On the same morning of the 22nd, we reached the Certosa del Galluzzo where, at 11 a.m., the conference, “Nourishing Territories, Energy for Peace,” kicked off, chaired by Livia Pomodoro – holder of the UNESCO Chair “Food Systems for Sustainable Development and Social Inclusion” at the Università Statale di Milano – and coordinated by Claudio Serafini, Director of Organic Cities Network Europe.

The foundation stone of the Carthusian Monastery was laid at the behest of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, a member of one of the richest banking families in Florence, in the first half of the 14th century on the summit of Monte Acuto in the hamlet of Galluzzo, not far from San Miniato. Dedicated to San Lorenzo, its interior contains works by Orcagna, Giovanni della Robbia and Pontormo, who took refuge here in 1523 to escape the plague that had struck Florence. The complex is now guarded by the Community of San Leolino.

Following the opening of the conference proceedings by President Pomodoro, who recalled how “humanity as a whole and ourselves must resolutely respect not only life, but the very quality of life,” Monsignor Vasco Giuliani, Honorary Canon of the Chapter of Santa Maria del Fiore, took the floor and brought greetings from the Archbishop of Florence H.E. Monsignor Gherardo Gambelli.

“Peace,” said Monsignor Giuliani – among others, “is not simply the simplification, the uniformity of thoughts and people. It must express itself through the richness and diversity of people, with their cultural heritage, faith and humanity. This is what the second commandment urges us to do: for to love our neighbor means to love what God loves, that is, the whole of humanity. We therefore inhabit the world feeling that we are an integral part of the same family: the human family.”

It was then the turn of Luca Milani, Democratic Party group leader in the City Council, to bring greetings from Florence Mayor Sara Funaro.

Finally, Antonio Taddei, president of the Rotary Club of Florence Grand Duchy, closed the greetings portion.

Livia Pomodoro, initiating the debate, recalled that: “It is necessary to confront each other always without prejudice and without the desire to prevail, animated by the desire to learn from the other and to overcome possible misunderstandings and difficulties… All men possess a common matrix that is called humanity. The purpose of our ethical and cultural pilgrimage to the Abbeys of Europe, which has been going on uninterrupted for two years now, is to learn about it through the diversity and positivity that only culture and beauty can bestow. It is in places like these, the Charterhouse of Galluzzo and the Abbey of San Miniato, that we learn more and more about being together: and being together means cultivating peace.”

“The title of this conference,” Claudio Serafini specified in his introduction, “Feeding Territories, Energy for Peace, takes up the theme of the Expo held in 2015 in Milan: Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life, which President Pomodoro knows very well. Therefore, the combination of territories and peace turns out to be very important… I would say we will have two rounds of speeches, starting with Roberto Scalacci, an agricultural expert who has been in Brussels for many years, is an important member of the agricultural association world and is currently part of the regional department. He will speak to us precisely about the Tuscan agricultural model: an excellence at the European level.”…

The conference then immediately got into full swing with the first speaker: Roberto Scalacci, director of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the Tuscany Region. “Topics such as life, food and sustainability represent a now-traveled and necessary road to take for the future development of humanity. A necessary road. And the relationship between development and peace is basic to decline… Think of the world of food diplomacy: unfortunately, food has become strategic for war, not only for peace… The agriculture of Tuscany descends in a direct way from the sharecropping culture of the region, with many small plots conducted by sharecroppers. A contract that is now outdated, but which has given rise to many fractionated and well-structured properties that are functional to the Tuscan landscape and to the choice of sustainability, which is an environmental as well as a historical and social choice. One of the attractiveness of the region is precisely its sustainability, recognized in the world and given by small and medium-sized farms that have made this productive choice… We try to support and enhance the attractiveness of our land to the maximum… At this stage, 34 percent of Tuscany’s agricultural area is cultivated with organic methods, with peaks in some sectors of 38 percent. This is an encouraging figure that makes one think a lot, bearing in mind the target that Europe has set for 2030 of 25% of agricultural land. So less chemistry and more biodynamics, since biodiversity is both a resource for the future and for competitiveness in the current historical-economic framework.”

