God lives in Tuscany. Journey into the Christian heart of Western identity (Rizzoli, 2024) is Antonio Socci’s latest work, in which the author exhaustively demonstrates how, in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Christianity completely permeated the life of Tuscan civilization. A real and lived faith identity of a people and therefore of a culture from which – in that extraordinary multiplication of saints, men and women, artistic and scientific genius – hundreds of sculptures, paintings, architecture, poetic works and unique and unrepeatable, true cornerstones of human history.
The book God lives in Tuscany it is a journey through different routes from Florence and through Florence which embraces many Tuscan cities, deeply marked by the unmistakable Christian matrix: Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, Prato, Arezzo, Siena, the sword in the stone of San Galgano but also the wedding of Campiglia of Orcia, the Maremma, the Etruscans, illustrious popes, artists, mathematicians and philosophers who have left indelible marks in universal history. The text accompanies the reader to discover places inhabited by mystics, poets, thinkers, merchants, artists, bankers, artisans and farmers: those “cursed Tuscans” so quarrelsome, but all, saints and sinners, with the same faith (and the same amazement) before God who became flesh and “came to live among us”.
The detailed descriptions are unforgettable of Socci’s travels through the streets of Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Siena, searching for the most authentic side of Tuscany. Socci guides the reader like a new cicerone by talking to him about places, routes, artists, poets, philosophers, saints, Madonnas, anecdotes and literary works, battles and crucial theological challenges. The book is much more than a narrative of the beauty and truth that can be found in Tuscany, it is a map of the treasures to be rediscovered and with them of the ultimate reason for our life, that engaging charm that touched and still touches the hearts of believers today .
The Tuscany presented to us by Socci it is a land in which everything is an expression of the people’s Christian faith: not only the masterpieces of the many artists who were born there or who have loved it over the centuries, even the walls of the cities and even the vineyards and cypresses that we admire in its countryside . Socci makes us discover in his book, so full of quotes, references, literary frescoes and stories, that authentic Great Beauty which is Tuscany, too often transformed into an immense Emporium of wonders, in one amusement park besieged by hundreds of summer tourists who, unconsciously, tiredly chase a strip of shade between monuments and statues, without being reawakened by the beauty and truth that surrounds them.
On the contrary, in the pages of this book, in reality the diary of a pilgrimage, we will be given the time to observe, contemplate, listen, touch and savor, as one does with a good wine, all that is good, beautiful and true about Tuscany. There are not only cities of art, in Socci’s fascinating book visits are undertaken from the Maremma to the Apuan Alps; from Certaldo, the town of Boccaccio, to Vinci, where Leonardo was born, to Cortona where Beato Angelico left the Annunciation; there is also a view of the undulating sea of hills of the Val d’Orcia nor the mystical Apennine ridges of the Casentino and Pratomagno, where hermits, ancient forests and immense silences still live.
In Florence«the Italy of Italy», to that Florentine people who in 1527 voted, deliberated and proclaimed «Jesus Christ King of the Florentines», Antonio Socci promises to dedicate a very special volume that will accompany the reader in the discovery of art, faith, culture and events of a unique city.
The God lives in Tuscany by Socci is also a useful manual for thethe modern traveler who wants to undertake a journey or even a single visit in stages to Tuscany. A book that is certainly precious for anyone who wants to see and, above all, understand the reasons behind so many works, so much history and culture of a people who have left an indelible mark in the history of all humanity.
