Feast of Beata Maddalena Caterina Morano

Beata Maddalena Caterina
Morano, ora pro nobis

March 26th is the Feast of Blessed Maddalena Caterina Morano (1847–1908), a Piedmontese religious sister of the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, devoted to the education and spiritual formation of young people. Born in Chieri, Piedmont, she became a teacher at a young age and later joined the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, inspired by the mission of Saint John Bosco.

Sent to Catania as a missionary, she founded schools, oratories, and houses for poor and abandoned girls, becoming a beloved mother and educator. Known for her charity, humility, and tireless dedication to youth, she played a key role in expanding the Salesian mission in Sicily.

She was beatified in 1994 by Pope John Paul II. Her life remains a model of joyful service and unwavering faith.

Evviva Beata Maddalena Caterina Morano!

In celebration of her feast, we offer this prayer:

Prayer to Blessed Maddalena Caterina Morano

Father, you planted in the heart of the virgin, Blessed Madeleine Morano, your word of truth, which prompted her to dedicate herself with constancy and wisdom to the education of the young: grant that through her intercession and following her example, we may be docile to the action of the Spirit in fulfilling with joy your loving design. We make our prayer through your Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

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.

Palm Sunday at the Oratory of St. Josaphat in Bayside, New York

Simple Pleasures: Pulcinella-Themed Gifts at the Italian American Emporium in Little Italy, New York

Traditional Neapolitan Pulcinella dressed in cotton with
hand-painted terracotta hands, feet, and heads

Found a couple of Pulcinella-themed gifts imported from Naples at the Italian American Emporium in Little Italy, New York. A classic character from the commedia dell'arte, dating back to 17th-century Naples, Pulcinella is often shown with a hooked nose and a black mask, symbolizing the Neapolitan spirit and representing the voice of the people and the complexity of the human soul.

Hand-painted terracotta Pulcinella mask

From the Museum to the Drawing Board

Young Ladies of the Village, 1851-52, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet

Lately, I have been thinking about taking life drawing and painting classes again. My recent experience with writing courses has made that decision easier. Friends have been encouraging me for some time, and I finally decided to give it a shot.

If I am honest, there is also a sense of guilt. I was given some natural ability, and my parents believed I would develop it further. Instead, I let many years pass without seriously pursuing it.

Summer, 1911, bronze, Aristide Maillol

Another reason comes from my frequent visits to galleries and museums. Standing before paintings and sculptures awakens something that never quite went away. It reminds me that art once played a much larger role in my life.

Now I am well past my prime. My hand is less steady, and my eyesight is not what it was. Still, it is never too late to try again.

I have no expectations of success, and no interest in popularity or money. The goal is simpler than that. I just want to create something—and in doing so, make myself a little happier.

As I prepare for my first class, I went back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for inspiration, revisiting the European sculpture court and a few of my favorite figure paintings, especially those by Camille Corot (1796–1875) and Gustave Courbet (1819–1877).

Corot’s figures are quiet, introspective, and poetic, shaped by soft light and muted color. Courbet’s, by contrast, are grounded, weighty, and direct, presenting ordinary people with an unidealized, almost confrontational realism.

While I am nowhere near their level, I look forward to putting pencil to paper and being surrounded by others who take creating seriously.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, March 24th, Feasts of San Gabriele Arcangelo and Sant’Aldemaro da Capua

(L) Alphonse Promayet (1822-1872), 1851, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet. (R) Louis Gueymard as Robert le Diable, 1857, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet

(L) Woman in a Riding Habit (L'Amazone), ca. 1855-59, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet. (R) Madame Auguste Cuoq (Mathilde Desportes, 1827-1910), ca. 1852-57, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet

Woman with a Parrot, 1866, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet

(L) The Woman in the Waves, 1868, oil on canvas, Gustave
Courbet. (R) The Source, 1862, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet

(L) Sibylle, ca. 1870, oil on canvas, Camille Corot. (R) A Woman
Reading, 1869 and 1879, oil on canvas, Camille Corot

Bacchante by the Sea, 1865, oil on wood, Camille Corot

Bacchante in a Landscape, 1865-70, oil on canvas, Camille Corot

Bather, 1782, marble, Jean Antoine Houdon

Andromeda and the Sea Monster, 1694, marble, Domenico Guidi

(L) Leda and the Swan, 1654, limestone, Michel Anguier. (R) The Nymph of Dampierre, marble, signed and dated 1763, Louis-Claude Vassé

Girl with Doves, ca. 1780, cast terracotta, Claude Michel, called Clodion

Festmesse anlässlich des Todestages

Finding The Calypso

An old black-and-white photograph of my father's fishing boat

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently began taking creative writing classes. One of our first exercises was deceptively simple: choose a random photograph and write whatever it inspired. No research. No overthinking. Just let the image guide you.

