The Mystery of the Sicilian Avengers

[NOTES ON A STRANGE WORLD MASSIMO POLIDORO Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the paranormal, lecturer, and cofounder and head of CICAP, the Italian skeptics group. His website is at www.massimopolidoro.com. The Mystery of the Sicilian Avengers n eighteenth-century Sicily, there was believed the sect would meet—Na- the first to discuss the Beati Paoli in once was a group of mysterious men. toli’s novel became almost a sacred text, writing. In his Opuscoli palermitani, IBy day, they would care for their read aloud every evening by the head the first text to mention the sect, he businesses, but at night they would of the family for relatives who listened explains how in his days the Beati Paoli transform into a terrible sect, avengers to it in rapt silence. According to the “were already a lost seed.” That is, no of injustice and rectifiers of wrongs. historian Rosario La Duca: “In Sicily, one remembered them. Aristocratic and wealthy, they would the Beati Paoli is still the only book that It was Gaetani who reconstructed protect the poor commoners and bring a lot of ordinary people ever read in the their story, calling them first and fore- oppressors and tyrants to justice. They course of their life.” Yet very few out- most a “sect of wicked and capricious would wear black hoods and their people called avengers” and tracing identities were a mystery, even to each their origins back to 1185. From the other. Their meeting point was in a Middle Ages, the sect would be contin- place called “Cuncuma,” an under- ually renewed up until one of the most ground grotto in Palermo, where caves turbulent periods in the history of Sic- and tunnels could lead their vengeance ily, the one that in Natoli’s novel spans everywhere it was needed. They were from 1698 to 1719. known as the Beati Paoli (“Blessed It was an age of great contrasts, Pauls”), and whoever was found guilty shaken by years of war and strong dis- of some infraction would tremble upon agreements between church and state. hearing their name. Suffice it to say that during those twenty years, Sicily saw a succession The ‘Sacred’ Novel of three monarchies. First the Span- ish, with the accession to the throne These are, broadly speaking, the char- of Philip V, the first Bourbon king of acteristics of the legendary sect of Spain, then with Vittorio Amedeo II the Beati Paoli. It was a long history of Savoy, and finally with the Austrian handed down in Sicily and told only Photo Credit: photos from the blog of Tommaso Aiello (http://tommasoaiello.com) Charles VI of Habsburg. orally until it was published in the A portrait of Luigi Natoli by F. Camarda, 1934. In this climate, it was inevitable that form of a serialized novel in 1909. The the noble and powerful abused their author of the novel was Luigi Natoli, side Sicily have ever heard of it. But, powers at the expense of the weakest. who signed with the pseudonym of above all, it is reasonable to ask whether The Justice of the State, where it was William Galt and told the story in the history of the Beati Paoli is just a not absent altogether, was almost al- 239 episodes published daily by the legend or has any real historical basis. ways at the service of the strongest; in Giornale di Sicilia. addition, the same nobles often made Even before then, the story was told use of thugs to quickly resolve those A Sect of the Wicked and repeated with such passion and care cases that they preferred not to subject by the Sicilians that it became widely A historian of ancient Palermo, Fran- even to the courts. known among both the poor and the cesco Maria Emanuele Gaetani, Here, then, according to Gaetani, bourgeoisie. For the inhabitants of the Marquis of Villabianca, who lived at the reason that gave birth to the Beati Capo—the Palermo district where it the end of the eighteenth century, was Paoli: “Poor people, not being able to Skeptical Inquirer | July/August 2013 17 pay for a killer, summoned the pride to After the murder of Police Lieu- as it was later considered, being suf- do wickedly for themselves with their tenant Joe Petrosino, the enemy of ficiently known both the character of own hands.” It was not simply a form Italian crime transplanted in the United political-military faction and the era in of personal justice but was managed States, who was killed in Palermo on which it acted.” by a body acting in the shadows and, March 12, 1909, the investigation therefore, by its nature elusive and in brought to light that the mafia killers, The Extant Secret Lair turn powerful. responsible for the death of the Ital- Was it ever known who the Beati Paoli