Dio abita in Toscana

If you are thinking of some tasteful itinerary through the splendid Tuscany, for the upcoming Easter holidays, why not, run to the bookstore and buy the latest valuable literary effort by Antonio Socci "Dio abita in Toscana" Ed. Rizzoli. The title to tell the truth may seem a bit flattering, the usual marketing gimmick someone would think: quite the opposite! Socci, through a concretely geographical path, leads us hand in hand in Tuscany through cities, hills, cliffs and gullies, promontories and beaches where the spirit can be maximally exalted by the beauty of creation. From the enchantment of cosmic revelation, in this book we descend even deeper into the human heart admiring as pilgrims of hope, places where "everything prayed to God and everything presented him with praise and adoration". 

Florence is described as the heart of the Christian world in the 20th century, with its monuments such as the mayor Giorgio La Pira who in the stones of Palazzo Vecchio painted a social ideal of Christianity inhabited by man and his mentor, spiritual life companion the monk and mystic Divo Barsotti who from the hills of Settignano, so dear to Socci, glimpsed the presence of God in the city of the Medici. 

"Get up and enter the heart of the city, and you will be told what you must do": Santa Maria del Fiore, the Brancacci Chapel, between Dante, Donatello Brunelleschi and Michelangelo and a very rich list of places expertly described by the writer to introduce the traveler to the double mystery of good and evil, of sanctity and sin that is Florence and I would say a bit of all of Tuscany, since always. 

There are numerous returns to the Land of Siena, and with incredible historical precision the Christian root that loves man is described at the base of the Sienese monetary economy, of ethical origin: for example, in 1377 the Santa Maria della Scala hospital managed 520 current accounts, as "bearers of a strong ethical instance but also immersed in strong real needs". From there, inspired by the fervent fight against usury by San Bernardino da Siena, the Monte di Pietà was born, 1472, which today, unfortunately, is pitiful for many other misfortunes. 

These places and characters of sharing and fighting, as is every spiritual and artistic life, are traveled with a wealth of historical and artistic details that are never heavy, making the reading very pleasant and flowing even for readers unaware of the treasures of the Sienese Trecento or the Florentine Renaissance. 

The chapters wink at the tourist guide, structured in such a way that one can jump here and there, as we all do when we travel the Tuscan hills. “Know how to contemplate the beauty and sanctity of the cities and the land in which God has placed you”, Socci seems to say to us blessed Tuscans, almost as if to dissolve those “cursed” bonds that have made them sadly famous on t-shirts and bad-taste license plates. From the Livorno Montenero where the Madonna Regina Etruriae reigns, we move on to the enemy Pisa, where Catherine of Siena received the invisible stigmata, to continue in the charming Lucca enclosed in the splendid tree-lined walls and the Cathedral full of masterpieces. 

Obviously you cannot wander in Tuscany without coming across the flowery mouth of Boccaccio who in Certaldo narrated in prose "fresh and adventurous the virtues, but also the limits, the miseries and the sins of that Italy crossed and dominated by the mercantile audacity of the bourgeoisie of the late Middle Ages". God Lives in Tuscany is a historical and artistic investigation that is never heavy but of great kindness and elegance, like the soul of Antonio Socci, of a land blessed by little peace and much war as Ambrogio Lorenzetti well expressed in his fresco cycle on Peace and War, showing how the artists of the time “although sinners like everyone else, lived, with their community, the Christian faith that they then illustrated in their works.

Valentina Niccolai