For the exercise, I chose an old black-and-white photograph of my father’s small fishing boat. I’ve only ever seen the picture; the boat itself was lost before I was born. My father said the boat sank during a bad storm in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. It had been moored to a pier, and if I remember correctly, he forgot to clear the clogged scuppers. The storm intensified, rainwater collected, and the boat slipped beneath the surface. He couldn’t afford to raise her.

My father was a skilled and passionate fisherman, but owning a boat was different from fishing off one. He bought it impulsively from a friend—cheap, enthusiastic, and short on experience.

The Cousteau Society logo, depicting the nymph Calypso with a dolphin

In my story, I named the boat The Calypso. I never knew its real name. But choosing that name sent me off on an unexpected tangent. “Calypso” immediately brought to mind one of my childhood heroes, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and his famous research vessel. Cousteau’s Calypso, in turn, was named after the sea nymph in Homer’s Odyssey, who detained Odysseus on her island, Ogygia.

That single invented name pulled a thread that unraveled an entire tapestry of memory.

Illustration from Jules Verne's Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870):
Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax
view Colapesce from the Nautilus 

A precocious and imaginative child, my interests rarely stayed in neat categories. Oceanography, art, mythology, fantasy, and science fiction blended seamlessly in my mind. I devoured Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo and the Nautilus felt as real to me as any historical figure. I was equally fascinated by Scylla and Charybdis, by Galatea and Pygmalion, by nymphs and nereids, by Atlantis rising and sinking in equal measure.

Even folklore crept in—tales like Colapesce, the boy who could live beneath the sea, holding up Sicily on his shoulders. Later, films like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou felt less like parody and more like a knowing wink to that same childhood wonder.

Looking back, I realize those interests weren’t separate at all. They were syncretic, overlapping currents feeding the same internal ocean. The photograph of my father’s lost boat became a portal. It wasn’t just a writing prompt; it was a convergence point between experience and imagination.

And with it, the desire to make things again.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, March 23rd, Feast of San Giuseppe Oriol

Annunciation at the Oratory of St. Josaphat in Bayside, New York

Gustave Moreau at the Met

Salome with the Head of John the Baptist,
oil on wood, ca. 1876, Gustave Moreau (1826-1898)

A couple of paintings by Gustave Moreau, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, recently brought back a vivid memory.

My copy of Between Epic and Dream

In 1999, the museum hosted a major exhibition, Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream. I had first encountered Moreau’s work years earlier in high school, and that exhibition was my first and only chance to see many of his paintings in person. Captivated by the strange, jewel-like worlds of the French Symbolist painter, I felt that his canvases were less like illustrations of myth and scripture than visions—rich with color, ornament, and mystery.

I remember walking slowly through the galleries, examining the intricate details and shimmering surfaces. I had brought a date with me that afternoon. While we lingered in front of the paintings, she seemed largely uninterested. The contrast between my fascination and her indifference became clear quickly, and by the time we left the museum, I had already decided there would be no dinner.

I didn’t take photographs that day—I don’t think they were allowed—but I did buy the exhibition catalog, which I still own. Looking at Moreau’s work again now, even in a small group of paintings, instantly brought that afternoon back. Some exhibitions leave a lasting impression. That one definitely did.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, March 22nd, Feast of Sant'Isidoro l'Agricoltore

(L) Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, oil on wood, ca. 1876. (R) Oedipus and the Sphinx, oil on canvas, 1864, Gustave Moreau (1826-1898)

Photo of the Week: Egyptian Granite Atlantes at the Round Hall Entrance, Vatican Museum

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

The Annunciation at Annunciation Parish Upper Church in Crestwood, New York

Literary Caprices: Vignettes and Other Indulgences

Bronze Sheela-na-Gig pendant

Since we marked the blog’s anniversary a bit early this year, I’m sharing something a little different.

I started taking creative writing classes to sharpen my craft and, as an exercise, wrote a series of vignettes and short stories. Several examples have appeared here over the past year.

More risqué than my usual posts, the following pieces aren’t ones I typically publish—but there’s no reason to let them gather dust. More personal in nature, they have little to do with faith or the Italian American community.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that I don’t come from a literary or journalistic background, nor am I an academic or historian. This project was born from a desire to create something more relatable and interesting—at least to me. Tired of the same old Italian American narratives being peddled by smug academics and ideologues, I set out, in my own modest way, to contribute to a cultural renewal.

While I continue that effort, what I truly want now is to write poetry, which I hold to be the highest form of expression. Unfortunately, though I may have the heart for it, the soul of a true poet remains elusive—as evidenced by the few examples I’ve shared here in the past. Still, I’ll keep forging ahead in search of my Muse.

Accused by more than a few critics of being overly pedantic, I’ve made a conscious effort lately to temper that tendency. With these posts, I’m also trying to broaden my range and explore different genres. Since taking the classes, I have especially enjoyed revisiting old family stories and memories. Thankfully, I’ve been blessed with a full and interesting life—so, God willing, there will be more to come.