Paolo Orefice, professor emeritus of the UNESCO Transdisciplinary Chair “Human Development and Culture of Peace” at the University of Florence, spoke about the strong presence and penetration of UNESCO Chairs on the ground, and the topics and values they represent.

“In the United Nations 2030 Agenda, the goal of sustainability is central to the future of humanity. In the sense that it is not a partial or sectoral sustainability, but a global point of view. As indeed is the topic of peace, which is of pressing relevance… Abbeys already in the Middle Ages, at the time of their birth, were the safeguard of civilization and faith in an exhausted Europe by wars, famines and epidemics. It was therefore a matter of rebuilding and renewing society…We live in a situation that is in many ways similar, where after a thousand years our humanity, so interconnected and globalized, is again at a crossroads… The opposite of love is hatred and violence, so if from a complex and transdisciplinary scientific point of view we go to analyze ‘peace’ in the various spheres, from the family and personal sphere to that of relations between peoples and nations, we realize that we need to go beyond violence, hatred and prevarication in order to have true peace.”

The next speech was by Carlo Triarico, President of the Biodynamic Agriculture Association: “I am pleased to be here a second time with you, after the stop in Mantua. Biodynamics and peace are in close commonality with each other, since the issue of peace is connected with the issue of territories… Just as, from a historical point of view, after the fall of the Roman Empire, today we need to identify in territories the path, the right way to recover peace… We need to give birth to a movement that starts from below, from the territories, because ecology means relationship, land and not war… Biodynamics was born in the postwar period at the end of World War I, when a group of scholars gathered in Basel at the Free University named after Goethe: these men invented something fundamental for the future of mankind…Food has to do with the great union of the whole and is an element of communion and peace with the world…We have to reinvent communities, communities and their basic strength.”

This was followed by a talk by Lucio Cavazzoni, president of the Bolognese Apennine Bio-district:

“The society we are facing today is worse than that of the 1970s, as it is devoid of possibilities and full of difficulties… The issue of ‘agriculture’ is social and the relationship with the land is ‘environmental’… Food is now no longer the main thing, but a derivative consequence. In the last ten years, and especially in the last few months, the situation has changed…By now the land is getting out of the hands of its operators to become a corporativist productive tool…Statistics by the way confirm that the total world population in the near future will decrease: while it will increase in Africa, globally it will decrease…Land is again becoming the property of a few. We need to bring young people towards agriculture, as they have a view not of exploitation but of reconquest, declined in a dimension of relationship and connection. The concentration of land in the hands of a few owners leads to a disaffection, a distancing from a culture of knowledge and peace. Indeed, the term cultivation/culture until the 1600s possessed the same meaning….”

Finally, Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Florence and Academician Emeritus of the Georgofili Academy, took the floor:

“It is necessary to unite science and technology to nourish the territories. And, despite the deep cultural differences, we are children of a Christian ecumene: indeed, these are the roots of Europe… Florence represented in its time the main junction of the Via Francigena. Feeding and nourishing the hungry, including wayfarers and pilgrims, was one of the founding tasks of the Abbeys… I remind you that in Florence there was anciently a Magistracy of Abundance… Today the world throws 30-40% of what it needs to feed into the waste… Therefore, it is more necessary than ever, for food security, to produce capable ruling classes, who must rediscover those cardinal virtues carved in the door of the baptistery of Santa Maria del Fiore.”

In the second round of talks, Roberto Scalacci recalled how the Church, with abbeys and monasteries, has been important for the agricultural development of Tuscany. From the reclamation of land by monks to the spread of agricultural knowledge and techniques. And he went on to give the example of the Sienese monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, with its production of wine, oil, wheat (recovering ancient seeds in danger of disappearing), saffron and truffles.

For Professor Orefice, thanks to the abbeys there was a great impetus of civilization: “Today we need this more than ever, considering the current crisis of civilization we are experiencing….”

Carlo Triarico spoke about the experience of Piacenza, where 104 families took on the financing of a farm by receiving shares of its products in return, while Cavazzoni illustrated the challenges of biodistricts, where they start from agriculture to gather “principles of biosustainability.” Ciuffoletti instead delved into the role, from antiquity to the new Millennium, of the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, temperance, fortitude and justice.

