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Inno di Mameli (“Mameli Hymn”), the national anthem of (credit: Courtesy of Progetto Scriptorium onlus)

Country, south-central Europe. It comprises the boot-shaped peninsula extending far into the Mediterranean Sea as well as Sicily, Sardinia, and a number of smaller islands. Area: 116,346 sq mi (301,336 sq km). Population: (2011 est.) 60,769,000. Capital: Rome. The people are overwhelmingly Italian. Language: Italian (official). Religion: Christianity (predominantly Roman Catholic). Currency: euro. More than three-fourths of Italy is mountainous or highland country. The Alps stretch from east to west along Italy's northern boundary, and the Apennines stretch southward the length of the peninsula. Most of the country's lowlands lie in the valley of its major river, the Po. Three tectonic plates converge in southern Italy and Sicily, creating intense geologic activity; southern Italy's four active volcanoes include Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna. The economy is based largely on services and manufacturing; exports include machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, textiles, clothing and shoes, and food products (olive oil, wine, fruit, and tomatoes). Italy is a republic with two legislative houses. The head of state is the president, and the head of government is the prime minister. Italy has been inhabited since Paleolithic times. The Etruscan civilization arose in the 9th century and was overthrown by the Romans in the 4th3rd centuries ( Roman Republic and Empire). Barbarian invasions of the 4th5th centuries destroyed the Western Roman Empire. Italy's political fragmentation lasted for centuries but did not diminish its impact on European culture, notably during the Renaissance. From the 15th to the 18th century, Italian lands were ruled by France, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Austria. When Napoleonic rule ended in 1815, Italy was again a grouping of independent states. The Risorgimento successfully united most of Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia by 1861, and the unification of peninsular Italy was completed by 1870. Italy joined the Allies during World War I, but social unrest in the 1920s brought to power the Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini, and Italy allied itself with Nazi Germany in World War II. Defeated by the Allies in 1943, Italy proclaimed itself a republic in 1946. It was a charter member of NATO (1949) and of the European Economic Community (now the European Union). It completed the process of setting up regional legislatures with limited autonomy in 1970s. After World War II it experienced rapid changes of government but remained socially stable.

For more information on Italy, visit Britannica.com.

Partly because of the country's political and economic fragmentation until the completion of Unification in 1870, the emergence of a photographic culture in Italy lagged behind many other European countries. Although the announcements of 1839 caused an initial flurry of interest in the various Italian capitals, and an Italian translation of Daguerre's manual appeared in Rome in February 1840, few notable developments took place until the late 19th century. For at least two centuries, however, the Grand Tour had sustained a market for engraved and painted views of Italian monuments and landscapes, and photography arrived just as improved communications and great economic prosperity were bringing new waves of middle-class tourists to Italy from France, northern Europe, and America. Noël-Paymal Lerebours's Excursions daguerriennes (1840-4) included many Italian views engraved from daguerreotypes, and doubtless influenced other productions such as the Milan-based publisher Ferdinando Artaria's Vues d'Italie d'après le daguerreotype (1849). In the 1840s and 1850s the artist-photographer Giacomo Caneva marketed calotypes of Roman monuments. But it was the advent of the wet-plate process at the beginning of the 1850s that enabled view photographers like Carlo Naya and Carlo Ponti in Venice, and Giorgio Sommer, Robert Macpherson, Tommaso Cuccioni (1813-64), and James Anderson (1813-77) in Rome, to prosper. Florence, actually the capital of the new state between 1865 and 1871, was home to the country's leading photographic dynasty, the Alinari brothers, whose ambition to record Italian landscapes, mounments, and works of art throughout the kingdom was both commercially and patriotically motivated. Another important Florentine firm was founded in 1866 by Giacomo Brogi (1822-81), and later expanded to over 80 employees by his son Carlo (1850-1925). Thanks to the efforts of all these firms, and the technical and business innovations they pioneered, Italian photographs in their tens of thousands had found their way to practically every corner of the civilized world by c.1920, including landscapes, architectural and monumental views, and genre scenes, from travelling musicians (pifferari) to fisherfolk, peasant girls, and rustic taverns.

In 1889 Carlo Brogi became a co-founder and vice-president of the Società Fotografica Italiana and—further evidence of a maturing photographic culture—campaigned for improved copyright protection for photographers. Another prominent contemporary, although much of his work was done in Paris, was one of belle époque Italy's, and Europe's, most prolific amateurs, Count Giuseppe Primoli.

Although most materials had to be imported, photographic activity, including the launch of several journals, increased significantly in the last two decades of the 19th century. As in other countries, there were debates about photography's acceptance as an art, and the medium was promoted as such by various mechanisms, including an influential exhibition of artistic photography held in Florence in 1895. The First National Photographic Congress, held in Turin in 1898, further encouraged pictorialism and was followed by another in Florence in 1899. The year 1904 saw the launch of La photografia artistica, a journal intended to serve as the movement's official mouthpiece; the photographers Guido Rey and Edoardo di Sambuy achieved international recognition and made contact with pictorialism's greatest champion, Alfred Stieglitz. In other quarters, however, it was the new technical processes of photography that were being promoted rather than the work of artist-photographers: the journals Il dilettante di fotografia (1890) and Il progresso fotografico (1894) pushed scientific and pseudo-scientific developments such as microphotography, X-rays, spirit-photography, and Étienne-Jules Marey's chronophotography.

Other forms of photographic practice and ideology also surfaced, including the realist verismo movement. Nevertheless, pictorialism dominated the scene, at least until 1911, when the Third National Photographic Congress was held in conjunction with two exhibitions: the International Photographic Exhibition, a display of pictorialist work, and the International Competition of Scientific Photography, which included examples of Marey's chronophotography. This event signalled pictorialism's relative decline and the beginning of experimental photography in Italy, with Futurism in the lead. As Italy's first avant-garde art movement, Futurism best embodied the search for a modern visual language, and the photodynamism of the Bragaglia brothers in turn best embodied the visual research of the Futurists. Despite disputes within the movement concerning photography's ability to capture the sensory experience of the new century, Futurism undoubtedly contributed to the growing diversity of photographic techniques and theoretical approaches.

Photography's development during the fascist era (1922-43) was uneven and, like other branches of Italian culture, probably influenced as much by the socio-economic divide between north and south as by the dictatorship. Though less important than, for example, radio, photography was used extensively as propaganda, under the aegis of the National Institute LUCE. Big events, like the 1932 exhibition commemorating the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome, incorporated thousands of images, and countless more filled the fascist press and boosted the regime's multifarious projects. Interestingly, the propagandists were not averse to experimental and modernist styles when it suited them, and radical designers like the Futurist photomonteur Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni; 1896-1974) did propaganda work in the 1930s. Photography, and especially photojournalism, was officially subject to censorship. However, most Italian photographers were probably unaffected by state interference. Modernist influences from abroad, especially Weimar (pre-1933) Germany, were widespread. The quintessentially avant-garde photographer and film-maker Luigi Veronesi (1908-98), who had strong links with Fernand Léger, the Delaunays, and Moholy-Nagy, produced photograms, rayograms, and other experimental work. Photomontage was widely practised, not only by Tato but by Wanda Wulz, Marcello Nizzoli, and Bruno Munari (1907-98), all of whom contributed to the remarkable efflorescence of Italian advertising in the 1930s. Important here too were the designers of the Studio Boggeri in Milan, and Attilio Rossi's modernistic graphic arts magazine Campo grafico (1933-9). Finally, amateurs stayed busy, the availability of materials permitting; it was possible to do documentary work, for example in poor rural communities like Marone near Brescia (Lorenzo Antonio Predali); and even some of the regime's opponents, like Eva Paola Amendola, were able to record their years of internal banishment.

After the Second World War, two major strands of photography took shape: lyrical or expressive photography and Neorealismo-influenced reportage; the dialogue between the two effectively replayed the old debate of whether photography should be considered an art form or an offshoot of science. (At a popular level, the photoromance (fotoromanzo) flourished in the 1940s and 1950s, associated with publishers like the Del Duca brothers.) The group known as La Bussola, formed in 1947 by Giuseppe Cavalli (1904-61), Veronesi, Giacomelli, and other photographers based in the small town of Senigallia, sought to distinguish their work from photojournalism by asserting themselves as artists. In a culture still generally hostile to the reception of photography as an art form, however, it was work influenced by the Neorealist cinema of Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini that received that greatest recognition. Neorealismo provided a new way of seeing that suited the post-war ethos: the Italian landscape and culture were no longer viewed as a larger-than-life setting for acts of grand heroism, but instead as a mundane backdrop for more intimate examination of human relations and experience. Both stands borrowed from American art, literature, and cinema, particularly Depression-era work such as that of the FSA photographers. Paul Strand, who collaborated with the Italian cinematographer Cesare Zavattini on the book project Un paese (1955), was perhaps the single greatest influence on Italian photojournalists in this area. Yet, for lack of institutional support, most Italian photographers were producing work now considered amateurish; Mario Giacomelli, however, changed this, and also reconciled reportage with lyricism. The most revered photographer of the post-war years, Giacomelli's work combined the harshness of Neorealismo, with its unflinching scrutiny of the bleak post-war landscape, with a deeply felt empathy. He dominated the scene in the 1950s and 1960s together with Paolo Monti (1908-82), the two greatly influencing a subsequent generation of photographers.

Of this new generation, Luigi Ghirri emerged as leader of an informal group that sought collective support for their practice by staging exhibitions, organizing workshops, and instigating group projects with the purpose of stimulating each other as well as the public. The 1984 ‘Italian Journey’ project, which generated an exhibition and a book, was one such initiative organized by Ghirri. A reaction to the dry, apparently objective photojournalism of the 1970s, the project undertook an anthropological and existential examination of place by seeking traces of human experience in the landscape. The American New Topographics photographers, including Stephen Shore, were an intellectual model for this approach, but the Italians gathered in rural places such as Scanno and Senigallia to find expressive interpretations of a specifically Italian reality. It was characteristic of this period that photography was approached as a critical and analytical practice. By the turn of the 21st century outside influences no longer played the central role in the development of Italian photographic culture that they had done in the medium's first century, and while still a multi-regional entity, Italy entered the new century with a strong and varied photographic culture of its own.

Anon., Italian: View of the Tiber and St Peter's, Rome, late 19th century. Albumen print

Anon., Italian: View of Venice, late 19th century. Albumen print

— Molly Rogers

Bibliography

• Zannier, I., 70 anni di fotografia in Italia (1978).
• Zannier, I., Storia della fotografia italiana (1986).
• Costantini, P., and Zannier, I., Cultura fotografica in Italia (1986).
• Dewitz, B. v., et al., Italien sehen und sterben: Photographien der Zeit des Risorgimento (1994).
• Pelizzari, M. A. (ed.), ‘Nineteenth-Century Italy’, special issue, History of Photography, 20 (1996).
• Shanahan, P. (ed.), ‘The Italian Cultural Landscape of the Modern Period’, special issue, History of Photography, 24 (2000)

Considered to be the birthplace of ballet. From the early 15th century most Italian courts employed a dancing master and the first dance treatises were also published in Italy, including De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi by Domenico da Piacenza, c.1450-60. The lavish court entertainments choreographed by these dancing masters often became famous, such as Bergonzio di Botta's ‘dinner ballet’ staged at Tortona in 1489, and were the inspiration for the ballet de cour which subsequently flourished in France. This new form of spectacle overshadowed Italian activity (even though some of its most important artists were Italians working in France, such as Balthasar de Beaujoyeux who staged La Ballet comique de la reine in 1581). When ballet moved from the courts into the theatre, Milan emerged as the main centre with the opening of the Scala Theatre in 1778 and particularly with the engagement of Viganò as ballet master (from 1812 until his death). The Imperial Academy of Dancing was established in 1813 and when Blasis became director in 1837 it became one of the finest schools in the world, producing ballerinas of the stature of Cerrito, Fuoco, Ferraris, Rosati, and Legnani. During the 1830s and 1840s La Scala became one of the world centres of Romantic ballet. Cerrito, Elssler, Taglioni, and Grisi often appeared there; Luigi Henry's La silfide was seen in 1828 (four years earlier than Taglioni's in Paris); A. Cortesi choreographed a Giselle with new music by Bajetti in 1843; M. Taglioni staged her version of Perrot's Pas de quatre in 1846; and Perrot choreographed his Faust in 1848. But this activity was not confined to Milan. In Naples ballet performances dated back to 1737 with the opening of the Teatro San Carlo. Here the public was sufficiently enthusiastic to fight over rival dancers Beccari and Sabatini and during the first years of the 19th century were presented with over 40 new ballets created by Gaetano Gioia. Standards were raised by the opening of a ballet school attached to the San Carlo in 1812 under the direction of P. Hus. S. Taglioni was later director and was also an acclaimed choreographer, and Grisi began her career at the theatre in 1835. In Rome there was little significant ballet activity during the 18th century but during the Romantic period it, too, attracted visits from ballerinas like Cerrito, Grisi, Elssler, Taglioni, and Grahn, and in other cities like Venice, Turin, and Florence, visiting ballerinas and ballet masters worked for occasional seasons. During the second half of the century, however, ballet declined as it became overshadowed by opera. In Milan many well-known ballet masters were engaged at La Scala, including P. Taglioni and H. Monplaisir as were many star ballerinas such as Zucchi and Legnani, but the latter worked mostly abroad due to the lack of creative energy and enthusiasm left in Italy. Manzotti's spectacular productions, such as Excelsior (1881), revived some enthusiasm as did Brianza's appearance in her own production of The Sleeping Beauty, but these did not halt the decline. In Rome, too, there were brief revivals of interest with productions of Excelsior in 1883 and Saint-Léon's Coppélia in 1885, but there was no continuity of performance tradition and this trend continued throughout Italy into the 20th century. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes visited Rome in 1911 and 1917 but were not greatly appreciated and though Cecchetti was appointed director of the La Scala school he did not have any lasting influence. At La Scala Ballet there was a rapid turnover of ballet masters and choreographers but none stayed long enough to establish a clear identity—especially as the ballet (as in all Italian opera houses) had to serve opera productions. In Rome the ballet school of the Teatro dell'Opera was founded in 1928 and between 1934 and 1960 the company, under the alternating direction of R. Romanov and Milloss, staged several productions of the classics. Since then, however, ballet masters have lasted no longer than one or two seasons and at Naples and Florence (where recent directors have included Armitage and David Bombana) activity is similarly sporadic. Italy has produced only a few internationally known choreographers, such as Massimo Moricone, Bigonzetti, and Virgilio Sieni. One of its most influential figures in recent years has been Fracci, via her own performances and also her attempts, with Menegatti and Gai, to run touring companies. Other major features of the Italian scene have been the international festivals such as Nervi-Genoa, Verona, Spoleto, and Castiglioncello which at various times have strongly promoted dance. Some small independent companies have succeeded in challenging the more stagnant opera house companies notably Aterballetto which is resident at Teatro Valli, Balletto di Toscana, and Milan Ballet (founded 1997), but modern dance has not flourished in comparison with other European countries. Small groups tend to come and go, finding little official support. The Olympic Dance Company formed in 1996, under the direction of Gillian Whittingham and including dancers Alessandro Molin and Gheorghe Iancu, has attempted an ambitious fusion of modern and classical repertory with works by Wayne Macgregor, C. Carlson, and M. Hodson.

