Kingdom forever

Petralia Soprana is a charming medieval town in north-central Sicily, at the inland foot of the Madonie mountain range that separates the cheerful Cefalù coast from the hopeless inland hills. It has everything you need: winding medieval streets, a Baroque cathedral of Romanesque origins, a Norman castle which was converted into a Carmelite monastery after the Arab threat has passed, its weekly Friday market, on which day it is forbidden to enter the city from 9 am to 1 pm, a begun but never finished highway, on the six pillars of which a car park has been arranged, and, last but not least, a town hall, with a pastry shop below, and a small park in front with a monument to the fallen heroes.

The Piazza del Popolo on the feast of the armed forces, November 4, 2022

Today, in the age of democracy, the small park is called Piazza del Popolo, but in the anti-democratic age it was called Vecchia Vuccirìa. In the Sicilian language, vuccirìa means cacophony and confusion, in which today’s speakers tend to recognize the root voce, ʻword, sound’, but this is a false etymology. The name actually comes from the French word boucherie, cattle market, and the noise associated with such markets leads to the word’s modern meaning.

The ʻcattle market’ lends a special second meaning to the monument in the middle, which, according to tradition, commemorates those massacred in the war. The monument was dreamed up in 1929 by Antonio Ugo (1870-1950), a prolific sculptor during Fascism, head of the sculpture department of the Accademy of Fine Arts in Palermo, in the popular “Novecento” monumental classicist style of the period, which was so close to other – German or Soviet – imperial styles. The young Roman warrior going to war swears to defend his country with his sword held above a burning altar, like Mucius Scaevola. From under his arm, his anxious old mother peers at the altar, which is probably decorated with the motif of the Eucharist for her – and for Petralia Soprana’s similar old women’s – sake. On the other side, the hero is supported by his wife in going to war, only she knows why. Her arm embraces their Michelangeloesque child, who is partly secretly grieving his father’s heroic decision, partly drawing strength from his mother’s clothes for the time after his father’s fall, which is what this post is about.

Strangely enough, there is no inscription on the monument, although space was left for it, and the holes of the dowels fixing the former marble tablets are still visible.

We are probably dealing with another case of the historical cognitive dissonance which, as we have seen, is so characteristic of the small towns in Sicily. Mussolini’s rule brought development and public security to Sicily, and a harsh suppression of the mafia, which was only restored to its former monopoly by the Anglo-Saxon landings in 1943. The island therefore finds it difficult to give up its Mussolini-era monuments, which remind them of a bygone golden age that has not been reached since. In the main squares of small towns, Mussolini’s frasi celebri can still be read, and still there are sculptures and statues from his era. In the neighboring Gangi, the nationalist memorial plaque of 1936 was first removed in 1945, and then put back due to popular pressure. Probably this monument also had some dedicatory inscription which it was thought better to remove. The monument speaks for itself eloquently enough.

In the photo above, on the corner house overlooking the monument – which may have been an office or a party center – you can still see that under the balcony there was once a text painted in the font typical of public Mussolini quotes. What exactly it was, can be told only by the dwindling age group that can still browse the frasi celebri in their memory and identify the still readable groups of letters.

Much more interesting historical documents are the still-preserved inscriptions that were painted on the façade in May 1946, long after the fall of Mussolini, and which celebrate the monarchy and the king.

“Long live the King! Long live the monarchy!” The hammers and sickles that were faded above and below were not repainted like the royalist inscriptions.

These inscriptions are perhaps unique survivors of a campaign that preceded the June 2, 1946 referendum on Italy’s form of government.

The question of the form of government caused tensions in the domestic politics of united Italy from the very beginning. The spiritual father of the unified Italian state, Giuseppe Mazzini, who founded the Giovine Italia movement in 1831, dreamed of this state as a democratic republic that would abolish all previous kingdoms. However, the unification of Italy was ultimately carried out under the leadership of the king of Sardinia and Piedmont, in reality as a kind of internal colonization. Garibaldi, who united the country from the south, from Sicily, was indeed a republican, but for the sake of a unified Italy, he finally handed over his conquests to Victor Emanuel II. This even made some of his party colleagues consider him a traitor. The opposition between republicans and monarchists determined the entire domestic politics of Italy until Mussolini came to power in 1922.

