Dante Alighieri Society

[Jenny Lake]

Founded in 1889 by Torquato C. Giannini, the Dante Alighieri Society exists to spread Italian culture and language to the world. Namesake Dante was a medieval "poet" and member of the "physicians and apothecaries" guild. He wrote "The Divine Comedy" what people call Dante's Inferno.
http://dante-alighieri.org.au/English/D ... io2005.pdf

The son of T.C. Giannini, Gabriello M. Giannini, lived in New York and had a business office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza --G.M. Giannini and Co. The New York chapter of DAS was across the Hudson in Jersey City, situated in the neighborhood near Liberty State Park and railroad access to the harbor. Giannini's company (eventually) bought patent rights for radioactive isotope techniques from Enrico Fermi and shopped them around to U.S. companies in the mid-1930s.
These guys were all expecting big bucks from nuclear pharmaceuticals. They had a success with Sharp and Dome (Merck) through the agency of Philips fabriken in Amsterdam, and other companies in Canada (unnamed). Fermi's patents in 1936 include element "93" --plutonium-- which had been known about since '34. Supposedly, this is several years before a team at UCBerkeley "discovered" it and its potential to fuel an Abomb.
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/4611/1/I ... essman.pdf

The Jersey Dante Club looks like an ordinary "social club" --I've probably seen too many movies, so I'm guessing NOT ordinary. The DAS events calendar are full of celebration for the life&work of Guiseppe Mazzini.
Any info?

[Jenny Lake]

Here's a link to the Society--
www.dantealighierisociety.org

The "invisible Businessman" artcle is all about the Italians contribution to "nuclear trade" during the Fascist regime. It's a source document for the series article posted in Historical Events, Fathers of the Bomb.

My hunch is these guys are the Mob --not a stretch-- who had some specialized ops. It doesn't ring true to me that money from gambling, prostitution, liquor and drugs was enough. Where did they get their power? Did they have the jump on nuclear technology?

[sullivan]

The DAS events calendar are full of celebration for the life&work of Guiseppe Mazzini.
Any info?

To tie in with another thread here, Webster Tarpley has written some interesting material on Mazzini, his 'racial themepark' view of the world and his influence on fascism.

[Jenny Lake]

Synopsis of http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/4611/1/I ... essman.pdf in progress, mostly quoting directly:

The Italian Fascist regime rose to power in 1922. The crash of 1929 "focused its attention: scientific and technological innovation would be a tool to overcome the state of economic depression...(footnote; The 1929 world economic crisis enhanced state intervention [and] made the state a central actor in the national economy)

"The CNR (Center for National Research) operated as an organization directly controlled by the chief of government, Benito Mussolini. Guglielmo Marconi became its director...New legislation on patents was enacted [with] new standards of patent examination. (footnote 15, example: "The Italian mechanical engineer Antonio Meucci invented the first telephone...the patent was assigned to Alexander Graham Bell.)

"Between 1922 and 1929 industrial production in Italy grew by almost 75%...Exports almost doubled, led by automobiles and chemicals, fuels, and other substitutes for raw materials. Marconi was made chairman of a government committee --Scarce Raw Materials and Substitutes. [Enrico] Fermi's patron, Orso Maria Corbino (physicist), was a staunch supporter of the new Fascist economic deal and one of Marconi's allies. Corbino was on the board of directors of many Italian companies including Italian General Electric and the Edison Company of Milan...he was a senator, Minister of Public Education, and Minister of Economics and Industry. Corbino had more than enough clout to establish a chair for Fermi.

In 1926, following [his studies], Fermi returned to Rome to take up his professorship...Helped by his former fellow student in Pisa, Franco Rasetti, Fermi attracted students from the faculty of engineering who were fascinated by Fermi's lectures...These included sons of entrepreneurs such as Emilio Segre... The fathers of other group members such as Ettore Majorana**, Edouardo Amaldi, and Giovanni Gentile were distinguished academics. Fermi's group reflected a social network uniting various strands of the new middle class....

In 1927, Fermi was made Chairman of the CNR physics committee. In March of 1929, a report of the political police indicated that Volpi di Misurati, the most influential businessman in Italy, had sponsored Fermi's appointment...Fermi became a member of the board at the National Broadcasting Company...director of research laboratories...several consultancies in large Italian firms...[and] was well placed to develop nuclear physics.

Still, however, Italy suffered a "poor national output of patents. Only 33% of 10,000 parents filed in Italy were taken out by Italian inventors: multinationals accounted for the rest. [Guilo] Provenzal urged the filing of Italian patents abroad and in 1935 [the] National Fascist Association of Inventors...came into existence. But in that year, sanctions brought by the League of Nations after Italy's colonial adventure in Ethiopia shook the national economy by depriving it of an international market and essential imported resources.

Marconi...vainly asked Mussolini for more funding. When Marconi suddenly died (of a chest infection)...science policy was already failing. Research took off when (Ettore) Majorana suggested using neutrons as projectiles in nuclear reactions. [With his team] Fermi bombarded fourteen elements with a neutron source of beryllium and radon and obtained important new radio-activities. [Year 1934] They published the results in LRS and Nature (British mag founded by T.H. Huxley), thereby attracting the interest of other competing groups in Europe...Segre and Amaldi brought Rutherford (at Cambridge, Cavendish Lab) a comprehensive account [that] was published by the Royal Society.

The following autumn, Fermi made some experiments with blocks of paraffin and came to understand that substances rich in hydrogen or other light elements could slow down neutrons and increase their efficiency in nuclear tranformations.**** This time Fermi...sent no communication to Nature or Rutherford for the Royal Society. The new reluctance followed Corbino's directives [who] insisted that the group file a patent application before publishing further.

[Synopsis to be continued...]
** Ettore Majorana was considered one of Italy's brightest stars of science. Fermi called him a true genius. Majorana disappeared not long after his essential input to this project --presumed dead, but never found after a boating incident.
****For fission to occur, neutrons must be sufficiently "slow" to collide with protons. The number of protons in an element determines "atomic weight" and gives it a "chemical" rank in the periodic table --uranium at "92" protons is the heaviest natural element.

[MikeWB]

From browsing few of their sites, they're some of the most boring people ever. Majority of leadership are language profs and specifically Italian lang profs. Alighieri might have been 'interesting' but these guys are low on scale of importance.

[Jenny Lake]

by MikeWB on Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:24 am

From browsing few of their sites, they're some of the most boring people ever. Majority of leadership are language profs and specifically Italian lang profs. Alighieri might have been 'interesting' but these guys are low on scale of importance.  
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It may seem odd, but it's just the very "boring" look that has my attention. Why would these guys need a club in Jersey City by the railroad tracks near the harbor? How come there's no founding date for the Jersey chapter? When Black Tom Island was blown up in 1916, there was an unprecedented amount of railcars run through this neighborhood. I don't know what G.M. Giannini & Co. did for business, but he was a physicist/chemist so far as I know with connections in Cuba--to the "Havana importer" named in the 'whiterose' document, Isbert Adam. I don't have a handle on these guys yet, but I've got a hunch.

