Excerpt from The Monarchy and its Attributes by Juan Vázquez de Mella

Juan Vásquez de Mella y Fanjul
(8 June 1861—26 February 1928)

Revolutionary fever may indeed seize the soul and the social body, stirring up deceptive hallucinations in the mind and rebellious appetites in the subjugated will; yet, floating triumphantly above this deluge of error, the holy ark of the Church will bear safely all the great principles of civilization—and, consequently, the Christian Monarchy, through whose ministry that civilization was established in Europe and spread throughout the world. Let sophistries and theories arise in anger, inverting the terms of pagan Caesarism—placing within the collective, as an inalienable right, what the latter fixed as a power inherent in the person of Caesar—and the result will always be the same: under the sovereignty of the people no less than under the sovereignty of Caesar, tyranny merely changes its name and its seat. Yet even if its nature changes—whether through corrupt courtiers who bind the sovereign’s will to their own whims or through representatives who substitute their own will for the supposed will of the people—despotism, whether descending from above or ascending from below, will always cause justice to groan beneath its iron heel.

Thus, when the fever breaks and the waters recede to their original channel, the Christian Monarchy re-emerges from the revolutionary sands like a green oasis; beneath its luxuriant foliage, those who have survived the simoom and the storm may renew their shattered strength and withered health.

Translation by the editor. Excerpt from "La Monarquía y Sus Atributos—Cristiana, Personal," El Correo Español, 6 de enero de 1894; published in Juan Vásquez de Mella, Textos de Doctrina Política, Preliminary Study, Selections and Notes by Rafael Gambra, Madrid, 1953, p.42.

Pope Leo XIII on Wealth, Poverty, and Virtue

Portrait of Pope Leo XIII,
ca. 1878, Fabio Cipolla

"...The true worth and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness. Nay, God Himself seems to incline rather to those who suffer misfortune; for Jesus Christ calls the poor "blessed";(20) He lovingly invites those in labor and grief to come to Him for solace;(21) and He displays the tenderest charity toward the lowly and the oppressed. These reflections cannot fail to keep down the pride of the well-to-do, and to give heart to the unfortunate; to move the former to be generous and the latter to be moderate in their desires. Thus, the separation which pride would set up tends to disappear, nor will it be difficult to make rich and poor join hands in friendly concord."

Reprinted from Rerum Novarum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital and Labor, May 15, 1891, www.vatican.va

A Letter on Continuity and Calling

Not generally inclined to publish private correspondence, and already burdened with more work than time allows, I hesitate to encourage too many missives. Nevertheless, with the author's permission, I thought it worthwhile to share an excerpt from a thoughtful and intelligent letter we received regarding A Modern Man, Bound by Tradition (Il Regno, May 27, 2026).

Giovanni,

Well stated points in several areas. I agree, as we were raised with those values: legacy, continuity of family, and family history. You hit on the key point, not to confuse circumstance with vocation or calling. Anyone in modernity can move to a new place and can achieve wealth or lose wealth, but tradition, crianza, and cognizance of history and roots remain (or should). The modern argument, which you may hear in response to this article, is that every individual should strive and rise, not just be the best in his class or neighborhood, and in fact, those of us with ancestors who did rise made it possible to have those barons and marquises in the family. One of the big topics in noble circles is the notion of seggi or piazze chiuse, i.e., cities and towns where no new families could be aggregated into the closed seats of power or councils, and the strict enforcement of endogamy. Modern democratic thinking hates the idea of closing the door "arbitrarily" after somebody else got in. But if all classes move to the middle class, both from above and from below, there are no role models to emulate. If we are all individuals, not moving ahead in our lane, but constantly outside our lane, there is nobody to look to. Everyone is torn between serving by doing well in their station and trying to compete/dominate in the market because of the "prosperity gospel".

I love that you cited the example of Masaniello as a legitimist leader who turned power back over and did not seek personal gain when he could have abused the circumstances. He is often portrayed falsely as a zany revolutionary, like a proto-leftist, even. Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly. Anyway, I wouldn't change anything. Not sure if you want to expand based upon any of the above. I like that you quoted the proverb, variants of which I've heard: 'a lira fa 'o ricco, 'a crianza fa 'o signore/ 'e renare fanno 'o ricco, ma 'a crianza fa 'o signore, etc.

The letter raises an interesting tension here, one that has existed throughout history: namely, the relationship between continuity and social ascent. Aristocracies themselves were often formed through exceptional acts of service, loyalty, or ability before becoming hereditary realities. Yet modernity differs in that it tends to universalize striving itself, dissolving permanence into perpetual competition and mobility.

Ponderable Quote: Federal (Regionalist) — The Ancient Kingdoms by Juan Vásquez de Mella

Juan Vásquez de Mella y Fanjul
(8 June 1861—26 February 1928)

The national spirit is not opposed to the regional spirit, for it is nothing more than the synthesis of regional spirits. Woe to the one who, in seeking to favor the spirit of a nation and of a historical race, attempts to diminish the attributes and characteristics of the regional spirits which, in communicating and uniting, have engendered it!

We possess a peculiar life of our own, which each region preserves to a greater or lesser degree, and each region shares common features with all the others. There is a common collective history and another that is proper and particular. Both must be affirmed in their entirety. I affirm the regional spirit in all its purity, but I also say that if even a single regional history were torn away, the common history of Spain would be mutilated and rendered incomprehensible.

