Family Background and Humour in the Writings of Rinaldo De Benedetti

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Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019, pp. 439–525 © 2019 Ephraim Nissan - DOI https://doi.org/10.3726/PHIL042019.18 2019 Materials Family Background and Humour in the Writings of Rinaldo 4 De Benedetti, with an Interdisciplinary Analysis of “Racconto occitano” about Castelmagno in the Alps around 1910 00 Ephraim Nissan 439 London

525 Abstract Rinaldo De Benedetti, also known by his pen names Sagredo and Didimo, was mainly known because of his long career as a science journalist in Italy. He managed to 2018/2019 write and publish even under the racial laws, with the connivance of a publisher in Milan. His being in a mixed marriage probably enabled more successful survival tactics. Rinaldo De Benedetti also was a literary writer, publishing as such in old age, and his memoirs have been published posthumously. His childhood in Cuneo, as the son of a secular Jewish family, comes across in his memoirs. In particular, we translate and discuss aspects of a short story of his (which has only previously appeared in a communal publication), set around 1910 and whose protagonist was a relative Amadio Momigliano, faced with the mayor and councillors of Provençal hamlet of mountaineers in Piedmont’s western Alps, who came on visit on a Saturday of all day, decided to become Jewish because the parish priest, opposing their drunken dancing in front of church on the day of the patron saint, had challenged them to do that much. Momigliano alerted the diocesis, and the parish priest was ordered to con- Contents done dancing. That episode is part of a long campaign against dancing, which in that period in France pitted the clergy against some mayors. Whereas in the Kingdom of Italy, before PHILZeitschrift für Germanistik0323-79822235- World War I, there was a decades-long struggle pitting, e.g., bishops and province prefects (it was precisely in Piedmont that the archbishop of Turin was imprisoned in 1850 and then 1272Peter Lang GmbH 439 exiled to France), arguably the awkward episode described in “Racconto occitano” is better explained with reference to the state of affairs at the municipal level in France, as far as 2019_17_Nissan_2 439 clerical but also anticlerical Brittany. Materials 439 1. Introduction Family Background and Humour in the Writings of Rinaldo De Benedetti, with an Interdisciplinary This study in is Italian, Romance, and Jewish Italian studies,1 as well Analysis of “Racconto occitano” about Castelmagno as concerning Piedmontese Provençal communities of the Cuneese Alps. in the Alps around 1910 439 1 Some expertise in traditional Jewish literature (in particular, Talmudic references) is also involved.

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The interdisciplinary interplay is between the history of textual genres (scientific journalism, literary writing,2 and autobiographical writing), history, and folklore or popular culture (the latter, on the one hand in respect of ethnic stereotypes, and on the other hand in relation to aspects of Church history, in particular, late antique to modern attitudes to dancing, as well as the relations between the clergy, at both the parish priest and diocesis level, and local administrations, in both Italy and France, in the early years of the 20th century. As for history, we are concerned with Italian and French history of the 20th century, of Italian history between the country’s unification and the eve of the First World War, as well as of the Fascist Ven- tennio, the racial laws and Holocaust, and the after-war period, especially in respect of the history of publishing. We are going to pay special attention to a particular short story based on family memories, published posthumously (reproduced here by kind permission, translated passage by passage, and analysed). We show that this is an important document for understanding social dynamics around 1910 at the junction of southwest Piedmont and France’s Alpes-Maritimes, in respect of ethnic, language- and faith communities against the backdrop of strengthened secularism in the public sphere in both Italy and France. Interestingly, it appears to be the case that it is to the relations between mayors and the low clergy in France in those years that we are to primar- ily look, rather than to the strained relations of the “Italia dei prefetti” with the clergy in years that saw further confiscation of church property (arguably in partial emulation of French governments during the secular- ist revenge following the Dreyfus Affair, in the mid-1910s), that we are to look, when trying to make better contextual sense of the surprising, indeed comic events in an Alpine hamlet as described: a pugnacious parish priest challenged the parishioners to become Jews, if they were to continue their drunken dancing of men and women in front of the shrine on the very day of town’s patron saint; in those times of illiteracy up in the mountains, the mayor and councillors took up the challenge. On a Saturday, from the upper settlement in their valley, down dale they went, to meet an honest and esteemed, as well as very devout Jewish merchant they knew. The Catholic servant (she was versed in Jewish ritual requirements) warned

2 Literary writing by Rinaldo De Benedetti in his old age, but also (because of his pennames) Ugo Foscolo’s Notizia intorno a Didimo Chierico (A Report about the Cleric Didymus), and writings by Galileo Galilei.

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 441 them he would not desecrate the Sabbath discussing business. But they had come for something else. To his amazement, they asked to be converted to Judaism. Then they explained why. He went to the bishopric of Cuneo, which gratefully took the cue and pacified the townspeople. This “Introduction” is followed with the following sections: 2. “Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Ancestry and Relatives”; 3. “Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Early Life”; 4. “Rinaldo De Benedetti During the 1930s, and During the Racial Laws”; 5. “Rinaldo De Benedetti after the Second World War and up to his Death”; 6. “Rinaldo De Benedetti as a Literary Author”; 7. “The Short Story about Amadio De Benedetti and the Mountaineers of Castelmagno”; 8. “A Discussion of the Geography of ‘Racconto occitano’”; 9. “A Discus- sion of the Bone of Contention in ‘Racconto occitano’: Dancing in Front of a Church, Popular Religion, and Attitudes”; 10. “More Concerning Amadio Momigliano, According to Arnaldo Momigliano”; 11. “A Parallel of a Pas- sage from ‘Racconto occitano’ in the Memoirs of Rinaldo De Benedetti”; 12. “On Some Other Passages from the Memoirs of Rinaldo De Benedetti”; 13. “Freethinkers and Socialists”; 14. “Concerning the Story ‘L’orecchio di porco’ from Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Memoirs”; 15. “Concluding Remarks”.

2. Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Ancestry and Relatives

Rinaldo De Benedetti (March 1903 – January 1996) was a science reporter and a science popularisation writer. He also was a literary writer and a poet, and some of his literary output in prose is humorous. Arguably a short story of which I provide a translation in this section belongs in the same category as the best prose conveying Jewish humour in the 19th and 20th centuries. For part of his output, De Benedetti used the pen-names Sagredo and Didimo (the latter name is stressed on the antepenult). His memoirs are entitled Memorie di Didimo, and are humorous; rather than a continuous autobiography, they are a sequence of shortish chapters (stories written at different times) which provide sketches or events or of themes. Rinaldo Lazzaro De Benedetti was born in Cuneo, a city in Piedmont, into a Jewish family. He had a Jewish middle name, Lazzaro: Lazzaro De Benedetti was his paternal grandfather. The father, Celestino De Bened- etti, was a socialist by conviction, and an insurer by profession; he was

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 442 Ephraim Nissan from another town in Piedmont with a Jewish community: Casale Monfer- rato. The mother instead was Giuditta Momigliano, the daughter of Salo- mone Momigliano; she died in childbirth while her only child, Rinaldo, was aged two, and his father later wed Linda Cavaglion, from whom he had a daughter and a son. Rinaldo attended a Jewish kindergarten, and was taught how to read Hebrew while he was aged four. The philosopher Felice Momigliano (Mondoví, Piedmont, 1866 – Rome, 1924)3 was a maternal uncle to Rinaldo De Benedetti, and a cousin to the famous historian of antiquity, Sir Arnaldo Momigliano (Caraglio, Piedmont, 1908 – London, 1987). Arnaldo Momigliano’s Jewish forename was Aronne. His full name was Arnaldo Dante Aronne Momigliano. He was raised in the same house in Caraglio where his great-uncle Amadio or Amodio Momigli- ano lived (Mondoví, 1844 – Caraglio, 1924), a businessman and landowner who was a strictly observant Jew, conversant with the Talmud and the Zohar (a major mystical book) who taught Arnaldo Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible, and had him learn by heart the Book of Proverbs and the Maxims of the Fa- thers (Pirkei Avot). This was much more than the typical education in Jewish matters that Italian Jews of his generation used to receive. Rinaldo De Bene- detti devoted to Amadio Momigliano a humorous short story, about when, around 1910, the inhabitants of an entire little valley, angry at their priest who had forbidden dancing near the church’s entrance on their saint’s day, determined to become Jewish and turned to Amadio Momigliano. We are going to reproduce (by kind permission of Rinaldo De Benedetti’s daughter, Anna),4 translate, and discuss that short story, which thus far had only appeared in an ephemeral communal publication, posthumously.

3 Felice Momigliano, born in 1866, committed suicide in 1924, throwing himself from a window one night, and his death was derided, a few months later, by Father Agostino Gemelli, a psychologist and the founding rector of the Catholic University of Milan, in that university’s magazine, Vita e Pensiero. Gemelli expressed in print the wish that all Jews, being Christ-killers, would also die. He later claimed that his motive was not antisemitism. Felice Momigliano is the subject of a biography by Alberto Cavaglion (1988). 4 Anna De Benedetti donated all of her father’s books, as well as unpublished manuscripts of his, to a library recently established by Cavaglion and commemorating his brother: the Biblioteca e Centro Studi sugli Ebrei in Piemonte Davide Cavaglion, Cuneo. In an email (10 March 2016), the founder of that centre, Alberto Cavaglion added: “Non hai più alibi: devi venire a trovarmi per consultarli! Ci sono altri suoi racconti umoristici e hai fatto molto bene a dedicargli spazio” (“You no longer have any alibi: you must come and find me in order to consult them! [the manuscripts]. There are other humorous short stories of his, and you did well to devote space to him”).

Arnaldo Momigliano never attended school (he was an external candi- date at exams), but was sometimes taught by teachers from Cuneo. Felice Momigliano (who also received a strict religious education, yet departed from it) taught him Spinoza. Arnaldo Momigliano had himself buried at the Jewish cemetery in Cuneo, and on his grave he had an inscription inscribed which, among the other things, stated his beliefs: “La sua fede fu il libero pensiero senza odio e senza dogma ma amò di affetto filiale la tradizione ebraica dei padri” (“By faith he was a free-thinker, with neither hatred nor dogma, but he loved of a filial affection the Jewish tradition of his ancestors”).5 Arnaldo Momigliano was also a cousin of the Liberal Catholic jurist and historian Arturo Carlo Jemolo6 (Rome, 1891–1981), a scholar in Church Law and (quite prominently) in Church/State relations, who in his sympathetic evaluation of the juridical conditions of the Jews in Italy, differed in some technical respects from the Turin-based Guido Fubini, a champion of Jewish rights.7 Arturo Carlo Jemolo’s father was a government official born in Ragusa, Sicily, whereas his mother, Anna Adele Sacerdoti, was a primary school teacher: she was born in Ceva, Piedmont, the daughter of Leone Sacerdoti (the surname Sacerdoti means Cohen, this being a family of Aaronid priests in the context of the liturgy) and Marietta Momigliano. The couple married with a civil rite. She only converted to Catholicism late in her life. She had her son baptised when he was aged seven, after the death of her own mother.8

3. Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Early Life

In 1909, when Rinaldo De Benedetti was a first-grader, he watched the passage of the Halley comet from a bridge in the town of Cuneo. As an old man, he watched the Halley comet pass again in 1986, and he chose to do so at the same place as he did in 1909. Only in 1986, the comet was not visible with the naked eye. At that time however he, as a science reporter, was able to see photographs of the Halley comet shot by the Giotto space probe (Bianucci 2011). De Benedetti reminisced about the Halley comet,

5 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaldo_Momigliano 6 The surname Jemolo ['yemolo] is stressed on the antepenult. 7 See e.g. Fubini (1972, 1996). 8 See https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Carlo_Jemolo

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 444 Ephraim Nissan as well as on a cinema bordering on the courtyard of the house where he was raised, in his memoirs (2008, p. 25). Aged 17, Rinaldo De Benedetti wrote his earliest poems. He went on to write poems even in old age, and he was particular about adopting a formal metre. His latest poems, Sonetti Vespertini (Vespertine [i.e., old-age] Sonnets), were published posthumously (De Benedetti 2006). They are lucidly rational, and often subtly self-ironic. His poems tended to be circulated privately, and it is significant, in terms of the long span of their production, that among readers that appreciated them there were Benedetto Croce (the philosopher whose aesthetics was quite demanding), Attilio Momigliano (1883–1952, a scholar in literary studies — he, too, Jew- ish and from the Cuneo area), as well as Mario Luzi and Giovanni Raboni. After high school and his Classical maturity exam, he studied mech- anical engineering (commuting by train between Cuneo and Turin) and graduated from the Technical University of Turin in 1926. He found employment in Nice, at a mechanics workshop, where he renovated the machinery proficiently, but because of the patronising attitude of his boss, he left his job and took another, less well-matching job at a factory producing curtains, still in Nice. At the time, he was also writing short stories and a novel. In 1928, he found employment in Milan at an electric power company, but two years later on he was required to prove membership in the Fascist National Party; he rather left that job, and found employment in Turin with Angelo Treves, a cousin of his for whom he established a chemistry laboratory. In 1931, Rinaldo De Benedetti’s father, Celestino, died, and Rinaldo had his two half-siblings join him in Turin. His half- sister, Emilia, married Enrico Revere,9 also Jewish, who was an officer in the Royal Marine. They went to live at the city port of La Spezia, in eastern Liguria bordering with Tuscany, and were to perish in the Holocaust with their daughter Adriana, aged 9 (there is a competition, the Concorso “Adriana Revere”, named after her). In Turin and Milan, Rinaldo De Bene- detti became acquainted with some anti-Fascists in the early 1930s.10 Rinaldo De Benedetti moved to Milan, where he earned a living teaching at private schools, including the Leonardo Da Vinci school whose headmaster was Arturo Finzi, also Jewish. De Benedetti also moonshined

9 The surname Revere is stressed on the antepenult. 10 At http://rinaldodebenedettididimo.jimdo.com/didimo/ much information can be found about Rinaldo De Benedetti’s biography.

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 445 by teaching maths and Latin privately, and by ghostwriting Laurea dis- sertations for students about to graduate who would rather have somebody else write their thesis for them.

Felice Momigliano.

Arnaldo Momigliano.

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 446 Ephraim Nissan

Arturo Carlo Jemolo.

Rinaldo De Benedetti in his youth.

4. Rinaldo De Benedetti During the 1930s, and During the Racial Laws

Whereas Rinaldo De Benedetti was close to anti-Fascist intellectuals, by sending an application after an advert he came to take part, writing entries part-time, in the project of the Enciclopedia Italiana, the one published by the Treccani house and directed by the Fascist philosopher and powerful politician Giovanni Gentile, who had diverted a project originally conceived by the Jewish publisher Aldo Fortunato Formiggini (whose positivist approach Gentile, a neo-idealist, thoroughly disliked). De Bene- detti also came to know the philosopher’s son and namesake, Giovannino Gentile, a physicist. Also Rinaldo De Benedetti’s cousin, the historian of antiquity Arnaldo Momigliano, was participating in the encycliopedia project, for which he wrote many entries (including the one, quite tur- gid, about Rome). De Benedetti himself was unconvinced by Gentile’s philosophy and politics, and closer in both respects to the position of the other neo-idealist philosopher, Benedetto Croce, with whom he was personally acquainted. At that time, De Benedetti was teaching at Arturo Finzi’s private school in the evenings, whereas in daytime he was associated with the Enciclopedia Italiana, until its Milan office was closed after the entries beginning by Z had also been written. In the 1930s, Rinaldo De Benedetti collaborated with the Paravia publishing house. A book he published with them, about an Italian explorer in East Africa, Vittorio Bòttego e l’esplorazione dell’Omo (De Benedetti 1932), won the Premio Civinini for 1933. After the racial laws of 1938 took effect, at Paravia De Benedetti was required to declare that he was not Jewish, but he protested that he was Jewish and proud about it.11 There- fore, he was banned from publishing, and his extant publications were also banned and had to be taken out of the inventory and storage. Because of the racial laws, he was not allowed to teach even at private schools. Dur- ing the period of racial segregation, Rinaldo De Benedetti used to write publications that would be published under somebody else’s name. In that respect, he was a ghostwirter (which idiomatically in Italian is expressed by saying that he faceva il negro — a racial reference which given the racial segregation in place, turned out to be apt).

11 “Didimo – Ha Keillah” at http://www.hakeillah.com/2_13_18.htm

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During the period from 1938 to 1945, Rinaldo De Benedetti was working clandestinely for the publisher Garzanti. The Garzanti publishing house itself is the result of the Aryanisation policy: Aldo Garzanti took over from the once glorious Fratelli Treves publishing house (it was originally founded by the son of a rabbi), which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had been publishing the work of the most prestigious and sought after authors. Importantly, Italy’s post-war policies were not to inconveni- ence those who had benefited from the exclusion of the Jews and the Ary- anisation of their posts or firms. The brand name Garzanti is a reminder of this. It must be said however that the relations between Aldo Garzanti and Rinaldo De Benedetti show that even though they were exploitative, given the circumstances Garzanti was also offering a lifeline to ones persecuted. Ne louez trop, ni blâmez trop. Rinaldo De Benedetti used to be paid directly, in the presence of a witness, but with no trace of the transactions in the firm’s accountancy: off the books, off the record. During the period from 1938 to 1945, De Benedetti was preparing for Garzanti two famous encyclopedias of the afterwar period: the Piccola Enciclopedia Garzanti and the Garzantina Scientifica. Bear in mind that these were the precursors of the nearly editions of a famous, ubiquitous desk encyclopedia: the Enciclopedia Universale Garzanti and its spinoffs for various disciplines. It is poignant that even in the very worst period, Jews were contributing importantly to Italian culture. While managing the prep- aration of the encyclopedias for Garzanti, De Benedetti was subcontracting some entries to other Jews having to earn a living clandestinely. Rinaldo De Benedetti had to earn a living clandestinely even during the period, from the autumn of 1943 to the spring of 1945, when Jews were being hunted for murderous purposes. In 1943, the premises of Garzan- ti burned; the manuscripts of the encyclopedias were saved, because De Benedetti had them, and kept them in a suitcase. As the situation worsened, De Benedetti still kept in his pocket his real identification documents, but otherwise he would introduce himself by using his Catholic wife’s surname. He also kept changing his dwelling. In 1942, his wife published under her own name (being able to do so as she was an “Aryan”) a book of fables, Le Storie di Alazor (De Ponti 1942), which was actually written by her husband, and that sold off quickly, thus supplying an income. Rinaldo De Benedetti was even ghostwriting by writing articles for a collaborator of the Vatican’s newspaper, the Osservatore Romano. He was also private tutor to the children of a duke.

From 1939, he and Emi De Ponti were trying to get married, and as Italian law would no longer allow this, they turned to the Vatican for an exemption, but it was slow to come as the Church authorities suspected De Benedetti’s motives. Permission from the Vatican was obtained in 1941, and then it was a matter of finding a priest who would defy Italian law and celebrate the wedding. A parish priest in Brescia was eventually found, who daringly did so.12 In the period from 1943 to 1945, under Nazi rule (exercised both directly and through the puppet Repubblica So- ciale Italiana), Rinaldo’s wife sought refuge in the house of the podestà (mayor) in the town of Villa d’Adda (north of Milan, now in the province of Lecco): that Fascist mayor, apparently a mild, innocuous man, was a friend of her brother, because they both traded in silk. Rinaldo De Benedetti was working clandestinely in Milan (and had access to forbidden American or English science magazines that were nevertheless enter- ing Italy clandestinely), and commuting on his bike to Villa d’Adda. The mayor’s daughter used to warn him when a Fascist raid was imminent, and Rinaldo De Benedetti would leave the house and walk along the paths among the fields.13 In February 1942, Italian Carabinieri arrested his half- sister and brother-in-law in Liguria; the family of three was deported and perished in the Holocaust. Whereas Rinaldo De Benedetti considered himself ethnically Jewish (hence, his flat refusal when the publisher Paravia required him to declare that he was not Jewish), he was overtly agnostic in matter of faith, and authored a still unpublished booklet, Morale di un Agnostico. There is a chapter among the first few in his memoirs, Memorie di Didimo, in which he was being rather ironic about a high school classmate (“he had religious beliefs”) who angrily rejected De Benedetti’s confidences that he had been reading about prehistoric humans antedating sacred history. That classmate died very young. Incidentally, thinking about Pre-Adamites is found in both late antiquity and the early modern period; there is an early rabbinic passage

12 Rinaldo De Benedetti was widowed in 1956; his daughter, Anna, was aged eight at the time. He then wed a chemistry teacher, Giulia Minazio, from whom he had his son Carlo in 1958. 13 In the days after the Liberation (in Lombardy this was in late April 1945), Rinaldo De Benedetti walked around in Villa d’Adda arm-in-arm with the podestà, in order to save the latter from the reprisals of anti-Fascists. This is related in “Didimo – Ha Keillah” at http://www.hakeillah.com/2_13_18.htm

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 450 Ephraim Nissan about almost one thousand human generations that “rushed to be created”14 (literally: “bent15 themselves [sprinting] to be created”) before Adam, and did not succeed.16 In retrospect, both classmates were being naïve. Whereas, I reckon, De Benedetti would have liked such an item for inclusion in his Aned- dotica delle Scienze, as he was attuned to the history of ideas, his main goal was conspicuously fluent communication with a lay public, avoiding technicalities that could be dispensed with.