Isbert Adam shows up in the correspondence of Leo Szilard and Lewis Strauss (Kuhn Loeb, USNavy, Rockefeller Trust, AEC chief), along with his "relative" Arno Brasch. The young Brasch was working on high-voltage plasma experiments back in the 20s --early lasers! One of Brasch's test places was the observatory at Monte Generoso on the Swiss-Italian border. He was doing very dangerous work attempting to "redirect" lightning and later he used his generating equipment, "capacitron", to irradiate food (Brasch died at age 53 on May 3, 1963 in New York City). Szilard was doing high energy work too --on the record here for filing patents on other scientists' work and selling them out of the country to people like Isbert Adam. Giannini was fully inside on this nuclear trade in patents, and he sold to businesses in Canada-- to whom? Rothschilds owned huge landholdings of uranium there --I've read 80,000 sq. miles.

....still think it's boring?

[MikeWB]

Hmm... this connection is extremely remote and from what I've seen from checking out their sites, these people are ITALIAN, not Jewish.!

I'm classifying this under nonsense.

[Jenny Lake]

okay, Mike-- you're skepticism is making me laugh. Lots of Italian Jews. Fermi married one. His closest associate, Emilio Segre, came from a wealthy Jewish family. The families Montefiore and Del Monte-- all Jewish. Sephardic Jews bear distictively Latin names, coming from Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It's not different from finding German, Russian, Swedish, and English names in long lines of Jewish families.

[sullivan]

okay, Mike-- you're skepticism is making me laugh. Lots of Italian Jews. Fermi married one. His closest associate, Emilio Segre, came from a wealthy Jewish family. The families Montefiore and Del Monte-- all Jewish. Sephardic Jews bear distictively Latin names, coming from Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It's not different from finding German, Russian, Swedish, and English names in long lines of Jewish families.

Yes, the Montefiore and Del Monte are both Italian Jewish families, but these names are not Latin, but Italian. Italian Jewish families, like those elsewhere in Europe, generally tended to take their assumed names from placenames. Note they that Italian names often refer to placenames,such as 'Da Vinci' or literally 'from Vinci', but these names include the preposition 'from'. Del Monte is one of the rare exceptions amongst the Jewish assumed surnames.

[Jenny Lake]

Here's another article by Turchetti illuminating the role of Gabriello Giannini and his company, G.M. Giannini and Co.
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/4609/1/Slow_Neutrons.pdf

There were seriously hard feelings among scientists and the Manhattan Project administration (later AEC) for renegging on patent deals. Giannini became a defense contractor  during the war making jet engines for Lockheed while he was still and continuing in the role of a broker for Fermi's patents. He upped the ante with the U.S. government from $900,000 to $10,000,000 at a time when one of the Italian scientists "defected" to the USSR.

Catch the last paragraph about the "socializing" of the AEC.

[Jenny Lake]

The Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana
http://astro.physics.sc.edu/~physmgr/CI ... jorana.pdf

[Jenny Lake]

According to "Dante Alighieri" listed by the Jewish Virtual Library the rabbis loved Dante and quoted him often, one reason being that in Dante's Hell there were no Jews --http://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0005_0_04876.html

An Italian website for the DAS lists Giosue Carducci as a founder --tucked into the page for the Palermo chapter. Here's Carducci's profile from the wikipedia-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giosu%C3%A8_Carducci
(wiki quote) "His political views were consistently opposed to Christianity...the Catholic Church in particular...[which he called] the real and unaltering enemies of Italy"

Carducci was the first Italian to win a Nobel in 1906 for literary achievement. His most controversial act was to publish the poem "Hymn to Satan". He's squarely identified as a Satanist freemason here--www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/RMCarducci.html

[Jenny Lake]

Giosue Carducci: 19th Century Poet, Statesman and Satanist
by R. Merciless, Copyright 2000 C.E.
 
 
In 1906 the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Giosue Carducci of Italy for extraordinary lifelong accomplishment in the field of poetry. He was a Satanist.
By the time he won the Nobel, Carducci had firmly established himself as one of the world's most well-known and influential literary figures with a large body of distinguished work and a long career of artistic achievement, political activism and religious agitation.  He had published several volumes of poetry attracting worldwide critical acclaim. In  addition, his prose writings including literary criticism, biographies, speeches and essays filled some 20 volumes. [1] He had also been elected a Senator of Italy and voted a very substantial life-long pension. The Nobel prize was merely the capstone of a long, brilliant and highly successful life. [2]

Carducci's credentials as a Satanist include not only his worldly successes and overt opposition to Christianity but his writing of the highly controversial poem, Inno a Satana or "Hymn to Satan." In writing, publicly reciting and twice publishing this astounding poem, he stepped firmly beyond his paganism and even his anti-clericalism into the realm of  modern Satanism by embracing the mythic character of Satan as an exemplary role model and heroic archetypal symbol. Indeed, it is this taking of Satan as an exemplar symbol that is the defining characteristic of the Modern Satanist. [3]

Of course, living as he did in 19th century Italy, Carducci probably would not have  referred to himself as a "Satanist." The linking of that term to the Satanic character would have to wait almost exactly 100 more years when Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan, defined it for the modern world in The Satanic Bible in 1969. [4]   Nonetheless, Carducci's explicit and life-long adoption of Satan as archetypically symbolic of his personal philosophy which he called "radical rationalism," unequivocally places the Nobel laureate firmly within the Satanic tradition, even if less daring biographers have preferred the term "pagan" to describe him.

Carducci felt great affinity for the classical world and wrote several internationally  acclaimed homages to ancient Roman gods and the long lost, Christian-obliterated happy pagan lifestyle of old. But unlike Baudelair, Leopardi, Levi, Rimbaud, Huysmans and other 19th century literary figures who penned somewhat Satanic works, Carducci did not die on his knees whimpering and begging forgiveness from a previously scorned Christian god.[5] Instead, he died an unabashed enemy of the Pope and ended his days as defiantly anti-clerical as he ever was.

Carducci was born near Verana, Italy in 1835. From an early age, guided by his  politically active physician father, he learned Latin and studied the Iliad and classical works of Homer. He also energetically read the works of the famous Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi (1798 - 1837) and was perhaps somewhat inspired towards Inno a Satana by reading the despondent Leopardi's unfinished Ad Ahrimane ("To Ahriman,") an at times depressing prayer addressed to the Prince of Darkness and acknowledging His rule of the Earth. [6]

By 1860, at age 25, he had been appointed to the chair in Italian Literature at Bologna University where he would spend a long, brilliant career of over 40 years. He was also actively involved in the political upheavals reshaping Italy at the time.

