Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

FEDERICO CESI, THE FIRST ACADEMY, AND UMBRIA 61as horizon and context in which to place the biographical and intellectualexperience of Cesi and the first Lynceans and as a historico-culturallegacy which they have left us. ‘Gathering the Cesian and Lyncean vestigesor memories’ (Gabrieli) in the various forms in which they have comedown to us, constitutes an act directly functional to the identification ofthe dynamics that have contributed in important ways to the formationof that identity. 85As far as concerns, in primis, the historico-geographical horizon inwhich the experience of Cesi and the first Lynceans was played out,Gabrieli’s affirmations could not be any more explicit and detailed:Cesian and Lyncean Umbria is to be found precisely in the region’scentral part, which from Perugia and Terni declines toward Rome,closed within the two river valleys of the Tiber and its tributariesfrom the left (the Topino, the Maroggia and the Naia), between thetwo present day rail lines Terni-Foligno-Perugia and Terni-Todi-Perugia-Umbertide; crossed for a large part of its length, fromNarni to Bevagna, by the famous old Via Flaminia and its branches(Ulpia, etc.) the road which touches the places and lands properto Cesi, and of which two Lynceans, Francesco Stelluti fromFabriano and the Hamburghese Luca Olstenio, researched, studied,and drew the multiple, ancient traces. 86And further on Gabrieli reiterates thatthe largest number of Cesian and Lyncean memories are encounteredin central and southern Umbria, in the valley of the Tiberand its tributaries, the Nera and the Naia, along the present dayelectric train line of the ‘Central Umbria’, that runs through Todi,Acquasparta, San Gemini, and Cesi. 8785 Already in 1940, for example, Gabrieli lamented the fact that ‘the official programof the upcoming Umbrian regional celebration, among various other illustrious figures,contians no mention of Federico [...] who, Roman by birth, but from a family originallyfrom Umbria, spent considerable time in the region, in Acquasparta, Cesi, Narni, andTodi, as a youth and as a mature man, especially in the closing years of his not very longlife’, G. Gabrieli, Federico Cesi Linceo nella sua ‘Abadia angelica’ presso Narni, in ‘Latinagens’, XIX, 1941, pp. 5-10, cit. from Contributi, vol. I, p. 143. Gabrieli’s view is shared byanother attentive historian of Umbrian culture: ‘The institution of one of the most celebratedacademies, that of the Lynceans, is an Umbrian glory’, P. Pizzoni, Gli umbri nelcampo delle scienze, Perugia 1951, p. 227.86 G. Gabrieli, Umbria cesiana e lincea. Appunti per un itinerario linceografico, in‘Latina gens’, XVIII, 1940, pp. 255-271, in Contributi, vol. I, pp. 177-178.87 Ibid., p. 181.