"Bologna! This little city is too narrow, too old, too hot! Too lazy, too much university and convents, too much reclining on the Po Valley! Leave! Away, away from this place, what was I supposed to do here? Third-born and no inheritance: I could choose between a religious career, like my sisters who ended up in a convent, or a military career. I had enrolled at the University of Padua to study botany and mathematics, but when I learned that Pietro Civran, whom I knew, was embarking as the new ambassador of Venice to Istanbul, I did everything I could to embark with him, as a secretary, as a mercenary, even as a kitchen boy! I would do anything to leave. Can you imagine? The East, the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan, the Turks: unknown language, unknown demons, mosques and harems, silks, seas, ships..."
.. and coffee, or rather: cavé!
The quote is taken from a performance by Marilena Manicardi, now included in her La Maria dei dadi da brodo, in which she tells the story of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, an illustrious scientist, soldier and diplomat, and his desire to escape from the narrowness of Bologna.
What does Marsili have to do with coffee? The fact is that the scientist, later founder of the Institute of Sciences in Bologna, enlisted in the Habsburg army, was taken prisoner in 1683 and then sold to the Pasha of Temesvar. In the role of servant he was employed, during the second siege of Vienna, to allot coffee to the troops exhausted by fatigue. His studious character led Marsili to become an expert on the mysterious drink, until then used only as a medicine, to the point of even writing a treatise on it:
Asian drink, toasted to the Most Eminent Bonvisi, Apostolic Nuncio to His majesty the Emperor... which narrates the medical history of cavè or coffee.
“I had to practice the art of Cavè cooking for many days in a smoky tent, not only because of the quantity needed for the use of the Court’s Household, but also because it was necessary to keep a Shop stocked, which could be compared to one of our Inns; which employment educated me in the Art of preparing Cavè, to observe many of its effects, and which gave me life, while by this means I had made myself acquainted with those Bosnians, who bought me at that very time [...]; and therefore Your Excellency will say that the Cavè in me has had a great virtue, and that it is right that I should be grateful for exalting its intrinsic qualities”
In the treatise he provides instructions for the correct preparation of what we know today as 'Turkish coffee', namely:
so much of that powder I have said, that is approximately a tenth part of the quantity of water, this being the most suitable proportion to make the drink properly pleasing, and nutritious
Which is the unit of temporal measurement for the storage of the coffee so that its fragrance is exalted? Three or four Lord’s Prayers!
Therefore, Marsili is evidently an important link in the diffusion of coffee as a fortifying drink in Western Europe, but his merits, we know, are much greater: once redeemed from slavery he proved himself as a man of war and diplomat, even if a sensational slip-up took him away from the battlefields. Today he would be defined as a resilient personality, since he did not wallow in disappointment, but made a virtue of necessity by dedicating himself intensely to his scientific and cultural passions
This was the starting point of the modern University of Bologna in the area of via Zamboni, with the acquisition of Palazzo Poggi, the construction of the Specola and the subsequent transfer of the ancient Institution from the Archiginnasio, in the Napoleonic era.
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili died in 1730. He left all of his numerous manuscripts to the Institute of Sciences, housed in Palazzo Poggi.
Sources
Marinella Manicardi e Federica Iacobelli, La Maria deu dadi da brodo. La storia industriale di Bologna tra romanzo e teatro, Bologna, Pendragon, 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq_A2n3aPcY
https://bub.unibo.it/it/visita-il-palazzo/museo-marsili