11 February

NEW - Anton Giulio Bragaglia - theatre director and photographer

Intellectual whose work sparked argument among Futurists

Anton Giulio Bragaglia, a film and theatre director and writer whose early work with photography made him an important if controversial figure in the Italian Futurist movement, was born on this day in 1890 in Piglio, an historic hilltop town about 55km (33 miles) east of Rome, in Lazio.  Bragaglia began his working life in Italy’s nascent movie industry - his father, Francesco, was employed at a studio in Rome - and went on to influence Italy’s cultural life in many more ways as a theatre director, cinematographer and the founder or editor of a number of arts magazines, in addition to his work with photography.  He also founded in 1922 the Teatro Sperimentale degli Independenti, an alternative theatre built by adapting the ancient Roman baths of Septimius Severus in Via degli Avignonesi, a street that runs parallel with the top end of Via del Tritone, near Piazza Barberini. Read more… 

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Giuseppe De Santis - film director

Former Resistance fighter famous for neorealist classic Bitter Rice

The writer and film director Giuseppe De Santis, who is best remembered for the 1949 neorealist film Bitter Rice - screened as Riso Amaro for Italian audiences - was born on this day in 1917 in Fondi, a small city in Lazio about 130km (81 miles) south of Rome.  De Santis is sometimes described as an idealist of the neorealism genre, which flourished in the years immediately after World War Two, yet it can also be argued that he moved away from the documentary style that characterised some of neorealism’s early output towards films with more traditional storylines.  Bitter Rice, for example, while highlighting the harsh working conditions in the rice fields around Vercelli in the Po Valley and the exploitation of labourers by wealthy landowners, is also a tale of plotting, jealousy and treachery among thieves.  Read more…

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Carlo Sartori – footballer

Italian was first foreigner to play for Manchester United

Carlo Domenico Sartori, the first footballer from outside Great Britain or Ireland to play for Manchester United, was born on this day in 1948 in the mountain village of Caderzone Terme in Trentino.  The red-haired attacking midfielder made his United debut on October 9, 1968, appearing as substitute in a 2-2 draw against Tottenham Hotspur at the London club’s White Hart Lane ground.  On the field were seven members of the United team that had won the European Cup for the first time the previous May, including George Best and Bobby Charlton, as well as his boyhood idol, Denis Law, who had missed the final against Benfica through injury.  Sartori, who made his European Cup debut against the Belgian side Anderlecht the following month, went on to make 56 appearances in four seasons as a senior United player before returning to Italy to join Bologna. Read more…

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Louis Visconti - architect

Roman who made his mark on Paris

The architect Louis Visconti, who designed a number of public buildings and squares as well as numerous private residences in Paris, was born on this day in 1791 in Rome.   Notably, Visconti was the architect chosen to design the tomb to house the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte after King Louis Philippe I obtained permission from Britain in 1840 to return them from Saint Helena, the remote island in the South Atlantic where the former emperor had died in exile in 1921.  Born Louis Tullius Joachim Visconti, he came from a family of archaeologists. His grandfather, Giambattista Antonio Visconti was the founder of the Vatican Museums and his father, Ennio Quirino Visconti, was an archaeologist and art historian.  Ennio had been a consul of the short-lived Roman Republic, proclaimed in February 1798 after Louis Alexandre Berthier, a general of Napoleon, had invaded Rome. Read more… 

Carlo Carrà - Futurist artist

Painter hailed for capturing violence at anarchist's funeral

The painter Carlo Carrà, a leading figure in the Futurist movement that gained popularity in Italy in the early part of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1881 in Quargnento, a village about 11km (7 miles) from Alessandria in Piedmont.  Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that was launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 and attracted many painters and sculptors, designers and architects, writers, film makers and composers who wished to embrace modernity and free Italy from what they perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.  The Futurists admired the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, all of which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention.  Read more…