It was a time of revolution in Italy as Republicans, inspired and assisted by revolutionary France, struggled to throw off the old tyrannical Hapsburg order and unite and democratize Italy's many separate feudal states and kingdoms. By the mid-1860s, after years of civil war and political struggle most of the Italian peninsula had been united under a constitutional republican monarchy. However, one of the last vestiges of tyrannical domination on the Italian peninsula was the continued direct political control of Rome and surrounding regions by the Pope. With the military backing of Hapsburg Austria, the Pope held direct secular political power over the Italian provinces known as the Papal States. Naturally, the anti-clerical freethinkers among the Republicans found tyrannical rule by the papacy to be as odious as, or even worse than, that by unelected, hereditary nobles. Both impeded human progress by locking power in the hands of those who were long on hereditary or ecclesiastical connections and short on any actual demonstrated merit or ability.

Throughout Italy, 19th century Masonic lodges were centers of organizing revolutionary activities ranging from anti-royalist propaganda to underground guerrilla attacks. Carducci was, of course, a member as were nearly all the other significant leaders of the Italian revolutionary movement. Other prominent masons of the time included influential political philosopher Giuseppe Mazinni, head of the successful Young Italy movement, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, the internationally famous Italian  revolutionary war hero.

In contrast to the overtly theistic and even Christian flavor to be found among German and Anglo-American Freemasons at the time, French and Italian masonry both adopted a much more pan-religious, nearly overtly atheist tone. Like Masons everywhere, they too used the term "Grand Architect of the Universe" to refer to the "creator."  For many of the more sharp-witted Italian and French Masons, however, it had a very different meaning.  Applauding its own expansive view of the Mason's "Grand Architect", the official newsletter of the Italian lodge noted,
 

"The formula of the Grand Architect, which is reproached to Masonry as ambiguous and absurd, is the most large-minded and righteous affirmation of the immense principle of existence and may represent as well the (revolutionary) God of Mazzini as the Satan of Giosue Carducci (in his celebrated Hymn to Satan); God, as the fountain of love, not of hatred; Satan, as the genius of the good, not of the bad." [7]

This Masonic newsletter reference to Carducci in the same breath as Mazzini, one of the republic's most effective and inspiring revolutionary thinkers and leaders, clearly demonstrates Carducci's great prominence and influence at the time. Moreover, the sort of religious outlook quoted above made all of Italian masonry an explicit enemy of the Vatican. On March 18, 1902, Pope Leo XIII issued "Annum ingressi," a pronouncement against Italian Freemasonry. Of the above quotation, The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 disapprovingly sniffed, "In both interpretations it is in reality the principle of Revolution that is adored by Italian Masonry."

The deep anti-church sentiment of French masons—most likely shared in full by their Italian brothers—is amply reflected in the following quote from a 20 September, 1902 speech by Senator Delpech, president of the Grand Orient de France:
 

"The triumph of the Galilean has lasted twenty centuries. But now he dies in his turn. The mysterious voice, announcing (to Julian the Apostate) the death of Pan, today announces the death of the impostor God who promised an era of justice and peace to those who believe in him. The illusion has lasted a long time. The mendacious God is now disappearing in his turn; he passes away to join in the dust of ages the divinities of  India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, who saw so many creatures prostrate before their altars. Bro. Masons, we rejoice to state that we are not without our share in this overthrow of the false prophets. The Romish Church, founded on the Galilean myth, began to decay rapidly from the very day on which the Masonic Association was established."[8]

Carducci, the firebrand masonic freethinker and revolutionary, wrote Inno a Satana in September 1863, at the age of 28 and three years into his teaching chair at the University of Bologna. It was composed as a brindisi or toast which he recited at a dinner party among friends. [9] Appropriately for reciting with a raised glass of chianti, the poet titled it "A Satana" or "To Satan." It was then published in 1865 under the title Inno a Satana or "Hymn to Satan" but should probably have more accurately carried the title of "A Toast to Satan." The tone, rhyme, meter and content all bear this out clearly and well-reflect the origination of the work. It is not difficult to imagine a table full of Carducci's freethinking revolutionary pals hoisting their glasses at the conclusion of the recitation, shouting "Here, here," and quaffing a glass of Italy's finest produce. In vino veritas, indeed!

Modern literary scholars have recognized Inno a Satana as an in-your-face manifesto of Carducci's most deeply felt convictions and cherished beliefs, which he occasionally modified but never  abandoned over the course of his long life. For Carducci, like for LaVey, Satan symbolically represents all of those wonderful things which the hierarchy of orthodox Christianity opposes and attempts to suppress: beauty in nature and art, sensual pleasures, confidence in man's ability to transform the physical world, freedom of thought and expression, unprejudiced intellectual inquiry,  economic and social progress.

It is unfortunate that an English-reading person of the 21st century is not able fully to grasp the emotional power the poem invoked in 19th century Italy with its clever rhyming language and allusions to well-known recent and historical events and figures. Still, it can serve as an inspiration to others. Indeed, a glimmer of the impact can be discerned by seeing it (and even trying to read it aloud) in its original Italian. All readers should try this.

[To open a window showing Inno a Satana in Italian and English, click here.]

Readers will note that Carducci's poem includes 50 stanzas of 4 lines each where the second and fourth are rhymed.  This meter seems to resonate something like a a train's locomotive steaming along under full power and this is a metaphor which the poet brings around the bend into full view at the close of the poem.

It was published a second time in 1869 in Bologna's radical newspaper, Il Popolo, as a provocation timed to coincide with the 20th Vatican Ecumenical Council, a time when revolutionary fervor directed against the papacy was running high as republicans were pressing both politically and militarily for an end of the Vatican's domination over the so-called papal states under the military support of the hated Austrian Hapsburgs.

The second publication was meant to be a provocation and provocative it was. Reaction to the reappearance of the controversial poem was quite strong. Even some of Carducci's fellow republicans publicly distanced themselves from embracing Satan along with the poet even if they were opposed to the Pope. Moderate newspapers excoriated Carducci for potentially harming the cause with such blasphemous and inflammatory writings.

But, in fact, the republican cause was triumphant. In 1870, Hapsburg Austrian military support for the Pope collapsed and republican troops marched into Rome, ending by force the papacy's secular political control of the region. It is quite likely that, as they took the city,  at least some of those troops had Inno a Satana fresh in their minds.