5. Rinaldo De Benedetti after the Second World War and up to his Death

After the end of Nazi rule in Italy, Rinaldo De Benedetti began his collaboration with the Milan newspaper, Corriere della Sera, in August 1945, with an article in which, in the aftermath of the Ameri- can use of atom bombs over Japanese cities, De Benedetti explained the workings of the atom bombs. De Benedetti joined that newspaper,

14 Apart from apparently better chances of survival for such Jews (such as Rinaldo De Benedetti) who had in-laws who were not Jewish by either religion, or Fascist or Nazi racial criteria, also note Riccardo Di Segni’s (2015) remark in his conclusions, concerning the quantitative correlation between survival, and converted status (i.e., of such persons who had converted away from Judaism). Di Segni is Rome’s chief rabbi, as well as a clinical cardiologist, and a scholar in Jewish studies. Cf. in Marcus Jastrow’s dictionary (1903, p.1384, s.v. qāmaṭ). 15 The verb qimmēṭ for ‘to bend’ denotes ‘to crumple’ in Modern Hebrew. 16 Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ḥagigah, 13b (Soncino English translation in Epstein 1935–1948, my brackets): “But R[av] Aha b[ar] Jacob said: Upon those who pressed forward, for it is said: Who pressed forward before their time, whose foundation was poured out as a stream. It is taught: R[abbi] Simeon the Pious said: These are the nine hundred and seventy four generations who pressed themselves forward to be created”. Whereas the Soncino translation adopts the understanding ‘pressed forward’, in a note it concedes different understandings (my brackets): “So Jast[row] and Levy [these are two important dictionaries]; […]. Goldschmidt trans., ‘die verdrangt worden sind’ (who were suppressed [this is compatible with ‘crumpled’] or displaced); Rashi [in the 11th century] trans., ‘who were decreed (to be created)’, MS.M[unich] adds here, ‘before their time’”.

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 451 in parts thanks to the famous journalist Orio Vergani, an acquaint- ance or friend. De Benedetti also collaborated with the associated weekly, the Domenica del Corriere. The latter’s editor was the writer Dino Buzzati. The editor of the Corriere della Sera when De Benedetti began his collaboration was Guglielmo Emanuel, but De Benedetti left that newspaper when it was under the editorship of Mario Missiroli, who took over in 1952: De Benedetti was among the founders of an association, the Associazione Italiana per l’Educazione Demografica (AIED), whose aim was to inform the public about anticonceptionals (such a campaign was still forbidden by a Fascist-era law), and birth control17 was among the themes of De Benedetti’s articles on the Corriere della Sera. This had been tolerated by Emanuel, but Missiroli had a word with De Benedetti, who preferred to move in 1953 to the Turin newspaper La Stampa (where he was to publish over one thousand articles). At the time, the latter’s editor was Giulio De Benedetti, not a relative of Rinaldo De Benedetti: the latter, allegedly because of the homonymy,18 chose to sign using the pen-name Didimo.19 It must be said however that he was already using the pen-name Didimo while writing for the Corriere della Sera, from 1945 to 1953.20 His collaboration with La Stampa was intense and lasted 43 years, comprising articles as well as book reviews, and he was (among the other things) its commentator about space missions from 1957 to the 1970s, and he also established on La Stampa and edited until the 1980s its science page, the first in a daily newspaper in Italy. It became a weekly supple- ment, Tuttoscienze. His very last article in La Stampa was published on 17 January 1996, eight days after his death.

17 He eventually published books about overpopulation (De Benedetti 1954, 1972, 1976) and about pollution (De Benedetti 1972, 1976, 1979). That is part of De Benedetti’s moralistic output. He also contributed to the daily La Provincia of Cremona (a city in southern Lombardy) as a columnist, under the rubric Dizionarietto Morale (that is, “Little Dictionary of Moral”), organised like a philosophical lexicon, and in total he discussed there over 800 terms. 18 According to http://rinaldodebenedettididimo.jimdo.com/didimo/ 19 The name Didimo — Rinaldo De Benedetti’s pen-name — is stressed on the antepenult. 20 The webpage http://rinaldodebenedettididimo.jimdo.com/didimo/ points out that Rinaldo De Benedetti also used the pen-name Marco Valderi on some magazines in the afterwar period.

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 452 Ephraim Nissan

Rinaldo De Benedetti.

Rinaldo De Benedetti in old age.

What is this classical reference, to Didymus? The more direct source was in Italian literature. The Venetian author, a poet, writer and critic in Italian, Ugo Foscolo, was born on the island of Zante in the Ion- ian Sea in 1778, and died near London in 1827. In his opus, there are two emblematic characters, and some critics range at least part of his opus according to how germane they are to those two. Jacopo Ortis is a tragic character, of storming sentimentality, who commits suicide. He is like Goethe’s Werther, and is rather obviously Pre-Romantic. In Foscolo’s output one also finds a Neo-Classic trend, Apollinean and detached. It is associated with the character of Didimo Chierico. Fos- colo’s Notizia intorno a Didimo Chierico (A Report about the Cleric

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Didymus)21 was written in the early 1800. (Around that time, Foscolo translated Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.)22 Foscolo’s Didimo is a vivacious, ironic, detached observer. He is no doer; he talks. Afterwards, while a refugee in Switzerland, Foscolo published in Zurich in 1816 the Ipercalisse (Hypercalypse), a biblicising satire in Latin against Napoleon, by the “minimal prophet” (not just a minor prophet) Didimo Chierico: “Dydimi Clerici prophetae minimi Hypercalypseos liber singularis”.23 Cf. the ancients consult- ing the oracle of Apollo Didymoeus, and the blind Didymus, a seer, announcing the death of the emperor Julian. In 1949, Rinaldo De Benedetti founded for Garzanti a monthly science magazine of which he was the editor, L’Illustrazione Scientifica. It was written in Italy, with two articles per issue being translations from the Scientific American. From 1957, the monthly’s publisher was Feltrinelli, also in Milan. In the decades after the war, De Benedetti collaborated with a few magazines (including Il Mondo, the Illustrazione Italiana, Collo- qui, and eventually Epoca, and L’Europeo), and published with another Milan-based publisher, Hoepli, a collection of science history anecdotes, Aneddotica delle Scienze, which appeared under a pen-name, Sagredo, and to which we are going to come back. For a publisher in Turin, UTET,

21 The terms Foscolo, Didimo, chierico, and Didymus are stressed on the antepenult. 22 Importantly, the influence of that book by Sterne on Italian authors later than Foscolo was in the direction of the pathetic. De Voogt and Neubauer’s book (2008) The Reception of Laurence Sterne in Europe has a chapter on Sterne’s reception in Italy, where the following is stated on p. 203: “With the Romantics the ambivalent laughter-tear was further dramatized and, rather than implying a subtle psychological transaction, it was presented as an opposition of contraries. The ‘sensibility’ of Sterne quickly became identified with the ‘sentimental’ of the Romantics. Consequently there were many examples of weak Romantic imitations. These include: Lo Spettatore Italiano (The Italian Observer, 1822) by Giovanni Ferri di san Costante, Viaggio e meravigliose avventure di un veneziano che esce per la prima volta dalle lagune e si reca a Padova e a Milano (The journey and marvellous adventures of a Venetian who for the first time leaves the laggon for Padua and Milan, 1823) by Luigi Bassi, La fidanzata ligure (The Ligurian fiancée, 1828) by Carlo Varese and Viaggio sentimentale al camposanto colerico di Napoli (A sentimental journey in the cholera cemetery of Naples, 1837) by Lorenzo Borsini. These are some of the most derivative pieces at the expense of Sterne, all heavily sounding the chords of the pathetic”. 23 Facing Latin and Italian text of the Ipercalisse is found at http://www.classicitaliani. it/foscolo/fosco12.htm

De Benedetti authored a desk encyclopedia on pure and applied sciences, the Dizionario Rapido di Scienze pure e applicate (De Benedetti 1962). He also was a broadcaster about science, and this resulted in two books based on his broadcasts (De Benedetti 1961). As member of the broad- casting commission of RAI, he became acquainted with some intellectuals, including the pet Eugenio Montale. (He also knew the poet Umberto Saba.) From the 1970s, he was considered the doyen of science reporters in Italy. As late as 1997 (and perhaps in even later reprints), a science popularisation lexicon has been published, Che Cos’è: la parole della scienza, whose authors are indicated as Rinaldo De Benedetti and the Italian association of science reporters, the Unione Giornalisti Scientifici Ital- iani. Already in 1937, Rinaldo De Benedetti published a book entitled Antonio Pacinotti, about the physicist Pacinotti (Pisa, 1841–1912),24 the inventor of the dynamo known as the Pacinotti ring. In 1967, De Bene- detti published another book about the pioneers of electricity, Uomini dell’elettricità. In 1974, he published the book Gli scienziati (Scientists). Also in 1974, a book for the centennial of Guglielmo Marconi’s birth appeared, Marconi, cento anni dalla nascita (Marconi: One Hundred Years from His Birth), by Giorgio Tabarroni, Rinaldo De Benedetti, and Giancarlo Masini. Other themes Rinaldo De Benedetti pursued were, as already mentioned, overpopulation and environmental pollution; for example, in 1972, he published a book about overpopulation and pollution, Siamo troppi su questa terra inquinata (There Are Too Many of Us on This Polluted Earth). The pen-name Sagredo deserves an explanation. It was probably chosen because this was an early modern scientist, a friend of Galileo Galilei, and Galileo made him into one of the characters (Salviati, Sa- gredo, and Simplicio) debating in an important treatise of his:

Giovanni Francesco Sagredo (1571– 5 March 1620) was a Venetian mathematician and close friend of Galileo, who wrote: Many years ago I was often to be found in the marvelous city of Venice, in discussions with Signore Giovanni Francesco Sagredo, a man of noble extraction and trenchant wit. He was also a friend and correspondent of English scientist William Gilbert.

24 The publisher, Oberdan Zucchi, often published hagiographic biographies (Caccia 2013, p. 186).

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Sagredo added a scale to Galileo’s thermoscope to enable the quantitative measure- ment of temperature, and produced more convenient portable thermometers. Sagredo also discussed with Galileo the possibility of a telescope using a mirror (a reflecting telescope). Galileo honoured him after his death by making him one of the characters in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems discussing the Copernican and the Ptolemaic theories of astronomy. In 1619, Galileo and Sagredo exchanged portraits. There are two existing portraits, in the Zhytomyr Regional Museum and the Ashmolean Museum. They are attributed to the brothers Leandro Bassano and Gerolamo Bassano. Sagredo died 5 March 1620, leaving his possessions to his brother Zaccaria, who largely disposed of them: Sagredo’s collection of letters has not been found. Sagre- do’s letters to Gilbert were destroyed in the Great Fire of London.25

6. Rinaldo De Benedetti as a Literary Author

Rinaldo De Benedetti used his pen-name Sagredo when he published, with the publisher Guanda in Parma, a book of select poems — he kept writing poems, many of them unpublished — which he gave the title Modi Antichi (that is, Ancient Manners, because of the metre he adopted, but his themes are much related to contemporary life). It has been claimed26 that he used the pen-name Sagredo in his poetry book because he wanted to keep his science writing and literary output separate, but this does not explain why he used the same pen-name in his Hoepli book of science history anecdotes, Aneddotica delle Scienze, to which we are going to come back. The first part of his collection of philosophical fiction stories, entitled Il Governatore e altri Apologhi, was published in 2011 under the title Il Governatore (The Governor), by Instar Libri in Turin. A considerable part of Rinaldo De Benedetti’s literary output is still unpublished. Such is the case of his fantasy politics (fantapo- litica) short story “I mangiatori di semi” (“The Seed Eaters”). Rinaldo De Benedetti wrote his stories combining ethics and science fiction in the late 1950s and in the 1960s. In the story Il Governatore (The Governor), the protagonist, who is first introduced as being asleep, is the ruler of a galaxy. The governor, we are gradually informed, does not sleep

25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Francesco_Sagredo Cf. Wilding (2006). 26 In http://rinaldodebenedettididimo.jimdo.com/didimo/

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 457 in a bed, does not close his eyes while asleep, and in fact has no eyes. He sleeps during his nights, and each one of his nights has the duration of one hundred thousand years, the time of half a rotation of his galaxy. When he awakes, he inquires with his secretary, who usually informs him that there is nothing new, so the Governor does not usually exercise his supernatural power.27 Other galaxies have similar rulers. Things change when on a planet, its inhabitants develop language, discover fire, and become able to launch rockets into space. In the 1990s, De Benedetti was reportedly devoting two hours per day to translating Homer, using hexameters from Latin metrics. A book of sonnets, Sonetti Vespertini (De Benedetti 2006), appeared posthumously.

7. The Short Story about Amadio De Benedetti and the Mountaineers of Castelmagno

Let us consider and discuss a short story by Rinaldo De Benedetti, first published (posthumously, upon the initiative of his daughter, Anna) in a magazine of the Jewish community of Turin.28 The protagonist of the story is not identified by name in the text, but this was Amadio Momigliano (Mondoví, 1844 – Caraglio, 1924), a great-uncle of Rinaldo De Benedetti. The main humorous aspect of this story is a point driven at the very end, in this paragraph:

Così avvenne che per poco un vescovo non riuscì a convertire all’ebraismo i parrocchiani di Castelmagno e che un vecchio talmudista li restituì alla loro chiesa. [It thus came upon to pass that a bishop almost managed to convert to Judaism the parishioners of Castelmagno, and that an old talmudist returned them to their Church.]

In the following, I translate passage by passage, and then provide a discussion of the cultural phenomenon involved, an important one in the transi- tion from paganism to Christianity and the resistance of the population to

27 This is rather like the ancient Epicurean conception of the deities. 28 “Didimo – Ha Keillah” at http://www.hakeillah.com/2_13_18.htm (De Benedetti 2013).

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 458 Ephraim Nissan the total suppression of ancient customs, even though in the story itself it comes across as an incident situated in the early 20th-century between the diocesis and parish priest, and the parishioners up in the mountains. The title of the story is “Racconto occitano” (“Occitan Story”).

Gli studiosi che hanno ricercato le storie dei movimenti religiosi in Italia hanno tras- curato il movimento di secessione della chiesa, che ebbe luogo ai primi di questo secolo, tra una popolazione delle Alpi Occidentali. Come esso nacque e come fu spento siamo in grado di raccontare per avervi parte non piccola nella vicenda un nostro congiunto. Questa storia chissà se meriti di uscir fuori dall’ambito familiare: comunque facciamoci coraggio. [The scholars who have researched the histories of religious movements in Italy have neglected the movement of secession from the Church, which occurred in the early years of this century, in the midst of a population of the Western Alps. How it origi- nated, and how it came to an end, we are able to relate because a relative of ours had in it a more than small part. Who knows, does this story deserve to be made known outside my family? Let us take courage and proceed. Dicono alcune regole della scrittura che per ben raccontare un fatto bisogna dire il dove e il quando. Il dove è una valletta delle Alpi Occidentali che scende dal Colle del Mulo, per vari abitati di cui il più alto è Castelmagno, fino al capoluogo, che è Cara- glio, ai piedi di un già munito castello di cui oggi resta qualche smozzicato muro. Il torrente che per la valle discende è il Grana che, dopo Caraglio, con vario errare per la pianura, mescolandosi ai torrenti Mellea e Maira, immette le sue acque nel Po. [Some rules of writing state than in order to properly relate an event, one must indi- cate where and when. The whereabouts are a little valley in the Western Alps that comes down from the Colle del Mulo (Mule’s Hill), through several settlements of which the one at the highest altitude is Castelmagno, down to the chief town, which is Caraglio, at the feet of a castle that once upon a time was defended, but of which only some dilapidated walls remain. The creek that descends through the valley is the Grana which, beyond Caraglio, after meandering in the plain, joins with the creeks Mellea and Maira, and pours its waters into the river Po.] Il tempo per indizi non certi è intorno al 1910, poco prima dello scoppio della prima guerra mondiale. Da allora molte cose sono cambiate: la strada che in alto era un sentiero buono per i muli e per gli scarponi chiodati oggi è asfaltata e percorsa da automobili. [As for the timing, based upon uncertain cues it must have been around 1910, a little earlier than the outbreak of the First World War. Since then, many things have changed: the road that up there used to be just a path suitable for the mules and for hob-nailed shoes is now asphalted and with car traffic.] Quanto alla gente, nella parte più alta della valle essa era ed è di Occitani, ma chi sapeva degli Occitani allora? Essi parlavano un dialetto non piemontese: quando si

chiamano da una costa all’altra le donne si sentono le voci Mario, Rosino, che voglio- no dire Maria, Rosina; il femminile appunto vi termina in o. Giù verso Caraglio si è invece in Piemonte. [As for the people, in the highest part of the valley it was and is made of Occitans, but who knew about the Occitans at the time? They used to speak a dialect that is not Piedmontese: when women call each other from one slope to the other, one hears the names Mario, Rosino, which stand for Maria, Rosina, as the feminine ends by o. Down in the direction of Caraglio, one is in Piedmont proper instead.]29 Un giorno dunque in una delle case borghesi di Caraglio, una domestica accorse ad aprire al trillo del campanello, si vide davanti cinque alti omoni, il cui odore com- misto di tabacco, di formaggio forte e di vino, i cui grossi pantaloni di velluto, rive- lavano essere montanari delle più alte frazioni della valle. [One day, in an upper middle-class home in Caraglio, a domestic servant ran to the door when the bell rang, and was faced with five tall big men, from whose smell combining tobacco, strong cheese, and wine, and whose coarse velvet trousers, you could tell they were mountaineers from the highest settlements of the valley.] “Che cosa volete?” domandò con piglio risoluto. Era, dopo il cavaliere, la persona più volitiva della casa, e, forte di uno stato di servizio che contava oramai una trentina d’anni, faceva valere la sua autorità su tutti coloro che pretendevano di varcarne la soglia. I cinque erano venuti per parlare col cavaliere. Niente da fare, rispondeva la domestica; di sabato il cavaliere non riceve; il cavaliere non tratta affari di sabato, non lo sapevano? Sì, certo lo sapevano che il cavaliere era ebreo. Un vero ebreo, come quelli del tempo antico, capitato chissà come a vivere di questi giorni. Egli il venerdì sera dava l’addio alle cose del mondo. Si dedicava alla preghiera, alla meditazione della Torà, si concedeva qualche pagina del Talmud, qualche cauto assaggio del libro dello Zohar: cauto perché questo della Cabala è un testo pericoloso. Leggeva anche, quand’era in vena, un capitolo di una grossa storia degli Ebrei in francese. Ma, in casa sua, nessuno attendeva ad opere servili, né figlio, né figlia, né servo, né serva, e neanche l’asino come dice la Bibbia, Esodo XX, 10, se l’asino ci fosse stato. Nella Val Grana, questa sua condizione e convinzione di ebreo era conosciuta e rispettata; nessuno veniva a parlargli in quel giorno di terre o di foraggi, di fagioli o di vini; affari che il cavaliere curava con intelligenza e fortuna gli altri giorni della settimana). “E non sapete – aggiunse la domestica – che non bisogna suonare il campanello; perché suonare il campanello elettrico è come accendere il fuoco? Bussare bisogna”. Essa era una buona cattolica e praticante; ma, fedelissima alle consegne, era rigida custode delle osservanze religiose dei padroni. Aveva imparato – a forza di sentirle – certe preghiere in ebraico e le faceva recitare ai bimbi di casa, il mattino, prima di dar loro il caffelatte.

29 In the Provençal language and its dialects, the feminine ends by o, as opposed to a in Italian and e in French (where that e is pronounced as ə in French as spoken in Southern France, a as spoken with a broad accent in Marseille, and zero as spoken in Paris).

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[“What do you want?” she asked resolutely. After the knighted master of the house, she was the most determined person in that home, and, with a strength deriving from her employment record of nearly thirty years, she exercised her authority on whoso- ever wanted to pass the threshold. You can do nothing about it, the servant replied; on Saturday the master does not receive; the master does not discuss business on Saturday, didn’t you know that? Yes, they knew that the master was Jewish indeed. A real Jew, like those of times bygone, who somehow happened to live in the present days. On Friday evening, he gave his farewell to the profane things of this world. He devoted himself to prayer, to meditation upon the Torah, he engaged himself in some pages of the Talmud, and some cautious tasting of the Book of the Zohar:30 cautious, because this Kabbalah text is dangerous. He also used to read, if so he fancied, a chapter of a bulky history of the Jews in French. But in his house, nobody carried out servile work, neither a son, nor a daughter, nor a maidservant, nor even the ass as prescribed by the Bible, Exodus 20:10, had it been the case that there was any ass around. In the Grana Valley, this Jewish condition and conviction of his was renowned and respected; nobody would come and talke to him on such a day about lands or fodder, beans or wines; things in which the knight used to trade with intelligence and success on the weekdays. “And don’t you know”, the servant said in addition, “that one isn’t supposed to ring the bell; as ringing the bell is like lighting a fire? One has to knock at the door instead”. She was a good and observant Catholic, and yet, quite faithful to her orders, she was a rigid custodian of the religious practice of her masters. She had learned, so often she had listened to them, some Hebrew prayers and she had the little children of the house say them, in the morning, before she would give them their coffee and milk.] I cinque non si muovevano: “Noi siamo venuti da Castelmagno – disse uno: è rip- etiamo il più alto paese della valle, dove si andava per sentieri e non per strade, dove ogni vegetazione è cessata fuorché di grame erbe, di pascoli battuti dal vento; dove la gente è più che altrove testarda, avara, vendicativa e anche nell’odore selvatica – siamo venuti fin qui apposta per parlare col cavaliere; e non torneremo indietro se prima non gli avremo parlato”. [Those five did not budge. “We came from Castelmagno”, one of them said. It is, we repeat, the village in the valley at the highest altitude, reachable through paths, not by road, and where all vegetation is no longer to be seen other than scanty grasses, windy pasture lands. More than elsewhere, the people there is stubborn, niggard, vin- dictive, and as you could tell by the very smell, savage. “We have come thus far on purpose, in order to speak to the knight. We are not going to go back unless we have spoken to him first”.] “E sta bene: andrò ad avvertirlo che voi volete vederlo per… per che cosa?”. Quelli sembrarono un po’ incerti e si consultarono a bassa voce. Poi uno disse forte: “Dob- biamo parlargli per la festa del Santo”.