Italy Italy can pride itself on having the earliest and one of the richest collections of literary fairy tales in Giambattista Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti. The seminal experimentations with the fairy tale as an independent literary genre in the Renaissance and baroque periods on the part of Basile and Straparola did not, however, provide the impetus for the blossoming of a subsequent fairy‐tale ‘vogue’, as was the case in France of the 17th and 18th centuries. Even Basile's Lo cunto, though recognized by scholars for centuries as an artistic and folkloric masterpiece, never achieved the status of beloved national treasure that the collections of Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, or Aleksandr Afanasyev did. Although Italy has abounded in important fairy‐tale collections as well as fairy‐tale authors, a national collection of Italian fairy tales akin to those published in other European countries in the 19th century appeared only in 1956. Up to this day Italian folklorists, literary scholars, and writers continue to grapple with the question of how to assimilate the vast storehouse of dialect narratives of oral tradition, still in part unfamiliar to the modern reading public, into literate culture.

1. up to 1400

The oldest example of an ‘Italian’ literary fairy tale is the story of ‘Cupid and Psyche’, embedded in Apuleius' 2nd‐century Latin novel The Golden Ass. During the millennium that followed, oral tales continued to circulate in the same fashion that they had for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, but due to various factors, among which figured the lack of a secular literate culture, there were few further experiments with the literary fairy tale. The advent of vernacular culture, especially from the 13th century on when the novella became a predominant genre, marked the point at which the mediation between popular and literary traditions began to manifest itself in the presence of fairy‐tale elements in short narrative, even if the first integral fairy tales appeared only three centuries later.

The anonymous late 13th‐century Novellino (The Hundred Old Tales), for example, draws on materials from diverse cultural traditions and thematic areas. Although many of the tales have the structure of medieval exempla, the collection also includes animal fables and fantastic motifs. In other contemporary manuscripts we find more explicit fairy‐tale elements, but in general the exemplum flavour of many of these earliest novellas did not allow for the full expression of the secular supernatural and marvellous that permeates the fairy tale.

We find the most significant early use of fairy‐tale motifs, and perhaps the first explicit reference to fairy tales, in Giovanni Boccaccio's works. Boccaccio had a pivotal role as mediator between the feudal‐chivalric and the emerging bourgeois cultures; thematically, his tales frequently feature ordinary protagonists who triumph over hardship, thus expressing a fairy‐tale‐like optimism. In chapter 10 of book 14 of his treatise on ancient mythology Genealogia deorum gentilium (The Genealogies of the Gentile Gods, 1350–75), he affirms that we may find wisdom not only in the works of great ‘official’ poets like Virgil, Dante, and Petrarch, but also in popular narratives: ‘there has never been a little old woman … as she invents or recites tales of ogres, fairies, or witches around the hearth on winter nights … who has not been aware that under the veil of her narrative lies some serious meaning, with which she can frighten children, or amuse maidens, or at least demonstrate the power of fortune.’ Among his works of fiction, the prose novel Filocolo (1336?) adapts the French tale of Florio and Biancofiore's troubled but ultimately happy‐ended love story, and includes such fairy‐tale functions as an initial lack, antagonists and helpers, a difficult quest and series of tasks, the magic gift, and a final reward and marriage. But it is above all in his most famous work, the Decameron (1349–50), that the fairy tale is used most cogently as a compositional device. No surprise when we consider the variety of materials, many of which share characteristics with the fairy tale, that Boccaccio drew from: classical literature, medieval lais and fabliaux, chansons de geste, and other popular narratives. As is well known, the entire book has a consolatory function, for its tales are told by a group of young people in order to escape the physical and psychological ravages of the plague. Although they are presented as examples of the power of fortune, individual enterprise, and love, the tales often borrow the structure of the fairy tale, especially in day 2, dedicated to the wiles of fortune, and day 5, which features love stories with happy endings. Among such tales are 2.3, the story of three brothers who miraculously ascend from rags to riches; ‘Andreuccio of Perugia’ (2.5), with its tripartite series of adventures; ‘Bernabò of Genoa’ (2.9), the tale of a woman wrongfully accused of adultery by her husband; ‘Giletta of Nerbona’ (3.9), which bears resemblance to Basile's ‘La Sapia’; ‘Nastagio degli Onesti’ (5.8); ‘Torello of Stra and the Saladino’ (10.9); and ‘Griselda and the Marquis of Saluzzo’ (10.10), which combines motifs common to ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and was later rewritten in verse form by Perrault.

Several other early novella collections offer further examples of the entrance of fairy‐tale motifs into the literary arena. Four of the 20 novellas in Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's Pecorone (The Big Sheep, second half of the 14th century) bear strong resemblance to fairy tales, even if in realistic garb (4.1, 4.2, 9.2, and 10.1); just as fairy‐tale motifs are evident in the tales ‘De bono facto’, ‘De vera amicitia et caritate’, and ‘De bona ventura’ of Giovanni Sercambi's Novelle (Novellas, 1390–1402). Fairy‐tale compositional techniques informed two other genres which were increasingly transported from the oral to the literary sphere towards the end of this period. A number of the cantari, epic or romantic ballads which in their early form were recited in town squares by minstrels, have an integral fairy‐tale structure, such as the anonymous Il bel Gherardino (The Fair Gherardino), Ponzela Gaia (The Gay Maiden), and Liombruno, each of which is composed of two ‘movements’ including the typical elements of initial lack, helpers, departures, battles, donors and magic gifts, and elimination of lack. The sacre rappresentazioni, or religious dramas, were also performed in squares or churches, and had as their subject biblical stories, Christian legends, and saints' lives. Unjust persecution was a favourite topic of several of the most renowned of these dramas, such as Santa Guglielma, which with its persecution of an innocent wife is similar to tale 10.1 of the Pecorone; Santa Uliva, in which a daughter's victimhood involves having her hands cut off, and which includes motifs later found in tales by Basile (‘The She‐Bear’ and ‘Penta of the Chopped‐Off Hands’), Perrault, and the Grimms; and Stella, whose evil stepmother is, of course, present in innumerable fairy tales.

2. 1400–1600

The cantari were the single most important influence on the Italian chivalric epic, which emerged in this period, and accordingly, the fairy‐tale motifs present in the former were often transposed to the latter. In Luigi Pulci's comic epic Morgante (1483) we find dragons and ogrish wild men; in particular, the story of Florinetta in canto 19 shares characteristics with Basile's ‘The Flea’ and ‘Cannetella’. Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love, 1495), is similarly populated by miraculous animals, ogres, and fairies, and Ludovico Ariosto's entire Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando, 1516–32), with its interminable search for the elusive female object of desire, is structured like an extended fairy tale.

Although a general interest in popular culture and folk traditions permeated the Renaissance, at least until the second half of the 16th century novellas generally favoured realistic subjects, often taking up the favourite Boccaccian theme of the beffa, or practical joke. From the second half of the 15th century on there was also an increasing interest in fables of the Aesopian type, which culminated in a work like Giacomo Morlini's Latin Novellae (Novellas, 1520). It is, however, Giovan Francesco Straparola who for the first time and in undisguised fashion included entire fairy tales in a novella collection. His enormously popular Le piacevoli notti (The Pleasant Nights, 1550–3), adopts a frame similar to that of the Decameron, in which, after the ex‐bishop of Lodi Ottaviano Maria Sforza leaves Milan for political reasons, he assembles an aristocratic company at his palace near Venice to tell tales over the course of 13 nights. The tales are an eclectic mix of various genres; of the 74 tales, 14 are fairy tales, whose materials were probably gleaned from oriental tales, animal fables, and oral tradition; these are: ‘Cassandrino’ (1.2), ‘Pre' Scarpacifico’ (1.3), ‘Tebaldo’ (1.4), ‘Galeotto’ (2.1), ‘Pietro pazzo’ (‘Crazy Pietro’, 3.1), ‘Biancabella’ (3.3), ‘Fortunio’ (3.4), ‘Ricardo’ (4.1), ‘Ancilotto’ (4.3), ‘Guerrino’ (4.5), ‘Tre fratelli’ (‘The Three Brothers’, 7.5), ‘Maestro Lattanzio’ (8.5), ‘Cesarino de' Berni’ (10.3), and ‘Soriana’ (11.1). Although Straparola's versions of the tales are nowhere near as innovative as Basile's experiment with the genre a century later, there is no doubt that he had a great influence not only on Basile, who reworked several of his tales, but also on Perrault and the Brothers Grimm; all of the fairy tales from the Nights, in fact, find later counterparts in the above collections and others.

3. 1600–1800

The spread of print culture, the anthropological interest that the continuing geographical discoveries inspired, and the attraction to the marvellous that permeated late Renaissance and baroque culture were among the most significant factors that resulted in a re‐evaluation of native folkloric traditions and the attempt to transport them into the realm of literature. And Giambattista Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones, 1634–6), the first integral collection of fairy tales in Europe, is the work that truly marks the passage from the oral folk tale to the artful and sophisticated ‘authored’ fairy tale. Written in Neapolitan dialect and also known as the Pentamerone, this work is composed of 49 fairy tales contained by a 50th frame story, also a fairy tale. In the frame tale, a slave girl deceitfully cheats Princess Zoza out of her predestined prince Tadeo, and the princess reacts by using a magic doll to instil in the slave the craving to hear tales. The prince summons the ten best storytellers of his kingdom, a motley group of old women, and they each tell one tale apiece for five days, at the end of which Zoza tells her own tale, reveals the slave's deceit, and wins back Tadeo. In many ways the structure of the Pentamerone mirrors, in parodic fashion, that of earlier novella collections, in particular Boccaccio's Decameron, suggesting that Basile was well aware of the radically new course he was taking: there are five days of telling that contain ten tales each; the tales are told by ten grotesque lower‐class women; the storytelling activity of each day is preceded by a banquet, games, and other entertainment; and verse eclogues that satirize the social ills of Basile's time follow each day's tales.

Despite its subtitle, the Pentamerone is not a work of children's literature, which did not yet exist as a genre, but was probably intended to be read aloud in the ‘courtly conversations’ that were an élite pastime of this period. Moreover, Basile did not merely transcribe oral materials, but transformed them into original tales distinguished by an irresistible presence of the comic; vertiginous rhetorical play, especially in the form of extravagant metaphor that draws on diverse stylistic registers; abundant references to the everyday life and popular culture of the time; final morals that often poorly fit their tales; characters who, likewise, often betray our sense of what they should be, as fairy‐tale characters; and a subtext of playful critique of courtly culture and the canonical literary tradition. The Pentamerone contains the earliest literary versions of many celebrated fairy‐tale types—‘Cinderella’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Rapunzel’, and others—although they are far more colourful, racy, imbued with sheer exuberance, and open‐ended than their canonical counterparts. Indeed, Basile does not offer easy answers to the problem of how an archaic, oral narrative genre can, or should, be re‐proposed in literary form; in the Pentamerone ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures intersect to create a ‘carnivalesque’ text in which linguistic and cultural hierarchies, as well as the conventional fairy‐tale hierarchies, are rearranged or made to show their weak spots. Besides being one of the most suggestive expressions of the search for new artistic forms and the attraction to the marvellous theorized by baroque poetics, Basile's work exerted a notable influence on later fairy‐tale writers such as Perrault and the women writers of his generation, and the Grimms.

In the century following its publication the Pentamerone inspired much admiration but few further experiments with the genre. Basile's friend Giulio Cesare Cortese included several fairy‐tale episodes in his Viaggio di Parnaso (Voyage to Parnassus, 1620), one of which closely resembles the first story of the Pentamerone, which was probably already in progress at this time. Salvatore Rosa made reference to many of the themes present in the Pentamerone in his Satire (Satires), written in the mid‐17th century, and in Lorenzo Lippi's mock‐epic Malmantile riacquistato (Malmantile Recaptured, 1676) we also find an episode borrowed from Basile. The only other fairy‐tale collection of the 17th century is Pompeo Sarnelli's Posilicheata (An Outing to Posillipo, 1684), composed of five tales told in Neapolitan dialect by peasant women at the end of the country banquet that the frame story narrates.

The enormous production and popularity of fairy tales in 17th‐ and 18th‐century France saw no parallel phenomenon in Italy, and it was over 100 years after Basile, when the fairy‐tale ‘vogue’ was in full fervour in France, that another Italian author wrote a major work based on fairy tales. From 1760 to 1770 the Venetian Carlo Gozzi published his ten Fiabe teatrali (Fairy Tales for the Theatre): L'amore delle tre melarance (The Love of Three Oranges), based on Basile's tale 5.9; Il corvo (The Crow), based on Basile's tale 4.9; Il re cervo (The King Stag); Turandot; Il mostro turchino (The Blue Monster); La donna serpente (The Snake Woman); L'augellin belverde (The Green Bird); I pitocchi fortunati (The Fortunate Beggars), La Zobeide; and Zeim re dei geni (Zeim, King of the Genies). Besides Basile, Gozzi's sources included French tales, oriental tales and romances such as the recently translated The Thousand and One Nights (see arabian nights), and popular oral tradition. The particularity of his plays lies in their juxtaposition of fairy tales with the conventions, improvisational techniques, and masks of the commedia dell'arte, a mix that, somewhat paradoxically, often results in a rather cerebral interpretation of the marvellous. Gozzi, a political conservative and literary traditionalist, wrote his satirical and pointedly ideological plays in polemical response to his arch‐rival Carlo Goldoni's dramas of bourgeois realism, and considered his fairy tales negligible ‘children's’ stories chosen precisely for their distance from the everyday world depicted in Goldoni's plays and for their ability to stimulate curiosity and surprise. Gozzi's Fairy Tales proved to be greatly suggestive from a theatrical point of view, as is evidenced by their inspiration of operas by Richard Wagner, Ferruccio Busoni, Giacomo Puccini, and Sergei Prokofiev.

4. 1800–1900

The early 19th‐century romantic interest in archaic popular traditions, which supposedly most genuinely represented the ‘spirit of a nation’, expressed itself in Italy above all in the study of folk songs and oral poetry, and in investigations of popular customs, beliefs, superstitions, and other practices. Fairy tales were generally not included in this sort of research, and foreign endeavours in this field, such as the Grimms’, aroused interest principally for their aesthetic value. Only later in the century, during the period of Italian unification (1860–70), did tales and legends become the focus of positivistic and comparativistic studies and ethnographic collections. Among the first fairy‐tale collections to appear were Vittorio Imbriani's Novellaja fiorentina (Florentine Tales, 1871) and Novellaja milanese (Milanese Tales, 1872); these were followed by what is arguably the most important Italian collection of the century, the four‐volume Fiabe novelle e racconti popolari siciliani (Fairy Tales, Novellas, and Popular Tales of Sicily, 1875) by Giuseppe Pitré. From the last decades of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century a wealth of other collections appeared that, along with the above, became precious documents for later anthologists of Italian fairy tales such as Italo Calvino. These include: Carolina Coronedi‐Berti's Novelle popolari bolognesi (Bolognese Popular Tales, 1874), Domenico Comparetti's Novelline popolari italiane (Italian Popular Tales, 1875), Isaia Visentini's Fiabe mantovane (Mantuan Fairy Tales, 1879), Gherardo Nerucci's Sessanta novelle popolari montalesi (Sixty Popular Tales from Montale, 1880), Pietro Pellizzari's Fiabe e canzoni popolari del contado di Maglie in terra d'Otranto (Fairy Tales and Popular Songs from the Countryside of Maglie in Terra d'Otranto, 1881), Antonio De Nino's Fiabe (Fairy Tales, 1883), Pitré's Novelle popolari toscane (Tuscan Popular Tales, 1888), Domenico Giuseppe Bernoni's Fiabe popolari veneziane (Venetian Popular Fairy Tales, 1893), Giggi Zanazzo's Novelle, favole e leggende romanesche (Roman Tales, Fables, and Legends, 1907), and Letterio di Francia's Fiabe e novelle calabresi (Calabrian Fairy Tales and Stories, 1929–31).

