Abstract

This article reconstructs the history of the Milani Archive of the Fondazione per le scienze religiose of Bologna in the context of the triple anniversary which occurred in 2023: the 100th of Lorenzo Milani’s birth (1923), the 70th of the establishment of the center founded by Giuseppe Dossetti (1953), and the 50th since Lorenzo Milani’s mother, Alice Weiss Milani Comparetti, matured the idea of establishing an archive (1973) that could preserve and make available for study the papers of her son – who died at only 44 in 1967 – giving credit to what was one of Italy’s most fruitful religious, spiritual, and cultural experiences. Thus are retraced, through unpublished correspondence, the origins, choices, and protagonists who led to the establishment of a Milani fund in Bologna, in what was then the Institute for religious sciences directed by Giuseppe Alberigo. This allowed for the opening of a research site on the prior of Barbiana, that led to the publication of the critical edition of Milani’s opera omnia in the Mondadori series “Meridianiµ in 2017, and that still continues