I’ve enjoyed writing these pieces. I hope you enjoy reading them.

Shane MacGowan (1957-2023)

Sheela at the Gig

It was the late 90s, and the summer air over Randall’s Island smelled of beer and fried food. The Guinness Fleadh Festival was in full roar—fiddles, citterns, and bodhráns thumping as thousands gathered beneath a hazy New York sky to celebrate Irish music and culture.

When The Pogues took the stage beneath the big tent, the crowd surged forward as if pulled by gravity itself. And there was Shane MacGowan—leaning into the microphone, ragged, magnificent, impossibly alive.

Midway through the show, the crowd suddenly split open. People laughed and stumbled aside as a massive man lurched through the clearing, drenched in beer and sweat, wearing nothing but tighty whities and a grin.

“Kelly!” he bellowed again and again before disappearing back into the amused, swallowing sea of bodies.

Not long after, as if summoned by symmetry, a young woman staggered past in her bra and panties, copper hair wild, shouting, “Patrick!” Her search was no more successful. The crowd folded behind her, too, reclaiming both stories without resolution.

Between sets, near the vendors’ tents, my girlfriend was trying on rings. A silver brooch caught the light—a sheela-na-gig. [1] It was beautiful. I turned it over in my hand—its ancient, stark symbolism unmistakable.

Devotion felt more important at the time, so, unable to afford both, I bought her a claddagh ring. [2] Certain symbols—love and loyalty—meant permanence if you believed hard enough.

In hindsight, of course, the sheela-na-gig understood things better than I did.

Bioluminescent Walk of Shame

At a house party on Long Island Sound, my girlfriend and I slipped away to go skinny-dipping. The water was calm, the night clear, and the moon was bright and full. Frolicking at first, we drifted into each other’s arms beneath its light—until, mid-moment, the water around us flared to life in an eerie fluorescent green.

A swarm of jellyfish had bloomed all at once, lighting up the shallows in an aquatic glow. Panicked, we thrashed our way back to shore, making quite a scene and drawing the attention of the entire party. As we streaked across the beach toward our clothes and the house, the revelers rewarded our ignoble exit with a generous round of applause. We weren’t stung—but we were red with embarrassment.

Lady Godiva, J.J. Lefebvre (1890)

A Stolen Glance and Unwelcome Encore

Stepping outside the noisy bar to take a call from a friend, I happened to glance up and saw a beautiful young woman in the second-floor apartment opposite, fresh from the shower, calmly toweling her hair in all her naked glory. Oblivious to my presence, she stood there with an ease that was almost statuesque. I turned away out of respect and told my friend what I’d just witnessed. Laughing, he said I was a better man than he—he wouldn’t have looked away.

Tempted, I stole a second glance. To my dismay, the window now framed a naked man instead, presenting me with the full and decidedly unwelcome monty. I let out an involuntary groan and relayed the turn of events. My friend cackled and said, “That’s what you get for being a peeping Tom.” [3]

Velvet Nights: Before the Curtain Fell

There was a time—before I found my way back to the Church—when the nights belonged to chasing skirt, cocktails, and loud music. Not long ago, I had the chance to step back into that world for a bachelor party. I passed—and it made me think of those nights again.

My friends and I would sometimes start the night pregaming at cabarets or burlesque clubs where women in heels knew how to pivot on a dime and make you feel "special" for the length of a song. The air carried perfume, gin, and the faint electrical buzz of anticipation.

Yes, it was decadent. Lewd at times, but hardly the last days of Caligula, no matter how people like to dramatize it. It had rhythm. It had choreography. It had a wink—feather boas, pasties, and fans. Long gloves peeled away finger by finger. Stockings rolled down with ceremonial patience.

The women weren’t rushing toward nudity; they were conducting it. It felt closer to performance art. Back then, the tease was the point. Suggestion carried more voltage than exposure. 

(L) Beverly Powers in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). (R) Commissioned
artwork for From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) by Frank Frazetta

It lived somewhere between Beverly Powers’ playful striptease in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the feverish heat of Salma Hayek’s dance at the Titty Twister in From Dusk Till Dawn. Glamour and danger, laughter and sweat. A joke told with a hip, a threat delivered with a smile.

We didn’t go for politics. We didn’t pretend it was empowerment. We went because we were young men who wanted to see beautiful, naked women. There’s no halo to hang on that. No clever excuse. It was appetite.

After the show, we’d buy drinks and talk to the girls—discussing art, music, and onstage mishaps. Some were sharp, funny, and more disciplined than the men watching them. Others, not so much. The fantasy stayed on stage. Offstage, it was just people. Looking back now, I can see how easily a young man mistakes spectacle for meaning.

I don’t romanticize it. But neither do I pretend it was the end of civilization. It was a chapter—perfumed, reckless, artful in its own way. A theater of flesh and spotlight.

And like any theater, the curtain fell.