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Lateran Treaty

How the Vatican became an independent state inside Italy 

An agreement between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, recognising the Vatican as an independent state within Italy, was signed on this day in 1929.  The Lateran Treaty settled what had been known as ‘The Roman Question’, a dispute regarding the power of the Popes as rulers of civil territory within a united Italy.  The treaty is named after the Lateran Palace where the agreement was signed by prime minister Benito Mussolini on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri on behalf of Pope Pius XI.  The Italian parliament ratified the treaty on June 7, 1929. Although Italy was then under a Fascist government, the succeeding democratic governments have all upheld the treaty.  The Vatican was officially recognised as an independent state, with the Pope as an independent sovereign ruling within Vatican City. Read more...

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Gianluca Ginoble – singer

Versatile baritone helps make Il Volo’s magical sound

Gianluca Ginoble, a member of the hugely successful and award winning Italian pop and opera trio Il Volo, was born on this day in 1995 in Roseto degli Abruzzi, in the Abruzzo region.  He is the youngest of the trio and the only baritone. The other two singers, Piero Barone and Ignazio Boschetto, are both tenors.  Gianluca’s family lives in Montepagano, a small hilltop town overlooking Roseto degli Abruzzi. He is the oldest son of Ercole Ginoble and Eleonora Di Vittorio and has a younger brother, Ernesto.  Gianluca started to sing when he was just three years old with his grandfather, Ernesto, in the Bar Centrale, which Ernesto owns, in the main square of the town.  While still young, Gianluca took part in music festivals and competitions in his area, winning some and being distinguished in them all because of his beautiful deep voice.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, edited by Vivien Greene

Italian Futurism was officially launched in 1909 when Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism. Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe is a paperback edition of the authoritative Guggenheim catalogue on the Italian avant-garde movement considerably advances the scholarship and understanding of an influential 20th-century artistic movement. As part of the first comprehensive overview of Italian Futurism to be presented in the United States, this publication examines the historical sweep of Futurism from its inception with Marinetti’s manifesto through the rise of Italian Fascism and the movement’s demise at the end of World War II. Presenting more than 300 works created between 1909 and 1944 by artists, writers, designers and composers such as Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Fortunato Depero, Gerardo Dottori, Marinetti, Ivo Pannaggi, Rosa Rosà, Luigi Russolo, Tato and many others, this publication encompasses not only painting and sculpture but also architecture, design, ceramics, fashion, film, photography, advertising, poetry, publications, music, theatre and performance.

Vivien Greene has been a Guggenheim curator since 1993 and specialises in late 19th- and early 20th-century European art with concentrations in French and Italian modernism and international currents in turn-of-the-century art and culture.

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Anton Giulio Bragaglia - theatre director and photographer

Intellectual whose work sparked argument among Futurists

Photography was only part of Anton
Giulio Bragaglia's artistic life

Anton Giulio Bragaglia, a film and theatre director and writer whose early work with photography made him an important if controversial figure in the Italian Futurist movement, was born on this day in 1890 in Piglio, an historic hilltop town about 55km (33 miles) east of Rome, in Lazio.

Bragaglia began his working life in Italy’s nascent movie industry - his father, Francesco, was employed at a studio in Rome - and went on to influence Italy’s cultural life in many more ways as a theatre director, cinematographer and the founder or editor of a number of arts magazines, in addition to his work with photography.

He also founded in 1922 the Teatro Sperimentale degli Independenti, an alternative theatre built by adapting the ancient Roman baths of Septimius Severus in Via degli Avignonesi, a street that runs parallel with the top end of Via del Tritone, near Piazza Barberini.

Francesco Bragaglia, an engineer, was the first technical director of the Cines film studio, which opened in 1906 near Porta San Giovanni in the Italian capital.

Anton Giulio joined the studio as an assistant director in the same year, gaining considerable experience working alongside directors Mario Caserini and Enrico Guazzoni.