Without the history of Catalonia, for example—and even considering only external politics—we would have to eliminate not only one of the armies of the Reconquest, the one that emerged from the Hispanic March, but also the conquest of the Balearic Islands, the domination of the Mediterranean; the expeditions to Oran, Tunis, and Algiers and Spain’s influence in Africa would be left without their principal foundation; the conquests of Italy would have to be subtracted, and therefore the rivalries they provoked with France, which led us to Pavia and San Quintín and so decisively shaped all subsequent history; we would even have to dispense with the sacred oath of Girona and the feats of the Bruch—and the general history of Spain would be truncated and incomprehensible.

When people here attempt to set Catalonia and Spain in opposition—what an absurdity!—it seems they ignore the history of Spain and refuse to acknowledge the greatness of Catalonia, which may stand as the firstborn among those that extend along the shores of the Mediterranean.

For tell me, gentlemen: without the Catalan tradition, without what it contributed to the Aragonese monarchy, would Gonzalo de Córdoba have gone to Naples if Alfonso V and Peter III had not first gone to Catania and Palermo? Would we have fought the Angevins and extended our dominion over Milan? Would we have fought and triumphed in Paris? Would we have had that duel to the death—which was not between two kings or two dynasties, but between two peoples representing different interests in the sixteenth century—between Charles V and Francis I? No; we would have to tear out a part of our national history of the sixteenth century; we would have to remove the domination of the Mediterranean, which was owed to the cooperation of Catalan history with our general history; without the contribution of that illustrious people, we would have to erase the blazing memory of Girona and the heroic tenacity of the soldiers of the Bruch, and we could not even understand the War of Independence at the beginning of the last century.

The history of Catalonia, like that of all the regions of Spain, has two parts: a primitive, particular one, corresponding to the character that marks each region while sealing its traditional identity—a sacred history that we must respect and love, not only with regard to the region in which we were born, but also all the other peninsular regions which, through coexistence over several centuries and through analogous needs and ethnic composition, maintain the strongest bonds; but there is another part common to all, to which these regions contribute through their lives, and that part in which they cooperate—the general history—is what properly and in the highest sense constitutes Spain.

Translation of the speech delivered at the Teatro Nacional de Barcelona on April 24, 1903; published in Juan Vásquez de Mella, Textos de Doctrina Política, Preliminary Study, Selections and Notes by Rafael Gambra (Madrid, 1953), p.45.

Ponderable Quote on the Neapolitan Uprising of 1798

General Championnet leading French troops against local forces during the capture of Naples, 1799. Engraving by Jean-Urbain Guérin (1760–1836), c. 1836

The following passage comes from the memoirs of Paul Charles François Adrien Henri Dieudonné Thiébault, a French officer who served during the Revolutionary Wars in Italy. Writing years later, he reflected on the fierce resistance encountered in the Kingdom of Naples during the upheavals of 1798–1799, when French forces helped establish the short-lived Parthenopean Republic.

Thiébault’s remarks capture the astonishment many French officers felt when confronted with the popular uprising that followed the collapse of the Neapolitan army. Though he scorned the regular troops as ineffective, he acknowledged the determination and ferocity of the insurgents—peasants, clergy, and irregular fighters who resisted French occupation across the countryside.

Below is the original French text from Thiébault’s memoirs, followed by an English translation.

Peu d'insurrections ont été aussi formidables. C'était une croisade; or, ainsi que je l'ai dit, après nous avoir forcés à les mépriser comme soldats, ces Napolitains nous avaient appris à les redouter comme hommes. Dès qu'ils formaient des pelotons réguliers, ils devenaient nuls; armés en bandits, par troupes de fanatiques, ils étaient terribles, et c'est, pour ainsi dire, lorsqu'il n'y eut plus d'armée napolitaine que la guerre de Naples devint effrayante. Quoique ces Napolitains de 1798, farouches et superstitieux, aient été battus partout, quoique, sans compter les pertes qu'ils firent dans les combats, plus de soixante mille des leurs aient été passés au fil de l'épée sur les décombres de leurs villes ou sur les cendres de leurs chaumières, nous ne les avons laissés vaincus sur aucun point. (Mémoires du Général Baron Thiébault, Paris, 1894, II, p. 324-325)

Few insurrections have ever been so formidable. It was a crusade; for, as I have said, after forcing us to despise them as soldiers, these Neapolitans taught us to fear them as men. Whenever they formed regular platoons, they became worthless; armed like bandits, in bands of fanatics, they were terrible, and it was, so to speak, when there was no longer a Neapolitan army that the war in Naples became truly dreadful.

Although these Neapolitans of 1798—fierce and superstitious—were defeated everywhere, although, aside from the losses they suffered in battle, more than sixty thousand of their number were put to the sword among the ruins of their cities or upon the ashes of their cottages, we never left them truly subdued anywhere.

Ponderable Quote from Textos de Doctrina Política by Juan Vásquez de Mella (IV)

Juan Vásquez de Mella y Fanjul
(8 June 1861—26 February 1928)

Because you hold a very strange concept of the Nation and of the Fatherland, which you confine within the narrow limits of the present. The nation is like the human organism, which is governed by the law of constant renewal whereby all the molecules that compose our body disappear, yet the spiritual soul remains, revealed through the continuity of memory and the unity of consciousness. And thus, in the generations that succeed one another upon the national soil, there is also a soul, a vital activity, and, in a certain sense, an informing principle—not subsisting as does that of individuals, but resulting from the beliefs, sentiments, aspirations, interests, memories, and hopes that form that treasury which tradition transmits from one generation to another, as though it were an ark in which the living essence of the Fatherland were enclosed. 