~ Giovanni di Napoli, March 21st, The Feasts of Bl. Maria Candida of the Eucharist and San Benedetto da Nursia

Notes
[1] The sheela-na-gig is often interpreted as a medieval warning against lust, its stark imagery reminding the faithful of sin’s moral and spiritual consequences. Others believe such figures served a more ancient apotropaic purpose—warding off evil, much like a gargoyle.
[2] The claddagh ring symbolizes love, loyalty, and friendship, expressing a commitment rooted in faithfulness and enduring devotion. 

[3] “Peeping Tom” originates from the medieval legend of Lady Godiva, in which a tailor named Tom secretly watched her ride naked through Coventry and was struck blind as punishment for his voyeurism.

A Lenten Retreat for the Jubilee Year of 2026 for the 800th Anniversary of the Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi in San Francisco, California

Celebrating the Abruzzese Poetry of Giuseppe Rosato on World Poetry Day

Giuseppe Rosato was born in Lanciano (prov. of Chieti) in 1932. He writes poetry in his native Abruzzese as well as Italian, and is also a writer, journalist, and literary critic. He has taught literature and worked in the cultural services of the RAI. Rosato has published several collections of verse in Italian, including L’acqua felice (Schwarz, 1957), La vergogna del mondo (Manni, 2003) and Le cose dell’assenza (Book, 2012), and several novels, including Vedere la neve (Carabba, 2011), La neve al cancelletto di partenza (Manni, 2008) and Piccolo dizionario di Babele (Stilo, 2009). In Abruzzese, he has published La cajola d’ore (CET, 1956), Ecche lu fredde (Riccitelli, 1986), Ugn’addó (Grafica Campioli, 1991), L’ùtema lune, pref. F. Loi (Mobydick, 2002), E mó stém’accuscì (I libri del Quartino, 2003), La ’ddòre de la neve, pref. G. Tesio (Interlinea, 2006), Lu scure che s’attònne (Raffaelli, 2009), La nève (Carabba, 2010), and È tempe (Raffaelli, 2013).

Tré ffile
(from La Cajola d’Ore)

Ce šta nu file chiare all’oridzónne
ma ’ccućì cchiare e lende, stammatine,
’ccućì bianghe ca pare se cunfónne
cele e mundagne, senza cchiù ccunfine.

Nu file de recorde, assópre a quelle,
se sturcine e s’areturcine, strétte
ana feneštra aperte, an’ora bbelle
de chi sa quande, ch’arenasce mbette.

Nu tétte an’atru tétte e an’atre štenne
nu fume lende che ss’unisce e pije
la vije de lu cele; e va tremenne
pecché è nu file de malincunije.

Three Threads
(from Cajola d’Ore [The Golden Cage])

There is a clear thread on the horizon
but so clear and slow, this morning
so white that the sky and mountains
seem to blend together, without boundaries.

A thread of memory, above that,
unwinds and rewinds, tied
to an open window, to a beautiful hour
of who knows when, that is reborn in the chest.

One roof to another roof and to another stretches
a slow smoke that unites and takes
the path to the sky; and it trembles
because it is a thread of melancholy.

Nu Spròvele de Nève
(Da La ’ddòre de la nève)

Nu spròvele de nève, che gné qquande
se vulé fà assendì t’à resbejate
a notta fónne (e tu gné ana chiamate
si’ ite a guardà ’rrete ala persiane),
vé a dàrete lu salute: è mmarze,
già té spuppà le piande – te vò dice –
e le sacce ca tuttanome penze
sole ca è pprimavére.
Ma tu, almene tu me sò penzate
ca me vulive dice addije, addije
pe na lùtema vote…
Nu spròvele de nève, c’à durate
sćì e nò mèdz’ore. I’, mbacce alu vétre,
lu core a pizze le sò vište a ìrsene.

A Dusting of Snow
(from La ’ddòre de la Nève [The Scent of the Snow])

A dusting of snow, which as if when
it wanted to make itself heard
woke you up in the dead of night
(and you, as if to a call,
went to look from behind the shutter),
It comes to greet you: it’s March,
the plants are already sprouting- it wants to tell you-
and I know everyone thinks
only that it is spring:
but you, at least I thought to myself
you wanted to say farewell, farewell
for one last time…
A dusting of snow, which lasted
for half an hour.
I, my face on the glass, watched
it go away with a broken heart.

* Translations by Cav. Charles Sant’Elia

The Origins of Rome’s Nasoni

After reading our post on the custom-made bronze nasoni we commissioned from Dante Mortet, our friend, Roman author and journalist Germana Valentini, shared this brief historical reflection on their origins—tracing how a practical urban solution became one of the enduring symbols of everyday life in Rome.

"There were two main reasons that led Mayor [Luigi] Pianciani to install public drinking fountains. The first was to allow people to freely drink potable water in the streets and squares of the city. The second was to provide an outlet for the water network, which at the time had very high pressure, thereby reducing it and preventing pipes from bursting.

