Coming Late to Being Sicilian
“You’re Sicilian? Have any relatives in the Mafia?”
That question kept me from admitting to anyone until I was well into my 30s that half my Italian heritage is Sicilian. (For the record, the other half is from Potenza in the Basilicata Provence where the boot of Italy forms the foot’s arch. It’s not on the coast, but up in the mountains. But that’s an
essay for a different blog.)
Sicily itself sits off the “Toe of Italy” separated from the main peninsula by only a few miles of channel. It’s so close that Italian engineers are planning either a railroad tunnel (aka, a Chunnel) or a long suspension bridge between the European
mainland that ends at that Italian toe and the port of Messina on Sicily. Once it opens, I’m on that train.
The two history books of Sicily I own both start with the association of the Three-Cornered Island and the mining of obsidian going back to prehistoric
times. This jet-black stone created by volcanic activity can be chipped and sharpened into cutting blades or polished as art objects. This natural glass is treasured for its inherent simplicity and beauty.
Sicily is an island of volcanoes, on the island itself, and on smaller islands of its coast. Obsidian is easy to find there.
Obsidian: hard and curved as volcanic glass often
is. Beautiful when shined to a glossy night-black finish. Not a refined beautiful object as is Belleck porcelain or Waterford or Italian crystal. And also, knowing how to break it into shards, obsidian can be sharpened enough to use as a scalpel blade; this ancient cutting edge is still in use as such today.
What’s so ironic and puzzling about being Sicilian is that this island set in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is a treasure of history that gets overlooked or belittled even today. No one should feel any shame for being part of this culture. The Greeks colonized the island long before Rome began to flourish. Siracusae, (Syracuse today), is one of the birthplaces of modern mathematics. Archimedes, perhaps one of the greatest scientific and logical minds of the Ancient World, not only worked out intricate, axiomatic theorems, but also started other intellectuals and engineers thinking about hydrodynamics, fulcrums and levers, and the
heavens.
I find it funny that even today Archimedes is listed as a “Greek” even though he was born in Syracuse and lived there most of his life. As a member of the New World, I am American (of Italian heritage, obviously) but I can hardly say I’m an Italian in such a way to suggest I was born in Rome. So, why call a Sicilian of Syracuse “a Greek”? It’s all part of the bad rap Sicily continuously gets. I believe it stems from the modern bias against Sicily; the Ancients would never have considered Archimedes a Greek.
Like any subject, you scratch the surface and you find a wealth of information. In 2005, my three brothers and I traveled to Potenza then flew from
Naples to Palermo, rented a car, and drove to Piana degli Albanesi where my father’s parents lived until they immigrated to the US in 1913. (He was born in Sacramento in 1914, an American of Sicilian ancestry.) As its name suggests, Piana degli Albanesi is itself a village of immigrants who fled Albania in the 1480s because the Muslim Turks were pushing into the Balkans after the fall of Constantinople.
Isn’t history a wonder? The Balkans still can’t get along and, even as recently as the Fall of the Iron Curtain, Albanians have been loading up rusty steamers and chugging for Sicily as a refugees.
In her book, Sicily: Three Thousands Years of Human History, Sandra Benjamin states that the Albresh, (the name for these Sicilians and Italians of Albanian ancestry), have lost their language and
customs. Her research conclusion is a bit premature. During the late Fifteen-Century migration, Albanian Christians settled in 300 villages in Southern Italy and Sicily. (Coincidentally, Potenza was one of the Italian villages although my Mother’s ancestry has none of this Albanian heritage.) Over time in most of these villages, the Albresh have lost their Albanian heritage. As is typical of immigrants, over time most are indistinguishable from their neighbors.
