Américo Tonda and the writing of religious history in Argentina through his epistolary archive (1929-1943)

Abstract

This work presents the results of an investigation on the unpublished correspondence of the priest historian Américo Tonda (19161984) with the purpose of reconstructing his intellectual genealogy and deepening in the knowledge of his contributions to religious history. A documentary corpus of approximately 500 letters, corresponding to the chronological range 1929-1943, in which three different stages have been tentatively identified, has been examined: the entrance to the Seminary until the departure to Rome (1929-1935), the years of study in Europe (1935-1939), and that of priestly ordination and beginning of historiographical work (1939-1943). The methodological theoretical perspective is inscribed in recent approaches located in the field of the history of historiography that emphasize the importance of the personal inserted in the academic and intellectual discourse. It is argued that in the scientific world in which the need for selfawareness, the representativeness of the singular and the epistemological reflection increase incessantly, new forms of expression are required for the understanding of the writing processes of history