"Between 1872 and 1874, the first twenty “nasoni” were installed. They were made of cast iron, about 120 cm tall, and weighed around 100 kg, though their shape was somewhat different from today’s. Water flowed continuously from three dragon heads placed at the top of a cylindrical structure, and then drained into the sewer system through a grate at street level.

"In the following years, the design of the fountains was modified: the three decorated spouts were replaced by a single smooth pipe, whose shape gave rise to the nickname “nasone” (“big nose”)."

Solemnity of the Annunciation at Transfiguration Church in New York City

Remembering HRH Prince Don Ferdinando Maria Andrea Alfonso Marco of Bourbon-Two Sicilies

28 May 1926 - 20 March 2008

In memory of His Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, late Grand Master of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George, we pray for the happy repose of his soul.

Let us pray:

O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of the brethren, relations, and benefactors of our Order, and especially the late Grand Master, Ferdinand, the remission of all their sins, that they may obtain the clemency which they have always desired by pious supplications, and rejoice in the heavenly homeland with the Saints and Thy elect. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Honoring San Giuseppe Together

San Giuseppe, ora pro nobis

Although we were not able to gather as a group for our annual Tavola di San Giuseppe this year, the spirit of the feast remained very much alive. Instead, we celebrated with our family, sharing a meal in line with tradition. While the setting was more intimate, the meaning endured—marked by gratitude and continued devotion to our glorious patron. Evviva San Giuseppe!

Caponata

Pasta con sarde with toasted breadcrumbs

Zeppole di San Giuseppe

Sfingi di San Giuseppe

Happy Spring!

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

The March or vernal equinox marks the beginning of spring, a time of rebirth and fertility. In celebration of the new season I would like to share a poem by the acclaimed Sicilian poet and 1959 Nobel Laureate Salvatore Quasimodo from The Night Fountain: Selected Early Poems translated by Marco Sonzogni and Gerald Sawe, Arc Publications, 2008, p. 26-27. 

The accompanying photo of Primavera (Spring), or Flora, the goddess of fertility and springtime, from the Villa Arianna, Stabiae, first century AD, was taken at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli in 2010.

Wild Flowers

Blood clots hanging over torn green velvet:
the wounds of the fields!
Breathing in the sweet air, spring has broken
the veins of its swollen breasts.
Wind gusts with eager lips: a kiss!
Blood-red wild flowers float on threadlike
and foamless waves.

Primule

Grumi pensili di sangue sul lacero velluto verdognolo.
Oh le ferite dei prati!
La primavera respirando voluttuosamente l'aria soave, ha rotte
le vene del suo seno turgido.
Un fiotto di vento con le labbra avide; un bacio! E le
primule sanguigne galleggiano su l'onde filamentose e
senza spuma.

Passion Sunday at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Jersey City, New Jersey

Shroud of Turin Lecture at St. Joseph School Auditorium in Raritan, New Jersey

Foreclosing on Faith Film Screening and Conference with Filmmaker Viktoria Somogyi and Canon Law Expert Attorney Brody Hale

Sanfedismo and the Neapolitan Counter-Revolution, 1799 — Part IV

The Destruction of the Tree of Liberty in the Largo di Palazzo
by Saverio della Gatta (active from 1777 to 1827)

See, Part I, Part II, Part III

Restoration, Aftermath, and the Memory of Sanfedismo

By early June 1799, the Parthenopean Republic existed largely in name. French forces had withdrawn to the north, provincial administrations had collapsed, and Cardinal Ruffo’s army stood at the gates of Naples. On June 13th, the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua, Ruffo and his forces, having heard Mass and invoked the saint’s intercession, entered the city. Intense street fighting followed as loyalist and Sanfedisti forces engaged the remaining republican defenders. By day’s end, the Bourbon banner once again flew over Naples.

The surviving leaders of the Republic withdrew to fortified positions and entered into negotiations. In a gesture of Christian clemency, Ruffo offered generous terms: safe conduct and preservation of life in exchange for peaceful surrender. These terms were accepted—and then violated. Upon the arrival of Admiral Horatio Nelson with the British fleet, the agreed-upon capitulations were set aside. Acting independently of Ruffo and in defiance of his guarantees—whether on his own initiative or with tacit royal encouragement remains debated—Nelson authorized arrests and executions, most notably that of Francesco Caracciolo, Duke of Brienza. This decision remains a source of enduring controversy. Ruffo himself protested vigorously and withdrew from Naples in disgust. Modern scholarship has increasingly recognized that the ensuing reprisals cannot be laid at his feet.

The republic had lasted scarcely five months. Its legacy, however, was disproportionate to its duration. Governed by a narrow elite and sustained by foreign arms, it left behind deep divisions, widespread devastation, and a body count that even French officers acknowledged with unease. The people they claimed to liberate neither consented to their rule nor mourned its end.

