Epistolario scelto

Item

Country

IT

Name of institution (English)

State Archives of Parma

Name of institution (official language of the state)

Language of name of institution

ita

Contact information: postal address

Strada M. d'Azeglio 45e, 43125 Parma (institutional headquarters)
Via La Spezia 46, 43125 Parma (archival collections and reading room)

Contact information: phone number

0039 0521235487

Contact information: web address

Contact information: email

as-pr@beniculturali.it

Reference number

Epistolario scelto

Type of reference number

Archival reference number

Title (English)

Sellected correspondence

Title (official language of the state)

Epistolario scelto

Language of title

ita

Creator / accumulator

Archivio di Stato di Parma

Date note

15th century/1857

Language(s)

ita

Extent

26 folders

Type of material

Textual Material

Scope and content

This collection comprises correspondence produced by or related to some illustrious figures of the history of Parma. Among Girolamo Muzio's correspondence, there is a letter that he sent to Ferrante Gonzaga, the governor of Milan, concerning the Sephardic family Mendes Benveniste. On November 28, 1551, he informed the governor of the supposed intention of Brianda de Luna's daughter, Beatriz Mendes, to go to Turkey with the fortune she had inherited from her father, Diogo Mendes. This episode is part of the long dispute between Brianda and her sister Beatriz de Luna over the late Diogo Mendes' inheritance. This letter, as well as other Muzio's letters, was transcribed and published by Amandio Ronchini (1864, doc. CXXI).

Archival history

The Epistolario scelto is a collection created by Tommaso Gasparotti (1785-1847), the director of the Archivio Farnesiano, in the first half of the 19th century, and later expanded by Amadio Ronchini (1812-1890). The collection was composed of documentation relating to illustrious figures in Belles-Lettres, Arts or Political History extracted from various fonds, in particular the currently dismembered Segreteria farnesiana e borbonica. Especially, it was extracted from their original fonds numerous letters of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and those of some members of the Gonzaga di Guastalla family. In 1853, Ronchini published part of this correspondence in the volume Lettere di uomini illustri conservate in Parma nel regio Archivio di Stato. In his catalogue of the Archivio di Stato di Parma (1941), Giovanni Drei published the list of recipients and senders of the letters comprised in this collection.

Administrative / Biographical history

The history of the Archivio di Stato di Parma dates back to 1592, when the works in the Palazzo della Pilotta were completed with the creation of a specific space to store the Farnese archives, in accordance with the last will of Ranuccio I Farnese. Until then, the archives were dispersed in various buildings. At the beginning of the following year, Pietro Zangrandi was appointed archivist of the Archivio Segreto ducale.
In the 1730s, a large part of the documentation preserved in the Archivio was transferred to Naples, when Don Carlo di Bobone became king of Naples and later renounced to the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. Only a part of this documentation returned to Parma.
After the French domination, Maria Luisa d'Austria established the Archivio Generale dello Stato on October 15, 1816, with the aim of gathering the documentation produced during the Farnese and Bourbon governments and the French period, as well as the archives of extinct courts. It was under the dependence of the Ministero dell'interno and, after 1848, of the Dipartimento di grazia, giustizia e buongoverno. In 1860, the archive of Parma, as well as other Emilia-Romagna archives became part of the Direzione generale degli Archivi del Regno di Sardegna.
The Palazzo della Pilotta continued to be the headquarter of the Archivio di Stato di Parma until the Second World War. On May 13, 1944, an aerial bombardment destroyed a wing of the palace, damaging part of the archival collections.
In 1948, the archive moved to the oldest wing of the Ospedale della Misericordia, also known as the Ospedale Vecchio. This part of the Ospedalle had been originally built between 1476 and the first decade of the 16th century. The main deposit of the archive was located in the large vaulted room in the form of a cross that had served as a ward of the hospital until 1926, and that became known as the "Crociera".
In 2011, the documentation was transferred to a modern warehouse annexed to the new facilities of the Archivio di Stato di Parma in via La Spezia 46.

Access points: locations

Access points: persons, families

Access points: subject terms

Access points: document types

System of arrangement

Records are arranged in alphabetical order.

Finding aids

Links to finding aids

Author of the description

Carla Vieira, 2022.

Bibliography

Published primary sources

Item sets

Linked resources

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Title Alternate label Class
Archivio di Stato di Parma Collections (official language of the state)