Dal 'Chiarissimo Professore' al 'tu'. Gli anni della formazione di Giuseppe Alberigo attraverso la corrispondenza con Delio Cantimori (ca. 1954 - ca. 1959)

This essay examines the initial phase of the relationship between Giuseppe Alberigo and Delio Cantimori through their correspondence from 1954 to 1959. It analyses the letters as something that actively shaped their relationship by functioning as methodological guidance, research programme, academic mediation, and bridge across political and confessional divides. This contribution reconstructs the beginnings of their contacts, Cantimori’s role in Alberigo’s training as a historian, the moral and personal turning point marked by the August 1957 exchange on Cantimori’s exit from the Italian Communist Party, and the public crystallisation of their relationship in Cantimori’s preface to Alberigo’s I vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento.