By Antonio La Cava
Barbanera is not used to travel: he is an astrologer, a hermit, a wise man who gives us every year his precious pieces of advice by a calendar that marked the history of Italy.
The Bel Paese exports goods, trademarks and ideas, with fashion and culture. But that an almanac was exported abroad, we would not expect it!
Well, Barbanera, the famous Italian almanac and calendar, paid visit to his compatriots at the Italian Bookshop in London, telling them his history and plans, also the ones related to abroad.
Barbanera has a multi-centenary history, in fact, back in 1761, the Discorso Generale (General Discussion) was published, a collection of forecasts and pieces of advice for the year to come, reputed the first Barbanera and printed in Foligno, at Pompeo Campana’s workshop.
The figure of Barbanera is an authentic character, truly lived in Foligno. “Grown up in a large family, he studied in a monastery. But soon, urged by a strong vocation as a hermit, he left the monastery to isolate and devote himself to the contemplation of the heavens. His home, anyway, was always open for the citizens of his village to whom he dispensed his forecasts and pieces of advice”.
It was then more than two centuries ago that the famous hermit from Foligno gave his studies to the press, making an almanac to be hanged on the walls. So it arose the Almanac Barbanera, with news about the year to come and decorated with elegant xylographs.
It is no accident that Barbanera was born in Foligno, named “the centre of the world”, because its centrality within the Papal State. And despite the fact that the publishing, in Foligno, sprung as a street publishing, its importance is highlighted by the first print of the Divine Comedy in 1472.
If the almanac is a work mainly sacerdotal, Barbanera was, since its beginning, the product of the folk wisdom handed down, a product deeply rooted in the social structure.
After 1762 the almanac became a booklet, and mostly between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, Barbanera spread through the rural classes, becoming a kind of a “gospel”, a summa of pieces of advice to keep in mind for the whole year.
The success of Barbanera crossed the borders of the city, being sold in fairs and markets by sellers and street vendors, so became an essential means for the daily activities, “full of suggestions for the agricultural works, the weather forecasts, the saints, the feasts”.
Barbanera charmed, too, famous personalities such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, who in 1934 wrote: “...Common people think that I have at my bedside the Odyssey or the Iliad, or the Bible, or Flacco, or Dante, or Alcyone by Gabriele D'Annunzio. The book on my bedside is that where it is gathered the ‘flower of the Times and the wisdom of the Nations: the Barbanera...”.
During the years Barbanera has adapted to the change of the society: readers are different and more urbanised, and changed their habits and life rhythms.
From this year Barbanera has gone international, landing to different States of the world. The German newspaper Bild choose Barbanera as the New Year’s gift for its readers, and other countries like Spain, the United Kingdom, Austria and Argentina are starting to distribute it.
The success of Barbanera is surly linked to the strength that the popular wisdom holds, but also to the strong tradition belonging to a useful means for a society that, though ever-changing, harbours for the passing time an unaltered sacredness. A strength, the one of the famous Foligno’s Almanac, able to unite tradition and innovation and that during the year, rather the centuries, has so become a mirror for the measurement of time, and has symbolised itself the change of times.
Copyright 2008 GIORGIOSTUDIO Ltd – All rights reserved
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