There were also a number of writers at this time who benefited from the huge amount of ‘prime materials’ newly at their disposal to produce highly suggestive creative elaborations of fairy tales, for the first time written for a young audience. The most famous of these is Carlo Collodi's novel Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino (The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet, 1883). In short, Pinocchio tells of how its homonymous protagonist, a wooden puppet, is induced both by the harsh socio‐economic conditions in which he lives and by his own cheerfully transgressive nature to undergo a series of perilous adventures that eventually lead to his transformation into a real boy. Pinocchio, though it shares with the fairy tale its structure of a journey of initiation fraught with obstacles that ultimately leads to rebirth on the higher plane of adulthood, as well as the common motifs of a fairy godmother, talking animals, magical helpers and donors, and other marvellous beings, also has much in common with the more realistic genres of the picaresque novel, the moralizing family drama so prevalent in children's literature of this period, and even the Bildungsroman, or novel of formation. Pinocchio's adventures are essentially traumatic, for the social world that Collodi depicts is coloured by privation, violence, and indifference, and even in the more intimate, familial sphere, self‐interest and cruelty often reign. Pinocchio has, in fact, been considered an ‘anti‐Cinderella’ tale for its ostensible message that the only way to achieve social validation is through hard work, self‐reliance, and obedience to one's superiors; and that even when it comes, it is far from the enchanted happy ending of fairy tales. Indeed, Pinocchio nearly became a cautionary tale along the lines of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ since, when it was first being published serially in a children's journal, Collodi ended his tale at the end of chapter 15, when Pinocchio is hanged and left for dead, victim of his own unruly ingenuousness. Ultimately, though, Pinocchio's lasting attraction has much less to do with the puppet's metamorphosis into a responsible member of society than with the affirmation of the unleashed vitality and essential humanity of childhood of which he gives constant and poignant proof up until the very last chapter. Although the best‐known re‐adaptation of Pinocchio is Disney's film, there have been many imaginative contemporary rewritings of Collodi's classic tale in Italy, among which figure Carmelo Bene's 1962 dramatized version and Luigi Malerba's Pinocchio con gli stivali (Pinocchio in Boots).

The birth of Pinocchio coincided with the publication of the Sicilian Luigi Capuana's first collection of original fairy tales, C'era una volta (Once Upon a Time, 1882), which was then followed by many others, including ll regno delle fate (The Kingdom of Fairies, 1883), La reginotta (The Princess, 1883), Il Raccontafiabe (The Fairy Tale‐Teller, 1894), Chi vuol fiabe, chi vuole? (Who Wants Fairy Tales, Who Wants Them?, 1908), and Le ultime fiabe (The Last Fairy Tales, 1919); as well as by the theatrical fairy tales Rospus (Toad, 1887) and Spera di sole: Commedia per burattini (Sunbeam: A Comedy for Marionettes, 1898). Capuana used his familiarity with Sicilian folklore to create tales that evoked the oral tales of tradition, although it is his innovative elaboration of these materials through the use of humour, whimsical fantasy, and realistic detail that gives his work its true flavour. This flavour best emerges in the 19 tales of Once Upon a Time where, alongside princes and princesses, fierce antagonists, enchanted objects, and marvellous metamorphoses, we find loving depictions of domestic tableaux and Sicilian landscapes, surprisingly earthy fairies and wizards, and lower‐class protagonists consumed by their primary needs whose final triumph is guaranteed, however, by their simple virtues of perseverance, goodness of heart, and humility.

The children's author Emma Perodi's experimentations with the genre closed the century. Among her numerous fairy‐tale collections should be remembered Le novelle della nonna (Grandmother's Tales, 1892), whose frame tale narrates the life of the Marcuccis, a peasant family that lives in the Tuscan countryside. The narratives, many of which are fairy tales, are told around the family hearth by the Marcucci matriarch Regina from one Christmas Eve to the following November, punctuating the ‘real’ stories of the Marcucci family; indeed, Regina often chooses her tales on the basis of the consolation or instruction that they may offer to members of the family. Perodi's tales are distinguished by a vividly expressive style, the juxtaposition of reassuringly domestic scenarios and uncanny fantastic topographies, the attraction to the dark and the cruel, and the presence of bizarre and macabre figures. Although within the frame Regina may stress the didactic function of her tales, Perodi ultimately resists any socializing project in favour of the celebration of the pleasures of narration and of the delectable indeterminacy of the fantastic worlds that her tales depict.

5. 1900–present

By the start of World War I, the flurry of collection and compilation of tales had died down somewhat, although it again resumed after World War II. The ‘rediscovery’ of the popular narratives of the various Italian regions in the 20th century has been distinguished, on the one hand, by a more painstakingly philological approach to the source materials and, on the other, by the relatively recent attempt to determine ‘ecotypes’ of tales based on the principal cultural areas of Italy. Furthermore, figures such as Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci have had an enormous influence in redirecting folkloric and fairy‐tale scholarship of this century. Croce, above all in his seminal studies of Basile's Pentamerone published in the first decades of the century, maintained that the investigation of folk tales as historical and aesthetic entities should supersede questions of origin or comparativistic analysis of motifs, and thus opened the door to a full‐fledged literary analysis of fairy tales. Gramsci, in his essay ‘Osservazioni sul folclore’ (‘Observations on Folklore’, 1950), put forth the idea that popular folklore expresses a ‘concept of the world’ that is radically different from the ‘official’ world view, and that by studying these perspectives we may better understand the contradictions of a society based on class divisions, an idea that would then be taken up by ideological criticism.

Notwithstanding the abundant tale collections and theoretical reflection on the material contained therein, a definitive ‘master collection’ of Italian tales was not published until 1956, when Italo Calvino, one of the most eminent literary figures of the 20th century, filled the gap with his Fiabe italiane (Italian Folktales). The 200 tales were chosen with the criteria of offering every major tale type, of which Folktales includes about 50, often in multiple versions; and of representing the 20 regions of Italy. Fairy tales predominate, but there are also religious and local legends, novellas, animal fables, and anecdotes. Calvino selected his materials primarily from 19th‐century tale collections, and by ‘touching up’, imposing ‘stylistic unity’, and translating from Italian dialects created his own versions of the tales. This procedure was likened to the Grimms' by the author himself, but Calvino is entirely self‐conscious about his ‘half‐way scientific’ method, discussing at length his techniques of recasting the tales and integrating variants so as to produce the ‘most unusual, beautiful, and original texts’.

Calvino motivates his endeavour by maintaining that folk tales are the thematic prototype of all stories, just as he finds an essential structural paradigm for all literature in the multiple narrative potentialities that folk tales offer, with their ‘infinite variety and infinite repetition’. The Italian corpus that Calvino discovers is, in his eyes, comparable in richness and variety to the great Northern European collections; at the same time, it possesses a distinctly personal and ‘unparalleled grace, wit, and unity of design’. He also identifies a series of more specific characteristics of the Italian tales, though critics have pointed out that they may be in part Calvino's own invention: a sense of beauty and an attraction to sensuality, an eschewal of cruelty in favour of harmony and the ‘healing solution’, ‘a continuous quiver of love’ that runs through many tales, a ‘tendency to dwell on the wondrous’, and a dynamic tension between the fantastic and the realistic. Regarding the vital importance of his material, Calvino maintains that ‘folktales are real’, since they encompass all of human experience in the form of a ‘catalogue of the potential destinies of men and women’. From folk tales we learn, ultimately, that ‘we can liberate ourselves only if we liberate other people’; that we must salvage ‘fidelity to a goal and purity of heart, values fundamental to salvation and triumph’; ‘beauty, a sign of grace that can be masked by the humble, ugly guise of a frog’; and ‘the infinite possibilities of mutation’.

In the introduction to his Folktales Calvino exhorts his readers to consult the original sources he used, and scholars to publish the tales they contain. Since the 1970s, especially, this challenge has been met on multiple fronts: there have been re‐editions of the classic 19th‐century collections, new compilations of tales and indices of tale types, the emergence of children's writers with a predilection for fairy tales, and suggestive ‘retellings' of traditional tales by well‐known contemporary authors.

The most ambitious of the attempts to catalogue Italy's wealth of popular tales was a series of 16 volumes published by Mondadori from 1982 to 1990 dedicated to the fairy tales of the various Italian regions, in which an author and scholar teamed up to translate and edit the material. This sort of endeavour has led to an ever more precise consideration of both the influences that merge to form the common types of Italian tales and of their distinguishing regional characteristics. In this same period there have also been noteworthy experiments with rewriting the classic fairy‐tale canon for children, which in the case of the pedagogue and children's writer Gianni Rodari also encompassed a theoretical discussion of how fairy tales could assume a creative and liberating function in the hands of both children and educators (Grammatica della fantasia (A Grammar of Fantasy, 1973)). Rodari's own most suggestive encounters with the fairy tale include Favole al telefono (Tales on the Telephone, 1962), Tante storie per giocare (Lots of Stories for Play, 1971), and C'era due volte il barone Lamberto (Twice Upon a Time There Lived Baron Lamberto, 1978). Rodari's teachings served as an ideal model for numerous authors who have, over the past decades, continued to transform the increasing interest in fairy tales into the invention of original works often distinguished by the treatment of contemporary social and political issues within the traditional narrative structure of the fairy tale. Among these authors should be remembered Beatrice Solinas Donghi, whose playful approach to tradition is most evident in Le fiabe incatenate (The Linked Fairy Tales, 1967) and La gran fiaba intrecciata (The Great Interlaced Fairy Tale, 1972); Bianca Pitzorno, whose revisitation of fairy‐tale commonplaces often focuses on the development of positive female protagonists, as in L'incredibile storia di Lavinia (The Incredible Story of Lavinia, 1985) and Streghetta mia (My Little Witch, 1988); Roberto Piumini, whose extensive fairy‐tale corpus includes both traditional material and innovative tales which engage with social transformations and political myths of our time (for example, Il giovane che entrava nel palazzo (The Youth Who Entered the Palace) and Fiabe da Perserèn (Fairy Tales from Perseren), both written in the early 1980s); and Luigi Malerba, whose Pinocchio con gli stivali (Pinocchio in Boots, 1977) is a pastiche in which the itineraries of a modern Pinocchio lead to encounters with classic fairy‐tale characters such as Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. And, finally, there have also been a number of initiatives in which authors and poets whose principal activity is not children's literature have tried their hands at fairy tales, as in the 1975 anthology Favole su favole (Fairy Tales upon Fairy Tales).

The cataloguing of popular tales in the second half of the 19th century was in some sense a response to national unification and the inevitable weakening of local traditions that its linguistic and educational standardization would bring. So today the cultural homogenization that our late‐industrial, globalized society thrives on makes the need to retrieve the narrative remnants of local traditions seem even more urgent. This urgency stems not from a romantic nostalgia for preserving the past, but from the hope that the cultures which produced these legacies may regain their fading vitality and continue to tell their life‐affirming tales and that, therefore, we may all continue to experience and to recreate the power of fairy tales to delight, instruct, and promote human communication.

Bibliography

• Aristodemo, Dina, and de Meijer, Pieter, ‘Le fiabe popolari fra cultura regionale e cultura nazionale’, Belfagor, 34 (1979).
• Bacchilega, Cristina, ‘Calvino's Journey: Modern Transformations of Folktale, Story, and Myth’, Journal of Folklore Research, 26 (1989).
• Beckwith, Marc, ‘Italo Calvino and the Nature of Italian Folktales’, Italica, 64 (1987).
• Beniscelli, Alberto, La finzione del fiabesco: Studi sul teatro di Carlo Gozzi (1986).
• Boero, Pino, and De Luca, Carmine, La letteratura per l'infanzia (1995).
• Bottigheimer, Ruth B., ‘Straparola's Piacevoli notti: Rags‐to‐Riches Fairy Tales as Urban Creations’, Merveilles et Contes, 7 (December 1994).
• Bronzini, Giovanni Battista, ‘Italien’, Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vii (1992).
• ——La letteratura popolare italiana dell'Otto–Novecento: Profilo storico‐geografico (1994).
• Canepa, Nancy L., From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile's ‘Lo cunto de li cunti’ and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale (1999).
• Cirese, Alberto Maria, ‘Folklore in Italy: A Historical and Systematic Profile and Bibliography’, Journal of the Folklore Institute, 11 (June/August 1974).
• Cocchiara, Giuseppe, Popolo e letteratura in Italia (1959).
• Emery, Ted, “‘The Reactionary Imagination: Ideology and the Form of the Fairy Tale in Gozzi's Il re cervo’”, in Nancy L. Canepa (ed.), Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France (1997).
• Faeti, Antonio (ed. and intro.), Fiabe fantastiche: Le novelle della nonna by Emma Perodi (1993).
• Mazzacurati, Giancarlo, “‘La narrativa di G. F. Straparola e l'odeologia del fiabesco’”, in Forma e ideologia (1974).
• Perella, Nicolas, ‘An Essay on Pinocchio’, Italica, 63 (spring 1986).
• Petrini, Mario, La fiaba di magia nella letteratura italiana (1983).
• ——Il gran Basile (1989).
• Pinocchio Oggi: Atti del Convegno Pescia‐Collodi 30 settembre–1 ottobre 1978 (1981).
• Robuschi, Giuseppina, Luigi Capuana, scrittore per l'infanzia (1969).

— Nancy Canepa

Italy (Italia), a word perhaps meaning ‘land of calves’ (as if from Vitelia; Lat. vitulus, ‘calf’); the name appears to have been originally applied to the southern half of the toe of Italy. By 450 BC it meant all of the south-west peninsula (now Calabria), subsequently inhabited by the Bruttii, and by 400 it also included Lucania (the mountainous district of south Italy north of Calabria). By the third century BC it meant the whole Italian peninsula south of Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul. After the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC Cisalpine Gaul too became part of Italy. At the beginning of historical times, at the end of the sixth century BC, the Italian peninsula as a whole was inhabited by a variety of races: Celts in the north, Etruscans south of these, Greeks in the south of the peninsula, and in the centre an agglomeration of kindred tribes, Umbrians, Sabellians, Oscans, and Latins. These peoples differed from each other to a greater or lesser degree in race, language, and culture. The physical characteristics of the country are no less varied, from the Apennines and other mountain ranges, which produced a hardy, frugal mountain people, to the warm southern seaboard, where Greeks led an easy and luxurious life, e.g. at Sybaris and Croton. The achievement of Rome during the republican period was to conquer and absorb all the inhabitants of the peninsula, receiving from them in return influences which are clearly reflected in Roman literature.

On June 7, 1925, Professor Marco Levi Bianchini (1875-1961), director of the psychiatric hospital of Nocera Inferiore (Salerno), helped create the Societa Psicoanalitica Italiana (SPI) (Italian Psychoanalytic Society). Of its members only Dr. Edoardo Weiss (1899-1970) had been analyzed. This was an important cultural event given the climate of indifference toward psychoanalysis in the world of Italian neuro-psychiatry, then dominated by Enrico Morselli (1852-1929).

