Memorie di scuola a Campo Verano. I monumenti funebri a Erminia Fuà Fusinato e a Carlo Belviglieri

This essay explores the historical meaning of the funeral monuments to two praiseworthy educators, Erminia Fuà Fusinato (1834-1876) and Carlo Belviglieri (1826-1885). The monumental honours paid in the solemnity of the Campo Verano in Rome are testimonies of the highest value publicly recognized to the deceased. While celebrating Fuà Fusinato and Belviglieri’s educational merits, the monuments fix a symbolic message in the hard materiality of the marble: they preserve durably a paradigm of teaching worthy to be handed down over time. The joint analysis of monumental sources and commemorative documents is therefore revealing for the cultural history of school. Together with a reconstruction of the history of the monuments — from the birth of the initiative to the inauguration, an inferential work has been carried out on printed materials: a set of a good teacher’s qualities has been extracted from the in memoriam speeches given during the inaugural ceremonies and other official occasions of homage, as well as from the writings of praise; it deals with some of the ideals of behavior — differentiated according to gender — constitutive of the public imaginary about teaching during the post-Risorgimento period.