Dear Readers,
June jottings with an Italian connection: Italy’s National Day or Italian Republic Day celebrates the date, June 2, 1946, when Italians went to the polls to express their preference between a Republic and Monarchy form of government. The last King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III of the House of Savoy, had reigned for 46 years, however for more than two decades, under fascism, “Il Duce” Mussolini was de facto ruler of Italy.
In 1943, when Mussolini was deposed by vote of his own party council and imprisoned, as Southern Italy was near surrender to the Allies (he was rescued by Hitler and in broken health became puppet dictator of Northern Italy until he was executed by Italian partisans in April 1945), the King and Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who since the fall from power of Mussolini in July 1943 was the Prime Minister of Italy, had an opportunity to provide leadership for the people of Italy in September 1943 (after signing a secret unconditional surrender armistice agreement with Dwight Eisenhower, Allied Commander in Rome), but instead took flight thinking only about their own hides and left thousands of soldiers and civilians uninformed in disarray, facing the wrath of former German allies, and in some parts of Italy fighting against Allied forces.
By June 1944, the Allies took Rome and US President Roosevelt declared jubilant “the first Axis Capital is in our hands. One up and two to go.” On June 5, 1944, King Victor Emmanuel III, in an effort to save crown and carcass resigned and his son, Crown Prince Umberto became acting Head of State, but World War II still continued. Berlin fall to the Allies in April 1945, Mussolini was executed by the partisans in Italy on April 28, 1945 and in Berlin, April 30, 1945, Adolph Hitler committed suicide.
In the Pacific, WWII continued but after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 14, 1945 and General McArthur formally accepted the Japanese surrender aboard the US Aircraft Carrier Missouri on September 3, 1945. On June 2, 1946, the year following the end of World War II, in a national referendum Italians with good memory voted to abolish the monarchy and turn their nation into a Republic.
For many months prior to the election in Italy, Italian newspaper editors in the United States, like Generoso Pope Sr. in New York, urged thousands of “Il Progresso” readers to write to relatives in Italy and encourage them to vote out the monarchy and vote in “la democrazia.” Despite all the postal persuasion of their US “paesani”, the vote ending the monarchy was not a landslide but, they said “a miss is as good as a mile” and in June 1946, the Italian Republic, a democratic form of government, was proclaimed to replace the monarchy and “Viva la Democrazia.”
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Archangel St. Michael is the patron Saint of my father’s hometown. His official feast day is in September but his “Festa di San Michele” is celebrated there in the spring because centuries ago he saved the town from the ill winds of influenza in May (Little is known about the archangels, saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, except that the Holy Scripture speaks of angels as ministers of God in human affairs. St. Michael defended the honor of God against Satan, St. Gabriel announced to Mary the coming of Jesus and St. Raphael guided Tobias on his journey and healed his blind father).
These days St. Michael the Archangel is invoked as the Patron of Police Officers, probably because he too battled the “bad guys.” It is said that according to the Book of Revelation, the beautiful angels of holiness and wisdom, and the reflection of God’s light, were tested in their love for God. A rebellious force, led by the angel Lucifer, rose up and declared their equality to God. Immediately, a great angel came forth to challenge Lucifer and his army, announcing “Mi-cha-el” – meaning “who is like God?”.
Michael and the other loyal angels, battled with the rebellious angels, and cast them into the depths of Hell, because of their arrogance and pride. Michael has long been a special protector for the people of God, as well as defender of Heaven. It is believed that Michael will also do battle with and destroy the Antichrist, as he did with Lucifer. Because of his powerful protection Michael has been given the title of Archangel, and is in charge of all the Heavenly armies. For the old-timers, born before television and hi tech, the annual town Festa in honor of their patron saints were the stuff of happy memories that lasted a lifetime.
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Benevento (meaning Good Winds), a city of some 65,000 “abitanti” always triggers memories of my father, Vincenzo, in his happy host role on Sunday afternoons offering “liquore” to his visiting “paesani.” And, since I could read pretty well, I would note on the bottle label that the content of a couple of his favorite liqueurs had come all the way across the Atlantic, from Benevento, Italy where it had been produced and bottled at the “Ditta Giuseppe Alberti.”