The moral narrative constructed after the fact inverted these realities. Counter-revolutionary violence was magnified—no calumny was too great to lay at its feet—while republican and French atrocities were minimized, contextualized, or ignored. General Thiébault recorded that more than sixty thousand civilians were killed during the five-month occupation—excluding combatants. [21] This staggering figure also clarifies the environment in which reprisals occurred. A society subjected to systematic looting, sacrilege, massacre, and coercive rule does not emerge morally neutral. That later commentators expressed shock at retribution while excusing the conditions that produced it reflects less a concern for justice than a preference for ideological symmetry.

The subsequent French return in 1806 further exposes the limits of revolutionary apologetics. Critics have pointed to the absence of a comparable Santa Fede uprising as evidence that support for the Bourbons had evaporated. The argument is unconvincing. The political context had changed. This time, Napoleon did not impose a Godless republic but installed monarchs—first his brother Joseph Bonaparte, then his brother-in-law Joachim Murat—thereby blurring the symbolic clarity that had unified resistance in 1799. More decisively, the methods of occupation intensified. Mass executions, village burnings, and collective punishment were employed to suppress resistance before it could coalesce.

Modern historians have documented this with precision. In a 2009 issue of War in History, historian Philip G. Dwyer offers a stark account of the period’s brutality, focusing in particular on the French conquest of Southern Italy. In his article “‘It Still Makes Me Shudder’: Memories of Massacres and Atrocities during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,” he describes towns set ablaze, civilians shot or bayoneted as they fled, prisoners executed afterward, and entire communities erased as political warnings:

“In southern Italy, where in the summer of 1806 the French army killed thousands of locals and devastated more than 25 villages in an attempt to wipe out all armed resistance. Lauria, a town of around 9000 inhabitants was perhaps the worst hit, possibly as an act of revenge for what had been done to a French officer sent to parlay with the town: his body was supposedly cut into pieces, put in a basket and sent back with French prisoners. During the fighting the town was set on fire so that those attempting to escape the flames were simply shot or bayoneted, without distinction of age or sex, as they emerged from their houses. The lower part of the town was reduced to a smoldering ruin. Masséna and his officers unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the troops from pillaging and burning. Some 734 men, women and children were killed in this way (according to the French). One Neapolitan colonel estimated that there were more than 3000 dead and wounded. A further 341 people taken prisoner were shot and hanged over the following days.” [22]

Writing again in 2013 in the Journal of Genocide Research, in an article titled “Violence and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: massacre, conquest and the imperial enterprise,” Professor Dwyer observes:

“The French presence in Calabria, led to a diminution in population of 21,000 people, out of an estimated population of a little more than 800,000. That is about four percent of the population.” [23]

“Massacres were, therefore, not only responses to local acts of ‘brigandage’; they were political statements. In July 1806, Napoleon directed his brother Joseph, King of Naples, ‘to execute at least 600 rebels and to ‘pillage five or six of the villages that have behaved the worst’. Joseph carried out the order, hanging and shooting 600 ‘brigands’ over an eight-day period.” [24]

Under such conditions, the absence of mass uprising signifies not acquiescence but the successful application of terror.

Following Murat’s defeat by Austrian forces in 1815 during the Neapolitan War, he fled to France. Naples then sued for peace and signed the Treaty of Casalanza, effectively restoring Ferdinand IV, a settlement later reaffirmed by the Congress of Vienna. Uniting his realms, Ferdinand assumed the title Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies—a decision that, in this author’s view, proved a fatal error. By unifying Naples and Sicily, he effectively trampled on Sicily’s historic rights—though that is a discussion for another day.

In an ill-fated attempt to replicate Ruffo’s triumph, the swashbuckling Murat sailed for Calabria, consumed by delusions of grandeur. Instead of a hero’s welcome, the pretender and his small band of would-be reconquerors were met with sticks and stones, treated less as liberators than as common brigands. One woman—whose sons had been murdered by Murat’s heavy-handed aide-de-camp, General Charles Antoine Manhès, charged with the extermination of so-called “ruffians”—struck him in the face, crying, “You speak of liberty, and you had four of my sons shot!” [25] Like the terrorist Bandiera brothers in 1844 and the subversive Carlo Pisacane in 1857, Murat and his men were captured, beaten, and executed by the very people they claimed to “liberate.”

To this day, the tragic events of the Neapolitan Revolution and Napoleonic invasions remain vivid in popular imagination. Annual Requiem Masses for Cardinal Ruffo are held in his native Calabria. The effigy of General Championnet is burned during Carnival in Frosinone. Murat’s execution is reenacted in Pizzo Calabro. In Fara Filiorum Petri, the miraculous deliverance of the town is commemorated by lighting the Farche, traditional ritual bonfires recalling the apparition of St. Anthony the Abbot and the rout of French troops. [26] These rituals are not relics of folklore alone; they are acts of memory that resist official narratives.