When he was 19, however, still to become established as the director, set designer, and cinematographer he would be remembered as, Bragaglia became excited by the fledgling Italian Futurist movement and their enthusiasm for speed, dynamism and technology.

He and his older brothers, Arturo and Carlo Ludovico, both of whom worked, like Anton Giulio, in the film business, wanted to become active participants in the movement, which rejected traditional art and would influence painting, literature, sculpture and architecture in Italy in the early part of the 20th century.

Through their experimental work with cameras, they found ways to capture movement, energy, and continuity in photographs, using long exposures to create blurred forms and the impression of movement. 

Anton Giulio set out their methods and vision in his 1911 manifesto, entitled Fotodinamismo futurista.  His photodynamic works, such as Waving and The Typist, were widely admired for demonstrating motion as the essence of modern life and through these he hoped to establish photography as a central medium of Futurist experimentation and a tool for expressing the rhythms of modernity. 

Bragaglia's The Typist, in which his open shutter
technique was able to capture a sense of movement

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement, was supportive of their contribution and was happy to help them fund exhibitions of their work - although ultimately the movement expelled them in 1913 due to fundamental disagreements over whether photography could be considered as an art form.

This was mainly down to the influence of Umberto Boccioni, the painter and sculptor, who argued that photography was a mechanical medium that merely copied reality, not true creative art, and could undermine the high-art status of Futurist painting. 

Boccioni and others felt that Anton Giulio Bragaglia had been presumptuous in publishing his Fotodinamismo futurista manifesto, accusing him of trying to act as a spokesman for the movement without having the permission to do so. 

Despite their expulsion in 1913, Anton Giulio Bragaglia continued to contribute to the avant-garde movement, later founding the Casa d'arte Bragaglia in 1918, welcoming Futurist artists and giving them space to exhibit their work.

He continued to experiment with photography, his work being exhibited in Italy and abroad, including the Venice Biennale in 1924 and 1926.

By then Bragaglia had made a broader impression in the arts world. Having become editor-in-chief of the artistic and theatrical periodical L’Artista in 1911, he founded the magazine La Ruoto and the periodical Cronache di Attualità, attracting impressive lists of contributors to both that included Gabriele D'Annunzio, Grazia Deledda, Rudyard Kipling, Luigi Pirandello, Corrado Alvaro, the poet Trilussa and artists Giorgio De Chirico and Fortunato Depero. 

A section of the interior of 
Bragaglia's Teatro Sperimentale

He made a number of films, largely with a Futurist imprint, in no small part due to the avant-garde scenography of Enrico Prampolini. 

In 1918 he founded and directed the Casa d'Arte Bragaglia, which he inaugurated with a personal exhibition by the Futurist painter Giacomo Balla. The following year he directed his first play at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. 

In 1922 he opened the Teatro Sperimentale degli Indipendenti, which he directed until 1936, having entrusted the architect and artist Virgilio Marchi with the adaptation of the ancient Roman baths. He engaged Balla, Depero and Prampolini to take care of furnishings and decoration, again with a heavy accent on Futurist styles. 

The Teatro Sperimentale degli Indipendenti became a point of reference for the Italian avant-garde, although Bragaglia did not close the door on traditional theatrical forms. Although he embraced the innovations of international theatre, he was also keen to promote young Italian playwrights.

An intellectual with a considerable range of interests, he wrote extensively as a critic on cinema, theatre, dance, scenography and stagecraft, often travelling across Europe and to America to host exhibition and conference tours, while still working actively in the theatre, in which he eventually directed more than 50 productions.

He directed for the last time at the Rome Opera House in 1960, staging Pietro Mascagni's Le maschere, an opera written as an homage to Italian comic opera - opera buffa - and the traditions of commedia dell'arte.

Bragaglia died in July 1960 at the age of 70. His funeral and burial took place at the Verano monumental cemetery in Rome, not far from the Sapienza University.