I do not drink much “Strega”, but for nearly half a century I’ve always kept a bottle around, just for old time’s sake. Benevento, unlike Naples, looks thoroughly landlocked. The city sits on a plateau between two rivers, the Calore and the Sabato, in the middle of a fertile plain with Apennine ranges, covered with snow in winter, all around. One mountain to the southwest, the 4,095-foot Taburno, has suggested the shape of a sleeping beauty (la bella dormiente).
Benevento today depends to a large extent on the farms and orchards that surround it and on its food and light manufacturing industries. Torrone packaged in those little fancy square boxes or crunchy nougat sticks, and the yellow, anisette-flavored Strega liqueur are Benevento specialties, popular all over Italy. The liqueur’s distillers sponsor one of Italy’s major literary prizes, the Premio Strega, which is prestigious and provides good publicity. Strega means “witch”, a reminder that sorcery is a recurrent theme in old Benevento folktales.
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Credit Thomas Jefferson, our third president (1801-1809), for introducing new Italian crops, cheeses and wines to the United States. In April 1787, after a brief stay in Paris, Jefferson had hurried on to the great seaport city of Marseilles, in order to study the port’s commerce. He went down to the docks, hunted up American merchant ships, interviewed Marseilles merchants and tried to find out how many American ships had called in four years of peace. From them he learned about the sources of an important trade in rice funneled through Marseilles to Paris.
Two varieties of rice were being sold, small amounts of Carolina rice from the United States, preferred only for serving with milk and sugar, and Piedmont rice, from the high northern plains of Italy, preferred for almost all cooking with meat or oils because fewer grains had been broken. As honorary vice president of the South Carolina Society for Promoting and Improving Agriculture, Jefferson wanted to report back to its rice-growing members. He learned that the Italians had developed a special machine for husking the rice without breaking it.
He also studied the cultivation and species of dried raisin, which he was sure would succeed in South Carolina and spent whole days talking to gardeners. From them he learned about new varieties of figs, olives, capers, pistachio nuts and almonds. Jefferson arrived in Turin, the capital of the kingdom of Sardinia, which extended from Geneva, Switzerland, to the Mediterranean Sea and included Nice and Sicily, in April, 1787. Passing up the opportunity to visit the resplendent palaces around Piazza San Carlo, he visited the museum of antiquities and vineyards in the countryside.
From Turin he drove out into the rice country, quickly making two discoveries. First, the rice region was not the Piedmont, it was farther east, in Lombardy. He struck out on excursions to Moncalieri. Stupinigi, Superga to study the rice fields, which lay on either side of the road. He also made an excursion to Lake Como. He then headed toward Milan, studying the great rice fields between Vercelli and Pavia, stopping to talk to peasants in the fields and interviewing owners. He drove on to Novara, where there were fields of rice all along the road.
Permitted to see the husking machinery, he later sketched it from memory to illustrate a long memorandum describing rice processing. He made excursions to Rozzano, saw how Parmesan cheese was made and studied their icehouse to learn how the cheese was stored all year in snow. He toured the dairies that produced the cheese. Here he learned how to make and store ice cream at Monticello. He discovered mascarpone and an Italian Count showed him how it was made. Jefferson’s second important discovery in Italy was that it was not only the husking machine that accounted for the superiority of Piedmont rice. Piedmont was a different species.
Despite the fact that taking any of the unhusked rice out of Italy to a place where it could be used to plant a crop in competition to the Piedmont was a crime punishable by death, Jefferson was determined to take some Piedmont rice seed to his rice grower friend in South Carolina. Young Jefferson, not yet president of the United States, knew this was illegal and that the exportation of rice in the husk was prohibited.
Bribing a man enough to make the risk worth his while, he took measures with a muleteer to run a couple of sacks across the Apennines to Genoa, where he could take it by boat to Nice. In case the muleteer was caught, Jefferson decided to “bring off as much as his coat pockets would hold.” Weeks later, he shipped the contraband rice off to South Carolina. His pockets stretched as he carried out daring agricultural espionage, Jefferson hurried on as fast as his carriage would take him over the mountain roads of the Apennines to Milan, where he made many sketches of architectural gems that caught his fancy.
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