It forms the solidarity among generations, which resemble the waves of an immense river that one day reflects serene and starry skies and another day dark tempests; that one day mirrors the greatness of Covadonga and another the misfortune of Guadalete; one day the shadow of Alarcos and another the splendor of Las Navas, the glory of Lepanto, or the sublime misfortune of Trafalgar; yet which always flows along the channel of History, traced through the march of the centuries by the tradition of a people. When the will of the nation—the nation which is not the fortuitous aggregate of people gathered within the shifting limits of a territory, but the moral organism of a series of generations united by an internal spiritual bond—arises, not as the fleeting and passing work of a day, not as an ephemeral will, but as a constant and enduring will revealed in the perennial traditions of History, then those institutions which depart from that tradition and that national spirit, which do not wish to derive their title from it, or which attempt to divert that current from its natural channels, are swept away and cast into the abyss from which they cannot rise again, for they sink forever, and the principle of tradition passes triumphantly over their ruins, to continue History.

Translation my own. Speech delivered in the Congress, May 6, 1898; published in Juan Vásquez de Mella, Textos de Doctrina Política, Preliminary Study, Selections and Notes by Rafael Gambra (Madrid, 1953), p.28.

Ponderable Quote from Textos de Doctrina Política by Juan Vásquez de Mella (III)

Juan Vásquez de Mella y Fanjul
(8 June 1861—26 February 1928)

A people declines and dies when its internal moral unity is broken, and an entire generation appears—disbelieving—regarding itself as a broken link in the chain of the centuries, unaware that without the community of tradition there is no Fatherland; that the Fatherland is not formed by the soil we tread, nor the atmosphere we breathe, nor the sun that shines upon us, but by that spiritual patrimony which previous generations have fashioned for us over the centuries, and which we have the right to perfect, to expand, to ennoble; but not to squander, not to destroy, not to allow to reach future generations diminished or not at all; that tradition, in the final analysis, is identified with progress, and there is no progress without tradition, nor true tradition without progress. Tradition means the transmission of a wealth of ideas, beliefs, aspirations, institutions, from one generation to another, founded upon a right and a duty: the right of the generation that has produced the patrimony—or part of the spiritual and material patrimony—of a people, that it pass on to the generations to come; and the duty of the generation that receives it to develop it, not to diminish or destroy it, and thus deprive those who follow of it. Upon this right of the preceding generation and upon this duty of the generation that follows rests the juridical foundation of tradition, which cannot be denied without murdering the Fatherland.

A progress that were an extraordinary invention and did not rely upon tradition to transmit it would die at the very moment of its birth; and a tradition that added nothing to the inheritance received, indifferent to the demands of new needs, would be something dead and petrified, which would have to be set aside so as not to obstruct the channel of history through which the life of a nation flows. Therefore, while applauding progress—which consists only in successive perfection—it is necessary to feel as the Fatherland feels, to think as the Fatherland thinks, to love as the Fatherland loves; and for this it is necessary not to detach oneself from the chain of generations and to affirm those characteristics that no politician, nor any warrior, has fashioned, but which many generations and many centuries have shaped in collaboration with different races and peoples and diverse historical influences, which a single belief—serving as a golden clasp—joined together so as to seal our spirit with indelible marks.

Translation my own. Speech delivered in Santander, September 1916; published in Juan Vásquez de Mella, Textos de Doctrina Política, Preliminary Study, Selections and Notes by Rafael Gambra (Madrid, 1953), p.28.

Ponderable Quote from The Making of Italy by Patrick Keyes O’Clery

This passage, drawn from the reflections of Félix Dupanloup, preserved in The Making of Italy (1882) by Patrick Keyes O’Clery, records a firsthand Catholic witness to the cultural and spiritual devastation wrought by Italian unification. Through the fate of the Neapolitan Chartreuse, Dupanloup exposes how the rhetoric of “progress” masked the stripping away of worship, learning, beauty, and living religious presence—leaving structures intact but their soul extinguished.

"I saw at Naples," said Mgr. Dupanloup, "the celebrated Chartreuse, that admirable monastery which all Europe has visited on that beautiful mountain in front of Vesuvius and that glistening sea. Formerly a gentle and benevolent monk received the traveller, offered him refreshment, and showed him over the monastery with kindness and intelligence. Now a rough soldier receives you, and conducts you over the place, making ridiculous efforts to make his bad French understood. Instead of the magnificent library, which has been carried off and thrown no one knows where, they have placed there a shop of Venetian glass and painted crockery. Such is the progress of civilization! Of the thirty-two monks who were there, two only have been permitted to remain, who wander sadly in the solitude of their desecrated and desolate cloisters. No longer do the praises of God rise up to heaven in hymns and spiritual songs; the choir is deserted. No venerable white-robed monks remain to walk majestically under those magnificent porticoes, or to rise and pray during the splendour of those Neapolitan nights for the great and populous city sleeping at the foot of the holy mountain. Thus had religion, poetry, and art sanctified all the heights, all the valleys, and all the most beautiful sites of this lovely Italy. On all sides prayer and praise in uninterrupted accents rose up to the throne of God. In its solitary places, as in its cities, the soul of man found everywhere holy shelters for lives of love and disinterested charity, for tranquil study or for the devotion and self-abnegation of the apostolate. All these noble creations of Catholic faith on this Christian soil have disappeared or are disappearing. The walls are not yet all cast down, but their soul is gone. Life is extinct. They have left neither religion, nor poetry, nor art, nor truth—nothing!" (pp. 378-379)