Piglio occupies an elevated position with 
sweeping views across the Sacco Valley

Travel tip:

Built on a spur of Monte Scalambra, a somewhat isolated mountain located on the border between the Metropolitan City of Rome and the Province of Frosinone, Bragaglia’s birthplace, Piglio, overlooks the Sacco Valley.  At the highest point of the small town stands the castle built by the Colonna family just over 1,000 years ago. The Colonnas lost control of the town but regained it in the 14th century and retained control until the early 19th century. With a history that goes back to ancient Roman times, the town’s strategic position has not always been to its advantage. A fierce battle between the Romans and Hannibal’s army in the valley during the Second Punic War, Napoleon’s armies largely burnt it down in the late 18th century and it was bombed by Allied planes in World War Two. Happily, it has been quieter in recent times and Pope John Paul II used to go there for moments of relaxation, a habit which is commemorated in a path laid out in the town, in which significant quotations attributed to him are engraved. Today, Piglio is known as part of the Cesanese DOCG red wine production area, staging a wine festival in October each year. 

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The Palazzo Barberini, built in the 17th century,
now houses one of Rome's major art museums

Travel tip:

Bragaglia opened his Teatro Sperimentale degli Independenti within some ancient Roman baths in the district of Rome known as Rione II - Trevi, an area right at the heart of one of Rome’s most visited areas. Naturally, it features the iconic Trevi Fountain, now more than 250 years old, which remains one of the city’s most popular attractions, so much so that the city now charges tourists a €2 euro fee for the privilege of seeing the fountain close up at peak times. Other major sights within the Trevi rione are the Palazzo Barberini, the Baroque palace built for the Barberini family in the 17th century that stands directly off the piazza and houses one of Rome’s major art museums; the Fontana del Tritone, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 1643 masterpiece which is the centrepiece of Piazza Barberini; and the Fontana delle Api, another Bernini fountain located just off the piazza.The Via Veneto, one of the city’s most famous boulevards thanks to its association with the Dolce Vita era, begins at Piazza Barberini, while the Quirinal Hill area, which includes several historic churches and the Palazzo Quirinale, the official residence of the Italian President, is also nearby. 

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More reading:

Umberto Boccioni, the leading Futurist artist who died tragically young

How Giacomo Balla’s paintings captured movement and speed

Giorgio De Chirico, founder of the scuola metafisica of Italian art

Also on this day:

1791: The birth of architect Louis Visconti

1881: The birth of Futurist painter Carlo Carrà

1917: The birth of film director Giuseppe De Santis

1929: Lateran Treaty gives independence to Vatican

1948: The birth of footballer Carlo Sartori

1995: The birth of singer Gianluca Ginoble

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10 February

Andrea Silenzi - footballer

Forward was the first Italian to play in the English Premier League

The footballer Andrea Silenzi, who made history in 1995 when he became the first Italian to be signed by a Premier League club, was born on this day in 1966 in Rome.  A 6ft 3ins centre forward, Silenzi had enjoyed Serie A success with Torino in particular, his form persuading Nottingham Forest to offer £1.8 million - the equivalent of about £4 million (€5.1 million) today - to bring him to England.  When Forest manager Frank Clark proudly announced his new man before the 1995-96 season, it was seen as an important moment for the fledgling Premier League. Serie A at the time was the most glamorous in Europe, wealthy enough to hire stars from all around the world, including many British players; it was rare for Italian players to move abroad. Yet Silenzi, who had won a call-up to the Italian national team after his 17 goals for Torino in the 1993-94 season, had agreed to come to England. Read more…