30 The Book of the Zohar is the main text of Jewish mysticism. Traditionally, a Jewish man is not supposed to begin studying it before reaching the age of forty.

“La festa, avete detto?” “Sì…, di san Magno”. “Venite avanti …”. Non pareva molto persuasa; ma la sua resistenza era al termine. [“All right. I’ll go and inform him that you want to see him for... for what?” The men looked somewhat hesitant and whispered to each other. Then one of them said aloud: “We need to talk to him because of the festival of the Saint”. “The festival, you say?” “Yes… St. Magnus’ Day”. “Come in…”. She did not appear to be quite persuaded, but her resitance had come to an end.] Piaceva al cavaliere parlare di cose religiose; ma con uomini di studio, con qualche rabbino, con qualche dotto che veniva a fargli visita e a cui mostrava certi prezio- si acrostici ch’egli componeva con le iniziali dei versetti della Bibbia; gli piaceva anche parlarne con certi suoi congiunti, ch’egli soleva richiamare alle usanze dei vecchi che andavano miseramente perdute dopo l’apertura del ghetti, “la peggiore delle nostre disgrazie”; e ne discorreva a lungo anche con un prete cattolico amico suo, degna persona, con cui già sapeva fin dove poteva andare d’accordo e dove non più e con tutto il rispetto ch’era dovuto da ciascuno alla dottrina e alle convinzioni dell’altro. Ma con i montanari di Castelmagno, dove si e no tre persone sapevano leggere e scrivere il loro nome, non aveva mai pensato di dover parlare d’altro che di terre, di fagioli, di biade, d’orzo, di formaggi. Come che fosse quei tali, come mandarli via su due piedi? Il cavaliere, lisciandosi tra imbarazzato e incuriosito la barbetta bianca, li accolse nello studio e li invitò a sedere: ravvisò in essi sindaco e consiglieri di quell’alto comune. [The knight liked to take about religion. Buit he liked to do so with leanred men, with some rabbis, with some scholar who paid visit to him and to whom he would show some precious acrostic poems he used to compose with the initials of verses of Scripture. He also like to talk about religion to some relatives of his, whom he urged to return to the older generations’ practice, which was waning miserably since when the ghettoes were opened up, “the worst of our calamities”. He also used to talk about religion to a Catholic priest who was a friend of his, a decent person, with whom he knew how far he could go and still agree, and how far he could not, with all due respect that they each owed the doctrine and beliefs of the other one. But with the mountaineers of Castelmagno, where barely three persons knew how to read and write their names, he had never envisaged having to talk of anything else than lands, beans, fodder, barley, or cheese. At any rate, how could he send away those men on the spot? The knight, as embarrassed as he was made curious, caressed his white little beard, and let them into his studio and had them take a set. He recognised them as the mayor and councillors of that town up in the valley.]

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“Vi ascolto – disse –, ma oggi, sapete, non posso occuparmi di affari. Se sono affari, ne parleremo un’altra volta”. [“I am listening”, he said, “but as you know, today I cannot engage with business. If it’s about business, we’ll talk about it on some other opportunity”.] Delle molte e minute osservanze della sua fede, al cavaliere stava soprattutto a cuore il riposo del sabato. Egli soleva raccontare ai suoi nipoti, che erano osservanti tiepidi e svagati, ai congiunti e ad ogni altro correligionario che conversava con lui, che av- endo egli, nei tempi passati, una bottega a Mondovì, dove il mercato cade proprio di sabato, egli la teneva chiusa, proprio in quel giorno, in cui veniva dalla campagna la gente a fare acquisti, il giorno buono per i negozianti: e, ciò malgrado, Dio lo aveva fatto prosperare e là appunto aveva gettato le basi della sua presente fortuna. E soleva aggiungere ai nipoti che l’obbligo del comandamento non era solo di riposare il sabato, ma anche di lavorare gli altri giorni, perché sta scritto: “Sei giorni lavorerai, e il settimo riposerai”. Lavorare e riposare: due comandamenti ugualmente santi, che non credessero che fosse d’obbligo soltanto riposare il sabato e fosse lecito poi fare niente il resto della settimana. Ma non erano queste naturalmente cose che si potessero dire a quei montanari, e il cavaliere stava in attesa che quelli si decidessero a parlare. Ma essi parevano impacciati e si guardavano l’un l’altro, come per dire: parla tu. Final- mente uno si decise: [Of the many and minute precepts of his faith, the knight was very particular especially about the Sabbath rest. He used to tell his nephews,31 who were tepid and distract when it came to observance, and his relatives and any other coreligionist with whom he held conversation, that a long time ago, when he used to have a shop in Mondoví, where the market day was on Saturday of all days, he kept his shop closed on the Sabbath, even though it was precisely when people was coming from the countryside for their shopping, the good day for shopkeepers. Neverthe- less, God had made him prosper and it was there that he had founded his present fortune. He used to tell his nephews in addition that the precept obliges not just to rest on the Sabbath, but also to work on the other days, because it is written: “Six days thou shalt work, and on the seventh thou shalt rest”. To work and to rest: two precepts that are equally saintly. Let them not believe that it was only obligatory to rest on the Sabbath, and that it was permissible to do nothing all week long. But these were not, of course, things he could tell those mountaineers, and the knight was waiting for them to make up their mind and talk at the long last. But they semmed to be uncomfortable and were staring at each other, as though to urge: “Be the one who speaks”. Eventuially, one of them resolved to speak and did so:] “Ecco noi veniamo a nome della popolazione di Castelmagno … a domandare a lei ...; noi vogliamo che lei ci dica …; insomma noi vogliamo diventare ebrei”.

31 One would translate nipoti as “grandchildren”, were it not that we know that Amadio Momigliano had nephews or grand-nephews living in the same house in Caraglio, including Arnaldo Momigliano, the future historian (and free-thinker).

“Come, come, come?” Il cavaliere non era sicuro di aver capito bene e li guardava con aria interrogativa; E annuivano gravemente con grande dondolio di teste. “Tutto il paese?” Il dondolio di teste continuò. [“Well, we come on behalf of the population of Castelmagno... in order to ask you…; we want you to tell us…; I mean, we want to become Jewish”. “How, how, how?” The knight was unsure he had heard correctly and was staring at them questioningly. They nodded gravely in assent, with much rocking of their heads. “The entire village?” They went on rocking their heads in assent.] “Ma come vi è venuto in mente una cosa simile?”. Gli ebrei non hanno la passione di far proseliti; e al cavaliere l’idea che quegli omoni, così grossi, così forti, così selvaggi, così lontani da essere affinati da secoli di una vita racchiusa e timorosa, dovessero tramutarsi in ebrei, appariva mostruosa, una cosa che non poteva essere, un fatto contro natura. [“But how did it occur to you, something like that?” Jews have no passion for pros- elytising. For the knight, the very idea that those big men — so large, so strong, so savage, so far away from the refinement that comes from a centuries-long secluded and fearful life — would turn into Jews, looked monstrous, something that could no be, something against nature.] “L’idea ci è venuta così: che noi vogliamo farci ebrei e subito. Siamo tutti d’accordo; dunque non c’è più niente da dire. Siamo venuti da lei per sentire cosa s’ha da fare”. [“We just got this idea: that we want to become Jewish, and right away. We are all in agreement about that, so there is nothing else to be said. We have come to you so you would tell us what we have to do”.] Il cavaliere cercava intanto di raccapezzarsi. Egli sapeva che quella era la gente più materiale del mondo; cacciatori di marmotte, pescatori di trote, contrabbandieri, mu- lattieri, bestemmiatori, bevitori, violenti, taccagni, e manco un’ombra di religione in loro. I parroci che erano mandati lassù (ed erano scelti per quel posto tipi tutti speciali: o angelici di pazienza o ferocemente pugnaci) avevano vita difficile. Le mat- tine dicevano messa ai banchi vuoti. Qualche rara vecchietta faceva apparizione la domenica: solo qualche volta, quando capitava lassù a far visita al romito sacerdote un qualche suo compassionevole amico o congiunto, a portargli un po’ di conversaz- ione umana e notizie del mondo, allora soltanto, il mattino dopo, la chiesa era piena di gente: non per ascoltare la messa, ma per vedere il forestiero. Una volta all’anno il parroco aveva molto da fare: il giorno della festa del santuario, che in un certo giorno di mezza estate era meta di gite e pellegrinaggi da tutta la vallata e anche dalle vallate vicine. In quel giorno gli osti dei luoghi preparavano ravioli con un ripieno di riso; il santuario appariva stipato di gente; si aprivano certe stanze per l’ospizio dei pellegrini, il tutto con un gran ronzare di rosari di pie donne: verso sera poi si ballava. Tutto il resto dell’anno c’era tra parroco e popolazione una sorda guerra, una ostilità appena repressa dalla consuetudine e dalla necessità di sopportarsi a vicenda.

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In questa ostilità doveva trovarsi la chiave del problema e in tal senso il cavaliere decise di tastare il terreno. [Meanwhile, the knight was trying to make it out. He kknew that it was the most material people in the world; marmot hunters, anglers of trout, smugglers, mule drivers, blas- phemers, heavy drinkers, violent, stingy, with not even a bit of religion in them. The parish priests who had been sent up there (and for that place, it was quite special ones who were chosen: either angelic in how patient they were, or ferociously combative) had a hard life. In the morning, they used to say mass to empty benches. Some rare old woman would appear on Sunday. It was only sometimes, when the isolated priest received on visit some compassionate friend or relative of his, to bring to him some human conversation and news of the world, it was only on such occasions that on the morning after, the church was full of people: not to hear mass, but to see the foreigner. Once every year the parish priest had much to do: it was the day of the festival of the saint’s shrine. On a mid-summer day, it was the destination of trips and pilgrimage from all over that valley, as well as other valleys nearby. On that day, the publicans of those places used to prepare ravioli stuffed with rice; the shrine appeared to be crammed with people; some rooms were opened in order to accommodate the pilgrims, and this was in the midst of a loud humming of the rosaries of pious women. Then, in the evening, people would dance. Apart from that day, all year long, there was between the parish priest and the population a tacit war, such enmity that was only contained by custom and by the need for tolerating each other. It was in this enmity that one would have to look for the key of the problem. It was accordingly that the knight resolved to probe into the ground.] “Io potrei aiutarvi, se volete, ma dovreste venir qui col vostro parroco”. Gli omoni non parvero gradire la proposta: uno strinse le labbra, un altro si mosse nervoso sulla sedia. “Quello non verrà! – gridò un terzo col tono di chi, al solo pen- sarci, già si indigna di un’offesa non ancora patita – No, no: bisogna fare a meno di lui”. E un altro aggiunse: “E poi bisogna far presto: prima della festa del santuario”. “Perché prima della festa?” domandò il cavaliere. [“I could help you, if you wish so, but you should come here with your parish priest”. Those big men did not seem to like the proposal: one of them clenched his lips, another one moved nervously on his chair. “He’ll not come!” a third man shouted with the tone of one who, just thinking of it, was already indignant at an offence he suffered. “No, no, we’ll have to do without him”. Yet another one said in addition: “Besides, we need to hurry: it must be done before the festival of the saint’s shrine”. “Why before the festival?” the knight asked.] A poco a poco la faccenda veniva in chiaro dalle risposte reticenti, smozzicate e sforzate dagli omacci: don Pellegrino, il parroco del luogo, non apparteneva al tipo angelico, ma piuttosto a quello feroce. Era un uomo combattivo e cocciuto, che, forte della bontà delle intenzioni, teneva bravamente testa all’ostilità della gente e sempre coltivava una qualche ragione di litigio con essi: trovava a ridire che frequentassero le osterie e diser- tassero la chiesa; che mettessero tre giorni di tempo a contrattare una vacca, bevendosi

tra i contraenti e il sensale metà del valore della bestia; osava richiedere che i ragazzi andassero a scuola o al catechismo; gli dispiaceva se una figliola mettesse al mondo un marmocchio fuori dal matrimonio; diceva chiaramente al suo gregge che puzzava troppo e che doveva lavarsi di più: battaglie tutte disperate e perdute ma don Pellegrino combatteva con ardore, perché egli aveva il gusto della lotta. Giusto un’effimera pacifi- cazione avveniva tra le due parti con l’avvicinarsi della festa del santuario; festa per cui l’autorità del prete era necessaria e in qualche modo insostituibile. Orbene, quest’anno era venuta fuori una novità. Il parroco aveva ricevuto una lettera dalla curia, deplorante che, in occasione di festività religiose, i fedeli si dedicassero a trattenimenti e balli spesso indecorosi, per lo stato di ubriachezza dei partecipanti, e contrari in ogni modo al buon costume; e che, con maggiore offesa per la religione, li tenessero sovente proprio sui sagrati delle chiese: invitava i parroci, questa lettera, ad evitare che lo scandalo si ripetesse. Essa giunse a don Pellegrino più gradita che un invito a nozze. Appena ricevutala, andò difilato dal sindaco e gli disse chiaro e tondo che quest’anno non si doveva ballare, in occasione della festa del santo; chè se poi qualcuno si fosse messo in testa di ballare lo stesso, andasse pure in qualcuna delle bettolacce che a loro piaceva di frequentare; ma non davanti alla casa di Dio, come s’era fatto negli anni passati. Chè se lui, per amore di pace aveva fatto finta di niente, lo scandalo era però giunto alla curia e il vescovo aveva espressamente proibito la cosa, ed aveva ragione. Ubriacarsi come bestie, dir parolacce, cantare canzoni sconce e palpeggiar le ragazze proprio nel giorno del santo e davanti alla porta del Santuario: cristiani siete o giudei! [Bit by bit, the matter was made clearer by the reticent answers, mumbeld and forced, given by those big men. Don Pellegrino, the parish priest of their place, did not belong to the angelic type. He did belong to the ferocious type. He was a combative and stubborn man, who, made stronger by his good intentions, made head against the people’s enmity, and was always nursing some reason to squabble with them: he reproached them for going to the taverns and deserting the church; for their taking three days long to negotiate the sale of a cow, while drinking between them, the parties and the middleman, the value of one half of that beast. He dared to request that the children would go to school or to the catechism. He disliked it if some young woman gave birth to a brat out of wedlock. He was telling his flock squarely that they were stinking too much and should wash more often. Those were desperate battles, lost all of them. And yet, Don Pellegrino fought them with ardour, because he liked to fight. It was only an ephemeral appeasement that took place between the two parties when the festival of the saint’s shrine approached. That was a festival for which the authority of the priest was necessary and indeed irreplaceable. The rub of the matter was that this year there was something new. The parish priest had received a letter from the diocesis, and it deplored that during the religious festival, the faithful engaged in often indecorous entertainment and dances, because of the drunkenness of the participants, and in all manners contrary to decency. And that, an even worse affront for religion, they were often dancing precisely on the church-squares. The letter urged parish priests to prevent that such a scandal be repeated. This letter pleased Don Pellegrino more than if he had been invited to a wedding. As soon as he received it, he went right away to find the mayor and told him bluntly that on this year, there must be no dancing, at the saint’s festival, and that if anybody was nevertheless determined to dance all the same, let him go to some of

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 466 Ephraim Nissan

the taverns they liked to visit; but not in front of the house of God, which was what they had done in previous years. Because even though he, for the sake of peace, had feigned nothing, the scandal had nevertheless reached the diocesis and the bishop had explicitly forbidden this, and he was right. To get drunk like beasts, to swear, to sing indecent songs, and to touch young women indecently, during the saint’s day of all days, and in front of the door of the saint’s shrine! Are you Christians or Jews?!] Ora, il ballo sul sagrato era proprio la parte della festa più gradita ai montanari: né bisogna credere che si impuntassero tanto per tenerlo lì per fare dispetto al prete. Gli è che tra quei monti non si sarebbe potuto trovare, per miglia all’intorno, un altro spiazzo piano di uguale ampiezza. All’annunzio del divieto l’ostilità contro il parroco toccò vertici sconosciuti, con un gran discorrere ed esaltarsi a vicenda. E quel fug- gevole accenno ai giudei aveva fatto venire in mente a qualcuno quello ch’era parso un rimedio e una vendetta insieme. Se quella era roba da giudei, ebbene si sarebbe an- dati dal cavaliere, quello che abitava giù a Caraglio: quello era ebreo e un brav’uomo; si diceva in giro che, come ebreo, valeva quanto un vescovo. Si sarebbero fatti ebrei e con lui si sarebbe fatta la festa del santuario, ballo compreso. [The point is, the dance in the church-square was precisely the part of the festival that the mountaineers liked most. They were not stubbornly doing this in that place to spite the priest. The problem was that in those mountains, one could not find, miles and miles around, another flat place as ample as that. When the prohibition was announced, the enmity against the parish priest surged up to peaks never reached earlier, with much discussion and mutual incitement. That fleeting mention of the Jews gave somebody the idea what appeared to be both a remedy and revenge. If that was something befitting Jews, then let them go to the knight, the one who lived down in Caraglio: that one was a Jew and a decent man; it used to be said around that as a Jew, he was worth as much as a bishop. They would become Jews, and with him they would hold the festival of the saint’s shrine, including the dancing.] Non ritenne il cavaliere di addentrarsi in sottigliezze teologiche per far comprendere ai montanari di Castelmagno che, una volta che si fossero fatti ebrei, avrebbero dovuto rinunciare alla festa del santo. Ma, presa tra sé una soluzione, disse loro che avrebbe pensato alla proposta, che avrebbe dovuto scriverne a qualcuno e che avrebbe fatto sapere loro una risposta prima della festa. [The knight did not consider it expedient to delve into theological subtleties in order to have the mountaineers of Castelmagno understand that, upon becoming Jewish, they would have to renounce the festival of the saint. Rather, having taken a decision he kept for himself, he told them he would think of their proposition, that he would have to write somebody about it, and that he would lwet them know before the festival.] Un paio di giorni appresso, recatosi a Cuneo per certi suoi negozi, fece una visitina in curia e raccontò la faccenda al coadiutore del vescovo; il quale dapprincipio tentò d’indignarsi, ma poi non poté fare a meno di ridere e ne risero insieme fino alle lacrime. Ma tosto l’uno dei due e poi subito l’altro si quietarono come vergognosi e si fecero

seri, contegnosi. Perché quella risata, tra loro, cordiale, incontenibile, che cos’era stata se non un’improvvisa incontenibile comune illuminazione di marca volteriana? Quanto se n’accorsero, essa era già scoppiata; si pentirono d’averci preso gusto e riassunsero ciascheduno la sua parte. Seguirono ringraziamenti, complimenti, saluti. La sera stessa partivano dalla curia disposizioni per il parroco di Castelmagno, con le quali, a parziale rettifica della lettera precedente, lo si informava che, nel caso che proibire il ballo sul sagrato ai parrocchiani dovesse portare a scandali o eccessi di altra natura, meglio era las- ciar fare e solo cercare con la massima prudenza possibile che si evitassero le forme più offensive e disgustose del trattenimento, ecc. Avvertimento che il parroco non gradì affatto, perché egli, sopra ogni altra cosa, amava la lotta; ma capì che, in qualche maniera, i parrocchiani l’avevano spuntata e fece intendere al sindaco che la proibizione era tolta. [A couple of days afterwards, having gone to Cuneo for some transactions of his, a visited the diocesis and related the matter to the bishop’s assistant. At first, the latter tried to express indignation, but then was unable to restrain mirth, and they laughed together to the point that they shed tears. Soon however, one of them and then immediately the other one, too, calmed down as though in shame, and they became serious, sporting gravitas. Because that burst of laughter between the two of them, cordial and impossible to restrain, what was it, if not a sudden, uncontainable shared enlightenment of a Voltair- ian nature? When they noticed, it had already burst. They repented for the pleasure they had taken in it, and they each resumed their respective role. Thanks followed, compliments, and a farewell. That very evening the diocesis sent out orders for the parish priest of Castelmagno, partly countermanding the previous letter, and informing him that in case forbidding the parishioners dancing in the church-square could result in scandals or excesses of any other nature, it was preferable to acquiesce and only endeavour, as cautiously as possible, to prevent the most offensive and disgusting forms of the entertainment, and so forth. It was a warning that the parish priest disliked intensely, because what he liked most was a fight; and yet, he understood that somehow, the parishioners had won, and he let the mayor realise that the prohibition was annulled.] Così avvenne che per poco un vescovo non riuscì a convertire all’ebraismo i parrocchiani di Castelmagno e che un vecchio talmudista li restituì alla loro chiesa. [It thus came upon to pass that a bishop almost managed to convert to Judaism the parishioners of Castelmagno, and that an old talmudist returned them to their Church.]

