International conference on Latin as a tool for dialogue at the University of Siena
The conference “Global Latin II. Latin as a vector of cultural exchange between Europe and Asia ”, generated by the interuniversity center for comparative studies“ I Deug-Su ”of the University of Siena.
The event will be held at the Santa Chiara Lab of the Sienese University and will be dedicated to Latin as a language of intellectual and scientific exchange between Europe and the Far East in the 13th-18th centuries.
Experts from all over the world, including China, Japan, Korea, Israel, Australia, the United States, will exhibit the news of research on that unexplored mass of Latin documentation which for some centuries represented the most intense instrument of intellectual and scientific dialogue between civilization. European and Far Eastern civilizations.
In Siena, the “I Deug-Su” Center of the Department of Philology and Criticism of Ancient and Modern Literature – now in agreement with the University for Foreigners of Siena – developed in 2021, for the regional digital digital program Giovani Sì, the library “Eurasian Latin Archive”, directed by Professor Francesco Stella and led by researcher Emmanuela Carbé, who collects and collects the numerous sources in Latin and Latin-Chinese, but also in Latin-Japanese. At the same time, thanks to funding and collaborations with the University of Seoul, it was possible to publish unpublished documents on evangelization and anti-Christian persecutions in 19th century Korea, now collected in the “Korean Hagiographica” series.
Participation in the conference is free and the works can also be followed in live streaming on the youtube channel of the Department of Philology and Criticism of Ancient and Modern Literature at the address www.youtube.com/dfclam_unisiena
The works will then continue from 7 to 9 September at the Botanical Garden of Pisa, with the second part of the meetings between scholars, entitled “Roma Sinica III. The languages of science between Western and Eastern civilizations ”, dedicated to the production of scientific works in Latin in the Far East.
The complete program of initiatives is published on the website of the Interuniversity Center for Comparative Studies “I Deug-Su”: www.centroideugsu.unisi.it/2022/08/30/global-latin-ii-siena-september-5-6-2022.
The exchange that developed between East Asia and Europe on the threshold of the modern age is one of the most impressive movements of cultures documented in human history and has produced an unparalleled increase whose extent has so far been underestimated, also due to the difficulty of access. to the sources. The protagonists of this intercultural miracle and future missionaries such as merchants such as Marco Polo and subsequent missionaries such as the Franciscans Giovanni di Pian del Carpine and Odorico da Pordenone, and later Jesuit intellectuals such as Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall, Martino Martini, Michael Boym.
“Thanks to these waves of travelers, who left behind the initial thrust of commercial or religious interests, – explains Professor Francesco Stella – we have the first autopsy European accounts of the history and customs of the Mongolian, Chinese and Japanese peoples and, from the sixteenth century, the ‘beginning of what Geoffrey Gunn called’ first globalization ‘. Through the Jesuits they reached China and Japan, made accessible in Chinese, Japanese or Latin translations, related to Greek and Latin treatises on geometry and mathematics, botany and hydraulics, mechanics and astronomy, including; and conversely, the first reliable information on Chinese culture, Confucian morality as well as on the history of the Tatars or on local fauna and flora arrived in Europe, often in Latin texts, giving rise to European Sinology ».
Teams from all over the world have been working on this huge and underestimated historical-cultural scientific phenomenon for a few years. In Italy, the Latin documentation is studied among other things in Turin and Pisa by the “Roma Sinica” group, while the task is entrusted to the inter-university Center for Comparative Studies “I Deug-Su” in Siena.