Later movements of resistance, particularly brigantaggio after 1860, were not direct continuations of Sanfedismo but shared its underlying rejection of imposed political order. Where the Sanfedisti represented organized counter-revolution under legitimate authority, brigand resistance was fragmented and often chaotic. Both, however, expressed opposition to conquest disguised as national unification. Following the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the Kingdom of Sardinia, Southern Italy experienced systematic dispossession, economic extraction, and repression comparable in structure—if not in rhetoric—to earlier occupations. The region’s subsequent impoverishment was not accidental but the result of deliberate policies.

The collapse of prosperity, combined with widespread violence against Southern Italians, produced a trauma whose multigenerational consequences have been largely ignored. This neglect extends not only to the material devastation inflicted upon the South, but also to the absence of any serious inquiry into the residual psychological effects of conquest, occupation, internal colonization, and historical erasure—effects that produced a durable alienation and continue to shape Southern Italian society into the present.

Sanfedismo was not an irrational spasm at the margins of history, but a coherent popular counter-revolution that exposed the gap between revolutionary mythology and political reality. The Parthenopean Republic did not fall because the people failed to understand “liberty,” but because they understood domination when they encountered it: foreign bayonets, confiscations, sacrilege, and ideological rule enforced by violence. Ruffo’s achievement was not merely military but political and spiritual. He mobilized legitimacy—altar, throne, local loyalties—against an elite project sustained by occupation. That later historiography elevated collaborators into martyrs while branding the victors as barbarians follows a familiar pattern: revolution demands, even after defeat, that its opponents be recast as criminals so that conquest can masquerade as emancipation. To remember the Sanfedisti is to recover a suppressed truth about how societies actually resist: not through slogans, but through faith, memory, and the stubborn will to remain themselves.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli

Footnotes:
[21] Thiébault, Paul Charles François, Mémoires du Général Baron Thiébault, Paris, 1894, II, p. 324-325.
[22] Dwyer, Philip G., "'It Still Makes Me Shudder': Memories of Massacres and Atrocities during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars," War in History, Vol. 16, No. 4, November 2009, pp. 381-405, Sage Publications, Inc. p.387.
[23] Dwyer, Philip G., “Violence and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: massacre, conquest and the imperial enterprise,” Journal of Genocide Research, 2013, Vol. 15, No. 2, (pp.117-131) p.119.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Atteridge, A.H., Marshal Murat: King of Naples, Worley Publications, 1992
[26] According to local tradition, on January 16, 1799, a detachment of French soldiers emerged from the forest and advanced on the unsuspecting townsfolk, who were celebrating the vigil of St. Anthony the Abbot. Amid the chaos, the Faresi desperately called upon their glorious patron, who suddenly appeared before the French host clad in full Bourbon military regalia. Commanding the invaders to halt their advance, the soldiers foolishly ignored the saint’s warning and continued forward. In response, the trees erupted into blazing infernos, driving the enemy away. In some more fantastical versions, the trees are said to have sprung to life, in mythical Tolkienesque fashion, to rout the Grande Armée.

Sanfedismo and the Neapolitan Counter-Revolution, 1799 — Part III

Cardinal Fabrizio Dionigi Ruffo leading the Sanfedisti
under the protection of St. Anthony of Padua

See, Part I, Part II, Part IV

The Reconquest: Ruffo, Altamura, and the Fall of the Republic

Following the flight of the Neapolitan court to Palermo, Cardinal Fabrizio Dionigi Ruffo was appointed Vicar General of the mainland kingdom and tasked with restoring royal authority.

Born on September 16, 1744, in San Lucido, Calabria, into a prominent noble family of the Kingdom of Naples, Ruffo was educated in Rome. He entered the service of the Papal States and in 1785 was appointed Treasurer General of the Apostolic Camera under Pope Pius VI, overseeing papal finances during a period of increasing fiscal and political strain. Although he was made a cardinal in 1791, he was never ordained a priest—something not uncommon in the eighteenth century.

Ruffo was not a professional soldier and lacked formal military training. Before 1799, his experience was primarily administrative and political rather than martial. After withdrawing to Calabria during the upheavals that followed the French invasion of the Papal States, he later joined the royal court in Sicily.

Acting under royal mandate, Ruffo crossed from Sicily to Calabria in early February 1799 with only a small following—sources vary, citing seven or eight companions—and a single banner bearing the royal arms on one side and the Holy Cross on the other. He landed at Punta del Mezzo near Reggio Calabria on February 8th.

From the outset, Ruffo’s campaign combined political legitimacy, religious authority, and practical organization. Issuing a pastoral call to clergy and magistrates, he ordered the preaching of a crusade to defend faith, restore lawful sovereignty, and expel foreign rule. The response was rapid. Men from across Calabria—peasants, artisans, former soldiers of the disbanded Bourbon army, and local nobility—joined his ranks. Within weeks, the Armata della Santa Fede had grown into a force estimated at between twenty and twenty-five thousand men.

