History

In late 18th-century Palermo, beneath the glare of the Sicilian sun and the shadow of Baroque palaces, power rested on a fragile mixture of absolutism, clerical privilege and historical myth. It was here that Giuseppe Vella, a Maltese abbot attached to the Benedictine abbey in Monreale, carried out one of the most audacious intellectual scams in Sicilian history. Claiming to translate ancient Arabic manuscripts, Vella fabricated texts that rewrote the island’s medieval past in ways that conveniently served Bourbon rule and ecclesiastical interests. The forgery — later known as the Council of Egypt — suggested that many aristocratic privileges had …

Although little-known today, Enrico de Tonti carried the rich heritage of Italy into the annals of European explorers. His Italian roots of resilience and tenacity — traits forged in a region long ruled by foreign empires — were keys to his survival in the wilderness of 17th-century North America. Tonti was born around 1649 in a coastal town near Naples to Lorenzo de Tonti and Isabelle di Lietto. The family moved to Paris soon after his birth so his father could escape persecution after an unsuccessful revolt against the city’s Spanish viceroy. Raised in Paris, Tonti grew up among émigrés. …

I have my Grandmother Anna Anzalone Tinaglia’s old Italian “La Sacra Bibbia” from when she lived in the North Side neighborhood once known as Little Sicily. Her copy is well-worn and annotated by her. It’s from the American Bible Society, which gave out Bibles to new immigrants in America. It is a translation by G. Diodati, an Italian Protestant. It isn’t sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and for centuries it was prohibited. Giovanni Diodati was born in 1576 in Switzerland to a noble Protestant family from Lucca. Protestant exiles, his family had fled the Inquisition to find refuge in the …