20 September

NEW - Sant’Eustachio – Roman saint

Christian convert martyred by Hadrian became world famous 

The feast day of Saint Eustace, Sant’Eustachio as he is known in Italian, is celebrated on this day every year in Rome, as well as throughout Italy, and elsewhere in the world.  Eustace is revered as a Christian martyr because he was killed by the Emperor Hadrian in AD 118 for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods. He was thrown to the lions initially but the animals are said to have refused to eat him, so Hadrian ordered another unpleasant death for him and his family, using a brazen bull, a lifesize model of a bull cast in bronze, which was a particularly cruel torture and execution device of the day.  After Eustace and his family’s deaths, their bodies were secretly recovered and buried by Christians in Rome.  A church and minor basilica in Italy’s capital city is named after Eustace in Rione Sant’Eustachio, an area between Piazza Navona and the Pantheon.  Read more…

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Capture of Rome

Troops enter the capital in final act of unification

Crack infantry soldiers from Piedmont entered Rome and completed the unification of Italy on this day in 1870.  Rome had remained under French control even after the first Italian parliament had proclaimed Victor Emmanuel of Savoy the King of Italy in 1861.  The Italian parliament had declared Rome the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy even though it had not yet taken control of the city.  A French garrison had remained in Rome on the orders of Napoleon III of France in support of Pope Pius IX.  But after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, Napoleon III had to withdraw many of his troops. Italian soldiers from the Bersaglieri regiments in Piedmont led by General Raffaele Cadorna seized their chance and after a brief bombardment were able to enter Rome through a breach in the Aurelian Walls near Porta Pia.  Read more…

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Sophia Loren – actress

Glamorous star one of just three Italian Oscar winners

The actress Sophia Loren, who came to be regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful women and is the most famous name in Italian cinema history, was born on this day in 1934 in Rome.  In a career spanning more than 60 years, Loren appeared in almost 90 films made for the big screen and several others for television.  Although she was often picked for her looks and box-office appeal, she proved her acting talent by winning an Oscar for her role in Vittorio De Sica’s gritty 1960 drama Two Women, released in Italy as La ciociara.  In doing so she became one of only three Italians to win the Academy Award for Best Actor or Actress and the first of either sex to win the award for an Italian-language film. She followed Anna Magnani, who had won in 1955 for The Rose Tattoo, as the second Italian Oscar winner in 1961. Read more…

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Election of Pope Clement VII

Appointment that sparked split in Catholic Church

The election of Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII by a group of disaffected French cardinals, prompting the split in the Roman Catholic Church that became known as the Western Schism or the Great Schism, took place on this day in 1378.  The extraordinary division in the hierarchy of the church, which saw two and ultimately three rival popes each claiming to be the rightful leader, each with his own court and following, was not resolved until 1417.  It was prompted by the election in Rome of Urban VI as the successor to Gregory XI, who had returned the papal court to Rome from Avignon, where it had been based for almost 70 years after an earlier dispute.  The election of Cardinal Bartolomeo Prignano as Urban VI followed rioting by angry Roman citizens demanding a Roman be made pope. Prignano, the former Archbishop of Bari was not a Roman. Read more…

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Asia Argento - actress and director

Twice winner of Italian ‘Oscar’ with turbulent private life

The actress and director Asia Argento, whose father is the influential horror movie director Dario Argento, was born on this day in 1975 in Rome.  Argento’s mother was the actress Daria Nicolodi, granddaughter of the composer Alfredo Casella. She appeared in her first movie at the age of nine and turned out to have such a talent for acting she had won two David di Donatello best actress awards - the Italian equivalent of an Oscar - by the time she was 21.  As well as appearing in around 50 movies, some of which she also wrote and directed, and a number of television productions, Argento’s artistic talents have ranged to writing short stories and novels and recording solo albums as a singer.  Her private life has been somewhat turbulent. Married for five years to the director Michele Civetta, she was previously in a long-term relationship with the Italian rock musician Morgan. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, by David Farmer

Far more than a dry hagiographical account of the lives of saints, this entertaining and authoritative dictionary breathes life into its subjects and is as browsable as it is informative.  First published in 1978, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints offers more than 1,700 fascinating and informative entries covering the lives, cults, and artistic associations of saints from around the world, from the famous to the obscure, the rich to the poor, and the academic to the uneducated. From all walks of life and from all periods of history and from around the world, the wide varieties of personalities and achievements of the canonized are reflected. An updated introduction explains the steps towards becoming a saint, the processes of beatification and canonisation.  This revised fifth edition includes appendices containing five maps of pilgrimage sites, a list of saints' patronages and iconographical emblems, and a calendar of principal feasts, as well as a new appendix on pilgrimages.

David Hugh Farmer, formerly Reader in History at Reading University, is the author or editor of nine books. One of these was Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis: The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln by Adam of Eynsham, which he edited with Decima L Douie.

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