8. A Discussion of the Geography of “Racconto occitano”

We are going to discuss aspects of this short story based on an anecdote from Rinaldo De Benedetti’s recollections about his family. The Grana Valley32 is in

32 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_Grana

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 468 Ephraim Nissan southwestern Piedmont. It extends from east westward, and the upper valley is in the West. Caraglio, in the plain at the feet of the valley is in the east. At present, the local councils (comuni) of the valley belong not only to the Province of Cuneo, but also to an intermediate administrative unit which comprises the valleys of the Grana and the Maira (Comunità montana valli Grana e Mai- ra).33 The Grana valley exports Castelmagno cheese,34 a now legally protected brand produced in the three local councils at the highest altitude within the valley: Monterosso Grana, Pradleves, and Castelmagno. In contrast, the mid and lower valley of the Grana at present produces organic agricultural staples. Apart from the three councils of the upper valley, the valley also comprises the councils of Valgrana and Montemale, whereas Caraglio is in the plain at the opening of the lower valley. The highest mountain is Monte Tibert (2,647 m). Castelmagno is the topmost local council of the valley; its average altitude is 1,150 m. On 31 December 2015, there only were 85 inhabitants left. Gradual depopulation of Castelmagno began during the last twenty years of the 19th century, and proceeded apace during the 20th, accelerating during the 1920s.35 There is no school in Castelmagno, but there are a library and two museums. Castelmagno comprises six still inhabited hamlets: Campomolino (Champdamoulin) which is the seat of the administration, Einaudi (In- aout),36 Colletto (Coulet), Nerone (Niroun), Chiotti (Quiot), and Chiappi (Quiap).37 In contrast, other hamlets are abandoned.38

33 http://www.valligranaemaira.it/; https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comunità_montana_ Valli_Grana_e_Maira 34 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castelmagno_(formaggio) 35 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castelmagno In 1861 there were 1,310 inhabitants in Castelmagno; in 1871, 1,448; in 1881, 1,431; in 1901, 1,315; in 1911, 1,210; in 1921, 1,062; in 1931, 769; in 1936, 698; in 1951, 485; in 1961, 294; in 1971, 186; in 1981, 211; in 1991, 163; in 2001, 117; in 2011, 82 inhabitants. 36 Giulio Einaudi, the founder in 1933 of Einaudi, a major publishing house based in Turin, was the son of the economist (and eventually Italy’s president in 1948–1955) Luigi Einaudi, who was born in Carrú in the province of Cuneo into a well-to-do family of the peasantry and wed a student of his who was an aristocrat. 37 When my English teacher at high school in Milan (later a university professor in Como) was about to marry, my classmates asked her what her married name would be. She hesitated an instant before replying: “Chiappi”. It took courage, because the plural in the feminine, c h i a p p e, is a vulgar Italian name for ‘ b u t t o c k s ’. 38 Rulavà, Caouri, La Crous, Champdarfei, Arbouno (Narbona), Albrè, and Tech. Batouira (Batuira) was abandoned, but a Buddhist community has resettled it. Valiera (Valliera) was abandoned, but there is a current attempt to attract tourists and to produce there again a cheese named after that place.

The festival of St. Magno (St. Magnus, a martyr) is on August the 19th. At the Sanctuary of St. Magno at Catelmagno,39 whose building in its present shape (as seen in the photograph) is from 1716, in its the oldest chapel (the Al- lemandi chapel) there is a cycle of frescoes by Pietro of Saluzzo, from the late 14th century, and a cycle of frescoes by Giovanni Bottoneri, of the 16th century. In 1475, Enrico Allemandi had a Gothic chapel built; it is the core of the shrine. In 1775, a new altar was built. In 1845–1848, the 15th-century belfry was made higher. In 1861–1868, arcades were added on the sides, with lodgings for pilgrims above. In 1894, a Roman altar of Mars was found under the Allemandi chapel, along with Roman coins from around the year 250 C.E. The Sanctuary at Castelmagno attracts tourists.

39 The place-name Castelmagno is from Latin castrum magnum (‘great fortress’ or ‘great castle’). This apparently was because of a castle that used to control the valley. The remains of that castle are near Colletto.

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The red rectangle shows the position of Val Grana (the Grana Valley) inside Piedmont.40 Next page: The Sanctuary of St. Magno at Castelmagno (photo by Marco Plassio).41 Page after the next: A panoramic view of Caraglio, seen from the lower Grana Valley (photo by Luigi Tuby).42

40 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valgranaposizione_it.png (in the public domain). 41 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castelmagno#/media/File:Castelmagno-Santuario.jpg (in the public domain). 42 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_Grana#/media/File:Caraglio_bassavallegrana_ monviso_veduta.jpg

9. A Discussion of the Bone of Contention in “Racconto occitano”: Dancing in Front of a Church, Popular Religion, and Attitudes

Dancing in front of a church, in Western Europe, is a survival of pagan ritual, and as such it was fought by Church authorities in the early Middle Ages; it was with reluctance that it came to be tolerated as part of Chris- tian popular religion, such as in the Catalan custom of the sardana outside the church of Madremanya in Girona after Sunday mass. This has been discussed by Ken Dowden in his book (2000) European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. For example, he quoted (ibid., p. 161) from Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 13.4: “These unhappy and wretched people who neither fear nor blush to practise dances (bal- lationes et saltationes) before the very churches of the saints, even if they go as Christians to church, they return pagans from the church, because ista consuetude balandi de paganorum observatione remansit (the custom

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 472 Ephraim Nissan of dancing is a left-over of the practice of the pagans)”. In Sermon 16.2, Caesarius reproached: “What sort of Christian is that who scarcely ever comes to church, and when he does, doesn’t stand in the church or pray for his sins … after he has got drunk, he rises to dance (ballare) like a frenetic madman in a diabolical way, to dance (saltare), to sing shameful, amatory, indulgent (luxuriosa) words” (Dowden 2000, pp. 162–163). Dowden (2000, p. 162) remarked: “Folk ritual not sanctioned by the Church is ‘paganism’. Any Christian father with insight will see that it is really the Jews worshipping the Golden Calf. But dance also of- fends against a code of restraint which had been active (and generally is) in western upper-class society”. “Christianity, which had taken root in the cities, imposed an ascetic urban code of restraint as it advanced towards the fields. […] Thus dance is an offence against the Christian gestural code. This theme is a recurrent one in the history of Europe: in the Renaissance, too, the nobler classes sought to distinguish themselves by restraint in gesture and by adopting courtly dance styles that could be distinguished from their rustic cousins […] Pagans, therefore, dance and sing because (a) that is what pagans do, as we learn from the case of the Golden Calf, and (b) they are bad and lower-class people, probably rus- tics!” (Dowden 2000, p. 163). In fact, according to Rinaldo De Benedetti’s story relating his family tradition about the peasants who determined to become Jewish, the priest, don Pellegrino, had made them face a dilemma, by telling them to choose whether to be Christian or Jewish. The priest had not mentioned pagans, presumably because there no longer were pagans in the region, and the denominational Other of Christians were the Jews of Piedmont. And yet, it may be that there was an echo of Caesarius of Arles, as the latter, in Sermon 46.5, after quoting the verse “The people sat to eat and drink, and they rose to play” (Exodus, 32:6) concerning the Children of Israel worshipping the Golden Calf, stated that “in honour of the same idols began to arrange dances and in frenetic manner to distort their limbs in various styles of dance (saltationes)” (Dowden 2000, p. 161). Or was there an echo of the contemptuous reference made by John Chrysostom to the devout practice of Jews in Antioch dancing barefoot in the street on the Day of Atonement? I would not go as far as hypothesising that the parish priest in Castelmagno was one of the many priests who at any rate in France, invested part of their salary (and were condemned for doing so by Pope Pius IX) in a subscription to the huge Patrologia Latina

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 473 series edited and published by the Abbé Jacques-Paul Migne43 (1800– 1875), Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, 221 vols. (Paris: Migne, 1844–1864), or to subsequent editions, or that the parish priest had access to some individual volume of the Patrologia Latina (hence Caesar- ius of Arles),44 let alone the Patrologia Graeco-Latina (hence John Chrys- ostom).45 It is possible that at the diocesis of Cuneo there was awareness

43 The following is excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques-Paul_Migne: “Jacques Paul Migne (25 October 1800 – 24 October 1875) was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely-distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a universal library for the Catholic priesthood. […] Migne had become convinced of the power of the press and the sheer value of raw information widely distributed. In 1836 he opened his great publishing house, Imprimerie Catholique, at Petit Montrouge, in the outlying 14th arrondissement of Paris. There he brought out in rapid succession numerous religious works meant for the use of the lesser clergy at popular prices that insured a wide circulation. […] The three great series that have made his reputation were Patrologiae cursus completus, Latin series (Patrologia Latina) in 221 vols. (1844–5); Greek series (Patrologia Graeca), first published in Latin (85 vols., 1856– 7); then published with Greek text and Latin translation (165 vols., 1857–8). Though scholars have always criticised them, these hastily edited, inexpensively printed and widely distributed texts have only slowly been replaced during a century and a half with more critically edited modern editions. […] Migne by-passed the bookselling establishment with direct subscriptions. His Imprimerie Catholique developed into the largest privately held press in France. Tragically, however, for Migne, on the night of 12–13 February 1868 a devastating fire, which began in the printing plant, destroyed Migne's establishment, which was also producing religious objects. In spite of his insurance contracts, Migne was able to retrieve only a pittance. Shortly afterwards Mgr Georges Darboy, archbishop of Paris, forbade the continuance of the business, and even suspended him from his priestly functions. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 inflicted further losses. Then from the curia of Pope Pius IX came a decree condemning the use of Mass stipends for the purchase of books, in which Migne and his publications were especially named. Migne died without ever having regained his former prosperity, and his Imprimerie Catholique passed in 1876 into the hands of Garnier Frères”. 44 The writings of Caesarius of Arles are found in Vol. 67 of Migne’s original edition of the Patrologia Latina. That volumes comprises the works of Dionysius Exiguus, Viventiolus Lugdunensis, Trojanus Santonensis, Pontianus Africae, Caesarius Arelatensis, and Fulgentius Ferrandus. 45 “The Patrologia Latina is one part of the Patrologiae Cursus Completus, the second part of which is the Patrologia Graeco-Latina, consisting of patristic and medieval Greek works with Latin translations. The Patrologia Latina includes over 1000 years of Latin works from Tertullian to Pope Innocent III, in 217 volumes: volumes

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 474 Ephraim Nissan of Caesarius, but this is unnecessary for the course of events in Rinaldo De Benedetti’s story. The Catholic Church in general, at the level of dioceses and parishes, sought to restrain dancing (see below).46

Conflicting attitudes toward the human body and, by extension, toward dancing have characterized all three of the major monotheistic religions in the West — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although the negative view has generally won out, alternative models and solutions constantly challenge any overwhelming orthodoxy. Biblical literature, for instance, provides both favorable and unfavorable pictures.47

Suzanne Youngerman (2005 [1987]) further points out:

The strongest evidence that there was dancing connected with religion in the early Christian church is the persistent condemnation of dance chronicled in the writings of over six hundred years of church councils. At this time, dancing was particularly associated with ceremonies at the shrines of martyrs. The disdain of the church for dancing stemmed in part from the state of dancing at the time. Much of the refinement of Greek and Roman dance and theater had degenerated into generally bawdy mime and acrobatic shows, or else the dancing had become associated with pagan rituals. The church even refused baptism to performers. A growing asceticism further divorced Christianity from dance. In addition, certain heretical movements in- corporated dance into their liturgy, further fueling orthodoxy’s condemnation of it. […] Condemnation of dancing continued into the later Middle Ages. However, the inherent theatricality of the Christian liturgy, as well as of the biblical literature, could not be ignored. Dramatic performances were often elaborate, sometimes involving processionals and dancing. Dance roles tended to be comic or grotesque character parts. Starting around the twelfth century through about the fifteenth century, plays were associated with Easter and Christmas. […] The Pelota of Auxerre is thought to have been a complex dance in which the clergy passed a ball among themselves along the stations of a labyrinth. […] Dancing in both a recreational and performance context took place mostly outside the church, often in conjunction with local saint days and religious festivals. Christmas was particularly enlivened by popular dancing often involving mumming, a practice that still accompanies this holiday in parts of

1 to 73, from Tertullian to Gregory of Tours, were published from 1844 to 1849, and volumes 74 to 217, from Pope Gregory I to Innocent III, from 1849 to 1855” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrologia_Latina). The Patrologia Latina Database (accessible at http://pld.chadwyck.co.uk/) is an electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855, and the four volumes of indexes published between 1862 and 1865. 46 By the way, in 1906, a book by Giuseppe Barone was published in Naples, which also considered rite: Il ballo nel rito religioso, nella Divina Commedia, nell’igiene, nella patologia, e nella morale. 47 Youngerman (2005, pp. 2152–2153).

the United Kingdom and in North and South America. The Feast of Fools provided the opportunity for burlesques of the established church. Many of the celebrations on these holidays had pagan roots, providing further reason for official condemnation.

Judith Lynne Hanna remarks (2005, p. 2135):

Christianity’s love-hate relationship with the body and acceptance of a mind-body dichotomy — which the rationalism of sixteenth-century Europe intensified — has led to both positive and negative attitudes toward dance. […] Paul said, ‘Glorify Christ in your bodies’ (1 Cor. 6:15–20). From the second century, Christians (e.g., Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Clement of Alexandria) described dance as an imitation of the perpetual dance of angels, the blessed and righteous expressing physically their desire to enter heaven. Christianity built upon the Hebrew tradition of demonstrating through pious dance that no part of the individual was unaffected by the love of God. Yet Christian- ity also scorned flesh as a root of evil to be transcended, even mortified. Misunder- standings of Paul’s view of flesh, by which he meant to refer to the individual acting selfishly, led to negative attitudes toward the body in general that he did not share. Christianity’s rejection of the body reflects an inability to come to terms with the passing of time and with death. Moreover that the body is the instrument of sex and of dance creates fear of unbridled arousal of the passions and sexuality. Consequently, religious and secular totalitarian governments try to exert control over dance.48

A basically secular, materialistic outlook is sometimes ascribed to the Pro- vençal peasantry. In Brittany, a region often taken to be clerical, animosity towards the clergy in some areas is associated with the Church having traditionally sided with landowners and the better classes in general, and the values of the French Republic being perceived as an alternative. Ellen Badone’s49 article (1991) “Le folklore breton de l’anticléricalisme” is concerned with a particular area of Brittany:

48 “Western philosophy and Victorian prudishness have not, however, affected the Eastern Orthodox Church to the extent of eliminating dance in worship” (Hanna 2005, p. 2135). “Europeans recognized that non-European dance was intertwined with indigenous religions and moralities. Even though these dances often had themes and origins comparable to those of European folk dances, colonialists considered indigenous dances to be the manifestation of savage heathenism, and thus antagonistic to the ‘true faith’. They therefore frequently sought to eliminate them. The British influence, for example, contributed to the demise of Hindu temple dancing without succeeding in spreading Christianity. However, even when proscribed or out of fashion, dance rises phoenixlike and transformed. The Hindu temple-dancing became an Indian nationalist symbol appropriated by middle-class women” (ibid.). 49 Badone published the book (1989) The Appointed Hour: Death, Worldview and Social Change in Brittany.

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Popular anticlericalism is inveterate in the Monts d’Arrée, a Breton area with traditional tendencies towards left wing politics. […] The local folklore of anticlericalism, which has been recorded throughout fieldwork in La Feuillée (Finistère), deals either with the sexuality of priests, including the Red Monks in the former abbey of Le Relecq, or with their abilities to influence the people, by tricks or by sorcery.50

50 Badone (1991), from the English abstract. On p. 434, Badone relates: « Dans le temps », les prêtres étaient accusés de « mettre en scène » des apparitions surnaturelles pour effrayer leurs paroissiens et pour renforcer le contrôle clérical sur les affaires du village. Une telle magie était utilisée pour procurer des « preuves » visibles de l’existence de l’autre monde et de ses habitants, y compris les âmes perdues et des figures telles que le démon. Marguerite, une octogénaire de La Feuillée, raconte qu’à Poullaouen, une commune voisine, le démon lui-même avait pris l’habitude d’apparaître aux veillées mortuaires des anticléricaux et des rouges notoires de la paroisse, réclamant pour lui le corps du défunt. Ces apparitions terrorisaient la population de Poullaouen. Cependant, après plusieurs cas de ce genre, un groupe de jeunes gens du village décida de faire en sorte que l’incident ne se reproduisît pas. La prochaine fois que le démon arriva, pour enlever le corps du défunt lors d’une veillée, les jeunes gens lui barrèrent le passage et l’assaillirent. Au cours de l’algarade, on découvrit que le « diable » n’était autre que le recteur, recouvert d’une peau de vache et portant une paire de cornes sur la tête. En se faisant passer pour Satan, conclut Marguerite, le prêtre avait espéré instiller la crainte à ses paroissiens rebelles et les encourager à assister plus régulièrement à la messe. Bien que cette histoire ne paraisse guère plausible, au moins un prêtre du XIXe siècle à Poullaouen, célèbre pour sa violence et son extrémisme, aurait été capable d’une telle escapade. […] [“Once upon a time”, priests were accused or “staging” supernatural manifestations in order to scare their parishioners and to reinforce clerical control over village matters. Such magic was resorted to in order to supply visible “evidence” of the existence of the world to come of if its denizens, including damned souls and such characters as the Devil. Marguerite, a woman aged 90 from La Feuillée, relates that in Poullaouen, a town close by, the Devil himself had taken on the habit of appearing at the wake for notorious anticlericals or Reds of the parish, claiming for himself the body of the deceased. These visions terrified the population of Poullaouen. Nevertheless, after several such cases, a group of young people from that village decided to see to it that that incident would no longer occur. The next time that the Devil arrived, in order to take away the body of the deceased during a wake, those young persons blocked his way and assaulted him. During the row, it turned out that the “Devil” was none else than the rector [the main parish priest], covered with a cow hide and wearing a couple of horns on his head. By passing himself as Satan, Marguerite concluded, the priest had hoped to instil fear in his rebellious parishioners and encourage them to attend Mass more regularly. Even though this story does not seem plausible, at least one priest in the 19th century in Poullaouen, one who attained fame for his violence and extremism, would have been capable of such behaviour. …]

Informants claimed however that social change has reduced those abilities. Actually, Brittany is usually associated with clericalism, as Badone conceded: Pour un observateur superficiel, la Bretagne pourrait sembler inappropriée à une étude du folklore anticlérical. Les stéréotypes communs dépeignent en effet la Bretagne comme une région de catholicisme dévot, conservatrice tant en matière de mentalités que de mode de vie. [To a superficial observer, Brittany may appear to be unsuitable for a study of anticlerical folklore. In fact, widespread stereotypes depict Brittany as a region of devout Catholicism, and as conservative in both mentality and way of life.]

In some French regions,51 the conflict between mayors and parish priest was acute:52

Dans de nombreuses régions de la France rurale, durant le XIXe siècle, la différence idéologique entre les catholiques et les anticléricaux républicains se traduisait par des conflits de prérogatives entre les maires — représentants de l’autorité séculière — et le clergé paroissial. Les conflits de personnalités entre les prêtres et les fidèles contribuèrent aussi à alimenter les sentiments anticléricaux (Magraw 1970; Lafon 1987; Basdevant- Gaudemet 1988). De telles tensions ont continué de s’exprimer dans certaines régions, y compris en Bretagne, durant la période postérieure à la seconde Guerre mondiale.53 [In several regions of rural France, in the 19th century the ideological differences between catholics and anticlericals was reflected in conflicts of prerogatives between mayors (inasmuch representative of lay authority) and parish priests. Conflicts of personality between priests and their congregants also fed into anticlerical sentiments (Magraw 1970; Lafon 1987; Basdevant-Gaudemet 1988). Such tensions have persisted in some regions, including Brittany, during the period after World War II.]

Badone’s article (1991) comprises a section entitled “La parodie de pardon de 1907”. At La Feuillée, the patron saint is John the Baptist, whose festival, on June the 24th, is the local festival of forgiveness. It is deeply felt by the local population, and a religious procession takes place after Mass.

51 In Italy, in Piedmont in the modern period both clericalism and anticlericalism have been strong. 52 Of course, that was also the case of some areas in Italy. The actors Fernandel and Gino Cervi are associated in Italy with their playing the roles of don Camillo and the Communist mayor Peppone in a famous film series. The conflict between Communists and Catholics in Italy is the subject of a book by David Kertzer (1980), a historian who has more recently researched the relations between the higher echelons of the Church and the Jews in Italy during the modern period, or then the relations between the Church and Mussolini, eventually affecting the Jews. 53 Badone (1991, pp. 424–425).