In 1915, there appeared the first work of Freud translated into Italian and published by Marco Levi Bianchini for the Biblioteca Psichiatrica Internazionale under the title Sulla psicoanalisi (On Psychoanalysis); it included the five lectures given by Freud at Clark University in the United States. The review Archivio Generale di Neurologia, Psichiatria e Psicoanalisi, founded in 1920 by Levi Bianchini, became the official organ of the SPI in 1925.

On October 1, 1932, Edoardo Weiss transferred the SPI from Trieste to Rome, and Levi Bianchini became honorary president. Weiss, a Jewish physician from Trieste, had known Freud in Vienna when he was still a student and had been sent to Paul Federn for his personal analysis. He completed his training as an analyst in 1913 before obtaining, the following year, his medical diploma. After returning to Trieste he began to practice as a psychoanalyst (1919). The core of the new society consisted of Cesare Musatti (1897-1989), Nicola Perrotti (1897-1970), and Emilio Servadio (1904-1995), the last two being students of Edoardo Weiss.

Other new publications appeared, including the ephemeral Rivista di Psicoanalisi in 1932, which was banned by the Fascist government at the end of 1933. In 1931, Weiss's Elementi di Psicoanalisi was published, with a preface by Sigmund Freud. The book made an important contribution to the understanding of psychoanalysis, and in fact was the first true work of psychoanalysis published in Italy (in 1937 it was in its third edition).

But the cultural climate in Italy under Fascism was not conducive to the spread of psychoanalysis. To this must be added the hostility of official psychology, represented by the Catholic Agostino Gemelli (1878-1959, see especially the articles published between 1924 and 1925 in Civilità cattolica), and mainstream philosophy, which was influenced by Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. An opportunity arose, however, through the indirect contact between Freud and Benito Mussolini. The father of a patient of Edoardo Weiss, Giovacchino Forzano, was a friend of the Fascist dictator. During a consultation in Freud's office, in the presence of Edoardo Weiss, he asked Freud to dedicate one of his books to Mussolini. Weiss was extremely embarrassed but Freud accepted with a certain ironical detachment and wrote the following dedication in the volume selected (Warum Krieg?, Why War?): "To Benito Mussolini, with respectful greetings from an old man who recognizes in you the hero of a culture. Vienna, April 26, 1933." Later (1952) Weiss felt obligated to explain Freud's behavior to Kurt Eissler, secretary of the Freud Archives in New York, insisting on his rejection of fascism. In a letter of June 30, 1956, to Ernest Jones, he attempted to contest the statement of his patient, the daughter of Giovacchino Forzano, according to whom Mussolini intervened with the Viennese authorities to ensure Freud's safety and enable the family to leave Vienna.

Notwithstanding Weiss's difficulties as the head of the Italian delegation, he was able to participate in the international congresses of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) in Wiesbaden (1932), Lucerne (1934), and Marienbad (1936). In 1935 the IPA recognized the SPI as a member society, but the Fascist government looked askance at the affiliation of Italian psychoanalysts with a foreign association. Emilio Servadio was refused the necessary authorization from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to affiliate with the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and the IPA. In a report dated April 20, 1935, Carmine Senise, chief inspector of police, described the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society as a subversive movement of leftist Jews and claimed that Freud maintained relations with extremists and with Italian anarchists. This climate of hostility did not prevent Italian analysts from publishing in 1936, in the Biblioteca Psicoanalitica Internazionale, a series of essays entitled Saggi in onore di Sigmund Freud to celebrate Freud's eightieth birthday. That same year Ernest Jones, as president of the IPA, was forced to defend his Italian colleagues by writing a letter to the consul general of Italy in London, protesting the fact that the IPA had never recognized the Italian association. In September 1938, however, the Fascist government instituted race laws, and the SPI was dissolved. Emilio Servadio emigrated to India. In January 1939, Edoardo Weiss emigrated to Chicago, where he stayed for the remainder of his life.

Psychoanalysis in Italy did not resume activities until 1945. Joachim Flescher, a Polish doctor analyzed by Edoardo Weiss, had been very active in psychoanalysis and, by publishing a number of articles, sought to propagate knowledge of the field. In 1947, the SPI was officially reconstituted with Nicola Perrotti as president and with the assistance of Alessandra Wolff Stomersee, Princess Tomasi di Lampedusa (1895-1982), who had trained at the Berlin Institute during the early twenties and had returned to Palermo, where she had a small circle of students.

The review Psicoanalisi, founded by Joachim Flescher, became the official mouthpiece of the SPI. Meanwhile, the first Italian Congress of Psychoanalysis was organized in Rome in 1946, followed by a second congress in 1950, also held in Rome. Psicoanalisi was published during the years 1945-1946, but in 1948 Nicola Perrotti founded a new review, Psiche, which, like its French homonym Psyché, created by Marie Choisy, was devoted as much to research as it was to popularization. Within the cultural debate of the time, the speech given by Pius XII on April 15, 1953, played an important part, for, overlooking the reservations of Agostino Gemelli, the Church then recognized the validity of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. In 1955, the SPI reintroduced Rivista di Psicoanalisi, which has remained the official publication to this day. During the next few years some psychoanalysts trained in London by Melanie Klein and her students spread awareness of Kleinian theory in Italy. They included Adda Corti, Pierandrea Lussana, Mauro Morra, and Lina Generali Clementis. The systematic translation of the work of Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott, Herbert Rosenfeld, Donald Meltzer, and Hanna Segal also had considerable influence on psychoanalysis in Italy.

During the nineteen sixties, the SPI was involved in the creation of a number of local centers primarily devoted to scientific research and involvement in social policy. At the same time, differences regarding training were formalized with the establishment of three institutes—one in Milan and two in Rome—coordinated by the Commissione Nazionale del Training.

Interest in psychoanalysis among the public at large continued to grow. By the end of the sixties, there were a number of students, doctors and psychologists, surgeons, and psychiatrists, who had begun to look to the SPI, either to begin personal analysis or to seek supervision for their own treatment of others. During the nineteen-seventies and up to the mid-eighties, upon the initiative of Dr. Piero Bellanova (1917-1987), a number of SPI members joined together to form the Societa Italiana de Psicoterapie Psicoanalitica (SIPP) (Italian Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy). With help from the Tavistock Clinic in London, the profound interest in the work of Melanie Klein resulted in the creation of schools of child psychoanalysis, first in Rome, then in other cities throughout Italy. In 1979 Professor Adriano Giannotti (1932-1994) created, within the department of child neuropsychiatry at the School of Medicine in Rome, a "Corso di psicoterapia psicoanalitica dell'età evolutiva" (Developmental Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy).

Also in Milan, through the efforts of Professors Cesare Musatti, Franco Fornari (1921-1985), Antonio Imbasciati, Franco Ferradini, Giovanni Carlo Zapparoli, Dr. Enzo Morpurgo, and others, psychoanalysis entered the academic world and local medical institutions by training students and clinicians in psychoanalysis. Prompted by Professor Francesco Corrao (1922-1994), the so-called "Pollaloi" group was formed in Rome in the seventies to study and practice psychoanalysis according to the principles established by Wilfred Bion. A Centro Italiano de Gruppo Analisi (CIGA), inspired by the work of S. H. Foulkes, was also created in the seventies by Alice Ricciardi von Platen. During the seventies and early eighties, seminars were organized in Italy by Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, Marta Harris, and Hanna Segal, which received considerable popular attention.

At the same time the work of Jacques Lacan became known in Italy through the effort of three of Lacan's own students—Giacomo Contri, Muriel Drazien, and Armando Verdiglione, who, in 1974, with Lacan's agreement, formed a new association, the Cosa freudiana. The systematic translation of Lacan's seminars and writings was begun by Giacomo Contri and continued by a student of Jacques-Alain Miller, Antonio di Ciaccia. In 1953, during the Congrès des Psychanalystes de Langues Romanes (Congress of Romance Language Psychoanalysts), held in Rome, Jacques Lacan introduced his program: "Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse." Lacan returned several times to Italy for conferences and seminars. On October 31, 1974, a congress of theÉcole Freudienne de Paris was held in Rome, along with the first Congress (devoted to the topic of culture), held in 1982, of the Mouvement Freudien Internationale (International Freudian Movement), founded in Milan in 1976 by Armando Verdiglione. Verdiglione was arrested in 1986 and charged with "extortion, abandonment of the disabled, and criminal association," and condemned to four and a half years in prison.

In psychiatry the influence of psychoanalysis was evident in the new concept of mental illness and the new therapeutic methods illustrated by Professor Franco Basaglia (1924-1980). These led to Law 180/78, which profoundly transformed the organization and function of psychiatric hospitals in Italy.

In 1982, in the presence of the president of the republic Sandro Pertini, the Fiftieth Anniversary Congress of the Foundation of the SPI was held in Rome. During the eighties, the society had followed with growing interest the legislative procedure that resulted in the passage of legislation governing psychologists and psychotherapists (Law 56/89). The legislature examined the methods of intervention and engagement with the Italian state and planned to create a "Scuola di Formazione" (Training School) according to the terms of the new law.

Two IPA congresses were held in Rome, in 1969 and in 1989, and a Congress of Romance Language Psychoanalysts, was also held in Rome (1953, 1960) and in Milan (1964). The SPI as a whole and through its members has always maintained close contacts with its sister societies, especially in England and France. At the national congresses, the tenth of which was held in Rimini in 1994, foreign colleagues were always invited to attend. Throughout the eighties an attempt was made to promote interaction among members from different cities, either through seminars held every two years in Bologna or through yearly conferences organized by the center in Palermo. There were also a number of Italian-French colloquia held nearly every year, starting in November 1989.

Among the significant events of the nineteen-nineties were the revision of the bylaws and rules of the SPI, which dated back to 1974 (1994). Under the impetus of the Site Visit Committee, presided over by Serge Lebovici, a single and unique training institute, currently established in four locations—two in Rome, one in Milan, and one in Bologna—was formed that same year. At the same time a code of professional practice was published. In 1992, a circle of members led by Emilio Servadio and Adriano Giannotti led to the creation of a study group that was recognized by the IPA in 1993 as the Associazione Italiana de Psicoanalisi (AIPsi) (Italian Association for Psychoanalysis). A series of meetings were also held concerning the relation between psychoanalysis and culture, organized annually by the commune of Lavarone under the patronage of the autonomous province of Trento and the SPI. Glauco Carloni, Michel David, Anna Maria Accerboni, and Alberto Schoen assisted in organizing the meetings. The first Italian-Spanish colloquium took place in March 1996.

The theoretical and clinical contribution of Italian psychoanalysts to psychoanalysis merits respect. Aside from the work of Outre Cesare Musatti, who began the translation of the works of Sigmund Freud (OSF, 1967-1980), other important contributions have been made by Niccola Perrotti, Emilio Servadio, Franco Fornari, Eugenio Gaddini, Francesco Corrao, and Ignacio Matte Blanco, the Chilean psychiatrist and philosopher who became a naturalized Italian citizen.

The theoretical investigations concerning the "group field" and "analytic relationship" that characterized Italian psychoanalysis in the 1980s continued into the 1990s. Initiated by analysts who defined the analytic relationship as a system, their point of extra-analytic reference was systems theory while within analysis they relied fundamentally on Freudian metapsychology. Around the same time, Francesco Corroa, a psychoanalyst from Palermo, developed the group field model, deeply influenced by Wilfred Bion. Both trends developed clinical approaches through an extensive investigation into psychoanalytic methodology and epistemology. Several representatives of the psychoanalytic center of Milan, including Nissim Momogliano, employed not only Bion's work but the Kleinian-based clinical theory of Willy Baranger. Other Milanese colleagues were influenced by American intersubjective theory, which has gained currency in Europe in recent years.

The Italian Psychoanalytic Society has centers located in ten major cities, each relatively autonomous. Two reviews chart the ongoing development of psychoanalysis in Italy: Rivista di psicoanalisila, the official publication of the IPS, and Psiche, a journal with broader cultural aims that reaches an audience of specialists in other disciplines.

Bibliography

Accerboni, Anna Maria (1988). Psychanalyse et fascisme: deux approches incompatibles. Le rôle difficile d'Edoardo Weiss. Revue internationale d'histoire de la psychanalyse, 1, 225-243.

Bellanova, Piero, and Bellanova, A. (1982). Le due gradive. Roma: C.E.P.I.

Contri, Giacomo (1978). Lacan in Italia. Milan: La Salamandra.

David, Michel (1966). La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana. Turin: Boringhieri.

Novelletto, Arnaldo (1989). L'Italia nella psicoanalisi. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana.

—ROSARIO MERENDINO

The early modern period following the Renaissance is only now emerging from long neglect by historians, who once considered the period one of unbroken decline. This neglect is paradoxical considering that it was in the period of the late Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation that Italy attained its greatest influence in the Western world and a degree of wealth and sophistication that gave it the pilot role in European civilization. The two-and-a-half centuries following the end of the Italian wars in 1559 do not constitute a single period, however.

Italian States

Unlike France, England, and Castile, which were relatively centralized monarchies with deep roots in the Middle Ages, and unlike Germany, which was a loose-knit confederation of a myriad of relatively stable states under the benign leadership of the Holy Roman emperor, Italy lacked a simple over-arching political framework that enjoyed a wide consensus. Medieval wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines, partisans of papal and imperial authority, respectively, were fought to a stalemate where the reality of power lay with each major city and each great lord in central and northern Italy. Then a gradual and fairly rapid process of elimination of the small states by the larger ones resulted in a political map articulated around less than a dozen territorial states by the time of the Peace of Lodi in 1451. The large-scale Italian wars beginning in 1494 simplified this situation even more after a half-century of intermittent fighting. When the wars were over, the king of Spain, Philip II (ruled 1555–1598), was duke of Milan and king of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. A handful of Italian princes seated in Turin, Mantua, Ferrara, Parma, Florence, and Urbino were reduced to satellite status. The pope had now become effective ruler over all the Papal States in central Italy by eliminating the virtual independence of city-states like Perugia or Bologna. Three medieval city-republics still survived: the powerful Venetian state jealous of its independence, the rich but subservient Genoese republic, and the almost insignificant Luccan state. Once the French threat was definitively removed by a long succession of religious conflicts (1561–1629), Italy enjoyed the fruits of a Pax Hispanica that underpinned its economic growth and its new institutional stability.

The new principalities themselves were significant improvements over the unstable coalitions of interests in small city-states. Dynasties like the Medici in Florence, the Farnese in Parma, and the Savoy in Turin gradually reined in the privileges and the autonomy of feudal lords and ensured greater stability by offering more impartial justice. Italian urban governments were as efficient as those anywhere, and the political prerogatives enjoyed by established families in the towns and cities of central and northern Italy enabled them to govern conjointly with their princes. These princes also took the first steps to empower the elites of subject towns in their bureaucracies and employed them at their courts. While most princes built citadels to guarantee the docility of local nobles, they also entrusted the peasantry with arms and training as territorial militia. With time, even the new, upstart dynasties planted roots in the territories they ruled, cajoled the aristocracy to cooperate with them, wove alliances, and multiplied marriages with other dynasties in Europe. In short, they acquired legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects.

Similarly, the king of Spain held Neapolitan and Sicilian barons on a tighter leash and kept them from each others' throats. These aristocrats readily admitted the usefulness of a strong foreign monarch who served as a safety valve against overbearing and ambitious members of their own group. Spain held out many rewards for their compliant obedience and granted noble families ample autonomy in their fiefs. Spanish imperial ventures in the New World, in the Mediterranean, and in Flanders gave Italian elites almost everywhere a worthy theater in which to display their bravura and achieve their most lofty ambitions. Spanish power also kept the peace in Italy by barring the way to invaders and mediating the tensions arising between Italian states. Most of Italy lived contentedly in the Spanish shadow, and its elites joined the great Catholic crusades against heresy in Flanders, in France, and against the Turks in Hungary and the Mediterranean. More pacific Italians enriched themselves by helping finance the great Spanish military machine.