But, as moderate republicans had feared, the Vatican seized upon the poem as a propaganda item. As Carducci introduced Satan as a worthy and honorable symbol of the republican opposition to the tyrannical earthly power of the papacy, the Vatican's propaganda to its faithful sheep painted the revolutionaries as accursed minions of the literal Devil. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia proclaimed Masonic Lodges to be
 

"the advanced outposts and standard-bearers of the whole immense anti-Catholic and anti-papal army in the world-wide spiritual warfare of our age. In this sense also the pope, like the Masonic poet Carducci in his Hymn to Satan, considers Satan as the supreme spiritual chief of this hostile army." [10]

Clearly the Catholic Church stewed with such great frustration and hatred for the masons' anti-clerical activity, that it's disdain for Carducci in particular was never far from mind as indicated in the above passage. Had he lived to read it, Carducci would have no doubt been pleased to see his name thus immortalized in the Catholic Encyclopedia as a leading enemy of the church.

While Inno a Satana was extremely effective as a political device it was not considered by scholars and critics—or even by Carducci—to be great art. In the middle part of a major Oxford University lecture on Carducci's work in 1926, scholar John Baily, for example, offered the following analysis of Inno a Satana:
 

"It is at the bottom [Carducci's] faith in a sound mind and healthy body, [his] scorn of weaklings and palterers, which is the inspiration of the famous, or notorious Hymn to Satan. I cannot, of course, discuss it here from the point of view of religion. It gave and no doubt was meant to give, great offence to Catholics and indeed to all Christians—and still does. We must admit that he was always definitely a pagan: and often, especially in the first half of his life, not merely a pagan but an anti-Christian. This attitude is seen at its height in the Hymn to Satan though the title is, as we shall see, a misnomer. But to judge it or him fairly we must remember the time and place in which he wrote: an Italy which had long been ruled by priests who allied themselves with foreigners and tyrants, in which the Pope who had deserted the national cause still held Rome; in which one Pope had declared the steam engine to be an invention of the Devil and another was now replying to the spirit of the nineteenth century by getting himself declared Infallible. The Ode was written in one day in 1863, published in 1865, and again on the day of the opening of the Vatican Council. It is enough if it stood alone to disprove the notion of Carducci as mere academic pedant. It sputters with fiery life from the first word to the last. But the Satan whom it proclaims and glorifies is not the spirit of evil; there is no less immoral poet than Carducci. His  Satan is reason and nature, the body and the mind, all that revolts against the asceticism, sacerdotalism and  obscurantism which have so often claimed to represent the Christian religion. The Hymn is as full of imagination  as it is of spontaneity, sincerity, and strength. What it is not full of, either in thought or in language, is that grave music of the mind and of the word without which poetry cannot be entirely itself...Carducci's [Hymn to Satan] reads as little more than a piece of polemical journalism." [11]

Thereafter, Bailey went on to speak of what "is great and permanent" in the work of Carducci and to enumerate the many later poems and prose which did, indeed, in his opinion rise to the highest levels of the literary art and which were, of course, the basis of his winning the Nobel Prize. At the close of his lecture, Bailey concluded:
 

"The smith does not always succeed nor does the poet, each is clumsy sometimes and each sometimes finds his metal too hard to shape. What I have wished to say today is that Carducci succeeded often, and that when he succeeded it was with such materials, so finely worked, that his place among the poets is assured and immortal."

So, despite the revolutionary impact of Inno a Satana, Carducci's greatest poetic achievements still lay ahead. Carducci was a revolutionary on multiple fronts both political and artistic. Like his politics, Carducci's more advanced poetry became revolutionary as well. He was not afraid to undertake bold, daring adventures in his works. The Rime Nuove ("New Rhymes") and the Odi Barbare ("Barbaric Odes") which appeared in the 1880s contain the best of Carducci's poetry.

Odi Barbare in particular included brilliant, ground-breakng innovations. Carducci reintrocued  old classical Latin poetry styles and meters into contemporary Italian-language works. This adaptation of ancient technique to new Italian recalled the pace and flavor of Homer and Virgil and was Carducci's way of honoring both classicism and paganism. It was also an attack upon two things he abhorred: the romanticism in contemporary poetry and the Christianity in contemporary society. Indeed, all of Carducci's work  extolled Italian hope and Roman glory and was an assertion of classic reason as  opposed to romantic mysticism and Roman Catholic piety.

He also wrote scathing reviews of what he considered trite sentimentalism in the gushing, unoriginal romantic poetry being churned out and lauded by his contemporaries.

These were all gutsy moves. To undertake such radical innovation in his own work and to so harshly criticize the popular Romantics, Carducci certainly showed he was willing to risk attracting condemnation that could hamper his popularity and his career. But, just as he had helped republican efforts to liberate Italian political life from royalist Hapsburg and Papal domination, Carducci also lead the liberation of Italian poetry from sentimental romanticism while at the same time offering it the innovation of his re-introduction of the meters of the classics. This was the cutting-edge artistry that brought him the Nobel.

When Carducci was selected to receive Nobel Prize in recognition of his worldwide acclaim, he was an old man and, indeed, was too ill to travel to Stockholm to accept the award in person. Had he been present, the Nobel committee might not have been so presumptuous as to try to make apologies for the great poet's "Satanism" or to attempt to separate him from Inno a Satana.

It is clear that even the relatively progressive intellectuals of the Nobel committee were uneasy with publicly embracing a pagan and Satanist like Carducci before a global audience. Their efforts to downplay these aspects of the man are evident in the presentation speech properly noting that his poetic brilliance transcended such things and (improperly) trying to show that he had disavowed/retracted Inno a Satana.

While the whole of the Nobel presentation speech included the expected long laudatory recounting of the honored poet's life and accomplishments, it also included this tidbit of back-pedaling.

There is a good deal of justice in many of the attacks on Carducci's anti-Christianity. Although one cannot perfectly approve of the way in which he has tried to defend himself in Confessioni e Battaglie ("Confessions and Battles") and in other writings, knowledge of the attendant circumstances helps to explain, if not to justify, Carducci's attitudes.

Carducci's paganism is understandable to a Protestant, at least. As an ardent patriot who saw the Catholic Church as in many ways a misguided and corrupt force opposed to the freedom of his adored Italy, Carducci  was quite likely to confuse Catholicism with Christianity, extending to Christianity the severe judgments with  which he sometimes attacked the Church.

