July 30, 2022

Around the Web: What is a Brigand?

Brigand Way (Photo courtesy of Calabria: the Other Italy)
Reprinted from Calabria: the Other Italy

The word “brigand” – brigante in Italian – is heard quite a bit with reference to Southern Italy, and I have noticed a certain confusion, particularly amongst English speakers, as to its significance. It’s an important term in understanding the Italian South and the history of Italy, so I thought I’d contribute my two cents to the question, “What is a brigand?” in an Italian context.


Brigand in the early 1800s
Brigand: In the Dictionary

Taking the dictionary definition, there’s no doubt, the term has strong negative connotations. Bandit, robber, outlaw, marauder and highwayman are common synonyms for brigand, which is often used to describe a member of a band that ambushes and robs people in forests and mountains.


Brigandry or brigandage – brigantaggio in Italian – is classically the form of the word that depicts the criminal activity carried out by brigands.


So why then, when in Southern Italy, do you hear the word brigante pronounced with a quasi-reverence?


Brigand - Brigante: Historic Use


Words have a way of changing their meaning. In the Middle Ages, an Italian brigante was a type of foot soldier, an adventurous member of a mercenary unit. The term’s negative characteristics apparently came through the French, who used it during the Napoleonic period to disparage Italian revolts to their occupation. Thus, brigante referred not only to bandits in the pure sense of the word but also included those with social and political motivations. Continue reading

Ponderable Quotes from ‘A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry’ by Geoffrey De Charny

“Thus it should appear to everyone that the best pastime of all is to be often in good company, far from unworthy men and from unworthy activities from which no good can come.” (P.63)


“You should be generous in giving where the gift will be best used and as careful as you can that you let your enemies have nothing that is yours. Love and serve your friends, hate and harm your enemies, relax with your friends, exert yourself with all your strength against your foes. You should plan your enterprises cautiously and you should carry them out boldly.” (P.70)


“Trusting too much in his daring can make a man lose his life foolishly; but when one is engaged on an armed enterprise, one should dread vile cowardice more than death.” (P.71)


“Be sure that you do not despise poor men or those lesser in rank than you, for there are many poor men who are of greater worth than the rich.” (P.71)


“Refrain from remonstrating with fools, for you will be wasting your time, and they will hate you for it.” (P.71)


“Above all refrain from enriching yourself at others' expense, especially from the limited resources of the poor, for unsullied poverty is worth more than corrupt wealth.” (P.71-72)


“From arrogance grow many branches from which many evils come, so many as may cause the loss of soul and body, honor and wealth.” (P.73)


“What you do not know, you should ask with due humility to be taught it.” (P.73)

* Reprinted from A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry by Geoffrey De Charny (1306-1356), translated by Elspeth Kennedy, 2005, University of Pennsylvania Press

July 29, 2022

X Edition of the Pio Alferano Prize Honors Men and Women From the World of Culture with Patroness HRH Princess Beatrice di Borbone Delle Due Sicilie

HRH Princess Beatrice di Borbone viewing the ongoing exhibit Imitanda: The myth of arceology and the dream of the Grand Tour in the Di Giaimo collection
Photo courtesy of Corriere Borbonico
This year in a splendid area of the San Costabile di Castellabate Castle in the Cilento region of Campania the ceremony for the Premio Pio Alferano 2022 was held, organized by Constantinian Knight Cav. Prof. Vittorio Sgarbi, with HRH Beatrice di Borbone delle Due Sicilie, Grand Prefect of the Constantinian Order, as Patroness. 

Princess Beatrice was accompanied by the Delegate of Naples and Campania of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George (SMOCSG), Donna Federica De Gregorio Cattaneo Dei Principi di Sant'Elia. The Prize, sponsored by the Royal House of Bourbon Two Sicilies, was attended again this year by many personalities such as the Mayor of Castellabate and illustrious guests such as the noted journalists Marcello Veneziani and Cesara Buonamici; the Director of the Pompei Excavations, Gabriel Zuchtriegel; the Abbot of Montevergine, Don Riccardo Guariglia; the singer songwriter Enrico Ruggeri; the author of “Osho”, Federico Palmaroli; and the actor Bruno Torrisi.

Mostre Edizione 2022, from 3 July to 30 September 2022,
Castello Dell'Abate - Castellabate (SA)
Princess Beatrice, accompanied by Don Leopoldo De Gregorio Cattaneo and by Dr. Gerardo di Meo, then inaugurated the magnificent exhibit of Bourbon era furnishings from the private collection of the antiquarian Saverio di Giaimo, and "Sgarbeide" a photographic collection covering the numerous trips of Vittorio Sgarbi in Italy and abroad through the work of Nino Ippolito, his press officer, both on view in the Castello dell'Abate through 30 September 2022.