The Sixteenth Century

This long sixteenth century, lasting until 1620, marked the creation of the first truly global economy with ramifications in Asia and the Americas. Much of the great flow of silver from the Spanish New World was diverted to the coffers of Italian businessmen who then reinvested it in large-scale trade. Italy enjoyed a number of cultural advantages it had accumulated since the Middle Ages. With Arabic numerals, with widespread numeracy, and commonplace recourse to paper transactions, Italians developed the most sophisticated financial and credit mechanisms anywhere. Italy's high-quality urban manufactures dominated the lucrative luxury sectors of international commerce, the skills to produce them protected and enhanced continually in each city. Venice was probably the most important industrial city in Europe, if not the world. Milan was

a vast workshop fed from the great Po valley and provisioned, like the manufacturing cities around it in Lombardy, from much of Europe. Cities like Florence, Bologna, and Naples were also notable centers of manufacturing in a broad range of activities. This economy was directed, at the top, by large-scale bankers, dominated by the Genoese, meeting annually in Piacenza to sort out the exchange and credit needs of all of Europe. The manufacturing economy was complemented by one of the most efficient agricultural economies in the Western world, giving Italy the highest population density in Europe. The successful integration of livestock-raising, tree and vine crops, and cereals in central and northern Italy permitted landlords to utilize scant resources more rationally. If the country was not quite self-sufficient in food supplies, ruling elites adopted complex administrative measures to avert urban famine.

Italy was not least the seat of the Catholic Church. Despite the challenge to its hold over western Europe with Protestant reformations in Germany, France, and England, the great and complex institution survived and gradually recovered. The long and intermittent Council of Trent (1545–1563) enhanced the unity of the institution, while new religious orders like the Jesuits bolstered the power of the pontiff. The new Roman Inquisition (founded in 1542) quickly crushed any hint of nonconformity in Italy, while an array of committees rejuvenated the basic texts and doctrines of the faith. The Roman Curia grew to become one of the great courts of Europe, and the city of Rome grew with it, largely rebuilt and deploying modern concepts and tools of urbanism that made the Eternal City the most modern metropolis on the continent and a great repository of both sacred and secular architecture. The Council of Trent had far-reaching consequences for the practice of Catholicism throughout the world, but Italy was its motor, the area of recruitment of its most active proponents. It took decades for the central organs of the church to apply the council's decisions to the urban and rural hinterland, and much longer for these changes to bear fruit. Nevertheless by 1600 the reforms were everywhere in full swing, with the aim of Christianizing Italians in depth. One effect was to make the church an ever more powerful political entity that expanded its jurisdiction and its taxing power with respect to the state. Members of the social elite flocked to enter both old and new religious orders, or saw the church as a coveted career choice. Clerical discipline and doctrine were then relayed to men and women in both city and country via ever more numerous confraternities.

Cultural Leader of Europe

Italy's cultural inventions provided the standards to which Europeans complied in literature, architecture, art, and music until the end of the nineteenth century, although the country lost some of its pilot role by 1650. The era is synonymous with the baroque aesthetic, fashioned in Rome in the late 1500s, and often closely associated with the Catholic Church. Italian spectacles and festive activities were something of a magnet for Europeans, who imitated its styles. In music, both the small-scale madrigal and the large-scale opera were inventions of the period with a long future. Italian cities invented the modern conservatory to train professional musicians, as they invented the art academy as a place to master the techniques and the theory of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Rome and Venice witnessed the emergence of the first art "market" where buyers and sellers exchanged artworks as commodities. Over time, the baroque aesthetic gradually simplified to announce the basic principles of what would become neoclassicism in the eighteenth century. Italy remained the favorite destination of painters and architects seeking models elaborated in both modern and ancient times.

The proponents of all these reforms and inventions were very largely aristocrats. Urban living had given them a patina of urbanity that combined gentle birth, good breeding, a high level of education, and the ability to choose among a wide array of professional and amateur activities without equal in Europe. The humanist models of virtù exercised in this world were taught formally to nobles in Jesuitrun colleges created first in Italy and then exported throughout the Catholic world and beyond. At first, little prevented the active involvement of noblemen in commerce and manufacture, but as aristocratic mores formed a proper doctrine by the late sixteenth century, they began to withdraw from the active role to celebrate a more genteel otium ('leisure'). Yet it was precisely this detachment from mundane affairs that other Europeans found compelling. The pomp and formality of aristocracy defined the early modern elite, and even the age.

The Seventeenth Century

The Italian pilot role was snatched away suddenly around 1620. The country was never fully protected from foreign threats. During all of the early modern age, Barbary pirates infested the Mediterranean and the Adriatic seas, seizing ships laden with merchandise belonging to Italians. Worse, flotillas of Muslim pirates raided coastal villages and carried off the population into slavery in North Africa or the Middle East. At times, even substantial cities like Reggio Calabria could be sacked by the largest of such flotillas. Italians and Spaniards responded by building a vast network of coastal fortresses and towers, manned with troops and backed with militia to rally threatened districts. The great Ottoman fleets were smashed at Lepanto in 1571, but insecurity reigned thereafter, checked only by the expansion or creation of Catholic crusading flotillas of the knights of Saint John of Jerusalem and of Santo Stefano, operating out of Malta or Livorno, or the small papal and Savoyard squadrons combined with Spanish vessels based in Genoa, Naples, or Sicily.

Wars and Politics

The corsair raids were mere pinpricks next to the eruption of large-scale warfare in Italy and Europe after about 1613, which engulfed first the northern states and then gradually all the others. The Thirty Years' War, which began in 1618, widened to include France intermittently after 1625 and permanently after 1635. Northern Italy became a frequent battleground for contending armies, while other territories contributed troops and money, mostly in support of Habsburg Austria and Spain. The consequences of large-scale, long-term warfare threw the Italian economies into upheaval, destroying networks of credit and exchange, closing off markets, closing workshops, weakening survivors to the point of making them more vulnerable to contagious diseases. By the 1640s, mounting taxes and a dizzying public debt triggered a massive uprising in the kingdom of Naples that imperiled the Spanish regime. If the region saw the rapid recovery by Spain, the kingdom of Naples was too exhausted to remain a pillar of Spanish strength. During the seventeenth century, King Philip IV (ruled 1621–1665) privatized most of his assets in southern Italy in a desperate attempt to find cash to fight the war, reducing royal power in that region to a shadow. It would be decades before Spanish viceroys could muster enough strength in the form of tax revenue to impose their control over the mountainous hinterland and impose obedience on the most turbulent feudal lords. In Sicily, too, the number of troops in the coastal fortresses contracted to the edge of insignificance. Even Venice was drawn into a long and costly defense of its overseas empire against the Ottoman Turks in three very costly wars (1645–1670, 1684–1699, 1714–1718) that reduced its presence in the Middle East to a mere shadow. Hundreds of Venetian patricians died on the ramparts of Candia (present-day Hania), the capital of Crete, or in desperate sea battles with the Turks in the Aegean or the Dardanelles, or of typhus and plague contracted during military operations.

With the eclipse of Spanish power everywhere in Europe, Italian states became pawns in the new European state system articulated around a handful of emergent great powers. Challenged repeatedly by France, Spain was hard pressed to defend its overseas colonies and its European possessions. It almost lost Sicily in the 1670s in the aftermath of an urban revolt at Messina (1674–1678), and Naples and Sardinia escaped conquest only due to French lack of initiative. French pressure on Italian states convinced those princes and republics to let lapse their ties and alliances with Madrid. Only in 1690 did a challenge to French ambitions emerge with the Habsburg emperor Leopold I's (ruled 1657–1705) dispatch of an army to northern Italy, intent on filling the Spanish vacuum with an Austrian one. Leopold I intended to impose his jurisdiction (and his claims to Italian taxes) on the whole of northern and central Italy, as Charles V (ruled 1519–1556) had been briefly able to do in the sixteenth century. The demilitarization of most of the Italian states after the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 forced the smaller states without large standing armies, like Genoa, Mantua, Florence, and Modena, to comply reluctantly with imperial ultimatums. This crisis came to a head during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) when the extinction of the Spanish Habsburg line opened a succession contested between France and the rest of Europe. Most of Spain acclaimed Louis XIV's grandson Philip as king and heir of all the Spanish dominions in 1700. However, the prospect of combining the weak global empire of Spain with the powerful and populous kingdom of France was too horrible to contemplate for the Austrian Habsburgs and their allies in England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Spanish territories in Italy meekly accepted the Bourbon candidate, Philippe d'Orléans, and most accepted the presence of French armies in Italy to defend the inheritance. The Gonzaga rulers of Mantua openly sided with the "Gallispans," as they were called. Piedmont was dragged into the French alliance at the outset of the war but changed sides in 1704. Campaigning on a scale never before seen, between the Gallispan forces and the imperial and Piedmontese in northern Italy, culminated in the perilous siege of Turin by the French in 1706. A victory there would probably have entrenched the Bourbon dynasty in Italy. At the last minute, an imperial army under Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736) maneuvered its way to Piedmont and routed the Gallispan army and chased it out of Italy. In the subsequent campaigns, Austrian armies occupied all of Lombardy and the kingdom of Naples and imposed imperial tutelage on all the smaller states. Over the subsequent decades, Vienna would patiently extend its authority over them all, with the exception of Piedmont and Venice, which had substantial armies of their own.

Economy and Social Conditions

The legacy of war in the seventeenth century included both disease and ruin. Hard times magnified the impact of diseases like the plague that swept away a quarter of the population of northern Italy in 1630 and then a quarter of southern Italy in 1656. The decline of food prices in the aftermath of the plagues also served to depress the entire economy, with the result that most peasants lost the land they owned due to insufficient revenues in hard times. Widespread misery took a lethal toll in frequent outbreaks of typhus, which killed hundreds of thousands of people each time there was a general harvest failure. Widespread poverty drove prices downward for at least a century, between 1620 and 1730, forcing all to curtail spending and investment. The urban manufactures lost their markets abroad and then increasingly their markets at home, too. Instead of importing food and raw materials and exporting high-quality manufactured goods, as in the past, Italians imported ever more manufactured goods from France, the Netherlands, and England, and sold agricultural commodities and semifinished products in exchange. From what we can measure, standards of living in Italian cities and villages declined along with the population. This was not an economic crisis, per se, preparing a rapid recovery. Rather, Italy fell quickly and enduringly behind its northern European neighbors and became the very example of stagnation and decline.

Italy lost its cultural ascendancy in the same period. After spearheading the mathematization of the universe, Italian philosophers formulated the first serious challenge to the Aristotelian worldview that the church supported. However, the church grew in strength throughout this crisis period, and with the active support of Italian princes, it mobilized against new currents in philosophy and science in an enduring manner. If Italy retained a larger number of universities and academies compared to other countries, these were gradually coopted by religious authorities vigilant against dangerous novelties. Italian elites ceased their campaign to spread literacy in cities and villages. Europe's cultural center of gravity shifted away from northern Italy to settle on the triangle of Paris-London-Amsterdam, which became the fulcrum of the Enlightenment.

The Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth century nevertheless witnessed a partial recovery of Italy, though it did not begin to close the gap with northwest Europe. The long depression of the European economy ended around 1730 as the newly rising population began to raise prices and intensify commercial exchanges. Italy's once-prized urban manufactures continued to lose ground, and the country ruralized further, while in northern Europe the cities gained ground absolutely and relatively. Nevertheless, famines became less frequent as large-scale maize and rice cultivation introduced these high-yield crops into the staple diet. A new interest in agricultural questions among the elite sparked an era of innovation and experiment, and investments aimed to reclaim farmland from marshes and hillsides. The Italian population increased from thirteen million to eighteen million at the end of the century, but European population increase was stronger outside Italy. Fortunes were made supplying grain and other foodstuffs to the cities, and the country exported food and other agricultural products like raw silk. Economic thinkers began to suggest lifting the number of restrictions hedging agricultural production and distribution, in the expectation that landlords would produce more food as prices rose. The widespread famines of the mid-1760s constitute a watershed in that governments everywhere began to liberalize the economy, and the grain trade in particular. Production did indeed rise, but prices rose relentlessly, too, and with them, misery proved irrepressible.

The same liberalizing trends were introduced into manufacturing, with the same mixed results. State monopolies and privileges protecting specific industries did not prove very successful. After mid-century, governments began to turn a blind eye to breaches in the regulations. Governments contributed to the expansion by investing effort in roads, canals, and monetary stability. More typically, new initiatives scattered to the countryside and used peasant labor that was abundant and cheap in the off-season. By the late eighteenth century, the future geography of Italian industry was already perceptible in Piedmont, northern Lombardy and the Veneto, Liguria, and northern Tuscany, producing cheap goods for popular markets in Italy and beyond. As the price of manufactured goods declined, something of a consumer revolution began to reach a large portion of the population, in central and northern Italy particularly.

Religion

The same secularizing trends at work north of the Alps began to weaken the monolithic nature of Tridentine Catholicism in the peninsula. In order to contest the challenges to their jurisdiction coming from France, Spain, and Austria, the popes gave new impetus to the study of church history, armed with the new tools of chronology and diplomatics. The unintended result was to have church scholars lead an assault on over a thousand years of church legends. A more critical form of erudition, a study of history, law, and institutions, made intellectual elites in Italy more suspicious of receiving tradition uncritically. After more than a century of active Counter-Reformation, the Italian clergy had never been so well educated or disciplined, but this meant that they were open to fresh intellectual currents, too. The church sometimes excoriated secular tendencies and arrested some of the early Freemasons (members of a philanthropical secret society who tolerated unorthodox religious views), but it could not reverse the trend. In the 1720s and 1730s Piedmont began to limit the church's jurisdiction, and took a more active role in education and charity, areas in which church institutions had been more active than the state. States began to invoke the need to appoint their own censors. Inquisition activities began to be curtailed, since they had always operated with the state's cooperation, and this was no longer automatically forthcoming. Italian states began to impose new taxes on church incomes, to reduce the tax immunities of clergymen, to reduce the number of priests and monks in their territories, and to abolish mortmain, which had prevented church land from being sold to secular landowners. Between 1750 and 1770 a spate of laws limiting the church's jurisdiction was issued all across Italy, sometimes accompanied by new concordats. Nevertheless, this did not entail the more profound dechristianization that was beginning in France. Popular attendance at church services was still very high everywhere. Over most of Italy, the late seventeenth and the entire eighteenth century witnessed missionary activity on an unprecedented scale over the entire countryside, instilling a more modern individual piety despite the theatrical flourishes typical of Mediterranean religiosity. If anything, the eighteenth century witnessed an unprecedented cultural gulf between urban cultural elites and the illiterate majority of Italians.

Intellectual Currents

The intellectual dynamism in eighteenth-century Italy was considerable, across the gamut of genres. Increasing numbers of books were published in Italy, and ever more were imported, legally or as contraband. While censorship was still the norm, censors often intervened with a light hand. The church's index of prohibited books of 1758 was less severe than those preceding it, and was perhaps less severe than that of some Italian states. A great many forbidden works lined the bookshelves of Italian homes or libraries, often published in French. The publication of books was complemented by the multiplication of periodicals. While they rarely reached more than a couple of thousand subscribers each in northern and central Italy, they usually passed through more hands. These made known books published throughout Italy and the rest of Europe with very little time lag. Italian elites became conversant with French Enlightenment principles and with English ideas, too, spread by young aristocrats on the grand tour. By the 1760s and 1770s, the Italian authors who were members of academies and contributors to philosophical and literary journals began to disseminate their ideas close to the realm of power in Milan and Turin, Parma and Modena, Florence and Naples.