And as to the impetuous Inno a Satana, it would be a great wrong to Carducci to identify him, for example, with Baudelaire and to accuse Carducci of poisonous and unhealthy "Satanism." In fact, Carducci's Satan has an ill-chosen name. The poet clearly means to imply a Lucifer in the literal sense of the word—the carrier of  light, the herald of free thought and culture, and the enemy of that ascetic discipline which rejects or disparages natural rights. Yet it seems strange to hear Savanarola praised in a poem in which asceticism is condemned. The whole of the hymn abounds with such contradictions. Carducci himself in recent times has rejected the entire poem and has called it a "vulgar sing-song." Thus, there is no reason to dwell any longer on a poem which the poet himself has disavowed. [12]


Their little fig leaf probably fooled no one for it was obvious that the master poet Carducci looked back to the dinner-table political toast of the early days of his art with a condemning eye only in assessing the poem's lack of artistic sophistication. Calling the poem "vulgar sing-song" was merely a repudiation of its youthful, immature poetic style. In his professional work, having introduced immense contributions to the field of poetry, he had long since moved beyond the silly, elementary structure of the provocative little rhyme he shared with friends and compatriots over a raised wine glass. But such self-criticism of that early work certainly did not imply any rejection of the substance of the sentiments expressed therein. Those he held to without apology to the very end of his days.

"I know neither truth of God nor peace with the Vatican or any priests. They are the real and unaltering enemies of Italy." he said in his later years. [13]

At the end of Carducci's life, Romanticism, Catholicism and (one could argue) political domination remained quite popular with the great mass of Italians, but his daring stabs at all three had unforgettably opened the door for the elite few seeking to liberate themselves politically, artistically and religiously. His lasting contribution to freedom of the mind and spirit is forever immortalized in the roster of the Nobel Prize, the highest literary distinction on Earth; in a beautiful stone monument in Bologna; in the pages of his still-acclaimed works, and in the hearts of all that they still touch.  And really, how much more immortality can any successful Satanist hope for than that?

 
Giosue Carducci: 19th Century Poet, Statesman and Satanist
by R. Merciless, Copyright 2000 C.E.
 
 
In 1906 the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Giosue Carducci of Italy for extraordinary lifelong accomplishment in the field of poetry. He was a Satanist.
By the time he won the Nobel, Carducci had firmly established himself as one of the world's most well-known and influential literary figures with a large body of distinguished work and a long career of artistic achievement, political activism and religious agitation.  He had published several volumes of poetry attracting worldwide critical acclaim. In  addition, his prose writings including literary criticism, biographies, speeches and essays filled some 20 volumes. [1] He had also been elected a Senator of Italy and voted a very substantial life-long pension. The Nobel prize was merely the capstone of a long, brilliant and highly successful life. [2]

Carducci's credentials as a Satanist include not only his worldly successes and overt opposition to Christianity but his writing of the highly controversial poem, Inno a Satana or "Hymn to Satan." In writing, publicly reciting and twice publishing this astounding poem, he stepped firmly beyond his paganism and even his anti-clericalism into the realm of  modern Satanism by embracing the mythic character of Satan as an exemplary role model and heroic archetypal symbol. Indeed, it is this taking of Satan as an exemplar symbol that is the defining characteristic of the Modern Satanist. [3]

Of course, living as he did in 19th century Italy, Carducci probably would not have  referred to himself as a "Satanist." The linking of that term to the Satanic character would have to wait almost exactly 100 more years when Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan, defined it for the modern world in The Satanic Bible in 1969. [4]   Nonetheless, Carducci's explicit and life-long adoption of Satan as archetypically symbolic of his personal philosophy which he called "radical rationalism," unequivocally places the Nobel laureate firmly within the Satanic tradition, even if less daring biographers have preferred the term "pagan" to describe him.

Carducci felt great affinity for the classical world and wrote several internationally  acclaimed homages to ancient Roman gods and the long lost, Christian-obliterated happy pagan lifestyle of old. But unlike Baudelair, Leopardi, Levi, Rimbaud, Huysmans and other 19th century literary figures who penned somewhat Satanic works, Carducci did not die on his knees whimpering and begging forgiveness from a previously scorned Christian god.[5] Instead, he died an unabashed enemy of the Pope and ended his days as defiantly anti-clerical as he ever was.

Carducci was born near Verana, Italy in 1835. From an early age, guided by his  politically active physician father, he learned Latin and studied the Iliad and classical works of Homer. He also energetically read the works of the famous Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi (1798 - 1837) and was perhaps somewhat inspired towards Inno a Satana by reading the despondent Leopardi's unfinished Ad Ahrimane ("To Ahriman,") an at times depressing prayer addressed to the Prince of Darkness and acknowledging His rule of the Earth. [6]

By 1860, at age 25, he had been appointed to the chair in Italian Literature at Bologna University where he would spend a long, brilliant career of over 40 years. He was also actively involved in the political upheavals reshaping Italy at the time.

It was a time of revolution in Italy as Republicans, inspired and assisted by revolutionary France, struggled to throw off the old tyrannical Hapsburg order and unite and democratize Italy's many separate feudal states and kingdoms. By the mid-1860s, after years of civil war and political struggle most of the Italian peninsula had been united under a constitutional republican monarchy. However, one of the last vestiges of tyrannical domination on the Italian peninsula was the continued direct political control of Rome and surrounding regions by the Pope. With the military backing of Hapsburg Austria, the Pope held direct secular political power over the Italian provinces known as the Papal States. Naturally, the anti-clerical freethinkers among the Republicans found tyrannical rule by the papacy to be as odious as, or even worse than, that by unelected, hereditary nobles. Both impeded human progress by locking power in the hands of those who were long on hereditary or ecclesiastical connections and short on any actual demonstrated merit or ability.

Throughout Italy, 19th century Masonic lodges were centers of organizing revolutionary activities ranging from anti-royalist propaganda to underground guerrilla attacks. Carducci was, of course, a member as were nearly all the other significant leaders of the Italian revolutionary movement. Other prominent masons of the time included influential political philosopher Giuseppe Mazinni, head of the successful Young Italy movement, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, the internationally famous Italian  revolutionary war hero.

In contrast to the overtly theistic and even Christian flavor to be found among German and Anglo-American Freemasons at the time, French and Italian masonry both adopted a much more pan-religious, nearly overtly atheist tone. Like Masons everywhere, they too used the term "Grand Architect of the Universe" to refer to the "creator."  For many of the more sharp-witted Italian and French Masons, however, it had a very different meaning.  Applauding its own expansive view of the Mason's "Grand Architect", the official newsletter of the Italian lodge noted,
 

"The formula of the Grand Architect, which is reproached to Masonry as ambiguous and absurd, is the most large-minded and righteous affirmation of the immense principle of existence and may represent as well the (revolutionary) God of Mazzini as the Satan of Giosue Carducci (in his celebrated Hymn to Satan); God, as the fountain of love, not of hatred; Satan, as the genius of the good, not of the bad." [7]

This Masonic newsletter reference to Carducci in the same breath as Mazzini, one of the republic's most effective and inspiring revolutionary thinkers and leaders, clearly demonstrates Carducci's great prominence and influence at the time. Moreover, the sort of religious outlook quoted above made all of Italian masonry an explicit enemy of the Vatican. On March 18, 1902, Pope Leo XIII issued "Annum ingressi," a pronouncement against Italian Freemasonry. Of the above quotation, The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 disapprovingly sniffed, "In both interpretations it is in reality the principle of Revolution that is adored by Italian Masonry."

