Feb 20, 2008 3:45 PM

Centuries-old Italian dynasty lives on the Web

Traveling from Los Angeles to Italy? Facile! But making the journey to 12th-century Italy? Well, that just got a little easier, too.

For more than 40 years — and without much fanfare — UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library (YRL) has been home to an amazing collection of papers that once belonged to the Orsini, one of Italy's most prominent families. The Orsini's wealth and political might gave them a leading role at the center of Italian politics for centuries; the family produced three popes, 28 cardinals and 33 Roman senators.

UCLA's Orsini archive remained virtually inaccessible to researchers until recently. Now, thanks to a two-year project spearheaded by YRL and funded by a grant from the Steinmetz Foundation, the papers are available to the UCLA community and scholars worldwide online, along with an annotated index, or finding aid.

The archive, which UCLA acquired in 1964, comprises thousands of documents — everything from maps and wills to personal letters and accounting ledgers — from the 12th century to the mid-1900s.

The collection provides an extraordinary view of life near Italy's center of power. "I can't think of any other institution anywhere in the U.S. that has material on a single family for a run of centuries," said Thomas Kuehn, chairman of Clemson University's history department, who studied some of the papers while researching the dynasty's legal history.

Because of the range of documents, the archive offers information about a vast range of subject matter — art, architecture, economics, gender issues, politics and more.

"There is also tremendous [material] for people working on historical linguistics," said Massimo Ciavolella, UCLA professor of Italian and comparative literature. "Because the papers cover six or seven hundred years, we can trace the development of language and dialects just by studying the language in the papers. It's historically important."

Last February, UCLA held a conference for Orsini researchers. Two of the visiting scholars stayed on after the symposium ended — one for three months, the other for five months — poring over archived papers six days a week, from the time the library opened until closing time, recalled Victoria Steele, head of YRL's Department of Special Collections.

The Orsini documents also provide fascinating insights that might otherwise be lost to the history books.

"The documents show the way in which families lived," Ciavolella said. "There are even accounts of their kitchen utensils, so they offer a glimpse of everyday life in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries."

Guendalina Ajello, a New York University doctoral student, catalogued the collection. Although she had learned about some of the archive’s most important documents before she began the project in 2005, "there were a few I was absolutely blown away by," she said. One example: a peace agreement from the 1450s between Ferdinand I, king of Naples, and the rebel barons who were attempting to overthrow him.

"This led to the perpetuation of the Aragonese dynasty in the south of Italy," Ajello said. "We haven't found that this document exists anywhere else, and it's very important in Italian history."

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