PISTOIA – Mayor Alessandro Tomasi and the municipal council of Pistoia learned with pain the news of the professor’s sudden passing Stefano Zamponi, a highly refined intellectual from Pistoia, owner of a culture that is never bookish and always attentive to critical discussion and the point of view of young people. He was frequently encountered in the Manuscript Room of the Forteguerriana, a few steps away from the papers of “his son” Sozomeno, intent on new research which he – he had announced to the librarians – would last for the whole summer.
Professor emeritus of paleography and codicology at the University of Florence, during his very intense career he has focused his studies on the themes of writing and books in the Middle Ages, coordinating numerous projects for the census of Italian manuscripts and holding important scientific positions in the international field on the subject of Latin paleography. As director of the Capitular Archive of Pistoia, he was able to combine his precious wisdom with clear attention towards technological innovation, making the digital version of ancient archive documents available to scholars many years in advance of the major digitalisation campaigns .
His curriculum as a scholar also saw him as president of the Giovanni Boccaccio Institute of Certaldo for years, where he exercised an important teaching role towards young scholars. But, beyond his everlasting scientific merits, today the city of Pistoia remembers Stefano Zamponi for his profound humanity, his always polite trait, his natural kindness, which made him first of all a beautiful person.