The deep anti-church sentiment of French masons—most likely shared in full by their Italian brothers—is amply reflected in the following quote from a 20 September, 1902 speech by Senator Delpech, president of the Grand Orient de France:
 

"The triumph of the Galilean has lasted twenty centuries. But now he dies in his turn. The mysterious voice, announcing (to Julian the Apostate) the death of Pan, today announces the death of the impostor God who promised an era of justice and peace to those who believe in him. The illusion has lasted a long time. The mendacious God is now disappearing in his turn; he passes away to join in the dust of ages the divinities of  India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, who saw so many creatures prostrate before their altars. Bro. Masons, we rejoice to state that we are not without our share in this overthrow of the false prophets. The Romish Church, founded on the Galilean myth, began to decay rapidly from the very day on which the Masonic Association was established."[8]

Carducci, the firebrand masonic freethinker and revolutionary, wrote Inno a Satana in September 1863, at the age of 28 and three years into his teaching chair at the University of Bologna. It was composed as a brindisi or toast which he recited at a dinner party among friends. [9] Appropriately for reciting with a raised glass of chianti, the poet titled it "A Satana" or "To Satan." It was then published in 1865 under the title Inno a Satana or "Hymn to Satan" but should probably have more accurately carried the title of "A Toast to Satan." The tone, rhyme, meter and content all bear this out clearly and well-reflect the origination of the work. It is not difficult to imagine a table full of Carducci's freethinking revolutionary pals hoisting their glasses at the conclusion of the recitation, shouting "Here, here," and quaffing a glass of Italy's finest produce. In vino veritas, indeed!

Modern literary scholars have recognized Inno a Satana as an in-your-face manifesto of Carducci's most deeply felt convictions and cherished beliefs, which he occasionally modified but never  abandoned over the course of his long life. For Carducci, like for LaVey, Satan symbolically represents all of those wonderful things which the hierarchy of orthodox Christianity opposes and attempts to suppress: beauty in nature and art, sensual pleasures, confidence in man's ability to transform the physical world, freedom of thought and expression, unprejudiced intellectual inquiry,  economic and social progress.

It is unfortunate that an English-reading person of the 21st century is not able fully to grasp the emotional power the poem invoked in 19th century Italy with its clever rhyming language and allusions to well-known recent and historical events and figures. Still, it can serve as an inspiration to others. Indeed, a glimmer of the impact can be discerned by seeing it (and even trying to read it aloud) in its original Italian. All readers should try this.

[To open a window showing Inno a Satana in Italian and English, click here.]

Readers will note that Carducci's poem includes 50 stanzas of 4 lines each where the second and fourth are rhymed.  This meter seems to resonate something like a a train's locomotive steaming along under full power and this is a metaphor which the poet brings around the bend into full view at the close of the poem.

It was published a second time in 1869 in Bologna's radical newspaper, Il Popolo, as a provocation timed to coincide with the 20th Vatican Ecumenical Council, a time when revolutionary fervor directed against the papacy was running high as republicans were pressing both politically and militarily for an end of the Vatican's domination over the so-called papal states under the military support of the hated Austrian Hapsburgs.

The second publication was meant to be a provocation and provocative it was. Reaction to the reappearance of the controversial poem was quite strong. Even some of Carducci's fellow republicans publicly distanced themselves from embracing Satan along with the poet even if they were opposed to the Pope. Moderate newspapers excoriated Carducci for potentially harming the cause with such blasphemous and inflammatory writings.

But, in fact, the republican cause was triumphant. In 1870, Hapsburg Austrian military support for the Pope collapsed and republican troops marched into Rome, ending by force the papacy's secular political control of the region. It is quite likely that, as they took the city,  at least some of those troops had Inno a Satana fresh in their minds.

But, as moderate republicans had feared, the Vatican seized upon the poem as a propaganda item. As Carducci introduced Satan as a worthy and honorable symbol of the republican opposition to the tyrannical earthly power of the papacy, the Vatican's propaganda to its faithful sheep painted the revolutionaries as accursed minions of the literal Devil. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia proclaimed Masonic Lodges to be
 

"the advanced outposts and standard-bearers of the whole immense anti-Catholic and anti-papal army in the world-wide spiritual warfare of our age. In this sense also the pope, like the Masonic poet Carducci in his Hymn to Satan, considers Satan as the supreme spiritual chief of this hostile army." [10]

Clearly the Catholic Church stewed with such great frustration and hatred for the masons' anti-clerical activity, that it's disdain for Carducci in particular was never far from mind as indicated in the above passage. Had he lived to read it, Carducci would have no doubt been pleased to see his name thus immortalized in the Catholic Encyclopedia as a leading enemy of the church.

While Inno a Satana was extremely effective as a political device it was not considered by scholars and critics—or even by Carducci—to be great art. In the middle part of a major Oxford University lecture on Carducci's work in 1926, scholar John Baily, for example, offered the following analysis of Inno a Satana:
 

"It is at the bottom [Carducci's] faith in a sound mind and healthy body, [his] scorn of weaklings and palterers, which is the inspiration of the famous, or notorious Hymn to Satan. I cannot, of course, discuss it here from the point of view of religion. It gave and no doubt was meant to give, great offence to Catholics and indeed to all Christians—and still does. We must admit that he was always definitely a pagan: and often, especially in the first half of his life, not merely a pagan but an anti-Christian. This attitude is seen at its height in the Hymn to Satan though the title is, as we shall see, a misnomer. But to judge it or him fairly we must remember the time and place in which he wrote: an Italy which had long been ruled by priests who allied themselves with foreigners and tyrants, in which the Pope who had deserted the national cause still held Rome; in which one Pope had declared the steam engine to be an invention of the Devil and another was now replying to the spirit of the nineteenth century by getting himself declared Infallible. The Ode was written in one day in 1863, published in 1865, and again on the day of the opening of the Vatican Council. It is enough if it stood alone to disprove the notion of Carducci as mere academic pedant. It sputters with fiery life from the first word to the last. But the Satan whom it proclaims and glorifies is not the spirit of evil; there is no less immoral poet than Carducci. His  Satan is reason and nature, the body and the mind, all that revolts against the asceticism, sacerdotalism and  obscurantism which have so often claimed to represent the Christian religion. The Hymn is as full of imagination  as it is of spontaneity, sincerity, and strength. What it is not full of, either in thought or in language, is that grave music of the mind and of the word without which poetry cannot be entirely itself...Carducci's [Hymn to Satan] reads as little more than a piece of polemical journalism." [11]

Thereafter, Bailey went on to speak of what "is great and permanent" in the work of Carducci and to enumerate the many later poems and prose which did, indeed, in his opinion rise to the highest levels of the literary art and which were, of course, the basis of his winning the Nobel Prize. At the close of his lecture, Bailey concluded:
 

"The smith does not always succeed nor does the poet, each is clumsy sometimes and each sometimes finds his metal too hard to shape. What I have wished to say today is that Carducci succeeded often, and that when he succeeded it was with such materials, so finely worked, that his place among the poets is assured and immortal."