Ponderable Quote from The Making of Italy by Patrick Keyes O’Clery

Written in 1892, this passage from The Making of Italy by Patrick Keyes O’Clery offers a contemporary Catholic critique of post-unification Italy, exposing the social and economic costs hidden beneath liberal slogans of “freedom.” O’Clery’s account captures how dispossession, militarization, taxation, and emigration defined the lived reality of Italians—especially in the South—under the new national regime.

"Besides making the soldiers live at free quarters on the people, another expedient was the more ordinary one of selling their lands and goods. Year after year these were thrown on the market in such numbers as to bring very low prices, while the unfortunate owners left the country:— year after year the tide of emigration from Italy has increased. But the Italian is told he is free. It is true he is still subject to arbitrary arrest, to imprisonment in which he waits wearily for trial, and to domiciliary visits; it is true that the press is liable to State prosecutions and suppression, and that "order" is guaranteed by an active gendarmerie, who are not over-scrupulous in their proceedings. The Italian will say he had all this under some at least of the old governments. But the Government of United Italy gives him more than this. He no longer sees the monastery looking down upon his village, but he has the secularist school, he can travel by railway (though it is true he sometimes looks in vain for a good road to it), he has the privilege of spending some years in barracks under the law of compulsory military service; instead of the various metallic coinages of the old States, he has one uniform currency of dirty paper, and as the value of this paper fluctuates, and it would be difficult to state prices both in coin and paper, the shopkeepers are saved the trouble by there being scarcely as much as a franc piece in circulation. Finally, the free Italian has the advantage of paying a tax on everything he touches or possesses. It is lamentable that in some parts of Italy all these advantages were not always appreciated as they should be. The Sicilians especially behaved badly. They had an unpleasant habit of shooting the tax-collector, and taking to the hills as brigands, where the bersaglieri hopelessly attempted to hunt them down." (pp. 366-367)

Ponderable Quote from Eso Que Llaman Estado by Rafael Gambra Ciudad

Don Rafael Gambra Ciudad (21 July 1920—13 January 2004)

Patriotism is a natural sentiment, deeply rooted in the human spirit, which springs, in a way, from the divine precept of honoring and loving one's parents, the most easily and spontaneously observed of all precepts. If it does not transgress its true nature, patriotism is also a fulfillment of the precept to love one's neighbor, that is, those around us, our fellow human beings; a way of feeling in communion with others, a sentiment opposed to individualism, which allows us to live within a collective tradition and to love the common faith that permeates and enlivens it. The natural affection for one's homeland is, in itself, an impulsive and, as it is born of love, unifying sentiment; in any case, an open sentiment that, unlike irrational and closed passions, cannot engender negative attitudes or hatred.

Translation my own. Excerpt from Eso Que Llaman Estado, Rafael Gambra Ciudad, Ediciones Montejurra, 1958, p.178

Ponderable Quote from Textos de Doctrina Política by Juan Vásquez de Mella (II)

Juan Vásquez de Mella y Fanjul
(8 June 1861—26 February 1928)

This is why every man, even without realizing it and against his will, is a traditionalist, because he begins by being an accumulation of tradition. Let him strip himself, if he can, of what he has received from his ancestors, and he will see that what remains is not the same person, but a mutilated being who craves tradition as the complement of his existence. The most audacious revolutionary, who, in the name of an idealistic theory, formed more by fantasy than by reason, sets out to demolish the social edifice and pulverize even the foundation stones to erect a new one, if, before beginning the demolition, he pauses to ask himself who he is; if passion does not blind him, he will hear a voice speaking to him from the walls he threatens and from the depths of his soul: You are a condensed tradition that seeks to commit suicide; you are the last descendant of a dynasty of ancestors as old as humankind; no lineage is more ancient than yours. If even one link were missing in that chain of thousands of years, you would not exist; you want to overthrow a lineage of traditions, and yet you are partly a product of them.

You want to destroy a tradition in the name of your autonomy, and you begin by denying previous autonomies and disregarding those that will follow; in inaugurating your work, you want a tradition to continue against past traditions and against future traditions, proclaiming the sole truth of your own. Looking back, you are a parricide; looking forward, a murderer; and looking at yourself, a madman who believes he is destroying others when he is killing himself.

Great men are those who know how to preserve, in an intangible society, the heritage of tradition; those who not only preserve it, but also correct it; or those who, not content with preserving and correcting it, perfect and augment it. And the most traditionalist is not the one who merely preserves, but the one who, in addition to preserving, corrects, who adds and increases, because he better follows the example of the founders, not limiting himself to maintaining the existing legacy, but doing what they did: producing and extending their works through progress. That is why the greatest men in history are the most traditionalist; that is, those who leave behind nothing but tradition. Only the common man, who does not create, transmits nothing of his own, and often, without even knowing them, he repudiates the legacies of others. In short, individual autonomy is the solitude of isolation, breaking the social fabric of generations and abruptly interrupting, if its disruptive force is strong enough, the continuity of a people's life. Tradition is the family gathered around the same hearth, where men and flames are replaced, the flames lasting longer than the men.