The Fondazione Pio Alferano inspired by the values of the General of the Carabinieri Pio Alferano, seeks to promote knowledge of artistic and cultural heritage through exhibitions and soirées such as this to honor figures who distinguish themselves during the year for their activities promoting culture.  

Source: www.fondazionepioalferano.it

Presentation of the First Comprehensive Book on Cav. Dr. Pietro Ramaglia in Ripabottoni

Presentation of the first comprehensive book on Cav. Dr. Pietro Ramaglia, Knight Grand Cross of the Sacred Military Order of Saint George, by Prof. Gabriella Paduano and Father Gabriele Tamilia sponsored by the Abruzzo and Molise Delegation of the SMOSCG (Photo courtesy of Prof. Gabriella Paduano)
In the splendid location of the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Ripabottoni, Campobasso the master work of the noted architect Ferdinando Sanfelice, and a national landmark, on the 22 July the presentation of the new book, Pietro Ramaglia (1802-1875). Il medico molisano fondatore della Moderna Scuola Medica Napoletana was held.  This was the first presentation of the book fresh from the presses, in the town where Dr. Ramaglia was born and in the church where he was baptized.
In an atmosphere which speaks of the glorious Neapolitan 18th Century, surrounded by the works of Francesco Solimena and his Molisan pupil Paolo Gamba, 220 years after his birth the authors Mons. Gabriele Tamilia and Dr. Gabriella Paduano have brought back from oblivion the great clinician, credited with founding modern medicine in Europe and who was the personal doctor of King Ferdinando II of Bourbon of the Two Sicilies. Cav. Prof. Avv. Franco Ciufo, Delegate for Abruzzo and Molise of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, to which Ramaglia belonged and which has sponsored the publication of the book, presided over the ceremony.

After the greetings of the Mayor of Ripabottoni, Orazio Civetta, the authors discussed their findings with a distinguished panel which included Mons. Gianfranco De Luca, Bishop of the Dioceses of Termoli- Larino; Prof. Italo Testa, former head physician of the Cardarelli Hospital of Campobasso, a well known connoisseur of the history of Molisan and Neapolitan medicine; Dr. Carolina De Vincenzo, representative of the Order of Physicians of Campobasso; Mons. Claudio Palumbo, Bishop of the Dioceses of Trivento; and Cav. Prof. Avv. Franco Ciufo contextualized Dr. Ramaglia in the legendary golden age in the southern Kingdom which produced so many scientists in all fields, especially in medicine and treatment assistance with the establishment of many well known hospitals.


On a sweltering July afternoon, a church was filled with people to remember that young man from Ripabottoni, a small town in Molise, who set out to Naples, where he was the head clinician of the Royal Incurabili Hospital, a scientist, founder of a School of Medicine, physician of the Royal House and personal physician to King Ferdinando II who made him Cavaliere di Grazia del Sacro Militare Ordine Costantiniano di San Giorgio, but above all, a pious and generous man.


Source: www.ordinecostantinianoabruzzomolise.it

July 26, 2022

Celebrating the Feast of San Giacomo il Maggiore

We began our modest celebration with prayers, toasts
and a little Abadía da Cova, a distinctive Galician herb liquor
Unable to get out of work in time to attend Mass Monday evening, my workmates and I instead celebrated the Feast of San Giacomo il Maggiore at a local Galician tapas bar. In addition to being widely venerated across Southern Italy, Santiago Matamoros (as he is called in Spain) is also the patron saint of the old Kingdom of Galicia and de las Españas. Evviva San Giacomo!
Tortilla de Betanzos
Pulpo á Feira
Chorizos al Infierno
Churrasco con chimichurri
Estrella Galicia '1906' Reserva ESP
Estrella Galicia

July 25, 2022

Photo of the Week: Beata Vergine del Rosario nel Duomo di Ravello

Blessed Virgin of the Rosary in the Cathedral of Ravello
Photo by New York Scugnizzo

July 17, 2022

Rest in Peace Dom Luiz de Orleans e Bragança, Prince Imperial & Head of the Imperial House of Brazil

6 June 1938 — 15 July 2022
In memory of His Imperial and Royal Highness Augustus Dom Luiz Gastão Maria José Pio Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Orleans e Bragança, Head of the Imperial House of Brazil, Prince of Brazil, Prince of Orleans and Bragança, legitimate depositary of the rights to the Throne and the Crown of Brazil – de jure, Constitutional Emperor and Perpetual Defender of Brazil, we pray for the happy repose of his soul.