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Francesco Hayez - painter

Artist who pushed boundaries of sensuality

The painter Francesco Hayez, regarded as the father of the Milanese Romanticism movement in the mid-19th century and an artist renowned for his depictions of historical events and for his political allegories, was born on this day in 1791 in Venice.  His father, a fisherman, was French in origin and married a girl from Murano called Chiara Torcello, although they were a relatively poor family and Francesco was largely brought up by his wife’s sister, who had the good fortune to marry Giovanni Binasco, a wealthy ship-owner who dealt in antiques and collected art.  It was Binasco who fostered in Hayez his love of painting and after initially beginning an apprenticeship as an art restorer became a pupil in the studio of the Venetian painter Francesco Maggiotto. He was admitted to the New Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 1806.  Read more…

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Luca della Robbia - sculptor

Renaissance ‘genius’ famed for glazed terracotta

Luca della Robbia, whose work saw him spoken of in the same breath as Donatello and Lorenzo Ghiberti among the great sculptors of the Renaissance, died on this day in 1482 in Florence.  Della Robbia worked in marble and bronze initially but enjoyed considerable success after inventing a process for making statuary and reliefs in terracotta decorated with a colourful mineral glaze.  Thought to be around 82 or 83 years old, he had shared the full details of the process only with his family. On his death, his nephew Andrea della Robbia inherited his workshop and other members of the family, notably his great-nephews Giovanni della Robbia and Girolamo della Robbia, continued to employ his methods with success into the 16th century.  Terracotta literally means cooked earth and Della Robbia’s technique involved the application of colourful glazes made using lead, tin and other minerals to the fired clay. Read more…

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Ernesto Teodoro Moneta – Nobel Prize winner

Supporter of Garibaldi was also an ‘apostle for peace’

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, who was at times both a soldier and a pacifist, died on this day in 1918.  Moneta was only 15 when he was involved in the Five Days of Milan uprising against the Austrians in 1848, but in later life he became a peace activist.  He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1907, but publicly supported Italy’s entry into the First World War in 1915. On the Nobel Prize official website he is described as ‘a militant pacifist’.  Moneta was born in 1833 to aristocratic parents in Milan. He fought next to his father to defend his family home during the revolt against the Austrians and then went on to attend the military academy in Ivrea.  In 1859 Moneta joined Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand and fought in the Italian army against the Austrians in 1866.  He then seemed to become disillusioned with the struggle for Italian unification and cut short what had been a promising military career.  Read more…

Roberto Bompiani – artist

Prolific painter recreated scenes from ancient Rome

Artist Roberto Bompiani, who became well known for his paintings depicting Rome in ancient times, was born on this day in 1821 in Rome. He became a successful landscape and portrait painter and later in his career he also worked as a sculptor.  His portrait of Queen Margherita of Italy, which was painted in 1878, still hangs in the Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome.  From a wealthy family, Bompiani dedicated himself entirely to the study of art and enrolled at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome when he was 15. He was awarded a share of a first prize in design not long after joining the Academy. Within three years he was regularly winning prizes for sculpture and painting.  As a painter, Bompiani depicted historical, mythological, and religious subjects in an idealised style making his figures physically perfect and giving them noble, spiritual expressions.  Read more…

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ENI – oil and gas multinational

Italian energy company emerged after WW2

The Rome-based multinational oil and gas company ENI, one of the world’s largest industrial concerns, was founded on this day in 1953.  The company, which operates in 79 countries, was valued at $52.2 billion (€47.6 billion) at the time of writing (in 2018), employing almost 34,000 people.  That made it the 11th largest oil company in the world.  Its operations include exploration for and production of oil and natural gas, the processing, transportation and refining of crude oil, the transportation of natural gas, the storage and distribution of petroleum products and the production of base chemicals and plastics.  A wholly state-owned company until 1995, ENI is still to a large extent in the control of the Italian government, which owns just over 30 per cent of the company. ENI came into being as Italy was rebuilding after the Second World War, which had left its economy in ruins. Read more…

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Raffaele Lauro – author and politician