Translation my own. Excerpt from a speech delivered at the Parque de la Salud in Barcelona, May 17, 1903; published in Juan Vásquez de Mella, Textos de Doctrina Política, Preliminary Study, Selections and Notes by Rafael Gambra, Madrid, 1953, pp.27-28.

Ponderable Quote from Textos de Doctrina Política by Juan Vásquez de Mella (I)

Juan Vásquez de Mella y Fanjul
(8 June 1861—26 February 1928)

Man reasons and, therefore, invents, combines, transforms, that is, progresses, and transmits to others the achievements of his progress. The first invention was the first progress; and the first progress, when transmitted to others, became the first tradition that began. Tradition is the effect of progress; but since it communicates it, that is, preserves and propagates it, it is itself social progress. Individual progress does not become social unless tradition embraces it. It is the torch that sadly goes out at its first glimmer if tradition does not take it up and lift it so that it may pass from generation to generation, renewing in new environments the brilliance of its flame.

Tradition is hereditary progress, and progress, if it is not hereditary, is not social progress. A generation, if it is the heir of previous ones, which transmit to it through hereditary tradition what they have received, can accept it and do what good heirs do: increase and perfect it, to communicate it improved to their successors. It can also squander the inheritance or repudiate it. In this case, it bequeaths misery or ruin, and if it has built something, destroying what came before, it has no right to expect the next generation, disinherited of the ruined patrimony, to accept what it has created, and it will likely be left with neither. 

This is because Tradition, if it includes the right of ancestors to immortality and respect for their works, also implies the right of subsequent generations and centuries not to have the inheritance of their predecessors destroyed by a rebellious intermediate generation. The savage autonomy of making a clean sweep of everything that came before and subjecting societies to a series of annihilations and creations is a kind of madness that would consist of asserting the right of the wave over the river and the riverbed, when tradition is the right of the river over the wave that stirs its waters.

Translation my own. Excerpt from a speech delivered at the Parque de la Salud in Barcelona, May 17, 1903; published in Juan Vásquez de Mella, Textos de Doctrina Política, Preliminary Study, Selections and Notes by Rafael Gambra, Madrid, 1953, p.27.

A Lament for the Passing of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by Giacinto de' Sivo

Giacinto de' Sivo b. 29 November
1814—d. 19 November 1867

"I don’t say the old Regno was faultless, that it was a paradise. Wherever men govern each other there is always bound to be some discontent, whatever the country. Human good is relative – everything cannot be quite the same for everybody. Some nations are warlike, others consists of farmers, or of merchants, artists or manufacturers; what suits them is for them to decide. Only bad judges omit to weigh good against evil, since as many blessings as possible and as few ills are the real measure of a country’s prosperity. Political bias magnifies a government’s failings without taking the times and the circumstances into account, and crudely simplistic judgements obscure anything else worthwhile – as if perfection were attainable by human endeavours. Closing one’s eyes to all that is good makes everything else look bad and raises countless questions. Naples had fewer troops than France, fewer ships than London, less liberty than America, not so much of the fine arts as Rome, and less polish than Paris, though those are not the only things which make for happiness. Nonetheless, in relation to its size and status the country had enough of them to be second to none. Commerce, arts and letters, morality, religion, security, comfort, industry, civil rights, all these it had in plenty. People lived pleasantly and inexpensively, with an abundance of entertainment and amusements; anybody who avoided subversive politics enjoyed complete freedom and could do what he liked. In short the realm was the happiest in the world. Countless foreigners who came to it prospered so much that they settled. 

"During the last forty years the population increased by a quarter. There was a wealth of public buildings, of good roads, aqueducts, warehouses, free hospitals, bridges of stone, brick or iron, arsenals, arms factories, barracks, foundries, high schools, academies, universities, churches, royal palaces, convents, monasteries, harbours, docks, shipping, fortresses, prisons, orphanages, flourishing industries, scientific farming, prize herds, reclaimed marshes, reservoirs, rivers harnessed for irrigation, botanical gardens, pawnshops, corn exchanges, stock markets and finance houses, freeports, arts and crafts institutes, funded charities, savings banks, insurance agencies, shipping brokers, merchant banks, railways, electric and submarine telegraphs, and every other amenity of civilized life. As for crime, murder was rare. Paupers were few and hunger practically unknown, since there was provision by religious, private, municipal and government charities. There was no paper money, only gold and silver. Taxes were light and expenses small – one lived very well on a modest income. Work was plentiful, prices low and holidays many. There was respect for the gentry, for the law, for authority, safety and order for everyone everywhere. 

"Then Gladstone came and called the regime ‘the negation of God,’ fed with lies by the opposition who wanted to bring in their ‘God’, and ruined us…almost unbelievable calumnies were repeated in newspapers all over the world."

* Reprinted from Naples: A Travellers’ Companion selected and introduced by Desmond Seward, Atheneum, 1986 pp. 294-296. The excerpt is originally from Giacinto de' Sivo's Storia delle Due Sicilie dal 1847 al 1861 (Rome, 1863). 