Eternal rest grant unto His Royal Highness, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

July 5, 2022

Announcing the Revival of the San Leucio Society of Paterson, New Jersey

San Leucio di Brindisi, ora pro nobis
Dear friends, it is with great pleasure that we write to inform you about the highly anticipated revival of the San Leucio Society of Paterson, New Jersey. The nascent group’s initial priorities are reestablishing Masses and processions in honor of San Leucio di Brindisi, the glorious patron of San Salvatore Telesino, Benevento. These celebrations will be held annually on January 11 and the last Sunday in July. Evviva San Leucio!

Anyone interested in this worthwhile venture can find the San Leucio Society in Paterson, New Jersey, at the following web addresses:


Website - https://saintleuciosociety.org/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/saintleuciosociety

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/saint_leucio_society/

Email - saint_leucio_society@protonmail.com

July 4, 2022

A Prayer for Highland Park, Illinois

Mary Immaculate, ora pro nobis
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the horrific mass shooting at the Fourth of July Parade in Highland Park, Illinois and their families. May St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, St. Joseph and Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception watch over you.

Prayer for the victims


Loving God, welcome into your arms the victims of violence and terrorism. Comfort their families and all who grieve for them. Help us in our fear and uncertainty, and bless us with the knowledge that we are secure in your love. Strengthen all those who work for peace, and may the peace the world cannot give reign in our hearts. Amen.

Reflections on “Italian American” Identity

Guest Op-Ed


Submitted by Erasmo Russo

While an ever growing literature on “Italian American” identity is coming out of American academia, several key issues have been largely ignored. From a Neobourbon/Two Sicilies perspective the terms “Italo-americano” and “Italian American” have become common shorthand for a vague set of markers, but which at the end of the day, at best fall short of any meaningful descriptiveness of the ethnos and at worst are mere constructs of Americans for American purposes. For purposes of this article the term “Italian American” will be used according to general American usage to include broadly all people and cultures of the Italian peninsula and islands transplanted to the United States. “Italian” will be used in the political and legal sense of “citizens of the modern nation of Italy."

The Italian American community has fallen prey to the worst aspects of American “pick me” political culture. As is well known, for generations Italians living in the Americas identified themselves within the diaspora communities based on their region or city of origin and only vis-à-vis outsiders would merely employ the term “Italian.”  “Italians” are a vastly diverse people based on regional languages and traditions and unique local history. Most foreigners are even acutely aware of this. In the United States the lumping of distinct peoples into one monolithic group was done formally by authorities and by the outside American society for simplicity sake to create voting blocks and groups to be proselytized to and to be more readily assimilated. From the left, “Italians” were a mass of radical workers and syndicalists, and from the right they were a mass of conservative middle class and upwardly mobile voters. Political and sociological ideologies as well as the diversity of the immigrant diaspora communities allowed “Italians” to be all of these simultaneously. Businessmen and men of letters, and activists radicals and laborers at the same time. The net effect of constant recruitment efforts from the left and from the right has led to many Italian Americans seeking prominence via America's “pick me” culture. Most notably in American academia, which is dominated by the left, Italian Americans often vie to please Anglo American liberals by loyal lockstep displays of ideology, while in politics and economics many vie to please Anglo American leadership by party support and voting loyalty. By this mechanism, Italian Americans, like all ethnic groups in the American empire, clamor to show loyalty to the dominant elite du jour, insisting they are “not like the rest” of their own group but are “just like good Americans.” Some often may even go so far as to claim they alone represent and typify their group’s best traits in this “pick me” posture. They then actively turn to their own group and demand conformity to their articulated positions and demean and denounce members of their own group who dare challenge their narrative.

As second and third generation members of the diaspora further assimilate and a new wave of younger better educated Italian immigrants moves to the United States, many public debates have challenged individuals and organizations who succumb to “pick me” culture and who proclaim they and their views are “Italian American” culture or ways. The pages of newspapers, scholarly journals and websites are replete with these debates. Among some of the most amusing pieces to appear in the last twenty years are self-proclaimed “Italian American” pundits from both the right and left who are now writing articles and books on how Italy should be as Americanized as possible and consume the same foreign products, be ashamed of its native culture, abandon religious practices, and should even become a nation of immigration and accept more outside groups in order to show its true progress as a NATO and G8 nation. This is clear proof that an “Italian American” identity has everything to do with the American landscape and nothing to do with the expression of italianità.