Sorrentine's talents include writing, film directing and song

Italian Senator and journalist Raffaele Lauro was born on this day in 1944 in the resort of Sorrento in Campania.  A prolific writer, Lauro has also been an important political figure for more than 30 years.  He was born in Sorrento and as a young man worked as a receptionist at a number of hotels along the Sorrento peninsula.  After finishing school he went to the University of Naples where he was awarded degrees in Political Science, Law and Economics.  Lauro then won a scholarship from Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and studied first at their diplomatic institute and later in Paris.  He later studied for a degree in journalism in Rome and became director of a scientific magazine, moving from there to become a commentator on new technology for Il Tempo in Rome and Il Mattino in Naples.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Italian Job: A Journey to the Heart of Two Great Footballing Cultures, by Gianluca Vialli and Gabriele Marcotti

Football lies at the heart of popular culture in both England and Italy. It is played, watched, written about and talked about by millions in both countries. But how do the characteristics of England and Italy affect the game in these two footballing nations? Do the national stereotypes of Italians as passionate, stylish lotharios and the English as cold-hearted eccentrics still hold true when they kick a ball around?  In The Italian Job, for the first time, a footballer of the first rank, Gianluca Vialli, in conjunction with sportswriter and broadcaster Gabriele Marcotti, tackles this debate head on. Uniquely positioned across both the English and the Italian games, they provide a fascinating and highly controversial commentary on where football is now and where it's headed. They have invited some of the biggest names in the sport to join in their discussion. Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger, Sven Goran Eriksson, Fabio Capello and Marcello Lippi, amongst others, add their not inconsiderable weight to the highest-profile symposium on football ever convened. Vialli, who died of cancer in 2023, and Marcotti explore every aspect of football, be it tactical and technical or cultural and sociological. Stuffed full of controversial opinions and gripping revelations, The Italian Job takes you on a journey to the very heart of two of the world's great footballing cultures.

Gianluca Vialli was an Italian football player and manager who played as a striker, making almost 500 league appearances, including 58 in the English Premier League for Chelsea, whom he also managed. He was a Champions League winner with Juventus. Gabriele Marcotti is a Milan-born journalist based in London.

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9 February

Vito Antuofermo - world champion boxer

Farmer's son from deep south who won title in Monaco

Vito Antuofermo, who went from working in the fields as a boy to becoming a world champion in the boxing ring, was born on this day in 1953 in Palo del Colle, a small town in Puglia, about 15km (9 miles) inland from the port of Bari.  He took up boxing after his family emigrated to the United States in the mid-1960s.  After turning professional in 1971, he lost only one of his first 36 fights before becoming European light-middleweight champion in January 1976.  In his 49th fight, in June 1979, he beat Argentina's Hugo Corro in Monaco to become the undisputed world champion in the middleweight division.  Antuofermo's success in the ring, where he won 50 of his 59 fights before retiring in 1985, opened the door to a number of opportunities in film and television and he was able to settle in the upper middle-class neighbourhood of Howard Beach in New York. Read more…

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Ferdinando Carulli - classical guitarist and composer

Neapolitan wrote first guide to playing the instrument

The composer Ferdinando Carulli, who published the first complete method for playing the classical guitar as well as writing more than 400 works for the instrument, was born on this day in 1770 in Naples.  Carulli was also influential in changing the design of the guitar, which had a smaller body and produced a less resonant sound when he started out, to something much more like the classical guitars of today.  The son of an intellectual advisor to the Naples Jurisdiction, Carulli first trained as a cellist and received instruction in musical theory from a local priest.  He became interested in the guitar in his 20s and became so enthusiastic about the instrument he decided to devote himself to it entirely.  The guitar was little played and there were no guitar teachers in Naples in the late 18th century, so Carulli had to devise his own method of playing.  Read more…

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Procopio Cutò - chef and entrepreneur