Another Important Work Brought to Light

Once again, Gianandrea de Antonellis has performed a service to all who care about the long-suppressed, often-distorted, and routinely neglected history of the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. With La reazione d’Isernia del 1860 (Alta Terra di Lavoro), he brings to public attention a work whose documentary wealth and moral clarity cut straight through generations of Risorgimento myth-making.

Francesco Bax's La reazione d’Isernia del 1860, as introduced by de Antonellis, is a scholarly contribution of rare honesty. By assembling forgotten documents and refusing to bow before the dictates of “official history,” Bax reminds us that the past is not a fixed monument but a contested field in which truth demands courage. The volume, as presented here, should be read by anyone seeking to understand not only what happened in 1860, but how nations construct—and enforce—the stories they prefer to tell about themselves.

From the Foreword*:

It is a difficult undertaking to succeed in telling the truth when the regime imposes upon the writer its own version, punishing transgressors. Whether it is the Mancino Law (25 June 1993, no. 205 and subsequent expansions) in Italy, the Gayssot Law (13 July 1990) in France, or the ‘Law for Historical Memory’ (Law 52 of 26 December 2007, later evolved into the ‘Law on Democratic Memory,’ no. 20 of 19 October 2022), all these state impositions not only punish a mere opinion crime, but force historians to conform to what is politically established, even when documentary research may demonstrate the opposite of what the legislator has decreed.

In the nineteenth century, the idea of turning historiographic reconstruction—or, in the case of very recent events, chronicle writing—into a matter of law had not yet occurred to anyone. But since history is written by the victor, and in order for it to become common lore, to be instilled from the earliest age into the minds of children, it must be protected from any contamination—especially when such contamination tells a truth contrary to what must be the official truth.

Thus, during the Risorgimento, the fable of the popular and spontaneous uprising of the inhabitants of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies against the Bourbon government (naturally, inherently corrupt and hated by all) must not be altered by even the slightest criticism of the Piedmontese regime, of its stifling bureaucracy (far worse than the Bourbon one!), of its oppressive taxation, of the violence of the Garibaldian troops, and of the brutality of the Bersaglieri corps and the Piedmontese in general (whom Carlo Alianello, not by chance, called ‘the SS of 1860’). [1]

Preceded by an imposing propaganda “war machine” (fueled, it must be admitted, by many Neapolitan exiles from 1848), the Italian invasion crushed every attempt at criticism—however mild—of the new regime. One example is the journal La Tragicommedia, directed by Giacinto de’ Sivo, whose printing press was destroyed by red-shirted squadristi (at least metaphorically), [2] or the newspaper Il Trovatore, whose issues were often seized and whose editor, in February 1869, was subjected to a month of preventive arrest without any charge being filed against him. [3]

In this climate of cultural terrorism (and not only cultural), direct criticism was clearly impossible. One had to resort to irony (as in the case of the two publications mentioned, though with limited success, especially the first), or else adopt a “mask,” like the one apparently used by the clever author of the first of these memoirs […].

Notes

[1] Carlo Alianello, La conquista del Sud. Il Risorgimento nell’Italia meridionale, Rusconi, Milan 1972, ch. XIX, Giustizia è fatta, p. 261:

“Let us stop defining ourselves the ‘good guys’ of Europe; and let none of our northern brothers come complaining about Nazi massacres. The SS of 1860 and the years that followed were called, at least by the inhabitants of the former kingdom, the Piedmontese. So let us stop rolling our eyes, opening our mouths to howl, clenching our fists, and straining our necks to denounce the violence of others in this or other continents. Let ours suffice, to feel a single shiver of shame. We were capable of doing more—and worse.”

[2] Cf. Giacinto de’ Sivo, La Tragicommedia. L’unificazione dell’Italia vista dalla parte del Sud, ed. Francesco Maurizio Di Giovine and Gabriele Marzocco, Il Giglio, Naples 1996, second edition.

[3] Cf. Lo Trovatore carcerato, editorial of 16 March 1869.

Those interested can purchase Francesco Bax’s La reazione di Isernia del 1860. Nel racconto di tre testimoni (D’Amico, 2025) at www.damicoeditore.com

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 24th, Feast of San Giovanni della Croce

*Translations are my own

Ponderable Quote from “Carlismo per Napolitani” by Gianandrea de Antonellis

Bourbon and anti-Spanish?

Returning to Neapolitan and Bourbon writers such as Giacomo Marulli, one may ask: is it possible to stand against the Risorgimento (as nostalgic for bygone times) while at the same time accepting one of the main cultural weapons (not to say falsehoods) of that very Risorgimento? How was it possible not to recognize in anti-Spanish sentiment a tool used to cement the rather fragile hypothesis of an “Italian nation” that was to be unified from the Alps to Sicily in the name of the struggle against the foreigner? How could one be pro-Bourbon and anti-Spanish—especially when, at the time Marulli was composing his historical tales, the Bourbons, though no longer the Habsburgs of the Siglo de Oro and “imperial Naples,” sat upon the throne of Spain?

Certainly, some authors would justify the apparent paradox by considering the Bourbons to be more French than Spanish. Among them, as already mentioned, was above all Francisco Elías de Tejada, who even maintained that it was in fact a Spaniard—the Duke of Rivas—who helped to spread the “black legend” of Masaniello’s revolt as an anti-Spanish uprising.