The expansion of Ruffo’s army reflected the weakness of republican control outside Naples. With French forces withdrawing northward and the Parthenopean Republic increasingly isolated, the countryside slipped beyond Jacobin authority. Armed bands, some disciplined and others irregular, rose throughout the provinces. While criminal elements inevitably exploited the disorder, the predominant motivation was defensive and political: the protection of local communities and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.

As Ruffo advanced northward, resistance to his army was uneven. In many towns, republican administrations collapsed without serious fighting. In others, particularly those where Jacobin influence was strongest, resistance was determined and violent. The most significant of these confrontations occurred at Altamura in Puglia.

Altamura had established itself as a Jacobin stronghold and refused repeated offers of clemency. Ruffo proposed a pardon on condition that the inhabitants renounce the republic and submit to royal authority. Encouraged by republican leaders and falsely assured that French reinforcements were imminent, the city rejected these terms. During negotiations for the release of two captured engineers, an envoy sent by Ruffo failed to return. The prisoners were likewise not released.

When Ruffo attacked, the fighting lasted a full day. By nightfall, the defenders had exhausted their ammunition. Seeking to limit further bloodshed, Ruffo deliberately left one side of the city unblocked, allowing civilians and defenders to flee under the cover of darkness, reportedly through Porta Bari. Before abandoning the city, however, the “gentle patriots,” truly embracing the beau idéal of the French Revolution, carried out a final act of violence and left the victors a grisly parting gift: forty-eight captured royalists, including Ruffo’s envoy, were bound, shot, and sealed inside a church crypt. When Ruffo’s forces entered Altamura without further resistance, they discovered the victims dead or dying. Only three survived. [15]

Subsequent historiography has often portrayed the sack of Altamura as an unprovoked massacre. Contemporary research complicates this narrative. Francesco M. de Robertis, writing in Archivio Storico Pugliese, concluded that the events commonly described as a “Jacobin holocaust” or “massacre of the innocents” were, in fact, reprisals following the murder of Bourbon loyalists. De Robertis further noted that the number of royalists killed in the convent of San Francesco may have reached 150. [16]

Even Vincenzo Cuoco, a sympathetic chronicler of the Neapolitan Republic, acknowledged that Ruffo had exercised “apparent moderation in all his victories” prior to Altamura. Cuoco nonetheless framed the sack of the city as an act of calculated terror, attributing it to the defenders’ “noble obstinacy” rather than to the preceding murders. His account conspicuously avoids specifying whose blood was shed, while transforming executed collaborators into martyrs of liberty. [17]

This selective framing persists in modern commemorations. In Altamura, a monument erected in 1899 honors the “martyrs” of the revolution without reference to the Bourbon loyalists who were murdered. Artistic representations, such as Michele Cammarano’s Massacre of Altamura (1881), similarly present a one-sided depiction of the events, reinforcing the revolutionary narrative while excluding its victims.

Comparable scrutiny is rarely applied to republican violence elsewhere. French General Guillaume Philibert Duhesme burned and sacked towns across Avellino, Salerno, and Basilicata, imposing heavy financial exactions and leaving widespread ruin. General Jean-Baptiste Broussier ordered the destruction of Andria and Trani, where contemporary accounts estimate thousands of deaths. Ettore Carafa, commander of the Republican Legion, openly boasted of the devastation inflicted. Harold Acton observed that republican forces were often more methodical than Ruffo’s irregulars, leaving anarchy and ruin behind them. [18]

Acton further noted the inconsistency of Jacobin moral outrage. Republican correspondents justified the burning of cities and execution of clergy as legitimate measures against rebellion. General Macdonald’s orders prescribed death for clergy deemed responsible for resistance and authorized the destruction of entire districts. These policies were implemented without hesitation, yet later commentators reserved their indignation almost exclusively for the actions of the Sanfedisti. [19]

By contrast, Acton concluded that Ruffo himself acted with restraint amid extreme circumstances. Though some may have joined his army seeking plunder, Ruffo consistently advocated moderation and amnesty. He converted wavering republicans, restrained excess where possible, and urged clemency upon the crown—recommendations the king and queen would later reject. [20]

By early June, the Parthenopean Republic was in terminal decline. French protection had evaporated, provincial resistance had overwhelmed republican administrations, and Ruffo’s army stood poised outside Naples, its advance reinforced by the arrival of foreign allies, including a Russo-Ottoman expeditionary force led by the French émigré Cavalier Antoine Micheroux. The reconquest was no longer a question of possibility, but of timing.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli

Footnotes:
[15] Acton, Harold, The Bourbons of Naples, Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1957.
[16] de Robertis, Francesco M., “Altamura 1799: puro olocausto giacobino o strage a ritorsione di precedente strage?” pp. 7-10, Archivio Storico Pugliese, LV 2002, Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, Bari, Palazzo dell’Ateneo.
[17] Cuoco, Vincenzo, Historical Essay on the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, University of Toronto Press, 2014.
[18] Acton, Harold, The Bourbons of Naples, Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1957.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.