Friar Bocci, at the beginning of the twentieth century

The never finished (Hospital) of Carmignano.

Thinking like an inhabitant of Carmignano this would be the perfect story and character for a parade of San Michele. And who knows, it may even happen sometime in September. Moreover It would not be the first time that the street theatre, the contest among the four districts, which each year animates and upsets the countryside, tells (and reveals) little known facts of the history of Carmignano. About Friar Anastasio Bocci, aka Angelo, and his adventure at the beginning of the last century, in fact, just a few in the village know or remember. A page, mysteriously, almost completely forgotten.
Once there was a hospital in Carmignano. It was built by friar who was erudite of even though of humble origins who had written several books, a sickly friar, born in 1836, with a firm and resolute heart. Or rather, there could have been that hospital because the building “that can accommodate sixty beds” under a sharp bend on the road that leads from Carmignano Santa Cristina in Mezzana, where the monk had grown up before shutting himself away in seminary, along the steep alley that stretches into the valley below which is, still today, Via degli Asinai. An imposing building, even bigger than the noble villas on the surrounding hills – it was finished after long ordeal in the autumn of 1906, three and half years after the beginning of the works, but it would never house a hospital. The money to complete the structure ran out, and the friar, who had offered to build and donated the hospital to the municipality in exchange for the soil and the recognition of the nature of public utility work, became indebted beyond measure. After a long play for time the support of the Municipality and it councilmen and landowners administrators failed. They had been the first on 26th September 1900, just two months after the tragic assassination of King Umberto I, to propose (and allocate a small sum in the budget) to build a hospital and name it after the assassinated monarch; almost as if to wash the shame for the regicide committed by a fellow citizen from Prato.
It all came to nothing, a pawn sacrificed in the battle between clerical and anticlerical studying each other’s moves with suspicion, an earthenware pot in the disputes between “ricciani” and”niccoliniani ‘ the two factions of nobles who at the time took turns at the helm of the Municipality, the victim of private interests and unappreciated dream of a grouchy and proud parish who still was “friend of the people”, animated by a Christian ideal of social justice and precursor of modern subsidiarity. To tell us about his adventure and fill a void in the memory of the village are two books published at the end of 2008. The first was written by Silvano Gelli, former mayor of Poggio a Caiano with a passion for local history, not new to writing (Corpo infermo e anima di ferro, published by Attucci). The latter is the work of the journalist from Seano Nicola Gori (L’amico del popolo, published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana). and recalls mostly the friar’s biography and his spiritual path, It all began in 1901.

That was when the friar came forward for the first time with   his proposal. And the city council enthusiastically accepted the offer. It was a flash in the pan, though and the Reverend had underestimated the difficulty of the job: first the tormented acquisition of the soil, owned by the Verzanis, then the benefactors who were difficult to find and the construction costs that instead continued to grow. Economy was then the friar’s permanent thought and it could not have been otherwise.   Until his death in 1908. he kept trying and trying. He tried to encourage the local population by printing letters and appeals, also slyly publishing the correspondence with the Municipality. He tried to look for patrons. He tried to involve doctors, willing just to complete the work, to confine the hospital for the poor and deprived in a pavilion to make space, as we would say today, for a private luxury clinic with “twenty rooms with fee, famous professors for surgical operations, a telephone service and a car to transport the sick from Signa and Poggio a Caiano. “This for at least for twenty years, until the doctors would leave the company and without accepting, in that period, citizens affected by infectious diseases , not to scare away the rich and wealthy people.
In the end, after three years of work and the feast that followed the roofing of the building, he had to give up. That hospital “modern and model,” as told in 1904 to the chroniclers by Dr. Antonio Dotti, where you could breathe “healthy air, well organised and in good position,” a kind of myth for the poor country people, a clean bed and hot meals two or three times a day, close to home remained only a dream. (wf)

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