raffaello Gregorio (the second name perhaps in honor of the reigning
Pope) Gaspero, son of Vincenzo son of Pietro Caverni and Assunta Mancioli
was born in S. Quirico at the Ambrogiana (the lovely Medici villa now an
asylum for the criminal insane) on March 12, 1837, at 8:00 p.m. He was the
Via Pisana. The place is now marked by a memorial plaque with an epigraph
by Father G. Giovannozzi, placed there in July 1902, which following the
unfortunate cultural customs of those times remembers him in a rather
infelicitous manner as “most celebrated writer ... with German erudition
and Italian genius.” Such rhetoric hardly suits his work which, though not
always polished and rigorous, is brilliant, sagacious, and often piercing—in a
word, truly Tuscan. The Registry of baptisms in Pieve di Montelupo shows
that Raffaello Gregorio (the second name perhaps in honor of the reigning
Pope) Gaspero, son of Vincenzo son of Pietro Caverni and Assunta Mancioli
was born in S. Quirico at the Ambrogiana (the lovely Medici villa now an
asylum for the criminal insane) on March 12, 1837, at 8:00 p.m. He was the