So, despite the revolutionary impact of Inno a Satana, Carducci's greatest poetic achievements still lay ahead. Carducci was a revolutionary on multiple fronts both political and artistic. Like his politics, Carducci's more advanced poetry became revolutionary as well. He was not afraid to undertake bold, daring adventures in his works. The Rime Nuove ("New Rhymes") and the Odi Barbare ("Barbaric Odes") which appeared in the 1880s contain the best of Carducci's poetry.

Odi Barbare in particular included brilliant, ground-breakng innovations. Carducci reintrocued  old classical Latin poetry styles and meters into contemporary Italian-language works. This adaptation of ancient technique to new Italian recalled the pace and flavor of Homer and Virgil and was Carducci's way of honoring both classicism and paganism. It was also an attack upon two things he abhorred: the romanticism in contemporary poetry and the Christianity in contemporary society. Indeed, all of Carducci's work  extolled Italian hope and Roman glory and was an assertion of classic reason as  opposed to romantic mysticism and Roman Catholic piety.

He also wrote scathing reviews of what he considered trite sentimentalism in the gushing, unoriginal romantic poetry being churned out and lauded by his contemporaries.

These were all gutsy moves. To undertake such radical innovation in his own work and to so harshly criticize the popular Romantics, Carducci certainly showed he was willing to risk attracting condemnation that could hamper his popularity and his career. But, just as he had helped republican efforts to liberate Italian political life from royalist Hapsburg and Papal domination, Carducci also lead the liberation of Italian poetry from sentimental romanticism while at the same time offering it the innovation of his re-introduction of the meters of the classics. This was the cutting-edge artistry that brought him the Nobel.

When Carducci was selected to receive Nobel Prize in recognition of his worldwide acclaim, he was an old man and, indeed, was too ill to travel to Stockholm to accept the award in person. Had he been present, the Nobel committee might not have been so presumptuous as to try to make apologies for the great poet's "Satanism" or to attempt to separate him from Inno a Satana.

It is clear that even the relatively progressive intellectuals of the Nobel committee were uneasy with publicly embracing a pagan and Satanist like Carducci before a global audience. Their efforts to downplay these aspects of the man are evident in the presentation speech properly noting that his poetic brilliance transcended such things and (improperly) trying to show that he had disavowed/retracted Inno a Satana.

While the whole of the Nobel presentation speech included the expected long laudatory recounting of the honored poet's life and accomplishments, it also included this tidbit of back-pedaling.

There is a good deal of justice in many of the attacks on Carducci's anti-Christianity. Although one cannot perfectly approve of the way in which he has tried to defend himself in Confessioni e Battaglie ("Confessions and Battles") and in other writings, knowledge of the attendant circumstances helps to explain, if not to justify, Carducci's attitudes.

Carducci's paganism is understandable to a Protestant, at least. As an ardent patriot who saw the Catholic Church as in many ways a misguided and corrupt force opposed to the freedom of his adored Italy, Carducci  was quite likely to confuse Catholicism with Christianity, extending to Christianity the severe judgments with  which he sometimes attacked the Church.

And as to the impetuous Inno a Satana, it would be a great wrong to Carducci to identify him, for example, with Baudelaire and to accuse Carducci of poisonous and unhealthy "Satanism." In fact, Carducci's Satan has an ill-chosen name. The poet clearly means to imply a Lucifer in the literal sense of the word—the carrier of  light, the herald of free thought and culture, and the enemy of that ascetic discipline which rejects or disparages natural rights. Yet it seems strange to hear Savanarola praised in a poem in which asceticism is condemned. The whole of the hymn abounds with such contradictions. Carducci himself in recent times has rejected the entire poem and has called it a "vulgar sing-song." Thus, there is no reason to dwell any longer on a poem which the poet himself has disavowed. [12]


Their little fig leaf probably fooled no one for it was obvious that the master poet Carducci looked back to the dinner-table political toast of the early days of his art with a condemning eye only in assessing the poem's lack of artistic sophistication. Calling the poem "vulgar sing-song" was merely a repudiation of its youthful, immature poetic style. In his professional work, having introduced immense contributions to the field of poetry, he had long since moved beyond the silly, elementary structure of the provocative little rhyme he shared with friends and compatriots over a raised wine glass. But such self-criticism of that early work certainly did not imply any rejection of the substance of the sentiments expressed therein. Those he held to without apology to the very end of his days.

"I know neither truth of God nor peace with the Vatican or any priests. They are the real and unaltering enemies of Italy." he said in his later years. [13]

At the end of Carducci's life, Romanticism, Catholicism and (one could argue) political domination remained quite popular with the great mass of Italians, but his daring stabs at all three had unforgettably opened the door for the elite few seeking to liberate themselves politically, artistically and religiously. His lasting contribution to freedom of the mind and spirit is forever immortalized in the roster of the Nobel Prize, the highest literary distinction on Earth; in a beautiful stone monument in Bologna; in the pages of his still-acclaimed works, and in the hearts of all that they still touch.  And really, how much more immortality can any successful Satanist hope for than that?

[Anonymous]

Inno A Satana

remember Satanist is Saturnist

To you my daring
verses are unleashed,
you I invoke, O Satan
monarch of the feast.

Saturn is the God of Vegetation

Put aside your sprinkler,
priest, and your litanies!
No, priest, Satan
does not retreat!

You can't stop time aka Father Time aka Saturn

Archangel, deplumed,
drops into the void.
The thunderbolt lies frozen
in Jove's hand

Jovus Pater aka J Patar aka Jupiter aka Jove symbolized by the thunderbolt aka YHVH aka Jehovah the thunderer.

See Chronus keeper of Time aka Saturn married to Rhea ate his Children for fear of being replaced like he did his Father Uranus.
Rhea fed Chronus a rock instead of Zeus aka Joves aka Jupiter
Jupiter eventually overthrew his papa Saturn and then proceeded to marry his mama Rhea.