Not so in Piana degli Albanesi. Here, the Albresh
language is still spoken by my relatives. It is the language of my father and my grandparents, so I learned. My distant Sicilian cousins are teaching their daughter Albresh to keep their heritage alive. She was about 6 or 7 in 2005 when I met her; she spoke formal Italian (the Tuscan dialect), the Sicilian dialect of Italian, plus Albresh from her family, and the basics of English she was learning in school. I am sure before she finishes high school, she’ll know French, as well. And anyone speaking Sicilian/Italian can pick up Spanish with little difficulty. Piana also has an Albanian seminary, started during the Cold War when Albanian Communists banned the Church.
Young Albanian men can get along with Sicilian Albresh pretty well, even though my linguist cousin informs me that today’s Albresh is more like Medieval Albanian than modern Albanian.
So, Sicily has this layer of Albanians who came in 1488. Think of the other layers: Greeks,
Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Romans, Muslims, Normans, the Spanish, the French, and the Germans (to be ousted by American and British forces in 1943) to provide an incomplete list.
The Normans seized contol in 1166, one hundred years after conquering England. The Normans knew a good island to conquer when they saw it. They united Southern Italy with Sicily to form the Kingdom of Two Sicilies or sometimes, the Kingdom of Naples. From the 1500s or so, Sicily became the
football of Europe, something to kick around the royal households. Shakespeare makes this point in his History Plays where one of the reasons to reject a marriage proposal between the English throne and a French royal is that she’s only bringing the Sicilian crown in her dowry. The Bourbons had Sicily. Then Spain had it. (They treated the Sicilians miserably, by the way. Under Spanish rule, a Sicilian peasant
could not get a passport to leave the island; these peasants were virtual slaves in their own fields for 200 years.)
I am grateful for the Normans for one particular aspect. As rulers of this island, they recognized its rich and varied history. In the 1200s, the Norman King, Roger II, ordered all the “antiquity” in his kingdom be saved. On Roger’s authority, Segesta was saved, at the time, a seventeen-centuries-old
temple.
The Greek-style temple at Segesta is the only one in the whole Mediterranean that has all four of its column walls still standing. That means its original walls have now been standing for over 2500 years. All other such temples are partially in ruins. This would include Roman Era temples as well. Look all you want, at the Parthenon, at the ruins in Agrigento with its Valle dei Templi, throughout all the far-flung reaches of the Greek, Alexandrian and Roman empires. Not another temple stands in its original glory like Segesta unless restored by modern archeologists.
This impressive and massive temple itself never seems to have had a roof. This puzzles modern archeologists except those who believe it never intended to have a roof so that different religions could use the same space. Local, pre-Greek Sicilians worshiped to the sky without needing a
roof. (The mild Sicilian weather cooperates.) It’s a rare religious community today that shares its worship space without acrimony, but on polyglot
Sicily it happened 2500 years ago.
And the surviving remnants of the village of Segesta itself, set higher up the rugged hill from the temple, has the ruins of another pagan, pre-Christian temple which then became a Christian Church, then a Mosque, and then finally a monk’s hermitage once the Moors were driven from the island.
I consider Segesta one of the holiest spots I’ve ever visited. Humans have found it so for close to thirty centuries. Can’t beat a track record like that.
So, Sicily is not the darkest island of Europe, not the festering pool of Mafia that too many TV-addicted
Americans have come to believe.
Monreale Cathedral (a Norman edifice with magnificent Christian mosaics), Segesta, Agrigento with its Valle dei Templi (which the Greek poet Pindar once called “the fairest city inhabited by
mortals”), Villa del Casale, (with the grandest and best-preserved examples of Roman mosaics), Mount Etna (Europe’s largest and most active volcano): all places I need to visit. It will be a homecoming for me, a return to that rich culture as “multi-ethnic” as any modern country. Rugged and tempestuous, historic and lavish, meditative and boisterous, quiet along its golden beaches but thunderous at the peak of Etna.
And at its core, a bedrock of obsidian. Hard as
glass, and when necessary, sharp as any forged blade. Traits that have stood me well.
That's me in 2005 with Segesta Temple in the background. Note the best take of me, but there it is. (Shirt bought in Potenza, Italy.)
