“Un'università di tanta soddisfazione”: gli storici all'Università di Pisa negli anni della transizione

The essay investigates the intricate intellectual and human relationships among the historians in Pisa during the transition period, with special reference to Giovanni Battista Picotti and Walter Maturi, but also Delio Cantimori. Pisa is a point of observation of particular importance since, during fascism, was at the center of attempts by Giovanni Gentile to put his idea of university into practice. On the other hand, between 1944 and 1948, Pisa was the object, above all by Luigi Russo, of a reworking of the memory in order to privilege the anti-fascist thought and action of the local academic community. Picotti and Maturi embodied the crisis of important historiographical trends – Picotti's philological-scholarly historiography, Maturi’s ethical-political historiography. Those trends, however, did not lack lasting legacies. In Pisa, both Picotti and Maturi played the important role of ‘masters’.