2018 Volume 27 Issue 3 Pages 334-352
Cimatti's Museum at Chofu, Japan, keeps a geological collection assembled by the Italian Roman Catholic priest Vincenzo Cimatti (1879‒1965), who spent the last forty years of his life in Japan, active as teacher and missionary. After graduation in both natural sciences (1903) and philosophy (1907), he was professor at the Valsalice Lyceum in Turin, Italy, the original site of the Salesian Society, a religious and educational institution founded in 1859 by the Italian priest Giovanni Bosco (1815‒1888). Cimatti's geological collection consists of hundreds of fossils, minerals and rock samples of mainly Italian origin obtained through donations and exchanges. It follows a style common to a number of educational science museums established in many Italian cities since half 19th century from public and private institutions both secular and religious. Cimatti's Museum has a deep connection to the spiritual and historical background of Italian museums. Cimatti's collection is a factual example how the break between geology and religion occurred in the 19th century without major concern in the liberal religious circles in Italy. From Cimatti's writings it appears that to him studying nature meant to know God's wisdom and love. In a more general historical perspective, Cimatti's collection points to a continuity with the tradition of natural and geological science museums which flourished in Italy since the 16th century, with its leading Catholic scientists (e.g. Aldrovandi, Kircher, Marsili, whether diluvianist or not) rather immune from pressure of Sacred Writings over science development, unlike their British colleagues. The long-lasting, global-cultural approach of these historical scientific museums is mirrored also in Cimatti's Museum exhibiting a molar tooth of a Pliocene Mastodon from Italy donated to Cimatti by his coetaneous friend Michele Gortani (1883‒1966), who was a leading geologist of the 20th century and Director of the Capellini Museum of the University of Bologna, a 19th century filiation of the late Renaissance Aldrovandi's Museum.