“You’re Sicilian? Have any relatives in the Mafia?”
That question kept me from admitting to anyone until I was well into my 30s that half my Italian heritage is Sicilian. (For the record, the other half is from Potenza in the Basilicata Provence where the boot of Italy forms the foot’s arch. It’s not on the coast, but up in the mountains. But that’s an
essay for a different blog.)
Sicily itself sits off the “Toe of Italy” separated from the main peninsula by only a few miles of channel. It’s so close that Italian engineers are planning either a railroad tunnel (aka, a Chunnel) or a long suspension bridge between the European
mainland that ends at that Italian toe and the port of Messina on Sicily. Once it opens, I’m on that train.
The two history books of Sicily I own both start with the association of the Three-Cornered Island and the mining of obsidian going back to prehistoric
times. This jet-black stone created by volcanic activity can be chipped and sharpened into cutting blades or polished as art objects. This natural glass is treasured for its inherent simplicity and beauty.
Sicily is an island of volcanoes, on the island itself, and on smaller islands of its coast. Obsidian is easy to find there.
Obsidian: hard and curved as volcanic glass often
is. Beautiful when shined to a glossy night-black finish. Not a refined beautiful object as is Belleck porcelain or Waterford or Italian crystal. And also, knowing how to break it into shards, obsidian can be sharpened enough to use as a scalpel blade; this ancient cutting edge is still in use as such today.
What’s so ironic and puzzling about being Sicilian is that this island set in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is a treasure of history that gets overlooked or belittled even today. No one should feel any shame for being part of this culture. The Greeks colonized the island long before Rome began to flourish. Siracusae, (Syracuse today), is one of the birthplaces of modern mathematics. Archimedes, perhaps one of the greatest scientific and logical minds of the Ancient World, not only worked out intricate, axiomatic theorems, but also started other intellectuals and engineers thinking about hydrodynamics, fulcrums and levers, and the
heavens.
I find it funny that even today Archimedes is listed as a “Greek” even though he was born in Syracuse and lived there most of his life. As a member of the New World, I am American (of Italian heritage, obviously) but I can hardly say I’m an Italian in such a way to suggest I was born in Rome. So, why call a Sicilian of Syracuse “a Greek”? It’s all part of the bad rap Sicily continuously gets. I believe it stems from the modern bias against Sicily; the Ancients would never have considered Archimedes a Greek.
Like any subject, you scratch the surface and you find a wealth of information. In 2005, my three brothers and I traveled to Potenza then flew from
Naples to Palermo, rented a car, and drove to Piana degli Albanesi where my father’s parents lived until they immigrated to the US in 1913. (He was born in Sacramento in 1914, an American of Sicilian ancestry.) As its name suggests, Piana degli Albanesi is itself a village of immigrants who fled Albania in the 1480s because the Muslim Turks were pushing into the Balkans after the fall of Constantinople.
Isn’t history a wonder? The Balkans still can’t get along and, even as recently as the Fall of the Iron Curtain, Albanians have been loading up rusty steamers and chugging for Sicily as a refugees.
In her book, Sicily: Three Thousands Years of Human History, Sandra Benjamin states that the Albresh, (the name for these Sicilians and Italians of Albanian ancestry), have lost their language and
customs. Her research conclusion is a bit premature. During the late Fifteen-Century migration, Albanian Christians settled in 300 villages in Southern Italy and Sicily. (Coincidentally, Potenza was one of the Italian villages although my Mother’s ancestry has none of this Albanian heritage.) Over time in most of these villages, the Albresh have lost their Albanian heritage. As is typical of immigrants, over time most are indistinguishable from their neighbors.