After the fall of Mussolini on July 25, 1943, the question gained new relevance. The king fled to southern Italy, controlled by Anglo-Saxon troops, and virtually became a lame duck. In addition, he had already compromised himself by appointing Mussolini in 1922, and supporting his dictatorship for twenty years. In the North, occupied by the Germans, the republican parties were illegally re-established, and participated in the anti-German partisan movement. Therefore, after the liberation of the country on April 25, 1945, they demanded a referendum on the form of government.

The ballot of the referedum on June 2, 1946

One month before the referendum, Victor Emanuel III passed the throne to his son Umberto, whose name is still given to squares in Sicily. This change dates the Petralia campaign inscriptions to May 1946..

“The monarchy is the only one that can guarantee the salvation of the homeland. Long live Umberto! Long live the monarchy!”

The June 2 referendum was the first in Italy to take place on the basis of universal suffrage, i.e. women could also participate in it. Less than half of the population of 45 million cast valid votes, of which 12 million voted for the republic and 10 million for the monarchy. After the proclamation of the republic on June 11, King Umberto handed over the power to the new president, Alcide De Gasperi, and then went into exile.

By projecting the votes on the map, we can see how much the issue divided the country. Roughly to the north of Rome, supporters of the republic predominated, and supporters of the monarchy to the south of it. In eastern Sicily, where Petralia is located, the monarchy achieved more than two thirds. This might be also the reason of the survival of the monarchist campaign inscriptions in Petralia, as silent witnesses of the resistance against the colonizing North.

“It is the careerists and adventurers mad for power who are furiously attacking the monarchy. God save the king! Long live the king! People of Petralia! Vote for the monarchy!”

Our reputation in the world

In Venice, a small square opens at the side of the San Cassiano parish church, where the Ponte de la Chiesa leads to the Calle dei Morti on the other side. This latter got its name from the parish cemetery that was once there. At the foot of the bridge steps, there stands the marble corner column of the only house in the square, which bears the house number 1854 on its capital. However, the inscription under the capital is only noticed by those who go close enough to see the letters engraved on it in low relief.

The upper, larger part of the inscription was engraved by a skilled hand in regular capital letters:

1686 A DÌ 18 ZUGNO BVDA FV ASEDIATA ET A DÌ 2 SETTEMBRE FV PRESA

Buda was besieged on June 18, 1686, and occupied on September 2

Beneath, another date was engraved in a freer hand:

1686 A DI 27 LV

On July 27, 1686

We do not know who considered it important enough to record the dates of the recapture of Buda from the Ottomans. But we know he was not alone.

The history of the liberation of Buda, occupied by Suleyman on August 29, 1541, goes back to September 1683, when the imperial German and Polish armies liberated Vienna from the Turkish siege, and a month later they also recaptured Párkány and Esztergom from the Turks. In the euphoria of the victory, Pope Innocent XI convinced the Hapsburgs, Poland and Venice to establish the Holy League for the recapture of additional Ottoman territories. The League’s troops already besieged Buda in 1684, but that time without success. In 1686, after a long preparation, they returned again and, after a three-month siege, at the cost of heavy losses, the finally took the city on September 2, after almost exactly 145 years of Turkish rule.

Gyula Benczúr: The recapture of Buda Castle, 1896. Entering through the castle’s Vienna Gate, Charles of Lothringen looks at the corpse of the Ottoman commander defending the castle, Arnavut Abdurrahman Abdi Paşa, whose monument stands behind the gate today

The monument to the Turkish commander of Buda stands at the place where he fell on September 2, 1686, defending the castle. It was erected in 1932 by the descendants of György Szabó, who fell in the same place, on the same day, besieging the castle. The inscription on the monument is in Hungarian, Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish: “Arnavut Abdurrahman Abdi Paşa, the last governor of the 145-year Turkish occupation of Buda, fell near this place on the afternoon of the 2nd day of September of 1686, in the 70th year of his life. He was a heroic adversary, peace be upon him.”