Sicilian who popularised coffee and gelato in 17th century Paris

The chef and café proprietor Procopio Cutò, who opened one of the earliest coffee houses in Paris and has been credited with introducing Italian ice cream to the French capital, was born in Sicily on this day in 1651. Cutò, whose full name was Francesco Procopio Cutò and at times called himself Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, or François Procope, was the owner and founder of the Café Procope, which thanks to its illustrious clientele can claim to have been the first literary coffee house in Paris.  The café opened for business in 1686 and traded continuously for around 200 years before closing in the late 19th century.  The name was revived in the 1950s and the original premises in Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie - in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter on the left bank of the Seine - is again called Café Procope, although it is now a restaurant rather than a coffee house.  Read more…

Pietro Nenni - politician

Orphan who became influential leader of Italian Socialist Party

The politician Pietro Sandro Nenni, who was a major figure of the Italian left for five decades, was born on this day in 1891 in Faenza in Emilia-Romagna.  Nenni was general secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) on three occasions and rose to high office in the Italian government, twice serving as foreign affairs minister and several times as deputy prime minister, notably under the progressive Christian Democrat Aldo Moro in the centre-left coalitions of the 1960s.  He was a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951 but returned the $25,000 that came with the honour in protest at the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.  Born into a peasant family, Nenni lost both his parents before he was five years old and grew up in an orphanage, having been placed there by the aristocratic landowners for whom his father had worked.  Read more…

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Ezechiele Ramin – missionary

Priest from Padua who was murdered in Brazil

Ezechiele Ramin, a Comboni missionary who was shot to death by hired killers after standing up for the rights of peasant farmers and traditional tribesmen in a remote rural area in Brazil, was born on this day in 1953 in Padua.  Ramin was only 32 when he was murdered in July 1985, having worked in the South American country for about a year and a half.  He had already completed missionary assignments in North and Central America, worked to help victims of the Irpinia earthquake in Campania and organised a demonstration against the Camorra in Naples before being posted to Brazil.  He was based in the state of Rondônia, an area in the northwest of Brazil next to the border with Bolivia, where small farmers found themselves oppressed, by legal and illegal means, by wealthy landowners, and where government measures had been introduced to curb the freedom of the indigenous Suruí tribes.  Read more…

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Pope Gregory XV

Legally-trained pontiff was against witchcraft and for secret ballots

Pope Gregory XV, who was christened Alessandro Ludovisi, was elected on this day in 1621.  He was the last Pope to issue a papal ordinance against witchcraft with his ‘Declaration against Magicians and Witches’, put out in March 1623.  He was already 67 years of age and in a weak state of health when he was chosen as Pope and relied heavily on his 25-year-old nephew, Ludovico Ludovisi, to assist him in his duties.  Born in Bologna in 1554, the young Alessandro Ludovisi was educated at a Jesuit college in Rome before going to Bologna University to study law.  He worked in various roles for the church until he was appointed Archbishop of Bologna in 1612, having at some stage been ordained.  In 1616 he was sent by Pope Paul V to mediate between Charles Emmanuel 1, Duke of Savoy and Philip III of Spain, who were involved in a dispute. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Real Rockys: A History of the Golden Age of Italian Americans in Boxing 1900-1955, by Rolando Vitale

The first book to explore the history of Italian Americans in boxing, The Real Rockys is a fascinating collection of sociological essays and detailed appendices, examining the role and achievements of the Italian American prizefighter. From humble immigrant origins through to the struggle for assimilation in America, the story reveals that during the most intense inter-ethnic rivalry in boxing Italian Americans captured the greatest proportion of world titles and produced the highest number of championship contenders. Yet the outside world was oblivious to this remarkable success with his Italian identity usually hidden under an appropriated Irish moniker. A fact often overlooked is that there were over 50 Italian American champions and recognized title claimants from this period. For the first time these heroes and hard men are acknowledged for the contribution they made to American sports.

Rolando Vitale has worked in the media for more than 20 years as a writer, researcher and translator. Based in Hertfordshire in the UK, he has reported on some of sport’s biggest events, including scores of boxing shows, and his articles have appeared in national and international publications.

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