Piedmont

More often than not, Italian governments were friendly to such developments, which never encompassed much more than an urban elite. Many of the academies functioned with the blessing of princely governments. These governments evolved gradually in the direction of more discretionary power in the hands of the prince and his court, and a dwindling role for the noble heirs of the urban governments whose institutions reached back into the Middle Ages. The model was largely French, fashioned over several centuries by kings who gradually subjected great lords and autonomous regions to their authority. Piedmont applied these lessons most effectively with perfect continuity through the dukes of Savoy from Emanuel Philibert (ruled 1559–1580) onward. The house of Savoy domesticated its nobility by making service a condition of fiefholding. Nobles served in the army and at court, in both cases enhancing the power of the prince. Noblemen strove to be admitted to bureaucratic institutions in Turin. The dukes also adopted the French employment of powerful commissioners, called intendants, entrusted with the strict application of the duke's decisions in every district capital. With a more efficient government hierarchy, the dukes could afford to raise taxes and establish a standing army, which could be used to enforce its will on recalcitrant subjects. During the long reign of Victor Amadeus II (1683–1730), the duke single-mindedly pushed back provincial, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical privilege with the aim of increasing his revenues. These he spent principally on warfare. Aided by British and Dutch subsidies, Victor Amadeus fashioned a large and effective military force that helped tilt the balance against Louis XIV and resulted in the expansion of the state in Lombardy and the acquisition of Sardinia (1720) with its royal title. Along with Venice, but with more ambitious expansion aims, Piedmont possessed the only serious Italian army on the peninsula. By committing its army to one side or the other in the rivalry between the Bourbons and the Habsburgs, the Savoy dynasty was able to increase the size and power of the state.

Naples

Piedmont was eventually isolated after 1756 once Habsburgs and Bourbons decided to make peace to confront other threats. Both dynasties applied absolutist principles in the Italian areas they governed, although these were not completely novel in the eighteenth century. The French Bourbon kings considered Italy to be a sideshow and did not seek major gains there during the eighteenth century. Their sole durable initiative was to purchase the rebellious island of Corsica from Genoa in 1767 and to crush the rebels there. Ejected from the peninsula after 1707, the Spanish Bourbons returned in 1734 when a seaborne army enabled the adolescent Charles III (ruled in Naples 1734–1759) to take Naples and Sicily from Austria. Charles was long dependent upon instructions from his parents, who gave him an army composed chiefly of Spanish and other foreign troops. True to Bourbon principles, Charles sought to domesticate the Neapolitan aristocracy and rule through civil servants steeped in royalist tradition. Charles was forced by family allegiance to commit the kingdom to war against the Habsburgs after 1740. With luck, his army defeated an Austrian attempt at reconquest in 1744, and Neapolitan notables resigned themselves to the Bourbon regime. The chief minister in Naples, Bernardo Tanucci (ascendant 1740–1776), adopted principles long followed in France, then Spain, to curtail baronial and ecclesiastical jurisdictions and liberties to the benefit of royal government, and to recover the direction of tax offices alienated to private investors during the preceding century. The place of the church was drastically curtailed during the latter half of the eighteenth century, in part due to a new concordat. Feudal power receded more gradually, though baronial excesses and violence were largely things of the past after 1750. There was even some progress in enhancing royal control over the tax machinery and in streamlining government procedures. After Tanucci retired, and the crown settled on Charles's son Ferdinand I (ruled 1767–1825) and his Habsburg queen Maria Carolina, absolutist policies designed by aristocratic Freemasons hemmed in baronial power in Sicily, too. The Bourbons tried to maintain a credible army and rally the aristocracy around it, and in the 1780s they created a navy, too, with which to combat Barbary corsairs. In Naples the regime established a panoply of royal institutions, including a palace at Caserta modeled on Versailles. The regime was fairly deeply rooted in the kingdom when French revolutionaries overthrew it in 1799, and it was restored largely through popular rebellion.

Northern Italy and the Habsburgs

Austrian Habsburgs applied the same general principles in the areas they governed after winning the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714. Initially they scooped up most of the Spanish territories in Italy: Milan, Naples, and Sardinia (exchanged with Piedmont for Sicily in 1720). Habsburg ambitions did not end there. Mantua was confiscated from the Gonzaga dukes for backing the Bourbons. The emperor Charles VI (ruled 1711–1740) also intended to incorporate into the empire the other Italian principalities: Parma on the extinction of the Farnese in 1731; Tuscany on the extinction of the Medici in 1737. Italians constituted about one-third of the emperor's direct subjects in those years.

But the incipient "Austrian" empire was a ramshackle conglomeration of territories articulated around the Austrian and Bohemian heartland, with its peripheries responding poorly to directives from the center. Its vulnerability in Italy was demonstrated during the War of the Polish Succession in 1733–1735 as Gallispan armies supported by Piedmont ejected imperial troops from both Lombardy and Naples, losing the latter definitively. When in 1740 a Prussian attack gave birth to a new coalition aimed at breaking up the Austrian Habsburg empire, triggering the War of the Austrian Succession, the new Habsburg regime headed by Maria Theresa had never looked weaker. The Danubian territories rallied around the dynasty, however, permitting the levy of new Habsburg armies for fighting in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. A new Spanish army operating in Emilia with Neapolitan support was beaten back. When Piedmont and Britain joined Austria soon after, the Habsburg Monarchy was able to mount better odds. Maria Theresa briefly lost Milan and Parma in 1745 to Gallispan troops but soon after recovered sufficiently to put the Bourbons on the defensive. French successes elsewhere finally allowed a Spanish Bourbon to become duke of Parma in 1748, but it was a limited success. Maria Theresa spent the rest of her reign reinforcing imperial institutions in Milan. As in Piedmont, the crucial initiative was to undertake a meticulous cadastre of landed property that allowed it to assess taxes more equitably and efficiently. Gradually, the monarchy took over the business of raising taxes, which was novel for the ancien régime. After 1765, Maria Theresa was aided by her eldest son, Joseph, who reigned as emperor between 1780 and 1790. As a result of their initiatives to stimulate the economy and streamline the administration, Milanese patricians gradually lost their hold over the region, to the benefit of Italians nominated from Vienna.

The Habsburg influence spread throughout Italy in the eighteenth century, prefiguring the predominance of Metternich's age in the early nineteenth century before Italian unification. Genoa relied on imperial troops to retain its shaky hold on Corsica. Maria Theresa's husband, emperor Francis I (ruled 1737–1765), succeeded the Medici to the grand-ducal throne of Florence, and ruled it from Vienna through the intermediary of Lorrainer officials, until his son Leopold (ruled 1765–1790) went to rule there directly after 1765. The Este line in Modena eventually merged with a Habsburg prince, extending Vienna's influence into Emilia. Once Habsburgs and Bourbons formed an alliance in 1756, it was cemented in place through a series of marriages, and queen Maria Carolina effectively brought Naples into the Austrian sphere of influence at the end of the century, displacing the Spanish connection of her Bourbon husband.

Habsburg reforms tended to be most drastic with respect to the Catholic Church. Maria Theresa was content to impose Vienna's jurisdiction in her territories, at the expense of the pope. It can be argued that she was following the Bourbon lead in this area, imposing ultimate state control over papal functionaries. Reforms to church structures under her sons Joseph II (in Lombardy and the Trentino) and Leopold (in Tuscany) were intentionally more fundamental, as both princes sponsored the spread of Jansenist principles at the expense of traditional Catholicism. Bishops nominated from Vienna were henceforth all selected with a view to uprooting "superstition" and "fanaticism." Priests were trained at great seminaries under state control, using a Jansenist catechism. The great majority of religious houses were closed by government order and their property confiscated. Most of these measures irritated most Italians, and the Tuscan reformers were challenged by traditional bishops and popular riots in 1787. Leopold decreed a pause in these and other reforms, but they marked the real end of the Counter-Reformation era in Italy, just before the arrival of French revolutionary troops in 1796.

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——. The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts, 1560–1800. New York, 1998.

Mackenney, Richard. Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250–c. 1650. London, 1987.

Malanima, Paolo. La fine del primato: Crisi e riconversione nell'Italia del Seicento. Milan, 1998.

Marino, John, ed. Early Modern Italy, 1550–1796. Oxford and New York, 2002.

Marino, John, and Antonio Calabria, eds. and transl. Good Government in Spanish Naples. New York, 1990.

Pastor, Ludwig von. The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages. 40 vols. London, 1936–1967.

Ricuperati, Giuseppe, and Dino Carpanetto. Italy in the Age of Reason, 1685–1789. New York and London, 1987.

Sella, Domenico. Crisis and Continuity: The Economy of Spanish Lombardy in the 17th Century. Cambridge, Mass., 1979.

——. Italy in the Seventeenth Century. New York and London, 1997.

Smith, Denis Mack. A History of Sicily. 2 vols. New York, 1969.

Symcox, Geoffrey. Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675–1730. Berkeley, 1983.

Venturi, Franco. Italy and the Enlightenment: Studies in a Cosmopolitan Century. Translated by Susan Corsi. New York, 1972.

Woolf, Stuart J. A History of Italy, 1700–1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change. London and New York, 1986.

—GREGORY HANLON

This entry includes four subentries:
Northern Italy
Southern Italy
The Italian Meal
Tradition in Italian Cuisine

Republic in southern Europe, jutting into the Mediterranean Sea as a boot-shaped peninsula, surrounded on the east, south, and west by arms of the Mediterranean, and bordered to the northwest by France, to the north by Switzerland and Austria, and to the northeast by Yugoslavia. The country includes the large islands of Sicily and Sardinia, as well as many smaller islands, such as Capri. Its capital and largest city is Rome.

• Italy was the core of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire from the fourth century b.c. to the fifth century a.d.
• Beginning in the fourteenth century, the Italian Renaissance brought Europe out of the Middle Ages with its outstanding contributions to the arts. To this day, Italy continues to be associated with great artistic achievement and is home to countless masterpieces.
• Under the fascist leadership of Benito Mussolini (see fascism), Italy began colonization in Africa and entered a military alliance with Germany and Japan. These countries were known as the Axis powers in World War II.
• Italy has been a member of NATO since 1949.
• Italian cooking, featuring pasta, has become a staple of the American diet.

The international dialing code for Italy is:   39

Recipes

Geographic Setting and Environment

Located in southern Europe, Italy is slightly larger than the state of Arizona. Most of Italy is mountainous, and it is home to Mount Vesuvius, the only active volcano on the European mainland.

A fertile valley surrounds the Po River, the largest river in Italy. Many different plants thrive in its rich soil. Italy is surrounded by water on three sides and benefits from a variety of seafood and coastal vegetation.

Climate varies depending on elevation and region. Colder temperatures can be found in the mountainous regions, particularly within the high peaks of the Alps, a mountain range in the northwest. Temperatures are warmer in the Po River valley, the coastal lowlands, and on Italy's islands (Sicily and Sardinia), with an average annual temperature around 60°F.

Plants and animals also vary depending on elevation and region. Italy hosts a wide variety of trees, including conifers, beech, oak, and chestnut in the higher elevations. Evergreens, cork, juniper, laurel, and dwarf palms are widespread throughout the Po River Valley and Italy's islands.

History and Food

From the early Middle Ages (beginning around A.D. 500) to the late 1800s, Italy consisted of separate republics, each with different culinary (cooking) customs. These varying cooking practices, which were passed down from generation to generation, contributed to the diversity of Italian cuisine. Italy's neighboring countries, including France, Austria, and Yugoslavia, also contributed to differences in the country's cuisine.

Italy changed in many ways when the economy flourished following World War II (1939–45). During this time, farming was modernized and new technologies and farming systems were introduced. Various culinary practices throughout the country's regions began to be combined after people started migrating from the countryside to the cities. Many southern Italians traveled to the north at this time, introducing pizza to northern Italians. Those from the north introduced risotto (a rice dish) and polenta (a simple, cornmeal dish) to the south. Fast foods, mostly introduced from the United States, have brought more culinary diversity to Italy. However, pride in the culture of one's region, or companilismo, extends to the food of the locality, and regional cooking styles are celebrated throughout the country.

Foods of the Italians

Although Italians are known throughout the world for pizza, pasta, and tomato sauce, the national diet of Italy has traditionally differed greatly by region. Prior to the blending of cooking practices among different regions, it was possible to distinguish Italian cooking simply by the type of cooking fat used: butter was used in the north, pork fat in the center of the country, and olive oil in the south. Staple dishes in the north were rice and polenta, and pasta was most popular throughout the south. During the last decades of the twentieth century (1980s and 1990s), however, pasta and pizza (another traditional southern food) became popular in the north of Italy. Pasta is more likely to be served with a white cheese sauce in the north and a tomato-based sauce in the south.

Italians are known for their use of herbs in cooking, especially oregano, basil, thyme, parsley, rosemary, and sage. Cheese also plays an important role in Italian cuisine. There are more than 400 types of cheese made in Italy, with Parmesan, mozzarella, and asiago among the best known worldwide. Prosciutto ham, the most popular ingredient of the Italian antipasto (first course) was first made in Parma, a city that also gave its name to Parmesan cheese.

See Pasta e Fagioli (Noodle and Bean Soup) recipe.

See Fettucine Alfredo recipe.

See Polenta recipe.

See Saltimbocca alla Romana (Veal Scallops with Sage and Prosciutto) recipe.

Food for Religious and Holiday Celebrations

Every Italian village celebrates its own saint's day with a festival featuring fireworks, feasting, and dancing. The traditional main dish for these festivals is roast suckling pig. A popular Easter dish throughout Italy is Agnellino (roast baby lamb), often served with roasted artichokes.

Although the holiday bread called panet-tone is the best known of Italy's many holiday desserts, regions throughout the country have their own traditional holiday sweets featuring local ingredients. In the north, butter is a major ingredient of these desserts. Zelten cakes, similar to fruitcake, are filled with raisins, dates, figs, almonds, pine nuts, orange peel, rum, and cinnamon, are baked two or three weeks before Christmas because they improve with time. Strudel is popular in the Tyrol region in northern Italy. In the south, dessert recipes are more elaborate and use olive oil (instead of butter), lots of eggs, candied fruit, and honey. Among the best known are struffoli, fried cubes of egg pastry covered with honey and sprinkled with colored sugar, a specialty from Naples.

See Italian Easter Bread recipe.

See Panettone (Italian Christmas Bread) recipe.

See Biscotti recipe.

Mealtime Customs

Italians generally eat three meals a day. Adults eat a light breakfast (la prima colazione), often stopping at a coffee shop on their way to work for a caffellatte (coffee with milk) or cappuccino with bread, butter, and jam, or cake. Lunch and dinner are similar meals. They consist of an antipasto (an appetizer based on cold meats), a pasta or rice dish (depending on the region) such as risotto, a main meat or fish course, a salad, and cheese and fruit. Lunch (il pranza or la seconda colazione) is the main meal of the day for many Italians and is eaten between noon and 2 P.M.