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[…] La procession est conduite par un jeune garçon vêtu d’une peau de mouton et de sandales, représentant Jean Baptiste. L’enfant conduit un agneau, symbolisant le Christ, que le saint baptisa et reconnut pour le Messie en proclamant: « Voici l’agneau de Dieu, qui enlève le péché du monde » (Jean, I, 29). Point de mire de la procession du pardon, l’agneau est décoré avec des rosés fixées sur sa laine, préala- blement nettoyée et décolorée pour atteindre une blancheur de neige. [… The procession is led by a young boy wearing a ram hide and sandals, representing John the Baptist. The child leads a lamb, representing Christ, who was baptised by that saint, who also recognised in him the Messiah by proclaiming: “This is God’s lamb, who takes away sin from the world” (John 1:29). The target of the procession of forgiveness, the lamb is decorated with roses attached to its wool, that had itself previously been cleaned and decolorated so it would become as white as snow.] En dépit de la tradition anticléricale de la paroisse, le pardon constitue toujours un événement populaire à La Feuillée. Selon les anciens, la procession « a toujours eu lieu », et la fête date au moins du début du XIXe siècle, alors que l’élevage des mou- tons jouait un rôle central dans l’économie locale. La Feuillée est la seule paroisse dans la région avec une procession de pardon mettant en vedette un animal, et le maintien de son attrait tient en partie au fait que la procession à l’agneau différencie La Feuillée des paroisses d’alentour, soulignant son identité propre. [Notwithstanding the anticlerical tradition of the parish, the procession of forgiveness remains a popular event in La Feuillée. According to older people, the procession “has always taken place”, and the festival is at least as old as the early 19th century, at a time when raising sheep was central to local economy. La Feuillée is the only parish in the region that has a procession of forgiveness displaying an animal, and the fact it has remained popular partly depends upon the fact that the procession with a lamb distinguishes La Feuillée from the other parishes of the area, thus underscording its own identity.] Tandis que la messe régulière du dimanche n’attire que quinze à vingt fidèles, des femmes pour la plupart, la messe du pardon réunit une assemblée de deux cent per- sonnes ou plus. Bien plus, au moins un tiers de ceux qui viennent à la cérémonie du pardon sont des hommes, du sexe le plus anticlérical en paroles. Leur présence à l’église est moins une adhésion à la doctrine catholique qu’un acte d’allégeance à la communauté. L’attachement au pardon provient du fait qu’il résume l’identité parois- siale. Comme le dit avec enthousiasme un jeune homme de vingt et un an: « Le petit agneau, c’est nous, c’est La Feuillée ».54 [Whereas regular attendance at Sunday Mass is only practised by between fifteen and twenty congregants, most of them women, in contrast Mass during the Forgiveness festival is attended by a congregation of two hundred persons or more. Moreover, at least one third of those who come to the ceremony are men, of the gender with the

54 Badone (1991, p. 432). Thus, I don’t think Didimo’s story is about a fooltown (for which, cf. Davies 1991).

greater proclivity to anticlericalism. Their presence in church is not so much adhe- sion to Catholic doctrine, as an act of allegiance to the community. Attachment to the festival of Forgiveness derives from the fact that it epitomises the identity of the parish. As a man aged twenty-one has said enthusiastically: “The little lamb is us, it is La Feuillée”.]

In 1907, the rector (the parish main priest, as opposed to the vicar) respon- sible for organising the patron saint’s day celebrations announced, with the approval of the bishop, that on that year, the4 festival of forgiveness would not take place, because of the improper behaviour of participants on previous years, behaviour that the city council had refused to repress. The population of La Feuillée was offended by the decision. As a protest, the procession took place nevertheless, and instead of a lamb, a fox was the animal used for that purpose:

Le fait que le soutien au pardon existe indépendamment du soutien à l’église et au clergé est bien illustré par un incident survenu à La Feuillée lors du pardon de 1907. Comme se le rappellent les plus anciens paroissiens, le recteur décida cette année là d’annuler le pardon. Le bulletin diocésain de 1907 rapporte que l’évêque approuva son comportement, parce que le pardon avait été, les années précédentes, l’occasion de « manifestations hostiles ou inconvenantes », que le conseil municipal avait refusé de réprimer […] La décision heurta cependant la population de La Feuillée, et, en signe de protestation, un groupe de jeunes de la paroisse organisa un simulacre de procession le 24 juin, au cours de laquelle un renard décoré de rubans fut conduit à travers le bourg, suivi par une foule qui força l’entrée de l’église. Arrivé dans l’église, le renard enrubanné fut « baptisé » sur les fonts baptismaux. Tout au long de la parodie, le maire fit sonner les cloches de l’église à toute volée. [The fact that support for the festival of Forgiveness exists independently from support for the Church and for the clergy is illustrated by an episode that took place in La Feuillée during the festival of Forgiveness in 1907. As the oldest parishioners recall, on that year the rector had decided to abolish that festival. The bulletin of the diocesis of 1907 relates that the bishop approved of his behaviour, because on previous years, the festival of Forgiveness had seen “hostile or improper displays”, which the town council had refused to repress […] However, that decision offended the populace of La Feuillée, and in protest, a group of young people of the parish organised an imitation of the procession on June the 24th, and during that event, a fox ornamented with ribbons was led throughout the town, followed by a crowd that broke open the church. Once it was inside the church, the ribbon-clad fox was “baptised” at the fount. During that entire parody, the mayor had the church bells peal unceasingly.] Dans son inversion de l’ordre rituel, le pardon parodique représentait une évidente victoire de l’autorité temporelle sur l’autorité spirituelle. Ce n’était pas le prêtre, mais

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le maire qui faisait sonner les cloches. Avec son appui, ce n’était pas un enfant innocent, mais la jeunesse turbulente du village qui conduisait une procession mettant en scène un animal sauvage à la place de l’agneau domestique qui représente le Christ et signifie la soumission et l’innocence dans l’imagerie chrétienne traditionnelle. [By inverting the ritual procedure, the parody of the festival of Forgiveness represented an evident victory of the lay authorities over the spiritual authorities. It was not the priest, but the mayor who had the bell ring. With his support, it was not an innocent child, but the village’s turbulent youngsters who led a procession displaying a wild animal instead of the domestic lamb that represents Christ and signifies submission and innocence in traditional Christian imagery.] En conséquence de cette démonstration anticléricale, qui eut lieu sous un des pre- miers conseils municipaux de gauche élus à La Feuillée, le recteur et le vicaire quit- tèrent le village et se réfugièrent avec leurs proches ailleurs. L’église de La Feuillée fut soumise à une interdiction de six mois, à la suite de laquelle un nouveau prêtre fut assigné à la paroisse […]55 [As a result of this anticlerical demonstration, which took place under one of the earliest Left-wing town councils elected at La Feuillée, the rector and the vicar left the village and sought refuge with their relatives elsewhere. The church of La Feuillée was subjected to an interdiction of six months, following which a new priest was seconded to the parish …]

In the case of Castelmagno as related by Rinaldo De Benedetti, his great- uncle, the devout Jew Amadio Momigliano who had been approached by the mayor and councillors, managed to bring about pacification between the Church authorities and the parishioners. Badone (1991, p. 431) states the following concerning the Church’s attempts to prevent dancing:

Dans les Monts d’Arrée, la campagne de l’Église contre la sexualité était axée sur la danse. Du début du XIXe siècle aux années 1950, l’Église a cherché, en Bretagne, à décourager toutes les formes de danse (Lambert 1985: 103–106; Le Gallo 1980: 1008–1009). Dirigée initialement contre les danses bretonnes traditionnelles, en ligne ou en cercle, telle la gavotte des montagnes, populaire dans les Monts d’Arrée, la croisade contre la danse se concentra plus tard contre les danses modernes, en couple, apparues dans le secteur durant les années 1920. Elles furent condamnées parce que la position des danseurs — kof à kof, ou ventre à ventre, en Breton — était censée provoquer l’excitation sexuelle. Lorsque le jazz, le swing et les autres types de musique non traditionnelle pénétrèrent dans les Monts d’Arrée, après la seconde Guerre mondiale, les sermons contre les bals continuèrent. [In the Arrée Mountains, the Church’s campaign against sexuality mainly targeted dancing. From the early 19th century to the 1950s, the Church tries, in Brittany, to

55 Badone (1991, pp. 432–433).

discourage all forms of dancing (Lambert 1985, pp. 103–106; Le Gallo 1980, pp. 1008–1009). It initially targeted traditional Breton dancing, in line or in a circle, such as the mountains gavotte, which was popular in the Arrée Mountains. Later on, the crusade against dancing focused on modern dancing, of couples, which made its appearance in the area during the 1920s. They were condemned because the position of the dancers — kof à kof, or belly to belly, in Breton — was deemed to cause sexual excitement. When jazz, swing, and other kinds of non-traditional music spread in the Arrée Mountains, after World War II, sermons against dancing persisted.]

In an endnote, Badone remarks (1991, note 10 on p. 446): “Les efforts du clergé pour combattre les dangers de la danse ne se limitèrent pas à la Bretagne, comme le montrent les exemples portugais évoqués par Riegel- haupt (1984: 110) et par Brettell (1990: 64)” [“The efforts of the Church to fight the dangers of dancing were not confined to Brittany, as shown by the examples from Portugal related by Riegelhaupt (1984, p. 110) and Brettell (1990, p. 64)”]. In the short story by Rinaldo De Benedetti, there is an irony in that the devout old Jew was expected to lead the dances on that patron saint’s day in Castelmagno. The irony is not just because of it being incongruous because of the different religion, but also because Jewish orthodoxy itself disapproves of men and women dancing together.56

56 Not all folk dance involves men and women dancing together. Take for example traditional martial dances in Piedmont. Rocca Grimalda is a village in the plain of Ovada, in the rural south of Piedmont. In that town, there is a tradition — only documented from the 20th century — of a festival from the Carnival period, with a dance, called Lachera, performed in the streets, but in the more authentic tradition (which has been recovered in the last several years, after modifications it had undergone during the Fascist period) with bands of performers going from house to house, where they are rewarded with money and food. Piercarlo Grimaldi reviewed (1995) Franco Castelli’s book (1995) La danza contro il tiranno: Leggenda, storia e memoria della “Lachera” di Rocca Grimalda. During the 1940s, Bianca Maria Galanti had described the Lachera as a kind of armed dance, and this misled later scholars. Castelli’s study reconsiders the matter anew, based on field research and a search for documentary evidence. There are no weapons in the Lachera, and nevertheless Castelli (1995, pp. 135–136) maintains that the absence of this feature does not justify taking the Lachera out of the category of armed dances from Piedmont, and this because of strong affinities. Grimaldi (1995, p. 208) is not entirely convinced, yet he admits that Castelli’s study has been exhaustive, and that there does not appear to be enough evidence for supporting an alternative reading of the Lachera, one which he would like to propose, considering the Lachera as part of such Carnival plays (cum dance) in which a ius primae noctis narrative is represented;

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Badone cites studies showing that conflicts often stemmed from competition between a priest and parishioners concerning control over major ritual celebrations.57

some such performances involve a dance with swords, and some do not. In fact, the Lachera represents a narrative in which the dance is performed against a tyrant. (In this respect, it is ironic that it underwent significant modifications in order for it to be performed in the presence, and in honour, of Benito Mussolini.) Let us turn to the similarities between the Lachera and the Jewish Purimspiel tradition, as associated with the festival of Purim. The following is quoted from Grimaldi (1995, p. 207), and in turn his own quoted text includes a quotation from Castelli’s book (1995); Grimaldi describes how the authentic tradition of the Lachera has been recovered, after the modifications it underwent in the 1930s: Si è tornati a sfilare per le vie del paese nel periodo carnevalesco, precisamente il sabato grasso, ed è intenzione della popolazione di recuperare pure il carattere di questua che contrassegnava la festa d’inizio secolo, quando ancora le maschere andavano di casa in casa a rappresentare la Lachera e ricevevano come controdono gli alimenti della cascina che venivano appesi ad un palo, un vero e proprio albero della cuccagna, così come ci racconta efficacemente un testimone: “Quando arrivavi ad una cascina che poi magari ti davano una gallina, gli facevi il ballo: o la lachera o la giga. Portavano anche un palo, una carasa dove mettevano appese le bestie, le galline, la roba che ti davano. Uno o due con dei cestoni sulle spalle per le uova, e ci davano anche dei soldi, che allora i soldi erano rari...” (p. 79). [Now again, people hold a procession through the streets of the village during the Carnival period, namely on Saturday before Shrovetide, and the populace intend to recover also the character of itinerant collection which typified this festival in the early 20th century, when the masked performers were still going from home to home in order to perform the Lachera and used to receive, as a gift in return, foods from the given farm. These used to be hanged down from a pole, a greasy pole (albero della cuccagna), as related effectively by a witness: “When you arrived into a farm, where they may give you a chicken, you would dance for them: either the lachera, or a jig. Moreover, they would also bring a pole, a carasa on which they used to hang the animals, the chicken, the stuff they would give you. There would be one or two of them, with hampers on their shoulders for the eggs, and they would also give us money: at that time, money was infrequent to come by...” ([Castelli,] p. 79).] 57 “Comme d’autres études de l’anticléricalisme en Europe l’ont montré, les conflits avec l’Église s’originent souvent dans la concurrence entre le prêtre et les paroissiens pour le contrôle des grands événements rituels (Brandes 1976, Pina-Cabral 1986: 131, 205; Riegelhaupt 1973, 1984)” (Badone 1991, p. 433) [“As other studies of anticlericalism in Europe have shown, it is often the case that conflicts with the Church originate from a competition between the priest and the parishioners for the control of major ritual events (Brandes 1976, Pina-Cabral 1986, pp. 131, 205; Riegelhaupt 1973, 1984)”].

10. More Concerning Amadio Momigliano, According to Arnaldo Momigliano

Let us say something more about Amadio Momigliano. In an interview the historian Arnaldo Momigliano (Caraglio, Piedmont, 1908 – London, 1987) gave in 1987 to Silvia Berti, the editor of his paper collection on Jewish themes, Pagine Ebraiche (Jewish Pages) — an interview that was only published in 2016 (in La Repubblica of 15 June 2016, on p. 46), when an augmented edition of that book appeared, something was said about Arnaldo Momgliano’s childhood. (We have already mentioned that he became secularised, notwithstanding the competence in traditional Jewish learning he acquired in the house of Amadio Momigliano.)

The historian Arnaldo Momigliano.

Silvia Berti asked:

Mi piacerebbe sapere qualcosa in più sulla tua famiglia, soprattutto su tuo nonno Amadio Momigliano. [I would like to learn something more about your family, especially about your grandfather, Amadio Momigliano.]

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Arnaldo Momigliano corrected her:

Il nonno Amadio era in realtà il fratello di mio nonno, che si chiamava Donato Momigliano ed è morto molto giovane. Amadio prese in casa a Caraglio mio padre quand’era ragazzo perché il nonno era malato di tubercolosi e allora si aveva una grande paura della tubercolosi; poi, alla morte del nonno, fu adottato proprio ufficial- mente. Aveva una particolare cultura cabbalistica, e negli anni in cui l’ho conosciuto io, cioè dal 1914 al 1924, quando è morto, siamo praticamente vissuti nella stessa casa. [Granddad Amadio actually was the brother of my grandfather, Donato Momigliano, who died quite young. Amadio had my father live at his own home when he was a boy, because my grandfather had tuberculosis, and those were times were there was a scare about tuberculosis. Afterwards, once my granddad had died, my father was offi- cially adopted [by his uncle, Amadio]. He [Amadio] had a particular mystical culture, and in the years when I knew him, namely, from 1914 to 1924, which is when he died, we practically lived in the same house.]

Further questions Silvia Berti asked included the following sequence:

Negli studi classici, quando hai cominciato a interessarti al mondo greco? «Quando sono andato all’università, io intendevo laurearmi in greco. Pensavo di fare una tesi su Menandro, ma appena diventai allievo di De Sanctis, lui mi disse: “Non faccia l’errore di laurearsi in greco; c’è un cattivo professore di greco. Si laurei con me”, e quindi mi sono laureato su Tucidide». [In the classics, when did you become interested in the classical world? “When I attended university, my intention was to graduate in Greek. I thought I would write a thesis about [the comediographer] Menander,58 but as soon as I became a pupil of [the historian] De Sanctis, he told me: ‘Don’t make the error of graduating in Greek; the professor of Greek is not a capable one. Let me be your thesis supervisor’. This is why I graduated with a thesis about [the Greek historian] Thucydides”.] Le curiosità intellettuali finiscono per convergere: questo interesse per le cose ebraiche diventa giudaico-ellenistico perché c’è il mondo greco, il mondo romano… «Ah, ma si capisce. A casa mia erano cose persino ovvie che il momento decisivo era questo, la formazione del cristianesimo, il contatto della cultura greca con la cultura ebraica. Era forte anche l’interesse per il cristianesimo. Attilio Mo- migliano scriveva su Manzoni, Manzoni come cattolico. Quindi c’era anche questa presenza del mondo cristiano in famiglia». [...] [Strands of intellectual curiosity end up converging: this interest of yours for Jewish themes became Judaeo-Hellenistic because there were the Greek world,

58 It is interesting that the future great historian Arnaldo Momigliano had originally planned to specialise in ancient Greek comedy.

the Roman world… “Oh, of course. At home, where I was raised, it wasd clear, indeed obvious, that it had been precisely that moment that turned out to be determin- ant, the formation of Christianity, the contact of Greek culture with Jewish culture. There also was [in my family] a strong interest for Christianity. Attiglio Momigli- ano wrote about [the writer Alessandro] Manzoni, Manzoni as a Catholic. So there also was this presence of the Christian world, in our family” (my translation of “Era forte anche l’interesse per il cristianesimo. Attilio Momigliano scriveva su Manzoni, Manzoni come cattolico. Quindi c’era anche questa presenza del mondo cristiano in famiglia”.] Come si spiega l’esplosione di storiografia ebraica nel ’900? «Siamo diventati occidentali! È una delle forme naturali dell’occidentalizzazione del giudaismo. Nel giudaismo di oggi uno può continuare la tradizione, le forme talmudiche, che sono le forme tradizionali, ma se no deve cominciare a pensare storicamente». [How do you explain the booming of Jewish historiography in the 20th century? “We became Westerners! It is one of the natural forms of the Westernisation of Juda- ism. Nowadays within Judaism one can continue the tradition, the Talmudic forms, which are the traditional forms, otherwise one must begin to think historically”.]

11. A Parallel of a Passage from “Racconto occitano” in the Memoirs of Rinaldo De Benedetti

Rinaldo De Benedetti’s memoirs (2008) comprise a short story entitled “La vendita della vacca” (“The Sale of the Cow”), in which he reminisced about his summer holidays in a mid-altitude mountain hamlet, in his childhood. It begins as follows:

D’estate i miei congiunti andavano al mare. Io, cui il mare non giovava, ero accom- pagnato a un paese di mezza montagna e affidato alle cure di buona gente, che vi tenevano una trattoria. [...] [In summer, my relatives used to go to the seaside. The sea was no good for my health, so I was accompanied to a mid-altitude mountain hamlet and put in the case of good people who used to run there a restaurant.]

De Benedetti relates about time he spent with local children, who used to capture fish with their bare hands or using a fork, and to bathe under an artificial cascade. He then turns to the description of negotiations for buying or selling a cow. This is a detailed parallel of something De Bene- detti mentions in “Racconto occitano” rather succinctly (“che mettessero tre giorni di tempo a contrattare una vacca, bevendosi tra i contraenti e il

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[...] Insomma, vissi tra quella gente a più riprese a a lungo; e perciò fui testimone di come là si procedesse per comperare una vacca. Bisognava essere in tre: il venditore, il compratore e il sensale. Quest’ultimo ci voleva per mettere d’accordo gli altri due e anche per giustificare la lunga discussuione sulle ultime lire; una sommetta che aveva poi un destino speciale: era il prezzo di una breve fuga dal mondo brutto, sporco, fumoso, faticato, tutto asperità e barbarie, non raddolcito da religione, in cui viveva quella gente. C’era una sorta di regola, non codificata, ma quasi rituale. Si discuteva prima per davvero il prezzo della bestia. Il mediatore (che era a volte l’oste medesimo) tentava di avvicinare le parti e ci riusciva fino appunto alle ultime lire. Qui, il negozio diven- tava difficile; i due non mollavano, senza alcuna impazienza di concludere; anzi, il discorso sviava, si veniva a parlar d’altro. Ogni tanto, con poca sincerità, si ritornava al prezzo, alle virtù, alle mende della bestia. Bisogna non trascurare la circostanza che i tre sedevano a un tavolo dell’osteria; e che, passando il tempo, le bottiglie svuotate si allineavano prima sul tavolo, poi sotto; e che il tempo significava le ore: due, tre, otto, venti e più; compresa una qualche dormita sulle dedie o allungati sulle panche, o per terra, per ricominciare magari il giorno appresso. [...] [… In short, I lived among those people at different times, and for a long time. There- fore, I witnessed how they used to go about buying a cow. It took three: the seller, the buyer, and the go-between. The latter was necessary in order to have the other two agree, and also in order to justify the lengthy discussion concerning the last few Liras, a little sum that then had a special purpose: it was the price of a brief escape from the world — ugly, filthy, smoky, wearying, all asperities and barbarity, unsweetened by religion — in which those people lived. There used to be a kind of rule, an unwritten yet almost ritual rule. They discussed at first, for real, the price of the beast. The go-between (who sometimes was the pub- lican himself) tried a rapprochement of the parties, and succeeded in doing so, as mentioned, up to the last few Liras. At that point, the transaction would become difficult. The two parties would not relent, and were not impatient at all to conclude. Quite on the contrary, they would digress, they would talk about something else. From time to time, with little sincerity, they would go back to the price, and to the beast’s good qualities and defects. The circumstance must not be ignored that all three were sitting at a table at the tavern, and that, as the time passed by, the bottles emptied were lined up at first on the table, and then underneath. And that by time, one means hours: two, three, eight, twenty and more; including some sleep on the chairs, or lying down on the benches, or on the floor, so they would resume perhaps on the next day. …]

Therefore, one can confidently say that not only a story that circulated in De Benedetti’s family into “Racconto occitano”, that its remarkable artistry had the benefit of its author’s direct observation of themores of the people in the mountains.

