Fire destroys ‘priceless’ books on philosophy and rare letters
Italian Mayor declares day of mourning as private Renaissance collection goes up in smoke
A FIRE in an Italian aristocrat’s library has destroyed “priceless” works by the Renaissance philosopher Bernardino Telesio and letters to Galileo Galilei.
Italian magistrates said an inquiry has begun into the causes of a fire in the southern city of Cosenza on Saturday that killed three people living in an adjacent apartment.
The newspaper Corriere della Sera described the private museum housing the collection of the Bilotti Ruggi d’aragona family as “the most important library in southern Italy”.
The owner of the library and wellknown collector, Roberto Bilotti, said he had informed local authorities repeatedly about the risk posed by three mentally handicapped squatters living in the apartment below the library.
“This was a tragedy waiting to happen,” Mr Bilotti said. “I had denounced the absurd situation with these neighbours to the public prosecutor’s office as long as eight years ago. These people had occupied a floor illegally. During the winter they lit fires to heat themselves… They needed help, but nobody took care of them.”
The three people who died were identified as Serafina Speranza, 51, Antonio Noce, 54, and Roberto Golia, 34.
Books that went up in flames included the first printed edition of Telesio’s great work, De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (which translates as On the Nature of Things according to their Own Principles).
Telesio was hailed by Francis Bacon, the English “father of empiricism”, as “the first of the moderns” among philosophers for his development of scien- tific method based on observation. His works questioning medieval obscurantism and Aristotelian philosophy led the Roman Catholic Church to place them on the index of banned books soon after his death in 1588, though he escaped persecution during his lifetime due to good relations with a number of clerics.
In addition to his standing with Bacon, Telesio was an important influence on Giordano Bruno, Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes.
Among other works lost in the fire was correspondence between Paolo Bombini, a priest, and Galileo Galilei, and original parchment manuscripts by the 16th-century writers Sertorio Quattromani and Aulo Giano Parrasio, also both from Cosenza, which was a thriving Renaissance cultural centre.
The mayor of Cosenza, Mario Occhiuto, declared today a day of mourning in the city.