Whether eating at home or in a restaurant, Italians take food seriously. They prefer to dine in a leisurely fashion, savoring their meals over a bottle of wine and conversation. Wine and bread are always served during main meals. Even children are often allowed a taste of wine. In southern Italy, where people take a long break during the hottest part of the day, dinner (la cena) is served later than in the north, often after 7:30 P.M.

In addition to their main meals, Italians have two traditional snack times. Spuntini (midmorning snacks) and the mid-afternoon merende. Both usually serve a type of bread dough with toppings. Some typical merende are bruschetta (usually a long loaf of bread, cut into slices and topped with seasonings), focaccio (an Italian flatbread), and crostini (fried slices of polenta). Originally a rural tradition, these snacks lost popularity following World War II as people migrated to

Italian cities. However, increased interest in traditional dishes and consuming healthy, lighter meals has helped these snacks become popular again, even in the United States.

See Frittata recipe.

See Bruschetta (Toasted Garlic Bread) recipe.

See Cannoli recipe.

Politics, Economics, and Nutrition

The government in Italy controls much of the agriculture of the country. It controls how much wheat can be produced, for example, and how much wheat can be imported. The government was not successful during the 1990s in its efforts to increase agricultural production. Italy imports about one-half of its meat, and in the late 1990s and through 2001, concerns over European beef because of mad cow disease and hoof and mouth disease caused the prices of beef to increase.

Further Study

Books

Albyn, Carole Lisa, and Lois Webb. The Multicultural Cookbook for Students. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1993.

Field, Carol. Italy in Small Bites. New York: William Morrow, 1993.

Halvorsen, Francine. Eating Around the World in Your Neighborhood. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Lukins, Sheila. All Around the World Cookbook. New York: Workman, 1994.

Penza, John, and Tony Corsi. Sicilian and American Pasta: 99 Recipes You Can't Refuse. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1994.

Roden, Claudia. The Good Food of Italy, Region by Region. New York: Knopf, 1991.

Web Sites

Delicious Italy. [Online] Availabe http://www.deliciousitaly.com/ (accessed August 7, 2001).

Epicurious: For People Who Eat. [Online] Available http://epicurious.com (accessed February 11, 2001).

International Women. [Online] Available http://www.internationalwoman.net/recipesitaly.htm (accessed August 7, 2001).

Lidia's Italy. [Online] Available http://www.lidiasitaly.com/ (accessed August 7, 2001).

Italy contends with France as the world's largest wine producer. Each produces between 1.3 and 1.6 billion gallons of wine annually, depending on the year. Together these two countries produce about 40 percent of the world's total. Italy's also the second greatest wine consumer, second only to France-each Italian consumes about eight times the wine of an average American. Italy's a land of vast geographic diversity ranging from its northern cool-temperature vineyards in the foothills of the Alps, to the hot southland. Italy's been making wine for at least 3,500 years in a variety of styles (dry to sweet, still to fully sparkling) and in a variety of ways, such as the passito method, from many grape varieties not widely grown outside of Italy. The Italian varieties used for red and rosé wines include aglianico, barbera, bonarda, canaiolo, dolcetto, freisa, grignolino, lagrein, lambrusco, montepulciano, nebbiolo, raboso, refosco, sangiovese, schiava, and Teroldego. Those used for white wines are albana, bombino bianco, cortese, garganega, greco, malvasia, Moscato (muscat), picolit, pigato, prosecco, tocai friulano, trebbiano, verdicchio, verduzzo, vernaccia di oristano and vernaccia di san gimignano. Other European (primarily French and German) varieties grown here are cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, Pinot Nero (pinot noir), syrah, chardonnay, gewürztraminer, müller-thurgau, Pinot Bianco (pinot blanc), Pinot Grigio (pinot gris), Riesling Italico (welschriesling), Riesling Renano (riesling), sauvignon blanc and sylvaner. The Italians have implemented a system similiar to France's for improving the quality of their wines. At the lowest level of this quality ranking are the vino da tavola wines, followed by indicazione geografica tipica wines and then the denominazione di origine controllata (doc), which is similiar to the French appellation d'origine contrôlée. Parameters for the Italian DOC, however, weren't considered strict enough so another higher level, denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (docg) was added. DOCG status, which requires stricter rules and controls, has been granted to fewer than twenty-five areas since it was implemented in the early 1980s. Italy has twenty large growing regions, the boundaries of which define the area geographically, not by any common wine style, grape variety, or climate. Of these twenty regions, the five largest volume producers (apulia, sicily, veneteo emilia-romagna and abruzzi) make over 61 percent of the total wine production. The order of these regions (as to whose is first, second, etc.) changes depending on the year. The four top regions producing quality wines (those ranked as DOC or DOCG) are veneto, piedmont tuscany, and emilia-romagna. These four areas produce over 57 percent of the DOC/DOCG wines. Some of the better known of these wines include chianti from the Tuscany region; asti from the Piedmont region; lambrusco wines from DOC areas like Lambrusco di Sorbara, Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro, and Lambrusco Salamino di Santa Croce in the emila-romagna region; and bardolino, valpolicella and soave from the Veneto region. High-quality wines also come from DOCGs like barbaresco, barolo and gattinara in Piedmont; brunello di montalcino and vino nobile di montepulciano in Tuscany; and torgiano rosso reserva in umbria.

[For information regarding ancient Italy, see Rome, Ancient Religion and Magic. ]

Magic and sorcery in medieval Italy centered around the many great personalities of the church. Even several popes have been included by the historians of occult science in the ranks of notable Italian sorcerers and alchemists. There appears to have been some sort of folk tradition that the popes had been given over to the practice of magic ever since the tenth century, and it was alleged that Silvester II confessed to this charge on his death bed. Éliphas Lévi stated that Honorius III, who preached the Crusades, was an abominable necromancer, and the author of the Grimoire of Honorius, a book by which spirits were evoked.

Bartholomew Platina (1421-1481), quoting from Martinus Polonus, stated that Silvester, who was a proficient mathematician and versed in the Kabbalah, on one occasion evoked Satan himself and obtained his assistance to gain the pontifical crown. Furthermore he stipulated as the price of selling his soul to the devil that he should not die except at Jerusalem, where he inwardly determined he would never go.

He did become pope. But on one occasion while celebrating Mass in a certain church at Rome, he felt extremely ill, and suddenly remembered that he was officiating in a chapel dedicated to the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. He had a bed set up in the chapel, to which he summoned the cardinals and confessed that he had held communication with the powers of evil. He further arranged that when dead, his body should be placed upon a car of green wood drawn by two horses, one black and other white. He stipulated that the horses should be started on their course, but neither led nor driven, and that where they halted his remains should be entombed. The conveyance stopped in front of the Lateran, and at this juncture terrible noises proceeded from it, which led the bystanders to suppose that the soul of Silvester had been seized upon by Satan according to the agreement.

There is no doubt whatsoever that such legends concerning papal necromancers are simply inventions; they can be traced through Platina and Polonus to Galfridus and the chronicler Gervase of Tilbury, whom Gabriel Naudé termed "the greatest forger of fables, and the most notorious liar that ever took pen in hand!"

On par with such myths is that of Pope Joan, who for several years was supposed to have sat on the papal throne although a woman, and who was supposed to be one of the rankest sorceresses of all time. Many magic books were attributed to Pope Joan. Lévi has an interesting passage in his History of Magic (1913) in which he states that certain engravings in a life of this female pope, purporting to represent her, are nothing but ancient tarots representing Isis crowned with a tiara. "It is well-known that the hieroglyphic figure on the second tarot card is still called 'The Female Pope,' being a woman wearing a tiara, on which are the points of the crescent moon, or the horns of Isis."

But all Italian necromancers and magicians were by no means churchmen—indeed, medieval Italy was hardly a place for the magically inclined, so stringent were the laws of the church against the occult. One exception, astrology, however, flourished, and its practitioners were accepted into the highest levels of society. A Florentine astrologer named Basil, who flourished at the beginning of the fifteenth century, obtained some repute for successful predictions and was said to have foretold to Cosmo de Medici that he would attain exalted dignity, as the same planets had been in ascendency at the hour of his birth as at the birth of the Emperor Charles V.

Many remarkable predictions were made by Antiochus Tibertus of Romagna, who was for some time counselor to Pandolpho de Maletesta, Prince of Rimini. He foretold to his friend Guido de Bogni, the celebrated soldier, that he was unjustly suspected by his best friend, and would forfeit his life through suspicion. Of himself he predicted that he would die on the scaffold, and of the Prince of Rimini, his patron, that he would die a beggar in the hospital for the poor at Bologna. It is stated that the prophecies came true in every detail.

Although the recorded notices of sorcery in medieval times are few in Italian history, there is reason to suspect that although magic was not outwardly practiced, it lurked hidden in out-of-the-way places. An excellent portrait of the medieval Italian magician can be found in the popular myths of Virgil the Enchanter.

The Legend of Virgil

The fame of Virgil the Poet was so great in ancient Italy that in due time his name became synonymous with fame itself. From that it was a short step to the attribution of supernatural power, and Virgil the Roman poet became in the popular mind a medieval enchanter. His myth is symptomatic of magic in medieval Italy as a whole and is therefore described here at some length.

When the popular myth of Virgil the Enchanter first grew into repute is uncertain, but probably the earliest conception arose about the beginning of the tenth century and each succeeding generation embroidered upon it some new fantastic element. Soon, in the south of Italy (the necromancer's fame was of southern origin), mysterious legends of the enchantments he had wrought emerged.

Thus Virgil was said to have fashioned a brazen fly and planted it on the gate of fair Parthenope to free the city from the inroads of the insects of Beelzebub. On a Neapolitan hill he built a brass statue and placed a trumpet in its mouth. When the north wind blew a roar so terrible came from that trumpet that it drove the noxious blasts of Vulcan's forges back into the sea. At one of the gates of Naples, Virgil supposedly raised two statues of stone and gifted them respectively with the power of blighting or blessing the strangers who passed by one or the other of them on entering the city. He constructed three public baths for the removal of every disease afflicting the human body, but the physicians, in a dread of losing their patients and their fees, caused them to be destroyed.

Other wonders he was supposed to have wrought were woven into a biography of the enchanter, first printed in French about 1490-1520. A still fuller history appeared in English as "The Life of Virgilius," about 1508, printed by Hans Doesborcke at Antwerp. It set forth with tolerable clearness the popular type of the medieval magician, and is drawn upon in the following biographical sketch: "Virgil was the son of a wealthy senator of Rome, wealthy and powerful enough to carry on war with the Roman Emperor. As his birth was heralded by extraordinary portents, it is no marvel that even in childhood he showed himself endowed with extraordinary mental powers, and his father having the sagacity to discern in him an embryo necromancer sent him, while still very young, to study at the University of Toledo, where the 'art of magick' was taught with extraordinary success." "There he studied diligently, for he was of great understanding, and speedily acquired a profound insight into the great Shemaia of the Chaldean lore. But this insight was due not so much to nocturnal vigils over abstruse books, as to the help he received from a very valuable familiar. "

The story goes on to say that Virgil's father died and his estates were seized by his former colleagues, so his widow was sunk into extreme poverty. Virgil accordingly gathered together the wealth he had amassed by the exercise of his magical skill and set out for Rome to put his mother in a position proper to her rank. At Toledo he had been regarded as a famous student; but at Rome he was a despised scholar, and when he asked the emperor to execute justice and restore his estate to him, that potentate, ignorant of the magician's power, simply replied, "Methinketh that the land is well divided to them that have it, for they may help you in their need; what needeth you for to care for the disheriting of one school-master. Bid him take heed, and look to his schools, for he hath no right to any land here about the city of Rome."

Four years passed, and only such replies as this were given to Virgil's frequent appeals for justice. Growing at length weary of the delay, he resolved to exercise his wondrous powers in his own behalf. When the harvest came, he accordingly shrouded the whole of his rightful inheritance with a vapor so dense that the new proprietors were unable to approach it, and under its cover his men gathered in the entire crop with perfect security. This done, the mist disappeared.

Then his angry enemies assembled their swordsmen and marched against him to take off his head. Such was their power that the emperor fled out of Rome in fear, "…for they were twelve senators that had all the world under them, and if Virgilius had right, he had been one of the twelve, but they had disinherited him and his mother." When they drew near, Virgil once more baffled their designs by encircling his patrimony with cloud and shadow.

The emperor, with surprising inconsistency, now joined forces with the senators against Virgil, whose magical powers he should have feared far more than the rude force of the senatorial magnates, and made war against him. But who can prevail against the arts of necromancy? Emperor and senators were duly beaten, and from that moment Virgil, with marvelous generosity, became the faithful friend and powerful supporter of his sovereign.

It may not be generally known that Virgil, besides being the savior of Rome, was supposed to be the founder of Naples. This feat had its origin, like so many other great actions, in the power of love.

Virgil's imagination had been fired by the reports that reached him of the surpassing loveliness of the sultan's daughter. Now the sultan lived at Babylon (that is, at Cairo, the "Babylon" of medieval romancers) and the distance might have daunted a less ardent lover and less potent magician. But Virgil's necromantic skill was equal to magically raising a bridge in the air, and, passing over it, he found his way into the sultan's palace and into the princess's chamber. Speedily overcoming her natural modesty, Virgil bore her back with him to his Italian bower. There, he enjoyed his fill of love and pleasure, then restored the princess to her bed in her father's palace. Meanwhile, her absence had been noted, but she was soon discovered on her return, and the sultan, hastening to her chamber, interrogated her respecting her disappearance. He found that she did not know who had carried her off, nor where she had been carried.

When Virgil abducted and restored the princess on the following night, she took back with her, by her father's instructions, some fruit plucked from the enchanter's garden, and from its quality the sultan guessed that she had been carried to a southern land "on the side of France." These nocturnal journeys being several times repeated and the sultan's curiosity growing ungovernable, he persuaded his daughter to give her lover a sleeping draught. The deceived magician was then captured in the Babylonian palace and flung into prison, and it was decreed that both he and his mistress should be punished for their love by death at the stake.

Necromancers are not so easily outwitted. As soon as Virgil was apprised of the fate intended for him, he made, by force of his spells, the sultan and all his lords believe that the mighty Nilus, great river of Babylon, was overflowing in the midst of them, and that they swam and lay and sprang like geese, and so they took up Virgil and the princess, tore them from their prison, and placed them upon the aerial bridge. And when they were thus out of danger, Virgil delivered the sultan and all the lords from the river, and when they recovered their wits they saw the enchanter bearing the beautiful princess across the Mediterranean, and they marveled and felt that they could not hope to prevail against such supernatural power.

And in this manner Virgil conveyed the sultan's daughter over the sea to Rome. He was infatuated with her beauty, and, "Then he thought in his mind how he might marry her [apparently forgetting that he was already married] and thought in his mind to found in the midst of the sea a fair town with great lands belonging to it; and so he did by his cunning, and called it Naples…"

After accomplishing so much for his Babylonian beauty, Virgil did not marry her. He did endow her with the town of Naples and its lands, and gave her in marriage to a certain grandee of Spain. Having disposed of her, the enchanter returned to Rome, collected all his treasures, and removed them to the city he had founded, where he resided for some years and established a school that speedily became of illustrious renown. Here he lost his wife, by whom he had no issue, built baths and bridges, and wrought the most extraordinary miracles. So passed an uncounted number of years, and Virgil at length abandoned Naples forever and retired to Rome.