12. On Some Other Passages from the Memoirs of Rinaldo De Benedetti

Rinaldo De Benedetti’s memoirs were published posthumously under the title Memorie di Didimo (De Benedetti 2008), but the title as originally intended was Memorie di un Nonagenario. This title is likely to have been a literary reference, being probably patterned after the original title of Ip- polito Nievo’s masterpiece, Confessioni di un ottuagenario. De Benedetti did live to be ninety-some, whereas Nievo never lived to be an octua- genarian. Nievo was born in Padua in 1831, and sank in the Tyrrhenian Sea in 1861, after he took part in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s conquest of Sicily in the Expedition of the Thousand. Between December 1857 and August 1858, Nievo authored the novel Confessioni di un italiano (An Italian’s Confessions), which was published posthumously in 1867 under the title, imposed by the publisher, Confessioni di un ottuagenario. In that novel, Nievo contrasted the new world of Italy’s unification process, to a grotesque past under the previous regimes. It is about the process of matur- ation of the protagonist. De Benedetti’s book Memorie di Didimo is a collection of short autobiographical stories which he authored in different periods. In the preface to Memorie di Didimo, De Benedetti combined explanation and humorous deprecation, especially self-deprecation (2008, p. 15):

Questa storia è forse più lacunosa di altre perché l’autore non ha potuto né voluto dire tutto di sé o delle persone con cui si è incontrato o scontrato. In realtà, egli non merita una biografia. Poco gli è venuto di fare di importante nel mondo; niente che richieda la penna di uno storico o di un cronista o di se stesso, fattosi tale. Sua giustificazione per lo scrivere è ch’egli è vissuto a lungo e ha visto molte cose. Di qualcheduna vuole portare la testimonianza. [This story is perhaps more defective than others because the author neither could nor would say everything about himself or the people he met or was confronted with.

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In fact, he does not deserve a biography. Little of importance did he happen to do in the world; nothing that would require the pen of a historian or chronicler or himself turning into either. His justification for writing is that he has had a long life, and has seen a lot. Of some things he has seen, he wants to give testimony.] Perciò le pagine che seguono sono come un album di fotografie, scattate in tempi suc- cessivi, dove sono conservati fatti, episodi, incontri, distanziati a volte di anni. O, per dire altrimenti, al filo della memoria stanno qui attaccati insieme pietre polite e altre grezze, gemme, ciondoli, amuleti, conchiglie come appunto si vede in certe collane di selvaggi, ma anche di fanciulle e signore e giovanotti nostrani. Tuttavia, nei ricordi che seguono, una unità c’è; ed è costituita da un certo indirizzo, di cui l’autore non ha saputo né voluto disfarsi, nel vivere come nello scrivere, e che lo ha contrapposto al mondo per vari aspetti, tal che il suo navigare è proceduto sempre controcorrente. Ne sono scaturiti alcuni pensieri e riflessioni, cui gli eventi, talora quelli minori, lo hanno condotto. Non che a qualcuno questi pensamenti possano servire gran che, dal momento che è già difficile imparare dall’esperienza propria; sennonché, incontrandosi per avventura due esperienze simili, può accadere che l’una confermi l’altra. Ma, in fondo, queste sono scuse. Ho sentito il bisogno di scrivere. Spero che qualcuno mi legga. [Therefore the pages that follow are like an album of photographs, shot at different times, preserving facts, episodes, encounters, sometimes separated by a gap of years. Said otherwise, attached to the thread of memory we have here polished and unpol- ished stones, gems, pendants, amulets, shells as one can see in some necklaces of savages, as well as of maidens and ladies and young men of our own places. Never- theless, in the memoirs that follow, there is unity, and it is constituted by a given direction, of which the author neither knew ho to do without, nor wished to do so, in his life as well as when writing, and which has opposed him to the world in some respects, so that he always navigated against the stream. Some thoughts and reflec- tions stemmed from this; events, sometimes minor ones, led him to them. Such bits of thinking are not expected to be of much use to anybody, as it is so difficult to learn even from one’s own experience; and yet, when two similar experiences perchance meet, it may happen that they each confirm the other. But there, after all, are just pretexts. I felt the need to write. I home somebody would read me.]

As we are going to see, this is not the only preface in which he playfully apologised for writing, elaborating about whether an apology is needed after all. The first two chapters after the “Prefazione” are “La vecchiezza” (“Old Age”) and “I ricordi” (“Memories”). “La vecchiezza” is replete with ironies. The following is quoted from pp. 17–18:

Me la sono trovata addosso, la vecchiezza: oramai a essa appartengo. Me ne fan- no avvertito la data di nascita, la memoria di cose lontane, l’immagine di me nello specchio; la circostanza che, in tram e nell’autobus, ci siano gentili persone che, ignorando i miei dinieghi, si alzino per cedermi il posto; qualche fotografia, qualche

infermità insistente. Poi ci sono gli amici, che incontro e mi dicono: “Sei sempre lo stesso”; sergno che sono cambiato, ed essi per bontà mentono. Altri, sorprendendomi a un lavoro, credono di lunsingarmi, dicendo: “Tu non demordi”, segno che pensano che dovrei aver smesso. Me la sono trovata addosso, la vecchiezza: oramai a essa appartengo. Me ne fan- no avvertito la data di nascita, la memoria di cose lontane, l’immagine di me nello specchio; la circostanza che, in tram e nell’autobus, ci siano gentili persone che, ignorando i miei dinieghi, si alzino per cedermi il posto; qualche fotografia, qualche infermità insistente. Poi ci sono gli amici, che incontro e mi dicono: “Sei sempre lo stesso”; sergno che sono cambiato, ed essi per bontà mentono. Altri, sorprendendomi a un lavoro, credono di lunsingarmi, dicendo: “Tu non demordi”, segno che pensano che dovrei aver smesso. [I found old age on me: by now, I belong to it. I am made aware of it by my birth data, by memory of things bygone, by my reflected image in the mirror; by the circumstances that on the tram and the bus, there are kind individuals who, notwithstanding me parrying such offers, stand up in order to give me their seat; by some photograph, by some insistent infirmity. And then there are friends, whom I meet and who tell me: “You are still the same”, an indication that I am changed, and that out of their goodness, they are telling me a lie. Others, chancing upon me while I am doing some work, think they are flattering me by saying: “You don’t give up”, which indicates that they think I should have given up.] Non mi dispiace poi tanto essere vecchio: in un certo senso è una vittoria. Pensando a quanti amici, congiunti, colleghi, hanno lasciato la scena del mondo, non posso evitare un po’ di soddisfazione per essere sopravvissuto. Il sentimento è ignobile; me ne vergogno, lo reprimo o discaccio, o almeno mi sforzo. Ma allora mi viene in mente il mio professore di francese, della terza classe del ginnasio; il quale ogni tanto divagava, e, per esempio, ci raccontò o tentò di farci indovinare le folli dissolutezze di un suo giovanile soggiorno a Parigi; un’altra volta si divertì a passarci in rivista dalla cattedra. Fissando, uno ad uno, noi seduti ai banchi, prometteva ai più prosperosi lunga vita e forza e successo (anche con le donne); e arrivando il suo sguardo su di me, magrolino e pallido, scosse la testa, con un sorriso di compatimento, come per dire: “Tu avrai vita breve”. Non lo disse, ma io compresi e non mi spaventai affatto. Vede, professor Duck? Lei non sapeva quel che ebbe a scrivere un medico, oscuro quanto valoroso: che sovente l’uomo forte (idoneo a resistere) è di poca apparenza. [I am not so sorry I am old: in a sense, it is a victory. Thinking of how many friends, relatives, colleagues, have left this world, I cannot avoid some satisfaction at having survived. The sentiment is ignoble; I am ashamed of it, I repress it or chase it away, or at least I try. But then I recall my teacher of French in eighth grade; he used to digress from time to time, and for example, he related to us, or tried to have us guess, the mad debauchery of a stay of his in his youth in Paris; another time he amused himself by reviewing us [the way a commander reviews the troops] from his desk. He stared at us, one by one, and promised to the most florid ones a long life, and strength, and success (including with women). When his stare reached me, slim and pale, he shook

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his head, with a smile of commiseration, as though to say: “You’ll live a short life”. He did not actually say so, but I understood, and was not scared at all. Don’t you see, Mr. Duck? [a disguise of the teacher’s name] You were unaware of what a physician, as obscure as he was of valour, wrote: namely, that oftentimes, a man who is strong (fit for resisting) is not showy.] Una vittoria, dunque, la vecchiaia, o meglio una “gloriuzza” da portarsi appresso senza trionfo, anzi con discrezione, perché non c’è merito a non essere morti. Per di più, a pensare che alcuni di quei summenzionati amici e congiunti in realtà morirono per essere stati uccisi nei torbidi anni passati, mi si affaccia un dubbio: codesta tua età, quasi un’antichità, non è frutto di un tuo comportamento guardingo, diretto a sopravvivere? Tanto il cipiglioso tiranno che è in noi, il Superego, riesce a farci colpa di tutto. [Old age is a victory, then, or rather a “minor glory” one ought to take along with no triumph, with discretion indeed, because it is no merit, if one is not dead. Moreover, thinking that some of the aforementioned friends and relatives actually died because they were killed in the turbid years bygone, I get a suspicion: that old age, almost antiquity, of yours, isn’t it the outcome of a careful behaviour of yours, aiming at survival? Such is the extent to which the scowling tyrant that is in us, the Superego,59 manages to blame us for everything.] C’è nella vecchiaia qualche benefizio: che nessuno si attende più gran che da noi. Tutto quel che si fa, così come ogni giorno che si campi ancora, è un di più, un gua- dagno. Ogni piccolo successo, ogni impresuccia che si porta a termine, è una gloria (tutta nostra, da non farne vanto). [...] [There is, in old age, some benefit: that nobody expects much any longer from us. Anything one does, as well as any single day one goes on living, is a bonus, something earned. Every little success, any little endeavour one sees to completion, is a glory (entirely ours, one not to boast about). …]

In the story “Inflazione” (“Inflation”), De Benedetti begins (2008, p. 36) by stating the initial part of an episode from his childhood:

Non conoscevo questo termine (e forse non si adoperava ancora), ma ne colsi il prin- cipio quando, ragazzetto, venuto in possesso di una monetina di due centesimi di allora, decisi un acquisto. [I was still unaware of this term (perhaps it was not even in use as yet), but I grasped the principle when, as a little boy, having coming into the possession of a little coin of two cents of a Lira of those times, I decided to buy.]

59 Among the other things, Rinaldo De Benedetti founded for the publisher Garzanti a book series in psychoanalysis. He appointed Antonio Miotto as series editor.

De Benedetti then turns to describing in some detail the kinds of coins that used to exist, before proceeding with the narrative he had begun, about being ignored by a shopkeeper because the price he was offering was too cheap for the trouble. There is a situational irony, as the child had felt empowered by the coin he clutched in his hand, and moreover, he did not even need to enter the shop, because the shopkeeper was near the entrance, thus more promptly available; and yet, she ignored the child. In retrospect, the author states he would have used the Latin maxim O tempora, o mores, decrying the decline in behaviour of the then current period; only, De Benedetti concedes, as a little child he did not know Latin yet (De Bene- detti 2008, p. 37):

Fortunato possessore di due centesimi, trovandomi a passare sotto i portici della mia cittadina, mi avventurai verso una drogheria. Non mi fu bisogno di entrare: la padrona stava seduta presso l’ingresso intenta a un lavoro di maglia. Porgendole la monetina, chiesi “dô centesim d’ rigulissia ’d bosc”, due centesimi di liquirizia di legno. [The lucky owner of two cents, happening to pass under the arcade of my little town, I ventured in the direction of a grocery. I did not even need to enter: the shopkeeper was sitting near the entrance; she was knitting. I offered her the little coin, and asked [in the local dialect] “two cents of wood liquorice”.] Era, ed è tuttora, questa mercanzia, fatta di brevi bastoncini o rizomi di una pianti- cella (Glycirrhiza glabra), che noi si succhiava per il sapore dolce, riducendoli a poco a poco a scopettini di fibre. [This staple, was, and still is, constituted of short little rods, or rhizomes, of a little plant (Glycirrhiza glabra [licorice roots]), which we used to suck because of its sweetness,60 until we reduced them little by little to tiny brooms of fibres.] La mercantessa non degnò né di alzarsi, né di levare il volto, e io capii e me ne andai. “O tempora!”, avrei esclamato se avessi saputo di latino. I centesimi non avevano più corso, o almeno non erano tanto appetibili quanto bastasse a scomodare una droghi- era sorniona. [The merchantess[!] did not deign to either stand up, or rising her face, and I understood and went away. “O tempora!”, I would have exclaimed, if only I knew Latin. Cents were no longer legal tender, or at any rate they were not palatable enough for the trouble of a sly grocer of a lady.] Così incominciò, per esperienza mia l’inflazione, che qualche tempo dopo, con la guerra (la prima guerra mondiale), prese l’abbrivo. Da allora a mentre sto scrivendo

60 Note that dried licorice roots, used in confectionary, are also a laxative. The plant is a leguminous shrub.

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ha svilito, in meno d’un secolo, il valore della lira nella proporzione suppergiù di ventimila a uno. [This is how, in my experience, inflation began. Some time later, during the war (the First World War), it made headway. Since then up to the moment when I am writing, it had diminished, in less than a century, the value of the Lira in the proportion of nearly twenty thousand to one.]

This is an example of Rinaldo De Benedetti entrusting in his memoirs to a minor episode a much bigger phenomenon. In the story “Il savoiardo” (“The Savoy Biscuit”), De Benedetti relates about his days at primary school, and mocks his utmost rectitude in class, which was preamble to his being used roughly by others on a given occasion in class, as well as in more important ways in adult life (De Benedetti 2008, p. 35):

[…] Ma io mi sentivo investito di una dignità ufficiale e perciò tornato in classe, dopo aver riferito alla maestra le parole della signora, deposi sulla cattedra il savoiardo intatto (me ne schiaffeggerei, adesso). “Vedete — disse la maestra alla scolaresca — come si comporta il vostro compagno? Così si deve fare. Egli non si è tenuto il dolce; lo ha consegnato alla sua maestra”. E poi a me: “È tuo, caro, tienilo pure; lo mangerai dopo, alla ricreazione”. [… But I was fully conscious of an office with which I was invested, so upon return- ing into the classroom, after relating to the teacher what that lady had said, I places on her desk that Savoy biscuit, intact (I’d slap myself, at present). “Do you see”, the teacher told the class, “how you classmate behaves? This is how it should be. He didn’t keep the biscuit to himself; he consigned it to his teacher”. Next, she told me: “It’s yours, darling, keep it; you’ll eat it later, during recess”.] Io, tornato al mio posto, aprii la cartella che solevo tenere a lato del banco, e vi in- trodussi il biscotto. Più tardi, nell’intervallo della ricreazione, volli riprenderlo: non c’era più. Pensai che si fosse sbriciolato; ma non trovai neanche le briciole. Il caso era misterioso e ne tacqui. Più tardi mi persuasi che qualche mano abile, mentre io ero intento alla lezione, si fosse allungata dentro la borsa e ne avesse trafugato il tesoro. Fu quello uno dei primi balzelli (seguirono poi altri, di maggiori) da me pagati al mio stile “rispettivo”. Si sa (lo lasciò scritto Machiavelli); i tipi che lo praticano, la fortuna li ha in uggia. [Back to my place, I opened my bag, which I used to keep on the side of my desk, and put the biscuit inside. Later on, during recess, I wanted to take it: it was no longer there. I thought it crumbled, but I didn’t find the crumbles either. It was a mysterious case, and I kept it to myself. Later, I became convinced that some clever hand, while I was listening to the lesson, stretched itself inside my bag, and stole its treasure.

That was one of the earliest tolls (other ones followed, and they were more grasping) which I paid to my “respectful” style. It is known (Machiavelli wrote about it) that good luck has a dislike for its practitioners.]

Savoiardi, in a detail from a political cartoon about Piedmont ceding Savoy to Napoleon III. Having mentioned savoiardi, let us say something more about that baked product. A pun on savoiardi for ‘Savoy biscuits’ or ‘people of Savoy’ (the region which Piedmont had to give Napoleon III in retribution for his military help) inspired the unsigned cartoon, reproduced here, from L’Arlecchino of 9 April 1860. King Victor Emmanuel II tells his prime minister, Camillo Benso di Cavour, referring to the cock (i.e., France) eating the biscuits: “Look, Camillo, you told me he didn’t want to eat, but instead the Savoiardi are disappearing.” “As long as he is just eating Savoi- ardi [who are French-speaking], let him do it.” (“Guarda Cammillo [sic] mi dicevi che non voleva mangiare e invece I Savoiardi spariscono.” “Fino che mangia Savoiardi lasciamolo fare”). In the event however, Napoleon III obtained not only Savoy, but also Nice and the western-most part of the coast that had until then belonged to Piedmont. In real life, Victor Emman- uel II was very short.

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The full cartoon from L’Arlecchino of 9 April 1860.

Rinaldo De Benedetti did not use humour or even irony in all chapters of Memorie di Didimo. In some, he was just cleverly reminiscing in an expertly worded style. Sometimes he recalled situations that participants considered funny, such as when, in the story “Il cinematografo e la cometa” (“The Cinema [in the Courtyard] and the [Halley] Comet”), he describes how, from the open corridor outside the apartments of the courtyard house (a casa di ringhiera) where he was raised as a child in Cuneo, he and other children could observe, in the morning hours, when rehearsals of silent films began at the cinema in front, so they would run down and into the premises, tolerated by the owners, and watch the films, some of them slapstick comedy (comiche), whereas the pianist was sitting and taking notes, planning what to play to a paying public during projections. The following passage is from p. 25:

In questa atmosfera, non riscaldata né ravvivata da musiche, ci passavano sott’occhio, più innaturali che mai, le prodezze di Saturnino Farandola, i primi languori di Fran- cesca Bertini, le torte spiaccicate sul viso delle comiche, i documentari che allora erano detti “dal vero”, ed erano poi riprese di paesaggi.

[In this climate, neither heated nor enlivened by music, we watched, more unnatural than ever, the displays of prowess on the part of Saturnino Farandola, the earliest languid performances of Francesca Bertini, the cakes hurled at faces in slapstick comedy, the documentaries that at that time used to be called “from life”, but actually were filmed landscapes.]

In another chapter, entitled “Felice”, in Memorie di Didimo, about his maternal uncle, the philosopher Felice Momigliano, Rinaldo De Benedetti relates an episode in which that uncle, teaching at a Magistero (teachers’ college, but it was, and still is, a university faculty at Italian universities), was kindly mocked by his female pupils, and this so pleased the (not infre- quently humorous) writer Alfredo Panzini (who like Luigi Pirandello and the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, was a frequent visitor), that Panzini wrote a humorous short story inspired by what had happened. The following is quoted from pp. 70–71:

Per me che scrivo, ragazzo di tanti anni fa, lo zio era il modello un po’ bizzarro dell’uomo di studio. Nella sua casa di Roma egli teneva circolo con i suoi colleghi del Magistero: Panzini, Pirandello, Gentile; nonché altri, come Buonaiuti, Gallico. Molti anni appresso, quest’ultimo ebbe a ricordarmi l’arte di lui, di conversatore af- fascinante, dottissimo, ad ora ad ora faceto. Quella casa era aperta alle sue allieve del Magistero, che vi portavano soffi di giovinezza. [For me who am writing, and who was a boy so many years ago, this uncle was the somewhat bizarre model of a scholar. At his home in Rome, he held a salon [intellectual club] with his colleagues from the teacher5s’ college: Panzini, Pirandello, Gentile, as well as others, such as Buonaiuti and Gallico. The latter, many years later on, reminisced in my presence of how fascinating he [Felice Momigliano] was at conversation, erudite, and sometimes facetious. That home was open to his [Momigli- ano’s] female students from the teachers’ college, and they brought inside a breeze of youthfulness.] Una volta queste inondarono la casa di fiori. Era successo che la domestica, rimasta incinta, avesse messo al mondo un bambino. Lo zio, che allora era scapolo, si faceva tenere l’appartamento da governanti, che gli davano, come capita ai buoni, fastidi di vario genere: talché egli sovente si lamentava di essere alle prese con le “guerre servili” (non confondere con quelle che l’antica Roma sostenne per le rivolte degli schiavi). Per il lieto evento, come si dice, lo zio si diede molto da fare, come avrebbe fatto un buon marito per la moglie, ancorché lei non giovane né bella, fosse im- probabile come oggetto di piacere. Ma le allieve vollero credere che il professore fosse veramente diventato padre e si divertirono a festeggiarlo. L’episodio piacque ad Alfredo Panzini che ne fece oggetto di un suo racconto. In realtà lo zio si diede anche da fare per cercare il genitore di quel piccolino e lo trovò e lo persuase a sposare la donna. Così era fatto felice; così in parte si rivelava negli scritti. Poiché in quasi ogni

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idea c’è del buono, egli di molte si incantava e tentava di conciliarle. Voleva che andassero d’accordo socialismo, “mazzinianesimo” e patriottismo risorgimentale, e poi ebraismo e cristianesimo. Adesso, tanto più vecchio di lui, mi rendo conto che quelle buone intenzioni non potevano trovare seguito. [Once those students flooded the apartment with flowers. What happened was that the maidservant, who had been pregnant, had given birth to a little boy. My uncle, who at that time was unmarried, had his apartment kept in order by maidservants, and these caused him, which is what happens to good people, various problems. He therefore often complained that he had to face the “servile wars” (not to be mistaken for those ancient Rome fought because of slaves’ revolts). For the happy event, which is how it is called, my uncle did very much, which is what a good husband would have done for his wife, even though she, who was neither young nor pretty, was unlikely as an object of pleasure. Those female students though choose to believe that their professor had actually become a father, and they amused themselves as they fêted him. That episode pleased Alfredo Panzini, who turned it into one of his short stories. Actually my uncle also endeavoured to find the father of that baby, he found him, and persuaded him to marry that woman. This how Felice was; this partly comes across in his writings. As in almost any idea there is something good, he was enchanted by many of them and tried to reconcile them. They wanted to reconcile socialism, “Mazzinianism” [radical republicanism], and the patriotism of the Risorgimento, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Now that I am much older than he ever got to be, I realise that those good intentions did not stand a chance.

