This issue of Studi Umbri you are reading is, so to speak, out of series, in the sense that it escapes the journal’s regular numbering. Strictly speaking it should be number 1 of volume 15, but in fact it is a special issue for a somewhat particular reason, and the reason is this: it is an issue specifically dedicated to Luigi Cimmino. Luigi, together with other friends, wanted this journal and made it (and will keep making it, of course), but this time you will find no contribution of his, because this time Studi Umbri was put together entirely without his knowledge. The idea is that of a homage, a tribute, to a friend who, after a long and fruitful career as a teacher and scholar, has gone into, as they say, quiescence, that is, retirement. Naturally, imagining a quiescent Luigi is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron made flesh one might say, for who will ever manage to make him stop studying, writing and teaching?

The contributions gathered here are therefore the work of a group of friends, certainly not all of Luigi’s friends, who are surely far more numerous than those represented here, but still enough, we believe, to give a measure of the esteem and affection he has deservedly earned, through his work as a teacher and, far more broadly, through his tireless helpfulness and generosity.