Italian Witchcraft

In his Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches of Italy (1899) folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland gives a valuable account of the life and practice of the Italian strega, or witch, as described by a Florentine hereditary witch named Maddalena. He states: "In most cases she comes of a family in which her calling or art has been practiced for many generations. I have no doubt that there are instances in which the ancestry remounts to medieval, Roman, or it may be Etruscan times. The result has naturally been the accumulation in such families of much tradition. But in Northern Italy, as its literature indicates, though there has been some slight gathering of fairy tales and popular superstitions by scholars, there has never existed the least interest as regarded the strange lore of the witches, nor any suspicion that it embraced an incredible quantity of old Roman minor myths and legends, such as Ovid has recorded, but of which much escaped him and all other Latin Writers…Even yet there are old people in the Romagna of the North who know the Etruscan names of the Twelve Gods, and invocations to Bacchus, Jupiter, and Venus, Mercury, and the Lares or ancestral spirits, and in the cities are women who prepare strange amulets, over which they mutter spells, all known in the old Roman time and who can astonish even the learned by their legends of Latin gods, mingled with lore which may be found in Cato or Theocritus. With one of these I became intimately acquainted in 1886, and have ever since employed her specially to collect among her sisters of the hidden spell in many places all the traditions of the olden times known to them. It is true that I have drawn from other sources but this woman by long practice has perfectly learned what few understand, or just what I want, and how to extract it from those of her kind.

"Among other strange relics, she succeeded, after many years, in obtaining the following 'Gospel,' which I have in her handwriting. A full account of its nature with many details will be found in an Appendix. I do not know definitely whether my informant derived a part of these traditions from written sources or oral narration, but believe it was chiefly the latter… "For brief explanation I may say that witchcraft is known to its votaries as la vecchia religione, or the old religion, of which Diana is the Goddess, her daughter Aradia (or Herodias) the female Messiah, and that this little work sets forth how the latter was born, came down to earth, established witches and witchcraft, and then returned to heaven. With it are given the ceremonies and invocations or incantations to be addressed to Diana and Aradia, the exorcism of Cain, and the spells of the holy-stone, rue, and verbena, constituting, as the text declares, the regular church service, so to speak, which is to be chanted or pronounced at the witch meetings. There are also included the very curious incantations or benedictions of the honey, meal, and salt, or cakes of the witch-supper, which is curiously classical, and evidently a relic of the Roman Mysteries."

Briefly, in discussing the ritual of the Italian witches, Leland reports that at the Sabbath they take meal and salt, honey and water, and say a conjuration over these, one to the meal, one to the salt, one to Cain, and one to Diana, the moon goddess. They then sit down naked to supper, men and women, and after the feast is over they dance, sing, and make love in the darkness, quite in the manner of the medieval Sabbath of the sorcerers. Many charms are given connected with stones, especially if these have holes in them and are found by accident. A lemon stuck full of pins we are told is a good omen. Love spells fill a large space in the little work, which for the rest recounts several myths of Diana and Endymion in corrupted form.

Leland's interesting book was one of the major sources used by Gerald B. Gardner in his reconstruction of witchcraft in the 1940s and served as a model for the Book of Shadows, which modern witches claim as a traditional descent in their covens.

Spiritualism

An early indication of the rise and spread of Spiritualism in Italy was surveyed in an article published in Civitta Catholica, the well-known Roman organ entitled "Modern Necromancy." It concluded, "1st. Some of the phenomena may be attributed to imposture, hallucinations, and exaggerations in the reports of those who describe it, but there is a foundation of reality in the general sum of the reports which cannot have originated in pure invention or be wholly discredited without ignoring the value of universal testimony.

"2nd. The bulk of the theories offered in explanation of the proven facts, only cover a certain percentage of those facts, but utterly fail to account for the balance.

"3rd. Allowing for all that can be filtered away on mere human hypotheses, there are still a large class of phenomena appealing to every sense which cannot be accounted for by any known natural laws, and which seem to manifest the action of intelligent beings."

The famous medium D. D. Home visited the principal cities of Italy in 1852 and was so active in his propaganda that numerous circles were formed after his departure. Violent journalistic controversies arose out of the foundation of these societies, with the result that public interest was so aroused that it could only be satisfied with the publication of a paper on the subject. It was titled Il amore del Vero, issued from Geneva and edited by Pietro Suth and B. E. Manieri. In this journal accounts of the spiritual movements in the various countries of Europe, and the United States were published although the church and press leveled anathemas against the journal.

In the spring of 1863, a society was founded at Palermo named Il Societa Spiritual di Palermo, which had for its president J. V. Paleolozo, and such members as Paolo Morelle, professor of Latin and philosophy.

It was about the autumn of 1864 that lectures were first given on Spiritualist subjects in Italy. They were started in Leghorn and Messina, and although of a very mixed character and often partaking largely of the lecturer's peculiar idiosyncrasies on religious subjects, they served to draw attention to the upheaval of thought going on in all directions, in connection with the revelations from the spirit world.

In the year 1870, over a hundred different societies were formed, with varying success, in different parts of Italy. Two of the most prominent flourishing at that date were conducted in Naples, and according to the French journal Revue Spirite, represented the two opposing schools that have prevailed in Spiritualism, namely, those who accepted the idea of reincarnation —associated with the Spiritism of Allan Kardec from France —and those who looked for the continued upward progress of the soul, known in America and England merely as "Spiritualists."

About 1868, the cause of Spiritualism was energized (at least in the higher strata of Italian society) by the visit of Samuel Guppy and his wife Agnes Guppy-Volckman to Naples, where they took up residence for two or three years. Guppy-Volckman was known throughout Europe for her physical mediumship. Drawing upon Guppy's wealth and social standing, she was able to place her performance at the command of the distinguished visitors who crowded his salons. It soon became a matter of notoriety that the most exalted individuals in the land, including King Victor Emmanuel and many of his nearest friends and counselors, had become convinced of the truth of the phenomena exhibited through her mediumship.

About the year 1863 Spiritualism began to enjoy the advantage of positive representation in the columns of a new paper named the Annali dello Spiritismo (Annals of Spiritualism). This journal was published in Turin by Niceforo Filalete. The columns of the Annali recorded that a Venetian Society of Spiritualists named "Atea" elected General Giuseppe Garibaldi their honorary president, and received the following reply by telegraph from the distinguished hero, the liberator of Italy, "I gratefully accept the presidency of the Society Atea. Caprera, 23rd September."

The same issue of the Annali contained a verbatim report of a "grand discourse, given at Florence, by a distinguished literary gentleman, Signor Sebastiano Fenzi, in which the listeners were considerably astonished by a rehearsal of the many illustrious names of those who openly avowed their faith in Spiritualism."

The years 1863-64 appear to have been rich in Spiritualist efforts. Besides a large number of minor associations, (their existence was recorded from time to time in the early numbers of the Annali and Revue Spirite), about this time the Magnetic Society of Florence was formed. It would continue for many years to exert a marked influence in promoting the study of occult forces and phenomena. Seymour Kirkup, well known to the early initiators of Spiritualism, resided in Florence and contributed many records of spiritual phenomena to the London Spiritual Magazine. Nearly ten years after the establishment of the Magnetic Society of Florence, Baron Guitern de Bozzi, an eminent occultist, founded the Pneumatological Psychological Academy of Florence, but it was discontinued after his death.

Psychical Research and Parapsychology

In Italy, the divisions between Spiritualism and psychical research have tended to be blurred. Many eminent psychical researchers were sympathetic to Spiritualism if not actually endorsing its beliefs. One of the most famous investigators was the psychiatrist and criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) who was convinced by the evidence for survival after death. Marco Tullio Falcomer, who conducted experiments with the famous physical medium Florence Cook, was a Spiritualist, as was also Enrico Morselli (1852-1929) who had investigated the phenomena of the medium Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918).

Among other Italian psychical researchers were Giovanni Batista Ermacora (1869-98), Enrico Imoda (who investigated the phenomena of Linda Gazzera), P. B. Bianchi, Angelo Brofferio (who became a Spiritualist), Ercole Chiaia, Philippe Bottazzi, Augusto Tamburini, and Rocco Santoliquido (1854-1930), who played a part in the founding of the Institut Métapsychique in Paris. Later researchers were Ernesto Bozzano (1862-1943), Giovanni Pioli of Milan, Lidio Cipriani of the University of Naples, William McKenzie of Genoa, Count Cesar Baudi De Vesme (1862-1938), Ferdinando Cazzamalli of Como, Fabio Vitali, G. C. Trabacchi, and Sante de Sanctis.

In 1901, the Società di Studi Psichici (Society of Psychic Studies) was founded in Milan. It was responsible for investigations of the mediums Augustus Politi, Eusapia Palladino and Lucia Sordi.

In 1937, the Società Italiana di Metapsichica (Italian Society of Metapsychics) was founded in Rome, in memory of CharlesRichet, the noted French psychical researcher. In 1946, one group from the society headed by Ferdinando Cazzamalli formed the Association di Metapsichica, in Milan; at a later date the name was changed to Società Italiana di Parapsicologia, replacing the older term "metapsychics" with "para-psychology." It is currently headed by Emilio Servadio, at Via de Montecatini 7, 00186 Rome. The quarterly journal Metapsichica Rivista Italiana di Parapsicologia is the official organ of the Associazione Italiana Scientifica di Metapsichica headquartered at Via 5 Vittore, 19-20123 Milano.

Another active organization is the Centro Studi Parapsicologici (Center for Parapsychological Studies) established in Bologna in 1948, directed by Piero Cassoli. Other organizations include the Facoltà di Scienze Psichiche e Psicologiche (Faculty of Psychic and Psychological Sciences) of Academia Tiberina, established in 1960 (which may be reached at Via del Vantaggio 22, Rome), the Centro Italiano di Studi Metapsichici (Italian Center of Metapsychic Studies) founded in Pavia in 1968, which has conducted studies in psychic healing (and may be reached at Via Calascione 5/A, Naples), and the Centro Studi Parapsicologici de Bologna, Via Tamagno 2, Bologna.

Among periodicals the oldest is Luce e Ombre (Light and Shadow) founded in 1900 in Rome, edited from January 1932 from Milan under the title Ricerca Psichica. The journal Uomini e Idee (Men and Ideas) was launched in Naples in 1959 and in 1965 it was replaced by Informazioni di Parapsicologia (Parapsychology News) as a publication of the Centro Italiano di Parapsicologia. Since then, Luce e Ombra has been published quarterly by dell'Associazione Archivio di Documentazione Storica della Ricerca Psichica. Address: Bozzano-De Boni, Via Orfeo, 15, 40214 Bologna. The Fondazione Biblioteca Bozzano-DeBoni, with the Bozzano-DeBoni Library Foundation, is located at Via Guglielmo Marconi, 8-40122 Bologna. The website for the foundation is: http://www2.comune.bologna.it/fbibbdb/siti.htm. The foundation and research library is devoted primarily to psychical research and parapsychology, and was initially collected by Ernesto Bozzano (1862-1943) and Gastone De Boni (1908-1986) who were both recognized scholars in paranormal phenomenonology. It is a nonprofit association. DeBoni was responsible for reviving Luce e Ombra following the interruption of the war years from 1940 to 1946. In 2000, the publication celebrated the hundredth anniversary, and four volumes containing several of the articles throughout the hundred years were being published. A congress was held on June 3, 2000 also in celebration of this long pursuit.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical & Parranormal Experience. San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1991.

The Wonderful History of Virgilius The Sorcerer of Rome. London: Daure Nutt, 1893.

Fratelli d'Italia,
l'Italia s'e' desta,
dell'elmo di Scipio
s'e cinta la testa.
Dov'e la vittoria?
Le porga la chioma,
che schiava di Roma
Iddio la creo'.

Stringiamoci a coorte,
siam pronti alla morte.
Siam pronti alla morte,
l'Italia chiamo'.
Stringiamoci a coorte,
siam pronti alla morte.
Siam pronti alla morte,
l'Italia chiamo', si'!

Noi fummo da secoli
calpesti, derisi,
perche' non siam popoli,
perche' siam divisi.
Raccolgaci un'unica
bandiera, una speme:
di fonderci insieme
gia' l'ora suono'.

Uniamoci, uniamoci,
l'unione e l'amore
rivelano ai popoli
le vie del Signore.
Giuriamo far libero
il suolo natio:
uniti, per Dio,
chi vincer ci puo'?

Lyrics by Goffredo Mameli

Benito Mussolini, the leader of the Italian Fascist movement, took control of the Italian government in October 1922 (see also Fascism). Antisemitism was not part of Mussolini's political platform; nonetheless, Italy's Jewish community was nervous about the new regime. Mussolini was quick to assure them that the Fascists were not antisemitic and did not seek to harm the country's Jews. For the next ten years, Mussolini and the Jews enjoyed civil relations. In fact, many Jews even joined the Fascist Party, as they supported Mussolini's national agenda.

After the Nazis rose to power in Germany in 1933, Mussolini spent several years trying to balance his relationship with the West and his support for Adolf Hitler. However, in 1936 Italy moved away from the Western powers and edged towards Germany: that year, Italy joined Germany in the Spanish Civil War, and soon thereafter, Mussolini first used the term "Rome-Berlin Axis" to denote the countries' alliance. That fall, Mussolini initiated an antisemitic press campaign to satisfy Hitler. In September 1938 the Italian government committed itself to the "Axis" by issuing racial Anti-Jewish Legislation, similar to Germany's Nuremberg Laws. Foreign Jews living in Italy were ordered to leave the country.

Italy officially entered World War II in June 1940. At that point, Mussolini felt compelled to step up his country's anti-Jewish measures. Masses of foreign Jews who had not left the country in 1938 were thrown in prison. In early September the Italian Ministry of the Interior ordered the establishment of 43 camps, where "enemy aliens" (including foreign Jews) and Italian opponents of the Fascist government were to be detained. These camps, although by no means comfortable, were a far cry from the Nazis' Concentration Camps. In Italy, families were allowed to live together, schools were set up for the children, and there were social and cultural activities for all.

Mussolini was completely dependent on Hitler, both economically and militarily, so he could not afford to stop his program of anti-Jewish persecution within Italy itself (although Mussolini never agreed to deport his country's Jews to Extermination Camps). However, the Italians asserted their independence by helping those Jews living outside Italy, in Italian-occupied territories, such as in France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. In 1942, after Germany began deporting Jews to the east in earnest, the Italian military began a serious rescue operation throughout the territories it administered. In all, the Italian authorities saved some 40,000 non-Italian Jews.

In early September 1943 the Italians decided to end their participation in the war and make peace with the Allies. Mussolini was overthrown, and the Allies began liberating Italy, starting with the south of the country. At that point, Germany stepped in to reoccupy all the parts of Italy not already taken by the Allies. A government was set up with Mussolini as a puppet ruler, and the Germans as the real power. This signaled the beginning of the Holocaust for the Jews of Italy.

From mid-September 1943 to the end of the war in April 1945, the Germans hunted down Italian Jews; more than 20 percent of the country's Jewish population was imprisoned in jails and concentration camps, and then sent on to extermination camps. From September 1943 to January 1944, 3,110 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Throughout the rest of 1944, another 4,056 were deported to the east. Another 4,500 Italian Jews living in territories formerly under Italian rule were also deported. An additional 173 Jews were murdered in Italy itself.

In all, some 15 percent of Italy's Jews perished during the Holocaust. The great majority of the country's Jewish population survived with the help of both Italian civilians and the Italian military.

• Nations of the World - Italy: Italian Republic; in S Europe; capital Rome; area 116,303 sq. mi., pop. 57,657,000; Italian; Catholic; lira