De Benedetti was willing, in Memorie di Didimo, to concede that his uncle’s ideals and the way he pursued them were unrealistic; the nephew stated in justification of his critique of his uncle that he, Rinaldo De Benedetti, at the time of his writing, was much older than Felice Mo- migliano was when he died. Momigliano was raised as a strictly observant Jew, before forgoing orthopraxy. He was close to some Catholic Modernists. He was also one of the few, in Italy, who took some interest in Reform Judaism. (More usually, in Italy, and this can also be observed in the very different Israeli society, secularisation and the abandonment of religious practice among Jews did not entail a social convenience of adopting the formal observance of some rite, such as an antinomian brand of Judaism, which in contrast, in the social context and expectations of 19th-century Germany, Habsburg Hungary, and the United States of America, where belonging to a congregation is socially important, resulted in the spread of Reform Judaism. In Italy, it is only in the early 21st century that Reform Jewish congregations emerged, as an alternative to the official synagogues, whose observance in practice is Modern Orthodox.)

Alfredo Panzini.

The writer Alfredo Panzini, who was born in Senigaglia in 1863, was popular in the early 20th century up to the Second World War; he was successful with the public, less so with critics. One reason he is mostly forgotten is that his prolific writing was linked to the time of writing. From 1886 he taught at grammar or high schools in Castellamare di Stabia and Imola, then at the prestigious Parini high school in Milan (1888–1897), at the Technical University of Milan (1897–1917), and at the Mamiani high school in Rome (1918–1924). The latter period is the one matching the temporal setting of the episode related by Rinaldo De Benedetti about Felice Momigliano and Alfredo Panzini. The last year, 1924, Panzini taught in Rome was also the year of Felice Momigliano’s suicide. De Bened- etti, non uncharacteristically shy, in Memorie di Didimo refers to 1924 as having been the year of his uncle’s death, without mentioning suicide, much less the scandal of Don Agostino Gemeli, the rector of the Catholic

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University in Milan, gloating about that death in a magazine of his university. Italian authors who influenced Panzini were Carducci and Pascoli. He was also influenced by Laurence Sterne and Heinrich Heine. He died in 1939. His book Viaggio con la giovane ebrea (1935) elaborates about an encounter a young Dalmatian Jewish woman. From Comandini (n.d.), one can download books by Panzini.

13. Freethinkers and Socialists

In the story “L’orecchio di porco” (“The Pig’s Ear”), in Rinaldo De Bene- detti’s Memorie di Didimo, among the other things we are told about what his father and a maternal uncle of his (both of them freethinkers) thought of each other (De Benedetti 2008, pp. 42–43). After remarking about his childhood experience as a Jewish child in his experience for example at school, De Benedetti remarks:

Alla diversità ero abituato anche in famiglia; dove le donne erano religiose, con una certa tiepidezza, mentre mio padre era libero pensatore e socialista. Così pure uno zio materno, che abitava a Roma e insegnava all’università, e d’estate veniva dalle nostre parti; il quale però era un libero pensatore in una maniera diversa da mio padre, per- ché era filosofo e professore di filosofia; e ogni tanto lasciava intendere che riteneva bensì mio padre un libero pensatore, il quale però non pensava. Mio padre, a sua volta, aveva lo zio in conto di uno che pensava sì, ma delle stramberie. Insomma la varietà di fedi, in casa e fuori e attorno a me, era grande; e io sentivo, sin da fanciullo, che nessuna di quelle religioni o posizioni ideali era tutta nel vero: e così credo anche adesso, per molte altre, incontrate poi. Ma qualche volta ebbi ad accorgermi che non contava l’opinione mia, in quelle cose; contava l’idea che di esse avevano gli altri. [I was used to diversity also within my family: the women were religious, somewhat tepidly, whereas my father was a freethinker and a socialist. Likewise an uncle on my mother’s side: he used to live in Rome, where he taught at the university, and in summer he used to come to our area [in Cuneo]. But he was a freethinker differently from my father, because he was a philosopher and a professor of philosophy. From time to time, he would let you understand that he considered my father a freethinker, but one who would not think. As for my father, he considered my uncle as one who did think, but was thinking of bizarre things. In short, the variety of faiths, at home and outside and around me, was great; and I felt, as early as when I was a child, that none of those religions or ideal stances was entirely true: I think the same at present, too, concerning many other ones, which I came across later on. But sometimes I had

to realise that my own opinion did not matter, in such things; what did matter was the idea about them that others had.]

The text continues with an account of how, when leaving school, a non- Jewish pupil asked him “Why did you kill Him?” (that is to say, that pupil was an adept at considering the Jews C h r i s t -killers, but he wanted to hear from one of them why they had done it). The story “L’Asino e i gatti” (“The Donkey and the Cats”) is about Rinaldo De Benedetti’s absorbing socialist satire from the socialist satir- ical magazine L’Asino (his father was a freethinker and a socialist), and about two arguments using a cat in order to question belief (the first one in L’Asino, concerning Eve’s punishment, and the second one, an argu- ment concerning the concept of the “Universal I” made by a reader of the philosopher Benedetto Croce, who answered it in a rather cavalier amused mood). “L’Asino e i gatti” begins as follows (De Benedetti 2008, pp. 49–50):

Si è rimasti in pochi a ricordare «L’Asino», il settimanale satirico illustrato di Guido Podrecca. In casa si era abbonati a quel foglio, che io ragazzo guardavo e leggiuc- chiavo. Una scritta, sotto il titolo, o accanto al dimesso quadrupede, spiegava che l’asino “è il popolo, utile, paziente e bastonato”. [Only few are still around, who remember L’Asino (The Donkey), the illustrated satir- ical magazine of Guido Podrecca. At home, we used to have a subscription to that periodical, which as a boy I used to browse and read here and there. An inscription, under the name of the magazine, or on the side of the unassuming quadruped, explained that the donkey “is the people: useful, patient, and beaten”.] Era un foglio parecchio arrabbiato. C’erano disegni di carabinieri baffuti, dai pantaloni neri e spiegazzati, che a coppie si portavano via, frammezzo, un qualche proletario. Di frequente era figurato Giolitti, alto nel palamidone, il naso prepotente, la mosca al mento. Compariva anche il piccoletto re, che non era difficile mettere in caricatura; ma non veniva risparmiato il papa Pio X, ch’era poi un bell’uomo. Non c’erano vie di mezzo: da una parte stavano coloro che avevano il comando; di contro, la povera gente. Il socialismo di allora poco doveva inventare per indicare dove stessero la pov- ertà, la miseria. In un certo senso, l’asino era una lettura anticipata e grossa di cose scritte poi con arte da Silone. [...] [It was a periodical with a lot of anger in it. There were cartoons showing Carabinieri with a moustache, wearing black, crumpled trousers, who as a couple carried away, between them, some proletarian. [The prominent politician Giovanni] Giolitti was often drawn, tall in his frock-coat, his assertive nose, and the imperial on his chin. Also the quite short king used to appear; it wasn’t difficult to draw him as a caricature. But Pope Pius X wasn’t spared either, and yet he was a handsome man. There was no

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middle course: on the one side, there were the ones who ruled; on the other, the poor. Socialism at that time did not need to invent much in order to point out where poverty and wretchedness were. In a sense, the donkey [rather: L’Asino] was a coarse precursor of things that eventually [the novelist Ignazio] Silone would write with artistry. …]

Some relatives were displeased at seeing that magazine61 at Rinaldo De Benedetti’s parents’ home (2008, pp. 49–50):

Benché certi congiunti non nascondessero il disgusto per il foglio che vedevano in casa, di esso io condividevo, come si dice, la filosofia, non foss’altro perché era quella di mio padre, per il quale la mia ammirazione era sconfinata. Oggi ancora, dopo tanti anni, un poco mi riconosco nel ragazzotto che da quelle pagine apprendeva a non lasciarsi incantare da nessuna ufficialità, a difendersi da chiunque pretendesse di darla a intendere. Certo le argomentazioni del settimanale non erano sublimi. [Even though some relative did not hide their disgust at the periodical they saw at our home, I shared, as they say, its philosophy, even for no other reason than this being the one held by my father, for whom my admiration was boundless. Even at present, after so many years, I still recognise myself a bit in that boy who from those pages was learning not to let himself enchant by any officialdom, and to defend himself from anybody who would have him acquire a belief. It must be said that the arguments of that weekly were not sublime.] Una ne traggo, come posso, dalla memoria. Nella scrittura è detto alla donna: “Tu partorirai con dolore” (Genesi 3, 16: punizione inflitta a Eva, per aver mangiato del frutto proibito a datone all’uomo). Dall’«Asino» qualcheduno replicava suppergiù così” “Ho una gatta che ogni anno mi fa i micetti: nel metterli al mondo, visibilmente patisce e si lamenta. Vedete che la mela dell’Eden non c’entra”. Teologia da sottos- cala, è vero; ma non senza una logica. [I recall one, as far as I can, from memory. In Scripture the woman is told: “Thou shalt give birth in pain” (Genesis 3:16: this is punishment meted to Eve because she ate of the forbidden fruit and gave of it to her man). In L’Asino, somebody retorted more or less as follows: “I have a she-cat that every year, gives birth to kittens. When she gives birth, she is conspicuously in pain and moans. You can see that the apple of the Garden of Eden has nothing to do with it”. It was theology from the cupboard under the stairs, but it wasn’t deprived of logic.]

Interestingly, I would retort, it is a matter of degree. Some dog breeds have such a large head, that they could not exist in nature, as birth has almost always

61 Rinaldo De Benedetti gained some experience as a journalist — at a local newspaper in Cuneo — in the summer of 1917, several years before he enrolled as an engineering student. He related about this in the chapter “Prime prove di giornalismo” (“Early Experience as a Journalist”) in his memoirs (De Benedetti 2008, p. 58 ff).

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 501 to be assisted, even by Caesarean section. There is a link between “the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge”, and women having traditionally incurred, well into the 20th century, a significant danger of dying in childbirth. Human intelligence is related to brain size, and in fact is at the upper limit of giving birth still being feasible rather than lethal. Human intelligence and the ensuing intellect come at the price of giving birth being at the borderline still enabling survival.

14. Concerning the Story “L’orecchio di porco” from Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Memoirs

The story “L’orecchio di porco” (“The Pig’s Ear”), in Memorie di Didimo, is about Rinaldo De Benedetti’s experience as a Jew, and the focus is on his childhood. It begins as follows (De Benedetti 2008, p. 42):

Venendo al mondo, m’era capitato di nascere in una famiglia di relgione ebraica della minima borghesia piemontese: entro una minoranza insomma. Da questa circostanza trassi, fin da bimbo, un vago sentimento di diversità. Gli altri in chiesa si scoprono e noi, nel nostro minuscolo tempio, tenevamo su il cappello. La mattina, alle scuole elementari, la nostra buona maestra, al cominciar delle lezioni, ci faceva dire le preghiere; ma, in piedi con gli altri, io non partecipavo all’orazione. Comunque portavo appresso la diversità senza drammi e con naturale accettazione. [When I was born, it happened that I was born into a family of the Jewish faith belonging to the lowest middle class of Piedmont: thus, into a minority. From this circumstance I derived, as early as when I was a toddler, a vague sentiment of difference. The others, at church, uncover their heads, whereas we, at our tiny temple, used to keep our hat on. In the morning, at primary school, our good teacher, when lessons started, had us tell our prayers; but, standing with the others, I did not took part in the prayer.62 At any rate, I carried along my difference without giving it a dramatic turn, and with natural acceptance.]

62 This was also my own experience at grammar school in Milan in the late 1960s, when a temporary teacher, young and grim-faced, insisted on us pupils standing up and saying prayers at the beginning of her lesson, and checked we were complying. When checked, I moved my lips silently, but was not saying those prayers. As an art supply- teacher, she was definitely not supposed to do what she was doing. Being Jewish, I was exempted from religious education, but stayed in the classroom because my mother was advised this would deter the priest from talking about me. This is something that happened instead to a Calvinist pupil who used to leave the classroom).

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We have already considered the subsequent passage, in which Rinaldo De Benedetti described the different worldviews of the women in his family (they were religious, though only tepidly so), and his father (a freethinker and a socialist), and then the differences between his father and his uncle, Felice Momigliano, who was a professor of philosophy,

il quale però era un libero pensatore in una maniera diversa da mio padre, perché era filosofo e professore di filosofia; e ogni tanto lasciava intendere che riteneva bensì mio padre un libero pensatore, il quale però non pensava. Mio padre, a sua volta, aveva lo zio in conto di uno che pensava sì, ma delle stramberie. [But he was a freethinker differently from my father, because he was a philosopher and a professor of philosophy. From time to time, he would let you understand that he considered my father a freethinker, but one who would not think. As for my father, he considered my uncle as one who did think, but was thinking of bizarre things.]

This oriented the boy’s opinions towards unbelief rather than belief, concerning all ideologies (De Benedetti 2008, p. 43):

Ma qualche volta ebbi ad accorgermi che non contava l’opinione mia, in quelle cose; contava l’idea che di esse avevano gli altri. E così, un giorno, uscendo di scuola (e mi pare fossimo nella seconda classe delle elementari) un compagno mi domandò (ma forse la domanda veniva a seguito di qualche discorso o episodio o lezione: i precedenti non li rammento), mi domandò dunque: “Ma perché l’avete ammazzato?” [But sometimes I had to realise that my own opinion did not matter, in such things; what did matter was the idea about them that others had. That way, one day, as I was leaving school (I think we were at primary school, in second grade) a classmate asked me (but perhaps the question came after some talk or episode or lesson: I don’t remember the antecedents), the following question: “Why did you kill Him?”] Lui, l’ammazzato, era Gesù; gli uccisori, noi, gli ebrei. Non ricordo quel che risposi. A questa stramba accusa, per fatti (avvenuti o no) tanto tempo addietro, ripensai poi più volte. Capita di sentir dire che gli ebrei sono intelligenti. Non credo che lo siano più che gli altri; ma essi, come membri d’una minoranza, hanno più frequenti le occasioni per pensare. [He, the one killed, was Jesus; the killers, these were us, the Jews. I do not remember what I replied. About this bizarre accusation, concerning events (whether they happened or otherwise) so much time ago, I later thought on several occasions. It happens one would hear somebody say that the Jews are intelligent. I don’t think they are more than others; but they, being members of a minority, have more frequent opportunities to think.]

Next, De Benedetti referred to his personal experience of mild antisemitism during his childhood (2008, pp. 43–44), hence the title of the chapter, “L’orecchio di porco” (“The Pig Ear”):

Devo aggiunngere che non mai,63 in quegli anni lontani, ebbi a sentire su di me o sulla mia gente il peso di speciali odiosità o antipatie. Salvo che ogni tanto, a me o a qualche altro mio amichetto ebreo, capitava che i compagni rivolgessero un saluto che dapprincipio non capii e che dovette essermi spiegato. Prendevano essi con la mano un lembo della loro giacca e, ripiegato in due, lo agitavano verso di noi. Sim- boleggiavano in tal modo l’orecchio di maiale, un animale vietato come cibo dalla legge mosaica; e pensavano così di farci dispetto o che altro: scioccherie di monelli. [I must add that never, in those bygone years, I had to feel over me or over my people the weight of special hatred or antipathy. Except that sometimes it happened, to me or to some other Jewish child, a friend of mine, that our companions gave us a salute that at first I did not understand, and that had to be explained to me. They used to take in their hand edge of their jacket and, having folded it in two, they waved it toward us. In that manner, they were symbolising the ear of a pig, an animal forbidden as food by Mosaic law; in that manner, they thought they were spiting us or whatever: the silly actions of brats.] Dovevano venire una trentina d’anni poi, per gli ebrei di tutta Europa, i tempi delle avversità; quando le cose della vita mi avevano ormai portato lontano dalla mia cittadina. Anni dopo ancora mi capitò di incontrare citata una proposizione del Talmud: “Se ti dimentichi di essere ebreo, se ne ricorderanno gli altri”; e di dover dire a me stesso: “Quanto è vero”. [It was only nearly thirty years later, for the Jews of all Europe,64 that times of adver- sity65 came; at a time when the unfolding turns of life had already taken me away from my small town.66 Years later, I happened to come across a proposition from the Talmud:67 “Were you to forget you are a Jew, the others will [nevertheless] remember [you are one]”; and to have to tell myself: “How true it is”.]

63 Rinaldo De Benedetti’s use of “non mai” (“never”) instead of the usual “mai” (“ever”, in the sense of “never”), in the absence of a further word of negation in the sentence, is an example of how careful his wording and style are. 64 And the Near East: take the massacres of Jews in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq on 1 and 2 June 1941, upon the initiative of local Nazis, but under the nonchalant watch of the British army. 65 Note the understatement. It is not the only place where Rinaldo De Benedetti shies away from blunt statements. 66 Because of what follows, one suspects that De Benedetti was also alluding: “and from any remnant of a Jewish lifestyle as well as communal context”. He explicitly mentions forgetting about being a Jew. 67 I was unable to identify the source of that dictum; I suspect it is a rather radically reworked version of something that may occur in early rabbinic sources. I am grateful to Abraham Ofir Shemesh, who identified it as a quotation from Bernard Malamud. Did Rinaldo De Benedetti, or the author of the text he read, misremember the ultimate source, as though it was the Talmud instead of Malamud?

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It must be said that the “pig ear” insult of non-Jewish children for Jews is reminisced about as having been benign (whereas it was nothing of the sort, as it clearly was a residual of the virulent clerical antisemitism typical of Piedmont before it abated because of the struggle of the Liberals against clerical intransigence68 during the late 1840s and the 1850s, on the eve of Italy’s unification being led by Piedmont) also in an interview a Piedmontese jurist (he was a judge under Fascism) and historian of great stature and integrity (and one very attentive to justice for the Jews in the decades after the Second World War), Alessandro Galante Garrone (1909–2003), gave Alberto Papuz- zi in old age (he was ninety at the time), only in his case the setting of childhood memories was in northeastern Piedmont (he was born and raised in the town of Vercelli, before moving to Turin) instead of Cuneo in southwestern Piedmont, which was where Rinaldo De Benedetti was born and raised. That interview with Galante Garrone was published in Turin’s important daily newspaper, La Stampa, on Thursday, 18 May 2000 (Papuzzi 2000). The interview was about the anti-Fascist milieu in Turin, during the Fascist regime, and the occasion was the appearance, at the Turin-based major publisher, Einaudi, of a book by Angelo D’Orsi (2000) about culture in Turin in the interwar period. Papuzzi went to find him at home, accompanied by the editor of La Stampa (a detail that gives an idea of Gal- ante Garrone’s prestige). In the conversation, also the interviewee’s wife, Maria Teresa (Miti for friends) intervened, precisely about the pig ear insult; she was the daughter of a member of the judiciary, Peretti-Griva. In the interview, some Jewish intellectuals who were active in Turin are also mentioned, such as Vittorio Foa (the father of the historian Anna Foa), or Leone Ginzburg (born in Odessa in 1909, and tortured to death by the Nazis in Rome in 1944; he was the first husband of the novelist Natalia Ginzburg). I am quoting and translating the final part of that interview:

Ci parli di Vittorio Foa... «Ci incontrammo nel ’31 ma l’amicizia nacque nel ’34. Io avevo già rapporti con i fuoriusciti di Giustizia e Libertà a Parigi, attraverso Agosti e Aldo Garosci, ma nel

68 In the town of Acqui, in 1848, as a Jew enrolled in the National Guard came back to town, he was accused of ritual murder (the point was accusing him, rather than there having been an alleged victim of the crime), and the bells of the cathedral’s belfry rang to incite the mob with the bishop refusing to call for calm. The mayor of Acqui had the Jew arrested and held in custody in order to protect him (Dolermo 2005, Part 1, Ch. 5).