Archangels are known to represent planets

Like pale meteors,
spent worlds,
the angels drop
from the firmament

firmament is the sky
angels might represent falling stars

Satan alone lives.
He holds sway in
the tremulous flash
of some dark eye,

Saturn can look like an eye at the right angle

Sculpture, painting
and poetry
first lived for you, Ahriman,
Adonis and Astarte,

This is the Story of Saturn aka Tammuz

When Venus
Anadyomene
blessed the
clear Ionian skies

Venus is Rhea, born from the foam of the sea when the Son slays the father replacing him and starting the whole process over again.

and so on and so forth

[Jenny Lake]

The New York/New Jersey chapter of Dante Alighieri Society is on Summit Ave --proximity to the main rail lines of the Lehigh Valley RR and the Central New Jersey lines is along Communipaw Ave (from the waterfront terminal) --follow Communipaw west where it branches onto Summit, heading NW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lehig ... rminal.png
During WWI and the decades before, this was the main route of supply traffic to New York City --the railhead jutting into the harbor was called Black Tom Island, a reference in some way to the coal freight? This point was the staging area for all supplies to be shipped to the Allies in WWI. On July 31, 1916, Black Tom Island was incinerated by a massive explosion --the worst act of "domestic" terror in U.S. history until the Murrah Bldg in Oklahoma City.

The "Mob", as conceived by Mazzini and cohorts were "Carbonari" --traders in coal.

The neighborhood between the waterfront and the SE start point of Summit Ave. was a dense, industrial zone full of warehouses. Early tunnels from Jersey City and Hoboken were built for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Co., predating the New York City subway system. Passenger cars were opened through the tunnels beginning in 1909. The president of H & M Railroad, who oversaw tunnel construction was William Gibbs McAdoo, son-in-law of Pres. Woodrow Wilson and his Sec of Treasury. Hudson and Manhattan owned the terminal real estate that became the World Trade Center --a deal that was struck in the 1960s by the Port Authority of NY and NJ (one entity). The Port Authority agreed to refurbish and maintain the decaying railway in exchange for the property management of the World Trade Center.

[Jenny Lake]

Excerpts from:

Jews in the Army of the Kingdom of Italy (1848-1923)

By Andrew J. Schoenfeld, MD
Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine

The Italian Jews of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were one of the most fervent nationalist groups in the nascent Italian State. As a result, they actively enlisted in the army of the Kingdom of Italy and its predecessor, the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. Indeed, their valorous and inspired service has prompted some authors to liken the Italian Jews of the nineteenth century to a type of military caste. .....
1
Perhaps in no state since the Roman Empire did Jews attain such a level of integration and importance as they did in the late nineteenth century Kingdom of Italy. Residents of the Italian peninsula since the days of the Maccabees, nowhere in Europe was there a longer tradition of a Jewish community so well versed and productive within the parameters of "native" culture. Fluent in Italian long before the Renaissance, Jews were involved in a cross-cultural exchange with fellow Christians in almost every state on the peninsula.

A unique Italian Jewish culture was formulated by the cultural milieu in the lands below the Alps (possessed of its own religious rite and Judeo-Italian prayers) even as Jews could not help but influence Italian Christians with their prominence in the fields of medicine, literature and business. While official state regulations restricted Jewish activity in certain fields, the coming of the Risorgimento removed hindrances that prevented Jews from laboring in state service. The enlightened Savoyard Kings of Sardinia-Piedmont and later Italy allowed Jewish Italians to achieve success in a dizzying number of fields, most notably government administration and the military.

Yet, for all their great achievements and dedication to the land of their birth, the history of the Italian Jews remains one of the least well documented in all of Europe, with perhaps only the Jews of the Balkan states receiving even less attention in the historical literature. Countless treatises have been penned on various aspects of Jewish history in the German, Russian and Polish lands but only relatively few works have been published on the Italian Jews and none of these have been definitive. .....
2
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the Italian Peninsula was carved up into a myriad number of small kingdoms and duchys, all of whom expressly proscribed members of the Jewish faith from service in state government, including the military. Although certain Jews like Abraham Castello, Salamone Fiorentino and Isaac Maurogonato played prominent roles in Parma, Venice and the Papal States, it was well accepted that Jews were not suited for the profession of arms.

While individual Jews were able to achieve a modicum of political influence at certain courts, the practice of the military profession was strictly forbidden in Sardinia-Piedmont, Parma, Modena and the Papal States. Lombardy and Venice, as provinces of Austria, technically allowed Jewish military service but there are no specific examples of Italian Jews from these regions serving in the Austrian army. While these injunctions against Jews were either holdovers from more conservative times or the reflection of popular sentiments, the political clime of the early nineteenth century would not only pave the way for Italian Jewish emancipation but also remove the impediments to national service.

The French Revolution and the military success of Napoleon were not only responsible for eliminating Jewish disabilities in Italy and elsewhere but also contradicted the popular belief that Jews were unfit or unable to serve in a military capacity. The example of Andrea Massena proved particularly inspiring for the Jews of Italy, especially since he was a scion of their community.1 Born at Nice in 1758, Massena was an early volunteer in the French Revolutionary army. As general of the 32nd division, he was personally responsible for liberating the Jewish communities of Northern Italy. After his pivotal role in the Battle of Mantua, General Massena was named commander of the Roman territories and Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Army.

This great general, champion of Italian Jewry and the "right hand of Napoleon's army,"2 would end his career as Prince of Rivoli, Duke D'Essling and Marshal of Provence. But the affairs of the Italian Jews were too closely linked with the success of Bonaparte and his generals. Following the debacle at Waterloo and the rise of the conservative Austrian, Prince Metternich, the old disabilities and injunctions once again saddled the Jews of Italy.

But, the examples set by Napoleon and his Jewish Field Marshall were not lost on the younger generation of Italian Jews. They had proven that the dominion of the Old Order could be challenged and that Jews, as much as any other citizen, could take up arms in the service of freedom, brotherhood and national unity. As the influence of republicanism and liberalism grew in the cities of the peninsula, so too did Jewish participation increase in the movements for freedom and Italian unification. Jews were particularly active in Giuseppe Mazzini's Giovine Italia movement, among them Angelo and Emilio Usiglio3, Pellegrino Rosselli, David Levi Chierino and the Todros family of Turin, who financed Mazzini's republican incursion into Savoy4. The allies of Giovine Italia in Leghorn, the Veri Italiani society, were led by two Jews: Ottolenghi and Montefiore.5 The implications of these popular movements in Northern Italy were not lost on the state governments and several official reforms were made throughout the late 1830s and 1840s.

                                                                    ________________________________________________________________

text continues at http://www.jewishmag.com/101mag/Italian ... anjews.htm