Not so in Piana degli Albanesi. Here, the Albresh
language is still spoken by my relatives. It is the language of my father and my grandparents, so I learned. My distant Sicilian cousins are teaching their daughter Albresh to keep their heritage alive. She was about 6 or 7 in 2005 when I met her; she spoke formal Italian (the Tuscan dialect), the Sicilian dialect of Italian, plus Albresh from her family, and the basics of English she was learning in school. I am sure before she finishes high school, she’ll know French, as well. And anyone speaking Sicilian/Italian can pick up Spanish with little difficulty. Piana also has an Albanian seminary, started during the Cold War when Albanian Communists banned the Church.
Young Albanian men can get along with Sicilian Albresh pretty well, even though my linguist cousin informs me that today’s Albresh is more like Medieval Albanian than modern Albanian.
So, Sicily has this layer of Albanians who came in 1488. Think of the other layers: Greeks,
Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Romans, Muslims, Normans, the Spanish, the French, and the Germans (to be ousted by American and British forces in 1943) to provide an incomplete list.
The Normans seized contol in 1166, one hundred years after conquering England. The Normans knew a good island to conquer when they saw it. They united Southern Italy with Sicily to form the Kingdom of Two Sicilies or sometimes, the Kingdom of Naples. From the 1500s or so, Sicily became the
football of Europe, something to kick around the royal households. Shakespeare makes this point in his History Plays where one of the reasons to reject a marriage proposal between the English throne and a French royal is that she’s only bringing the Sicilian crown in her dowry. The Bourbons had Sicily. Then Spain had it. (They treated the Sicilians miserably, by the way. Under Spanish rule, a Sicilian peasant
could not get a passport to leave the island; these peasants were virtual slaves in their own fields for 200 years.)
I am grateful for the Normans for one particular aspect. As rulers of this island, they recognized its rich and varied history. In the 1200s, the Norman King, Roger II, ordered all the “antiquity” in his kingdom be saved. On Roger’s authority, Segesta was saved, at the time, a seventeen-centuries-old
temple.
The Greek-style temple at Segesta is the only one in the whole Mediterranean that has all four of its column walls still standing. That means its original walls have now been standing for over 2500 years. All other such temples are partially in ruins. This would include Roman Era temples as well. Look all you want, at the Parthenon, at the ruins in Agrigento with its Valle dei Templi, throughout all the far-flung reaches of the Greek, Alexandrian and Roman empires. Not another temple stands in its original glory like Segesta unless restored by modern archeologists.
This impressive and massive temple itself never seems to have had a roof. This puzzles modern archeologists except those who believe it never intended to have a roof so that different religions could use the same space. Local, pre-Greek Sicilians worshiped to the sky without needing a
roof. (The mild Sicilian weather cooperates.) It’s a rare religious community today that shares its worship space without acrimony, but on polyglot
Sicily it happened 2500 years ago.
And the surviving remnants of the village of Segesta itself, set higher up the rugged hill from the temple, has the ruins of another pagan, pre-Christian temple which then became a Christian Church, then a Mosque, and then finally a monk’s hermitage once the Moors were driven from the island.
I consider Segesta one of the holiest spots I’ve ever visited. Humans have found it so for close to thirty centuries. Can’t beat a track record like that.
So, Sicily is not the darkest island of Europe, not the festering pool of Mafia that too many TV-addicted
Americans have come to believe.
Monreale Cathedral (a Norman edifice with magnificent Christian mosaics), Segesta, Agrigento with its Valle dei Templi (which the Greek poet Pindar once called “the fairest city inhabited by
mortals”), Villa del Casale, (with the grandest and best-preserved examples of Roman mosaics), Mount Etna (Europe’s largest and most active volcano): all places I need to visit. It will be a homecoming for me, a return to that rich culture as “multi-ethnic” as any modern country. Rugged and tempestuous, historic and lavish, meditative and boisterous, quiet along its golden beaches but thunderous at the peak of Etna.
And at its core, a bedrock of obsidian. Hard as
glass, and when necessary, sharp as any forged blade. Traits that have stood me well.
That's me in 2005 with Segesta Temple in the background. Note the best take of me, but there it is. (Shirt bought in Potenza, Italy.)
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