1934 presi contatto con gli antifascisti torinesi, fra i quali primeggiava Vittorio Foa. Si rivelò con quella attrazione che sapeva esercitare così bene, ti accendeva come poteva fare Mazzini quando fondò la Giovine Italia». [Please tell us about Vittorio Foa... “We met in 1931, but it was in 1934 we became friends. I was already in contact with the exiles in Paris belonging to the Giustizia e Libertà group, through Agosti and Aldo Garosci, but in 1934 I contacted the anti-Fascists in Turin, and among these, Vit- torio Foa was most prominent. He revealed himself with that attraction he knew how to exercise so well, as [Giuseppe] Mazzini could when he founded the Young Italy [in the mid 19th century]”.] Sapevate di rischiare la galera? «Bè sì. La mettevamo in conto. Eccome. Sapevamo di correre questo rischio e perciò adottavamo tutte le precauzioni possibili. Per esempio io non dicevo neanche a mia madre con chi uscivo. E’ meglio che tu non lo sappia, le dicevo». [Did you know you ran the risk of going to prison? “Well, yes. We took that into account. We knew we were running this risk, and therefore we took all possible precautions. For example, I didn’t tell with whom I was going out even my mother. It’s better you don’t know, I used to tell her”.] Ma quale fu la reazione dopo gli arresti? Lo precede Miti: «Io mi sono messa a piangere per Ginzburg, perché lo avevo avuto come supplente di filosofia alle Magistrali Berti. Aveva fatto delle lezioni su Pinoc- chio e ce ne eravamo tutti innamorati. Io poi l’avevo conosciuto anche di persona, essendo lui russo e essendo russa anche la mia insegnante di pianoforte. Oh, sì, era un insegnante straordinario». [But what was the response after arrests were made? Miti precedes him: “I wept for Ginzburg, because I had him as a temporary teacher of philosophy at the Berti teachers’ training school. He gave us some lessons about Pinocchio and we all fell in love with him. Moreover I also came to know him personally, as he was a Russian and because also my piano teacher was a Russian lady. Oh yes, he was an exceptional teacher”.] E il professore, che l’ha ascoltata con tenerezza: «I Ginzburg, i Foa erano anche uomini nuovi. Guardi che ancora oggi, a novant’anni suonati, io provo nei confronti di Vittorio Foa lo stesso sentimento di allora per il fascino con cui sapeva soggiogare i giovani» «Certo — aggiunge Miti — li ha sempre incantati». [Prof. Galante Garrone, who has been listening to her tenderly, now says: “Per- sons like Ginzburg and Foa were also new men. Just imagine that even now, past the age of ninety, I feel for Vittorio Foa the same sentiment I felt then, because of his fascinating manner with which he knew how to subjugate youngsters”.

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“Of course”, Miti says in addition, “he always enchanted them”.] Descrivendo il consenso che il fascismo riusciva a ottenere fra gli intellettuali, D’Orsi racconta anche le vicende di ebrei fascisti, alcuni dei quali fino all’ultimo dichiararono fedeltà al duce. Come era possibile che non avvertissero la minac- cia dell’ideologia fascista? [Describing the consensus that Fascism achieved among intellectuals, D’Orsi relates also about Fascist Jews, some of which declared their fealty to the Duce to the very last. How was it possible they did not feel the threat of Fascist ideology?] «La tradizione italiana non era antisemita. Neanche con il fascismo. Uno dei primi fascisti si chiamava Finzi ed era ebreo. Non avevamo nessuno stupore che ci fossero ebrei fascisti, perché nelle nostre famiglie borghesi non si facevano differenze: erano italiani come gli altri. Al massimo si facevano scherzi bonari. Ricordo che a Vercelli quando si passava nel quartiere ebraico capitava che i ragazzi facessero una specie di ciocca con il lembo della giacca, come si chiamava Miti?» «Mi sembra che lo chiamassero l’orecchio di maiale» «Ecco, sì, l’orecchio di maiale. Un’allusione popolare, alla buona. Perciò le leggi razziali sono stati uno degli errori più ignobili e grossolani del fascismo, che colsero tutti di sorpresa, furono uno shock per la gente comune, non per noi che sapevamo che il carro di Mussolini si era ormai agganciato a quello di Hitler». [“The Italian tradition wasn’t antisemitic. Not even under Fascism. One of the earliest fascists was one named Finzi, and he was Jewish. We weren’t amazed at all about there being Fascist Jews, because in our middle-class families we did not set them apart: they were Italians, like the rest. At most, one would make some benign prank. I remember that in Vercelli, when one passed through the Jewish neighbourhood, it happened that boys would make a sort of cluster with the edge of their jacket. How did they call it, Miti?” “I think they called it the pig’s ear”. “Right, yes, the pig’s ear. A folkish allusion, a benign one. Therefore the racial laws were one of the most ignoble and coarse errors of fascism, they took everybody by surprise, they were a shock for ordinary people, not for us as we knew that Musso- lini’s cart was already coupled up to Hitler’s”.] Ricordi, ricordi, che riempiono la stanza mentre la luce del sole si allontana e la signora Miti accende il paralume alle nostre spalle. Come l’ultimo incontro con Leone Ginzburg. «Era l’estate dei 45 giorni, fra la caduta del fascismo e l’8 settembre, nei giardino [sic] in fondo a corso Matteotti che era l’abitazione di Luigi Einaudi e dove aveva sede provvisoria la casa editrice del figlio Giulio. Fu un bellissimo colloquio». [Recollections, recollections that fill up the room while the sunshine diminishes and Mrs. Miti switches on the lamp behind us. Such as the last meeting with Leone Ginzburg.

“It was the summer of the 45 days, between the fall of Fascism and October the 8 [when German troops seized control of Italy], in the gardens at the end of Matteotti Avenue where there was Luigi Einaudi’s home, and where there were the provisional premises of the publishing house of his son, Giulio. It was a beautiful conversation”.]

The pig in relation to Jews, Christians, and the relations between the latter two, is a complex subject.69 In Germanic lands in particular, the anti- Semitic motif of the Judensau, the Jews’ sow, was virulent.70 A book by Isaiah Shachar (1974), The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and its History, treats that motif the way it appears in German culture and its visual arts between 1200 and 1850. This medieval motif, widespread in German lands but also occurring elsewhere (in Sweden), was eventually revived by the Nazis. Outside Germany’s present borders, the motif occurs in France (at the Cathedral of Metz), Switzerland (at the Cathedral of Basle), Poland (at the Cathedral of Gnesen), and Sweden (at the Cathedral of Uppsala), and in Vienna. The Judensau used to be represented with the body of a sow, and one could not tell it from just a representation of any ordinary sow, were it not for her suckling not piglets, but rather adult humans with smaller bodies than herself, these being interpreted as being Jews. For example, a sculpture at the Cathedral of St. Peter (1250–1520) in Regensburg features a sow looking left, and suckling a few Jews; two of these are shown in front, kneeling under her, with their back to the viewer, and the hat of one of them is apparently intended for revealing his group-identity. On the left side, near the sow’s head one of these humans can be looked at in the face; arguably, the artist was somewhat influenced by how infants used to be sculpted, in how this human with a gaping mouth was represented.71

69 See a book by Claudine Fabre-Vassas (1997), The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig. 70 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judensau 71 This motif of the sow is not the same as a pig-faced lady, a character which appears in European folklore independently of any link to Jews, or to the Judensau. Nevertheless, a pig-shaped lady appears in British imagery, and one instance (a standing Jewish young lady to whom a kneeling Gentile man is proposing) was made into the cover of a book on anti-Semitism in British culture. Regardless of the application to Jews, the motif of the pig-faced lady is rooted in a folktale about an affluent woman who chased away a beggar and her child, referring to him as a piglet. The begging woman then cursed her with the birth of piggish offspring. Arguably an innocuous 20th-century example of this motif (though phylogenetically unrelated) occurs in the television children series The Muppets, the character being Miss Piggy. Another such character is Peppa Pig.

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An example of the occurrence of the motif of the Judensau.

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The motif of the Judensau from the western façade of the Cathedral of St. Martin in Colmar in Alsace, France. Detail of a photograph shot by Torsade De Pointes on 22 July 2008, and put in the public domain on Wikimedia Commons.72 At the University of Milan in the late 1960s, at a time when the neighbourhood of the faculties whose buildings are in central Milan was in practice at the mercy of groups of the revolutionary Left, some far leftists ganged up on another leftist who was Jewish (and who was later to become a visible pollster, but whom I am not naming, as I obtained this information privately from his family). After subjecting him to a berating that left him with a disability (because of which he could not access some places and therefore, while a university assistant, he eventually renounced an aca- demic career, later establishing his own business and becoming a well- known pollster), somebody from among those who had beaten him for his Jewishness, phoned him up and insulted him: “Porciowski!”. This was a portmanteau (i.e., a blend) of porco ‘pig’ and Kopciowski, the name of one of Milan’s most visible rabbis. Their victim being Jewish, for all of his own sympathies for the radical left, made it legitimate, in the eyes of his beaters, to attack him both physically and verbally; the particular insult to which he was subjected was the outcome of such neologisation that eloquently testified to the conflation in every Jew of the image of the rabbi, and of the image of the pig. And this was happening in a former Axis country, and per- petrated (against one sympathetic to their politics) by ones who believed that there was “the Revolution behind the corner”, which they were to bring about.

15. Concluding Remarks

In the present study, we concerned ourselves with the life and writings of Rinaldo De Benedetti, a science journalist who also was a literary writer. His memoirs appeared posthumously. We discussed especially such passages or items from his writings that concern his Jewish family background, and social realities in southwestern Piedmont. We have discussed

72 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colmar_Cath%C3%A9drale_Judensau.JPG (in the public domain).

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 511 at length his “Racconto occitano”, about how around 1910, a diatribe in a mountain hamlet of Provençals in Piedmont’s Alps, a conflict pitting a parish priest and his parishioners, including the mayor and his councillors, because of drunken dancing, involved Amadio Momigliano (a relative of both Rinaldo De Benedetti and the historian Arnaldo Momigliano), a Jew- ish merchant with a fame of probity and also of being a devout Jew, and this because a priest had challenged his parishioners to become Jews, if they were not to relinquish dancing. Amadio Momigliano informed the diocesis, and this resulted in a solution of the conflict. This episode is an outlier in more than one way. For one thing, the conflict in the mountain hamlet, and the boldness of the mayor, have much to do with mayors’ and parishioners’ conflicts with the clergy in that period in France (even though the Provençal hamlet was inside Italy). It is somewhat atypical for the fierce struggle of the Kingdom of Italy and the clergy, a struggle that had already become shrill in the 1850s, precisely in Piedmont, after in 1848 the Kingdom of Sardinia had embraced liberalism and a constitutional monarchy.73 In that early phase of the conflict,74

73 As liberalism became strong in Piedmont during the 1840s, and in the late 1840s and during the 1850s was in power there, governmental policy came into conflict with the local high clergy. As premier, Massimo d’Azeglio managed to preserve parliamentary rule following the promulgation of the 1848 constitution, and moreover, he embarked on secularising the state. The jurist and senior judge Giuseppe Siccardi (1802–1857), as being the “ministro guardasigilli” (minister of Justice, or Or “Ministro di grazia e giustizia e affari ecclesiastici”) in Massimo d’Azeglio government from 1849 to 1851, introduced the bills known as the Siccardi Laws, which abolished the clergy’s privileges in Piedmont, and forbade for any body corporate (ente morale), including ones of the Church, the acquisition of the ownership of real estate without governmental authorisation. These privileges (typical ancien régime ones) involved the foro ecclesiastico, the diritto d’asilo (the right of asylum: the right for members of the public of seeking refuge and impunity, whatever the crime, by remaining inside a church, a convent, or a monastery), and the manomorta (mortmain property). The foro ecclesiastico was clergy’s separate judiciary, the special tribunal adjudicating cases involving members of the clergy, as these had the right of not being judged by a lay court, whether it was a civil case or a criminal case (even for crimes involving bloodshed). Mortmain is the inalienability and non-taxability of the Church’s assets (it was a major factor also in Mexican politics). Abolishing those three privileges brought Piedmont in line with major European countries. There were two Siccardi Bills: no. 1013 of 9 April 1850, and no. 1037 of 5 June 1850. 74 The Risorgimento was often enmeshed in anticlericalism (Pepe and Themelly 1966; Verucci 1981; Strukelj 2008). In scholarship, one sometimes finds this treated as a Kulturkampf, when anticlerical action was taken by the state in Italy (Lill and Tramello 1992).

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Piedmont had even imprisoned in 1850 and then exiled the archbishop of Turin, Luigi Fransoni, after the latter denied the last sacraments to the Minister of Agriculture, Piero De Rossi di Santarosa,75 because he had voted for the Siccardi Bill.76 Amadio Momigliano was born in 1844, four years before the emancipation of the Jews and Waldenses (Valdesi) of Piedmont,77 which was

75 Massimo d’Azeglio, as premier, was favourable to the Siccardi Law introduced by his minister of Justice. The clergy reacted vehemently in newspaper articles by a priest from Sanremo, Giacomo Margotti, and, furiously, by the Archbishop of Turin, Luigi Fransoni. The latter denied the last sacraments to the minister of Agriculture, Piero De Rossi di Santarosa, who died at the time (see on him Briacca 1988; Saraceno 1864). D’Azeglio proposed to the King, Victor Emanuel II, to appoint Cavour as a replacement for Santarosa, and the King agreed reluctantly. It is a situational irony that in so doing, he empowered Cavour, his own foe. 76 The Camera dei Deputati (or simply Camera, i.e., the House of Representatives) approved the Siccardi Laws immediately, by a large majority. Among those who voted in favour, there was the lawyer, playwright and author of short stories Pietro De Rossi di Santarosa, born in 1805, and who had been a government minister four brief times previously. What makes his case important is he died of tuberculosis in Turin on 5 August 1850, and even though he was a moderate and a devout Catholic, because of how he had voted the Extreme Unction was refused to him when he was about to die, and the parish priest, Pattavino, refused his body a religious funeral. This caused a public outcry, which prompted the Archbishop of Turin, Luigi Fransoni, to let last rites for Pietro De Rossi di Santarosa take place. In August 1850, the Archbishop was arrested nevertheless, because Pietro De Rossi di Santarosa had been denied the last sacrament and absolution. Fransoni was imprisoned at the Fortress of Fenestrelle, and later during the same year he was exiled in perpetuity from the domains of the House of Savoy. He had been Archbishop of Turin from 1832 (succeeding Columbano Giovanni Battista Carlo Gaspare Chiaverotti). It was only after Fransoni’s death, that a new Archbishop of Turin was appointed, namely, Alessandro Riccardi di Netro. Fransoni never agreed to abdicate as archbishop (Griseri 1966, Mellano 1964), even as the Pope himself put pressure on him in that sense, as the Pope would have preferred to appoint a new archbishop of Turin. Note however that in 1865, the Italian prime minister, General Alfonso Ferrero de La Marmora (1804–1878), sent Saverio Vegezzi (1805–1888) as an envoy to the Pope, on a delicate mission to solve the problem of several bishoprics having no bishop in the Kingdom of Italy. Pius IX rejected the request that the bishops would have to take an oath in front of the King, and the negotiations failed. 77 See e.g. Ghisalberti (1976). Romagnani (2001) is an edited volume about the Waldenses in the period between their two emancipations, namely, the period bookended by 1798 and 1848. Biller (2000, 2006) are surveys. Audisio (1999 in English, 1990a in French) is a paper collection about the history of the Waldensians c. 1170–c. 1570. Biller (2001) covers

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 513 also four years before the blood libel78 and anti-Jewish riots in Acqui.79 Amadio Momigliano also reportedly was (at least in part) a discontent if not of the post-1848 status of the Jews, then certainly of the process of

the period 1170–1530, when the Waldensian movement evolved from a clandestine religious order to a church; in the words of the publisher’s blurb: “The Waldenses, like the Franciscans, emerged from the apostolic movements within the Latin Church of the decades around 1200, but unlike the Franciscans they were driven underground. Not a full counter-Church, like the Cathar heretics, they formed a clandestine religious order, preaching to and hearing the confessions of their secret followers, and surviving until the Reformation. This volume begins by surveying modern historiography. Then, using both inquisition records from the Baltic to the Alps and the Waldenses’ own books, the author deals with the asceticism of the Waldensian order, its practice of poverty and medicine, the culture of the Brothers and the preaching of the Waldensian Sisters, the way both used and mythicised history to support their position, and the composition of their followers”. Peter Biller’s Oxford doctoral thesis is concerned with the correspondence of the Waldenses in the 14th century (Biller 1974). Merlo (1988a) is about Waldensian migrations in the Western Alps, whereas Merlo (1988b) is specifically concerned with the 1488 crusade against the Waldenses in the Alps. The Alpine Waldenses from 1480 to 1580 are the subject of a book by Euan Cameron (1984), whereas his 2000 book is about their medieval origins. Audisio (2000) considers their evolution from “Poor of Lyon” to the age of the Reformation. Audisio (2003) considers the geographical spread of the Waldensian “diaspora” in the 15th and 16th centuries. Audisio (2004) discusses the high self-esteem as a group of the Waldensians in those same centuries. The relations between Piedmont and Provence in the 15th and 16th centuries in respect of the Waldenses is the subject of Audisio (1975). Audisio (1992) discussed the family and sexuality of the Pauvres de Lyon in the 15th and 16th centuries. Audisio (1979) discussed the religious sentiment of the Waldenses in Provence in the period 1460–1520, upon the evidence of notary records. Waldensian preachers in the 15th and 16th centuries are the subject of Audisio (1976). Waldensian clandestine status in the 16th century is the subject of Audisio (1990b). Waldensian migrations were discussed by Gabriel Audisio e.g. in Audisio (1989a) about their presence in the Alps, and Audisio (1981, 1985) about their presence in the Lubéron. Audisio and Cameron (1986) intervened into a debate about the Waldensians of the Alps. Audisio (1989b) intervened in the debate about the origins of the Reformation in France. There is “systematic preference for minimalist interpretation in the recent historiography of Waldensianism” (Biller 2006, p. 16). “If the way ahead is dialectical, alternating between pro and con, it is perhaps time now to toy with the idea that deconstruction has gone too far and to mount a case against it” (ibid., p. 17). “Post-Reformation exaggeration of the antiquity of ‘the Waldensian valleys’ should not preclude recognition and balanced assessment of the contemporary evidence that does attest Waldensian habitation in the late Middle Ages” (ibid.). Cf. http://www.bibliografia-valdese.com 78 Blood libels against Jews, especially in Italy, are the subject of Caliò (2007). Cf. Marchi (2010), Crepaldi (2003), Klien (1974 [1991]), Pichetto (1993).

Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 514 Ephraim Nissan secularisation which proceeded somewhat concomitantly with increased acceptance and enjoyment of civil rights.80 Civil rights for the Jews often were considered a special irritant in the relations of post-1848 Piedmont and post-1859 Italy, and vocal intransigent quarters within the Church.81 “Racconto occitano” includes, among its paradoxes, also the collaboration between the devout Jew and the diocesis; Rinaldo De Benedetti interpo- lates a bit of his own freethinking upbringing, when he states, as we have seen (my translation):

A couple of days afterwards, having gone to Cuneo for some transactions of his, a visited the diocesis and related the matter to the bishop’s assistant. At first, the latter tried to express indignation, but then was unable to restrain mirth, and they laughed together to the point that they shed tears. Soon however, one of them and then immediately the other one, too, calmed down as though in shame, and they became serious, sporting gravitas. Because that burst of laughter between the two of them, cordial and impossible to restrain, what was it, if not a sudden, uncontainable shared enlightenment of a Voltairian nature? When they noticed, it had already burst. They repented for the pleasure they had taken in it, and they each resumed their respective role. Thanks followed, compliments, and a farewell. That very evening the diocesis sent out orders for the parish priest of Castelmagno, partly countermanding the previous

79 The town of Acqui in Piedmont — Acqui Monferrato (now Acqui Terme) — used to have a rather visible Jewish community in the 19th century, but that interfaith relations around the time that the Piedmontese kingdom emancipated the Jews were far from idyllic, can be seen from a particular episode (one that eventually Antonio Gramsci happened to refer to, having heard about it from a descendant of its Jewish protagonist). In Acqui, in 1848, as Bonajut Ottolenghi, a Jew who had enrolled in the National Guard came back to town, he was accused of ritual murder (the point was accusing him, rather than there having been an alleged victim of the crime), and the bells of the cathedral’s belfry rang to incite the mob with the bishop refusing to call for calm. The mayor of Acqui had the Jew arrested and held in custody in order to protect him. Marco Francesco Dolermo has devoted a book (2005) to the clergy-instigated hatred since the institution of the ghetto in Acqui in 1731, to the anti-Jewish riots of 1799 and 1848. The blood libel of 1848 is dealt with in Dolermo (2005, Part 1, Ch. 5). Also Dolermo (2000) was concerned with the Jewish community of Acqui. 80 Concerning the assimilation and secularisation of Italy’s emancipated Jews, see e.g. Sofia (1993). On Italy’s Jews from their “second emancipation” of 1848 (the first had been in the Napoleonic period) to the racial laws of 1838, see e.g. Bettin (2010), Valori (2007). Cf. Canepa (1975, 1977, 1978, 1986), Di Giulio (2016). Concerning the debate in Italy about whether to give the Jews civil rights, see Luzzatto Voghera (1998). 81 See e.g. Di Fant (2007), Facchini (2010), Lebovitch Dahl (2010), Marchi (2011), Luzzatto Voghera (1987).

letter, and informing him that in case forbidding the parishioners dancing in the church-square could result in scandals or excesses of any other nature, it was preferable to acquiesce and only endeavour, as cautiously as possible, to prevent the most offensive and disgusting forms of the entertainment, and so forth. […]

Because of his literary output in his own edge, at present Rinaldo De Benedetti’s fame as a science reporter has been receding in time, overtaken by his also being known to some also as a literary author, but especially by his posthumous fame as a clever and engaging memoirist. In this study, we have seen that even a short story previously published outside those ven- ues (indeed, posthumously in a newsletter catering to Turin’s Jewish community) deserves considerable attention, not only because of Rinaldo De Benedetti’s consummate skill as a raconteur, but among the other things because of the conflict it related between parishioners, led by the mayor and town councillors, and a priest, and the role of the diocesis, in a Proven- cal hamlet in the Alps of southwestern Piedmont — a situation that shares much with what the situation was in pre-WWI France, arguably more that with the pre-Concordat situation in the Kingdom of Italy, a subject that has itself received sustained attention in the scholarly literature.

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