This American “pick me” phenomenon is a social and economic dead end for the diaspora community. In fact, it is a suicidal move for the ethnos. The American invention and manipulation of hyphenated identities is a modern notion which seeks to reconcile the foreign immigrant with the power of the centralizing nation state. In the 19th and 20th century as old world traditional empires which comfortably and organically were able to include many peoples faded away, the ethno state or nation state based on evolving checklists of authenticity became de rigueur. Groups such as those coming from modern nations like Italy are clearly unique and identifiably different than the Anglo dominant culture of the United States and its peculiar mixture of Protestant-Enlightenment limited oligarchic structure. Hyphenization culture is the easiest way to assimilate such ethnic groups. The foreign ethnos can keep its food and even religion, but must speak English and support local political parties, and indeed the host country’s entire socio-economic system and hierarchy. The creation of this third midway identity- “Italian American” leads to something that is neither American nor Italian. In these conditions the diaspora community is faced with a few options: become generic American, become Italian (in a generic modern Italian state way/pan Italianism), or retain their true original regional identity. For the Neobourbon and Two Sicilies minded people this latter regional identity represents the true path. Firstly, this is the most sincere and “authentic” choice, the easiest path, to continue living one’s life according to one’s true history and cultural ways. Secondly, adopting an ersatz pan-Italian mythology (based on Risorgimento and Fascist era propaganda) is often flatly incoherent and ultimately rings false. Finally, becoming “American” presents a vast amount of challenges, in that “American” often is reduced to either the deracinated absence of identity, or to obedience to Enlightenment ideas as filtered through English Freemasonry and Protestant settler theology from the British Empire predicated on divide and conquer strategies of governance.

T
his scenario plays out concretely every year in ongoing debates over whether the Genovese explorer Christopher Columbus should or should not be used as a symbolic rallying point for italianità in America; to what extent one may be “Italian” or “Italian American” if one is an Italian Jew or an Italian Waldensian and not a Catholic; or is it more or less authentic to be a Democrat or a Republican while living in the U.S.; and what position should the “Italian American community” take with respect to alliances with other ethnic groups.  The Neobourbon response is simply that all of these debates are fruitless and moot because they are all internal American discussions at the end of the day and serve only American political and economic purposes. They do not provide an outlet or pathway for our people to live out our history or culture. The vast majority of the diaspora community has its roots in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ranging from Sicily and Malta to Campania, Abruzzo, Molise, Calabria, Basilicata, and Puglia. Therefore, being Duosiciliano or keeping one’s regional identity, as stated above, proves to be the most coherent choice. Similarly, this majority identity includes the unique way Catholicism is practiced by these regional groups. The Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and later the Two Sicilies, all having deep and lasting linguistic, cultural and economic ties to the Spanish Empire, it is logical that the Duosiciliano community finds its natural allies in Hispanic cultures and nations. These prongs of the Duosiciliano identity are in no way a limitation. On the contrary, they represent an authentic and organic point of departure to approach the world and all other groups. It is patently false and obtuse to attempt to construct an “Italian American” identity predicated upon blind loyalty to changing American political landscapes, atheism, globalism, or antiquated leyenda negra propaganda that specifically denigrates the Latin Mediterranean Catholic ethos.

S
o what should one do? The young especially should visit the Patria, i.e. their true Patria, the regions their ancestors truly came from, not a pseudo Grand Tour organized for outsiders which barely showcases Rome, Florence and Venice. They should learn both standard Italian and their regional language. They should study their regions’ history. They should practice their faith. They should conduct their daily lives as our people do and always did. They should learn the real reasons why their families emigrated and continue to emigrate. They should then share their knowledge and enthusiasm for their culture with the world as living exemplars. Lastly, they should remove themselves from the false dialectic of American nomenclature and discourse. When one is part of an ethnos one has no need of invented political or ideological identities. We must ask ourselves, who is served by us assuming a hyphenated identity? Is a hyphenated identity truly such a badge of honor and “success”? Be free Duosiciliani, not colonial “pick me” lackeys.

July 3, 2022

New Book: Mal trattati... E partirono p' 'e tterre assaje luntane

New title that may be of interest to our readers. Available at www.ibs.it

• Mal trattati... E partirono p' 'e tterre assaje luntane by Annamaria Pisapia


Publisher: Magenes

Publication Date: June 22, 2022

Paperback: 17,10 €

Language: Italian

Pages: 220


Read description


Click here to see more books


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July 1, 2022

Happy National U.S. Postage Stamp Day!

Luxembourg, 2000, postes A, Maximum card — 500th Anniversary

of the Birth of Emperor Charles V/Charles Quint, Cancelled

In celebration of National U.S. Postage Stamp Day, I thought it would be fun to share a few favorites from my Luxembourg collection. 

Luxembourg, 2000, postes A, 500th Anniversary

of the Birth of Emperor Charles V/Charles Quint

Luxembourg, 2008, First Day Issue — 700th Anniversary

of Henry VII, King of the Romans, Cancelled

Detail of Luxembourg, 2008, First Day Issue — 700th

Anniversary of Henry VII, King of the Romans, Cancelled