The pasha’s death is also commemorated by Margit Kovács’s naive ceramics of 1977 at the Vienna Gate, at the beginning of Ostrom (Siege) Street. A particular blooper of the ceramics is that the castle in the background is besieged not by Christians, but by Turks, most probably under the influence of Géza Gárdonyi’s popular Stars of Eger, the most extensive romantic description of castle sieges in Ottoman-period Hungary

The recapture of Buda was celebrated all over Europe with fireworks, bell ringing and masses. This was especially the case in Venice, which, as a naval ally of the Holy League, liberated the Peloponnese from the Turks at the same time, which I will write about shortly. The inscription next to San Cassiano was also born out of this enthusiasm. It is not known, however, what the date of July 27 refers to. On that day, General János Eszterházy launched a major attack against the castle, but it was only partially successful, so it is unlikely that this is what the inscription reminds us of.

Fireworks on Brussels’ main square to celebrate the recapture of Buda

Among the celebrating cities was also Brussels, where, in addition to fireworks, several inns adopted Buda’s name. Around the lonely Buda Inn to the north of the city, a small village had developed by the early 19th century, which was later integrated into Greater Brussels as an industrial district.

Della Bosiers’ Fleur de Buda (1971) is about Brussels’ industrial district Buda

The next Hungarian historical event that made the hearts of all of Europe flutter was the revolution of 1956, after which squares and streets were once again renamed. Brussels already had its Buda, so what they did was to give number 56 to the bus going from the European Parliament to Buda quarter.

After the 1956 revolution, tens of thousands of Hungarian refugees were received in Italy as well, and squares in several cities were named after the Hungarian martyrs.

For example, in Capri (copyright by ribizlifőzelék)

Or in the Sicilian town of Piazza Armerina. On this October 23, we commemorated the anniversary here in a truly dignified place.

It was commemorated in a more dignified place by those Subcarpathian Hungarians, who in 1956 could not even dream of participating in the revolution, but now they are doing and promoting exactly what people of their age wanted to achieve in 1956, and what today’s Hungarian government wants to completely forget. After three hundred years, they are now improving our quite worn reputation in the world.    

“Russian, go home. 1956-2022. The 68th Territorial Defense Battalion of Subcarpathia, Ukraine”

Memento

Nei primi giorni dell’anno 2020 (-21) un virus sconosciuto proveniente dalla Cina semina disagi e tanti morti in tutto il mondo. Anche il Palio di luglio e di agosto non fu corso. Questa pietra vuole ricordare questo brutto evento. Siena 2020

In the first days of the year of 2020 (-21), an unknown virus coming from China is spreading sickness and so many deaths worldwide. Even the Palio of July and August was not run. This stone wants to remember this ugly event. Siena 2020

 
Any Italian knows, with the experience of three thousand years, how to cope with social trauma: put up a memorial stone to it! And one man of Siena knows how to make clear the severity of the trauma: Even the Palio of July and August was not run!!! Nothing like this has happened since the victory of Montaperti over the Florentines in 1260.

The plaque is on the wall of Vicolo della Fortuna 9, in the Jewish neighborhood, the Panther contrada, one of Siena’s seventeen traditional districts whose riding teams test their skills year after year in a horse race to commemorate the victory of Montaperti. The coats of arms on the plaque also emphasize the excellence of the Panther contrada and the unity of Siena.


Above the door of the workshop under the plaque, the coats of arms follow each other in reverse order: first the symbols of Siena, then the crowned panther. Marble restorer Emilio Frati is a local patriot, but a world citizen. During more than fifty years of work, he has been involved in the restoration of a number of outstanding monuments, including – overcoming Montaperti – the Cathedral of Florence, but now he has been working on the Siena cathedral for several years. He scrolls through the photo album The marble floor of the Siena Cathedral. “I restored this, and also this…”


In his workshop, beside the copies of the restored medieval monuments on many different scales, he also offers modern themes, still lifes, Siena souvenirs, and stone inlays of famous football players.




