A route of the places of Don Milani
One of the most interesting personalities of the 20th century, Don Lorenzo Milani, hailed from Florence and always carried out his activities in this area.
Born in Florence in 1923 to a wealthy and cultured family, he lived his first years on viale Gramsci, near piazza Beccaria.
The family moved to Milan, but it was with the return to Florence that Lorenzo discovered Christianity and his vocation to become a priest came when he was already 20 years old; he studied at the Major Seminary of Florence.
In this itinerary, meager but full of ideas, you go through the significant places of his life, completely devoted to the formation and education of people living in great poverty and isolated from society. A personal journey in which Don Lorenzo has always placed side by side his activity as a spiritual guide with the one as a pedagogue, with innovative and tradition-breaking intuitions.
The Milani family had a beautiful manor house in the Montespertoli countryside, at La Gigliola, Lorenzo's vocation matured here in the small chapel of the hamlet, and it was indeed at La Gigliola that he was invested wih his very first pastoral charge.
Soon, however, the young Don Lorenzo was appointed chaplain at the parish church of San Donato in Calenzano, a village between Florence and Prato. His educational work started in this labouring and rural context with the People's School.
Because of his opinions and his writings Don Lorenzo was disliked by the Florentine Curia, and the next assignment that he received sounded like a true exile: the small church of Barbiana, in the municipality of Vicchio on Mount Giovi was a remote and very poor place.
But right here, thanks to a constant work of hospitality and integration, Don Milani created his most relevant experience and the Barbiana school, with the pupils coming from the surrounding countryside, which turned into an educational model whose echo would reverberate across the whole of Italy and beyond national borders.
Between December 1954 and January 1966 - the years spent here by Don Lorenzo - Barbiana, the secluded place, magnetically attracted friends and persons from all over the world interested in that revolutionary way of educating, and still now attracts them, having become the seat of the Don Lorenzo Milani Foundation. The long years in Barbiana are still "readable" in the classroom, in the outdoor areas (the swimming pool, the arbour) not to forget Don Lorenzo's tomb, which lies in the small cemetery next to the rectory.
Every year, in May, the March of Barbiana brings back people to that place, for a meeting with the members of the Foundation, some of whom are former pupils of the prior.
Don Lorenzo's life was cut short by a terminal disease in 1967: his last days were spent in his mother's house, on via Masaccio in Florence. A plaque affixed by the Municipality of Florence on the building commemorates him.
Comune di Firenze
Étapes
San Donato parish church
This church, located in a raised position over the Val di Marina, dates back to the 10th century, probably built on a pre-existing building. The period of rebirth of the Parish church was in 1450, when it became the property of the Medici family, who also changed the structure adding an elegant cloister to the church.
Oddly used by the Medici who undertook an ecclesiastic career as a summer residence - that is the case with Giovanni dei Medici, future Pope Leone X and then with Alessandro Ottaviano dei Medici, future Pope Leone XI, the Parish church of san Donato is remembered above all because it was the first destination of the young priest Don Lorenzo Milani, who worked alongside the priest Don Daniele Pugi as a chaplain from 1947 to December 1954.
Right here Don Milani laid the foundations for his educational activity as a tool for the emancipation of the very poor, founding the People's School of San Donato.
The narration of his pastoral and educational experience then became the book Pastoral Experiences.
Chiesa di Sant'Andrea a Barbiana
On the slopes of Monte Giovi, a few kilometers from Vicchio, there is Barbiana, a small village including: the church of Sant’ Andrea, the small cemetery, a few nearby houses, others scattered in the woods and fields. In December 1954 Don Lorenzo Milani became the new prior until his death; his remains rest in the small cemetery, as he had chosen since the first days of his arrival.