ian-American policeman, not only had really were and where exactly they Ancestors of the Mafia? already appropriated the myth of the gathered? In his essay, Gaetani iden- For the masses, the Beati Paoli were Beati Paoli but had started to meet in a tifies only three members of the sect. heroes and defenders of the oppressed, basement, just like in the legend of the About the first, Giuseppe Amatore, and Natoli paints them as such in his ancient cult. we only know that he was a “master scopettiere,” that is a manufacturer of rifles, that he was called “u Russu” (the Red one) and that he was hanged in Palermo on December 17, 1704, at the age of twenty-seven. The second, Girolamo Ammirata, “rational by pro- fession” (an accountant), was hanged on the Piazza del Carmine in 1723 for killing a man “with a stroke of carrubina.” Regarding the third one, Gaetani tells us that he had been able to meet him in person. He was a famous coach driver in Palermo, Vito Vituzzu, that Gaetani knew as a child and called “The last ruffian of the Compagnia de’ Beati Paoli.” Once he escaped the Photo Credit: photos from the blog of Tommaso Aiello (http://tommasoaiello.com) Backboard of a Sicilian cart illustrating two episodes from the Beati Paoli stories. gallows, and with the cult dissolved, he was reduced to be the “church farmer,” novel. Others, however, such as the But this is just “embezzlement,” ac- i.e., the sacristan, at St. Matteo al Cas- nineteenth-century journalist Vincent cording to historians. “The Mafia” says saro. Linares, considered them “wicked kill- La Duca, “has its roots in the disinte- As for the cave of their mysterious ers” who often acted for personal ven- gration of the agrarian feudal structure get-togethers, it was called the Cun- dettas or to perform other common of the island, which took place in the cuma because in dialect “keep con- crimes. Also, according to Linares, the early nineteenth century, by which time cùmiu” means “take counsel together, sect was eventually vanquished and the sect of the Beati Paoli had long conspire.” scattered. gone.” Natoli’s book, therefore, would Natoli describes the lair: “It was a There are those who want to see a have unwittingly contributed to the sort of cave, dug into the tuff, with a link between the Beati Paoli and the apologetic feelings for the mafia. “The circular dome on top; in the middle of modern mafia, seen here as a secret citizen of Palermo,” says the scholar the room there was a stone table; the society. During a deposition, Mob re- Francesco Paolo Castiglione, “is cer- man who gave orders would sit behind pentant Tommaso Buscetta, a great ad- tain that in an unspecified age—as is the table, his black hood was large and mirer of Natoli’s book, declared: “The always the case with historical refer- fully closed as the hooded brethren and mafia was not born today, it comes ences among common people—the op- would reach down to the middle of his from the past. First there were the Beati pressed had reached a precise awareness chest.” Paoli, struggling with the poor against of their rights and were able to avenge According to Gaetani, the meeting the rich…we have the same oath, the the violence that they were forced to place of the Beati Paoli was identified same duties.” Another “pentito,” To- suffer. But clear indications show that, in an underground cavity in the neigh- tuccio Contorno, called himself “Co- as long as the novelists did not start to borhood of the Capo, near the church riolanus Floresta,” just as the hero of build fanciful tales about literary Beati of S. Mary of Jesus. Accessible through Natoli’s novel did. Paoli, the sect was not as mysterious it, Gaetani wrote, was the home of the 18 Volume 37 Issue 4 | Skeptical Inquirer MASSIMO POLIDORO NOTES ON A STRANGE WORLD] lawyer Giovanbattista Baldi: “From the first floor of the entrance of the house, through a door, you arrive in a small open court in which there is a low tree, and the floor on which you walk is nothing else than the layer covering the cave below. In the center of the vault is an eye with an iron grate that serves as a crack and gives light to the underground cave.” It then went down five stone steps and there you were in a room that overlooked the main cave, complete with seats carved into the rock and shelves “in which they placed their iron firearms.” The existence of this cave was con- firmed in the late nineteenth century by the visit of a Palermo scholar, Vincenzo Di Giovanni, who found it, stating that in 1889 it was possible to access it through “the house of Baron Biandano in the Via Beati Paoli at no.

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