In the afternoon, Don Bernardo Artusi, Father Custodian of the Certosa del Galluzzo, led us on a brief tour of the complex, pausing in the magnificent Abbey Church and the museum, where the frescoes painted by Pontormo and originally placed in the cloister are preserved, among other things.

At 4 p.m. it was time for the meeting, “The Paths of Peace between Faith, Art and Culture,” coordinated by Antonio Bettanini, Director of In cammino – Abbeys of Europe, which featured Don Carmelo Mezzasalma, Superior of the Community of San Leolino; Massimo Sebastiani, ANSA journalist; and Professor Paolo Orefice.

Professor Bettanini, after recalling how Florence was a city “that has sought and inspired peace in its history,” introduced Massimo Sebastiani as follows: “This is the fifth time, after Padula, Follina, Holland and Cisternino, that he has accompanied us on our journey. Creator and editor for Ansa of ‘The Word of the Week,’ a column dedicated precisely to the history of words, Massimo is accustomed to analyzing them in time and space, researching their historical roots and their transformation in current events.”

“I analyzed the words,” Sebastiani began, “as a craftsman would, taking care of them and never taking them for granted. To unearth their meaning, one cannot rely on etymology alone, although it sometimes helps and ‘displaces’. I begin with an argument that apparently has little to do with peace. Orson Welles in the film ‘The Third Man’ exclaims at one point: ‘In Italy there were wars, murders and terror, but out came Michelangelo, Leonardo and the Renaissance. In Switzerland there was nothing but brotherly love, but in 500 years of quiet life what came out? The cuckoo clock!’… It is also useful to quote Jesus’ phrase: ‘I came to bring the sword and not peace.’ So is the locution: ‘leave me alone,’ characteristic of those who do not want contact with others and prefer solitude. Or ‘peace of the senses’… In the etymon of the word peace, the Latin ‘pax’ has prevailed over the Greek term, perhaps because the Greeks were not very familiar with such a practice, starting right from the Homeric Iliad. The IndoEuropean root recalls agreeing, fixing, after there has been a confrontation. It therefore includes the idea of relationship, of a dynamic concept of peace. The covenant once confirmed must in fact be adjusted, modified….”

Don Carmelo Mezzasalma, after quoting a passage from Tomaso Montanari’s volume “Closed Churches,” continued: “It is the great message that the stones communicate to us, since the stones pray… In the Christian-Jewish faith, as the Old Testament suggests to us, peace was considered a gift from God, also because in the 8th-9th century B.C. there was only warfare in common… In fact, the definition ‘God of armies’ describes the very unique situation of this nomadic people in search of the promised land, another gift coming from God… War never solves anything. The underlying issue is relationship, talking to each other and relating precisely. It was Jesus who said, ‘Love your enemies’….”

“The human dimension of the living,” Professor Orefice pointed out, “is often identified with walking, with traveling, with setting oneself on the move by going into the unknown… The very dimension of life is to move from one known situation to another unknown one, which somehow forces me to rethink myself. This is also where the question of peace comes in, a word that takes on great value, light yet challenging and sometimes serving to justify war. Peace is a path that takes on mental value. It is the overcoming of opposites, of A and B when they are alternatives. Peace appears when one goes beyond the logic of opposites. It is necessary to go beyond the two antithetical categories to find a way out. Transdiscipline identifies this process with the logic of the included third, a logic that synthesizes the positions of A and B by including them. Peace is not the defeat of either side, but the unity that succeeds in recovering diversity.”

President Livia Pomodoro concluded the meeting by thanking the speakers and the present audience: “Thank you for this debate that was so rich in thought and that, with different voices and positions, highlighted the issues related to peace… We must at all times question ourselves as to why in this century we have used so many words, sometimes removing them and constructing new ones, to the point of losing the original meaning of the terms. We have been faced with a wear and tear of words. We need to go back to thinking how we can live again in harmony and peace through art and culture… On this journey of ours, we have recounted cultural experiences that are different from each other, but all of them have in common the hope for a better world, which must also be built through words.”

David Riondino’s recital “Passport to Peace” closed the day at the Certosa in Florence.

The actor, accompanied on clarinet by Fabio Battistelli, tried his hand at reading texts from classical authors such as Ovid, Horace and Lucian, St. Francis’ “Canticle of the Creatures,” Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” and Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” among others.