“Why did you put up this plaque?” “Because I think this was one of the most influential events of recent years, but we do not have any collective monument to it. Look, WWI had forty million victims. They have a monument in every single village, recalling their names, one by one. The ensuing Spanish flu had one hundred million of casualties, but if the press had not brought their memory back during the current epidemic, no one would know about them. Siena was the city hardest hit by the black death of 1348-1349 in Europe. It is fitting that at least here we should have a memorial plaque to the black death of 2020-2021.”

Lions on the wing

When future extraterrestrials wonder which living beings went extinct together with mankind in the 21st century, they will come to the surprising conclusion that several mammals had winged variants, and, although their fossil remains have not survived, representations of them will be easy to find. Altogether, man, cattle and lions have each had winged subspecies, it will be concluded. But the most peculiar mutation had to have been the winged lion with the double tail, either as a result of one of the nuclear accidents that had preceded the destruction of humanity, or as a development along with the wings for aerodynamic balance. In the absence of a fossil skeleton, evidence of this two-tailed winged lion will only exist in the form of a statue on the former Klárov Square of the former Prague, on the bank of the Vltava, next to the Lesser Side bridgehead of the Mánes Bridge.


The statue, erected through the fundraising efforts of the British community in Czechia, commemorates the winged Czech lions who, in the 1940s, protected the ground-going British lions against the attacks of the German eagles.

The air force of the Czechoslovak Republic was established in 1918 and ceased to exist exactly twenty years later, when the invading German army disbanded them and confiscated their planes. The Luftwaffe offered to take the Czech pilots, too, but the vast majority of them preferred to emigrate. Many joined the Polish Air Force, and they fought on their side in September 1939, but then fled the country with the rest of the Polish army, and continued to fight the Germans in the skies above other lands. The statue, erected as a gift from the British community in Czechia, commemorates the 2,500 Czech pilots who defended Britain during the “Battle of England” i.e. the ongoing German air strikes of 1940 and 1941.


Looking at the statue, I recall an earlier encounter with such a lion. It was in northern Scotland, on the banks of Cromarty Firth, in the cemetery of the now-perished village of Kiltearn (in local Gaelic, Cill Tighearna). Lloyd and I turned off the main road onto a dirt road leading to the cemetery right on the beach for the ruins of the medieval church and the tombs of the medieval Scottish lairds. We were very surprised to see, among the tombs of the lairds and burghers, a small plot of military graves from the 1940s, of three Canadians, twelve Poles and one Czech pilot.

The Czech sergeant, Jaroslav Kalášek was of the same age as the Czechoslovak Air Force: he was born in 1918 and died in 1944. According to the Czech war graves register, he fled to England in 1939, through Hungary and France, that is, together with the Polish army, which, after the coordinated German-Soviet invasion of Poland, was given a free escape route by Hungary, despite the displeasure of the German ally. He served in the coast guard unit of the British Air Force, which defended the industrial centers of Scotland against German airstrikes, thus making that coast a bit of a Czech sea. Their resistance is remembered, in addition to the war graves, by the artificial island in front of the middle pillar of the World Heritage Forth Bridge, with the remains of an air defense battery protecting Scotland’s east coastline.


Those of the Czech winged lions who survived the war were awaited by the damnatio memoriae at home. During the decades of Cold War, it was forbidden to talk about the service of Czech pilots in the British Army. Nevertheless, the regime remembered precisely who took part in this officially non-existent service: they were persecuted, imprisoned as enemies of the system, forced into menial jobs, and denied pensions. They were rehabilitated only after the Velvet Revolution, by a decree of Václav Havel on 29 December 1989, which restored their rank, pension and place in the historical memory of the country.

The erection of the winged two-tailed lion in 2014 also belongs among the gestures of restoring historical memory. However, it does not please everyone. A 2014 issue of Český rozhlas published, under the title “Circus in Klárov”, a legitimate criticism on the various postmodern sculptures spotted in this amorphous square of the Lesser Side, including “the extremely poorly modeled lion by the British sculptor Colin Spofforth, who makes kitschy sculptures exclusively for shopping mails, and whose work was never allowed out in public spaces”.


But Praga has even endured worse statues. This one will also remain as an imprint of our age, or at most a metronome will be put in its place.