This claim may seem surprising at first, but not overly so, if we consider that it is perfectly logical for a liberal to regard a traditionalist as his natural and principal enemy—even if of the same “nation.” Thus, despite sharing the same homeland, the liberal Spaniard views every traditionalist, monarchist, and Catholic Spaniard as an adversary (one need only think of the brutal violence of the Popular Front during the Second Republic). We know, after all, that the creation of an enemy “other than oneself” has always been—and always will be—a fundamental means of uniting one’s forces under a single banner and avoiding internal fragmentation.

It is therefore no surprise that, for the anti-religious progressives (as most Italian risorgimentali were), the traditionalist Spaniard became the perfect example of an external enemy—one to be blamed for every real or imagined backwardness of the Italian Peninsula, and against whom to unite the hatred of all, even of those who should have appreciated the religious values inherent in Spanishness—such as the Catholic, yet liberal, Manzoni.

The imperial Spains of the Siglo de Oro, by contrast, are Catholic (but intransigent), monarchic, and traditional—all traits that make them abhorrent to the liberal-progressive world.

Moreover, the exaltation of Charles of Bourbon as the one who had managed to revive the Kingdom from a supposed “ill-regarded government” marks the starting point for the spread of anti-Spanish propaganda (which was, in truth, as already said, anti-traditional and anti-Catholic) promoted by liberal culture from the Risorgimento onward. To attack the Church head-on could often prove, if not dangerous, counterproductive; to attack the “viceroyalty,” on the other hand, carried no such risks.

The outcome—still advancing—is the current historiography, especially popular but not exclusively so, which prefers to recycle the errors (or falsehoods) of past historiography rather than undertake deeper studies.

Perhaps the highest point—the culmination, given its source—of the propagation of the anti-Spanish narrative can be seen in the Proclamation of Francis II of the Two Sicilies upon leaving the capital. In it, the monarch (even if he did not write but merely signed the text) could find nothing better than to present himself as “a descendant of a dynasty which for 126 years reigned in these continental lands, after having saved them from the horrors of a long viceroyal government.”

This statement is a sign, probably less of historical ignorance than of outright subservience—whether through habituation or deliberate expedience—to the anti-traditional propaganda of which, paradoxically, Francis II himself was at that very moment the most illustrious victim.

Bourbon and anti-Spanish, then? No—worse: Bourbon and anti-Spanish.

* Translated from “Borbonico e antispagnolo?” in Carlismo per Napolitani, Gianandrea de Antonellis (Chieti: Solfanelli, 2022), pp. 82-85

Brief Excerpts from “Neapolitan Legends” by Matilde Serao (1856-1927)

The Barque of Dante, 1822, by Eugène Delacroix. Inspired by Dante's Inferno, the painting depicts Virgil, the sorcerer-poet, and Dante in the underworld

Well then, a moment ago, I erred in saying that we did not know Virgil the Magician. There is only one Virgil: the very one whom the fabulous chronicle [Cronaca di Partenope] sketches amid the shadows of magic is the poet himself. In truth, he possessed but one kind of magic—the grand and solemn poetry of his spirit. In the chronicle, it is the poet who appears.

The poet, with his long wanderings through that dreadful, beautiful, and tormented land that is the Phlegraean Fields, whence he dreamed of Avernus and the Styx; with his long wanderings through Campania Felix, where he acquired that deep love of nature—the love of the fertile fields stretching endlessly beneath the sun, of the green meadows where the ox with great eyes peacefully grazes, eyes in which the sky is reflected; the love of the dark, silent woods where the soul grows calm and drifts into repose; the love of the sunlit hills, where the free winds make whole fields of flowers sway; the love of the bird that sings and flies away, of the golden insect that hums, of the leaf carried off by the whirlwind, of the sturdy oak that nothing can shake: that profound love of nature which is the highest feeling of his poem, which is the magic by which he still enchants us, which is—with a word too modern, yet true—the nostalgia of his heart, the longing that makes him exclaim fortunator agricolas [blessed are the farmers], that gives to his descriptions so much color, so much light, so much life.

It is the poet who searches out and questions every hidden corner of nature; it is he who speaks to the stars trembling with rays in the summer nights; it is he who listens to the rhythm of the sea, as though it were the very measure by which his verse is scanned; it is the poet who knows the virtue of herbs, he who has discovered certain natural laws unknown to others; it is the civic poet who slays the beasts, drains the marshes, and raises in their place palaces and gardens; it is the poet who teaches the young the games that strengthen the body and soothe the soul; it is he—sublime, visionary—who ordains the omen of good or ill fortune; it is he who, like a powerful magnet, draws to himself love, reverence, and respect.

It is Virgil the poet. And nothing is known of his death. Like Parthenope, the woman, he vanishes. The poet does not die.

* Translations are my own

Fra’ Diavolo and the Defense of Cultural Memory: Correcting the Myths of Masaniello and Beyond

The Revolt of the Neapolitan Fisherman Tommaso Aniello, known as Masaniello (1622-1647) in Naples by Giuseppe Mazza (Museo della scienza di Milano)

A lu tiempo de chisti scunfuorte
Masaniello è bestuto da muorto.
Dint’’a nicchia ’na capa cu ll’ossa
nce ha lassato ’na coppola rossa.
Chesta coppola dà ’na voce,
quanno ’a famme nun è doce,
quann’’o popolo resta ’ncroce,
quanno pave ’stu tributo
pure ’a tassa ’ncopp’’o tavuto.
A lu tiempo de chisti scunfuorte
Masaniello è bestuto da muorto.
Masaniello s’’o credono muorto… [1]

Gianandrea de Antonellis’ article Fra’ Diavolo vive ancora nello spettacolo “Voci, suoni e canti di Briganti in Terra di Lavoro” (Fra’ Diavolo still lives on in the show “Voices, Sounds and Songs of Brigands in Terra di Lavoro”) is a compelling reflection on the politics of memory. More than a historical survey, it is a corrective act: dismantling persistent distortions surrounding figures such as Masaniello and Fra’ Diavolo, and restoring them to their rightful place in Southern Italy’s cultural consciousness.

De Antonellis begins with a meditation on the necessity of heroes.

“Blessed is the people that has no need of heroes." The pacifist and egalitarian intent of whoever wrote that sentence is beyond doubt, but it can also be read in another sense: blessed is the one who has no need of heroes—or of money, or of food, or of anything else—because he already has them, not because there is no need for them.

A people—any people—needs heroes. That is why we are naturally drawn, from childhood, to the stories of historical or literary heroes: Hector and Achilles, Horatius Cocles and Mucius Scaevola, Attilius Regulus and Pheidippides, Lancelot and Gawain… In the Kingdom of Naples we can list the Great Captain, Ettore Fieramosca, Masaniello of Sorrento, and his Amalfitan namesake, Cardinal Ruffo, the Prince of Canosa…

This sets the frame: a people bereft of heroes is a people deprived of memory. De Antonellis shows how cultural tradition continually seeks to supply such figures, though later generations may distort their meaning.

Particularly striking is the article’s correction of Masaniello’s legacy. Popularized as a revolutionary icon, Masaniello in fact led a revolt that was explicitly anti-revolutionary.

Masaniello—who has (wrongly) become a revolutionary symbol (in reality his revolt was fully anti-revolutionary, because it aimed to restore the previous taxation, the respect for Neapolitan law, and, above all, it burst forth with the cry "Long live the King of Spain! Death to bad government!")—is thus seen as the incarnation of the Volksgeist, the "spirit of the people," ready to rise up in case of abuses by the (mis)rulers of the day…

Here, de Antonellis restores Masaniello as a figure of popular legitimacy rather than revolutionary rupture, reminding us that loyalty and protest were not opposed but intertwined.

Bust of the hero Fra' Diavolo
sculpted by Raffaele Mollo (2019)

If Masaniello has been miscast as a revolutionary, Fra’ Diavolo has suffered the opposite fate: reduced from a colonel and duke into a bandit or comic rogue.

But if, thanks to a deft historiographical falsification that is hard to kill, Masaniello has become a (wrong, I repeat) symbol of the revolutionary spirit, it is far more difficult to turn into a progressive a champion of legitimism like Michele Arcangelo Pezza (1771–1806), a guerrilla leader who became a colonel of the Neapolitan army, created Duke of Cassano by Ferdinand IV, universally known by the nickname Fra’ Diavolo.

Unable to enlist him ideologically, liberal culture diminished him through Auber’s opéra-comique (1830) and later through Hollywood parody, turning a model of fidelity into a theatrical thief. De Antonellis sharply unmasks this falsification, showing Fra’ Diavolo as a hero of incorruptible loyalty who refused French offers of rank and money: “Because when one has sworn, one has sworn!”

The review culminates in Claudio Saltarelli’s theatrical revival, which gives Fra’ Diavolo his true voice. Through Raimondo Rotondi’s performance in the Laborino dialect, [2] the insurgent emerges not as an artifact of the past but as a living exemplar of courage and fidelity.

And so, on 11 November 1806, Colonel Michele Arcangelo Pezza died. And with him, the Duke of Cassano also died. But Fra’ Diavolo did not die. Because Fra’ Diavolo is always reborn, in each of us.

The sabre of Fra’ Diavolo becomes the counterpart to Masaniello’s red cap, a symbol that can rally every stratum of society—soldiers, nobles, clergy, and common people alike—around the perennial cause of resisting oppression.

De Antonellis’ essay, and Saltarelli’s theatrical work, are acts of cultural reclamation. They remind us that heroes must not be abandoned to distortion, whether by ideological misreading or by the trivializing force of entertainment.

The closing exhortation is the article’s most powerful contribution:

Put it in your heads: the story of Fra’ Diavolo is your story. Whoever wants to make you forget it does not wish you well.

By rehabilitating Masaniello and Fra’ Diavolo, de Antonellis does more than narrate history—he defends memory itself. His work is a reminder that cultural truth, once recovered, can still speak with urgency to the present.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, October 2nd, Feast of the Guardian Angels

* Translations are my own.

Notes

[1] Excerpt from the traditional Neapolitan ballad ‘O cunto ’e Masaniello, preserved in oral tradition and performed by the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare on the album Li sarracini adorano lu sole (EMI, 1974).

In the time of these hardships

Masaniello is dressed as a dead man.

Inside the niche, a skull with bones

has left a red cap there.

This cap gives a voice,

when hunger is not sweet,

when the people are left on the cross,

when it pays this tribute—

even the tax on the coffin.

In the time of these hardships

Masaniello is dressed as a dead man.

They think Masaniello is dead…

[2] The “Laborino dialect” is the local speech of the historical province of Terra di Lavoro (covering parts of northern Campania and southern Lazio), closely related to Neapolitan but marked by distinct regional features.